[fic] The Worldsmith [Chapter Two] (Axis Powers Hetalia, England/America, others)
Hi guys. I apologize if I've been a bit of a flake lately -- I've got a lot on my plate, and juggling it all is iiiiinteresting, but I am going to be social tonight!
...on the Internet!
...this is not a contradiction in terms. Really.
Anyway, here's Chapter Two! This one has zombies in it, and England wanking about magical theory.
Title: The Worldsmith [Chapter Two: O What A Tangled Web We Weave]
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Characters: England, America; William Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Robert Devereaux, and assorted other actors, playmakers, peers, gentry, scoundrels, spies, and thieves.
Rating: This chapter is PG-13. Others will be higher.
Summary: Sent back in time to deal with a mysterious threat to England's nationhood, England and America contend with witchcraft, the undead, the power of language, and their own clashing personalities.
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two: In which England fights a zombie and converses with a hunchback.
Notes: This is also known as the "time travel and Shakespeare and zombies" fic. You'll see why.
America shoves England aside, and England’s foot naturally chooses the worst moment to catch on the steps. God knows how he manages to fall backwards, but he doesn’t break his nose, though the back of his head smarts like nothing else. “America?” he gasps, once the blackness before him ceases to swirl.
No response. Has he run off on his own, the damned ingrate? He won’t have gone far; England can’t have blacked out for long, and America knows nothing of this London, and it’s beastly cold outside, and America always has hated the cold. He stands, favouring his other ankle. The fae hover about him, chittering, but withdraw when the next footstep shakes the floor above him.
England breathes out slowly, deliberately, and crawls back up the steps, barely places any weight on them at all. The thing upstairs shows no such caution. Thud, thud, thud-the sound drowns out England’s heartbeat.
He nears the top of the steps, barely pokes his head through the opening for all the good it does. The dark remains thick as ever, and at best England can see shadows, shadows rising and falling and blurring. What he wouldn’t do for a Hand of Glory-what he wouldn’t do for any hint, any knowledge, any chance to prepare for what he’s been thrust into.
Were America here, England reflects, no doubt he’d charge blindly into the darkness. Inwardly, England sighs. He ought to track him down, keep him from sowing the sort of disruption he seems to breed, and find some place for them to recover that isn’t a dead man’s quarters-
The fae shriek in alarm, and something slams into England’s temple.
Again, it’s a miracle he doesn’t fall down the steps. He lands hard on his arse, but if it’ll spare him a concussion, he’ll take it. Groaning, he springs to his feet, rubs his head. Fuck, that blow was harder than he’d have liked, whatever struck him felt strong as America-
-and the thing that struck him seizes him by the neck and hauls him into the air, his legs flailing. He claws into the hand throttling him, slams his knees into every inch of flesh he can reach-so the thing’s human, or shaped like one, the part of his brain not desperately searching for air remarks-but its grip doesn’t waver. Stars explode behind his eyes, but it’s hardly light he can see by-
“Light,” he calls out with what breath he can manage, “Joan the Wad-one of you, damn it-”
The flare strikes him unsuspecting, but the effect’s worse on the creature; it staggers backwards, and England slams his head into the thing’s skull. It hurts him more than it hurts the creature, most likely, but it does groan and drop him, and England scrambles to his feet, the pixie-lights keeping the dark at bay.
Shaped like a man, he’d thought, and he was right: the creature is a man, or rather was. The differences are subtle to the mortal eye, perhaps, but England sees them all. Its grubby flesh hangs from it like too-loose clothing in places, the reek of grave-dirt clings to it, and as the creature advances a worm threads through its eyeball.
“Merlin’s beard,” England breathes. This-this is wrong, this is terribly wrong. He remembers no creatures like this from Elizabeth’s England, no, not even the revenants, and he doesn’t need the fae clamoring at him to sense the wrongness the thing exudes with each step. Each quickening step, England might add. The thing’s apparently sensitive to the light, but it’s regaining its footing, and it lunges for England, who slams into the desk as he dodges. The cup crashes to the floor, and Spenser’s body slumps forward.
England calls on the fae again, draws on their power to cast his wards as swiftly as he can, but the thing punches him in the gut before he can incant the last syllable. Good god, is it learning? Fuck. He gasps, ducks under the next blow only to find himself flattened against the edge of the desk, the thing reaching for him, the smell of death drawing nearer.
