Perfect Shadows

chapter 10

Hal rested his head on his lover’s chest in an ambiguous state between vexation and hazy contentment, then raised it to gaze on the quiescent man beside him. The split on that full lower lip had broken open again with the ferocity of Hal’s onslaught, and that explained the odd taste in his mouth, he decided, rich and almost sweet, but with an underlying, unmistakable bitterness. He bent his head and licked the forming blood-drop, savoring the odd flavor once more. It was difficult to tear his eyes from that snowy skin; even the fading bruises that defaced it seemed beautiful. He had always shunned deformity, sickened by the scars that are shown as marks of valor, but now he wanted to hold that maimed face close, to kiss the blemished eyelid, and every purpled bruise. Robin owes me twenty nobles, he thought giddily, recalling the callous bet that the eye-patch was an affectation, which they had made when Essex had returned from one of his country sulks to find the insolent foreign prince usurping his place.

Hal’s lips brushed the scar, and Kit reached a lazy hand to tangle in those soft auburn curls, pulling the willing Hal into another deep kiss before releasing him and sitting up. As if summoned, Jehan appeared to scoop some of the tepid water from the bath, replacing it with boiling water from the can he carried, before leaving as silently as he had entered. There truly was not room enough for two in that tub, however friendly they might be, but Hal discovered what great pleasure it could be to stand thigh deep in hot water while your lover washed you, and then the possibly even greater pleasure of returning the attention.

Northumberland stood back and studied the new form of his old friend. Not bad, he decided. The cast-off clothing had been refitted into a quite passable wardrobe for an obscure scholar, and having his housemaids do the work had saved considerable expense. He spared a brief damning thought for Eden Bowen and her brothers. She had been truly gifted with her needle, and being beholden, worked for their keep in lieu of the wages her skill might otherwise have commanded. He brushed the distractions aside and returned to the examination of his guest. The patchy, moth-eaten beard had been shaved, the hair brushed and trimmed into tolerable order, and a cobbler had been called into make several pairs of specially fitted boots and shoes to accommodate the clubfoot. That had been the most galling expense, and served to add to the irrational grudge Percy nursed against Marlowe, a cobbler’s son. He nodded, satisfied. He would take the man with him to the Twelfth Night Masque at court.

One of the maids squeaked and scurried from the room, propelled by a vicious pinch from Montague, who had discovered certain compensations in the conformation of his new body. He had berated the earl for making him a cripple, brushing aside the explanation that, apart from the consideration that the beggar would never be missed, the very fact that he was a cripple made the spell more likely to succeed under the auspices of sympathetic magic, since Montague himself had been abnormally formed. A few days after the rite, stroking himself in the bath, a look of incredulous delight had spread over the ugly face as the body’s natural endowment revealed itself in all its outsized prominence. It had stopped the complaints from the restored man, but started a round of new ones from the servants, as Montague ploughed his way through the staff, sometimes by seduction, and sometimes by rape. If his knowledge was not so damned important he would turn him back out on the highway, Percy fumed, thinking of the money it was costing to outfit and keep the man, and to pay off the servants. He sighed, and turned to the matter of the Masque.

It was to be a black and white affair, but apart from color, there would be no restrictions on the costumes. Percy had met the night before with Essex, who had a wild scheme for using the masque to regain favor at court. The cause of Robin’s disgrace was keeping himself well to the shadows since the moonlight hunt, and short of a royal summons, would probably not appear. Not for the fear of Essex, as that vain fool thought, but for the fear of Robert Cecil. And rightly so, Percy smiled to himself, the crooked little man having been foremost among the authors of Marlowe’s murder.

Since the vampire’s rescue, Percy had been watching carefully for any changes in himself, any indication that the blood exchange had taken its effect, but aside from a tendency to headaches and an aversion to the strong sunlight that caused them, he had noticed nothing. Well, perhaps a predisposition to irritability, but that was all. And all normal, according to Doctor Newman Sommers as the former dwarf now called himself. It would not be until he suffered his own death that the real changes would occur, and he had to make arrangements ahead of time to avoid complications after.

Percy fully expected some sort of strike by the prince calling himself Geofri, had expected it before now, and had taken steps with his old friend Ralegh to forestall him. But when he died, if—when— he rose triumphant from the grave, that was when he would be most vulnerable, that was when he would need a stratagem. Musing on the matter Percy drifted from the gallery towards his workroom, not really noticing where he was going or the cries of his libidinous companion’s latest victim.

Hal knew that the court expected him to plan the Twelfth Night costume around the oyster satin. That would be the prudent course, he smiled to himself. That outfit, with the lace and pearls removed, was already resting in the property box of the Lord Chamberlain’s players, orbits of it adorning the shareholders, more like. That was the grand gesture, the point of the whole exercise. Let Mounteagle try to top that! But the pinchpenny fool would not even discard his own shamed garment, and one could count on the sleeves forming part of Will’s own costume for the masque. Ah well, you take your pleasures as they occur, he thought, and frowned.

He had avoided Libby since his failure that night, but it was unlikely he would be able to dodge her much longer. Perhaps it was as well that Kit was resisting his teasings to attend the masque, if he was to expect an unpleasant scene with Libby, although he would give a fair price to see the prince decked out, say, as a Venetian duelist, or in the slashes and shreds of a Landsknecht. But Kit was adamant: without a direct order from the hand of the Queen, Twelfth Night would find him quietly in Chelsey.

Kit had appreciated the costume Hal modeled for him, however. It was stylishly cut of heavy silk velvet in black of the deepest dye, and slashed a hundred times to show the sarsenet lining, a rich red color, glowing against the black like so many drops of blood. He looked like a murdered gallant, bleeding from countless wounds, and the death’s-head mask, a realistic skull, framed by his flowing locks, added the final macabre touch.

Essex was putting the finishing touches on his own costume, and drilling the serving-men in their parts. He was dressed as the sun, in cloth of gold from head to foot, and glittering with thousands of tiny spangles to catch and reflect the light. His headdress was a crown shaped of many rays like the sun itself and polished mirror-bright. His grooms were dressed in azure satin to represent the sky and wore white hats heaped with ostrich plumes to simulate clouds. They would pull him before the Queen in a chariot of gold, with cushions of azure silk. His conceit was based on the intelligence he had gathered, that Elizabeth was to be costumed as the moon, in silver and white, her maids all in black and spangled with stars. He would portray the sun coming to worship and woo the moon, to lay his shining crown at her feet. With all the court bound to black and white his gilded entrance could not fail to be a prodigy. He smiled to himself for a moment before a frown crept over his features. Hal was having but little success in his efforts to cajole the foreign prince into attending the masque. That would take some of the savor out of the evening, to be sure. Well, that plan could be implemented at a later date, but it would be beyond compare to be able to occasion the interloper’s ultimate disgrace before the entire court.

His frown deepened as the silver chiming clock on the table told an hour much later than he expected. He would have to leave immediately to reach Durham house and the meeting Ralegh had worked so hard to bring about between Robert Cecil and himself. His brother-in-law Percy would be there as well, and the snare closing around the Prince Kryštof ’s throat would begin to tighten. Essex drew on the fur-lined gloves and threw his cloak over his shoulders, striding across the courtyard to the waiting grooms and mounting the stallion with effortless grace. He wheeled his mount and vanished into the dying light of the short winter afternoon.