Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 33

"I was rescued from 1821," Keats said dismissively. "I bear some sympathy for your panic."

"Ah." Kit stepped behind the curtain to dress. He flushed hot when the other poet helped him with the closure on the trousers, but once Kit understood this device-the zipper-he found it enchanting. "I shall have much to study on, I wot."

"You will." Keats looked as if he was about to say more. The thin fabric of the s.h.i.+rt showed Kit's small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He hunched forward, uncomfortable; not even sweet Tom Walsingham had seen him so plainly.

"I would have brought you a bandage, if I'd thought," Keats said, and gallantly offered his jacket. Kit took it, face still burning, and shrugged it on.

"What-what year is this, Jack?"

A warm hand on his shoulder; Keats taking a deep breath alerted Kit to brace for the answer. "Anno domini two thousand one hundred and seventeen," he said. The words dropped like stones through the fragile ice of Kit's composure.

Kit swallowed, the implications he had been denying snapping into understanding like unfurled banners. Not the endless changing world, the towers like Babylon or Babel beyond his window. But-"Tom. Christ wept, Tom is dead. All the Toms-Walsingham, Nashe, Kyd. Sir Walter. My sisters. Will. Will and I were at work on a play, Henry VI-"

Keats laughed, gently. "Oh, I have something to show you, Kit." His eyes shone with coy delight. "Look here-"

He drew a volume from his bag and pressed it into Kit's hands. It weighed heavy, bound in what must be waxed cloth and stiffened paper. The words on the cover were embossed in gilt in strange-shaped letters. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Kit read, once he understood how the esses seemed to work. He gaped, and opened the cover. "His plays ..." He looked up at Keats, who smiled and opened his hands in a benediction. "This type is so fine and so clear! Marry, however can it be set by human hands? Tell me true, Jack, have I come to fairyland?" And then, turning pages with trembling fingers and infinite care, his carefulness of speech failing in exclamations. "Nearly forty plays! Oh, the type is so fine-Oh, and his sonnets, they are wonderful sonnets, he's written more than I had seen-"

Keats, laughing, an arm around Kit's shoulders. "He's thought the greatest poet and dramatist in the English language."

Kit looked up in wonder. "T'was I discovered him." Kit held the thick, real book in his hands, the paper so fine and so white he'd compare it to a lady's hand. "Henslowe laughed; Will came from tradesmen and bore no education beyond the grammar school-"

Keats coughed into his hand. "I sometimes think wealth and privilege are a detriment to poetry."

The two men shared a considering gaze and a slow, equally considering smile. "And ." Kit looked at the bag, the glossy transparent fabric as foreign as every other thing in the room. There were still two volumes within. The book in his hands smelled of real paper, new paper. With a shock, he realized that the page-ends were trimmed perfectly smooth and edged with gilt. And how long must that have taken? This poet is a wealthy man, to give such gifts as this.

"And what of Christopher Marlowe?"

Kit smiled. "Aye."

Keats looked down. "You are remembered, I am afraid, chiefly for your promise and your extravagant opinions, my friend. Very little of your work survived. Seven plays, in corrupted versions. The Ovid. Hero and Leander-"

"Forsooth, there was more," Kit said, pressing the heavy book with Will's name on the cover against his chest.

"There will be more," Keats said, and set the bag on the floor. "That is why we saved your life."

Kit swallowed. What an odd sort of patronage. He sat on the bed, still cradling the wonderful book. He looked up at Keats, who must have read the emotion in his eyes.

"Enough for one day, I think," the red-haired poet said. "I've given you a history text as well, and"-a disarming smile and a tilt of his head-"a volume of my own poetry. Please knock on the door if you need for anything-you may find the garderobe a little daunting, but it's past that door and the basic functions obvious-and I will come to see you in the morning."

"I shall amuse myself with gentle William." Kit knew a sort of anxious panic for a moment: it was so necessary that this ginger-haired poet must love him, Kit-and he also knew a sort of joy when Keats chuckled at the double entendre and clapped him on the shoulder like a friend.

"Do that. Oh!" Keats halted suddenly and reached into the pocket of his trousers. "Let me show you how to use a pen-"

The slow roil of his stomach got the better of Kit for an instant. "I daresay I know well enough how to hold a pen."

