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Scene Thirty Seven



The street outside Marlowe’s lodgings. Centaurs, invisible to humans -- except those who have been touched by faerieland -- roam the streets amid bawds and pickpockets, gentlemen and cony catchers.



Will saw the centaurs as he turned into Kit’s street. Strange beings, not at all like the elves.

Where the elves’ glamoury was all delicate, like sugar spun confects, pretty and enticing, these creatures’ power rolled off their steaming horse bodies, their gleaming, golden human torsos in dark waves.

Instinctively, without thinking, Will thrust his body in front of Ariel, as she exclaimed in surprise and fright.

He’d have done the same were she Nan, or one of his daughters, frightened of gross, rank creatures.

He did not think of the wooden maces in the creatures' hands, or what they’d to his skull. Only that he must protect Ariel.

Breathing deeply, breathing slowly, he tried to control his heart, his breath, tried to look like he couldn’t even see them, tried to prevent them seeing Ariel.

But first the powerful, sleek black leader noticed them, and grinned at them, his broad grin displaying what looked like teeth of the purest gold.

The yellow eyes, a shade lighter than Will’s, turned towards them, the broad mouth pulled in sly amusement.

He advanced at a canter.

Bawds and gentlemen didn’t see him, yet moved out of his way, as he advanced, grinning.

Ariel dug her little hand into Will’s shoulder.

“What have we here?” Will asked, in a whisper, to her, as the centaur cantered towards them. “Who is this? What is this?”

“A ... a centaur,” Ariel whispered.

“That much I’d realized milady,” Will said. “But why?”

“They are .... enemies. They wish to dethrone my lord. The traitors I told you about. These are they.”

Then the centaur stood before them, no farther away than it would take a single horse step to close. That close, he bowed. “Ah, milady. We’ve come to escort you back to your hill. As we love you well, we’d not be unruled.”

Ariel squeaked and made as if to hide between Will and the nearest wall.

“Milady,” the centaur said. He bowed at his human waist again. “I am Laius, a noble of Centauria, and I mean you no harm, only to take you back to your hill, your proper abode. You’ve been wandering, lost in your wits, and you’ve wondered into danger. We’ve tracked you here and here we found you, and from here we’d take you to your safe home.”

In Will’s mind, the centaur’s words resounded, slowly assembling into meaning. The centaur had come for Ariel, to take her to her hill. What kind of treason was that? How did Will know that Ariel had not escaped her rightful lord, and, wondering in her wits come to London? Because Quicksilver had been in London? But what if Quicksilver had gone back to the hill by now? Whose word had Will that the centaur had not?

Hesitating, he stood, helpless.

The centaur leaned over him, and reached for Ariel with a rough arm, with a hand twice the normal human size. He grabbed at Ariel’s shoulder and pulled her from behind Will, while his booming, barbaric laughter echoed. “Come, milady. Come. Your nuptials wait you.”

Ariel shrieked and batted at the hand.

Nuptials. Nuptials, not with Quicksilver. Captive, despoiled Quicksilver. Lost through Will’s own fault.

Will’s dagger was out that he’d never yet removed from his belt in anger since coming to London. Out and flourished, before Will could think, and cutting a broad gash into the golden arm, sending blood spraying over Will’s face, over Ariel’s shoulder.

The creature screamed, a scream like a bray, and for a moment his huge fingers unclenched from Ariel’s shoulder.

In that moment, Will recovered her, pulled her behind him, interposed his body between her and this beast man.

“How can you see me?” the centaur asked. He wrinkled his nose with distaste as though Will smelled badly.

That close, Will himself smelled the centaur, a heavy scent of animal hide and cloves.

He eyed the heavy hooves on the ground.

“You meddlesome mortal, think you that you’ll be allowed to interfere in the affairs of elven kind?”

The heavy hooves rose, the creature backed, a step, two. He backed and he reared and he came at them, using his hooves as a weapon, meaning to crush Will.

Will grabbed Ariel around the waist and rolled with her to the mud of the alley, tripping over a gentleman who, unmindful of the centaur that reared an arm span away from him, cursed them soundly.

His curses still rang in Will’s ears, when the centaur, rounding, came at Will again, his war mace out, and swinging, his human body half-bent, to dash Will’s brains.

On all fours, Will crawled away from certain doom, leaving Ariel momentarily unprotected.

Will would be killed. Killed and he knew it well. Killed and gone forever. And then they’d take Ariel, and what might these men-beasts not do to her, frail Ariel, queen of faerieland?

He heard the hooves clop near his head. He almost felt the blow that would dash his brains.

Then he heard a scream. This scream had no words. It needed no words to adorn the sheer battle-mad, blood-thirsting anger that molded it and curled it around the human mind, making all humans recoil and instinctively hold onto that which they held most dear.

Thus had Cain screamed when Abel’s blood was spilled. Thus had every man who in anger had drawn sword screamed his rage at the unfair world and wanton fate.

The hooves moved away.

Centaurs screamed orders in some foreign tongue.

Will sat up, panting.

