Any Man So Daring (27 page)

The true path, where Will walks. He holds the stick the lady gave him in his hand, and it pulls him, impatiently, like a child pulling an adult by the hand. Night closes in on all sides, and he is tired. He looks longingly towards piles of moss and leaves.

W
ill felt as though he could not walk any more. Each of his steps was dearly purchased in effort.

He took a step, and then he thought of Hamnet — alone, who knew alone for how long? — and he took another. Then he thought of Hamnet, and wondered if the lady was right. If she was right, who had been raising Hamnet these many years? He stepped forward again.

The path — a sandy way, which meandered amid trees and beyond groves — felt hard beneath his feet. His weary muscles complained over the effort of every step.

Sometime ago his stomach, complaining of long neglect, had joined its laments to the rest of his body’s woes.

Now and then it seemed to him he heard the sound of hooves in the woods, and, now and again, the sound of a voice complaining. He did not look. He did not tarry. Perhaps Marlowe’s ghost pursued Will. Perhaps it had commandeered a pale ghost horse.

 
Or perhaps the Hunter....

Will closed his mind against any thought of the immortal justicer. He had reason enough to fear without thinking of new ones.

By a high mound of leaves, he felt as though he could walk no more and, stopping, he whispered to himself, “O, weary night. O, long and tedious night. Abate thy hours: shine comforts from the east, that I may get to the castle and free Hamnet. My legs can keep no pace with my intent. Here will I rest me, till the break of day. And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, steal me a while from mine own company.”

Putting the magic rod — that still strained to find the magic path and follow it — within his doublet, where it pulsed and pushed like a small child begging for a sweet, Will laid himself down upon the mossy ground, his head on a mound of leaves.

He closed his eyes and, for a moment, he was back at Stratford, with his wife Nan. He sat at the broad kitchen table, and Nan had just put a bowl of soup in front of him. Across from him, Susannah and Judith sat, both miniatures of their mother, though Susannah already showed a woman’s form — as yet a shy womanhood, as reticent and unsure of itself as Miranda’s.

But there, at the broad, scrubbed kitchen table, in the small, rustic kitchen in the house at Henley street, sat Hamnet — a different Hamnet, grown and matured, looking much as Will liked to think Will had looked in his prime: with golden eyes and soft dark curls, and the first blossoming of a beard upon his chin.

Hamnet wore a bright blue velvet doublet and looked regal and full of confidence as his father had never felt yet.

Will looked at his son and smiled, happy that he had gone to London and slaved away his days and wasted his nights away from Nan and the girls. He had made Hamnet a gentleman out of it, hadn’t he? A gentleman who’d never need to be humble to any person.

But then, in the way of dreams, Will felt disturbed, and his heart misgave him that he had forgotten something or misapprehended something. Something was wrong. His plan for Hamnet had not worked as intended.

“Wish us joy,” Hamnet said. “Wish us joy, Father.”

He lifted his hand that held another’s hand. Turning his head, Will beheld -- sitting beside Hamnet on the long bench in the humble kitchen -- the elf girl that he’d met in the crux earlier this day.

She was blonde and slim and more beautiful than human girl could ever be. She was a princess of fairyland.

Now, in Will’s dream, Nan leaned over him, her warm body against his and whispered in his ear, “I always knew it would be thus, ever since I nursed her. I always knew she’d be our daughter.”

Marlowe’s ghost stood, half-leaning, against the wall of the kitchen, near the hearth hung with shining pans. One of his legs was raised, his foot resting flat against the wall.

He crossed his arms on his chest, much the same way he’d been represented in his portrait, limned while he was at Cambridge.

But one of the eyes that gazed so ironically out of the portrait that hung in the buttery at Cambridge, was now punctured and dripping gore.

And Marlowe was a ghost, dead for his fairyland love.

Will looked on Hamnet, who held the elf princess’ hand. Hamnet said again, “Wish us joy.”

