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Scene 17




Will’s bedroom. Will is in the middle of changing his clothes. He has his hose and shirt on, and is inspecting his doublet by the insufficient light of a small taper set on his table.


Will thought that his doublet looked well enough.

His best suit, purchased ten years ago at Will’s wedding, it had developed weaker spots and places where the nap had not worn so well. But all in all, it looked well enough.

Nan had mended it, once or twice, with her large, uneven stitches. Will smiled at the stitches, which were so characteristic of his wife.

An excellent woman, was Nan, but always more adept at fishing and walking through the woods, at digging in the garden, and even at cooking, than at the daintier arts of womanhood.

When she’d been a young girl, Nan had often escaped a house ruled over by an unsympathetic stepmother and several large, bossy brothers to wander the Forest of Arden till she came to know all its paths. Will smiled, remembering the young, tomboyish Nan.

He started slipping his doublet on when Silver materialized beside him in the still, shadowy air.

Will’s heart skipped a beat.

He’d thought himself well rid of her.

When he’d returned from the tavern, feeling the glowing warmth of his unexpected and much-needed meal, he’d found his house empty, no Silver in sight.

He’d been relieved. He’d thought the elf had finally desisted of seduction, finally given up on whatever deranged lust and wanton craving had brought her to London.

Instead, here she was again.

Will stepped back away from her. “Milady. I didn’t expect to see you again.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Her bosom, overspilling from the tight confines of its lacy nest, rose and fell rapidly, as if animated by some uncontrollable passion.

“I had to tell you,” she said. As she spoke, she stepped closer, and held each of his arms in one of her long, white hands.

Her hands felt so hot that, even through his doublet, he feared they would burn his arms.

He tried to step back, but found the wall behind himself, found himself surrounded by her lilac perfume.

He could go no farther.

“Lady,” he said, and turned his face away.

She moved her face closer. She pulled his face forward to look at him earnestly, with her large, silver eyes. “I must tell you, Will Shakespeare, that you’re in danger. Those who’ve once been touched by the fairy realm always crave fairy love and as such—”

Will slid away from her and, diving under her arm, made away. “Lady, for Jesu sake, forebear. I crave nothing. It is you who seem to have uncontrollable cravings.”

She looked surprised, offended, as if he’d slapped her.

Her dainty foot in its silver slipper stomped hard. The dusty rushes on the floor crumbled. “My cravings do not matter. It is those who’ve been touched by Fairyland, you see, who forever crave excitement. Almost always in their souls there remains an unquenchable thirst, like a hole that swallows normal human emotion and normal intercourse and that . . .”

Will had ceased listening to her. Her voice faded out of his ears as he looked at his doublet, where she had held him.

The force of her holding him, the force of his pulling away, had left several tears in the fabric.

Will could not go see an earl attired in this way. Oh, curse the elf and his-her mutable needs and his-her annoying demands.

Opening his clothing trunk, which was in the main empty, Will rummaged inside for a needle and wool thread. He knew that Nan had packed him some, when he’d left Stratford. If he could only find it.

He turned over his possessions, two shirts and some spare, much-worn stockings.

“Will Shakespeare, are you listening to me?” Silver asked, and grabbed him by the sleeve once again.

Will straightened. His long-simmering acceptance of her needling was at an end. “No, my lady. No. I hear you not. And you will not entice me with your charms, no matter how you try. So cease already.” His gaze persisted, nonetheless, in visiting the milky-white mounds of her bosom. “I have to mend my doublet so I can go and see the Earl of Southampton. Kit Marlowe has arranged for me to be introduced to the earl.”

“Kit Marlowe?” It came as a shriek, and the Lady Silver stomped her foot harder than ever. Dry dust of rushes rose from the floor. “The wolf has gone to search for Kit Marlowe. The dog is for him, Sylvanus is. Can’t you see the danger? Can’t you see he’ll come for you next?”

Will was tired. Silver spoke in riddles and, even now, held on to Will, leaned into him, her warm bosom against his shirt, soft and resilient against his arm.

If she persisted, he would hold her. He would take her in his arms and he would hold her, and then he’d be as unable to stop as he’d been ten years ago.

And what would he tell his Nan when he returned? How would he explain, once again, violating their sacred bond, their joint sacrament? Or could he lie to Nan? Deny this ever happened?

No, Will couldn’t countenance it.

He pushed Silver away. He fought free of her. He spoke in fast and breathless words. “Kit Marlowe has arranged for the Earl of Southampton to hear my poetry.”

He picked up the note from Kit and waved it around, before stuffing it into his doublet sleeve. The small tears on the sleeve would have to do. He would have to hug the shadows and stay in the darker portions of the room. Unlikely, anyway, that he would get invited to the high table, being only a poet and an unknown one.

“But Will, you must understand, you’re vulnerable to magic now. You—” She had her hands on her waist, her black hair undone and wild with her fury. Her silver eyes blazed in anger.

She had never looked so seductive.

He scurried away from her, backward, opened his door, and escaped to the tiny perch atop the staircase that led to his room. “I understand, my lady, that it is likely that Kit Marlowe’s good will would mean more to me than all your magic.”

He started down the stairs, holding fast to the tilting banister.

She leaned down. “It’s Sylvanus, you fool, Sylvanus you have to fear. Sylvanus, remember that. There are legends that elves, and creatures like elves, who’ve forfeited their material bodies can possess the bodies of humans, claim them for their own. And humans marked with the Fairyland touch are more vulnerable . . . .”

Will was almost at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up and yelled, “A pox on your Fairyland touch. I want no part of it.”

Such was his furious despair that only afterward did he think that doubtless he’d wakened his landlord and that doubtless in the morning he’d be accountable for keeping company with a well-dressed lady definitely not his wife.

At that moment he was conscious only of Silver, more beautiful than ever in her wild ire, stomping her foot atop the tiny perch in front of Will’s lodging.

That image stayed with him while he hurried to the bridge and to Southampton’s house on the other side of the river.

It took all his willpower to keep walking.

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Framed