Forgive me, he thinks, and seizes Spenser’s chair, shoves it-and Spenser-towards the creature. The chair topples onto it, and it’s pinned by Spenser’s corpse, however briefly-really, it’s almost funny, England could laugh except the thought of it hurts his chest. Before the creature flings Spenser aside, England chants the strongest binding spell he knows, chants so quickly he almost slurs the syllables. It still isn’t fast enough, the pixie-light is fading and the creature has him by the arm and is trying to pry it from its socket-he has no time, he needs to draw on what he has-
He bites his thumb until blood wells, smears it on the creature’s chest, and commands, “My blood is the sea, and the sea calls-”
The creature’s dragged back as though by a tide, and England slumps, barely breathing. What water remains in its body surges and swells until the thing looks ready to burst, its skin stretching thinner and thinner.
“Hold,” England commands; the swelling stops, and the creature doesn’t, can’t move with limbs that distended, but the tide drags at England’s bones now. God, he’ll pay the price for this later. For now, while he can still haul himself upright, he grabs the chair and bashes the thing about the head until it stops twitching, or until his arms stop shaking, or both.
“Bugger,” he says, more raggedly than he’d like. He glances out the window: snow settles on the street, but not a person or Nation is in sight. Sodding hell, he’s going to have to chase after America, isn’t he. That damned-he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and with things as they are, England’s not entirely sure he can’t get himself hurt, even with that strength of his, hurt or worse. No, no, it doesn’t bear thinking about, he can’t get morbid even if there are two fucking corpses in the room.
“Look for him,” he says to some of the fae. “One of you, some of you, all of you-I don’t care, however many of you it takes to canvass this city, I just want him found.”
Perhaps a third of them draw closer to England, show him the glamour they wove to hide his fight from prying eyes. They spin the shadows into four silhouettes: three unremarkable, and one all too familiar.
England tells the lump in his throat to stuff it. No, America wouldn’t let himself get abducted. Silly to even think of it. Utterly, wretchedly silly, America himself would decry it as preposterous.
Oh god, what has he gotten himself into?
England swallows, says, “Find those men, and when you do, inform me immediately.”
They depart, and he surveys the corpse-well, corpses-again. Spenser’s he ought to treat with more dignity than this. Grunting, he hauls the dead man onto his bed, and though he can’t quite get the covers to settle over him properly, he can at least cross his arms over his chest-
He stops, turns Spenser’s wrist over. No, that wasn’t a shadow, there is something on the back of his left hand, a symbol burnt into the flesh. Not long before death, from the looks of it; England may not have France’s intimate acquaintance with death, but he knows its signs well enough. This symbol, though, isn’t familiar to him: a figure with eight points, scored through with lines too fine to make out in the still-dim light.
“Oh, Edmund,” England breathes, “what did you do?”
Or what was done to you, he doesn’t say. But the words linger at the back of his mind, unspoken.
He crouches by the creature’s corpse next; now that it’s dead and not merely undead, its appearance is less remarkable, considering. After the job England did on its head, it’s difficult to make out any of the thing’s salient features, but its hair seems to have a reddish tinge to it, one not entirely due to blood. Its clothes are common, if coarse, and England doubts that the man would have been anything to take notice of in life, but well, he’s made a spectacle of himself in death, hasn’t he.
And the dead aren’t prone to doing that. England rubs his palms over his eyes, summons the fae, and sets to work. He found no geas on Spenser, but someone must have been controlling this creature’s actions, dead men aren’t often found lurking in the apartments of the living-God and the Grail, it is almost funny.
“What magic made you walk?” he says, half to the fae, half to himself. “Old or new, human or not?”
The threads of power surrounding the creature are starting to dissolve, and England snatches at their strands and follows them to the source before they can. Enchantments for strength, yes, he recognises those, woven together with spells to grant the creature a base array of senses, but what’s really remarkable is how they’re all linked: an incantation serves almost as a warp for the other spells, strengthening each and strengthened by them in turn until they create a pattern, one that repeats and repeats. There’s something almost iambic about it, in the order of when the magics peak and when they fall. Yes, it’s deft work. He hasn’t seen craftsmanship like this in centuries. England picks at the spells as delicately as he can until the pattern emerges as a stark phrase in his mind: ius sine clementia.
Justice without mercy.
He should know those words. He doesn’t. Shit. England wipes off what’s left of the blood on his thumb, gets back to his examination. He almost loses himself entirely in the subtleties until the fae tug at his sleeves and hair and point out the geas he’d been looking for, slapped over the beautiful spellwork like a crude overlay. Well, that’s simple enough to unravel.
