All Night Awake (40 page)

The Hunter looked, Will thought, knowing it was insane, approving and benevolent. “None of you should be in Never Land.” He looked at Will, then at the other three. “None of you.”

He frowned at Quicksilver and Ariel. “You—you, sovereigns of the ancient hill. For what you’ve done to me, oh King, you’ve paid well. Since all is returned to its proper aspect, you’ll evade my vengeance. Get thee hence, before you die of it. Both of you will be well as soon as you return to the world of living. All your wounds will be healed. All your power restored.” The Hunter’s gigantic arm made a gesture, and in the air, glimmering, a bridge of golden light appeared. The other end of it fetched within the golden throne room of Fairyland, for the moment deserted. “Go,” the Hunter said, gesturing at Quicksilver and Ariel. “The blight is gone from your hill and evil from the land. Those who died are gone, but those wounded and ill are hereby cured by this restoring of the natural order. Go and reign justly.”

Slowly, incredulously, Ariel, still nursing her arm, helped Quicksilver up.

By the bridge, Quicksilver turned to Will and bowed, and smiled, a small, hesitant smile at Kit Marlowe’s ghost. “Good night, sweet prince,” he said softly. “And flights of angels sing you to thy rest. Forgive me, Kit.”

Kit bowed and averted his face, tears sparkling in his one remaining eye.

Slowly, haltingly, Ariel and Quicksilver turned and walked arm in arm across the bridge.

The bridge, the throne room of Fairyland, all remained visible, till Ariel and Quicksilver arrived there and set foot on the pristine marble floor.

Then they turned to look at those left behind.

Quicksilver looked strong, perfect. Ariel’s arm was whole. Then the bridge and the view of the Elvenland vanished.

The Hunter said, “Now you, Master Marlowe, to that judgment you’ve evaded too long.” With a wave of his arm, Marlowe also vanished.

“And you, my good Will,” the Hunter said. The smilelike something sparked in the Hunter’s majestic, thunderous face.

But Will had remembered something.

“Wait, my good lord,” he said. “Wait. For in Deptford, in that room, we left three men with the Queen of England.”

“And?” the Hunter asked. “What fear you? Fear not. None of them will hurt the Queen—none of them—once the wolf’s magic was gone. The Queen has returned to her palace. Her spies have arranged a tale, that says Marlowe was killed in self-defense. The gears of deception shall grind on, and soon everyone will believe the deception.” Something like a gigantic sigh escaped the Hunter. “Few men can believe the fantastic and many often prefer more work-a-day lies.

“However, perhaps the Queen will remember you, Master Shakespeare. Perhaps she’ll remember you defended her. Who knows what benefit might not come to you thereby?”

The Hunter waved his hand. “Go back to your room, Will, and sleep well. You shall find the money you spent on your horse multiplied, safe beneath your mattress. You have saved the worlds, Will. Now go and be a poet.”

Again the rushing wind, this time warm, and Will lay in his bed, wondering if it were not all a dream.

But he got up and found, beneath his mattress, that the lord’s purse was full again, fuller than it had ever been, with ancient coins and glittering golden jewels. A thousand pounds, perhaps. A fantastical sum, enough to buy a share in a theater company, if Will should decide to do that.

Epilogue

The primeval forest of Arden, as it once was, with large trees, crowded close. Upon the ground the three spinners sit, working the threads of life. Amid the trees, Marlowe’s ghost appears and solidifies.

T
he three Fates spin beneath the trees of a forest, outside time and space. “

So the king has got his crown,” the youngest one says.

“And the queen’s web is spun,” the middle one says.

“And the traitor’s round is done,” says the oldest one.

She holds in her hand a dark thread, through which a vein of pure gold runs, and holds her scissors poised over it. A sigh makes her tremble. “And yet it is a pity to waste such thread. This stuff is hard to come by in this debased age. And a magic thread thus bequeathed by an ancestor full of power . . . .”

“It is illusion,” the middle one said. “Merlin never was.”

The younger one fingers the thread. “And yet, here’s the gold, here’s the vein of truth and the power and the word.”

“What would you do with it?” the oldest one asks, lifting her head.

A little ways away, amid the trees, Marlowe’s ghost stands, immaterial, and yet possessed of Marlowe’s charm as we first saw it—his clothes are impeccably clean and the best cut, and he looks like a man on his way to a fashionable assembly. His ghost has both his eyes, both full of myrth.

A slow smile molds to his lips, and expands, into something like mischievous intent. He walks forward, charming, confident, his mincing step all that could be expected of such a London dandy, a protégé of noblemen, the toast of theatergoers.

“Give the words to the poet,” he says. “Let my words live on, even if another must write them. I bequeath my poetry and the power in it to William Shakespeare of Stratford. Let anyone find fault with that.”

On those words, the old woman cuts through the thread with her sheers.

