Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 30

The milk didn't ring in the pail any more, but the gold rang fine on the dooryard stones.

The witch barely glanced at it. "I don't want your gold, blacksmith."

"I din't want for hers, neither," Weyland said. "'Tis the half of what she gave." He didn't stoop to retrieve the coin, though the witch snaked a softshoed foot from under her kirtle and skipped it back to him, bouncing over the cobbles.

"What can I pay?" he asked, when the witch met his protests with a shrug.

"I didn't say I could help you." The latest pull dripped milk into the pail rather than spurting. The witch tugged the bucket clear and patted Heidrun on the flank, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and the pail between her ankles while the nanny clattered over cobbles to bound back up on the roof. In a moment, the goat was beside the chimney again, munching b.u.t.tercups as if she hadn't just had a meal of apples. A large, fluffy black-and-white cat emerged from the house and began twining the legs of the stool, miaowing.

"Question 'tisn't what tha can or can't do," he said sourly. " 'Tis what tha will or won't."

The witch lifted the pail and splashed milk on the stones for the cat to lap. And then she stood, bearing the pail in her hands, and shrugged. "You could pay me a Name. I collect those."

"If'n I had one."

"There's your own," she countered, and balanced the pail on her hip as she sauntered toward the house. He followed. "But people are always more disinclined to part with what belongs to them than what doesn't, don't you find?"

He grunted. She held the door for him, with her heel, and kicked it shut when he had pa.s.sed. The cottage was dim and cool inside, only a few embers banked on the hearth. He sat when she gestured him onto the bench, and not before. "No Names," he said.

"Will you barter your body, then?"

She said it over her shoulder, like a commonplace. He twisted a boot on the rushes covering a rammed-earth floor and laughed. "And what'd a bonny la.s.s like thaself want with a gammy-legged, fusty, coal-black smith?"

"To say I've had one?" She plunged her hands into the washbasin and scrubbed them to the elbow, then turned and leaned against the stand. When she caught sight of his expression, she laughed as well. "You're sure it's not your heart that's broken, Smith?"

"Not this sennight." He scowled around the rim of his cup, and was still scowling as she set bread and cheese before him. Others might find her intimidating, but Weyland Smith wore the promise-ring of Olrun the Valkyrie. No witch could mortify him. Not even one who kept Heidrun- who had dined on the leaves of the World Ash-as a milch-goat.

The witch broke his gaze on the excuse of tucking an escaped strand of his long gray ponytail behind his ear, and relented. "Make me a cauldron," she said. "An iron cauldron. And I'll tell you the secret, Weyland Smith."

"Done," he said, and drew his dagger to slice the bread.

She sat down across the trestle. "Don't you want your answer?"

He stopped with his blade in the loaf, looking up. "I've not paid."

"You'll take my answer," she said. She took his cup, and dipped more ale from the pot warming over those few banked coals. "I know your contract is good."

He shook his head at the smile that curved her lips, and snorted. "Someone'll find out tha geas one day, enchantress. And may tha never rest easy again. So tell me then. How might I mend a la.s.s's broken heart?"

"You can't," the witch said, easily. "You can replace it with another, or you can forge it anew. But it cannot be mended. Not like that."

"Gerrawa with tha," Weyland said. "I tried reforging it. 'Tis gla.s.s."

"And gla.s.s will cut you," the witch said, and snapped her fingers. "Like that."

He made the cauldron while he was thinking, since it needed the blast furnace and a casting pour but not finesse. If gla.s.s will cut and shatter, perhaps a heart should be made of tougher stuff, he decided as he broke the mold.

Secondly, he began by heating the bar stock. While it rested in the coals, between pumping at the bellows, he slid the shards into a leathern bag, slicing his palms-though not deep enough to bleed through heavy callus. He wiggled Olrun's ring off his right hand and strung it on its chain, then broke the heart to powder with his smallest hammer. It didn't take much work. The heart was fragile enough that Weyland wondered if there wasn't something wrong with the gla.s.s.

When it had done, he shook the powder from the pouch and ground it finer in the pestle he used to macerate carbon, until it was reduced to a pale-pink silica dust. He thought he'd better use all of it, to be sure, so he mixed it in with the carbon and hammered it into the heated bar stock for seven nights and seven days, folding and folding again as he would for a sword-blade, or an axe, something that needed to take a resilient temper to back a striking edge.

It wasn't a blade he made of his iron, though, now that he'd forged it into steel. What he did was pound the bar into a rod, never allowing it to cool, never pausing hammer-and then he drew the rod through a die to square and smooth it, and twisted the thick wire that resulted into a gorgeous fist-big filigree.

