Scene Forty Two
Outside Mistress Bull’s, Will ties the reins of a tired-looking horse to a stone ring attached to the side of the house, beside the door. The smell of fish and rotting raises as if from the depths of the river where drowned mariners and dead warriors decompose.
Will should have bought a better horse. But his money ran to no more than a nag, a bag of bones, a creature of meager canter and tired steps.
Yet it had got him to Deptford. Saddle-sore, tired, wet through from the pouring rain, sweaty from the stifling heat, Will pounded on the door of Mistress Bull’s house.
He still did not know what he would do, but whatever it was, he must do it fast, for the sun was setting and soon the wolf would be stronger than anything Will might undertake.
What to undertake remained a round puzzle, a mystery he knew not how to solve.
Will feared Marlowe might have to be killed; Will very much wished that Marlowe could be saved.
At least... he thought of mad Marlowe, Marlowe attacking him in the dark of night in a Southwark alley. At least he would like to save the Marlowe who made the immortal poetry that lifted and lilted within Will’s own heart.
At least that. If only they could save the poet, and set aside whatever other darkness had come through and polluted this creature of the muses.
Let the wolf take the rest, let him have it and destroy it and die with it. But allow Marlowe’s yet-unwritten poetry to come to fruition, allow Marlowe’s golden words to live on.
Will dismounted in front of the narrow wooden door and knocked.
No one answered the door, and the house didn’t look like a rooming house, or the sort of purlieu that Kit Marlowe would haunt. It was too big, too imposing, too grand.
He knocked again, and his knock echoed as if upon an empty palace. Will felt too common, too gross, too indecisive.
What was he doing here? He should go back.
But he could not go back. He stood, rooted to the spot. The image of Ariel and Quicksilver came to him. Cold and fleeting, magical creatures though they were, they were creatures of a fair magic that made the cold world worth living in.
And then there was Will’s family, whose fate, he guessed, was tied to keeping the balance of the worlds -- faerie and human in their proper place. And in seeing that the foul wolf did not win.
Will raised his hand and knocked.