Lie in wait for Spenser’s guest, it says. When he arrives, kill him.
The temperature in the room plummets, or perhaps only England’s stomach does.
He weaves a glamour to hide the creature as quickly as he can; it ought to hold for days, long enough for him to return and get rid of the body properly later. “See if you can trace those spells to their source,” he tells the deftest among the fae, though at the rate the spells are fading, he hasn’t much hope. Again, he rubs his eyes, massages his temples. He’s chasing too many damned threads, and he’s no idea how any of them are bound together.
Time to visit someone who might, then. And should America return to this house-well. England swallows again. The fae will tell him. Perhaps it’s better America didn’t witness this; doubtless he’d have interrupted England every half-minute to tease him. Besides, the walking dead give him nightmares.
(But if he had been there, if he had seen, and wondered, and closed his eyes and truly listened for the fae-England can see his smile shift from astonished to delighted, almost as though America were there before him-)
He ought to go. The second cocks crow is almost upon him, and god help him if he’s caught here then.
It’s only as he creeps down the stairs, carrying Spenser’s pewter cup and muttering Spenser’s verses, that he recalls the origin of that phrase; he nearly drops the cup, but catches himself in time.
Justice without mercy.
“His name was Talus, made of iron mould,” England recites, “immoveable, restless, without end.”
The creature was flesh and not iron, but its similarities to Artegall’s metal servant in The Faerie Queene are-striking, if perverse. But why in god’s name would Spenser weave a spell that led to his own destruction?
“This is Frankenstinian,” England says, “and it sodding well isn’t period-appropriate.”
***
The hour at which England calls upon Sir Robert Cecil is indecent by any century’s standards, even the twentieth’s. Fortunately, Elizabeth’s secretary of state sleeps lightly, if at all.
“I do wish you would use the door,” Cecil says as England climbs through the window. “The draught is dreadful.”
“My apologies; I had not the time.”
Cecil grunts, makes an effort to climb out of bed. England bids him sit, his twisted back propped against the headboard for support-my pygmy, Bess used to call him, though England has never met a pygmy, he imagines they would look much like Sir Robert: stooped, hunchbacked, stout. But Greece’s pygmies are said to be right fair and gentle, and one doesn’t become England’s spymaster by being gentle, even if the position is inherited. “What business is it that calls you at this hour?” Cecil asks.
“Thou needst not address me so,” England says. “Thou knowest me well, I should think.”
“‘Tis my office, good Nation,” says Cecil, inclining his head. “Thy dress is strange.”
He laughs, briefly. “Wouldst not believe me if I told thee why I was attired so.”
“Would I not? I have seen many a strange sight.”
“And art about to see stranger, I shouldn’t wonder,” England says, takes his seat at last in Cecil’s chair. The speech is coming back to him readily enough; he wonders how America’s faring with it, if America’s had to speak with anyone since he fled.
All right, he supposes he can crack a smile at that thought.
“What news does my Nation have for me?” Cecil asks. The man’s awake now, and from the way his eyes dart England imagines he’s cataloguing what he sees, sorting through the details of this visit and England’s dress and god knows what else and filing them away for future reference. No doubt his father would be proud, were he here.
“What news I have I will share,” England says. “But I require news of thee first. And a blanket, if thou canst spare one.”
“Whatever my Nation requires.” The set of Cecil’s mouth can’t quite be called a smile. He gestures to the trunk at the foot of his bed, which England sets to opening at once. His fingers have stiffened far too much from the cold already. “I am but his servant.”
“Shows of humility suit thee ill,” England says, snorting, and draws out the warmest-looking blanket of all of them, drapes it about his shoulders like a cloak. “Thou knowest me well, aye, and just as well do I know thee.” Hell, he might well know Cecil better than he knows himself, as he’s privileged to know several things about him that Cecil himself won’t discover for a few years. (Perhaps he really ought to have a word with the man about the Gunpowder Plot-but no, there’s time for that later, if at all.)
“Then thou knowest I am thy servant.”
He laughs. “Robert Cecil,” he says, “I know I can trust thee as far as I can throw thee.”
For a moment he wonders if Cecil even knows the meaning of that expression-his eyes narrow, his mouth twisting smaller, but then he too bursts out laughing. “Ay, and thine arm is weaker than even mine.”
