Crawling Between Heaven And Earth (21 page)

Will could not answer that. Edmund's poetry, such as it was, had all the fire and power that Will's own words had possessed at twenty. But he lacked the calm of tutored thought, the quiet of reflected experience. Thus much had Will told him, ever. Thus much and naught more.

He'd always encouraged Edmund, had he not? Did he, in some corner of his being, fear this boy who reminded him so of Marlowe's greatness?

Before Will could reel in his thought, before he could respond to Edmund, Edmund smiled, a triumphant smile as if having proved his point, and turned on his heel, and headed for the door.

"You did well," Will Kemp said in a stage whisper. "You did well. Someone needs to rein in that boy, for his own good."

But Will watched his brother walk away in a stumbling, shambling walk, and thought he'd not done well at all.

The boy looked ill.

Will was at that age when his friends died, one after the other. Sometimes it seemed that all his acquaintance and everyone he remembered were mere ghosts, crowding around him with memoried affection but no living presence.

Old Mr. Pope, the actor, had died only two years ago. And this year Augustin Phillips, another actor, had died. Elizabeth, the great Queen in whose reign Will had been born, had died years ago, and before her brave, thundering Essex, her erstwhile favorite, who had for a while seemed to bestride the Earth and make the skies shake.

And Marlowe, great Marlowe whose words had taught Shakespeare's speech to sing, had lain ten years a-moldering in his anonymous grave in a Deptford cemetery.

It was as though Will had started a trip in this one coach, with coachmen and fellow-travelers, and one by one they'd all dropped off, leaving him alone and afraid.

But Edmund . . ..Edmund had come into the coach long after the trip had started—he'd come into the world well enough after Will that he could have been Will's own son.

Will watched Edmund trip and right himself slowly, in the hesitant movements of the infirm or old.

Edmund could not be allowed to dissipate himself until he died of it.

Children should not die before their parents, Will thought, despite the daily evidence of his eyes, despite the example of his own family.

Will, himself, would die, sure, but he'd leave behind himself this brother who was like a son and who'd continue Will's own path.

Not knowing which he feared more: That Edmund's distracted mind betrayed illness or that the boy was consorting with fairyland, Will sighed.

He was an old man. Old men had sick fancies and turns of the spirit that bode no good. It meant nothing.

"Your brother is ill, Master Shakespeare," Edmund's landlady said.

She stood at the door to Will Shakespeare's Black Friar's house, a disreputable woman with a flying untidiness of hair. Her garments, rough homespun inexpertly dyed black, stood out in this upper middle class neighborhood. She spoke with a decided French accent.

"He's so ill he could not get up from his bed this morning." As she spoke, she twisted a disreputable, frayed handkerchief in her hand. "He told me to tell you that he'd not be at rehearsal."

And at this woman who, no doubt, consorted daily with actors and lived cheek to jowl with brothels, sniffed, a sniff of disapproval, at the theater and all the workings thereof.

Will nodded. What else could he do? He nodded and he searched the purse at his waist for two coins, which he handed the woman, and he spoke in the soft, cultivated voice he'd learned to use ever since his wealth, his name had set him above the normal run of actors. "I will be along, shortly, madam."

Ill. Edmund was ill, after all.

He felt an odd relief.

Was this the coughing sickness that had claimed Edmund's Jenny and her illegitimate son by Edmund?

Will shook his head. It mattered not.

If Will's money could buy them, Edmund would have the best physicians, the most assured medicine.

If it was just this, just physical illness, then Edmund would survive.

And if not . . .

But all his hopes were dispelled as, after climbing Edmund's stairs two by two, faster than his own aging legs should carry him, Will entered his brother's shabby room.

Oh, sure, Edmund looked ill: parchment pale and drawn, he smelled of bitter sweat, of wasting illness. His breath left his lips like a howling wind, to be called back with groans of effort. The lustrous curls of youth lay matted and damp upon Edmund's yellowing pillow.

And yet none of this mattered. None of this.

