Postscript: Yr Shrew was an outstanding success. I will be observing your future career with some interest.

ALL. God forbid!

Faustus:

God forbade it, indeed; but Faustus hath done it

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Doctor Faustus

Murchaud had reach on Kit, and two good eyes, and Kit was not used to fencing with a surrounding audience hampering his movement. But Kit sidestepped as the pale sunlight of Faerie flashed along the spirals decorating Murchaud’s rapier. Despite the unkempt grass tugging his boots, a little spatter of dignified applause followed the gesture of his main gauche as it knocked his opponent’s foiled blade off line. Foiled, but still razor-sharp along the edge: the blade brushed Kit’s shirtsleeve in passing, parting the linen as easily as the skin of a peach. Kit stepped in to take advantage of the break in Murchaud’s guard, ducked a thrust of the main gauche, and, extended along the line of his blind eye, lunged. Murchaud barely twisted aside, Kit’s rapier stroking the brownleather jerkin over his muscled belly, and his riposte fell short as Kit skittered back, swearing breathlessly, sweat trickling between his shoulders. The onlookers shifted, a murmuring riot of colored costumes against the sweep of green lawn, the gardens of heartsease and forget-me-nots, the high golden walls of the palace.

Kit forced his attention away from the audience as Murchaud advanced, teeth white in the angle between his lips, lips coral pink against the black of his beard. Stop looking at his smile, Kit you ruddy fool. Watch his chest, his eyes hah! as if that will keep you from distraction!A thrust, a flurry of parry, riposte, bind Murchaud’s breath on his face as he pressed with all his greater weight and the strength of his arm. Kit locked his elbow, holding against the press, went for Murchaud’s belly with the main gauche and felt his hand knocked wide. Murchaud bent a knee, bulled and lifted, hilt ringing on hilt, shoving Kit’s rapier high and wide. Kit scrambled aside, sucking his belly against his spine and out of the path of the blade, feeling through the shifts of Murchaud’s weight for where the main gauche would be. Somewhere on his blind side, and Kit’s hand was out of line. He ducked backward, wove, dipped a knee as he parried another lunge and felt the edge part not just shirt but skin, the hotter trickle of blood joining the drip of sweat down his forearms and froze at the needle prick of Murchaud’s eighteen-inch dagger in the curve of his jaw where the pulse ran close. A slow, thick thread of blood curved down his throat, delicately as the pad of a thumb dragged over skin, and he shivered. Murchaud smiled in earnest now, and Kit tilted his head away from the knife and closed his eye as the applause swelled.

“Yield?”

“Yield.” Kit forced clenched fingers to unwind from the grip of his rapier. The blade rasped on Murchaud’s and thumped pommel-first into the grass. He waited for the knife point to ease away from the red-hot dimple it wore. Instead, the blade caressed his throat, came to rest in the hollow of his collarbone, pressed just sharply enough to sting as Murchaud covered Kit’s mouth with a kiss as claiming as any bridegroom’s. The applause for that was more than a polite ripple.

It could have been an hour later or a dozen, although sunlight still streamed between the bed curtains to stain Murchaud’s pale skin tawny. Kit pillowed his head on the man’s ridged belly and sighed, idly picking at the clean wrap of linen covering the scratch on his arm. Murchaud wound a few of the long fair strands of Kit’s hair around his fingers like a girl playing with her ribbons. That was better. Wryness twisted Kit’s mouth into something only a fool would call a smile.

“What?””

“The fencing, or the fencing?”

“Thy swordsmanship is improving,” Murchaud continued blithely. “And the strength of thine arm.”

“Exercise is the best remedy for a weak arm, I’m told.” Kit still tasted that public, thrilling kiss. Still heard the roar of approving laughter that had followed.

Now, Murchaud’s laughter trailed into thoughtfulness. “We’ll make a warrior of thee yet, Sir Christofer. How long hast been among us?”

“Four days? Five? Time passes quickly with thee by my side.” He’d expected from his previous visit that by the time a month passed in Faerie, the world of London would be thirty years gone. Not so: perhaps the difference changed with the whim of the Mebd, but the once or twice Kit had found an unattended moment in which to prowl through the palace’s golden corridors and peer into the Darkling Glass, it seemed only a few hours had passed for Will and Sir Francis. He had sought the Prometheans behind his murder, as well, but the glass shied from them, as if he would pick up ice with an oiled hand. Kit didn’t feel himself guarded, precisely. Or watched. But he was seldom left alone, waking or sleeping. Of course Morgan can watch me if she wishes. And no doubt the Mebd can, as well.

Murchaud continued, “Thou wilt need learn something of the factions, if thou art to be ours. I’ll presume a certain comfort on thy part with politics, given thy career fair enough.” Murchaud’s fingers tugged Kit’s hair as Kit turned his head to kiss the Elf-knight’s belly.

“There is thee and thy mother,” Kit continued. “By whom I read I have been claimed. But I know not yet what task you mean to set me to.”

“We’ve uses for poets. Not unlike the uses to which thou hast set thyself, in thine old Queen’s court.”

“Commission thy poem,” Kit answered. “I could pen a sonnet on the arch of ev’ry rib, passage of verse on thine eyes, and lay a very pastoral over field and fallow of thy flank and loin. I’ll hang a golden tongue about thy throat.”

Murchaud’s sweat was bitter and sweet; a droplet of Kit’s own blood had dried on his breast, and Kit kissed it away. Murchaud pressed fingertips to the hollow of Kit’s throat. “It should have sealed by now.”

“Like any corpse, I bleed at the touch of my murderer.”

“There is Faerie and there is Hell,” Murchaud interrupted, with the air of one reciting a catechism. “They are allied under a contract drawn up long ago, when the Christian, now Romish, church first came into its glory. Portions of that Romish church are under the sway of those who oppose science, poetry, freedom of thought, and liberty of speech. Those same men have their fingers in the puppet Puritans too.”

“I know this,” Kit answered. “The secret underbelly of the Prometheus Club. The claims and counterclaims as to who has honest right to the name are too complex for me to follow, but as I understand it, once …”

“Hush,” Murchaud interrupted. “Faerie pays a tithe to Hell for Hell swardenship. My mother, Morgan, wishes to see the tithe ended, and Faerie to stand on its own.” The Elf-knight’s calloused fingertips traced the curve of Kit’s ear. They played languidly on, even as Murchaud’s next words froze Kit’s breath into stone. “What didst thou intend, when I overheard thee to tell Shakespeare that thou wert no Gaveston?”

Kit sat back out of the bedclothes, tugging his hair out of Murchaud’s grasp and squinting against the sunlight to meet his eyes. “You watched me. In the Glass.”

“Aye: we stayed to ward you, should someone take your reappearance amiss.”

Kit swallowed the self-loathing that filled his mouth. You’ve gotten careless, Marley. Careless and unbalanced, and it will have you dead twice over if you don’t find your feet among these stones.

“Sir Piers Gaveston, Kit said calmly, was the leman of Edward the Second. For whom Edward abandoned a loyal wife and peers who would have supported him, neglected his Kingdom, and paid with his freedom and eventually his life and Gaveston’s life, now that I think on it. For all Edward was a selfish spoiled boy more than he was a King, he died quite terribly for his sins. There’s a story about an impalement.”