Scene 42
Will stands near the door of the room. Kit holds the Queen, who kicks and screams but whose arms Kit keeps immobile. Skeres and Frizer, at Poley’s gestured command, duck around the Queen to flank Will.
Will would swear it looked as though Kit had been going to bite the Queen and then stopped.
What was it, then? Was it the wolf in Kit, going to kill the Queen by the only methods the wolf knew?
But if so, then why had it stopped? And why did Kit look so stricken, and why had he reproached Will for coming?
“I came because I had to,” Will said, ignoring the two dark-attired men who flanked him. “I came because you needed help, and because Quicksilver and Ariel needed help, too.”
“So Kit had warned you away, had he?” a good-looking blond man said as he advanced, and pulled Kit away from the Queen. “And who are this Ariel, this Quicksilver? They sound like code names to me.”
Kit stumbled backward, as though not fully in control of his body.
Kit’s face had an intense look of concentration, as though every muscle were taut, every nerve straining. The look was familiar, but Will could not place it.
“You can’t help me, Will,” Kit screamed at Will, ignoring the blond man. His voice was a lost wailing, his eyes full of dread. “No one can help me for the night will come soon and then it will all be up.”
“I think it is all up now,” the good-looking man said. “I think it is all up now, Marlowe. Who are Quicksilver and Ariel?” he asked Will. “And what do you know of the conspiracy to kill the Queen?”
“Who is he?” Will asked Marlowe. He tried to duck past the Queen’s sword, and get near Marlowe, but the two tall, dark-attired men seized his arms.
What was this? It looked to him as though the knots of Marlowe’s life had all come to a tying point here, all entwining and enmeshing with each other. “Who are these people?”
“You’d have me believe you don’t know who we are? You, who conspire with Marlowe?” the blond man asked.
“Oh, good Will Shakelance, permit me to introduce the two men besides you. The one on the right is Skeres, the one on the left is Frizer. And the other gentleman is Poley, sweet, treacherous Robin Poley, who sends men to the gallows with a smile.” Kit’s voice had a mad echo of his old, amused drawl. “They are secret operatives. Spies. Spooks.”
He could talk, yet he remained immobile, Will thought. Immobile and strained, every muscle working at remaining still.
Suddenly, the expression on Kit’s face made sense—the poet looked exactly like Will’s seven-year-old son, Hamnet, when he tried to stop breathing, for a tantrum.
He looked like a man controlling the uncontrollable.
Sweat sprang from Will’s every pore.
Only Marlowe’s willpower stood between them and the unleashed might of the wolf—the might of a supernatural being in full rampage.
“Treason, foul treason,” the Queen yelled. She’d brought her sword down, but she glared at each of them in turn. “If these men be spies, they be not mine. I know naught of what they do. No one tells the truth to me, a fragile woman, and yet I am Queen and King enough for this kingdom.” She stomped her foot.
Kit’s eyes looked wild and he seemed just like Hamnet when he couldn’t stop himself from breathing anymore and must suck in living air.
“Kill me,” he yelled. “For mercy’s sake, Will, if you’re my friend, kill me.”
Skeres and Frizer and Poley, himself, stared at Kit as though he’d lost his mind.
Will unsheathed his cheap dagger, which he’d never used for more than eating his meat in taverns. Will had never with his own hand killed man or beast, save only a deer once, when he’d been practicing archery. And that he’d regretted enough.
Could he kill Kit? Could he actually plunge the dagger into the beating heart of the greatest poet who’d ever lived?
Faith, Will did not know.
But aye, he would try to kill the wolf.
Even if he must die trying.