A maiden stood between Edmund's small, rickety bed and the unsteady table that was meant to serve as Edmund's desk—where a ream of paper that Will had bought for Edmund sat, virgin of words, next to the untouched inkstone.

Solid as stone, unreal as ether, the beautiful stranger with the golden hair, stood and smiled at Edmund, and beckoned with wide smile, with enticing gaze.

She wore a white, semi-transparent gown, tight to her tiny waist and stopping short of the swelling roundness of her breasts, which peeked above the fabric with the creaminess of fresh butter and the sheen of fine silk.

"Come, Edmund, come," she said, her voice the soft whisper of a brook upon parched land. "Come with me to the plain of pleasure, Moy Mell, where Boadag is king for aye and where there's neither anger nor sorrow, nor pain."

Will stared. From the creature there came the heady scent of lilac flowering in a Summer night.

Hag ridden. He'd been right there. Edmund was prey of creatures like this, of creatures like onto the ones that Will had known in the far off days of his youth.

Standing at the door to that shabby room in the heart of London, Will ran his hand back over his domed forehead, through his thinning salt-and-pepper curls.

The smell of fairyland enveloped him. The creature's voice was soft temptation. She glimmered in the scant light coming through the thick lead-paneled window. She shone with her own vitality, her power, her magic.

Her golden hair flowed like molten metal, as she turned to smile at Will.

In his heart, at that moment, as its beats sped like a mad drum played by a drunken reveler at a fair, Will was again twenty and, again, stood in a forest and, artless, was made the dupe of a fairy princess.

It was a moment. A moment only.

The smell of Edmund's sour, bitter sweat mingled with the scent of lilacs. This smell of all too human mortality, the smell of the condition to which Will was born woke him from his dream.

Will had been right in that, too. Edmund was ill. And his illness might mean death. Or it might not.

Edmund was a healthy child, a happy boy, who had run happy and contented through the garden paths of his parents backyard, amid the vegetables and the roses, with never a sick day.

Edmund's vitality would count for him. He was young, he was strong, his life would continue.

The fear of death was nothing but a distant danger, Will told himself. For Edmund as for Will. Part and parcel of the fears to which man was heir.

And yet, in that land, Edmund would live on for sure. Will would live on for sure . . .

Will shook his head.

"My lady, what do you here? What call have you?" His voice caught on the words, as he spoke them, courteous and soft.

The creature, beautiful as moonlight and twice as cold, composed her milk-white features upon her little oval face, and smiled a little demure smile. "I came for to take your brother," she said. "To take him to the plains of ever-living, where the dance lasts forever and where his words, his fire and his youth shall serve us well."

Serve them.

Will's indecision stopped.

Oh, not serve them. Not Edmund who'd been protected from all debt, kept free and safe by his brother Will.

Free and safe.

He must be allowed to remain free. Even if he must risk death for it.

Will rounded on the thing, his hand going up to his forehead and retracing the papist sign of the cross, his lips falling, unawares, upon the words of the paternoster.

He should have known better. Of all people he. He knew these creatures neither angels nor demons—fled not from the holy signs, the holy words.

She laughed, a crystalline laugh. "What have we with your gods, Master Shakespeare? What have you with your crucified one? Leave it be. He has no rule over us."

Her voice was soft as velvet run over ice. Together with her smell, it made his hair stand on end at the back of his neck.

He thought of Quicksilver, king of elves. Once they'd been friends. Will heard Quicksilver's name upon his lips like a talisman.

"Aye," the woman said, and laughed again, the soft, mocking laughter. "Aye, you're of his well enough. I see his power mark upon you. But that's naught to us. We are of Erin and not of this island. We care not for his rule. You are of Quicksilver's company, and you we cannot touch, but him" She smiled at him, silver and crystal, glittering and cold. "The boy will be ours, and fair enough. A bard for a bard and poetry to oppose to Quicksilver's spells, should it ever come to that."

The smile was a challenge.

"He's my blood," Will said. "He's my brother. You cannot"

"He is dying," she said, cold and precise. "Your medicine cannot save him. Here he will die. In our land he'll live. He'll live forever."

