It was two weeks before I again returned to my lodgings and I viewed the shabby room with regret. Tom and I had lived under one roof and not spoken, except casually, in all that time. I had been but one of many guests and while Tom seemed to want the breach between us to be kept from public awareness, heal so seemed disinclined to heal it privately. Finally I had cited engagements in the city and fled back to London, hurt and bitter.
Little puffs of dust rose from the untidy piles of paper on my writing table as I shuffled through them. Tom had not recently made me any gifts of money and my purse was becoming slack indeed, but I could not seem to work. I dropped the pages and prowled around the room for a time, scowling at the greasy kitchen knave who brought my wine and lit my fire, then I sat down again.
I absentmindedly sharpened two quills into a heap of slivers then gave up entirely. I stripped off my clothing and threw myself onto the bed to sip the cheap Bastard wine, all I could currently afford. Thrift was not a natural virtue for me. I bitterly resented my forced economies, but with the pauper’s death of my fellow playwright, and bitter rival, Robert Greene as example, I fled any course that might land me in prison for debt. I had learned enough of prison in the time I had already spent in Newgate for dueling. My one tentative foray into supplying my wants by coining had led to an abrupt and embarrassing conclusion at the hands of Sir Robert Sidney, across the Channel in Flanders.
Though I had expected to toss for hours, sleep claimed me almost immediately that night, and I dreamed. I seldom had erotic dreams, but this night I dreamed of Rózsa. In reality I was an indifferent rider at best, but I dreamt that we were riding effortlessly through a wild and desolate countryside, her flowing hair unbound, red-raven-dark and burnished by the sun. She rode ahead, turning back to laugh and beckon, but try as I might, I could not catch up with her.
Things changed, as things will in dreams, and we were together by a waterfall that roared and shook the ground, where she once again undressed and took me, as though I were the woman and she the man. I woke with a start to realize that the room was candlelit and I was not alone. Rózsa was indeed here, just as I had dreamed. Her head was thrown back and I noticed her pointed canine teeth as she smiled, seeing that I woke. She leaned over, nuzzling my neck, never breaking her rhythm, and I felt the pain of her nipping teeth, fast followed as before by overwhelming bliss. As I drifted back to awareness I heard her dressing.” Please, stay,” I pleaded. “I—I’d fain not be alone this night.” Swiftly she crossed the room and took my hands in hers, leaning over to gently kiss my forehead and eyelids.
“I know, I know, my Kit. That’s why I am here: your pain called to me. I will return shortly—I am going for food and drink, for you have been neglecting yourself.” She donned her hat, swirled her cloak over her shoulders and with a backward wink to me was out the door. I lay back in my bed, the old, heavily-carved bed that had been an early gift from Tom, and waited. When she returned about half an hour later the watch was calling midnight and I was contemplating the stars over the rooftops. Orion had pulled on a ragged cloak of cloud as he sank into his western bed, trailed by Sirius, his dog, and Saturn, old Father Time. I leapt to my feet as Rózsa pushed the door open then sank back as the blood rushed from my head and the darkness grew on the edges of my sight. Instantly she was beside me, her arms around me.
“Steady, steady, my love. Did I not say that you had been neglecting yourself? When is the last time that you did eat? Yesterday you think? I think mayhap the day before. Come now and lie back and I will feed you.” She placed her long hand against my chest and pushed me resolutely back into my pillows. She had brought a dozen oysters that she expertly opened, tipping the shells against my