All Night Awake (78 page)

H
ad it worked?

Kit could not tell. He thought it had worked. He had seen the specters leave his room and fly through the dark, clear air towards the theater.

Kit’s hands hurt and the wolf paced, just as impatient behind Kit’s mental barrier, as Kit paced within his narrow, dark room.

Did both of them wait but for doom?

The ghosts had flown at Kit’s command, but had Kit’s other command brought someone forth to hear the spirits? And had they delivered his message? Exactly what message had they delivered? And to whom?

He couldn’t tell. He could only hope. He could only pray, pray with desperate fervor he’d not experienced since he’d been a choir boy in Canterbury. He could only pray for Quicksilver and himself, for his own damned soul.

Oh, let someone have got his message who understood it and who knew what to do to separate Kit from his doom.

Only let someone help him with this supernatural doom and Kit himself would deal with the mortal harm that threatened him -- and not the way he usually did.

He’d not talk to the council. He’d not denounce Raleigh for things Raleigh had never done. He’d not kill anyone. Let Kit survive this and Kit would leave the country all together. Go to Scotland or France and there live, in fearful, quiet humility, forsaking his art and his silks; his velvets and his drink; his late nights and later mornings. Kit would live like a monk sworn to poverty and humble affliction.

Only let Quicksilver be well, and remove the dark wolf from Kit’s mind, that even now paced back and forth and struck at the wall that divided them, the wolf’s impatient, eager hunger for blood and life striking at Kit’s mind, at Kit’s hold on his own body.

Kit touched the iron knob around his neck, and whimpered at the pain it brought him.

Oh, curse it all. Even wearing this knob over his clothes hurt and made him cringe inwardly. But touching it with his bare hands brought sheer torment.

And yet, he’d lived well enough with iron his whole life. This reaction to iron was a measure of how much the wolf had already taken Kit. But the iron acted on the wolf even more than on Kit, and, pray, it was all that Kit had to keep the wolf at bay until more effective, more permanent, remedy could be sought.

A sound of fast hooves outside brought Kit running to his window. His pursuers were here, at last.

But outside, in the dark shadows of the night, what moved, amid the bawds and their customers, the gamblers and their victims, the drunken men and their next drink, was not human.

These strange creatures looked half-horse, half-man, with dark hair unbound down muscular, bare torsos, and glimmers of golden chains and barbaric jewelry.

Ten of them, but only the nearest three were clearly visible -- their broad flat faces, dark curls, yellow eyes. One of the horse bodies was a stocky roan, another a sleek velvet black, the other pure white. But all of them, all of them looked alien and strange, and barbaric and just larger-than-human.

His mouth dropping open, Kit wondered how damaged the world was, already, and by what means, that centaurs would walk the world of men.

The men and the women on the street below walked around the centaurs without seeming to see them, even when they detoured to avoid them.

Did they not see them? Was it Kit, who alone could see them? Was it because he was so close to the realm of faerie, so touched by the coils of invisible magic?

Cold sweat dropped down Kit’s back.

Or was this just a manifestation of the madness seizing Kit? Did he see what was not there?

He touched the knob. It brought nothing but searing pain, and a further cowering of the cowered wolf. And yet, in the momentary parting of the barrier in his mind, Kit realized that the centaurs were something of the wolf, of the wolf’s own, dark vassalage.

Were they the expected avengers for Kit’s crimes, also?

They wouldn’t be, would they? Not if they’d come to serve the wolf.

But then, Kit’s saviors who would come, would, inevitably, run into these centaurs and....

And what? Would Kit’s deliverance flounder upon this shoal of hoofed humans and human-seeming beasts?

Looking down from his window, Kit sighed. The centaurs looked fierce, muscular, strong. Each held a war mace and wore, strapped around his middle, both sword and dagger.

If Kit went down, surely he would die.

But no, he wouldn’t. For the centaurs would not kill the body which harbored their master.

