Perfect Shadows

chapter 36

Nashe woke to find me kneeling beside his pallet, fixing him with my one-eyed stare. He seemed to find the uneven gaze unsettling and struggled to sit up, but I pushed him back down onto the pallet with a touch.

“Sylvana tells me that you should rest for a time, to repair some of hardship’s inroads upon your body. Do you wish for anything?”

“You don’t sound the same as them,” he muttered, motioning to the outer kitchen. “But there’s something familiar in your speech— Kent!” Nashe added, surprised, “You sound like a Kentishman.”

“Do you wish for anything?” I repeated, ignoring his last remark.

“If I might have some more wine, my lord,” he asked shyly, and I glanced to Sylvana, and back to him. She stepped forward with a flagon and filled his cup. We left the little man enjoying his drink and made our way to the study. I crossed to the fire, then turned to face my housekeeper.

“He’s dying, is he not?” My tone was flat and remote.

“He is, my lord. He may have a few weeks, even as much as a few months, but I do not think so. He has the consumption; that is why I moved him into the closet, away from the kitchen, but still close enough that I may see to him. I think that he has given up, my lord. Something has killed his spirit.”

“He was a good friend, rash and hot-headed sometimes, and with malice and spite enough to furnish any three normal men, but merry and loyal withal, where he had given his friendship. Poor Tommy! I do hate to see him used so!”

Two nights later, on the eve of Hal’s trial, Nashe blundered into my study wearing nothing but one of Jehan’s shirts, the sleeves rolled thickly around his thin wrists to reveal his hands, and the tail reaching his knees. He tacked off the table and ended at the hearth where I, dressed to prowl the streets, sat contemplating the fire.

“Never spilled a drop,” Nashe grunted with satisfaction as he settled the heavy flagon he carried near to the fire.

“Cupshotten again, Tommy?” I asked with wry amusement. Nashe was one of the lucky few that became more coordinated with drink, at least up to a point. He might be somewhat unsteady on his feet, but he could juggle knives or firebrands with never a hurt, and had won no few tavern wagers with demonstrations of that skill.

“Oh, hullo Kit. I thought you were dead,” Nashe beamed at me with his gap-toothed little-boy smile. “Have a drink? No? Are you a ghost then? I had heard that dying people see ghosts. I died myself last year—or was it longer? When they burnt all my books, Kit, every one! All my books,” he repeated mournfully, then looked up with another quick grin. “I saved yours though! Silly cook wanted to use them for fire-starter. I took ’em to your Tommy then and he, he gave me some money—my pocket’s gone Kit. Have you seen it? No matter, it was empty anyway. Kit, was it awful, dying? Is it awful, being dead?” his words trailed off and he slid from the chair onto the hearth. I caught him and kept him out of the fireplace, then carried him back to his bed. Sylvana stirred from her pallet near the kitchen fire, and seeing my burden rose swiftly to her feet.

“He’s drunk, Sylvana.” I dropped the wasted body into the bed and pulled the covers up, then stood for a few moments staring at my snoring friend. “He recognized me, or seemed to. I will see him tomorrow night, and try to keep him sober until I do.” Sylvana made a wordless sound of assent, and I turned to look at her. She hadn’t caught up a blanket or robe, and the dim firelight from the next room played up and down her body as she walked back to her pallet, sinking gracefully into the warm hollows in the blankets. In the stronger light I could see the bruising on her throat, made by Richard’s clumsy feeding. I followed and knelt to touch her throat lightly, and she shivered. I pulled her coverlet up around her then settled cross-legged to speak with her.

“The boy hurts you,” I said softly, and she shook her head. “He is awkward, my lord, as any young thing might be, but not cruel. He will learn his skills, and that swiftly, I think. Sylvie is much taken with him, and Eden is jealous.” Sylvana yawned and stretched, snuggling down into her bed, and I dropped a quick kiss onto her forehead before rising to my feet. I went up to Richard’s room, to check on him before I left, and found him quiet, his hair across the pillow like a raven’s wing on snow. His change was minimal physically. He appeared no more than sixteen, and his features had refined to a shattering beauty, regaining some of the androgyny he had lost in his adolescence. I involuntarily stroked my jaw, reflecting on the changes wrought in my own appearance. I had not minded gaining the two or three inches in height, but the face was still somewhat of a shock in the mirror, like and yet so unlike my own, at least as I remembered it. Richard stirred a little in his sleep, turning onto his side, his face away from me, and muttered a little before sinking back into his dream. I went then, to roam the London streets until the dawn forced me home.