“My arm is not weaker than thine.” England crosses them, flexing the muscle just enough. “When didst thou last draw a bloody longbow?” He might not have America’s strength, but-
America. England casts an anxious look out the window, wraps the blanket tighter ‘round his shoulders. The fae did promise to send word when they found him, but few of them like to accompany England into Cecil’s house; it reeks of iron, they tell him, iron and leather and other things crafted by men. Perhaps one of the fae found America, but fears to come in. Well, he oughtn’t tarry long, then. Doubtless Cecil will want his sleep.
“I yield,” Cecil says, holds his hands high, his smile not entirely gone. He ought to do it more often; it doesn’t make him handsome, precisely, but it enlivens his face. “Truly, thou givest me more trust than some.”
Considering how far I could throw you, yes, I suppose it’s nothing to sneeze at, England thinks, but doesn’t say. There are jests, and then there’s cruelty. “I trust thee to be what thou art.”
“And what is that? Nay,” he says, forestalling England, “needst not tell me, I have it from her Majesty and Essex oft enough, my Nation need not join in.”
“Her Majesty and Essex are speaking again?” England asks, tries to recall his own history. This is January of 1599; they’ll have been quarreling recently, though it’s hardly a new state of affairs for them. Again, England sighs. He did warn Bess that young men were not nearly so biddable as she thought them, but they’re all young men now, aren’t they? Leicester, Walsingham, Warwick, Hatton: all dead now, and what have they left behind?
“Ay, of a sort,” Cecil says, and doesn’t mask the note of smugness in his voice. England doesn’t begrudge him it. “He will not apologize for turning his back to her and reaching for his sword, she will not apologize for laying hands on him, but he is returned to court, and she has named him lord lieutenant of Ireland.”
“This does not displease thee.”
“The appointment is doomed,” Cecil says. “The Irish posting is poison, and all the court knows it. And it will keep that impertinent lout from Her Majesty’s side.”
“Ay, it will,” England agrees. “And it’s an ill-favored post, I’ll not argue with that.” Certainly not after knowing where the post leads Essex: to the Tower of London, and the chopping-block.
“And a venture bound to break our banks. We cannot sustain all these wars, my Nation-war with Spain’s merchants, war in the Low Countries-”
“And war with my sister,” England finishes. “I know, Cecil.”
“Had we made peace with Spain before the rout at Blackwater-” Cecil shakes his head, and his hunched shoulders lower. “My father did try.”
“He tried valiantly.”
“Ay, and died in the midst of the trying, only for Essex to take my father’s place by her Majesty’s ear.”
“She listens to thee,” England says, resists the urge to rub his eyes. Oh, what a tangled web is woven here; he navigated it all once, knew the steps to the careful dance Bess played with her court and with the Continent, laughed with her as she withheld and redirected and teased, made thousands of promises that promised nothing. But those days were centuries ago-or were, at any rate, before something dragged him back. And if he is as out of practise as he suspects, he’s buggered.
And America with him. He steals another glance out the window. How long does it take the fae to search a city, even one London’s size? It isn’t as though America’s any good at not drawing attention to himself.
Cecil snorts, scratches his back, winces as the wind beats itself against the window (now closed, thankfully). “Ay, when it suits her. Jesu, hast thou ever met such a woman?”
“Nay.” Nor shall he again. He tears his gaze from the window. “But she is more than woman.”
Cecil makes a dry bureaucratic sound, almost an ah. “Thou hast read Spenser’s poem, then?”
“Of Gloriana?” England would smile, but he can’t remember Spenser’s verses without seeing that black mark seared onto the back of his hand. “Ay. ‘Twas Spenser I came to thee about.”
Cecil glances at his desk, not at the papers scattered atop it but at the drawer on the top right, the one with a false bottom where he keeps the bulk of his correspondences. “He has fallen out of favor with Essex, it seems, or Essex with him. He takes a room on Kings Street and sends letters to his friends at court, seeking loans-but none to Essex, and Essex has sent him nothing.”
“‘Twould do Spenser little good, were he to send it now,” England says. “Spenser is dead.”
“Merciful heavens,” Cecil breathes, and what little colour there is in his face drains from it. “When?”
“Just this night.”
“How?”
Murder most foul certainly hasn’t crept into the vernacular yet, so England leaves it at, “Murder.”
“Thou art certain of it?”
“Ay,” he says. “I smelt the poison in the cup, and he told me as much with his dying breath.”
“Did he name his killer?”
England shakes his head. “He said only to find Will Shakespeare.”
“The playmaker?”
“Ay, the playmaker. Thy father’s playmaker,” England says, and before Cecil’s eyes can narrow any further, adds, “and he is not the murderer.”
