Perfect Shadows

chapter 21

“I am not pleased, Christopher.” Geoffrey’s voice was cold, but not so cold as my blood upon hearing his words. I said nothing, waiting for him to continue. I did not have to wait long. “I have taken back your custody,” he continued, “and not just because you have come here to Paris. Nicolas is clearly unable to provide the sort of discipline that your circumstances require; I am not. But neither am I unreasonable, and I understand your need for a measure of privacy. The gatehouse here is well appointed—you will keep your household there, unless, or until, you abuse this trust. For tonight, you will stay here, with me.” Richard watched all this in silence, and watched me led from the room like an errant child bound for punishment. His expression was unreadable.

Richard was able to suppress his hostility and revulsion to women through sheer force of will, but found that sudden encounters would still leave him shaking and sick; his very beauty attracted exactly the sort of attention that he could least tolerate. We settled in, and Richard continued trying to teach me, now with slate and chalk, to read and write, with but indifferent success.

My household being too small to support my need for blood, not long after our arrival I had taken to prowling the Paris streets, both to accommodate my needs and to allay the growing temptation to take Richard. One dark night, about a month into our stay, I saw someone I knew.

Poley, with his mincing steps and faded finery, crossed a pool of lantern light and vanished in the dark, unaware that he was no longer alone. He had stumbled up the steps to his mean lodgings, was fumbling with the lock, when I quietly said almost in his ear, “Allow me,” and pulled the heavy key from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He whispered my name as he recognized my voice, and knew that a dead man stood beside him in the darkness. He stood paralyzed just inside the door as I crossed the room to the meager fire and lit the candles with a spill from the dirty mantel. The soft light revealed his thoughts as it revealed my features: those of a stranger, or at least I didn’t look like Marlowe, or not exactly, but there was a resemblance . . . Poley caught his breath in a ragged gasp as I turned my head and showed the eye patch that covered my right eye. “Well, well, Robin, how are the mighty brought low! Is this the best that Cecil can do for you?”

“M-m-marlowe?” Poley stammered, then slumped to the floor in a faint. I knelt on the filthy floor, and dragged him up until my teeth found the vein in his throat. I drank his blood, though the taste of it disgusted me, but I had to take enough to exert my will over the repellent little man. He woke again, and struggled against me, but his strength was no match for a normal man’s, let alone mine. I forced his eyes to meet mine, charging him to remember this encounter as no more than a drunken dream. He would obey any command I gave him, and fall into trance at a word from me. I ordered him to sleep for a time, and before he woke I had gone.

I had arrived back at the manor in good spirits. Poley’s being in Paris promised some diversion, at least. I joined Geoffrey in the Hall, delighted to see Hal lounging by the fire. He had arrived an hour or so after my departure on my night’s adventure, and Geoffrey had invited him to the Hall to await my return. Hal had never actually met Geoffrey, only seen him at court from a distance, and seemed to be finding the man’s physical presence somewhat overwhelming. I had seduced him: Geoffrey would need only to snap his fingers to have anyone he desired groveling at his feet. Hal didn’t seem to know whether to be vexed or thankful that he presumably was not desirable. Geoffrey was well aware of the effect that he was having on my lover, and would have withdrawn but that he wished to speak with me.

I noted Geoffrey’s savage amusement and Hal’s sullen frustration as I joined them, my own amusement spilling out in soft laughter. “It is good to see you, Hal. You will stay in the gatehouse with me? I have had a chamber made ready,” I added, catching a subtle movement from Geoffrey indicating that he desired Hal’s absence at the moment. I arranged for a footman to take Hal across the grounds, and to settle his luggage, stealing a kiss in the shadows before sending him away.