Every man and woman, every one of Adam’s children on that street had stopped walking, forgotten his or her round, the normal, appointed occupations of this night. Instead they stood, staring at what to them must look like an even madder man than he looked to Will.

And to Will he looked bedlam.

Oh, Will knew him well enough. This was Kit Marlowe, but a Kit Marlowe such as Will would not have dreamed, not two days before. His clothes looked neither dirty nor ragged, but slept on, or rather, worn the whole livelong night unsleeping, having accumulated creases and stains where the body had sat that would fain lie, where the man had stood who’d rather sleep.

His hair, a matted fright and his beard untrimmed, Marlowe glared at the world with red-rimmed eyes, and threw a formless scream from his throat, like a threat held at man’s necks.

But what he actually held in his hand, in fighting stance, was a small, rounded iron object. More interesting, from this object blue flashes flew, that made the air smell of scorch. And with this object Kit Marlowe attacked and feigned at the heavily armed centaurs.

The iron touched the nearest one on the chest, and he screamed, as blue light blazed, and he lifted his mace and made as if to dash Marlowe’s brains out.

Then a voice spoke through Marlowe’s mouth, a voice smooth and soft and purring-threatening. Sylvanus. Erstwhile king of faerieland. Will would have known the honeyed threat anywhere.

His hair rose, as his scalp tightened in fear.

“Stop,” the voice cried. “Kill not this body, for him I’ve claimed. I’ve but lost control for a breath. I shall regain it. Kill him and you kill me, the patron and abettor of your rebellion. Then shall Centauria be lost to centaurs.” The voice lost force as it went, till it disappeared, submerged, seemingly under Kit’s wild cry.

But in that wild cry, in that maddened voice, Will now discerned as though a whimper of pain, an edge of suffering.

“He’s burning himself, you know,” Ariel said, in a whisper. She’d come up behind Will and, still sheltered by his body, knelt behind him. “Burning himself for the sake of keeping the wolf at bay. But the wolf is already him and in that embrace, he suffers for the pain he can’t but take, for the freedom but hardily purchased and so short of duration. Is this the coward we heard about? The fearful traitor? What odd behavior for one such. Brave, gallant, deranged behavior. If I knew not better I’d think him an upright man.”

Around the street, people applauded and laughed, and pointed at the madman who fought nothing, and howled at emptiness with vain fury.

“This is better than an afternoon in bedlam hospital,” a man standing near Will said.

“And we need not pay the entry fee to see the zanies,” his companion, equally well dressed, equally well perfumed, said and smiled. “Yet, is he not Kit Marlowe, the playwright?”

His friend who had first spoken smirked. “This is Kit Marlowe, you do not mistake. To Bedlam with him! is the man grown mad?”

Not knowing of their comments, not caring, wild-haired, wild eyed Marlowe tried to keep away all the centaurs that they could not see. With his iron piece, his only weapon, he thrust and he parried.

But even as he kept those in front of him away, those behind him grabbed him, and, with a smooth, effortless embrace, stopped both of Kit’s arms with his own.

Marlowe thus surrounded and helpless, another centaur approached and struck a gentle blow with his war mace upon the playwright’s wrist. He dropped the iron.

Gentle though the blow was for this creature, yet it made Kit scream, in ghastly pain as his already white face went whiter, and, released from the centaur’s hold, the playwright fell to his knees, holding his hand that dangled, seemingly boneless from his wrist.

It lasted a moment, no more.

The next moment, Marlowe’s face changed.

In a way it was like seeing the Marlowe of yore return. The face that had looked sallow and tired smoothed out, the skin looking brighter, the eyes, of a sudden, focused. The hair remained uncombed, the beard wild, but with the new posture, the new straightening of the shoulders, those didn’t seem to matter.

It went beyond that, though. Kit’s very bones seemed to change, the shape of his face sharpening, elongating, to look wolfish-cunning, wolf-hungry.

That face like a hungry animal’s looked down at the shattered hand, still cradled in Marlowe’s other hand.

Just a look and the hand seemingly regained shape and form. The wolf lifted it, flexed it, then smiled at the centaurs who, of a sudden, gave him space and bobbed him bows of great respect. “Thank you,” he said. “You have done well. Now, fetch her hence.” He pointed at Ariel.

Before Will could react, a centaur galloped over, and grabbing Ariel, threw her over his own horse body, holding her there with an impossibly back-bent arm.

The Marlowe who was no longer Marlowe smiled, his wolfish face distorted in a grin of murderous joy. “Now have I the king and queen both. One more life, and faerieland is mine.” Jumping, with unnatural grace, onto the horse-back of the nearest centaur, the wolf said, “Hence, quickly. We have work to do with this faerie queen.”

As he galloped past Will, on his odd mount, he called out, “And then I’ll go find your family.”

The people on the street stirred and talked and walked and resumed their normal occupations.

“Did you ever see that?” one of the gentlemen who’d spoken before asked his companion. “Marlowe has galloped hence, on a horse I couldn’t see. How did he do that?”

His companion looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “He must have been drunk. You know how he drinks.”

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Framed