“Were I to die, I would name the man who killed me,” Cecil says, strokes his chin in thought. “And the playmakers are a violent lot.”
“Not all of them-”
“Gabriel Spencer?” Cecil cuts in.
“The man came at him with a candlestick; it was self-defence.”
“And Ben Jonson slew him in self-defence?”
“Ben Jonson is, perhaps, too fond of dueling,” England admits through gritted teeth.
Cecil’s face is at its most placid, which still isn’t very placid at all, not with how his eyes glitter, not with the edge of his nose gleaming sharp in the starlight. “To say nothing of Christopher Marlowe.”
-England stands and slams Cecil’s chair to the side, his knuckles trembling around the wood. “You will do me the courtesy of leaving him be,” he says, emphasizes the you.
“Would that he had done the same-”
“I said enough!” England shouts, and the glass rings with the force of it. Even the fae shrink back, and England’s glare keeps them at bay until the pounding of his heart slows to something manageable. Fuck. He runs his fingers through his hair, looks askance. This has been a fucking awful day, he decides, so fucking awful that he can’t think of a word strong enough to describe it. Well, if he runs into Will, he’ll ask for his help on that.
Kit’s been dead for four hundred six years, you, he reminds himself. Or six, now, but the result’s the same, isn’t it?
“I will never understand your fondness for the theatres,” Cecil says, shifting into the same mode of speech England adopted, and draws his blankets closer to his chin.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” England mutters, “you’re a Puritan.”
“Come again?”
“Pay it no mind.”
“My Nation,” Cecil says, a bit stiffly.
“I want your men to search for Spenser’s murderer,” he says, hesitates. “Yours, and Dee’s.”
Cecil blanches; it’s visible even in the silver of the starlight, tinges even his beard ashen. “Dee, my Nation?”
“A mark was burnt on the back of Spenser’s hand,” England says, grimly, “and I was attacked by something that ought to have lain dead.”
England only catches half of the oaths Cecil mutters under his breath, but he’s impressed to see Cecil blaspheme so well. Why, he didn’t know the man had it in him. “A goat, Cecil?”
“Never mind the goat,” Cecil says, jerks his hand to the side as though to brush the matter away, “this is a matter of-”
“Sorcery, yes.”
“I like not what that portends.” Cecil’s fingers curl tighter around the coverlet.
“Nor I, Cecil. Nor I.”
Something tugs at the nape of his neck; England clasps his hand to his hair and pulls a pixie away. She chitters at him, too quickly at first, but once England bids her to slow her speech, he makes out her message.
“It appears I’ve found Will Shakespeare,” he says, just as the cock crows for the third time. Dawn will be breaking soon. Cecil draws his eyebrows together, but says nothing. He’s been privy to such conversations before, he knows how they work. “I will see what part he plays in this. Thank you,” he tells the pixie, “and search for a young man-well, not a man, you know what I-hm?”
“I asked if the magics you saw were familiar to you,” Cecil says.
God, England’s tired, everything makes him want to laugh. The pixie still tugs at his sleeve; he bids her leave for the moment, doubtless he'll have a chance to learn more from her later. “Cecil, this is all most strange and most familiar all at once. Wouldst thou like to know a secret?”
“I am always in the market for new ones,” he admits.
“I’m dressed as I am because I am most strange and most familiar. I come from the future. Thy future,” he continues, and perhaps he’s only confessing this because it’s been centuries since he’s seen Cecil start at anything, but the start he gives is one of the best England’s seen. “I am thy Nation, four hundred years hence.”
“I have never known thee to jest so, my Nation,” Cecil says, as though the words themselves feel strange on his tongue.
“It’s no jest.”
“Then why tell me this?”
“Because if thou speakst of it to anyone, they will think thee mad,” England says quite conversationally. “And to illustrate something, perhaps. I have what I was within me still. I am the Nation you know, and other things beside.” Which would explain why he hasn’t encountered a second version of himself, come to think of it.
“Ay,” Cecil says, his brow still knotted.
“Thy father, likewise, is with thee still-but thou wilt be other things beside him.”
At last, Cecil’s brow softens. “An almost pagan sentiment, my Nation.”
“Oh, it is.”
***
Judging from the shouts swelling behind the tavern doors, Shakespeare and the Chamberlain’s Men are either rehearsing or arguing. Knowing what England does of actors, he suspects both. Terrible etiquette to interrupt a rehearsal, but he does so regardless, seizes the door’s handle with both hands and heaves it over.
“Sir Kirkland!” Thomas Pope cries, spotting him.