"In your land something shall live," Will said. "Something. One of you. Not my brother." He swallowed the words he wanted to say but knew not how to form—he, the master and spinner of so many words—that the creature there, in that glittering plain beyond pain and death would not be Edmund, not the child who'd run after chickens and played with dogs. There was no room for such things in fairyland, no room for the untidy mess of human feelings. "He might be ill, but he is young. He'll live. He'll live like the rest of us fellows who crawl thus, between heaven and Earth. He'll survive. He'll learn to take the bitter with the sweet."

But she laughed. "You know the rules, son of Adam. You know them well. Tonight is Winter solstice and tonight we ride. You hold on to him and he is yours. But once you let him go, once he joins us, he is of ours, he is none of yours." Before Will's eyes, she vanished.

The ride. Will knew the ride well. In Arden it had been a solstice dance. In his youth the elves had taken Will's wife, Will's Nan, captive. He'd held onto her through fire and ice while the fairies danced all about.

He could hold on to Edmund while the elves rode on. He could.

He looked at Edmund's pale face, Edmund's feverish, shining golden falcon eyes.

"In the tavern," Edmund was saying, as though he needed explaining. "I danced with her in a tavern. Oh, Will, it was the brightest place in the world, and their music the most wonderful."

The dance. There had been a dance, then, already, and Edmund had already taken part in it. He was marked by them then. Oh, Will must hold onto him and hold fast, or else was he gone forever.

"Worry not, Edmund," Will said. "Worry not brother. I'll hold onto you, and they'll never get you."

But Edmund's eyes were set and feverish, as if looking on landscapes that Will could not see.

"I am . . .ill . . ." he whispered. "Ill. The coughing sickness as took Jenny and the baby."

"You are young, brother, you are young, and I'll get you a doctor and medicine, the best, for my money, the best that can be got."

"The best," Edward echoed, and his voice rasped. "The best, for your money." His eyes, still fevered, seemed to lose their luster and their intensity. He looked at Will like a man who has wandered into a strange house and knows none of the inhabitants.

It started with a gentle pitter-patter, like rain against the window, like the far-off sound of walking feet.

Awake, by his brother's bed, Will looked at the candle markings by which he told the night's advancement. Midnight.

Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night. The time of night when Troy was set on fire. The time when screech-owls cried, and ban-dogs howled, and spirits walked, and ghosts broke up their graves.

Solstice night at midnight. That time that best fit for what was to come.

Will looked at Edmund who slept and in his sleep had regained some tint on his cheek, some look of innocence.

Thus had Will watched his brother sleep when his brother had been a very small child. And he'd watched Edmund awake for fresh joys and renewed life.

Let it be so again.

The sounds from the outer wall increased, till, of a sudden, it was thrown open like a door to let bright, silvery light through.

On that light, shapes formed.

Will jumped from his chair beside Edmund's bed, and, thrusting himself forward, grabbed his brother mid-body and held him tight, while Edmund woke and muttered a query.

But Edmund's query was stilled on a rasped breath, and Will himself took in breath suddenly, at the creatures entering the room.

There were two horses, one roan and one white. Upon the roan, on a saddle of hammered gold, rode a giant who resembled a man except for his too-fine features. He was in every part what a man should be—his hands strong, his eyes wide and green, his red hair a starburst of light around his happily-formed face.

He laughed like the coming of dawn, like the banishing of nightmares.

The white horse beside his had no rider. Or rather, its rider walked by its side, her hand upon the flower-decked reins, her golden hair for once caught up, and entwined also with flowers.

"We came for the pledge," she said.

Will shook his head and tightened his grip on Edmund.

But Edmund had awakened, and wriggled hard within his brother's hold.

"Let me go with them," he said. "For there I'm not sick. There is life grief-free, and it's forever."

"Their life is no life that you would want," Will said. "Their gold is only tinseled over leaves, their food so much air that has no flavor. Oh, there's grief aplenty in this world. But there's sweetness too, if you stay to taste of it."

"How would you know their life and their food?" Edmund screamed. With ineffective, weakened hands, he beat at his brother's chest.