Will stood up. He yelled, “No!”

Fairyland would not steal his son from him. Will would see his son successful and be able to be proud of Hamnet in the world of men. This was his son, and not Quicksilver’s to steal.

Marlowe threw back his head and laughed a high, uncontrolled laughter like a drunk man.

“Stop,” Will yelled. “Stop!” He reached for the bowl of soup and threw it, over Hamnet’s head at the laughing ghost. “Stop!”

But the laughter went on and on and on.

Will woke up, his heart beating fast, so fast it seemed about to crack his ribs and escape his chest.

The dream gone, Will found himself lying on the ground, atop moss and leaves. A leaf stuck to his face, where sweat from his dream had dripped.

But the laughter remained -- high -- coming from just past the nearest trees. There a light moved, trippingly, like a lantern carried by someone who was none too sober.

And a woman’s voice screamed, high and faltering, “Help! Oh, help me!”

Scene Twenty Five

The campsite where Quicksilver and Caliban sit companionably on either side of the blazing fire and eat ill-cooked meat. Caliban sits with a bottle in his hand and four others by his feet.

Q
uicksilver eyed Caliban, while Caliban ate in fierce, growling bites, all the while making sounds as though he muttered to himself beneath the chewing.

Quicksilver picked desultorily at the slice of veal resting on a large leaf upon his knees.

The veal had cooked unevenly, in water that was really magic, as was the ocean of the crux -- pure magic, under the aspect of water.

Quicksilver was thirsty but hesitated to ask the troll to drink from the one open bottle into which the creature had been slobbering.

And yet, who was Quicksilver to call any being a monster? What right had he, who’d been born double and was now single, to call less than an equal to anyone?

He looked across the fire at Caliban, and the troll grinned at him, showing his sharp fangs encrusted with bits of meat, most of it raw.

Quicksilver looked away and set aside the veal, upon which a spark of magic force seemed to run, sizzling upon the tongue, electrical to the fingers.

Quicksilver wiped the tip of his fingers to the covering of his bed, that he’d wrapped around himself like an uneven toga. He cleared his throat, looking at the troll. “You’re from the Northern Mountains, then?”

For a while it looked as though Caliban wouldn’t answer, but then he growled once, twice. He held his dinner by the bone that ran through the piece of meat and, with each of his bites, he scraped the meat off and cut two swaths into the bone beneath.

He swallowed with another growl, then looked sideways at Quicksilver. “I was born in the mountains, but I didn’t stay there long enough to know them. The Hunter, the creature of the night who takes those who break the ancient laws, came to my den and took me away while I was no more than a cub.”

Caliban looked away from Quicksilver and into the distance. For a moment his dark eyes softened, acquired an almost human expression. Quicksilver would swear they had filled with tears that caused them to shine in the fire light.

Did trolls cry?

“I remember my dame,” Caliban said, and a catch of tears seemed to stop his voice from coming out fully.
 
It caught upon itself in the creature’s throat, seeming to thin as it squeezed past a lump of emotion. “She was a brave one, standing up to the Lord of The Night, and growling at him, and yelling that I was but a cub, a little one, and didn’t deserve damnation.”

Caliban blinked, and fat tears fell down his muzzle, water rolling over the orange fur before seeping slowly into it. “Faith, I remember her well, her moist tongue, her long fur. I was her favorite from the litter and she gave me the tit first. She tried to keep me. She tried. But the Lord of The Night said he wasn’t taking me for my crimes, but for his needs. He said he needed a servant and playmate for his daughter and he’d return me to my tribe and my clan, my den and my mother when his need was past.”

Caliban looked down at the gnawed-clean bone in his hand and gave a growl, low upon his throat. He flung the bone violently into the fire, raising a shower of sparks. “That was almost fourteen years ago, and sometimes I wonder how my mother and my clan fare in the northern mountains.”

