He whose name is Renewal

Chapter Thirty-Six

Kit arrives back at Mortlake, stamping snow off his feet. It has been a long day up and down the river to Dover and he is stiff in a way he is still getting used to. There is no sharpness of feeling, no indication that burning himself up like a lantern has made him any more susceptible to feeling pain, but there is simply more resistance in his joints. When he woke after the scaffold, eyes resisting opening on the way to Mortlake, it was Lazarus who put a hand firmly on his chest and said:

‘You must not move. Not if you want to live.’

‘So I am alive again?’ His voice had been nothing but a whistle, a squeak of air through swollen flesh.

‘Just.’ Lazarus’ voice had been tight with fury. ‘Seven minutes, Skevy. You were fucking late.’

‘Forgive me.’

Two words; so much effort to breathe them past stiff lips. Forgive me for loving Mariner more than I love you, forgive me for needing to save her. Forgive me for being the sun in your universe, holding you in my thrall. Then Kit had felt a hand in his hair, except there was no hair left. A palm, tentative for the first time, against his skull.

‘I will try.’

With eyes closed, Kit wondered if that was the best they could offer one another – attempts at absolution. In the last two months, long nights punctuated by a sleepy-eyed Lazarus administering healing draughts, the constant unwrapping down to his pink, shiny nakedness, balming and rewrapping, with gentle, wry comments upon his progress (‘Less like flaked almonds and more like pork skin, today’; ‘Are you healing me or preparing to eat me, Silver?’) absolution has been slowly arriving. Now all sins are known, exoneration is spreading through the blood. Every hurt Lazarus has caused is held in the golden balance of the persistent attentiveness of his care and devotion, his crowding dedication to their mutual survival and the unfading fealty of his kiss.

‘You made good time,’ Lazarus comments, as Kit enters the small study and tosses his cloak onto the back of one of the two chairs by the fire. Lazarus has still not opened up any of the other rooms, bookshelves still shrouded with sheets, a clear indication that even after four weeks, Lazarus has no intention of staying. Every day, more and more correspondence piles up on the desk, the seals becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Sir Thomas Walsingham, Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley, and today, the seal of the King of Scotland is broken and resting on the edge of the armchair, Lazarus’ eyebrows taut together as he reads.

‘He wishes you to return to court?’ Kit stretches his damp boots out in front of the fire and slowly removes his gloves, careful not to rush and rip the tender flesh, as Lazarus taught him. He clenches and unclenches his pink, shiny hands, feeling the stretch of the new skin, the fingertips with even less sensitivity. He is more prone to burning them than ever.

‘No, he wishes me to come to Edinburgh.’ Lazarus sets aside the letter. ‘There is news from Prague. Edward Kelley is truly dead. He died of wounds, trying to escape.’

Kit has not thought of him in over half a year. How strange it is to think that in the time he has been learning how to be an alchemist, one of the greatest of their age has been languishing, dying, imprisoned by one of the fiercest monarchs in Europe because he claimed to make gold. It is a stark warning.

‘What has Edward Kelley to do with you?’

‘After him, my father had the loudest claim for a miracle. Emperor Rudolf has lost his conjuror, so has Queen Elizabeth, since Kelley was an Englishman. She will no longer look to Dee. King James, no doubt, wants to ensure my father’s secrets are returned safely to their rightful inheritor.’

Kit imagines the courts of Europe as a stage, seen from above in the Gods, watching the monarchs in the wings pushing characters onto the boards. For all that alchemists jealously hoard their secrets, for the virtue of simply being born on soil that is English, Scottish, French, all they bring into being is already claimed for a crown. Kit does not want to be mastered by anyone, ever again.

‘I suppose you will not come with me?’

‘As what? Your friend? Your alchemist? Your lover?’

‘My Initiate,’ Lazarus says, leaning forward to take Kit’s hand. ‘But yes, the others also.’

Lazarus tells the truth now and that is better. Or perhaps it is simply now that Kit never expects the entire truth from him, and that is better. For does he really want to know all the reasons the King of Scotland might want Lazarus in Edinburgh? The embroilment of court, of plots and schemes, is something Kit intends to leave far behind.

‘Come with me.’ Lazarus leans towards him and kisses him, very slowly. Lazarus’ tongue is softer against the inside of his mouth, but perhaps the skin is new there too.

Kit pulls away, shaking his head.

‘You know I would care for you always,’ Lazarus says factually. The words I love you are meant to contain the entire world, but from Lazarus’ lips he hears the truth of what they do not say. All the things Lazarus is and will not stop being because he loves Kit.

