Any Man So Daring (3 page)

The panicked cascade of his words having finished tumbling from his lips, Ned stared at Will, the intelligence of his gaze sharpened by galloping fears. Behind his ordinary brown eyes marched armies of despair, brandishing flags of hunger and privation.

Will felt color climb to his cheeks, for the play should have been ready, could have been ready, more than a week ago, but for that he’d delayed, because he felt Marlowe’s words trickle through his incapable fingers onto the waiting paper.

Will felt himself nothing but a vessel for the doomed genius of the late Kit Marlowe and he wanted to be more. He wanted to write his own plays. He wanted to be applauded for his own work.

Yet, how to explain this to Ned, whose very blood ran with ciphers and figures, whose fear was fueled by a tide of red ink upon the company books, whose very life depended on the take of the theater on any given afternoon.

“The play will be done... er... very soon,” he said. He would have to write it. He would have to write it no matter whose it turned out to be, he thought, staring at Alleyn’s eyes and feeling Ned’s fear like a palpable thing, like a living creature, sniffing about the room and looking for an escape route. “The play will be done.”

“Do you have part of it?” Ned asked. He stood on one leg, an anxious stork. “Do you have part of it, some papers I can give the men to rehearse? They are as dispirited as... well, they are dispirited. They see no end in sight to empty theaters. You may well imagine. If you can give me a little, a few words...”

Will swallowed and shook his head. “Not yet, but I will. I promise you I’ll have it ready soon. It’s called
Vortigern and Rowena
and I have all the scenes laid here.” He tapped his head. “I have all the scenes, and I know what to do. I just have to write it. A simple matter.”

Ned’s eyes widened again, surprise and confusion in them. “But you’ve had two extra weeks,” he said. “And you wrote nary a word? What is wrong?” Ned’s small, sensitive nose sniffled at the stale air of the room, as though looking for something — alcohol? Or vestiges of madness? He advanced into the room, approached Will, with every step drawing closer and yet giving the impression of cringing away, as if afraid of giving offense or causing harm. “What is wrong?”

Will shook his head and shrugged.

“Oh, it scares me. Much does it scare me,” Ned said, and his hand, again, went to his throat, as though feeling the constriction of a noose. “Your face just now, your expression. Oh, it misgave me and made my heart turn on itself, for it was Marlowe’s expression that last month before he was killed — it was the look of a man with a devil at his heels and burning fire before him. Are you in trouble, Will? Trouble like Marlowe’s?”

Now the frighted rabbit that Ned normally personated became something other, something different — an eagle, impassive of eye, undeniable of voice — his gaze narrowing upon Will like the gaze of an angel seeking out sin, his voice the voice of an avenging preacher demanding confession.

Will drew back. Did Ned have to mention Marlowe? Did he have to pronounce Marlowe’s name? Did he have to compare Will’s expression to Marlowe’s?

“If you mean I’ve gone all fond of boys and tobacco, as Marlowe claimed to be, then no. I suffer from no such ill.” But as he said it, it seemed to Will he heard Marlowe’s light laughter, Marlowe’s careless voice declaiming,
All that don’t like boys and tobacco are fools.

And Will knew, knew with a deep certainty as never before that Marlowe’s outrageous statement was foolishness, designed to get attention and little else. Designed to put a soothing balm in Marlowe’s aching soul, Marlowe’s aching heart by shocking other people.

Because Marlowe had loved neither boys nor tobacco. Marlowe had loved the king of fairyland. Or at least the king of fairyland in his female aspect as Lady Silver. Will had never wished to know how Marlowe felt about Silver’s male aspect, the king proper, King Quicksilver of the Realms Above the Air and Beneath The Hills Of Avalon.

Just thinking on Silver it seemed to Will that he saw her white skin, her jet-black hair, felt her silk-soft skin upon his weathered cheek, the petal-tender touch of her lips on his lips.

He jumped, startled.

Oh, he hated fairyland and all that went with it.
 

Marlowe had died because of his love for the cursed elf. But Will had other loves — his wife, his daughters, his only son — he would not be caught unawares. He would not die for such a foolish thing as a bit of magic, a twist of glamour, the illusory love of elves, those creatures colder than moonlight, eternal as time, and more insensitive to human suffering than impenetrable granite.