Keats shook his head and grinned, pulling a slender black tube from his pocket. "Dear Kit. You don't know how to do anything. But you'll learn soon enough, I imagine."

Satyavati paced, short steps there and back again, until Balda.s.sare reached out without looking up from his workstation and grabbed her by the sleeve. "Dr. Brahmaputra-"

"Mr. Balda.s.sare?"

"Are you going to share with me what the issue is, here?"

One glance at his face told her he knew very well what the issue was. She tugged her sleeve away from him and leaned on the edge of the desk, too far for casual contact. "Marlowe," she said. "She's still crucial to our data-"

"He."

"Whatever."

Balda.s.sare stood; Satyavati tensed, but rather than closer, he moved away. He stood for a moment looking up at the rows of portraits around the top margin of the room-more precisely, at the white s.p.a.ce where the picture of Marlowe had been. A moment of consideration, and Satyavati as much as saw him choose another tack. "What about Master Marlowe?"

"If I publish-"

"Yes?"

"I tell the world Christopher Marlowe's deepest secret."

"Which Professor Keats has sworn the entire Poet Emeritus project to secrecy about. And if you don't publish?"

She shrugged to hide the knot in her belly. "I'm not going to find a third tenure-track offer. You've got your place with John and Dr. Haverson, at least. All I've got is"-a hopeless gesture to the empty place on the wall-"her."

Balda.s.sare turned to face her. His expressive hands pinwheeled slowly in the air for a moment before he spoke, as if he sifted his thoughts between them. "You keep doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Calling Kit her."

"She is a her. h.e.l.l, Mr. Balda.s.sare, you were the one who was insisting she was a woman, before we brought her back."

"And he insists he's not." Balda.s.sare shrugged. "If he went for gender rea.s.signment, what would you call him?"

Satyavati bit her lip. "Him," she admitted unwillingly. "I guess. I don't know-"

Balda.s.sare spread his hands wide. "Dr. Brahmaputra-"

"h.e.l.l. Tony. Call me Satya already. If you're going to put up that much of a fight, you already know that you're moving out of student and into friend."

"Satya, then." A shy smile that startled her. "Why don't you just ask Kit? He understands how patronage works. He knows he owes you his life. Go tomorrow."

"You think she'd say yes?"

"Maybe." His self-conscious grin turned teasing. "If you remember not to call him she."

The strange spellings and punctuation slowed Kit a little, but he realized that they must have been altered for the strange, quickspoken people among whom, apparently, he was meant to make his life. Once he mastered the cadences of the modern speech-the commentaries proving invaluable-his reading proceeded faster despite frequent pauses to reread, to savor.

He read the night through, crosslegged on the bed, bewitched by the brightness of the strange greenish light and the book held open on his lap. The biographical note told him that "Christopher Marlowe's" innovations in the technique of blank verse provided Shakespeare with the foundations of his powerful voice. Kit corrected the spelling of his name in the margin with the pen that John Keats had loaned him. The nib was so sharp it was all but invisible, and Kit amused himself with the precision it leant his looping secretary's hand. He read without pa.s.sion of Will's death in 1616, smiled that the other poet at last went home to his wife. And did not begin to weep in earnest until halfway through the third act of As You Like It, when he curled over the sorcerously wonderful book, careful to let no tear fall upon the pages, and cried silently, shuddering, fist pressed b.l.o.o.d.y against his teeth, face-down in the rough-textured coverlet.

He did not sleep. When the spasm of grief and rapture pa.s.sed, he read again, scarcely raising his head to acknowledge the white-garbed servant who brought a tray that was more like dinner than a break-fast. The food cooled and was retrieved uneaten; he finished the Shakespeare and began the history, saving his benefactor's poetry for last.

"I want for nothing," he said when the door opened again, glancing up. Then he pushed the book from his lap and jumped to his feet in haste, exquisitely aware of his reddened eyes and crumpled clothing. The silver-haired woman from yesterday stood framed in the doorway. "Mistress," Kit said, unwilling to a.s.say her name. "Again I must plead your forbearance."

"Not at all," she said. "Mmm-master Marlowe. It is I who must beg a favor of you." Her lips pressed tight; he saw her willing him to understand.

"Madam, as I owe you the very breath in my body-Mayhap there is a way I can repay that same?"

