Ill Met by Moonlight (33 page)

Twice—as by looking at the gentlemen Will could track it—twice the whole enchanted company went dancing past him, round, round, and round, a mysterious fairy circle he could not penetrate.

Will’s heart sank within him and, under the rain, standing in mud, he felt like the most miserable, the last, of beings.

Quicksilver had told him that Nan would be forfeit. If she didn’t get rescued now, she’d be forfeit, lost forever to Fairyland. And Will, poor Will, would trudge alone to his cold home, to be an object of pity to his neighbors—the chattering Wedgwood and the smith Hornby—who would relate over the day’s work how poor Will fared, and how his case was not expected to improve, and how it was said, far and wide, that he drank and that his life was in a shambles since his wife and daughter had left.

Other rumors would start, too, when time went by and no one saw Nan and no word came of her having settled somewhere else. Rumors that Will, or maybe Mary, had killed both wife and babe and buried them in the backyard of the house on Henley Street, amid the flax patches and the fat, round roses.

Time would go by and people would stop talking to Will. No good, then, reviving his father’s shop, for no one would come in when Will was there. And babes, on the street, would shy away from him, and far and wide the dreadful ballad of the schoolmaster who’d killed and buried his wife and his infant daughter would be sung at fairs and sold in cheap booklets, to quaking passersby.

All this Will saw, as the inevitable course of his life, while the magical dancers passed him in their joyous cavalcade.

That man in the golden suit—was he not Quicksilver? He’d thought Quicksilver banned from the hill. But this elf had Quicksilver’s same manner of moving, his graceful step. Had Will been lied to, yet again? The lady with whom Quicksilver danced had Nan’s face, but she looked even more besotted than the other Nans, her face very close to Quicksilver’s, and his, blurred like those of the other gentlemen, close to hers, as if they had eyes only for each other, intent and close on their own conversation.

Those looked like marriage negotiations, if Will had ever seen a marriage negotiated, and he felt a pang of something he was willing to admit might be jealousy as he saw the dancing couple do the whole circuit of the clearing and return, dancing toward him, intent still on their close negotiations.

Suddenly their arms reached out. Quicksilver and the woman who wasn’t Nan, though she looked like her, each reached out an arm and pulled Will into the dance.

Of a sudden, though there was still mud beneath his feet, Will didn’t sink in it, and, instead, danced on a hard, polished floor. His eyes couldn’t see it, but his feet could feel it, as, on their own, they moved to the rhythm of the fairy music.

“Fool boy,” Quicksilver said, in his odd, amused yet soft voice, that denoted more affection than Will had ever wished to inspire. “Did I not tell you to mark what she’s wearing?”

And the lady with Nan’s face and Nan’s body, who nonetheless talked in a softer voice, said, “She knew you would grab her, but you didn’t. Why not? Have you changed your mind?”

They dragged him on and on in their joyous dance, even as they spoke, and Will shook his head, and swallowed air to feed his movement, as he kept up with the elves’ fast, graceful movements, and tried to explain, “No . . . my mind . . . remains . . . the same . . . But Nan . . . everyone . . . even . . . this lady . . . looks like Nan . . . with the same . . . clothing.” He gasped for air and watched anger twist Quicksilver’s noble features into a knot.

“The villain,” Quicksilver said. “I was right. He doesn’t have power to alter everyone’s clothing, nor could he do it without protest from the ladies. But he changed your vision. Oh, damn, Will. We’ll take you to her.”

Dancing round and round, and round and round, faster and faster, they started passing couples, weaving around them, improvising a mad dance of their own that took them, around and around faster than Will’s feet could move.

Both lady and lord held Will, his feet off the ground, dragging him on in their merry dance, too fast, Will thought, too fast for any of the other couples to have time to discern that here danced three and not two.

They collided with another couple. Lord and lady extended their arms, pulled a woman into their group, shoved her into Will’s arms, and, letting them go, danced on, just two.

The man left dancing alone, his feet following the music but his face stricken and shocked, was the same ponderous majesty that Will had seen, once, sitting on the Elvenland throne.