The steel had a reddish color, not like rust but as if the traces of gold that had imparted brilliance to the ruby gla.s.s heart had somehow transferred that tint into the steel. It was a beautiful thing, a cage for a bird no bigger than Weyland's thumb, with cunning hinges so one could open it like a box, and such was his magic that despite all the gla.s.s and iron that had gone into making it it spanned no more and weighed no more than would have a heart of meat.

He heated it cherry-red again, and when it glowed he quenched it in the well to give it resilience and set its form.

He wore his ring on his wedding finger when he put it on the next morning, and he let the forge lie cold-or as cold as it could lie, with seven days' heat baked into metal and stone. It was the eighth day of the forging, and a fortnight since he'd taken the girl's coin.

She didn't disappoint. She was along before midday.

She came right out into the sunlight this time, rather than lingering under the hazel trees, and though she still wore black it was topped by a different hat, this one with feathers. "Old man," she said, "have you done as I asked?"

Reverently, he reached under the block that held his smaller anvil, and brought up a doeskin swaddle. The suede draped over his hands, clinging and soft as a maiden's breast, and he held his breath as he laid the package on the anvil and limped back, his left leg dragging a little. He picked up his hammer and pretended to look to the forge, unwilling to be seen watching the lady.

She made a little cry as she came forward, neither glad nor sorrowful, but rather tight, as if she couldn't keep all her hope and antic.i.p.ation pent in her breast any longer. She reached out with hands clad in chevre and brushed open the doeskin- Only to freeze when her touch revealed metal. "This heart doesn't beat," she said, as she let the wrappings fall.

Weyland turned to her, his hands twisted before his ap.r.o.n, wringing the haft of his hammer so his ring bit into his flesh. "It'll not shatter, la.s.s, I swear."

"It doesn't beat," she repeated. She stepped away, her hands curled at her sides in their black kid gloves. "This heart is no use to me, blacksmith."

He borrowed the witch's magic goat, which like him-and the witch-had been more than half a G.o.d once and wasn't much more than a fairy story now, and he harnessed her to a st.u.r.dy little cart he made to haul the witch's cauldron. He delivered it in the sunny morning, when the dew was still damp on the gra.s.s, and he brought the heart to show.

"It's a very good heart," the witch said, turning it in her hands. "The latch in particular is cunning. Nothing would get in or out of a heart like that if you didn't show it the way." She bounced it on her palms. "Light for its size, too. A girl could be proud of a heart like this."

"She'll have none," Weyland said. "Says as it doesn't beat."

"Beat? Of course it doesn't beat," the witch scoffed. "There isn't any love in it. And you can't put that there for her."

"But I mun do," Weyland said, and took the thing back from her hands.

For thirdly, he broke Olrun's ring. The gold was soft and fine; it flattened with one blow of the hammer, and by the third or fourth strike, it spread across his leather-padded anvil like a puddle of blood, rose-red in the light of the forge. By the time the sun brushed the treetops in its descent, he'd pounded the ring into a sheet of gold so fine it floated on his breath.

He painted the heart with gesso, and when that was dried he made bole, a rabbit-skin glue mixed with clay that formed the surface for the gilt to cling to.

With a brush, he lifted the gold leaf, bit by bit, and sealed it painstakingly to the heart. And when he had finished and set the brushes and the burnishers aside-when his love was sealed up within like the steel under the gold-the iron cage began to beat.

"It was a blacksmith broke my heart," the black girl said. "You'd think a blacksmith could do a better job on mending it."

"It beats," he said, and set it rocking with a burn-scarred, callused fingertip. " 'Tis bonny. And it shan't break."

"It's cold," she complained, her breath pushing her veil out a little over her lips. "Make it warm."

"I'd not wonder tha blacksmith left tha. The heart tha started with were colder," he said.

For fourthly, he opened up his breast and took his own heart out, and locked it in the cage. The latch was cunning, and he worked it with thumbs slippery with the red, red blood. Afterwards, he st.i.tched his chest up with cat-gut and an iron needle and pulled a clean shirt on, and let the forge sit cold.

He expected a visitor, and she arrived on time. He laid the heart before her, red as red, red blood in its red-gilt iron cage, and she lifted it on the tips of her fingers and held it to her ear to listen to it beat.

And she smiled.

When she was gone, he couldn't face his forge, or the anvil with the vacant chain draped over the horn, or the chill in his fingertips. So he went to see the witch.