“I have had a letter, Christopher, from Rózsa. She will be joining us here for the summer, and as this is her home, I can scarcely ask that she stay away. Your young ward—” he broke off, and I nodded gravely. I told Geoffrey that Nicolas had suggested the house in Brittany, should that prove necessary. We talked for a time of Richard, of his recovery, and the strain that his proximity was putting on my fortitude. Geoffrey was at least sympathetic, having gone through something of the sort with Rózsa years before. “It is never easy, never, but these things have a way of working themselves out, given time, and time we have in abundance. And now, your Southampton is a man of ready wit, but little depth, I think. He has never had to fight, so it seems, and thus has weaknesses where he most should be strong. But there is good metal there, under the dross.” Geoffrey turned his gaze from the hearth to me, piercing me with steely fire. “Go now to your guest, Christopher, though he will be but the companion of the moment—do not think that he would join us, for he would not. Indeed, I feel that he will break off with you soon now and that is no bad thing.”



Those words came back to me a few weeks later. We had begun to spend most of our time pushing at each other, Hal and I, he vainly rebelling against my mastery, and I refusing to yield an inch. Richard had been the cause of no little contention between us as well, since we both found the boy attractive. The position that Cecil had arranged for Hal was largely show and make-work, and he, in his enforced indolence and boredom, had been playing at provoking my jealousy, idly and without much direction. Knowing that I desired Richard, Hal had set out to seduce the lad himself, but Richard had shied away from any intimate contact. He would need more time and effort than Hal was willing to grant him, even though it might provide his other desire: the destruction of his intimacy with me.

It was as if Hal were demon-ridden, I sometimes thought, for no sooner would a thing approach a certain completion or perfection than he would set about its ruin, helplessly and unable to stop himself, as well attested by the disastrous conclusion of his career at court. He was still drawn to me, and even as he longed to provoke me, he seemed to long also to placate me, and his ambivalence made him irritable.

One day he got a letter, tear-stained and incoherent, from London. He crumpled it and cast it blindly across the room, where it bounced off Jehan’s muzzle, waking him from his doze by the fire. He got up and padded from the room to fetch me, and a few minutes later, still sluggish from the day’s trance, I slipped in.

“You’ve had a letter? Is it bad news?” I yawned and apologized. I was preoccupied and stared into the fire fingering the place on my lip, cut by my own sharp canine tooth. I was uneasy about the way that Hal had kissed the cut, licking the blood away with seeming relish. Did that count as an exchange? A few drops, only? No, it was impossible. But I was uncomfortably aware that he took some few drops any chance that he got.

“I must go to London. Libby’s pregnant, and the Queen has locked her away in the Fleet prison,” Hal blurted, pacing, then turning on his heel to face me. “I will marry her,” he stated defiantly, as if expecting an argument, but I had played these scenes more than once in my former life and recalled enough of them to know better. I merely nodded then poured the wine. I offered a glass to Hal, who took it from me with an air of unease that he was unable to completely hide.

“Her Majesty will certainly imprison you, an you do,” I commented blandly.

“She may try! I will be back in France before she knows I was in England. You cannot keep me here, Kit,” he added, the merest hint of a threat in his voice.

“Hal, I would not even try. I am, and hope to remain, a friend to you. All I ask is that you not burn all of your bridges, or at least, not spectacularly. It may be that you will have need of friends, and that sooner than you think.” Hal strode from the room without a further word and I watched my retreating lover’s rigid and angry back, then turned to the lesson that Richard had set me. It was useless, and worse, it was maddening, to stumble blindly through provinces where once I had flown, to live as an ignorant beggar where once I had been a king. I thrust the copybook aside and went across to the manor to speak with Geoffrey. We talked the night away, and I suppose that Geoffrey sensed my restlessness, for he commanded me to share his bed, as he ever did when he felt the need to reassert his mastery. When I woke the next evening, Hal had gone.



