Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 57

Jonson shrugged one ma.s.sive shoulder. "Because it is a good play."

Useless to ask for sense from a poet. One might as well converse with a tabby cat. Tylney lifted the bell, on the other corner of his desk from the play that ought already to be destroyed, and rang it, a summons to his clerk. "Go home, Master Jonson."

"You've not seen the last of me, Sir Edmund," Jonson said, as the door swung open-not a threat, just a fact.

It wasn't the usual clerk, but a tall soft-bellied fellow with wavy black hair, sweet-breathed, with fine white teeth.

"No," Tylney said. He waited until the click of the latch before he added, "I don't imagine I have."

ANGELL:.

Hast sheared the sheep, Groat?

GROAT:.

Aye, though their fleece be but siluer.

he handeth Angell a purse ANGELL:.

Then thou must be Iason and find the golden fleece: or mayhap needs merely shear a little closer to the skin.

GROAT:.

Will not the sheep grow cold, without their wool?

ANGELL:.

They can grow more. And, loyal Groat, wouldst prefer thy sheep grow cold, or thy master grow hot?

GROAT:.

The sheep may s.h.i.+uer for all I care.

Tylney waited until Jonson's footsteps retreated into silence, then waited a little more. When he was certain neither the clerk nor the playmaker were returning, he came around his table on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet and scooped up the clinking pouch that Jonson had left behind. He bounced it on his hand, a professional gesture, and frowned at its weight. Heavy.

He replaced it where Jonson had laid it, and went to chip sugar from the loaf and mix himself another cup of sack, to drink while he re-read the play. He read faster this time, standing up where the light was better, the cup resting on the sideboard by the inkpot and Jonson's bribe. He shuffled each leaf to the back as he finished. When he was done, so was the sack.

He weighed the playscript in his hand, frowning at it, sucking his aching teeth.

It was August. There was no fire on the grate.

He dropped the playscript on the sideboard, weighted it with the bribe, locked the door behind him, and went to tell the clerk-the cousin, he said, of the usual boy, who was abed with an ague-that he could go.

WITWORTH:.

That's Moll Tuppence. They call her Queene of Dogges.

RIGHTEOUS-IN-THE-CAUSE SAMSON:.

For why?

WITWORTH:.

For that if a man says aught about her which he ought not, she sets her curres to make him say naught in sooth.

Sir Edmund Tylney lay awake in the night. His teeth pained him, and if he'd any sense, he'd have had them pulled that winter. No sense, he thought. No more sense than a tabby cat. Or a poet. And he lay abed and couldn't sleep, haunted by the image of the papers on the sideboard, weighted under Jonson's pouch. He should have burned them that afternoon.

He would go and burn them now. Perhaps read them one more time, just to be certain there was no salvaging this play. Sometimes he would make suggestions, corrections, find ways-through cuts or additions-that a play could be made safe for performance. Sometimes the playmakers acquiesced, and the play was saved.

Though Jonson was a newcomer, Tylney knew already that he did not take kindly to editing. But it was a good play.

Perhaps there was a chance.

Tylney roused himself and paced in the night, in his slippers and s.h.i.+rt, and found himself with candle in hand at the door of his office again. He unlocked it-the tumblers moving silently in the well-oiled catch-and pushed it before him without bothering to lift the candle or, in fact, look up from freeing key from lock.

He knew where everything should be.

The brilliant flash that blinded him came like lightning, like the spark of powder in the pan, and he shouted and threw a warding hand before his eyes, remembering even in his panic not to tip the candle. Someone cursed in a foreign tongue; a heavy hand closed on Tylney's wrist and dragged him into his office, shouldering the door shut behind before he could cry out again.

Whoever clutched him had a powerful grip. Was a big man, young, with soft uncallused hands. "Jonson," he gasped, still half-blinded by the silent lightning, pink spots swimming before his eyes. "You'll hang for this!"

"Sir Edmund," a gentle voice said over the rattle of metal, "I am sorry."

Too gentle to be Jonson, just as those hands, big as they were, were too soft for a soldier's. Not Jonson. The replacement clerk. Tylney shook his head side to side, trying to rattle the dots out of his vision. He blinked, and could almost see, his candle casting a dim glow around the office. If he looked through the edges of his sight, he could make out the lay of the room-and what was disarrayed. The Ile of Dogges had been taken from the sideboard, the drapes drawn close across the windows and weighted at the bottom with Jonson's bribe. Perhaps a quarter of the pages were turned.

"I'll shout and raise the house," Tylney said.

"You have already," the clerk said. He released Tylney's wrist once Tylney had steadied himself on the edge of the table, and turned back to the playscript.

"There's only one door out of this room." And Tylney had his back to it. He could hear people moving, a voice calling out, seeking the source of that cry.

"Sir Edmund, s.h.i.+eld your eyes." The clerk raised something to his own eye, a flat piece of metal no bigger than a lockplate, and rather like a lockplate, with a round hole in the middle.

