For This Is Hell Read online

  Contents

  Scene One

  Scene Two

  Scene Three

  Scene Four

  Scene Five

  Scene Six

  Scene Seven

  Scene Eight

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  No Small Bills preview

  Laughing Boy's Shadow preview

  For This Is Hell

  By Steven Savile and Aaron Rosenberg

  Crazy 8 Press is an imprint of Clockworks.

  Copyright © 2012 Steven Savile and Aaron Rosenberg

  Cover by Vance Kelly

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information contact Crazy 8 Press at the official Crazy 8 website: www.crazy8press.com

  First edition

  Scene One

  Wherein our hero, confounded without a muse, travels to the Shining City and the Court of Elissa, daughter of Dido

  “I stand before you naked, not of body but of soul. Here am I, a man stripped bare of those charming words I would use as sword and shield. I’d as well be a peasant, tongue-tied by such a simple thing as beauty, my purpose undone by a single look. A mute peasant! Oh yes, my mouth moves, my tongue licks and tastes the air, but those damned words refuse to make pretty and so, instead, I blather like a fool in all his motley. You have reduced me to this, my beautiful queen. With just one look my brain is addled, but then that is the same as it ever was when walking in the presence of beauty.” Where is the love? he thought from the shadows as the leading man stumbled his way to the end of the soliloquy. Where is the passion? Where is the music? It was wretched. Mercifully, the actor’s delivery was so weak his voice barely made it beyond the groundlings pit. No one would hear in the heavens.

  He covered his eyes, but that did not stop him hearing.

  “But I am not your queen, am I? So what other falsehoods coil in your mouth? Doth mine lips call to mind a rose in full bloom? Doth the full ripe redness of them recall the velvet petals of the flower? Would you part them with your whispered promises, as above so below? Are those the words you so struggle to call to mind? Seductions? Whence I smile do you see the harlot behind the kiss or the sweet innocent maiden you dream me to be? Might I be both? Or must it always be one or t’other? So again, I am not your queen, that much is true, but wouldst thou then fashion me your whore?” She fluttered her long, lush eyelashes at her suitor, but whether in amusement or interest there was no way of knowing from the words alone.

  As she laid a hand on his, he froze, trapped like a fly in her honeyed words. He could not look away from her, but he could smile. Barely. The expression was utterly pained and bore the stiff rigor of a look rarely used and much forced.

  “The whole of the world lives and laughs and loves, dear lady, that is the nature of life, if we are but lucky enough to understand it as it unfolds around us. Time might choose to brand thee the whore queen of Carthage who doth bathe in asses’ milk and call lovers to her chambers by the hundreds, or to remember you more kindly. I suspect it will depend upon others, men humbled and humiliated, to decide how it will be—not, alas, for me nor you to decide. A man’s vanity does not love strong women. A man’s ego less so. You belittle your foes, best to leave them dead in the dust, that is the way of this ugly world, but even so their words might live on if they are spiteful enough shades. Yet,” he paused, offering what by rights ought to have been an immodest smile, “if such a wondrous gift were mine to bestow, I trust I would remember thee fairly and beautifully, as a woman unlike any other.”

  “I see you have found a few pretty words at last, Iarbas.”

  “I never doubted they would come, Elissa. Now, perhaps, if thine lips were to press up against mine so that I might taste thee in my mouth, more would come alive as I attain my desire?”

  Now, by the laughter lines that crinkled in the corners of her eyes, he could read her expression. The playful quirk of her lips confirmed it. She was teasing him. It really ought to have been more obvious than that.

  “And were that so, sir, surely thou wouldst not begrudge me a little—”

  “Enough! Enough! Enough enough enough!” The two potential lovers pulled apart, startled by the sudden outburst, as a dark figure burst upon them like some shadowy flame. “Hell’s balls! I cannot take another word of this malignant butchery of the Queen’s Tongue! Would that I had a dagger to pierce my sodding eardrums and silence the lot of you!”

