Ill Met by Moonlight (22 page)

“Your plans of going to Tyr-Nan-Og, of marrying there,” she said. Her voice rang all hollow, like an unsound bell cast in a poor foundry.

“You?” Quicksilver did not wish to believe it, and yet believing it, he couldn’t mind it.

Just a day ago and this would have been the consuming interest of his life, and his rage would have been boundless. But now, cut off and forsaken, he felt as though nothing mattered. All these words were no more than stones falling over his grave, and the dead neither cared nor felt. He had died in leaving the hill and, thus, this was nothing more than the corpse of the Quicksilver who had been that walked and talked, and dragged its sorry self across the forest, looking in vain for what it could not recover. And Ariel was his judgment, as real and terrible as the one that humans believed awaited them after death.

There was no judgment so terrible as seeing himself without deception.

Ariel’s dry, grieving eyes, fixed and intent, empty of all but purpose, turned toward his face. “Yes, I, I, I. I told the king, and I got the servant fairies to capture by their magic the images of your courting the foreign Queen. I. Ariel. Fool Ariel, wanting to keep you near, even at the pain of your pain. I did it. So you would stay and learn to love me. I did it. And thus, I, fool Ariel, caused my brother’s death.” She laughed hollowly.

Quicksilver stared at her, in horror. So, treason had come from such a quarter? And was it treason when, in fact, all the intention of it had been for love? Well . . . was Pyrite dead, though Quicksilver had never intended such? Treason it must be, though in Ariel’s fair face and dressed in Ariel’s soft intentions.

A thought of another possible treason crept into his mind, and his hair stood up in thinking it. And this one mattered, it mattered much. “Milady, tell me you did not invent your dream of my parents. Was it also a tale, what you spun to me, your idea of my parents’ murder, their vile death, their wretched condition in a world of shadows?” As he spoke, he grasped both her arms in his hands, and held her unkindly tight. “Tell me.”

But she shook her head slowly, and tears at last crept into her blue eyes. “No. No, that was true. That, and the vileness of it.”

Quicksilver took a deep breath, not sure he believed her, and yet her words breathed power and strength into him. He’d gone about this all wrong, and yet now he could only go on with it. If she spoke true, he couldn’t be dead, yet. Nor could death offer him the rest he craved. Even the ghosts of dead humans would return to the world when they had a mission. Quicksilver had a mission. If Ariel spoke true, then he still had his vengeance to do. And if he did his vengeance, even if he didn’t win kingship by it, yet his parents would be released from their nowhere existence, and Pyrite would not have died in vain. But what if Ariel had spun the tale to get his attention and now denied spinning it to avoid the consequences of his wrath?

Yet his wrath was a poor thing, now that he had been cut off from the hill. Why would Ariel fear it?

And Will had that dagger, that magic dagger that no mortal should have and that could only have come to him through the agency of a treasonous elf.

And yet, what if that dagger was more ancient yet, the mute testimony of some forgotten crime? It was said that the Rollrich stones—a circle of magic stones to the east, that had been there since time immemorial—were all that remained from elven royalty so old that their names and histories were gone and forgotten. Maybe that dagger had been used in killing that royalty, turning their magic flesh to stone.

But no. No. The dagger’s own iron would have disintegrated in that long a time, and its spells gone back, absorbed by the magical force of the world itself.

So, the dagger was recent, and Will’s father’s ailment all too plain. Sylvanus was a traitor and Quicksilver must avenge his parents.

Looking upon Ariel through eyes full of tears, which distorted his vision of her and made her look, herself, like a ghost, a trembling vanishing vision, Quicksilver nodded. “Farewell, milady. Forever and forever farewell. Goodbye. My vengeance waits and it is the only thing I have to live for.”

Ariel stared at him a moment longer, her eyes huge and glazed with shock. A sob tore through her lips. She backed away from him, slowly, until, three steps away, she turned and ran, tripping over roots and branches, catching her dress on brambles, leaving bits of lace and straggles of silk hanging in her wake like the abandoned flags of a retreating army.

Her footsteps lost themselves in the distance; her figure disappeared among the trees, first a glimmer of white amid the trunks, then a glimpse of brightness—now seen, now covered by the dark trunks.

Quicksilver stood alone in the dark dank forest. He took a deep breath of moist air into his lungs.

To be or not to be? the Hunter had asked Quicksilver . . . and Quicksilver knew not which he’d chosen. And yet, he must make a decision. Enough indecision and moping about with an air of aggrieved majesty. The new, exiled Quicksilver could not afford such posturing.

To stand around Arden Forest would win him nothing, except the Hunter’s attention. He thought he heard, far away, the echoes of the hunting bugle.

Will awaited the lady Silver.

Quicksilver sighed. He knew it was more out of fear than calculation, more out of wishing to be with a creature weaker than himself, than out of true thirst for revenge that he allowed his shape to change into that of the dark lady. By a supreme shivering effort of what remained of his intent and power, he changed his clothes to suit.

The dark lady thus limped through the forest, as shaken and humble, as truly helpless, as Ariel had ever been.

Scene 12

The kitchen of the house on Henley Street. The fire burns in the fireplace, and Will sits on the long bench at the table, looking into the flames. A fat black-and-white cat sits on his lap, licking its paws contentedly. The ancient dagger lies on the table.

T
he lady was late.

Will sat by the fire, striving to keep awake and force his eyes to remain open, though they wished to close. The flames in the broad fireplace leaped and roared orange and gold, forming weird figures and strange shapes that glared back at Will, like the shades of a nightmare.

A black-and-white cat sat on Will’s lap, the same cat that had been Nan’s and that she’d brought with her from Hewlands. Every time Will nodded off, his sagging body leaned forward and threatened to crush the cat, and the cat dug its sharp claws into Will’s legs, bringing him awake.

