Read Online Any Man So Daring by Sarah A. Hoyt - Free Book Online

display of power from this woman. Will had come here, blindly, on Ned’s word. He’d not known what to expect, save cobwebs, exotic animals in jars and the hands and fingers of long-dead criminals on display or bubbling over the fire in noxious potions. He expected a crone, muttering curses and glaring at him with half-mad eyes.
    Instead, he’d found a kitchen not so different from his own kitchen at home, and a young woman not so different from how his own wife back home had looked ten years ago.
    But now, at last, she showed her otherworldly power, her true nature.
    Trembling, Will repressed an urge to leave while he could.   If she had such power to look into his mind and heart, he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t meddle with her. Yet if he meddled not with her, the ghost would stay with him. If there was a ghost.
    “You called me by name,” he said. “How did you know it?” Because if she could read his thoughts, she already knew his fears. Why did she not calm them?
    She turned around and laughed, an easy, young laughter that vibrated in the homey, food-scented air of the kitchen. “Not through my powers, Master Shakespeare, which, at any rate, I would disdain to use for such a purpose.” She reached to the shelf over the chimney and, from it, pulled a much-thumbed booklet, which she held up.  
    On the cover was an awful woodcut of Shakespeare himself. Beneath it, faded words proclaimed, The poems of William Shakespeare, the sweet swan of the Avon, his Venus & Adonis & the Rape Of Lucrece.
    It was not any edition that Will himself had authorized. Likely a print laboriously copied from the first editions and full of errors. Doubtless, sold more cheaply than the original print, though. As for the likeness, the best that could be said was that it was enough like him. Enough to recognize him.
    “But if you have no great powers...” Will said.
    The woman set her hands one on each side of her waist and grinned at him. “I did not say that. But I have more respect for my powers than to do tricks for you, like a pet witch, a tame witch, a juggler on the street corner.  
    “Those who do tricks, mind, are tricksters and swindlers and no-accounts, trying to get pennies from your pocket, nothing more.” She paused and looked wistful. “As for me, for years, I denied what I was. I would have no commerce with the supernatural, no part in witchcraft. I denied and resisted till the forces beyond took me and held me in their palms, and made a mockery of my reasons and senses. I denied till I ran about, with my hair unbound, insane and pursued by things none other could see.
    “Then did I come to heel and break to saddle, and take on the duties that must be mine. For that I work. Not for money, but for the peace that comes with doing what I’m meant to do. I do not show off. I am no juggler.” Turning her back on Will, she resumed stirring the pot. “And therefore you’ll tell me what troubles you have, or you’ll be gone. There’s the door and yonder the road, and I’ll wager you know your way well enough to your cozy quarters, your respectable rooms.”
    As she spoke, Will pictured the street outside: Shoreditch at its worst, with winding, narrow streets from which the hastily built five story buildings on either side excluded all sunlight and all fresh air.
    The streets he’d walked to get here were unaccustomed streets for the respectable burgher he’d become.
    He shouldn’t even be in this part of town. And yet he knew it well enough. It was but three years since he’d lived here, as had Marlowe, as still did many of the poorer actors.
    The thought of Marlowe again brought a chill, again the feeling of being watched, and Will imagined walking that street, alone, back to his quarters.  
    And, step on step, Marlowe’s steps would dog his, and, thought on thought, Marlowe’s voice would echo in his mind, mocking Will’s worries, smiling derisively at Will’s wit.
    Marlowe had been dead for three years.