  “What’s wrong this time, Kit?” the young “lady” asked, stumbling back a step to make room for the newcomer as he pushed his way between the actors to the center of the stage. “Did I mangle the lines again? ‘Surely thou wouldst not begrudge me a little—’”

  “I said enough!”

  Then a second thought hit the “lady.” “Oh, hell and damnation, you’d think I’d never done this before. Mother, maiden, whore. That’s it, isn’t it? She’s the maiden and I’m serving up the whore. I’m sorry, Kit.” Out of the scene, the actor’s voice was considerably lower and rough, its natural timbre lacking anything approaching the dulcet tones of a beautiful warrior queen. Indeed, out of character, it was decidedly manly.

  “That’s not what’s wrong with the damned thing. Trust me, you were fine, Sam,” the shadowy man interrupted, resting a hand on the youth’s shoulder. “Your Elissa is as fine as anyone could ask for. Dido wouldn’t know you from her own daughter.”

  The fair maiden’s erstwhile suitor snorted. “Easy enough to say, certes,” he said, dropping into the vulgate and offering a wink, “given she’s been pushing up daisies for centuries now. Your performance ought to be a damned sight fresher.”

  “Yes, quite, thanks for that, Ned.” Kit snapped, his patience frayed thin by the catastrophe he had witnessed unfurling around him. “Always helpful when you decide to share your tuppence with us.” The playwright turned on his heel, and seemed, for just a moment, as though he were about to wrench a fistful of hair from his forelock. “I shall endeavor to use your insight as a spur for my creativity, if, in turn, you promise to harness the same and find new ability when I ask you to bloody well act. Do we have a deal?”

  Ned Alleyn bristled. “You’ve lost all sense of humor, Kit. It was a jest, nothing more. Time was, yours was the first voice to crack wise.”

  “Time was, I wasn’t a talentless hack and could actually make the damned language sing, and penning a scene where a few well-practiced words could have a woman part her legs was no challenge at all. Now I can barely raise a smile, never mind anything more ardent, and what’s worse, I can hear bloody Will’s echo in there. Will, of all people. Talent’s a feckless bitch, my friend. Forgive me, Ned. You’re quite right.” Marlowe rubbed the bridge of his nose, and clapped the tall performer on the arm. “The scene is bunk, the sentiment phony. The whole thing mocks me, through no fault of yours or Sam’s, but by Christ on the Cross it has me vexed.”

  “I cannot argue with you there,” Ned agreed, risking the playwright’s wrath simply by agreeing with him. “There’s no flow to the words, and try as we might they come across as unwieldy and insincere. They are like boys playing at soldier with sticks too long for their grip, off-balance and out of true.”

  Kit granted his friend a weary smile. “When your own words are finer than any I can put into your mouth, then indeed the world has turned upside down and inside out, and madness runs among us. I melt in your shadow, my friend.”

  “Ha!” Now it was Ned’s turn to slap him on the back, and as comradely as the gesture was, the slap came within an inch of bowling the slender playwright
from his feet. “Glad to see you’ve not completely lost your sense of humor. Just needs a bit of prodding to get it out.”

  “More like lubricating,” Sam suggested, a considerably more natural smile on his beardless lips now. “What say we repair to the alehouse and see whether a flagon or two might stir that genius of yours to greater heights, shall we?”

  “I’ll see you boys there anon,” Kit assured him. “But I would grapple with this beast of mine awhile longer, and where better than here, upon the place of its birth? Or stillbirth, as it is proving to be! But mark my words, lads, I will best it. I will prove upon its body once and for all that I am its lord and master. I will stomp and pound upon its flesh until it bends to my will like the supple willow beneath the stern north wind. I am the word and the word is everything. The word is God.” He teased a pair of tarnished coins from his belt pouch and palmed them into the young man’s hand. “Here, mine’s the first round to make up for my foul humor, good strong ale all around, and I trust that mine will not be empty when I arrive to claim it.”

