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Scene Thirty Six



Kit Marlowe’s room. Marlowe has removed the doorknob from his door and hung it around his neck, from a leather strap. He paces his room, back and forth, now and then touching the knob. Always, when he does that, it flashes forth in blue light. The smell of scorched flesh hangs heavy and bitter in the confined air of the room, mingling with the reek of the blood-soaked clothes piled in the corner, and with the stench of fearful sweat.



Had it worked?

Kit could not tell. He thought it had worked. He had seen the specters leave his room and fly through the dark, clear air towards the theater.

Kit’s hands hurt and the wolf paced, just as impatient behind Kit’s mental barrier, as Kit paced within his narrow, dark room.

Did both of them wait but for doom?

The ghosts had flown at Kit’s command, but had Kit’s other command brought someone forth to hear the spirits? And had they delivered his message? Exactly what message had they delivered? And to whom?

He couldn’t tell. He could only hope. He could only pray, pray with desperate fervor he’d not experienced since he’d been a choir boy in Canterbury. He could only pray for Quicksilver and himself, for his own damned soul.

Oh, let someone have got his message who understood it and who knew what to do to separate Kit from his doom.

Only let someone help him with this supernatural doom and Kit himself would deal with the mortal harm that threatened him -- and not the way he usually did.

He’d not talk to the council. He’d not denounce Raleigh for things Raleigh had never done. He’d not kill anyone. Let Kit survive this and Kit would leave the country all together. Go to Scotland or France and there live, in fearful, quiet humility, forsaking his art and his silks; his velvets and his drink; his late nights and later mornings. Kit would live like a monk sworn to poverty and humble affliction.

Only let Quicksilver be well, and remove the dark wolf from Kit’s mind, that even now paced back and forth and struck at the wall that divided them, the wolf’s impatient, eager hunger for blood and life striking at Kit’s mind, at Kit’s hold on his own body.

Kit touched the iron knob around his neck, and whimpered at the pain it brought him.

Oh, curse it all. Even wearing this knob over his clothes hurt and made him cringe inwardly. But touching it with his bare hands brought sheer torment.

And yet, he’d lived well enough with iron his whole life. This reaction to iron was a measure of how much the wolf had already taken Kit. But the iron acted on the wolf even more than on Kit, and, pray, it was all that Kit had to keep the wolf at bay until more effective, more permanent, remedy could be sought.

A sound of fast hooves outside brought Kit running to his window. His pursuers were here, at last.

But outside, in the dark shadows of the night, what moved, amid the bawds and their customers, the gamblers and their victims, the drunken men and their next drink, was not human.

These strange creatures looked half-horse, half-man, with dark hair unbound down muscular, bare torsos, and glimmers of golden chains and barbaric jewelry.

Ten of them, but only the nearest three were clearly visible -- their broad flat faces, dark curls, yellow eyes. One of the horse bodies was a stocky roan, another a sleek velvet black, the other pure white. But all of them, all of them looked alien and strange, and barbaric and just larger-than-human.

His mouth dropping open, Kit wondered how damaged the world was, already, and by what means, that centaurs would walk the world of men.

The men and the women on the street below walked around the centaurs without seeming to see them, even when they detoured to avoid them.

Did they not see them? Was it Kit, who alone could see them? Was it because he was so close to the realm of faerie, so touched by the coils of invisible magic?

Cold sweat dropped down Kit’s back.

Or was this just a manifestation of the madness seizing Kit? Did he see what was not there?

He touched the knob. It brought nothing but searing pain, and a further cowering of the cowered wolf. And yet, in the momentary parting of the barrier in his mind, Kit realized that the centaurs were something of the wolf, of the wolf’s own, dark vassalage.

Were they the expected avengers for Kit’s crimes, also?

They wouldn’t be, would they? Not if they’d come to serve the wolf.

But then, Kit’s saviors who would come, would, inevitably, run into these centaurs and....

And what? Would Kit’s deliverance flounder upon this shoal of hoofed humans and human-seeming beasts?

Looking down from his window, Kit sighed. The centaurs looked fierce, muscular, strong. Each held a war mace and wore, strapped around his middle, both sword and dagger.

If Kit went down, surely he would die.

But no, he wouldn’t. For the centaurs would not kill the body which harbored their master.

And besides, afraid of death though he was, how often had Kit brawled and been involved in quick, violent frays? And he’d not died, skillful as he was at defending himself.

He told his beating heart, his racing mind that he would not die of this. But he must go down stairs, and defend his rescuers from this supernatural menace.


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Framed