Ill Met by Moonlight (26 page)

“Gentleman? What are you talking about, child?” Having backed all the way to the kitchen, Will found his clothes scattered on the floor, and the remains of his wild, riotous banquet littering the humble, scrubbed pine table. With one hand holding his would-be toga, and the other grabbing his more common and comfortable breeches, he attempted to slip the breeches on without dropping the toga. Not an easy task, made all the more difficult and perilous, by Joan’s curious, watching eyes.

“I know what you don’t. . . .” Joan said, in singsong mischief.

She sounded, Will thought, like his pupils when they had played a prank on him and waited impatiently for the trap to be sprung so they could laugh and mock at his haplessness. He managed to pull his breeches up, and let the blanket fall while he finished fastening them.

“When Mother is in one of her moods, late at night, I’ve taken to wandering in the garden, playing, you know . . .”

Will didn’t know. The idea of a girl’s life, a woman’s life, had always seemed boring to him. What could there be to an existence in which letters weren’t learned and there were no ancient works to peruse, no maxims of wisdom to memorize? What could enliven a life that was entirely circumscribed by home and church, children and mending, shopping and husband?

Will couldn’t think of it, except to thank God that he had been born male and capable of learning. But he knew Nan had whiled away her time in Arden Forest and there learned freedom in a way her home did not allow.

Had Joan, too, learned forbidden language from the brooks? Had she tasted freedom amid the trees? Or was hers a small freedom, the freedom of the garden and the enclosure, the silent moment away from a prattling mother?

Will put his shirt on, and then his doublet, and fastened them both. He opened his door to look out. Through the pouring rain, he couldn’t tell the time of day, but he felt as though he’d slept much too long, slept later than he should have. He should have been halfway to Wincot by now.

There was too much light, even if only the diffuse, grey light of a rainy day. And there were too many sounds, the waking sounds of Stratford—doors opening and the clip-clop of horses along the thoroughfares. Somewhere nearby a rooster crowed.

“I saw the gentlemen that came to spy on Nan,” Joan said.

Will started to reply that there had been no gentlemen, then realized there probably had been—the advance guard of the hill, scouting out a prospect for kidnapping—and shut his mouth with a snapping sound.

“Oh, I don’t say as Nan consorted with them,” Joan said and smiled, a small dimple forming on the side of her cheek. “I never found
her
clothes strewn about the kitchen.”

“Oh, leave off, already,” Will said. He grabbed the wooden bucket from near the door, to get water from the well. Nan used to get it at night for him, and leave it set out in the basin for his morning washing. But Nan wasn’t here.

Swinging the bucket peevishly, Will pushed the door open and strode outside into the pouring rain, with Joan following.

Why he bothered, he couldn’t tell. After all, all it took was five minutes in this rain and he was washed enough, clean enough. Surely he didn’t need any more washing. Yet he would get water and scrub his face, and do a proper washing, although by the time he reached Wincot, even if he wore a cloak against the rain, he would be wet and dripping all through.

“But I saw gentlemen in velvet skulking and hiding around the wall, and among the plants, and also the strange fairy lights, the small ones, that came and looked in windows and rattled the shutters.” Joan walked behind Will, her steps a small echo to his. “And I followed them, back to the forest. Edmund and I followed them, to see where they lived.”

Will reached the well, a raised cylinder shaped in stones, with a square hole on top and a rope coiled beside it. The rope could be tied to the bucket, so that one could lower the bucket into the well and get the water. “Where they lived?” he asked. He started tying the rope to the bucket’s wooden handle.

“In the forest,” Joan said impatiently. “And I saw their dances and their walks, their affairs . . . It’s quite like a court, like the court of our queen must be—all great gentlemen and ladies.” Joan chuckled. “I know your gentleman, Will, I know him well.”

“I do not have a gentleman.” The rope tied to the bucket, Will started lowering it into the well.

“Oh, but you do, though you might not know it. Was it the lady you saw, Will? The ill-colored lady, with dark hair and white clothes?”

What did the girl know of the lady Silver? Curse Joan’s unsupervised childhood. Curse his mother’s detachment. Curse him, himself, as busy as he’d been with work and Nan and Susannah, that he hadn’t noticed how far astray the girl was going. And she’d taken Edmund near the people of the hill? Had she never heard of changelings? No, perhaps not. So many things had changed since Will was a child and the war between papists and the proper religion had tarnished everything and turned even legends and ancient knowledge into crimes.

“So, you do not know that this same lady is no lady, but just a disguise for the gentleman with blond hair and a midnight-dark velvet suit?”

“Oh, what nonsense, child.” Will felt the bucket hit water, and started hauling it up, the weight of the water on his arms, his straining shoulders. “Nonsense. The dark lady . . . a woman in all parts, I assure you.” He bit his tongue, having said more than he intended to, and pulled at the rope and turned to look at Joan.

She shook her head. “Oh, no. The gentleman is the true form, though he changes to the lady and back again. Many times I’ve watched and seen it.” She smiled.

Things were coming together in Will’s head. Silver and Quicksilver knew things that they said the other had told, but who would give such intricate descriptions, every detail observed?

And hadn’t Silver been banished, she said, for defending Will? But it had been Quicksilver who’d come to Will’s defense. . . .

And there was something else, the thing that had bothered Will all along. From his great memory for voices and sounds, he unearthed the voices of the two, Quicksilver and Silver, and realized what had sounded so familiar about Quicksilver’s voice.

Silver’s voice. Quicksilver’s voice. It was only one voice. The same voice translated, now to a higher register, now to a lower one.

His hands let go of the rope, and the bucket fell into the well.