  Sam laughed. “I will guard it with my life,” he assured Kit, “and the bottom shall still be damp, at the least, though how deep, only time will tell.” He touched his forehead, as though making a prediction. “The longer the time, the shallower the ale,” he said. He and Ned leaped down from the stage and strode across the Playhouse’s empty pit, heading toward the front doors. The remaining players glanced about, uncertain as to whether they should stay or go. Kit urged them all out with shooing motions of his hands.

  “Go. Begone. Away. Out of here! Follow your leads,” he told the rest of the Admiral’s Men. “Drink is good, and free drink better. So, to the alehouse with the lot of you, and warm its benches for my arse, so that when I join you I might delight in the warmth of both company and posterior!”

  That drew several laughs, and more than a few sighs of relief at this turn in their playwright’s humor, and the other men followed Ned and Sam out, calling back over their shoulders and promising that they would reserve a choice spot for his rear’s eventual appearance.

  *

  It was only once they were gone, the doors slammed firmly shut behind them, leaving the gallery desolate, that the dark man sank to his knees upon the stage. His head fell heavily into his hands.

  “Where hast thou gone?” he demanded of his palms, and then reared back to repeat the cry, beseeching the uncaring rafters painted as sky and clouds high above. “Where hast thou gone? Why hast thou forsaken me?”

  No answer came even long after his plea had finished echoing through the heavens. He allowed himself to sink still further, until he was sprawled full-length across the stage, arms and legs akimbo, head turned now toward the real sky.

  But still, for Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, the world chose not to reply.

  After several dull and decidedly uneventful moments had ticked past—broken only by the sound of his own breath rattling in his chest—Marlowe hauled himself to his feet once more. Clearly throwing himself upon the mercy of the cosmos was not the answer. Melodrama would not stir his misfiring Muse.

  But what, then, would?

  Martin, who had been minding the script and calling out prompts as needed, had let the broadsheets fall in his haste to drink of Marlowe’s generosity. Marlowe hopped down from the stage and gathered the scattered pages, ordering them once more. He glanced through them, his own scrawled words looking so lifeless and flat on the page. His scowl deepened with each line he read until at last he could bear it no longer, and flung them once more to the rushes strewn over the hard-packed dirt of the pit floor.

  “Pure unadulterated rubbish!” he snarled at the pages where they fluttered away from him. “Words? Are these all that remain? Pah! These so-called words shame the very pages upon which they are scratched! They defile the very ink with which they stain, and the very quill that scratched them! These are not words, they are an abomination!”

  He clutched at his temples, driving dirt-smeared fingernails into his flesh. “You are a disgrace to this mind, to this imagination! You are a pox upon my name and my reputation, a diseased canker that, should it burst, would surely coat my former glory with filth that would burn away all that I ever achieved and turn away even the most wretched wreck of humanity!”

  He lashed out at the nearest page with his foot, and sent it fluttering briefly into the air. It came down ink-side to the dirt. “Begone, thou hideous reminder, thou foul demonstration of mine failings! Begone, and trouble me no more!”

  The page offered no reply, nor had he expected it to. But there were responses a-plenty already within his own head.

  Crouching, he retrieved the battered broadsheet and straightened its crumpled face. If only it were as easy to smooth out the words therein. He began anew the task of gathering its fellows and restoring them to some semblance of order. He was being difficult, he knew. Difficult and demanding and childish. Precious and petulant. This tantrum was but the latest in an ever-lengthening string of tirades, and it had only been through force of will that he had sent the players away before unleashing it. They had seen enough of his anger already, and were as close to out of patience as made no difference. He acted the tortured artist, the misunderstood genius. He demanded the very best of them but could only offer these words, the worst of him. Marlowe scarcely deserved their forbearance. By rights they should have run, and run far far away at that, leaving him to bluster and blaspheme alone on the gilded stage.

  The players were as blameless as these pages he held. They were his instruments—if he lacked the skill to wield them how could that ever be their fault?

  No, the fault truly was his and his alone.