Did Marlowe follow him, did Marlowe’s words echo through him because Will alone knew that Marlowe had died as a hero, not as debauch?

Will touched the tips of his fingers to his lips, where he’d felt as if the shadow of the elf’s touch, and looked guiltily at Ned Alleyn.

“And there you go,” Ned Alleyn said. “There you go, jumping at shadows and blushing at nothing. Thus did Marlowe act too, and then, the next thing we heard, he had died of the plague, and then this was not true, and he’d died in a duel in a bawdy house. And then again, there are rumors, rumors that go afoot in the night and hide themselves in daytime — rumors that Marlowe worked for the privy council and it was by them that he was killed.” Ned, this new Ned that was more father than cowering entrepreneur, fixed Will with a cold eye, and put his hands on his hips and asked. “Are you involved in secret work, Will? Do you plot?”

At this Will laughed. He laughed before he could contain himself. Did he plot?

Oh, what were plots? He’d been involved in plots and counterplots, in the warp and weft of fairyland politics and murderous intrigues.

Fourteen years ago — was it that long? — when his Susannah was a new born babe and Nan but a new bride, they’d both been stolen by the then king of fairyland.

To reclaim them, Will had waded into fairyland politics and drunk deep the fountain of intrigue.

Did he plot?

Three years ago, with Marlowe, he’d rescued the king and queen of fairyland — and the whole mortal world with them — from a power darker than any dreamed by cloistered monks in their worst nightmares, or the darkest visions of mystics who saw apocalypse and destruction in the shadowed years ahead.

Oh, Will plotted, had plotted and now he wanted to plot no more. He wanted to remain a mortal among mortals and to know no more of fairyland and its dark corners.

His laugh halted, abruptly, on something like a hiccup, and Will read alarm in Ned Alleyn’s scared features.

Ned’s eyes looked like they’d drop out of his face, and their panicked look had become something else, a stare of great cunning, an examining glare, like that of a physician with a very ill patient. “If it’s not plots,” he said. “If it’s not plots, then perhaps it’s witchcraft, friend Will.” Ned’s hands grabbed Will’s sleeves and held tight -- white, thin fingers grasping the black velvet, like spiders clinging to the sides of a gallows. “Perhaps it’s witchcraft. Perhaps you’ve been charmed.”

Will felt blood respond to his cheeks, though his lips remained mute. Had he been charmed? Who knew? Once you’d been touched by the fairyworld, would you ever be clean again? Had not the fairyworld sought Marlowe out, thirteen years after Marlowe’s last involvement with them?

Will shook his head to Ned Alleyn’s question deferring answer.

Ned sighed impatiently. “You actors and playwrights are all the same — those of you who keep your wives far away. Looking for young ladies to still your pain and idle away your solitude, you scant notice if the lady is good or means you evil. And most such bawds, perforce, mean you evil. I, myself, always thought that was what brought Marlowe down — an evil word pronounced by some hag in some black midnight.” Now Ned pushed his face close to Will’s and asked in a confidential whisper, “Did you, perhaps, Will, disappoint some woman, lie to some bawd, and bring on yourself the cooking of bats and dead man’s fingers in a spell that makes your blood boil and your mind race?”

Will tried to shake his head, but what if his problem were truly enchantment? For Marlowe had died in a horrible manner, killed by a supernatural being. Perhaps Marlowe walked the Earth, full of hatred or need for revenge. Perhaps Marlowe...

Again, Will felt as though Marlowe stood just behind him, Marlowe’s grave-cold breath brushing his neck and making the hair there stand on end.

Should Will turn he would see Marlowe standing there, staring at Will with amused pity in his one remaining eye.

The feeling was so intense that Will did not dare turn and instead stared at Ned’s face and remained still feeling like a hunted animal brought to ground and unable to move.

“That is the problem, is it not?” Ned said, softly. And, without waiting for an answer, added, “Get yourself to Shoreditch. There, beside the sign of the snake, you shall find a small brown door, which, when knocked upon, will reveal a mistress Delilah. Mistress Delilah will remove the ill that’s been done to you quickly enough and then can you write my play.” Ned smiled, the sweet smile of the completely deranged who, having obsessed on something, care for nothing else. “And have it ready a week hence.”