Scene 15

Nan’s room in the fairy palace. She has just finished nursing one of the babies and now sets the child, with infinite care, back in the cradle. Nan wears a dress of golden silk, and looks rested and self-possessed. Beside her, sitting at the end of the bed, a wan Ariel embroiders in pastel colors upon pale silk.

N
an set the fairy princess down in the cradle. Such a beautiful baby and so good that Nan had become quite attached to her, almost as much as to her own daughter. Off and on she wondered if, when she managed to leave here—and she
would
manage to leave here—she should take the fairy princess together with her own bundle.

She was sure Will would welcome the baby, and both could be raised, side by side, as their own. But she worried about the fairy princess’ nature. Could she live away from the hill?

Nan shuddered, as she remembered the expulsion of Quicksilver. How he had looked—that bright, supernatural creature. Of a sudden, all light had gone from him, all strength, and he’d collapsed like the discarded peel of a withered apple.

Pulling the blanket over the princess, adjusting Susannah’s sleeping form, Nan cast a sidelong glance at Ariel. How wrong she had been there. How foolishly wrong. Watching Ariel, at Quicksilver’s expulsion, and now remembering how Ariel had gone after him, only to return wild and crying, like a woman scorned, Nan knew it was Prince Quicksilver whom Ariel pined for, and he whom she worshiped in the cathedral of her heart. Not the king at all.

And now, without Quicksilver, the little elf maiden had gone even more colorless, more dispirited. Not that she complained, or even talked about him. To Nan’s overtures, she’d replied by turning her face away and concentrating ever more on her broidery.

A knock on the door called Nan’s attention. Nan lifted her head and tied, with nimble fingers, the crisscross laces on her bodice, which hid her milk-heavy breasts.

She needn’t have bothered. When Ariel opened the door and looked out, she found no person, only a flock of the tiny fairies, who twinkled in lights all around her.

Grave, serious Ariel turned around, her pale, peaked little face set in anxious urgency, “Milady, they say the king has summoned you, and bid you come to the small audience chamber. They will show you where.”

The small audience chamber sounded like much too intimate a place. Nan shook her head. “No, you bid the fairies stay and watch the babies and summon us if aught goes amiss. And you show me where.”

Ariel inclined her head in assent and gestured at the little fairies. Then, gathering up her ample skirts so as to walk unencumbered, she turned and led Nan out of the chamber and down a maze of corridors.

The corridors in this place were such—ending in round halls from which myriad doors opened, and leading to staircases that climbed and descended seemingly at random—that Nan was sure she would never learn her way about, even if she should live out her life here.

A shiver ran down her spine.

No, she would
not
live out her life here. She would not. She could not. Oh, the food was good, and life was easier than in Stratford and, unlike Will’s parents, everyone in the hill was ready to make her welcome, to amuse her and entertain her in every possible way.

The temptation was great and, walking along the marble corridors, her elegantly cut skirt sweeping the floor, Nan admitted to herself that she could learn to live like this, with servants and maids to do her bidding; with daily perfumed baths; with soft, heavenly beds.

But she couldn’t live without her Will. And he would be mourning her, lamenting her, since she’d disappeared. He would be suffering for her and wondering where she was and what had become of her. That, or he thought her dead, and, either way, he’d be a suffering Will, a weeping Will, a subdued and mourning and quiet Will. A mockery and joke upon himself.

She couldn’t bear the thought of him like that. She couldn’t bear the thought of him, lost and helpless, within the manipulating schemes of his conniving mother. She could not.

Ariel stopped in front of a golden door, and knocked.

The door opened and Sylvanus himself, powerful Sylvanus, of the square shoulders, the broad, straight back, the narrow waist, the strong voice, stood looking at them.

Since the night before, when Nan had screamed at him and called him all manner of insults, from spineless worm to murderer, things had been cold between them. He had not asked her to join in the dance by his side, and she wouldn’t have done so had he asked. Leastwise, not if she could have imposed her own desires over the strength of his glamoury. Now she greeted him, remaining coldly distant, and looking as strong as she knew herself to be.

Behind him, she saw the whole of a small room, furnished with a chair and nothing else. The walls shimmered as though built of jade, and though no candle was visible, the room glowed with diffused light. Firefly fairies danced up near the ceiling, flashing their fire in a way that Nan had learned to recognize as excitement or anxiety.

It had been long in coming, this summons. Last night, after she’d learned of his attempt on Will, Nan had remonstrated with the king and told him what she thought of powerful men who seek to kill weaker ones. Knowing he couldn’t know of it, yet she preached at him, the story of the poor man and his one ewe lamb.

She’d been at her best, shrewish Nan, the one who’d scared suitors and lovers well away from her door for more than ten years running, and now, she thought, now the king would want to tell her that she was no longer welcome in his hill, and that he was desisting from his pursuit of her.

The king gestured for her to come in, closed the door behind her and Ariel, and sat on the broad chair at one end of the room.

Neither she nor Ariel were offered chairs, so it seemed as though he sat on a throne and they, his courtiers, stood respectfully before him. “Ah, my dear,” he said, and looked toward Nan. “My dear, my dear, my dear. Would that I could spare you the pain . . . but there . . . I have to tell you . . .”

So, now it would come, Nan thought, and almost smiled. He was going to ban her from the hill. And good riddance. She’d go back to her room and get Susannah, and leave this cursed place with a song in her heart. She turned to Ariel and smiled, but Ariel looked grave, frowning, as though sensing a trap.

“And Lady Ariel,” the king said, “you’re welcome too, even if I did not send for you, since what I have to say concerns your interests also.”

The lady Ariel turned even paler, and Nan thought maybe the maiden had reason. Maybe the king meant to marry her and make her a mother to the little princess. And maybe it was a worse fate for Ariel, but maybe not.