England smiles. “Well met, Master Pope.”
Even Kemp rises from the table, script in one hand, ale in the other. “Welcome, Sir Kirkland!”
“Wait. Sir Kirkland?” America says, spinning around on the bench-
-America.
“You!” England shouts.
“Me?”
“Master Jones?” asks Kemp, thumps America on the back to stop him from choking on whatever he’s shoved in his fool mouth.
“Master Jones?” England echoes, the colour rising in his cheeks. Is this the fae's idea of a joke?
Well. Yes, most likely. Damned little buggers.
“Sir Kirkland?” America sputters, attempting to roll his eyes and hack up something at the same time, which fails spectacularly.
Augustine Phillips clears his throat. “Sir Kirkland?”
England gestures violently to America, means to say what the fucking hell is he doing here? but all he manages is, “Master Jones!”
“Master Jones?” Phillips repeats, frowning.
“Yes! Master Jones!”
“I daresay,” says Will Shakespeare, descending the steps and trying desperately not to laugh from the way the corners of his mouth twitch, “that explanations are in order.”
---
--
Dialect notes, again:
Obviously, I’m not writing this thing in full-out Elizabethan, because I’m not that footnote-crazy, and quite frankly I don’t trust myself to. I’ve tried to keep in a few elements of Elizabethan speech for flavor, though, and I’ll explain those here.
First, the pronouns! Elizabethan pronouns are pretty similar to ours, except they had an informal “you” pronoun, thou. (It’s like the tu/Usted distinction in Spanish.) You use “thou” for inferiors and people you’re close to in informal contexts, and it’s a bit rude to thou people you aren’t familiar with-so when the guards switch over to using thou with America, they’re trying to put him in his place. Thou is declined like so:
Subject: thou. (Thou liest, shag-eared villain!)
Direct/indirect object: thee. (I give thee thanks, or Let me clutch thee.)
Possessive: thy (thy face), or thine before a vowel. (thine eye).
They also had ye for the second-person plural, though there’s increasing usage of “you” for both singular AND plural second-person.
Verb endings are mostly the same, except for second- and third-person singular. Let’s look at the verb to have:
I have
Thou hast/You have
He hath
We had
You/Ye had
They had
I’m mostly omitting the -eth/th ending on the third person singular in this fic, because it reads weird to modern eyes, but it might crop up with a few words.
Robert Cecil was kind of a dick, but he was good at his job. He took over the position of secretary of state from his father, Lord Burghley, and the position of spymaster from Sir Francis Walsingham, and was Elizabeth’s foremost advisor in the last years of her reign. He was also small and hunchbacked, so he didn’t quite get the same respect his father got. He and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex really didn’t get along. At all. They both vied for the queen’s favor, and Bess liked to play them off each other when she could. At the time of the fic, she and Essex were on decidedly cool terms because Essex was a lot less willing to defer to her authority than her other favorites had been, and you can imagine how well she took that.
Also, there’s this war with Ireland going on, and it’s not going too well. Elizabeth is about to send Essex there as her lord deputy, and Essex is-well, you’ll find out more about Ireland soon.
And Ben Jonson killed a dude. Actors really were violent back then. Didn’t help that most of them knew how to fence and liked to drink.
It might help to have some background on The Faerie Queene, too.
There might be a two-week break between this chapter and the next, given exam season and all that, but believe you me, this project is anything but abandoned.
.
...on the Internet!
...this is not a contradiction in terms. Really.
Anyway, here's Chapter Two! This one has zombies in it, and England wanking about magical theory.
Title: The Worldsmith [Chapter Two: O What A Tangled Web We Weave]
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Characters: England, America; William Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Robert Devereaux, and assorted other actors, playmakers, peers, gentry, scoundrels, spies, and thieves.
Rating: This chapter is PG-13. Others will be higher.
Summary: Sent back in time to deal with a mysterious threat to England's nationhood, England and America contend with witchcraft, the undead, the power of language, and their own clashing personalities.
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two: In which England fights a zombie and converses with a hunchback.
Notes: This is also known as the "time travel and Shakespeare and zombies" fic. You'll see why.
America shoves England aside, and England’s foot naturally chooses the worst moment to catch on the steps. God knows how he manages to fall backwards, but he doesn’t break his nose, though the back of his head smarts like nothing else. “America?” he gasps, once the blackness before him ceases to swirl.
No response. Has he run off on his own, the damned ingrate? He won’t have gone far; England can’t have blacked out for long, and America knows nothing of this London, and it’s beastly cold outside, and America always has hated the cold. He stands, favouring his other ankle. The fae hover about him, chittering, but withdraw when the next footstep shakes the floor above him.