She frowned and shut the door behind herself. The latch clicked; his heart raced; she was not young, but he was not certain he understood what young meant to these people. And she was lovely. And unmarried, by her hair- What sort of a maiden would bar herself into a strange man's bedchamber without so much as a chaperone? Has she no care at all for her reputation?

And then he sighed and stepped away, to lean against the windowledge. One who knows the man in question is not capable as a man. Or-a stranger thought, one supported by his long night's reading-or the world has changed more than I could dream.

"I need your help," she said, and leaned back against the door. "I need to tell the world what you are."

He s.h.i.+vered at the urgency in her tone, her cool reserve, the tight squint of her eyes. She'll do what she'll do and thou hast no power over her. "Why speak to me of this at all? Publish your pamphlet, then, and have done-"

She shook her head, lips working on some emotion. "It is not a pamphlet. It's-" She shook her head again. "Master Marlowe, when I say the world I mean the world."

Wonder filled him. If I said no, she would abide it. "You ask for no less a gift than the life I have made, madam."

She came forward. He watched: bird stalked by a strange silver cat. "People won't judge. You can live as you choose-"

"As you judged me not?"

Oh, a touch. She flinched. He wasn't proud of that, either. "-and not have to lie, to dissemble, to hide. You can even become a man. Truly, in the flesh-"

Wonder. " Become one?"

"Yes." Her moving hands fell to her sides. "If it is what you want." Something in her voice, a sort of breathless yearning he didn't dare believe.

"What means this to you? To tell your world that what lies between my legs is quaint and not crowing, that is-what benefits it you? Who can have an interest, if your society is so broad of spirit as you import?"

He saw her thinking for a true answer and not a facile one. She came closer. "It is my scholars.h.i.+p." Her voice rose on the last word, clung to it. Kit bit his lip, turning away.

No. His lips shaped the word: his breath wouldn't voice it. Scholars.h.i.+p.

d.a.m.n her to h.e.l.l. Scholars.h.i.+p.

She said the word the way Keats said poetry.

"Do-" He saw her flinch; his voice died in his throat. He swallowed. "Do what you must, then." He gestured to the beautiful book on his bed, his breath catching in his throat at the mere memory of those glorious words. "It seems gentle William knew well enough what I was, and he forgave me of it better than I could have expected. How can I extend less to a lady who has offered me such kindness, and been so fair in asking leave?"

Satyavati rested her chin on her hand, cupping the other one around a steaming cup of tea. Tony, at her right hand, poked idly at the bones of his tandoori chicken. Further down the table, Sienna Haverson and Bernard Ling were bent in intense conversation, and Keats seemed absorbed in tea and mango ice cream. Marlowe, still clumsy with a fork, proved extremely adept at navigating the intricacies of curry and naan as fingerfood and was still chasing stray tidbits of lamb vindaloo around his plate. She enjoyed watching her-him, she corrected herself, annoyed-eat; the weight he'd gained in the past months made him look less like a strong wind might blow him away.

Most of the English Department was still on a quiet manhunt for whomever might have introduced the man to the limerick.

She lifted her tea; before she had it to her mouth, Tony caught her elbow, and Marlowe, looking up before she could flinch away, hastily wiped his hand and picked up a b.u.t.terknife. He tapped his gla.s.s as Keats grinned across the table. Marlowe cleared his throat, and Haverson and Ling looked up, reaching for their cups when it became evident that a toast was in the offing.

"To Professor Brahmaputra," Marlowe said, smiling, in his still-strong accent. "Congratulations-"

She set her teacup down, a flush warming her cheeks as gla.s.ses clicked and he continued.

"-on her appointment to tenure. In whose honor I have composed a little poem-"

Which was, predictably, sly, imagistic, and inventively dirty. Satyavati imagined even her complexion blazed quite red by the time he was done with her. Keats' laughter alone would have been enough to send her under the table, if it hadn't been for Tony's unsettling deathgrip on her right knee. "Kit!"

He paused. "Have I scandalized my lady?"

"Master Marlowe, you have scandalized the very walls. I trust that one won't see print just yet!" Too much time with Marlowe and Keats: she was noticing a tendency in herself to slip into an archaic idiom that owed something to both.