Tylney stepped forward instead and grabbed the clerk's arm. "What are you doing?"

The man paused, obviously on the verge of shoving Tylney to the floor, and stared at him. "d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l," he said. "All right, look. I'm trying to save this play."

"From the fires?"

"From oblivion," he said. He dropped his arm and turned the plate so Tylney could see the back of it. His thumb pa.s.sed over a couple of small nubs marked with red sigils, and Tylney gasped. As if through a camera obscura, the image of a page of The Ile of Dogges floated on a bit of gla.s.s imbedded in the back of the plate, as crisp and brightly lit as if by brilliant day. It wasn't the page to which the play lay open. "My name's Balda.s.sare," the clerk-the sorcerer-said. "I'm here to preserve this play. It was lost."

"Jonson's summoned demons," Tylney whispered, as someone pounded on the office door. It rattled, and did not open. Balda.s.sare must have claimed the keys when he dragged Tylney inside, and fastened the lock while Tylney was still bedazzled. The light of the candle would show under the door, though. The servants would know he was here.

It was his private office, and Tylney had one of only two keys. Someone would have to wake the steward for the other.

He could shout. But Balda.s.sare could kill him before the household could break down the door. And the sorcerer was staring at him, one eyebrow lifted, as if to see what he would do.

Tylney held his tongue, and the door rattled once more before footsteps retreated.

"Just a historian," Balda.s.sare answered, when the silence had stretched a minute or two.

"Historian? But the play's not three months old!"

Balda.s.sare shook his head. "Where I come from, it's far older. And it's-" He hesitated, seeming to search for a word. "It's dead. No one has ever read it, or seen it performed. Most people don't even know it once existed." He laid fingertips on the papers, caressing. "Let me take it. Let me give it life."

"It's sedition." Tylney grasped the edge of the script, greatly daring, and pulled it from under Balda.s.sare's hand.

"It's brilliant," Balda.s.sare said, and Tylney couldn't argue, though he bundled the papers close to his chest. The sorcerer had been strangely gentle with him, as a younger man with an older. Perhaps he could gamble on that. Perhaps. It was his duty to protect the queen.

Balda.s.sare continued, "None will know, no one shall read it, not until you and Elizabeth and Jonson and Nashe are long in your graves. It will do no harm. I swear it."

"A sorcerer's word," Tylney said. He stepped back, came up hard against the door. The keys weren't in the lock. They must be in Balda.s.sare's hand.

"Would you have it lost forever? Truly?" Balda.s.sare reached and Tylney crowded away. Into the corner, the last place he could retreat. "Sir Edmund!" someone shouted from the hall.

From outside the door, Tylney heard the jangle of keys, their rattle in the lock. "You'll hang," he said to Balda.s.sare.

"Maybe," Balda.s.sare said, with a sudden grin that showed his perfect, white teeth. "But not today." One lingering, regretful look at the papers crumpled to Tylney's chest, and he dropped the keys on the floor, touched something on the wrist of the hand that held the metal plate, and vanished in a s.h.i.+mmer of air as Tylney gaped after him.

The door burst open, framing Tylney's steward, John, against blackness.

Tylney flinched.

"Sir Edmund?" The man came forward, a candle in one hand, the keys in the other. "Are you well?"

"Well enough," Tylney answered, forcing himself not to crane his neck after the vanished man. He could claim a demon had appeared in his work room, right enough. He could claim it, but who would believe?

He swallowed, and eased his grip on the play clutched to his chest. "I dropped the keys."

The steward frowned doubtfully. "You cried out, milord."

"I stumbled only," Tylney said. "I feared for the candle. But all is well." He laid the playscript on the table and smoothed the pages as his steward squatted to retrieve the fallen keys. "I thank you your concern."

The keys were cool and heavy, and clinked against each other like debased coins when the steward handed them over. Tylney laid them on the table beside the candle and the play. He lifted the coin purse from the window ledge, flicked the drapes back, and weighted the pages with the money once more before throwing wide the shutters, heedless of the night air. It was a still summer night, the stink of London rising from the gutters, but a draft could always surprise you, and he didn't feel like chasing paper into corners.

The candle barely flickered. "Sir Edmund?"

"That will be all, John. Thank you."

Silently, the steward withdrew, taking his candle and his own keys with him. He left the door yawning open on darkness. Tylney stood at his table for a moment, watching the empty s.p.a.ce.

He and John had the only keys. Balda.s.sare had come and gone like a devil stepping back and forth from h.e.l.l. Without the stink of brimstone, though. Perhaps more like an angel. Or memory, which could walk through every room in Tylney's house, through every playhouse in London, and leave no sign.

Tylney bent on creaking knees and laid kindling on the hearth. He stood, and looked at the playscript, one-quarter of the pages turned where it rested on the edge of his writing table, the other three-fourths crumpled and crudely smoothed. He turned another page, read a line in Jonson's hand, and one in Nashe's. His lips stretched over his aching teeth, and he chuckled into his beard.