Quicksilver wondered, also. So many clans of trolls had fought beside Vargmar, so many been decimated root and branch, the caves they inhabited blocked with trunks and leaves and set on fire — every creature, mother and father, adult and warrior, cub and babe alike, dead.

Thinking on it now, on that ruthless strategy, Quicksilver wondered how he’d found the heart to do it. Though, faith, his heart had little to do with it. The elves had not fought with their heart but with their brain -- with cunning and decision and strategy. With tradition and knowledge and duty.

Quicksilver had fulfilled his dynastic duty. He’d fought the ancient enemies, just as the other kings of elvenland had — Quicksilver’s father, Oberon, and before him Oberon’s father.

Caliban took another sip from the bottle. He watched Quicksilver though narrowed eyes, as though knowing what scenes passed behind Quicksilver’s tired gaze, as though he knew that he might not have a clan to return to and that the guilt for their decimation would rest on Quicksilver’s shoulders.

Quicksilver looked away feeling remorse for actions that he’d never before even questioned. He felt his throat close from thirst, thirst and hunger together — the hunger he could not satisfy, not on this veal that was more rare than cooked and cooked more by magic than by fire. He could not stomach it.

As for thirst....

From everywhere, nearby, came the sound of running water, the sound of water dripping. But it was an illusory sound.

Quicksilver remembered the pond where he’d met the lady Silver, remembered the feel of it. That was not water, but living, liquid magic. A drink of it and, force, he’d burn alive.

He cleared his throat again, “Kind Caliban,” he said, “May I have a drink?”

Caliban looked surprised, and well he might, since the wine was, by rights, Quicksilver’s, by him transported from the palace in fairyland.

To his credit, he made no protest, but smiled, showing his overgrown canine fangs, as he passed the bottle to the king of fairyland.

Quicksilver took a deep draught and told himself that he only imagined the slightly foul taste in the wine.

He tried not to think of the creature’s lips touching the bottle neck.

The wine was wet and — faith — wet was all Quicksilver required now.

He wondered if even now this wine would be flowing freely in fairyland, to commemorate the victory he’d obtained.

What would Malachite, what would fair Ariel think of Quicksilver’s disappearance? How long had he been gone?

He stared into the fire and saw in it patterns and shapes of monstrous import — armies in battle, creatures meeting each other in a field where neither love nor reason mattered, and only duty counted. Each one’s duty, differently arrayed, called in an opposite direction till only one race, one point of view emerged victorious — the other, perforce, dead.

“And you?” Caliban asked. “Who are you, O king? Why came you here?”

Quicksilver opened his hands. He couldn’t -- nor did he wish to -- tell the troll about Will and Will’s child, and Quicksilver’s feelings for Will and Will’s suspicions of Quicksilver. “I am the uncle of your mistress,” he said.

The troll smiled. “Ah, you’re Proteus's enemy.”

Quicksilver inclined his head. “You could say as much.”

“Oh, how I crave vengeance on Proteus,” Caliban said. “He has magicked my mistress with a magic more potent than any philter. He’s made her fall in love with his false ways and her innocent maiden heart has he deceived with tales strange and wondrous.” He paused. “He’s made her believe you are
her
enemy.”

“And you believe it not?” Quicksilver asked, wondering what the monster would say if he knew Quicksilver’s inner thoughts and Quicksilver’s sins and how long Quicksilver had fought against his trollish kin.

Caliban shook his great, matted head. “Proteus is too smooth, his tongue too glib. He loves not my mistress, nor could he, for all his heart is taken up with himself. He is too smooth and gentle to be true, and he knows those manners of men and elves that I cannot muster — but Lord, we trolls have some memory from our species, and some things we know without being told. With that memory, thus older than myself, I know when an elf is true and when he’s not. This elf is not.”

Something vibrated in Caliban’s voice — a hint of tears, a touch of affronted feelings. Of a sudden, Quicksilver saw it, and his eyes widened in shock.