"Not until next year at the earliest," he answered with a grin, but she saw the flash of discomfort that followed.

After dinner, he came up beside her as she was shrugging on her cooling-coat and gallantly a.s.sisted.

"Kit," she said softly, bending close so no one else would overhear. He smelled of patchouli and curry. "You are unhappy."

"Madam." A low voice as level as her own. "Not unhappy."

"Then what?"

"Lonely." Marlowe sighed, turning away "Several of the Emeritus Poets have married," she said carefully. Keats eyed her over Marlowe's shoulder, but the red-haired poet didn't intervene.

"I imagine it's unlikely at best that I will find anyone willing to marry something neither fish nor fowl-" A shrug.

She swallowed, her throat uncomfortably dry. "There's surgery now, as we discussed-"

"Aye. 'Tis-" She read the word he wouldn't say. Repulsive.

Keats had turned away and drawn Tony and Sienna into a quiet conversation with Professor Ling at the other end of the table. Satyavati looked after them longingly for a moment and chewed her lower lip. She laid a hand on Kit's shoulder and drew him toward the rest. "You are what you are," she offered hopelessly, and on some fabulous impulse ducked her head and kissed him on the cheek, startled when her dry lips tingled at the contact. "Someone will have to appreciate that."

The door slides aside. He steps through the opening, following the strange glorious lady with the silver-fairy hair. The dusty scent of curry surrounds him as he walks into the broad spread of a balmy evening roofed with broken clouds.

Christopher Marlowe leans back on his heels and raises his eyes to the sky, the desert scorching his face in a benediction. Hotter than h.e.l.l. He draws a single deep breath and smiles at the mountains crouched at the edge of the world, tawny behind a veil of summer haze, gold and orange sunset pale behind them. Low trees crouch, hunched under the potent heat. He can see forever across this hot, flat, tempestuous place.

The horizon seems a thousand miles away.

Ice The stallion was gnawed and b.l.o.o.d.y, but he was not dead.

Snow fell between us, gentling the contours of the battlefield where my brethren had died with their backs to a raging ocean, but I could see him sprawled in the gathering drifts among the gaunt bodies of a half-dozen of Loki's vile-wolves. A final abomination still panted nearby, a tar-colored monster struggling to rise as I approached. It had the strength neither to attack nor flee.

I took a deep breath of the crystalline air, and with it came a realization: So the vile-wolves can be killed. And then I wondered, Why didn't the valraven just fly up and escape them?

An old wound, garnered fleeing, stung my thigh, and a hesitant step carried me toward him. I had lost my helmet somewhere; I shoved dirty-blonde braids long as my arms out of the way. Far below us, the ocean foamed against boulders and ice at the foot of the seacliffs. The stallion raised one of his twin heads, and thrashed his shattered wings. His brown eyes shone white-rimmed and wide with fear beneath the horns. His other head, the antlered one, flopped on a broken neck, tongue lolling between fanged teeth. Under the tattered velvet of his hide, his lungs heaved; the blood that frothed from his nostrils was painfully bright. His wings - which should have been improbably white as unicorns - were streaked and daubed with blood and filth, while his struggles had churned earth and snow and gore into a horrible mire. I am ashamed to say I hesitated.

Oh, Muire, I thought, woman, for pity's sake. So I went to him, kneeling down beside him in the ice and the mud and the blood. I reached out an uncertain hand for his porcelain muzzle, and I let what Light remained s.h.i.+ne out of my eyes, feeling as if it faded already. I had never touched one of the valraven before: the angelic destriers were for better warriors than I.

He grew quiet at my touch, and I almost wept at the terrible extent of his wounds. He sighed and pushed his face against me, as a horse might with a friend. That act, somehow, struck me with more pity and horror than any other thing that I had seen on all that cruel and terrible day. How many fallen? How many failures? And not the least of them mine. I struck the tear from my eye: I was not deserving of pity, even my own.

The day had gone poorly for the Othinn's children. Far greater of my brethren than I fell that day. I had seen Strifbjorn dragged down by the trickster's hungry wolves; seen Menglad Brightwing die on a kiss, her will and being snuffed out like a candleflame; seen Arngeir thrown down and savaged by the tarnished.

To my eternal shame and sorrow, I fled the field and lived, while my brethren fell like tears.