‘If I come with you, you will ask me to make gold.’ Kit sighs and, as Lazarus opens his mouth, speaks over him. ‘You will say now – I will never do that, your gift is your gift, all I want is your safety and to have you warm in my bed every night – but when the King of Scotland presses you to use your alchemy for his gain and you have so far to climb and others to beat, you will ask me to make it. You will ask me to unwrap every secret in the universe because there is only one way to protect an alchemist from other alchemists so… you will ask me to scale the pinnacle. I have no desire to be a saint or a sorcerer, and you cannot promise me that if I come to Scotland you will not give into the temptation to make me one.’

‘You think you are too much temptation.’ Lazarus strokes the back of his hand with a thumb.

‘I think you are too much temptation,’ Kit returns, pauses for a second. ‘If I loved you less it might be easier.’

‘But you do.’ Lazarus leans forward, silvery eyes fixed upon him, hunting still, hunting after all this time. ‘Love me.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Kit admits. ‘For the both of us.’

Lazarus sighs, Kit does not know if it is in frustration of himself or in Kit for seeing him accurately, but he leans forward again, to trace his lips over the space where eyelashes once grew.

‘There might come a day when it is less unfortunate. When I am strong enough to protect us both without asking you to press the truest bounds of your skill.’ Lazarus’ breath smells of grape against his cheek, the taste of their first, catastrophic kiss. Kit does not know how much of these words are lies, or simply wisps of hope. Only time will tell.

‘There may come a day when gold comes from lead and dead men walk.’

‘It will come quicker if you put your skill to it.’

‘I cannot make gold if the formula is not good.’ Despite all he has learned of himself, Kit does not believe, at his core, that lead can be so easily shifted into gold, as water to steam or ice to water. It will take more than an alchemical child, it will take an alchemist of unprecedented mind to achieve such atomus transformation. If Kit is limited by his capacity for imagination then here sits his limit. ‘But the remnants of the living are not found beyond us.’

Kit thinks of the moment in the Cursed House when he thought he was dying; the quietness beyond.

‘You say there is no heaven? So bold.’ Lazarus smiles widely, as he always does when Kit veers towards the heretical.

‘What is the human body but a constellation of the same powers that formed the stars in the sky?’ Kit waves his hand, as if he will conjure a ghost from the fire and ash. ‘To dust we return, Silver.’

‘Not yet.’ Lazarus rubs a thumb along the back of Kit’s neck and pulls their noses together. Kit knows now, the timbre of a goodbye. If this one had been scripted, they are coming to its end, the lines running away from them.

‘Try to be less significant in the future,’ says Lazarus. ‘If you possibly can.’

‘I will not swear it.’

There is something beginning in his chest, perhaps a cousin to the sensation that has lived inside him his entire life since he was cast screaming and naked from the vessel, the knowledge of his mother’s death somehow imprinted on his tiny, alchemical body. There is good pain hidden inside the pain of parting, Kit thinks. Lost people are gone forever, but we carry them inside of us, always. It is an alchemy of its own majesty, to be at once gone and present.

‘Your sun.’ Lazarus presses a hand against Kit’s heart. Kit hears the words for the promises they are; I will hold your heart in mine again and feel it beat. I will not leave this earth and become nothing more than a creature that lives forever inside your chest. Without your sun in the universe my heart will not survive and as I am the stars and you are the body, as the planets are to the plants, so we are connected now and always.

‘Your sun,’ Kit promises.

*

In the first week of fifteen ninety-eight, Lazarus rides north to Scotland. Kit takes the river east to London. On his journey through the city people generally respond to him as a wandering Merlin, most cross themselves, some ask for blessings. Only one lad tries to kick him, but Kit beats him soundly with his walking stick until he wails. At the Silver Moon, Squire Kay is, for once, not behind the bar. She sits on the bench outside, wrapped up against the frosty chill, enjoying the rare but violently gold January sunshine. When she sees him she jumps, knocking the ale beside her over.

‘I’d not have known you.’ She gazes at his short, patchy fuzz across his head, his hairless face. Kit sits beside her, tilts his raw skin to the sun’s rays. Warm, he thinks; that will feel warm.

‘On the deed for this place, now Twentyman is finally off it, your name, is it Squire Kay?’

‘No.’ If she is surprised by this line of questioning she does not show it. ‘My birth name is Katherine Griffin and I am married. The deed is in our shared names, Ezra and Katherine Prophet.’

‘I am needing a new name,’ he says. ‘I will not bother you for board, I promise, I will live in the city and I intend to travel, but if you would have a cousin or relative long lost—’

‘Yes.’ She grips his gloved hand so fiercely he feels it through the leather, the pinch of it. ‘I will always have you.’