She was sweeping the dooryard when he came up on her, and she laid the broom aside at once when she saw his face. "So it's done," she said, and brought him inside the door.

The cup she brought him was warmer than his hands. He drank, and licked hot droplets from his moustache after.

"It weren't easy," he said.

She sat down opposite, elbows on the table, and nodded in sympathy. "It never is," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Frozen cold. Colder'n h.e.l.l. I should've gone with her."

"Or she should have stayed with you."

He hid his face in the cup. "She weren't coming back."

"No," the witch said. "She wasn't." She sliced bread, and b.u.t.tered him a piece. It sat on the planks before him, and he didn't touch it. "It'll grow back, you know. Now that it's cut out cleanly. It'll heal in time."

He grunted, and finished the last of the ale. "And then?" he asked, as the cup clicked on the boards.

"And then you'll sooner or later most likely wish it hadn't," the witch said, and when he laughed and reached for the bread she got up to fetch him another ale.

This Tragic Gla.s.s View but his picture in this tragic gla.s.s, And then applaud his fortunes as you please.

-Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 II 7-8 The light gleamed pewter under gracious, bowering trees; a liver-chestnut gelding stamped one white hoof on the road. His rider stood in his stirrups to see through wreaths of mist, shrugging to settle a slashed black doublet which violated several sumptuary laws. Two breaths steamed as horse and man surveyed the broad lawn of scythe-cut gra.s.s that bulwarked the manor house where they had spent the night and much of the day before.

The man ignored the slow coiling of his guts as he settled into the saddle. He reined the gelding about, a lift of the left hand and the light touch of heels. It was eight miles to Deptford Strand and a meetingplace near the slaughterhouse. In the name of Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council, and for the sake of the man who had offered him shelter when no one else under G.o.d's dominion would, Christofer Marley must arrive before the sun climbed a handspan above the cluttered horizon.

"That's-" Satyavati squinted at her heads-up display, sweating in the under-air-conditioned beige and grey academia of her computer lab. Her fingers moved with automatic deftness, opening a tin and extracting a cinnamon breath mint from the embrace of its brothers. Absently, she crunched it, and winced at the spicy heat. "-funny."

"Dr. Brahmaputra?" Her research a.s.sistant looked up, disconnecting his earplug. "Something wrong with the software?"

She nodded, pushing a fistful of coa.r.s.e silver hair out of her face as she bent closer to the holographic projection that hung over her desk. The rumble of a semiballistic leaving McCarran Aeros.p.a.ceport rattled the windows. She rolled her eyes. "One of the undergrads must have goofed the coding on the text. Our genderbot just kicked back a truly freaky outcome. Come look at this, Balda.s.sare."

He stood, a boy in his late twenties with an intimidatingly Italian name, already working on an academic's well-upholstered body, and came around her desk to stand over her shoulder. "What am I looking at?"

"Line one fifty-seven," she said, pushing down a fragment of panic that she knew had nothing to do with the situation at hand and everything to do with old damage and ancient history. "See? Coming up as female. Have we a way to see who coded the texts?"

He leaned close, reaching over her to put a hand on her desk. She edged away from the touch. "All the Renaissance stuff was double-checked by Sienna Haverson. She shouldn't have let a mistake like that slip past; she did her dis on Nashe or Fletcher or somebody, and she's just gotten into the Poet Emeritus project, for the love of Mike. And it's not like there are a lot of female Elizabethan playwrights she could have confused-"

"It's not a transposition." Satyavati fished out another cinnamon candy and offered one to Tony Balda.s.sare, who smelled faintly of garlic. He had sense enough to suck on his instead of crunching it; she made a point of tucking hers up between her lip and gum where she'd be less likely to chew on it. "I checked that. This is the only one coming up wrong."

"Well," Balda.s.sare said on a thoughtful breath, "I suppose we can always consider the possibility that Dr. Haverson was drunk that evening-"

Satyavati laughed, brushing Balda.s.sare aside to stand up from her chair, uncomfortable with his closeness. "Or we can try to convince the establishment that the most notorious rakeh.e.l.l in the Elizabethan canon was a girl."

"I dunno," Balda.s.sare answered. "It's a fine line between Marlowe and Jonson for scoundrelhood."

"Bah. You see what I mean. A nice claim. It would do wonders for my tenure hopes and your future employability. And I know you have your eye on Poet Emeritus, too."

"It's a crazy dream." He spread his arms wide and leaned far back, the picture of ecstatic madness.