And besides, afraid of death though he was, how often had Kit brawled and been involved in quick, violent frays? And he’d not died, skillful as he was at defending himself.

He told his beating heart, his racing mind that he would not die of this. But he
must
go down stairs, and defend his rescuers from this supernatural menace.

Scene Thirty Seven

The street outside Marlowe’s lodgings. Centaurs, invisible to humans -- except those who have been touched by faerieland -- roam the streets amid bawds and pickpockets, gentlemen and cony catchers.

W
ill saw the centaurs as he turned into Kit’s street. Strange beings, not at all like the elves.

Where the elves’ glamoury was all delicate, like sugar spun confects, pretty and enticing, these creatures’ power rolled off their steaming horse bodies, their gleaming, golden human torsos in dark waves.

Instinctively, without thinking, Will thrust his body in front of Ariel, as she exclaimed in surprise and fright.

He’d have done the same were she Nan, or one of his daughters, frightened of gross, rank creatures.

He did not think of the wooden maces in the creatures' hands, or what they’d to his skull. Only that he must protect Ariel.

Breathing deeply, breathing slowly, he tried to control his heart, his breath, tried to look like he couldn’t even see them, tried to prevent them seeing Ariel.

But first the powerful, sleek black leader noticed them, and grinned at them, his broad grin displaying what looked like teeth of the purest gold.

The yellow eyes, a shade lighter than Will’s, turned towards them, the broad mouth pulled in sly amusement.

He advanced at a canter.

Bawds and gentlemen didn’t see him, yet moved out of his way, as he advanced, grinning.

Ariel dug her little hand into Will’s shoulder.

“What have we here?” Will asked, in a whisper, to her, as the centaur cantered towards them. “Who is this? What is this?”

“A ... a centaur,” Ariel whispered.

“That much I’d realized milady,” Will said. “But why?”

“They are .... enemies. They wish to dethrone my lord. The traitors I told you about. These are they.”

Then the centaur stood before them, no farther away than it would take a single horse step to close. That close, he bowed. “Ah, milady. We’ve come to escort you back to your hill. As we love you well, we’d not be unruled.”

Ariel squeaked and made as if to hide between Will and the nearest wall.

“Milady,” the centaur said. He bowed at his human waist again. “I am Laius, a noble of Centauria, and I mean you no harm, only to take you back to your hill, your proper abode. You’ve been wandering, lost in your wits, and you’ve wondered into danger. We’ve tracked you here and here we found you, and from here we’d take you to your safe home.”

In Will’s mind, the centaur’s words resounded, slowly assembling into meaning. The centaur had come for Ariel, to take her to her hill. What kind of treason was that? How did Will know that Ariel had not escaped her rightful lord, and, wondering in her wits come to London? Because Quicksilver had been in London? But what if Quicksilver had gone back to the hill by now? Whose word had Will that the centaur had not?

Hesitating, he stood, helpless.

The centaur leaned over him, and reached for Ariel with a rough arm, with a hand twice the normal human size. He grabbed at Ariel’s shoulder and pulled her from behind Will, while his booming, barbaric laughter echoed. “Come, milady. Come. Your nuptials wait you.”

Ariel shrieked and batted at the hand.

Nuptials. Nuptials, not with Quicksilver. Captive, despoiled Quicksilver. Lost through Will’s own fault.

Will’s dagger was out that he’d never yet removed from his belt in anger since coming to London. Out and flourished, before Will could think, and cutting a broad gash into the golden arm, sending blood spraying over Will’s face, over Ariel’s shoulder.

The creature screamed, a scream like a bray, and for a moment his huge fingers unclenched from Ariel’s shoulder.

In that moment, Will recovered her, pulled her behind him, interposed his body between her and this beast man.

“How can you see me?” the centaur asked. He wrinkled his nose with distaste as though Will smelled badly.

That close, Will himself smelled the centaur, a heavy scent of animal hide and cloves.

He eyed the heavy hooves on the ground.