The next evening a message awaited me, asking me to meet with Geoffrey at Rózsa’s lodging in the city. I stepped into Nashe’s little room before I left, and the man turned his wandering gaze towards me, but did not seem to remember his speech of the night before.

“My lord?” he whispered, trying to rise. I stopped him with a wave, leaning over the narrow cot. “No, rest easy, Master Nashe. I must go out, but before I left I wanted you to know that all your books were not burned. Many were hidden away in libraries both here and abroad. You will not be forgotten, or remembered only as a passing reference to works unknown. Rest now, and get well.” I passed my hand over the high forehead, rumpling the stubbly hair. He smiled and sank into an easy sleep, as I slipped from the closet, shaking my head. Nashe, it seemed, recognized me as his old friend only while in his cups. I left to keep my appointment, and when I arrived Geoffrey was waiting for me with news of Hal’s trial. With his four hundred years, Geoffrey was old enough that the soft winter sunlight did not trouble him unduly, and had attended the trial to report the proceedings first hand. It had not gone well. As Rózsa’s handsome serving-man, Emile, served the wine, Geoffrey told the ugly story.

Francis Bacon, a long-time friend of the Earl of Essex, as well as a long-time beneficiary of the earl’s patronage, ruthlessly led the prosecution, to distance himself from the taint, no doubt. Essex was shaken and furious at Bacon’s defection, and the arguments and obfuscation he clumsily presented in his defense were brutally knocked down. When the two earls had returned to the court to hear the results of the jury’s deliberation, the peers had stood, one by one, and pronounced Essex a foul traitor, then had repeated the entire procedure with Southampton. The death sentence had been read out in ruthless detail, and Hal had blanched and placed himself under Her Majesty’s mercy, confessing his fault and entreating her leniency with simple dignity. Robin had merely asked that his favored divine be allowed to attend upon him in the Tower. They were marched back to prison, with the blade of the axe turned towards them. “Tell me, Kit, when did you make the exchange with the earl?” he added at the end of his tale, his voice suddenly stern.

“Essex? But I’ve never even—” I began, but Geoffrey interrupted impatiently.

“A fine waste of time that would be! No, I meant my Lord Southampton. He’s tasted of the blood somewhere, and that more than once. You can see it working in him, and I wondered, for you knew that I had advised against it,” he said.

I raised a hand to my lower lip, and nodded thoughtfully. “He seems to have a taste for it,” I said, and told him how Hal had licked the blood from my wounds more than once, but only a few drops at a time.

“Probably means nothing, then,” he said. “No doubt it will be resolved in time, but try to keep him from it, if you can.”

“Why?” Geoffrey turned sharply on me at the question, and I flinched in spite of myself. When he seemed satisfied that it was a simple request for information, and not a flaunting of his command, he answered.

“It can act like a drug upon mortals, conveying some of the advantages of the full exchange, but not perfectly, and only temporarily. It is best not to foster such a need,” he said, and took his leave. I thought about what he had said, and decided to make an attempt to see Hal that night.

To my surprise I found Cecil arriving at the Tower at the same time. The Earl of Essex had sent for the secretary, to tell him the truth, he said, about the conspiracy. The little man eyed me speculatively for a moment, then allowed me to enter, requesting an interview at a later time. The scene was much the same, except that Hal was clean, and his candles were plentiful and made of wax. He looked up from the book resting on the table before him, his eyes flashing and a smile flitting across his drawn face as he saw me. I could see the change that Geoffrey had mentioned: the feverish light in his eyes and the hectic spots of color on his cheeks. Suddenly, without a word, Hal threw himself from the chair and into my arms. “I hadn’t thought that they would allow me visitors,” he said raggedly. “You must be paying out a fortune in bribes.” I held him a moment before settling him back on his stool at the table.

“I met Cecil at the gate, and from what I overheard Essex will be spinning him a pretty tale even now; he said I might see you, and I expect that he will be along here when he is finished with Devereux. She said she would spare you, Hal, if you asked her,” I reminded Hal, my voice sharpening with the words. Hal nodded, smiling bitterly.

