Ink and Steel

Kit wheezes with pain and locks his tongue behind his teeth. And then there are men in the room, and he can’t beg if he wants to, because spiked iron fills his mouth. He did know the names of four of the other five. Easton, Carter, Saunders, Silver. The last one is a slender-hipped, broad-shouldered blond, barely a man in years, whom Kit would have eyed with some appreciation under other circumstances. Catesby, Fray Xalbador calls him, and Baines calls him Robin.

Easton, Carter, Saunders, Silver. Catesby. Richard Baines. Xalbador de Parma. Easton, Carter, Saunders, Silver I can remember that.

In the dream, the rough iron of the bridle already wears at his cheeks and nose. In the dream, the ruin of his right eye weeps blood and matter down his face. In the dream he kneels quietly at Baines feet, domesticated. ‘And rough jades mouths with stubborn bits are torn …’ History had been different, but dreams were what they were. Puke with that thing in your mouth, Kit, and you’ll die of it.

Kit strains to overhear the quiet discussion without attracting Baines attention. The Spaniard seems to be instructing the others with careful hand gestures. Kit presses at the gag in his mouth experimentally with his tongue, moans as fresh blood flows. Baines catches the iron straps around Kit’s skull in a free hand and gives it a little shake, playfully rattling the scold’s bridle, bruising Kit’s cheeks and tearing at his mouth. Baines reaches through the bars and smoothes Kit’s hair, leans down and whispers ‘Holla, ye pampered Jades of Asia, / What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day?’

Catesby, the splendid blond, turns from the rest and crosses to Baines, looking down at Kit with something like dismay. He’s a bit unprepossessing. Baines laughs, petting.

“He’s a poet. One of their sorcerer-playmakers, a darling of Walsingham’s. Already known around Cambridge for his filthy translations of Ovid, and London for a bloody travesty of a pagan play. Aren’t you, puss?” Another little shake, a caress, and more blood. This Kit nods, biding his time, a chip of tooth working into his gum.

“Good puss. Pick of the litter. It’s distasteful.”

“Twill break their black arts.” Baines jerks his head at Fray Xalbador. “Between me and he, you’ve two priests who say it. Desperate times.”

Catesby smiles bitterly, as that Kit thought but you weren’t there. It was only the five of them. Panic. I would remember if it had been six. I would remember. This is not how it happened. Catesby had been at Rheims, arriving just as Kit took his leave forever.Kit remembered the worn sword, the good clothes, the expansive grin. But Catesby had not, could not have been in that close basement room.

He still speaks. “It doesn’t sit well. But, to the glory of God and the Holy Mother Church.”

“To the glory of God,” Baines answers. Kit doesn’t think Catesby feels the lie in the big man’s words, but Kit does. Feels it in the way his hand tightens on Kit’s tattered arm.

Does Will know how much I left from that I told him?

Which will it be, the pentangle or the circle of Solomon?

Oh, God. No. Marley, I conjure thee, awake.

The braziers smoke as they make him ready, twisted rodstock heating in each one. It’s copies of the poker with which he’d threatened Will, not the irons de Parma actually used, and I fought. I fought and they had to drag me, he goes docile and willing to Baines command. It would be easier if they would bend him over the table, like Edward, so he can’t see their faces. But they want him on his back.

That Kit remembered how he had turned his head, cursing, pulling against the agony of Baines hands, and sunk his teeth in the base of the big man’s thumb. This Kit tries, but the weight of his head presses the bands of the bridle forward, drags the barbs on the bit across the soft ridges on the roof of his mouth in a mockery of a lover’s kiss. Still, that Kit remembered the taste of Baines blood with bitter triumph, and Baines mockery as he inserted the bit.

“Now, puss, if thou’rt going to bite we’ll have to muzzle thee sooner instead of later.”

“A fair idea,” the Spaniard had answered, “to stop his pagan poetry in his mouth. It’s why I had it with my mage-tools. That and in case we laid hands on a fay after all.”