Ink and Steel

“On a darker day,” she said, crouching and resting her back against the wall, but not sitting, “I might give ye that Kit was killed for my sins.” She balled fists reddened with scrubbing against her eyes, whipcord muscle flexing across skinny forearms.

“But it wasn’t Robert wielding the dagger.”

Will suddenly felt very tired, as if the space of a few feet across the floor between himself and Mistress Poley were a rushing river that must be swum. “Do you see your husband often, Mistress?”

She pulled her hands down. “Never an I can cross the street in time. But there might be yet a thing or two I may aid you with, Master Shakespeare.” She nodded, a sage oscillation of her head, and then she grinned. Will blinked in the dazzle of her smile as she squared her shoulders and rose against the wall without setting a hand on the floor, realizing that she was no older than he. Not that you re quite the beardless boy any more.

“Aye, Will Shakespeare, then. A friend of Kit Marley’s is a friend of mine.”

   Act II, scene v

Barabas:

Some Jews are wicked, as all Christians are.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, The Jew of Malta

Kit’s eye never shifted from the unrippled surface of the Darkling Glass, his fingertips hooked under the lip of the carved flower petals marking the frame. So long as his hand rested among the cold, sculptured blossoms, he heard the words of the players clearly: Burbage’s metered, resonant voice declaiming, ‘He jests at scars that never felt a wound’, Burbage and Kemp, and Will, and the rest of the company moved about the shaded stage before an empty house, on an early autumn afternoon. Sunlight glared on the packed earth of the yard, outlining a not-quite-perfect circle with the bite of the stage taken from it, its margins defined by the gallery roofs. Kit leaned closer, tracing the action behind the mirror, where small forms moved sharp and crisp in the cold, polished blackness of the glass. But it was cold. Cold as a scene viewed through a rippled casement.

Kit drew his brown woolen cloak tighter, tugging the hood up to hide his hair and the black band of the eyepatch crossing his face. He settled his sword at his belt with his left hand, hiding it under a fall of cloth, glanced over his shoulder, and finding himself unobserved thought very carefully about a dark corner of the Theatre’s second gallery, in the private boxes above and behind the stage. It came into view, a familiar concealed corner behind a pillar and a bench where lovers might steal a kiss. Or where a cloaked man might linger and in his own person overhear the voice of Richard Burbage speaking beautiful words:

‘By a name,

I know not how to tell thee who I am:

My name, dear Saint, is hateful to myself,

Because it is an enemy to thee.

Had I it written, I would tear the word’

A warm breeze brought Kit the scent of the streets and the distant barking of a dog, and the contrast to Faerie’s cool air and birdsong came home with a pang. He sweated in his cloak, and saw that the players sweated as much in their costumes, and thought, how much I miss thisonly a few moments before he realized that he could not, in fact, step back to Faerie as simply as he’d stepped away. I’ll need to find a looking glass.

He wasn’t worried: he thought he might have two or three days before the pain set in, and if he couldn’t visit Will because Will would be watched there were other errands Kit could busy himself upon. Once night fell. In the meanwhile, he crouched against the wall in a garishly painted box at James Burbage’s Theatre, first to be so named, and concealed his face, and watched men who had been friends rehearse a play.

Several of his own poor scribblings had made their mark upon these boards those sanded scorches were from an overturned firepot during a miscarriage of Faustus, some years since and by this current rehearsal, Kit judged that Will Shakespeare had made a fair mark of his own.

The play progressed. The shadows slid, and Kit slid with them, his eyes tinging and a smile on his lips. He sighed and settled down on the floor cross-legged, peering around a bench, his left arm going numb from elbow to wrist while he leaned his chin on his arm. He didn’t dare blow his nose, and so sniffled quietly and uncomfortably into the rough wool of his cloak. And then the truth of what he was seeing sank in, and he sat back against the wall, rapier sticking out to the side like a stiff, unwieldy tale.

Two warring houses and their children lost coming to their senses too late, uniting when the future they might have defended is lost to them. Not Catholics and Protestants, but Capulets and Montagues. Kit bit down on his finger to keep from laughing out loud.

I’d almost forgotten. His family is Catholic.