Within a week word had come from Robert Cecil of the events in London, and I, in Poley’s chambers, pocketed both the cipher and Poley’s translation. Poley himself sat slack-jawed against the far wall, his eyes white slits in his face, while I made free with his correspondence. I had appropriated the position of Lord Robert’s confidant in Paris for Geoffrey, and he fed the English spider only such flies as he saw fit. Poley had reported the presence in France of the Sybrian exiles, and had been instructed to observe and recount our movements. This had gone on for weeks, with Poley unaware that the messages he sent had been prepared by other hands, indeed, unaware that he had a visitor at all. I folded the flimsy papers into a small purse and tucked it into my doublet for Geoffrey to read to me later. I made up my mind: I would take the shoddy little man back to the manor, and this night would be his last. I bound him hand and foot, gagging him with the filthy rag he used for a kerchief, then set off to hire a horse to carry him. I was damned if I would carry the verminous little villain upon my own horse.

It would be Christmas soon, and the snow lay already thick upon the ground, muffling the horse’s hooves. Poley had awakened before we reached the manor, struggling madly against his bonds for a few minutes before resigning himself. Rhys met us at the stable, taking the horses and vanishing into the dark building.

I slung my squalid burden across my shoulder easily and made my way into the cellars through the outside entrance. There was a little room there, caught against the foundations of an older building when the present house had been rebuilt. It was a somewhat damp and a bit airless, but I wasn’t overly concerned with the little assassin’s comfort, only with my own revenge for that day in Deptford, over seven years before. I dropped the man to the floor and took the candles from the serving-wench who had accompanied us to light the way. I perched the candles on the outcroppings of the rough foundation stones, and stood over my victim in contemplation. Poley struggled into a seated position, then gasped as he recognized me.

“Good evening, Robin,” my smile was no more than a feral baring of teeth. “I see you remember me, after all. What else do you remember?” I stooped and plucked the gag from his mouth, letting it fall to the floor.

“What is the meaning of this outrage? I am an Englishman, and not to be treated so! I have friends, very highly placed friends, and—”

“You have no friends, Robin, and you never had. You are a tawdry twisted little man who has come to the end of his tawdry twisted little life. Did you think that you would never have to atone for the lives you warped and ruined? Did you think that you could explain it all to God, and he would forgive you? Well, perhaps you are right. You are certainly about to find out.”

“Who are you?” Robin shouted desperately, “You’re not Marlowe! Marlowe is dead!” I nodded agreeably, and took a step back from the man, closer to the candle, then removed the patch that covered my scarred eyelid. Robin gasped again, but said nothing.

“Marlowe is dead, Robin, undeniably dead, but I yet live, at least after a fashion. No,” I cut off the spluttering protests, “I do not wish to know the whys of the thing, or how you were forced to do it, or even how I forced the council into moving as it did. It makes no difference, you see. You will die, and I will kill you. I’ve just not decided upon how, yet.” That was a lie, though Poley could not know that. I would let the man stew all day, and break his neck quickly and cleanly the following night. “Of course, the precept ‘an eye for an eye’ offers a certain ironic symmetry,” I added, tilting my head to listen to the crowing of a distant cock, allowing the candlelight to fall full upon the jagged ridges of the heavy scar before turning on my heel and leaving the room, locking the door securely behind me. There was yet time for Geoffrey to read Poley’s correspondence, if I hurried.

Geoffrey’s voice was steady as he read, but my gorge rose at the crowing note in the terse tale of Hal’s capture and imprisonment. He had married his Libby, there in the prison, and had thought that word could not be taken to the Queen before he himself was well on the road back to Paris. But Cecil’s spies were legion, and the tidings had soon reached his ears. He then presented them to the queen as a perfect means to abate the objectionable earl’s imagined influence on Essex, whose precarious position at court was obvious to every eye but Essex’s own.

It scalded me to think of Hal imprisoned, though I had to admit that the romantic role of captive would probably afford him some little amusement, at least at first. Poley’s latest message to Cecil had been little more than a wail of supplication, entreating the secretary to recall him to London, and employ him there. We altered the message, advising Cecil that Poley was going out of Paris for what might be a protracted time, and hinting at some momentous news he would uncover.

“Take your rest now, Christopher,” Geoffrey ordered. “It grows late.” I thanked him, and left. The late winter’s dawn was almost upon me; I paused in the kitchens long enough to give orders concerning my guest, and reached my bed in the gatehouse as the shrouded sun rose.