He tried to catch up to Will and the lady in his arms, the lady who had to be Nan.

Quicksilver and his lady danced close by, now clearly visible, and Quicksilver fixed the king with a basilisk stare, and under that stare, the king spun slower, as though dancing while immersed in molasses. All the other couples passed him by, and he spun in place, under Quicksilver’s forceful glare.

Nan felt warm and soft in Will’s arms, much the same as she’d felt when, together, they’d danced in the churchyard at Temple Grafton, last year.

“My faithless husband,” she said. And it was Nan’s voice, shrewish-sharp and yet tinged with abiding sadness.

Had he hurt her that much, then? “Your faithful husband, milady. From now on, no other will do for me, no one else shall fill my arms.”

“Oh, I pray you, how many have you told that to, milord, and how many times?”

“None, Nan, none other, for you I married, and you I took to my bed.” The dancing made his breath short and cut the fine declaration of love he wanted to make to his Nan.

“You took another to your bed, too.” Nan’s voice was sharp as a well-honed blade, but her eyes were soft and full of tears. “To our own bed, our best bed, given us by your Arden aunt and by me cherished . . .”

“Fool that I was, fool,” Will said. “And foolish with longing for you I took another. Forgive me, Nan, forgive me. Love you me not well?”

Nan shook her head. Her eyes were soft but her face all hard, disciplined to hardness and joyless judgment. “Ah, no. No more than reason.”

“Oh, sweet Nan, do not be so. Wouldn’t you come home with me? Though you never came to any man’s call.”

She looked, for a moment shocked, surprised. “I never came? I came to your deceiving call, fast enough.”

“Then come to it, again. Do you not remember our home, our hearth, and the joy of being together?” Will was not so foolish that he dared mention their bed. He cast about for another enticement and said, “Your cat misses you so well that, in his suffering, he will even consent to come to my calling.”

“Foolish cat, then. Foolish. Fooled like Nan by sweet-talking Will,” Nan said. A faint twitch made her seem to almost smile. “And yet it is true that, hard though it is to conceive, there are men worse than you. You’ve never bid me come and go, at your whim, as other women’s lords might have done. And you never told me I had a weak brain.”

“A weak brain? Forbid it. I am not that foolish, my Nan. I promise I’ll never more bid you come, never impinge on you when you do not wish. Even now, I beg you to come, I do not order it. Come home, dear wife, and be my own. Hie home with me, with our Susannah.”

Nan smiled now, openly. “Yea, I’ll come when you bid me. But remember, I’m not doing your bidding henceforth. I won’t depart when you bid me to.”

“Stay till then. For I’ll never bid you go, and if you but abide till then, you’ll abide forever. For
then
will never come.”

“Then is spoken,” Nan said, and, despite her words, she smiled. “Fare you well now.”

“Foolish Nan. Thereupon will I kiss you.”

“But no. For if a fool kiss you, your lips shall be tainted with his foolishness, and I will not be a fool.”

“But you borrowed foolishness from my lips,” Will said. Dancing like that, round and round, he’d forgotten the seriousness of their situation and the very serious striving he must do for his Nan’s hand, her renewed regard, their baby’s freedom.

He held Nan in his arms, he smelled her, her soft perfume of roses beneath the other perfumes of Fairyland, and he thought himself safe, safe and home at last, in his Nan’s arms. How could he ever have thought that he longed for anything more? Who could long for anything more? “Let me borrow my foolishness yet awhile, and kiss those lips, where my foolishness does ill sport itself.” He pushed his lips close to Nan’s half-parted red lips, full of temptation and hinting at sweetness like a well-ripened grape, enticing and intoxicating.

But Nan turned her face, so his lips touched but the soft niche of her cheek and she laughed, “Neither a lender nor a borrower be, Will, neither a borrower nor a lender.”

But even then, in their striving, Will knew he had won her back.

Happy in his happiness and lulled by their joint dancing and Nan’s sweet body next to his, Will didn’t remember the king, nor did he look to see whether Quicksilver still kept him immobilized.

