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Curtain Call




Within the too-solid city of London, in a shabby room in Southwark, close to the play houses, Will Shakespeare turned in his bed.

He need never be afraid of Nan again, he thought, in his sleep. He had stood up to the Queen of faerieland, he had dared the wrath of the darkest of evil villains.

As soon as he finished this poem, as it ever was, he’d go visit Stratford, and see Hamnet and Judith, and Susannah. Aye, and his sweet Nan again.

He turned in bed again. He wasn’t quite sure why, but all of a sudden he knew he could finish the poem, too. And it would be admired and great, and live through the ages, long after Will himself had died.

In that space, neither asleep nor awake, where sometimes men know truths otherwise unknowable, Will thought he’d got something from Marlowe, some legacy bequeathed with the poet’s last breath.

It felt right to take that legacy, and Will would make sure those words lived through him and that he made them good.

He, who’d once said he’d have no words but his, now felt beholden to carry on Kit’s words and Kit’s work and make them dazzling-bright as Kit would have -- for when a man's verses could no longer be read nor a man’s good wit heard, it struck a man more dead than a great reckoning in a small room.

Will turned in bed and slept on, certain of the future and of his own ability.

* *

Outside, in the shabby street of Southwark, life ground on, the bawds went to bed, and the artificers woke and manned their workshops.

The threat of pure evil had been lifted from the neck of humanity, where it had rested like a naked sword. The spheres spun on, as they’d been meant to do for eternity.

In his palace the king of faerieland made ardent love to his joyful wife.

And the man who’d known about the threat and done what must be done to diffuse it slept on in his shabby room, and dreamed of poetry.


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Framed