Scene Forty Seven
The scene through Will’s eyes. He looks amazed at Hamnet and Miranda, then gazes in wonder at Quicksilver, who has resumed his male aspect.
“Look you upon them,” Quicksilver said and smiled at Will. “Have you ever seen sweet love so fast birthed?”
Will shook his head.
He remembered his lust for Lady Silver, but it seemed to him here something else blossomed. In the way the young people embraced, the way their gazes met, he read something else than lust.
Prodigious birth of love, so quickly grown, and she no more than fourteen.
Imagine there, he thought, a tragedy, where a fourteen year old girl falls for an enemy — a man of another house, another realm almost.
He shook his head. This was not a play.
There could be no tragedy here. But what else could it be, when Miranda was an elf and Hamnet a mortal?
“How can this be contrived?” Will asked Quicksilver in amazement. “How can they live together?”
Quicksilver smiled, and his eyes were soft. “I fear me you’ll say I stole your son from you, to my shadowy realm of slippery magic. But only listen, Will, with thy consent....
“You cannot take your son back to the mortal world. He was raised by the Hunter, and he is magical. He’ll never fit amid mortal men. Give your consent and he’ll a changeling be, a prince among the elves, Miranda’s betrothed, their union confirmed when she first shall reach the age of reason, and to be together, they’ll be my heirs when I the world depart, or am too tired to carry the burden of state.” He looked at Will with soft, pleasing gaze. “Thus shall our blood joined be. Say you’ll allow it, and with that one word, secure so many people’s happiness.”
Will did not know what to say. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t find the words to say it. So long he’d been afraid of magic. So hard he’d fought to keep magic from stealing part of his family.
And now, he’d let the dearest part of him go to elvenland?
He looked on Hamnet and Miranda and would swear they’d not heard any of the conversation, their gazes lost in each other.
“Aye me,” Miranda said, and glanced at Will and Quicksilver. “My only love sprang from my only hate.”
Hamnet, his gaze on her, replied. “Prodigious birth of love, this is to me,that I must love whom I thought my enemy.”
Will remembered his Nan and how he’d loved her in the first blush of love, how neither her age ten years more than his nor her reputation as a shrew could divide them.
Truth, he loved Nan still so well he would not part with her forever. Not willingly. How could he ask Hamnet to do that, and reduce himself to a smaller world than he could attain?
Will forced a laugh and heard it echo, brittle, at the edge of tears. “You have my consent, friend.” And in saying so, for the first time, he named Quicksilver thus. “I never thought for all my ambition that I’d sired a king.”
Now, this the young people had heard, and turning stared at Quicksilver, who smiled kindly on them.
“Then as my gift, and thine own acquisition, worthily purchased take my niece. Sit and talk with her. Soon, we shall to the hill and there shall both of you be happy.”
“Not so fast, sir,” Miranda spoke. “My father’s leave I crave, the Hunter’s dispensation. And then there are these creatures.” With her gesture she encompassed Caliban who had sat up looking dazzled, and the centaurs, who, looking scared, were regaining their senses. “They rightly fall to my father’s justice.”