Marlowe laughs. A small ghost appears beside his—a child who looks much like Marlowe, and who wears a miniature version of Marlowe’s velvet suit.

“Will you tell me a story now, Kit?” the child asks.

“Of course, Imp.” Marlowe extends his hand to the small boy, who takes it. “I have eternity to tell you stories.” Together, they walk away, growing fainter as they walk.

Marlowe’s voice comes from a long ways away. “There was once a King, and he had an only son . . . .”

“Humans,” the maiden mutters to herself, and joins the spun gold to a white thread. “The livelong day I’ll never understand them. Treacherous as the serpent and kind as the dove, full of bitter hatred and sudden, mild love.”

“Humans are as they must be,” the matron says. “And we as we are, that from their minds are born and control their fate only in this small degree.”

“Everything that was will be again.”

“Humans are all that is, and their heart our reign,” the crone completes. The thread measured out upon her lap is now white, but through it shines a single strand of pure gold.

Curtain Call

Within the too-solid city of London, in a shabby room in Southwark, close to the playhouses, Will Shakespeare sits and writes. Words flow from his pen, easy and clear.

Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face, he writes, Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn, Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase; Hunting he loved, but love he laugh’d to scorn;

Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, And like a bold-faced suitor ’gins to woo him.

T
hough not sure whence these words came, Will remembered that Marlowe had died, and feared he’d simply inherited the great poet’s genius by some magical transference.

He thought of Kit’s too-brief life, his squandered genius, the son Kit had never dared own.

As soon as Will finished this poem, as it ever was, Will would go visit Stratford, and see Hamnet and Judith, and Susannah. Aye, and his sweet Nan again.

He smiled at the thought of his wife. She would soon live like a lady, if his money could buy it.

Will wasn’t quite sure why, but all of a sudden he knew he could finish the poem, too. Finish it well, and it would be good.

It would be admired and great, and live through the ages, long after Will himself had died.

In that space, neither asleep nor awake, where sometimes men know truths otherwise unknowable, Will thought he’d got something from Marlowe, some legacy bequeathed with the poet’s last breath.

And though Will needed not the money, he’d go on writing. The poetry itself—Marlowe’s or his own—called to him. And if it were Marlowe’s, it was as well—for when a man’s verses could no longer be read nor a man’s good wit heard, it struck a man more dead than a great reckoning in a small room.

O
utside, in the shabby street of Southwark, life ground on, the bawds went to bed, and the artificers woke and manned their workshops. The threat of evil and dark death had been lifted from the neck of humanity, where it had rested like a naked sword. The spheres spun on, as they’d been meant to do for eternity. In his palace the King of Fairyland made ardent love to his joyful wife.

And the one man who’d known about the threat and done what must be done to lift it from the unaware orb of the great world wrote poetry and thought with mingled gratitude and grief of the flawed genius who’d bequeathed him such a rare gift.

Author’s Note

I
n writing
All Night Awake
, I took certain liberties with history, sins of omission and commission which I should confess.

The fire in Stratford-upon-Avon took place three years earlier and not at the time at which I had it happen. It is true, though, that many houses were destroyed and the houses on Henley street were saved.

And while it is true that the plague tormented London through the summer of 1593, it is not true that it only started then. Rather, it was a continuation of the plague that had—unnaturally—persisted over the winter. And I’m afraid it did not stop, conveniently, when Kit Marlowe died. His death, in fact, was often ascribed to the plague. A fit end—so the Puritans thought—to his riotous living.

Also, although several of Queen Elizabeth’s biographers portray her as a borderline paranoid who trusted neither advisors, nor spies, nor even her ladies-in-waiting, yet it is unlikely she ever roamed the streets disguised as a commoner. But the legend of it persists and it was too charming to resist.

I committed what any student of Shakespeare will consider a more serious offense when I postponed to 1593 the poet’s arrival in London. This so called “late arrival” theory was extant through the beginning of the twentieth century. However, now we have too much evidence—albeit circumstantial—of his presence in London earlier. And we believe that by 1593 many of his historical plays,
The Merchant of Venice
, and
Titus Andronicus
(the greatest play Marlowe never wrote) were already in existence. I have no excuse for choosing the outmoded theory, save that it served my own work best.

Perhaps my greatest offenses against history pertain to Christopher Marlowe. The worst of these might seem to be that I gave him an entirely spurious son. Imp is my creation and there is no evidence for him. In fact, it might be considered that there is negative evidence. Such an egregious offense as Marlowe’s siring of a bastard son would surely have been written about.

Also, what we think we know of Marlowe’s sexuality would make the siring of a son highly unlikely. But renaissance sexuality doesn’t easily fit into our twenty-first-century mold. From Marlowe’s plays alone, it seems hard to deny that he had an interest in “boys” (which in this context doubtless means men). However, what one is interested in and even what one writes about sometimes has precious little to do with one’s private life, as any writer can tell you.