Will thought, his thoughts merging into dreams, the same way that the golden flames melted into blue shadow and then into spitting orange fire, over again.

That Nan’s cat—as skittish of others and possessive of his mistress as any familiar of his witch—had agreed to let Will hold him was a wonder that struck Will’s mind, over and over, each time bringing new astonishment.

The poor thing had to miss Nan as much as Will did. Will nodded off and woke, looking at the fire, the image of the dark lady in his mind. Where was she? Why so late? He had an odd feeling about her, as if death had struck her on the way here.

But elves were immortal, or at least so long-lived that they must seem that way to mortal ken, were they not? And was Lady Silver not an elf? And was she not young? He saw in his mind’s eye the elf he’d struck with that knife that now lay on the table looking so common and so inoffensive. Again he saw sparks of color flying away on a wind that Will could not feel, a wind that rustled no leaf, moved no blade of grass. If elves were almost immortal, how had Will killed one?

His mouth tasted bitter, the ale from the alehouse mingling with the taste of his mother’s unpleasant soup. Will thought of his father, hiding in his room, crying with horror at the sight of the dagger.

John had talked of someone who’d made him kill the sovereign of the elves and fairies. As the dark lady wished for Will to kill the king of elves. And if he did, would the dead elf haunt him forever, as those others haunted his father in his dark dreams, like righteous nemeses pursuing the guilty murderer and leading him, howling, into madness?

For just a moment, he thought he felt the elf from the forest path standing behind him, a sad shade in a multicolored outfit.

A plague on both your houses.

The elf’s voice sounded, loud, in Will’s ears, and he woke, shaking, the sting of the cat’s claws on his thighs. It was an evil dream. Nothing but an evil dream. Will was not a murderer. He’d set out to murder no one. If he’d killed, he’d only done it to defend himself.

But how to defend yourself?
the voice that wasn’t there, that wasn’t anywhere but in Will’s own mind, asked, unabashed.
How to defend yourself, when you already had an elven protector, crossing swords with your would-be killer? Why did you not turn and run, run to the safe haven of your home and away from the strange quarrels of supernatural beings?

Because he was not a coward. Not a child.

Will flinched from the words his own mind formed, and started as if a stranger’s hand had slapped him, while his—much too clear—thoughts told him that he’d killed the elf to prove himself a man. That was the same foolish reason he’d lain with Nan before his marriage. For the same reason he’d found the job in Wincot and worked there, so far away from home, instead of taking over his father’s business here, close to home, where he could have prevented Nan from being kidnapped.

All of this, all his mad, rushed actions since finishing grammar school, a year and a half ago, had served only the pride of Will Shakespeare and his need to prove himself a grown man and better than his father. Nothing and no one else.

Will groaned, and the black-and-white cat dug its claws into Will’s leg in protest.

Petting the cat reflexively, in an appeasing, unthinking gesture, Will felt shame, such as he’d never felt before. He’d always been fairly sure of himself, nay, proud of his own achievements. From the time when he’d been little Will Shakespeare, the alderman’s son, the pride and joy of his mother and the wonder of the petty-school schoolmaster, Will had always had much too good an opinion of himself and his own prowess. And to keep that good opinion in the face of his father’s failing fortunes, Will had rushed headlong into a hasty marriage, a poor job, and fatherhood, for all of which he was scantily prepared.

He wished there was a hole deep enough, somewhere on Earth, to hide himself. But no. In marrying Nan, even if he’d courted her to prove himself a man, he’d found a wife willing and ready to make him her husband. If only he recovered Nan, he’d make her a good husband. No more going to Wincot, no more insanity, trying to prove himself a different man from his father. He’d learn what he didn’t know about the glover business from the old man and, in John’s stead, make the Shakespeare glover shop prosperous once more. And he’d be the best husband that Nan could wish, the best father that Susannah, or any other child, could want.

He nodded off on this vision of domestic happiness, with his heart full to overflowing of true repentance, and woke up to a knock on the door—less a knock than a desperate, cavalcade of fist upon wood.

Will jumped. For just a heartbeat, he thought it would be his Nan out there, under the pouring rain. His Nan, come back to him, now that he’d repented and would be a good husband.

He lifted the fat cat from his lap, eased him to the flagstoned floor.

The knock sounded again, impatient.

Will opened the door, his heart beating up near his throat. Let it be Nan and Susannah. Only please, let it be Nan, and Will, her faithless husband, would learn to live for her, for her alone. But the door, once open, revealed not Nan but the lady Silver.

Wet and looking cold, she leaned against the doorway as though strength failed her. She’d wrapped a cloak around herself, but so haphazardly that her soaked black hair showed around the hood, while most of her dress remained uncovered. Water dripped from the dispirited straggles of her tresses to soak through her white dress, delineating her generous curved bosom and emphasizing her narrow waist. And yet she looked somehow smaller, thinner, somehow diminished in her beauty and seductiveness. Her pale face appeared almost ghostly, like the visitation of one long dead, and her silver eyes looked out at the world with the gaze of one who mourns.

The face that her black hair framed, showed dark bruises and a broad, purple discoloration beneath her left eye. Her white gown fit her ill and as she moved great tears in the fabric displayed the tender, bruised flesh beneath.

The dark cloak, half-falling from her head and shoulders, dripped rain-soaked and limp, with great stains on it like old blood, and no more grand than the scarf of a peasant woman.

“Milady,” Will said, bowing, as he would have, had she come in full state to his door. “Milady Silver. Come in.” He stepped out of her way. She had come to tell him how to get his Nan back.

She smiled, just a little, as though gratified by his attention, even as her eyes filled with tears, and she looked guilty of unconfessed crimes. She entered the kitchen, and looked toward the fire and smiled again, a pale smile, a shadow of her former joy.