Will swallowed and made a sound that might be interpreted as assent. Was Marlowe’s ghost truly standing behind him? And if he were, would Ned Alleyn see Marlowe?

Ned looked only at Will, and spared no look at the shadows behind Will. “Good. Get you to Mistress Delilah. She will not disappoint.” Thus, with a tap on Will’s shoulder, he turned on his heel and left the room, never turning back.

Will wanted to scream for him to turn back, wanted to yell that Ned should turn back and look — look behind Will and see if Marlowe’s ghost stood there.

Mistress Delilah
, Will thought
. Beside the sign of the snake in Hog’s Lane
.

Well did Will know Hog’s lane, having lived there, hard by Hollywell, in Shoreditch, where the Rose theater had been located in which Marlowe’s plays had found abode and applause.

It was a hard-scrabble district, full of raw, shoddy construction and the people who could afford nothing better: recent migrants to the city, lost souls, vagabonds and those living just outside the law. A fit place for a witch.

Going to see a witch was against the law, a minor act of sacrilege and heresy that, depending upon the law’s mood, could warrant either penance and a fine or jail, or even death.

Will was a good protestant, forever just within the pall of the Church of England, its blessings and its munificence.

He had willed it so, despite his contact with fairyland. He had willed himself to be a churchman. He wanted the respectability that came with it for his children and their children.

Not for them to run from the law that outlawed their beliefs. No. They would believe what most believed and be accepted by all.

If Will went to see Mistress Delilah, she could tell him whether Marlowe’s ghost truly followed him or whether it all were but the spinning delusion of an overheated brain.

Will bit at the moustache that, following the contours of his upper lip, outlined his mouth in a thin, dark line, merging with his beard on the sides. He chewed the corner of his mouth and his moustache.

Turn and look, he thought to himself. Turn and look, you fool! You don’t need a witch to confirm the lie of what you know is an illusion. Turn and look.

Slowly, with infinite caution, he turned his head, to look behind himself.

But before his head was turned and while only the corner of his eye looked onto that dark space behind himself where he felt sure that Marlowe’s ghost stood, he caught a glimpse of blue, like the blue velvet in which Marlowe had gone to his moldy grave.

Just that, a glimpse of blue, by the corner of the eye, a hint of movement, a shape that might have been a man and a sound — so light that it would be drowned by the lightest whisper — no louder than the fall of a feather, the rustle of paper in a far off room.

But that sound, Will would swear, was Marlowe’s laughter.

Marlowe’s cursed laughter, that should long ago have been stilled by the dirt that filled Marlowe’s long-dead mouth.

Will jumped, stifled a scream.

He grabbed his cloak from the peg on the wall next to his bedroom door and, without turning, without looking, rushed out, out of this respectable rooming house, and towards Hog’s Lane and Mistress Delilah.

As he walked the narrow streets, elbowing apprentices and squeezing his way between slow, fat matrons burdened with shopping, Will could hear behind him the immaterial but ever present steps of Kit Marlowe following him.

Scene Two

A clearing in Arden Woods, hard by Stratford-upon-Avon. To mortal eyes, it is but a sprawl of rank weeds and straggling bushes, in the gloom beneath the overspreading shade of larger trees. Those with second sight, though, see a castle rising there, a noble palace, the capital of fairyland in the British Isles -- the reign of elven Avalon. The building is a white palace, a thing of beauty, with walls so perfect and smooth, towers so high and thin as to defy the imagination of humans and the reach of mortal artistry. In front of the palace, a clumsy structure of uneven boards rises, under the ceaseless hammers, the untiring work of many winged fairies. These winged servants of fairyland, small and dainty, flying hither and thither in flashes of light, work at building the platform for an execution block. The sound of their hammering penetrates the innermost confines of the palace, the royal chamber. There King Quicksilver stands before his full-length mirror. He looks like a young man of twenty, with long blond hair combed over his shoulder. Around him, his room lies neatly ordered, with a large bed curtained in green, a painted trunk, a well-worn golden suit of armor in the corner and -- on the wall -- a portrait of himself which, when viewed from a different angle, shows a dark-haired woman -- Quicksilver’s other aspect. Quicksilver looks only at his mirror, never at his portrait, as he raises his hand to adjust the lace collar that shows over his jacket.