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Scene Twenty Three



Will’s room. Will is asleep on the bed on his stomach, with Silver’s glimmering blanket sideways over him. Through the window come the pale light of morning and the sounds of a wakening street: metal banging on metal, from the forges and workshops, peddlers and merchants calling clientele and extolling the virtues of their services, carts rumbling slowly along the rutted street.



Will dreamed and knew he dreamed, but a disturbing, bottomless dream, a falling into darkness, a sleeping oppression like a scream never uttered, like the breath that, fugitive, leaves the sleeper’s mouth, and makes him gasp and beg for air and life.

In this bottomless darkness, he saw Silver, and Silver smiled at him, red, soft lips poised for grace and life and joy, white skin flushed with just a hint of pink, arms held open, in welcoming gesture.

Around Will’s shoulders her arms she wrapped, and in his ears, what sweet whisperings -- her breath against his neck, her lilac smell making him dizzy.

Silver was sweet, and Will would fain listen to her. Her body felt gentle and warm in his arms, and it had been so long since Will had held anyone like this. Even Nan.... It had been too long.

That Will hesitated, and, chaste in seduction’s arms, would hold back his love and his yielding, that had to do with Will’s true love.

What he had with Nan, now there was love. Though Nan’s skin be coarser than this silk, though Nan’s whispers never be as soft, Will knew Nan’s goodness, the soft caring of her heart.

He and Nan, like a tree well planted, had grown branches that, over their head, extended a canopy of love. If the trunk be slender or thick, what matter it, when the tree has born fruit, and the fruit is sweet?

He felt Silver’s temptation and his body rushed with the sap of spring and the desire to give in to this lady’s wooing.

And it was all a dream. Will knew he dreamed. Why not let his dream give him what his waking hours so denied him?

Yet, what would he win if he gained this thing his body sought? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.

And wherewithal would his true love with Nan be marred. Even if she never knew of his transgression. For Will had promised there would never be another.

Will turned in bed, his mind preoccupied, his dreaming arms hanging beside his body, while Silver hugged him tight and spoke of joy.

Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, would with the scepter straight be stricken down?

Will shook his head and, in his dream, pushed Silver away with his sleeping arms, and said, “Lady, no.”

She was taken from him. A dark whirlwind sprang out of nowhere, and sucked her away into grey blankness, into nothing.

Her face from pale turned waxen white, her body stiffened with unyielding death. Her lips opened and through them she screamed, “It was loving Will that has undone me.”

A scream echoed from outside Will’s room, a cry like the fresh discovery of life’s short span.

A woman’s scream, sharp, inconsolable.

The scream on the heels of Silver’s wail intertwined into Will’s nightmare, making him start. He woke up. Trembling he sat, shaking in his bed, sweat springing, fearful, from every pore.

What a dream he’d had. What a guilty dream. And following up close behind, this wailing, brought the fresh spring of his fear.

Was Silver gone? Had she died for Will’s ill-considered refusal of her?

And yet, how could Will not refuse her? And who was she, how far did she presume, that she presumed so far on Will’s love?

This creature that was neither male nor female, neither human nor mortal, neither breathing nor ethereal?

How could Will love such a thing, even had he not Nan -- real, true Nan -- to keep with him the span of his days? How could Will love light, immaterial light and cold magic?

He could not. She was a dream he’d dreamed when young enough not to know the true from the false.

But now the dream was gone and he, awakened, knew the real worth of wakening love.

And yet he wished Silver not dead. And he’d not have the guilt of her death on his conscience.

Outside the screams went on, pouring onto Will’s mind like blood fresh-sprung from a wound.

This was no dream. This broad daylight should have dispelled the nightly terrors. And though Southwark was known for brawls and bawds, screaming like this meant a fresh death, and that was rare, least of all in daytime.

Half-dazed and trembling, Will grabbed his clothes which he had thrown over the back of the chair. He pulled them on with clumsy hands.

     He opened his door to the warm morning air and ran perilously fast down his unguarded stairs.

Outside on the streets, people ran like ants whose anthill the careless boot has ripped open. Men abandoned their forges, women abandoned thei r homes, ill-awakened bawds ran out in their nightclothes with tattered shawls ill-wrapped around their shoulders.

They all ran in the direction of the screams and Will ran with them.

As he ran, his mind whispered a disordered prayer.

Only but let this mean a cutthroat had attacked a victim. Only but let this be a woman outraged in a dark alley. Let it be any crime, any crime at all, but not Will’s, and nothing to do with a wolf. Will remembered Silver’s talk of Sylvanus. He remembered his own dream of Sylvanus as a wolf.

At the end of the street, pushing through the disordered crowd that milled there, Will beheld a corpse: a corpse torn, and mauled into shapelessness.

He backed away through the crowd, gagging, feeling nauseous and dizzy.

A woman sat by the bloodied corpse, a young woman that, doubtless, in other circumstances would have been comely. She cradled the shattered head upon her dark skirt, and cried freely.

From the crowd Will heard comments, words that with some thinking assembled into meaning.

“It’s a bear,” one of them said. “Some bear escaped from a baiting ring.”

“Or one of the dogs,” said another.

“Looks like a wolf’s ravaging of a sheep,” said an old man. “I was once a shepherd. I should know.”

Will backed and backed, and backed, till he could hear no more.

Something must be done about it.

And Will knew not what to do. Silver had spoken of a wolf, and behold a wolf’s fresh kill.

Will had turned Silver from his room, from the safe haven of his protection, such as it had been.

Oh, the fool Will, the criminal fool.

Cringing and sick at heart, he backed clear away from the press of people and leaned against a wall, his heart beating fast.

He closed his eyes. Only let this be a dream, a mad dream.

But opening his eyes he saw the same, the crowd gathering, the pungent smell of fresh death augmenting the normal reek of the street.

“Ay me, for pity!” he whispered to himself. “What a dream was here! I do quake with fear: Silver said the wolf prowled the streets of London and behold, the fresh kill. Methought I was damned and behold, already, demons torment my heart.”

Screams came from two other directions. More deaths?

He thought of Silver who had come to town and warned him of just such dangers. He’d thought her to be lying for her own interests, and now, for his mistrust, was he undone, was she undone.

Was Silver dead, who just yesterday had been alive and hopeful and confident in Will’s room?

Or was Will’s dream one of those premonitory dreams he’d had sometimes, that warned him of impending danger?

If so, then he must find Silver. Silver would know how to curtail the wolf. Silver would know how to make the world clean.

Gathering himself with an effort, Will set off down the street. He must find Silver and tell her what was here.

Despite the heat of the sun he felt cold, as he meditated on the fresh terror of his dream. For Sylvanus, the villainous traitor, was inclined as was the ravenous wolf. And like the wolf he’d prowl till he’d mauled human world and faerieland both to death.

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Framed