“Will, look out!” Quicksilver’s scream, from seemingly very far off, startled Will, and yet he remembered what he’d come to do, and tightened his arms around Nan, hard.

Just in time. The ground beneath their feet seemed to open up, and suck Will down, like a whirlpool of water will suck at the unwary swimmer and threaten to devour him.

Will felt his feet pulled at and then his ankles, both of them disappearing beneath the murky water and the mud. Nan, on the other hand, remained on the invisible hard floor on which they’d danced, and was being pulled, insensibly, out of his arms.

Will held on. He held onto her waist with all his might, linking his hands together behind her and whispering softly, “If I hurt you, pardon me, love, pardon me.”

On those words, and while Will’s arms ached and strained with holding onto Nan, but Nan wouldn’t sink and he wouldn’t go down beyond his ankles, the scene shifted.

Nan screamed, “Will!” and let go of him, and flailed at him with her not inconsiderable force, her large, work-capable hands belaboring his head and shoulders, her arms pushing away from him.

So startled was he by her attack, that it took him a moment to realize he had become engulfed in flames, that flames shot out of his doublet, outlining his arms, bursting from his every pore, his every breath. Once he noticed them, he felt the pain, the agony of burning spreading along every nerve.

Nan, too, must have felt the burning, for her body contorted and she fought, trying to get away from Will’s burning arms.

In horror, Will watched his arms, which encircled Nan’s waist, melt in the flames. The smell of his own burning flesh made him cough. Yet he lived, like the immortal salamander, within the flames.

“Hold on, hold on,” Quicksilver’s voice said. “It is but an illusion.”

The king stood, separating Will and Nan from Quicksilver. On Quicksilver’s words, he extended one hand, and Quicksilver reeled as though punched. The king extended his other hand and kept Will and Nan engulfed in flames.

Quicksilver knelt, on the ground, immobile. Blood ran from his mouth. His eyes glazed. He looked transparent, greyish, like a pale thing on the edge of dissolving.

Will watched his own flesh burn, helpless, and knew not how to keep Nan in his immaterial arms.

Nan pushed at him with the force of panic, wishing to save herself from the flames, and his arms, which he couldn’t see, hurt even more than the rest of him.

Odd, how burning into nothing hurt less than the tiredness of holding on by force to a strong wench.

Will breathed fire, and it burned his lungs with every breath. He existed only as an exhalation of pain. Through it, without breath, without strength, without voice, he found the power to yell, “Quicksilver. Help.”

He’d thought, always, that asking for help would make him sound like a little boy in the world of men. But now, he asked for help and, though the object of his request seemed as helpless as himself, Will felt new strength grow inside him. He held Nan steadier and she, surprised at his scream, stopped struggling for a moment.

“It’s an illusion, Nan. You will not burn,” Will whispered with his new strength.

Far away, at the other end of the clearing, Quicksilver stirred, but, through eyes blurred with tears and smoke, Will had trouble seeing what the elf prince did.

Scene 21

The same clearing. Quicksilver kneels, overcome by the power of the hill embodied in Sylvanus. Near him, Ariel speaks, trying to push him forth into battle, but he kneels. His mouth bleeds, where Sylvanus hit him with the power of the hill, as if with a fist.

W
hat a fool Quicksilver had been, what an idiot. The salty taste of his own blood made him realize how stupid he’d been.

So, his craving for the boy had given him desperate strength, desperate enough to allow him to dress himself in glittering gold and brave coming to the Summer Solstice Dance and join in the merriment. And he, fool that he was, had believed himself in love, in real love, and had thought that such love gave him magic.

He’d even led the boy to his Nan, though Quicksilver’s heart split with the pain of letting Will finally go, of giving him up forever to his farm wife. Yet, while Quicksilver’s jealousy watched, and his envy spied out of his eyes at the man and wife as they talked and danced together, Sylvanus had overcome the feeble hold that Quicksilver had on him, and made Quicksilver the defeated prisoner where Quicksilver would have reigned victorious.