‘What was the phrase?’ Claret asks.
I can tell Will is itching to recite his poetry, his words, as surely as he wrote them. He twitches in his corner of the cell, next to his torn pages, sniffles, but remains silent – and in that moment, he’s my dearest friend.
‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,’ I start, planting a kiss between Claret’s thick, dark brows. She shivers. ‘Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar.’ A kiss on one cheek, then the next, tracing an errant tear. My Claret is crying. ‘But never doubt I love –’
Her lips find mine first, accepting my confession, and in that moment I don’t fear any flame, any death, as long as I die next to her.
Then she breaks our kiss, breathless and shaky but still with the fervour of someone not yet ready to give up. ‘Yes. To all of that. Yet you know what vexes me the most?’ I feel her hand rummaging through my cloak. ‘We did exactly as the Moirai told us. We found our guide, we reached Shepherd’s domain. We both used our keys to save an innocent. So why –’ She fishes out my key, gets up and slams it into our cell’s lock.
I hold my breath. Will half-opens his eyes, hopeful, as Claret tries to get my key to unlock our cell door. I can already tell it’s not working, but she keeps trying. ‘Why won’t that blasted thing get us out of here? Why have they abandoned us?’
She’s making too much noise. The other prisoners haverisen from whatever shallow sleep they sought their solace in. The wailing resumes, the banging of the bars, the cries for help more frenetic than ever.
I take Claret’s hand in both of mine, giving it a gentle tug until she understands and gives up, relinquishing the key. ‘It won’t open,’ I tell her.
‘Perhaps I can help with that,’ whispers another voice, from outside the bars.
Claret and I take a surprised step back, as a woman dressed in black appears, seemingly out of nowhere.
Gruoch gives me the coldest look.
40. Claret
‘Perhaps I can help with that.’
Queen Mother Gruoch melts out of the shadows, so close to our cell I scramble back, surprised. The woman could have been a spectre if not for the softest jingle of keys on her skirt, the sound too similar to Shepherd’s draping necklace for my liking. But when I try my knife again, thinking to threaten Gruoch to let us out, I find it’s still lost in the depths of my cloak, wrapped out of reach. All I grasp is errant threads, loose strands of silk, like my cloak is breaking at the seams – a message from the Moirai if there ever was one.
Don’t fight this. Don’t cut any more threads. Wait.
So I wait, muzzled and powerless to pounce, as the same woman who ordered our capture mere hours ago now unlocks our prison door. Even Shakespeare doesn’t get up from his corner, perhaps too worn out from his last encounter with a royal of this line to drum up any hope that this visit could go better. That Gruoch can listen.
‘Did you know that yourson,’ Anassa hisses the word at her, ‘has us marked to burn as witches? Did you come to gloat, Queen Mother?’
Gruoch huffs. ‘I should strike you for your insolence; give you a matching scar on your other cheek. But Spiritwon’t let me sleep, and I’m tired of its incessant whispering, its infernal knocking. Night after night, it forces me to wander through this castle like a restless wraith, opening doors, searching for the source of its phantasmal discontent only to find it in the mirror.’
‘… You are as mad as your son,’ Shakespeare whispers.
The man voices my own thoughts.
‘If this be madness, you should welcome it. Now get up. Time is our foe. Hurry.’
Nobody moves. None of us can tell whether Gruoch has come to free us, or see us to a swifter death. But what choice do we have? If we anger her too much, she calls the guards – and we get some fresh bruises for our trouble. At least this way we stand a chance to run away. Decision made, I snap out of my daze, and rush to help Shakespeare to his feet. He stumbles but does hold his own. Anassa and Gruoch are locked into a staring competition, four green eyes foraging each other’s forest for the truth. Anassa breaks first, giving Gruoch the smallest bow, the smallest tilt of the head. She must have reached the same conclusion as I have: to comply, for now. Gruoch ushers us out and Anassa follows right behind her, a raven shadowing a shadow, while I take the rear with Shakespeare, making sure he won’t collapse. Sad supplications from the other prisoners mark our path across this reeking dungeon, but Gruoch ignores their plight, and there’s no way for me to free them that won’t damn us. These lives are not on me to save. But Shakespeare’s is. Anassa’s is. So I focus on my people, as Gruoch brings us to the staircase that leads upward, to the ground floor.
My raven stops abruptly, gasping. I rush to her, and seewhat has her spooked: two guards, sprawled across the last few steps. Sleeping – or dead.
‘They’ll be fine,’ Gruoch tells us. ‘It’s just a little tonic in their tea, to calm them down. The doctor has me taking it at night, but when I do, the nightmares are worse than my nocturnal wandering.’
‘You poisoned them,’ translates Anassa. I can’t tell if she sounds impressed or disappointed.
‘Only a little bit. Come now, watch your step.’ Gruoch places one foot carefully between the arm and torso of a fallen guard, over the head of another. The guards don’t move. I see no chests swelling up with breath, not even slightly. Still, not my problem. Not my murders. I wait for Anassa to go up, then help Shakespeare navigate the stairs.
He looks at the guards, aghast. ‘The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures …’
‘What?’ This is not a good time for him to also lose his mind on me.
‘Oh, nothing. You know, I’ve often wondered if I wrote Lady Macbeth too cruel, too calculated. If, in my pursuit of crafting an allegory for ambition, I strayed too far from what a human being could do or be.’ He manages a shaky step, miscalculating, squishing part of a guard’s finger with his foot. He flinches, freezing in place – but the guard remains as still as a corpse. ‘I see now that, if anything, I was restrained in my descriptions,’ Shakespeare concludes once we make it up, past the two fallen men who will most likely rise no more.
The smell of death and dread still lingers in my nostrils, even once we clear the staircase and find ourselves on the ground floor. The outer door is within sight but out ofreach; three metal men standing between us and escape. Gruoch signals us to be quiet. She reaches towards one of the many black drapes on the wall, lifting it from the side to reveal an open panel, concealed behind the onyx curtain.Come on,her gestures say.