  This new play was too dear to his heart. Dido, Queen of Carthage had been the first of his plays to be performed, and it had sounded across the London theatre scene like a shot across the bow of a ship at sea, a clarion call alerting all that a bright new talent had arrived to take their world by storm. Christopher Marlowe was his name, and his talent shone true and clear, dazzling all that beheld it.

  It seemed only fitting, then, that he would now return to that same setting for this latest play. Young Dido was no more, dead by her own hand upon the funeral byre, a testament to her love for the departed Aeneas. But she had left behind a daughter, Elissa, to rule in her stead. And now it was Elissa, grown into the full bloom of womanhood, who must face the travails of love as her mother once had.

  But this play was far more than that. It was not merely a tale of love and betrayal, noble though such stories could be. It was a tale of creation, the birth of a wondrous creature, a figure of pure myth, a shining symbol of life and passion and the endless cycle of all things—

  The Phoenix.

  That majestic flamebird rose from the ashes of its own demise, restored to full vigor by the flames that warmed its golden plumage, to cast its glow upon the world and illumine by its flight.

  And the Phoenix, at least according to one set of ancient tales, first beat its majestic wings in Phoenicia and then Persia.

  Phoenicia, from whence the Carthaginians came.

  Marlowe was determined that his new work would bring the legend of the Phoenix to London, allowing its light to shine forth against the Thames and the Tower and the stern brick houses and the narrow, cobbled streets.

  For the legend was at the very core of his being. It glimmered within him, demanding to be set free upon the world once more.

  And he aimed to do it justice.

  If only these thrice-damned words would bend to his will.

  His fists clenched, instinctively trying to wring the pages like the neck of a hen. He barely checked himself. Parchment was pricey enough that it wasn’t worth venting his frustration upon. He would just have to find other outlets for it.

  He had the plot fully formed in his head—which, in many ways, made it all the more frustrating that he could not translate it into words. It was as clear as day in his mind’s eye. Elissa as Queen of Carthage, young and beautifu
l. The wizard Iarbas, wealthy and powerful, who seeks her hand in marriage. The counsel of elders who advise her, and who approve of the match, for it would strengthen Carthage and the throne both at once. And Barcas, the handsome young guard who has pledged his own heart to his queen, though he knows that she could never notice, much less return, the affections of one such as he.

  Marlowe paced the stage, the story unfolding before him as clearly as if Ned and Sam were returned to act it out for him. “Iarbas arrives and woos the young queen,” his words rang out across the empty Rose Theatre, where his only audience was comprised of parchment and wood and painted cloth. “Elissa is flattered by the wizard’s attentions, and recognizes the value of such a match, yet her heart is not in it. And why should it be? Her heart belongs elsewhere, though she does not know this yet, as is ever the curse of youthful love.”

  He stood in the dead center of the stage and folded crossed arms against his chest, tapping out a staccato rhythm with his foot to count off the beats. “Pragmatic counselors urge her to accept, of course they do, citing Iarbas’s vast wealth and estates—he is a powerful man, and clearly her first duty is to her people.” Marlowe rushed across the stage to the balcony as though about to deliver an impassioned plea to some beauty up in her ivory tower. “Elissa wanders her gardens, seeking answers, and in her daze nearly stumbles from the balcony to her death, but lo, a young guard leaps forward to save her. Of course it is Barcas. Their eyes meet, and Elissa sees the love in his gaze—pure and selfless and fiery, while Iarbas’s looks are cold and calculating. Never was there a better measure of a man than through the windows into his soul. She finds herself drawn to the handsome guard, whose love burns still hotter from this return to his affections. She resolves to refuse Iarbas’s suit, and to take Barcas as her husband instead, though it fly in the face of all tradition. Let them come at her with their swords of scorn!” He skipped across the stage, animated now, the power of the narrative flooding through him as he twirled about, pretending at being a giggling girl, anticipating the joy the two lovers would demonstrate. The torches that still burned along the walls brightened, their flames swaying to follow his movements.