Scene 44
The same scene as before, but through Will’s eyes. Will stares in horror as the two men beside him advance toward the Queen, daggers unsheathed. Marlowe steps forward, toward the Queen, in a slow walk, like an ill-controlled puppet.
For the oddest moment, for no more than a breath, Will wished to kill the Queen.
It was the voice of the elf, and whatever magical compulsion he’d thrown from his lifted hand.
But Will had been bespelled before, and had endured the spells and lived through them.
Will was a Sunday child, who saw the hidden and felt what no other man could feel. That gave him power for magic perceived is magic halved.
He shook the spell from his back, like a dog shaking water from his fur.
“You may come all, curs,” the Queen yelled. “I’ll see you all hanging high.” She twirled her rusty, edgeless sword with amazing agility, smacking Skeres’s, Frizer’s, and Poley’s daggers from their hand. “I will see you all hanging. I knew what villainy was passing. I knew Cecil hid things from me.”
In her triumph she didn’t see Frizer snatching Kit’s dagger from its sheath and speeding it toward her heart.
It all took the space of a breath.
Thoughts seared through Will’s brain like a dream. He couldn’t let the Queen die. The whole world depended on her, old and insane though she might be. Order must be preserved. Hamnet must be allowed to grow up. The wolf must be defeated.
As the thoughts flashed, already Will was airborne, leaping.
He jumped in front of the Queen at the same time that Kit, in his lumbering walk, had got close to her.
Not sure if Kit was himself or Sylvanus-controlled, Will gave Kit a shove, seeking to get him out of the way.
In that moment, Frizer lurched forward, and Kit, tripping, fell toward Frizer.
The dagger Frizer held, Kit’s own dagger, plunged into Kit’s eye.
Blood jetted forth.
Kit dropped to the floor, writhing.
Horrified, blood-spattered, Will stepped back. He thought that he heard Kit’s voice whisper “Thank you,” but he had to be dead before he even touched the floor, and from his dead lips the wolf screamed.
“Oh, curse the luck and the world and all of you. I will not die alone.”
Kit’s dead hand rose, and from Kit’s still-twitching fingers, magical sparks flew.
Will felt as if a roaring wind sucked him through unbelievable ice and unbearable cold.