England breathes out slowly, deliberately, and crawls back up the steps, barely places any weight on them at all. The thing upstairs shows no such caution. Thud, thud, thud-the sound drowns out England’s heartbeat.
He nears the top of the steps, barely pokes his head through the opening for all the good it does. The dark remains thick as ever, and at best England can see shadows, shadows rising and falling and blurring. What he wouldn’t do for a Hand of Glory-what he wouldn’t do for any hint, any knowledge, any chance to prepare for what he’s been thrust into.
Were America here, England reflects, no doubt he’d charge blindly into the darkness. Inwardly, England sighs. He ought to track him down, keep him from sowing the sort of disruption he seems to breed, and find some place for them to recover that isn’t a dead man’s quarters-
The fae shriek in alarm, and something slams into England’s temple.
Again, it’s a miracle he doesn’t fall down the steps. He lands hard on his arse, but if it’ll spare him a concussion, he’ll take it. Groaning, he springs to his feet, rubs his head. Fuck, that blow was harder than he’d have liked, whatever struck him felt strong as America-
-and the thing that struck him seizes him by the neck and hauls him into the air, his legs flailing. He claws into the hand throttling him, slams his knees into every inch of flesh he can reach-so the thing’s human, or shaped like one, the part of his brain not desperately searching for air remarks-but its grip doesn’t waver. Stars explode behind his eyes, but it’s hardly light he can see by-
“Light,” he calls out with what breath he can manage, “Joan the Wad-one of you, damn it-”
The flare strikes him unsuspecting, but the effect’s worse on the creature; it staggers backwards, and England slams his head into the thing’s skull. It hurts him more than it hurts the creature, most likely, but it does groan and drop him, and England scrambles to his feet, the pixie-lights keeping the dark at bay.
Shaped like a man, he’d thought, and he was right: the creature is a man, or rather was. The differences are subtle to the mortal eye, perhaps, but England sees them all. Its grubby flesh hangs from it like too-loose clothing in places, the reek of grave-dirt clings to it, and as the creature advances a worm threads through its eyeball.
“Merlin’s beard,” England breathes. This-this is wrong, this is terribly wrong. He remembers no creatures like this from Elizabeth’s England, no, not even the revenants, and he doesn’t need the fae clamoring at him to sense the wrongness the thing exudes with each step. Each quickening step, England might add. The thing’s apparently sensitive to the light, but it’s regaining its footing, and it lunges for England, who slams into the desk as he dodges. The cup crashes to the floor, and Spenser’s body slumps forward.
England calls on the fae again, draws on their power to cast his wards as swiftly as he can, but the thing punches him in the gut before he can incant the last syllable. Good god, is it learning? Fuck. He gasps, ducks under the next blow only to find himself flattened against the edge of the desk, the thing reaching for him, the smell of death drawing nearer.
Forgive me, he thinks, and seizes Spenser’s chair, shoves it-and Spenser-towards the creature. The chair topples onto it, and it’s pinned by Spenser’s corpse, however briefly-really, it’s almost funny, England could laugh except the thought of it hurts his chest. Before the creature flings Spenser aside, England chants the strongest binding spell he knows, chants so quickly he almost slurs the syllables. It still isn’t fast enough, the pixie-light is fading and the creature has him by the arm and is trying to pry it from its socket-he has no time, he needs to draw on what he has-
He bites his thumb until blood wells, smears it on the creature’s chest, and commands, “My blood is the sea, and the sea calls-”
The creature’s dragged back as though by a tide, and England slumps, barely breathing. What water remains in its body surges and swells until the thing looks ready to burst, its skin stretching thinner and thinner.
“Hold,” England commands; the swelling stops, and the creature doesn’t, can’t move with limbs that distended, but the tide drags at England’s bones now. God, he’ll pay the price for this later. For now, while he can still haul himself upright, he grabs the chair and bashes the thing about the head until it stops twitching, or until his arms stop shaking, or both.
“Bugger,” he says, more raggedly than he’d like. He glances out the window: snow settles on the street, but not a person or Nation is in sight. Sodding hell, he’s going to have to chase after America, isn’t he. That damned-he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and with things as they are, England’s not entirely sure he can’t get himself hurt, even with that strength of his, hurt or worse. No, no, it doesn’t bear thinking about, he can’t get morbid even if there are two fucking corpses in the room.
