Ink and Steel

Kit balanced the knife across the palm of his hand. “Damn, Will. I don’t know.”

“What does that mean, you don’t know?”

Kit reversed the knife in his hand like a juggler; Will jumped as he drove the blade neatly into the same gouge Will had left earlier, and a full inch deeper.

“By Christ’s sore buggered arse, Will. It means the possibility does exist. I shouldn’t think I’d need to draw you a plan. Given yours come in litters.” The glare as Kit shoved himself to his feet left Will speechless and stung. He stood more slowly, holding out his bandaged hand, the right one tightened on the coin.

“Kit,” Will swallowed, a task that was growing uncomfortable. “I apologize.”

“Damn you.” But the edge dropped from Kit’s tone, and he settled onto his stool again, resting his forehead on the back of his hand. “Thy pardon, Will. I am overwrought.”

Will nodded, and sat as well, reaching out right-handed to grab Kit’s wrist, hoping his hand would not shake.

“The boy will want apprenticing soon. Had you a desire to see him in some trade or another?”

“God.” Kit’s voice was shaky. He clapped his left hand over Will’s right and squeezed. “Anything but a player, a moneylender, or an intelligencer.”

“Not to follow in his father’s footsteps, then? Whatever those footsteps be.”

The silence grew taut between them. Will drew his hand back and dropped it into his lap.

“Right. Cobblery it is.” When he finished laughing, Kit emptied his cup and pushed it aside.

“Xalbador de Parma. Fray Xalbador de Parma. A Promethean.”

“I had discerned that.”

“More than that.” His voice seemed to dry in his throat. Will pushed his own barely touched cup of hock across the table, and Kit took it with a grateful nod.

“A Mage, they call him, plural Magi. As if he had anything in common with great spirits such as Dee or Bruno. Fray Xalbador is also an Inquisitor, one of their infiltrators in the Catholic church.”

Will wished suddenly he had not given his wine away, remembering Kit’s voice on another occasion, in the dark kitchen of Francis Langley’s house.

“Still, an Inquisitor. I’m tempted to count it some species of honor.”

“Oh. It bodes not well.” Kit shoved the cup back at Will with still some wine in it. “You must see to it that Francis gives Thomas Walsingham the name. Or better, see to it yourself. I’m sure your status is enough, these days, that he would grant you an interview if you sent him a note.”

“You sense a move against the Queen?”

“I can see no reason otherwise de Parma would be in England. You’ll want to pour wine, if you’ve finished that.”

“More wine?” But Will stood, and collected Kit’s cup as well, and again filtered the dregs through cheesecloth to produce something potable.

“Here.”

“Sit,” and Will sat. “What is it?”

“The reason Elizabeth protects Oxford. And what will make your task all the harder, though Essex has o’erplayed his hand.”

Will studied Kit’s face, its deadly earnest placidity except for a sort of valley worn between the eyes. “I listen.”

“You know Edward de Vere was raised as William Cecil, Baron Burghley’s ward after the sixteenth Earl of Oxford died. At the Queen’s request.”

“I do.”

“This does not leave this room.”

“I understand.” Kit drank off his wine at a draft, and plucked the dagger from the tabletop to clean his nails.

“Oxford is Elizabeth’s bastard son.”

   Act II, scene xi

Mortimer:

Madam, whither walks your majesty so fast?

Isabella:

Unto the forest, gentle Mortimer,

To live in grief and baleful discontent;

For now my lord the King regards me not,

But dotes upon the love of Gaveston.

He clapshis cheeks and hangs about his neck,

Smiles in his face, and whispers in hisears;

And, when I come, he frowns, as who should say,

“go whither thou wilt, seeing I have Gaveston.”

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II

Kit tugged his hood higher. “Latch the door after I leave.”

Will folded his arms. “I fail to see what errand could be of so much import that you must risk yourself in the street.”

“Some things,” Kit said, “a man must simply do. I’ll return by dawn. I swear it.”

“I’ll be at the Mermaid if you want me, then,” Will said, shaking his head in stagy frustration.

Kit walked through London with a feeling in his breast like freedom, his left hand easy on the hilt of a silver rapier forged as hard and resilient as steel. Carts clattered in the twilight, whorish girls and boys called from doorways, and men and women hustled home from market or out to taverns for their dinners. A commonplace scene, London in the sunset, and one at odds with the determination that coiled in Kit. He kept his eyes downcast and let his hair fall in front of his face, concealing as best he could his eyepatch.

A sunny day for staging a vengeance tragedy, Marley. Tis not vengeance,he told himself. Tis preclusion.