“She has said a great many things in her time,” he said. “I can still hear Buckhurst’s voice and the words of the hideous sentence pronounced upon us ringing in my ears: ‘. . . to be drawn upon a hurdle through the midst of the city, and so to the place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck and taken down alive—your bodies to be opened, and your bowels taken out and burned before your face: your bodies to be quartered—your heads and quarters to be disposed of at her Majesty’s pleasure, and so God have mercy on your souls.’ The words are branded upon my brain.” His voice was low and colorless, and his eyes had looked upon Hell. “The Queen despises me, I know. I shudder at the thought of what forms her ‘pleasure’ might take.” There was an awkward pause, and I stood abruptly.

“I shouldn’t have come. I will return when we know her majesty’s final decision, Hal. My cousin, Rózsa, is with Libby tonight, so she will be looked after.” Hal caught my hand, pulling me back.

“No, don’t go, not yet. I am glad that Libby’s not alone tonight. Will we know by morning, d’you think? I am such a coward, after all. I could have died in the fighting, with my blood up, but I cannot face dying like that.”

“You will not die like that, Hal, whatever might happen. That I do promise you,” I murmured, my lips against that burnished hair. We sat in silence for some time, and I was filled with pity for the rash young man, so like and yet unlike myself at that age. I could see him struggling with his fears, and he twitched violently at the sound of the bolt, staring at the door as if he expected the executioner to step in and drag him off to the block forthwith. I stood and slipped into a shadowy corner by the window.

Robert Cecil entered and stood a moment inside the doorway, perhaps garnering his strength after the grueling interview with Essex. His stooping figure, hunched from a childhood injury, bent even further with fatigue. He drew a breath and entered the chamber where we waited. He seemed shocked at the desperate fear on the Hal’s face, and a rare sympathy shone in his own.

“Rest easy, my lord,” he said softly. “Her Majesty has commuted your sentence. You will not die.” Hal’s head snapped up, his dark eyes enormous in his white face, and I thought for a moment that he was going to faint. With a visible effort he got himself under control, and stood to face the Secretary.

“I understand that you added your voice to others,” he flicked a glance tome, standing in the shadows by the window, “in my behalf. I do thank you, my lord, for I know that you have little cause to love me. What will happen tome?” he added, with only the faintest tremor in his voice to betray the strain he was under.

“You are to be kept here at the Tower for the rest of your life, my lord. This room is not uncomfortable, I think, and I will arrange for a partition to be built as well, for a withdrawing room. You will be allowed servants, and comforts, but not visitors without the council’s permission, at least at first. Your highness,” he added, glancing at the still figure by the window, “if you will accompany me?” He waited for me to join him in the outer chamber, quietly bolting the door behind him before proceeding to his office.

I declined the chair offered me, and stood waiting, watching the little man as he poured the last of the brandy from the small bottle I had procured on my last visit to that little office room. As I took the cup I noticed that the Secretary’s hands were cold as ice, chilling even to my own unnaturally cool flesh.

“Essex has laid the full blame of his enterprise upon the backs of his friends,” Cecil said abruptly. “He has even blamed his mother and his sister for helping to lead him astray. The only innocent in the whole affair is himself, it would seem. It’s spite, of course. He has heard that others have confessed their various roles, and all to his dishonor.” Cecil passed a weary hand over his high forehead, as if memory of the earl’s vituperation and servility made him ill. “His chaplain is with him, and we will soon sort him out. It is touching upon another matter that I wish to speak with you, your grace. Her Majesty is most displeased by your attachment to Southampton, and you are not to be allowed to see him. Neither will you present yourself at court until she calls you back. I am sorry for it, my lord; the young man needs a strong friend to guide him, but I fear he will only find sycophants.” Cecil gazed at me for a moment, lost in thought. “We have often been at cross purposes, I fear, when combining our forces might have served us, and the crown, better.”

“It would have been an uneasy alliance, at best, with so little trust between us. Would it be any less so now?”

“It might be so, now that I no longer have any perception that you might mean her Majesty harm, your grace, and there are stronger foundations than trust.” I nodded coolly, but returned no answer as I left the room.