"Who wouldn't want to work with Professor Keats?" She sighed, twisting her hair into a scrunchie. "Screw it: I'm going to lunch. See if you can figure out what broke."

The air warmed as the sun rose, spilling light like a promise down the road, across the grey moving water of the Thames, between the close-growing trees. Halfway to Deptford, Christofer Marley reined his gelding in to rest it; the sunlight matched his hair to the animal's mane. The man was as beautiful as the horse-groomed until shining, long-necked and long-legged, slender as a girl and fashionably pallid of complexion. Lace cuffs fell across hands as white as the gelding's forehoof.

Their breath no longer steamed, nor did the river.

Kit rubbed a hand across the back of his mouth. He closed his eyes for a moment before glancing back over his shoulder: the manor house-his lover and patron Thomas Walsingham's manor house-was long out of sight. The gelding tossed his head, ready to canter, and Kit let him have the rein he wanted.

All the rein he wants. A privilege Kit himself had rarely been allowed.

Following the liver-colored gelding's whim, they drove hard for Deptford and the house of a cousin of the Queen's beloved secretary of state and closest confidant, Lord Burghley.

The house of Mistress Eleanor Bull.

Satyavati stepped out of the latest incarnation of a vegetarian barbecue joint that changed hands every six months, the heat of a Las Vegas August afternoon pressing her shoulders like angry hands. The University of Nevada campus spread green and artificial across a traffic-humming street; beyond the buildings monsoon clouds rimmed the mountains across the broad, shallow desert valley. A plastic bag tumbled in ecstatic circles near a stucco wall, caught in an eddy, but the wind was against them; there would be no baptism of lightning and rain. She crossed at the new pedestrian bridge, acknowledging Professors Keats and Ling as they wandered past, deep in conversation-"we were going after Plath, but the consensus was she'd just kill herself again"-and almost turned to ask Ling a question when her hip unit beeped.

She dabbed her lips in case of leftover barbecue sauce and flipped the minicomputer open. Clouds covered the sun, but cloying heat radiated from the pavement under her feet. Westward, toward the thunderheads and the mountains, the grey mist of verga-evaporating rain-greased the sky like a thumbsmear across a charcoal sketch by G.o.d. "Mr. Balda.s.sare?"

"Dr. Brahmaputra." Worry charged his voice; his image above her holistic communications and computational device showed a thin dark line between the brows. "I have some bad news ..."

She sighed and closed her eyes, listening to distant thunder echo from the mountains. "Tell me the whole database is corrupt."

"No." He rubbed his forehead with his knuckles; a staccato little image, but she could see the gesture and expression as if he stood before her. "I corrected the Marlowe data."

"And?"

"The genderbot still thinks Kit Marlowe was a girl. I reentered everything."

"That's-"

"Impossible?" Balda.s.sare grinned. "I know. Come to the lab; we'll lock the door and figure this out. I called Dr. Haverson."

"Dr. Haverson? Sienna Haverson?"

"She was doing Renaissance before she landed in Brit Lit. Can it hurt?"

"What the h.e.l.l."

Eleanor Bull's house was whitewashed and warm-looking. The scent of its gardens didn't quite cover the slaughterhouse reek, but the house peered through narrow windows and seemed to smile. Kit gave the gelding's reins to a lad from the stable, along with coins to see the beast curried and fed. He scratched under the animal's mane with guilty fingers; his mother would have his hide for not seeing to the chestnut himself. But the Queen's business took precedent, and Kit was-and had been for seven years-a Queen's man.

Bull's establishment was no common tavern, but the house of a respectable widow, where respectable men met to dine in private circ.u.mstances and discuss the sort of business not for common ears to hear. Kit squared his shoulders under the expensive suit, clothes bought with an intelligencer's money, and presented himself at the front door of the house. His stomach knotted; he wrapped his inkstained fingers together after he tapped, and waited for the Widow Bull to offer him admittance.

The blonde, round-cheeked image of Sienna Haverson beside Satyavati's desk frowned around the thumbnail she was chewing. "It's ridiculous on the face of it. Christopher Marlowe, a woman? It isn't possible to reconcile his biography with-what, crypto-femininity? He was a seminary student, for Christ's sake. People lived in each other's pockets during the Renaissance. Slept two or three to a bed, and not in a s.e.xual sense-"

Balda.s.sare was present in the flesh; like Satyavati, he preferred the mental break of actually going home from the office at the end of the day. It also didn't hurt to be close enough to keep a weather eye on university politics.