were very upset, but I told you I would gladly suffer more than that for you—”
“And you took the knife and slashed across the cut to carve a ‘T’ into your own flesh.” Walsingham’s voice, spent and colorless, rose to a note of hysteria. “No! You died! I know that you died—” he gabbled, his eyes flicking nervously to a small casket on a nearby table. His visitor raised an eyebrow and seemed to flow upright off the bed, a shadow crossing the room to open the small chest. Walsingham’s thoughts lurched again.
This man moved with the assurance and grace of an accomplished swordsman and duelist. Kit had never moved like that, could never move like that, and Kit had not been so tall, his face so angular nor his hair so dark. Walsingham watched, frozen, as the bloodstained handkerchief was lifted from its resting place, and then the man was back beside him, without seeming to have crossed the intervening space. Kryštof ’s face had gone even paler, except for two splotches of intense color splashing his flat cheekbones like the paint on one of Ralegh’s savages.
“Is this your idea of a memento, then,” he hissed, his single eye glittering. “Did he tell you how it was, Tommy? Did Frizer tell you what he did to me? Shall I tell you? Shall I tell you now?”
“He said it was quick, p-p-painless. He said that you—that K-kkit was drugged, and did not wake when—when—” Walsingham faltered, and fell silent before the younger man’s bitter laughter.
“When I was butchered? Oh aye, they drugged me, but I did wake, defenseless and beset by enemies, to hear them plotting my murder, and I knew I was powerless to stop them. Skeres held me down while Frizer gloated and showed me the dagger bought especially for my slaughter, then he stuffed my mouth with silk, with this, and he slid the dagger into my eye, slowly, so slowly that it seemed to last for hours. Try to imagine that, Tommy, the sheer agony, the helplessness, the despair.
“But even that was far from the worst, Tommy, far from it. Do you know what the worst of it was?” The voice was soft, softer than the defiled silk he held, and as terrifying, as implacable as death. “The worst thing was that I knew that you had sent him to murder me, that you had sent the one man who would most enjoy my vulnerability and suffering, to dispatch me like a dog for which you had no more use. That was the worst thing, Tommy.” Kryštof sat staring into space, his blind side towards Walsingham, twisting the handkerchief in his hands, and Sir Thomas realized that the whimpering sound he’d been hearing came from his own throat. He forced the back of his hand away from his mouth.
“You lie!” he said recklessly. “You cannot be Kit! Kit is dead, dead and buried. I do admit there is a resemblance, a slight one, but you’re too young—Kit was twenty-nine when he died, and you’re no more than five and twenty. Kit was, Kit was a scholar, and you cannot even read!” He hurled the last words with a scorn he hoped would cover the greensickness he felt. The handsome, maimed face turned towards him, the lips curled in a wry smile that Walsingham knew only too well, and he understood that, no matter how loudly he protested, his belief was written on his face.
“That is true, I cannot read,” Kryštof paused and held up the fingers of his left hand, unstained by ink for the first time in their acquaintance, “or write, Tom. That, too, was taken from me.” The long fingers caressed the patch he wore, then reached for Walsingham’s hand. He tried to jerk away but the grip on his wrist was steel. “That’s a fine jest, is it not? The one thing that made my life worth living . . . what makes your life worth living these days, Tommy? What could I possibly take from you in return?”
Walsingham whimpered again, and drove the words out through his closing throat. “Are you going to k-k-kill me,” he quavered.
“Why do you ask me that? Do you feel you deserve no less?” his companion said, grinning humorlessly. He leaned back on the pillows, pulling his unwilling victim with him, first stroking his hand, then forcibly pulling the rings from the puffy fingers. “You have let yourself go to seed since you’ve wed, Tom,” he said,