He holds her hand back, listening to her soft sniffling tears as she closes her eyes, blinking against the sunlight, and he lets it fill his vision with gold. Perhaps it will be easier for them to love one another now, without Griffin and the secrets. Perhaps it will be easier to say this is my family, what is left of it, what I have chosen to hold fast.

Later, Kit stands, unnoticed in the open doorway of the Rose, whilst Ned Alleyn screams at Mister Henslowe.

‘We cannot do Faustus at Court, it is impossible! We have no stage craft!’ Ned bellows. He is wearing Faustus’ cap; they are clearly in the middle of the scene and the bored Mephistopheles is wearing a tremendous mask that looks too big for his head.

‘The Queen has asked for Marlowe for the Twelfth Night, since he is so bloody fashionable,’ Mister Henslowe says. ‘Especially after that little shit of a martyr made himself a burning Icarus at Tyburn with Marlowe’s damned words.’

‘We cannot do justice to hell with this shit—’ Ned aims a kick at Mephistopheles who curses and almost falls off the stage ‘—mumbling like a mummer behind a dog’s breakfast!’

‘I can rewrite it, if you like,’ adds Will, clearly roped in to playing Valdes again.

‘Oh, can you rewrite hell is discovered out of Doctor bloody Faustus?’ Ned yells. ‘Where will they go, instead? To fucking Verona?’

‘I am an alchemist,’ Kit says, raising a hand and his voice. ‘I can help you with your stage craft.’

He pulls his hood back. He is keeping his mostly bald head wrapped these days, but he can do nothing about his lost eyebrows and pink scars across his throat and hands.

‘Christ’s bloody wounds!’ Mephistopheles declares. ‘He should be the Prince of Hell, not me!’

‘Shut up.’ Ned Alleyn turns to Kit. There is a moment when Kit wonders if he will put together this odd-eyed, bald and scarred man with the strange child who used to follow his last stage crafter around, but of course he does not. The city has been rife with ague; there are rumours the Queen is sick again and the Irish have won a great battle against the English at Carrickfergus, Southwark-born soldiers buried under Irish skies. The world turns on and once you are dead in London, you are dead. ‘What have you got?’

Kit smiles and pulls one of Lazarus’ bottles out of his cloak. He makes a show of twisting his fingers above it as he’s seen Ned Alleyn himself do when playing Faustus, and then pours grey smoke out over his hands. It billows the same as it did the night they escaped Isherwood House and in the dancing grey plumes Kit sees horses riding north and ships sailing.

‘God’s nails, that is good,’ Will says, eyes gleaming. ‘It could be a tempest, or forest magic.’

‘Could be fire out of hell, more’s the point.’ Ned folds his arms. Kit can tell he is trying to look unimpressed but his knee is jiggling in excitement. ‘You’re an ugly sod. Not on the run, are you? No hue and cry up for you?’

‘No.’ Kit shakes his head. Nothing follows a dead man.

‘Then why are you here?’ Ned glares. ‘You could be selling tricks to fine folks on the Bridge.’

‘Because here is the only place I ever wanted to be,’ Kit says, letting himself grin. He knows it is unsettling. He finds this aspect of his new face incredibly useful. Mephistopheles steps back from his visage. ‘I can give you such magic as you’ve never seen.’

He makes a show of withdrawing his other hand from his cloak, clicks his fingers to produce fire, willed from his blood and being and the small flash paper in his palm. It sits perfectly atop his fingertip. Ned Alleyn whistles and Mephistopheles claps so hard his mask falls off.

‘Done,’ Ned says with a clap, gesturing him forward. ‘Now at Court you’ll have to use all your tricks, there’s no trapdoors available and little in the way of wings, no Gods to speak of, unless we send a lad up with some string…’

‘Well done,’ Will says, offering him a hand to shake. ‘What do we call you, alchemist?’

‘Christopher Prophet,’ he says. ‘Kit.’

He follows them up onto the boards. They creak familiarly under his feet. Kit holds his breath for a moment as he walks forward into that beloved space, takes in the comforting scent of the wood and the earth and the magic of it, of transformation and power. Of words made flesh, of dreams made real. For this is where Griffin lives and breathes still, if souls live anywhere at all, in paper and words and audience tears. Kit wants every stage in London, he wants to produce hell, overthrow Paris, burn Dido. Be better, said Griffin.

‘We will work wonders,’ says he, hearing Lazarus’ voice speaking the same, always present, inside his mind. The words chase around the empty theatre, buffeting the wooden seats and then up to the cold sky, soaring on birds’ wings before transforming, becoming nothing but air.