He laid the pages down. No more sense than a tabby cat. It was late for making a fire. He could burn the play in the morning. Before he returned Jonson's bribe. He'd lock the door behind him, so no one could come in or out. There were only two sets of keys.

Sir Edmund Tylney blew the candle out, and trudged upstairs through the customary dark.

In the morning, he'd see to the burning.

Knock on Coffins "Drive on, think positive, get off your b.u.t.ts, knock on coffins, etc."

David Berkowitz, 1977 Act I June 2007 Each Friday morning, Hafidha brought in two dozen doughnuts. One box contained two plain old-fas.h.i.+oned (Reyes); two sour cream glazed (Falkner); one chocolate dipped and one lemon-filled, no powder (Brady); one blueberry cake (Lau); one glazed and one chocolate-frosted (Worth); and two chocolate crullers (Todd). Because the bakery Hafidha favored considered any proper dozen to contain thirteen, she added two miscellaneous pastries, different every week.

The other box held six Boston custard creme, six a.s.sorted jelly, and a single chocolate- frosted with rainbow sprinkles. There was only one house rule regarding their consumption: no one could have the sprinkled one until all the rest were eaten. Hafidha and Chaz schemed mightily after that thirteenth doughnut, even when stragglers remained in the first box. Because the second dozen was the exclusive property of Shadow Unit's anomaloids, and G.o.d save any alpha-Special Agent or civilian employee -who wandered too near.

Daniel Brady watched rangy, brown-skinned, floppy-haired Chaz Villette spider across the bullpen from the kitchenette, four pastries balanced on a napkin and a cup of coffee in the other hand. Chaz nibbled at the Boston creme doughnut teetering atop his pile with crooked, functional teeth. Brady ran his tongue across his own even bite, wondering if years of orthodonture had been worth it.

Brady leaned across the divider to Nikki Lau's desk and stage-whispered, "You know, a lot of serial killers are serious sugar junkies-"

"I heard that." Chaz slid into his desk across the aisle. If Brady were a strobe camera, Chaz would have been leaving trails of elbows and knees on the film. Chocolate smeared his upper lip; he sipped coffee and licked it off. "Is that true? I've never seen it in the literature."

"What, you might not have read a book in the English language?"

"It's Truman Capote," Solomon Todd said, from his desk behind Chaz's. He did not look up from a series of pie charts that appeared to hold him engrossed. "In Cold Blood. Our Danny boy is a reader."

Todd was fit, five-seven, bespectacled over dark-ringed gray irises, and somewhere in the indeterminate valley between forty-five and sixty. His dark hair was balding, his long una.s.suming face defined by horizontal lines: the slash of a concerned frown, the ladder of concentration up his brow. He mostly moved like somebody was puppeteering him. Hafidha called him Duke, after the comics character.

Brady was catching it.

"See? Capote. It must be true." Brady winked at Chaz, then turned back to Lau as she made one of her characteristic thinking fidgets. She wasn't his type, but he could manage an aesthetic appreciation of a pretty Chinese-American woman tucking glossy razor-cut hair behind a seash.e.l.l ear.

She said, "Just be grateful you don't have to eat like that."

Enter Daphne Worth, stirring coffee, compact and professional in a tan summerweight pantsuit and a burgundy blouse that flattened her pale complexion, brown hair caught back in a short ponytail. "Grateful? I wish I could eat like that. But no, a second plate of spaghetti and you might as well roll me home."

"I'll eat it for you," Chaz offered, licking raspberry jelly off his mouth, one forefinger, and then his mouth again. There was powdered sugar on the lapel of a blue blazer that made him look like an awkward teenager dressed up as an FBI agent.

"Sure, but then I don't get to enjoy it, except as garlic sweat-" Whatever Worth had been about to say would hang forever unfinished on the air, because Esther Falkner- tall, athletic, brunette, olive-complected, reflexively hiding the old sore hitch in her step -swept past with a coffee cup in her right hand and a manila folder upraised in her left, her head tipped slightly toward it. Her loafers made no sound on the industrial gray carpet, and the gray wings of her tailored suit coat flared from her hips.

Chaz accordioned half a doughnut into his mouth and stood, dusting the powder from his coat. Brady held back and waited until Chaz, and Lau, and Worth, and Todd had grabbed cups and pens and notepads and Palm Pilots and Blackberries and fallen in behind Falkner like a row of somewhat fl.u.s.tered ducklings, and only then joined the end of the line.

Because tail-end Charlie was his job, that was why.

The briefing room was already hot and close, p.r.i.c.kling sweat across Todd's bare scalp. He scrunched sideways in his seat to make more room for Brady's football-player shoulders, happy enough to have won the daily game of musical chairs. Hafidha Gates was last, having the furthest to walk. But Hafidha always got a seat, on behalf of her laptop-and the preservation of the credit rating of anybody who might try to shark her. And n.o.body but Reyes ever took Reyes' chair.