Ink and Steel

He coughed into his hand. “If thou wilt not tumble me,” she said as she came to him, “wilt at least come to thy bed and comfort me with thine arms?” He blew out the lamp and did as she asked, and pretended not to hear her weep.

Until the small hours, when the noise from the street below grew slighter and she moved against him, mumbling into the dark. “I want a business, Will. If thou hast playmaking, then give me something other than stitchery and child-chasing to fill the hours.”

“What wouldst thou?” He felt her smile against his shoulder, and knew he was lost.

My lord husband. I could make thee a wealthy man. A long pause, and shimmering wryness. I want to buy land.

Which she could do only in his name and person.

“With the income I send?”

“And mine own portion.” Her held breath stilled against his cheek, he considered.

“Annie,” he said, and still heard no hiss of breath through her lips. “Send me what needst my mark,” he said.

“Mean old biddy. Stripling,” she answered, and kissed his cheek above the beard, and he was sorry that was all.

   Act II, scene vii

Can kingly lions fawn on creeping Ants?

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II

“Sweet Kit.” Murchaud shook his head, black curls uncoiling across the silver-shot gray silk taffeta of his doublet. He reclined beside the fire, an octavo volume propped on his knee. Kit looked up from the papers spread on his worktable and smiled through the candlelight, wary at Murchaud’s tone.

“You must not weary yourself on the affairs of mortals, my love. It will bring sorrow.”

Kit blotted his quill and laid it across the pen rest. Methodically, he sanded black words, setting the letter aside unfolded when he stood. “A command, Your Highness?”

Murchaud set his book aside and stretched on the divan, gesturing Kit closer, but Kit stood his ground.

“Nay, my lord.”

“Kit.”

“Nay, my lord.” He scraped a bootheel across the flags and frowned, turning to look into the flames of the cross-bricked hearth.

“Where has Morgan been?”

“What mean you?”

“I mean,” Kit said, watching ash crumble at the edges of a cave among the embers that glowed cherry red as a dragon’s eye, “she has not summoned me in … How long has it been?” He shrugged, running his tongue across the cleft in his upper lip and then frowning as he nibbled his mustache. “—some time.”

Kit heard the Elf-knight stand, his almost-silent footsteps as he closed the distance on Kit’s blind side.

“She has a cottage where she flees the court. It lies behind yonder beech wood. I will see that she knows of your sorrow. There’s worse to come.”

“What mean you?” The hesitation was long enough for Kit’s gut to clench.

“I’m leaving in five days. The Mebd sends me on diplomacy.”

“Where?”

“I cannot say. But it will be hard for you; Morgan must keep her distance now, and you must seem alone while I am gone. It must seem she has tired of you. You’ve played this game before. She said she warned you.”

Kit looked up. “That I might be needed for skills beyond poetry. Am I naught but a Queen’s toy, Murchaud?”

The Elf-knight smiled. “Is that so terrible a thing to be? You courted Papists for your former Mistress. There are factions in Faerie that are not so fond of your new one, or the Queen. You’ll be attractive to them.”

“The ugliness of the intelligencer’s lot,” Kit said. “Win a man’s trust. Become his friend. Whisper words of love in his ear as you slip in the knife. Catholicism is as excellent a religion as any, I suppose, so I have no reason to prefer Protestants to Catholics. Nor this Fae to that Fae, Murchaud.”

“No,” Murchaud answered, a gentle hand on his elbow. “But thou didst serve a Queen those Papists would have seen murdered, didst not?”

Kit turned back to the fire. “I did.”

Murchaud bent close amid a scent of new-mown grass. “And now you serve another, whose enemies are also manifold. Shall you serve her less well?”

“That other service, for all its blackness, I chose.” Kit sighed and nodded, and Murchaud draped an arm around his shoulders. The Prince’s tone grew intimate.

“You mourn your other life? You miss smoky, brutal London and its pox-riddled stews, its painted Ganymedes, and its starving pickpockets, soon to be hanged?”

“Should I not?”

“Ah, Kit.” Warmth, yes, and pity. “You’ll outlive it. Outlive all your loves and hates. Tis easier to lose it now, all of a piece, than by shreds and tatters.”

“… outlive it?” He turned and looked, despite himself, and caught Murchaud’s expression as the Elf-knight reached to steady him. “Outlive the mortal world?”

“Faerie does not move as the iron world, and you’ll not age here. How long did you think you had lingered here?” Earnest eyes, and dark brows drawn together.

“Hast been a year and more in England, two, three summers here.” Kit swallowed. His voice trailed off at the smile in Murchaud’s eyes. “How long?”