Bear, Elizabeth - The Ile of Dogges by Bear Elizabeth

Author:Bear, Elizabeth [Bear, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-30T15:43:24+00:00

“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 passed 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 glass 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 Baldassare,” 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. Baldassare 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 Baldassare 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,” Baldassare answered, when the silence had stretched a minute or two.

“Historian? But the play’s not three months old!”

Baldassare 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 Baldassare’s hand.

“It’s brilliant,” Baldassare 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.

Baldassare 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 Baldassare’s hand.

“Would you have it lost forever? Truly?” Baldassare 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 Baldassare.

“Maybe,” Baldassare 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

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