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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 lips. She alternated the shellfish with sips of
dark red claret and bites of sharp crumbly cheese, occasionally leaning over to
lick my lips and kiss me. It was pleasant to be waited on, to feel cared for
and safe. She had shed the