“You meddlesome mortal, think you that you’ll be allowed to interfere in the affairs of elven kind?”

The heavy hooves rose, the creature backed, a step, two. He backed and he reared and he came at them, using his hooves as a weapon, meaning to crush Will.

Will grabbed Ariel around the waist and rolled with her to the mud of the alley, tripping over a gentleman who, unmindful of the centaur that reared an arm span away from him, cursed them soundly.

His curses still rang in Will’s ears, when the centaur, rounding, came at Will again, his war mace out, and swinging, his human body half-bent, to dash Will’s brains.

On all fours, Will crawled away from certain doom, leaving Ariel momentarily unprotected.

Will would be killed. Killed and he knew it well. Killed and gone forever. And then they’d take Ariel, and what might these men-beasts not do to her, frail Ariel, queen of faerieland?

He heard the hooves clop near his head. He almost felt the blow that would dash his brains.

Then he heard a scream. This scream had no words. It needed no words to adorn the sheer battle-mad, blood-thirsting anger that molded it and curled it around the human mind, making all humans recoil and instinctively hold onto that which they held most dear.

Thus had Cain screamed when Abel’s blood was spilled. Thus had every man who in anger had drawn sword screamed his rage at the unfair world and wanton fate.

The hooves moved away.

Centaurs screamed orders in some foreign tongue.

Will sat up, panting.

Every man and woman, every one of Adam’s children on that street had stopped walking, forgotten his or her round, the normal, appointed occupations of this night. Instead they stood, staring at what to them must look like an even madder man than he looked to Will.

And to Will he looked bedlam.

Oh, Will knew him well enough. This was Kit Marlowe, but a Kit Marlowe such as Will would not have dreamed, not two days before. His clothes looked neither dirty nor ragged, but slept on, or rather, worn the whole livelong night unsleeping, having accumulated creases and stains where the body had sat that would fain lie, where the man had stood who’d rather sleep.

His hair, a matted fright and his beard untrimmed, Marlowe glared at the world with red-rimmed eyes, and threw a formless scream from his throat, like a threat held at man’s necks.

But what he actually held in his hand, in fighting stance, was a small, rounded iron object. More interesting, from this object blue flashes flew, that made the air smell of scorch. And with this object Kit Marlowe attacked and feigned at the heavily armed centaurs.

The iron touched the nearest one on the chest, and he screamed, as blue light blazed, and he lifted his mace and made as if to dash Marlowe’s brains out.

Then a voice spoke through Marlowe’s mouth, a voice smooth and soft and purring-threatening. Sylvanus. Erstwhile king of faerieland. Will would have known the honeyed threat anywhere.

His hair rose, as his scalp tightened in fear.

“Stop,” the voice cried. “Kill not this body, for him I’ve claimed. I’ve but lost control for a breath. I shall regain it. Kill him and you kill me, the patron and abettor of your rebellion. Then shall Centauria be lost to centaurs.” The voice lost force as it went, till it disappeared, submerged, seemingly under Kit’s wild cry.

But in that wild cry, in that maddened voice, Will now discerned as though a whimper of pain, an edge of suffering.

“He’s burning himself, you know,” Ariel said, in a whisper. She’d come up behind Will and, still sheltered by his body, knelt behind him. “Burning himself for the sake of keeping the wolf at bay. But the wolf is already him and in that embrace, he suffers for the pain he can’t but take, for the freedom but hardily purchased and so short of duration. Is this the coward we heard about? The fearful traitor? What odd behavior for one such. Brave, gallant, deranged behavior. If I knew not better I’d think him an upright man.”

Around the street, people applauded and laughed, and pointed at the madman who fought nothing, and howled at emptiness with vain fury.

“This is better than an afternoon in bedlam hospital,” a man standing near Will said.

“And we need not pay the entry fee to see the zanies,” his companion, equally well dressed, equally well perfumed, said and smiled. “Yet, is he not Kit Marlowe, the playwright?”