Perfect Shadows

chapter 16

I looked up at Tom, able to focus for the first time since I’d been pulled from the pentacle. A scalding shame washed over me, as if I were somehow to blame for my degradation and defilement, not the hapless victim.

“Tommy?” I asked hoarsely, turning my face away. I well remembered how he had last seen me. “What are you doing here?”

“He rode to us full tilt, the night Northumberland displayed you to him,” Nicolas answered. “He saved your life.”

“No,” I whispered. “No, it was another saved it,” thinking of that beautiful voice, the caressing taloned hands, and fighting the sense of unspeakable loss that threatened once more to overwhelm me. “But it is Tom that brings me back to it.” I reached a thin hand to Walsingham’s cheek, to stroke the silky golden beard, and Tom caught my hand in his, bringing it to his lips. Nicolas, all but unnoticed, quietly left us alone.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Kit, and all I have ever done is hurt you terribly,” Tom said softly, and leaned over to kiss my scarred and stitched eyelid, but I moved and it was our lips that met. Sometime later Tom sat up and slipped his doublet off. He untied his collar and tossed it to the floor and began unlacing his shirt.

“Tommy,” I responded weakly, “I do not think that—”

“Hush, my love. Let me.”

Later as we lay entwined, sated and replete, I savored the lingering taste of my lover’s blood, and the sight of Tom’s sleeping form. I had thought that I would starve, that I would never be able to feed again without conjuring the hell of my imprisonment, and the defilement Northumberland had inflicted upon me. But Tom had roused my desire, and I found that Harry Percy was the farthest thing from my mind as I drowned my hunger in Tom’s sweet blood, even as I drowned my unexpected lust in his body. I saw that Tom was awake and watching me. “I’m sorry, Tom. I did not mean to wake you. You’re looking better, you know.” And he did. He had lost the puffiness caused by too little exercise and too much wine, and no longer tried to outshine the court gallants, thereby trading the vague impression of a kittenish decaying belle for that of an interesting and polished middle-aged gentleman. He smiled at me, his sleepy eyes violet in the candlelight. “So do you,” he murmured, then tensed, pushing my reaching hand away.

“How can you bear to touch me,” he whispered brokenly. “I let them murder you. I could have stopped it, some way. Oh Kit, I thought that I would be relieved, that I’d be safe. The council, and most especially Cecil, wanted you dead. You had worked for my cousin, Sir Francis, but would not work for him,” he answered my questioning expression. “Your views were becoming an embarrassment to them, and you were reckless, willful and wanton. Those last few weeks you almost seemed frantic, and they were unable to predict what you would do next. It fell in very well with what I thought that I wanted, and I sent Frizer. Mayhap God will forgive me, Kit. I cannot ask that you do so.

“But when the word came that you were slain, and I knew that I would never hear your laugh again, never listen while you skewered some vaunting rhymester with a few acid syllables, never hold your sweet body against me again, I wanted to die too.” I gently wiped the tears from Tom’s cheeks with the corner of the sheet. “And then you came back, I knew that it was you. I could only think that you had come for vengeance. I lost my head, running to Northumberland like a demented hen. And he nearly killed you again. Killed you again?” his voice trailed off as he realized the impossible import of his words.” Kit, how?” I brought my fingers to his lips.

“I will tell you,” I said gently. And so Tom heard of my last living weeks, the ordeal that followed my death and renascence, and the nature of the life that was left to me.

“You . . . drink blood? My blood?” Tom’s voice was as pale as his face, but he flushed with remorse. “Take it, take it all! It still will not repay you for what I did to you.”

“Oh, Tom, it was not revenge that brought me to your bed that first night, but that I could not stay away, though I was let to know how inadvisable it was,” I toyed with a lock of his hair. “But then I could not stop myself from tormenting you. Do you remember the stable cat at Nonsuch?” Tom nodded, shuddering. “You should have waited those few seconds longer, Tom, and you would have seen why I laughed. The cat tired of the diversion, simply lost interest and walked away from the mouse, which shortly recovered its wits and made good its escape. I knew at that moment that I would cease hurting you, even if I were not strong enough to leave off seeing you altogether. But then I was wounded—”

“I cried out to warn you, when I saw the bow,” Tom interrupted, and I nodded.

“Yes, I thought, hoped, that that was your intent. But later, when Percy captured me, I believed that you had sold me to him, to rid yourself of me yet again.” The utter desolation of those bitter hours overcame me, rendering me unable to speak for a time. I felt the scalding sensation in my right eye socket that meant it was filling with tears, and the acid trace on my left cheek where they fell freely, until Tom wiped at them with the sleeve of his shirt. I gave him a wry smile. “If you do not wish to remember what I have told you, I can take the memory from you,” I said softly, and Tom looked pensive.

“I . . . am not a strong man, you know that. Perhaps it would be better that you should take that knowledge, than take the risk of having it forced from me.” I considered this, then suggested that our story, if necessary, be that Tom had befriended the handsome foreign prince, whom he had, while in a fit of morbid fancy, nicknamed ‘Kit’. I smiled ruefully at Tom.

“I find that, after all, I would rather that you know me, even if it occasions some danger, arrogant though that may be.” Tom nodded, content, only to sit bolt upright a few minutes later, his hand clapped over his mouth.

“Kit! Who rests in your tomb at Scadbury? I had it all carved out of stone, and your body quietly removed to rest there, as a sort of amends. . . .”

“A princely grave, then, for a pauper’s bones,” I said with mock solemnity, and then joined in Tommy’s laughter.

“It appears that for once my dear wife was correct in suggesting that I was squandering my means. You frighten her, you know,” he added.

“Why?”

“She’s ambitious. She’s become a great favorite of the Queen, and fears that your friendship will do me no good, given your family’s estrangement with Cecil.”