“Look for him,” he says to some of the fae. “One of you, some of you, all of you-I don’t care, however many of you it takes to canvass this city, I just want him found.”
Perhaps a third of them draw closer to England, show him the glamour they wove to hide his fight from prying eyes. They spin the shadows into four silhouettes: three unremarkable, and one all too familiar.
England tells the lump in his throat to stuff it. No, America wouldn’t let himself get abducted. Silly to even think of it. Utterly, wretchedly silly, America himself would decry it as preposterous.
Oh god, what has he gotten himself into?
England swallows, says, “Find those men, and when you do, inform me immediately.”
They depart, and he surveys the corpse-well, corpses-again. Spenser’s he ought to treat with more dignity than this. Grunting, he hauls the dead man onto his bed, and though he can’t quite get the covers to settle over him properly, he can at least cross his arms over his chest-
He stops, turns Spenser’s wrist over. No, that wasn’t a shadow, there is something on the back of his left hand, a symbol burnt into the flesh. Not long before death, from the looks of it; England may not have France’s intimate acquaintance with death, but he knows its signs well enough. This symbol, though, isn’t familiar to him: a figure with eight points, scored through with lines too fine to make out in the still-dim light.
“Oh, Edmund,” England breathes, “what did you do?”
Or what was done to you, he doesn’t say. But the words linger at the back of his mind, unspoken.
He crouches by the creature’s corpse next; now that it’s dead and not merely undead, its appearance is less remarkable, considering. After the job England did on its head, it’s difficult to make out any of the thing’s salient features, but its hair seems to have a reddish tinge to it, one not entirely due to blood. Its clothes are common, if coarse, and England doubts that the man would have been anything to take notice of in life, but well, he’s made a spectacle of himself in death, hasn’t he.
And the dead aren’t prone to doing that. England rubs his palms over his eyes, summons the fae, and sets to work. He found no geas on Spenser, but someone must have been controlling this creature’s actions, dead men aren’t often found lurking in the apartments of the living-God and the Grail, it is almost funny.
“What magic made you walk?” he says, half to the fae, half to himself. “Old or new, human or not?”
The threads of power surrounding the creature are starting to dissolve, and England snatches at their strands and follows them to the source before they can. Enchantments for strength, yes, he recognises those, woven together with spells to grant the creature a base array of senses, but what’s really remarkable is how they’re all linked: an incantation serves almost as a warp for the other spells, strengthening each and strengthened by them in turn until they create a pattern, one that repeats and repeats. There’s something almost iambic about it, in the order of when the magics peak and when they fall. Yes, it’s deft work. He hasn’t seen craftsmanship like this in centuries. England picks at the spells as delicately as he can until the pattern emerges as a stark phrase in his mind: ius sine clementia.
Justice without mercy.
He should know those words. He doesn’t. Shit. England wipes off what’s left of the blood on his thumb, gets back to his examination. He almost loses himself entirely in the subtleties until the fae tug at his sleeves and hair and point out the geas he’d been looking for, slapped over the beautiful spellwork like a crude overlay. Well, that’s simple enough to unravel.
Lie in wait for Spenser’s guest, it says. When he arrives, kill him.
The temperature in the room plummets, or perhaps only England’s stomach does.
He weaves a glamour to hide the creature as quickly as he can; it ought to hold for days, long enough for him to return and get rid of the body properly later. “See if you can trace those spells to their source,” he tells the deftest among the fae, though at the rate the spells are fading, he hasn’t much hope. Again, he rubs his eyes, massages his temples. He’s chasing too many damned threads, and he’s no idea how any of them are bound together.
Time to visit someone who might, then. And should America return to this house-well. England swallows again. The fae will tell him. Perhaps it’s better America didn’t witness this; doubtless he’d have interrupted England every half-minute to tease him. Besides, the walking dead give him nightmares.
(But if he had been there, if he had seen, and wondered, and closed his eyes and truly listened for the fae-England can see his smile shift from astonished to delighted, almost as though America were there before him-)
He ought to go. The second cocks crow is almost upon him, and god help him if he’s caught here then.
It’s only as he creeps down the stairs, carrying Spenser’s pewter cup and muttering Spenser’s verses, that he recalls the origin of that phrase; he nearly drops the cup, but catches himself in time.
Justice without mercy.
“His name was Talus, made of iron mould,” England recites, “immoveable, restless, without end.”
The creature was flesh and not iron, but its similarities to Artegall’s metal servant in The Faerie Queene are-striking, if perverse. But why in god’s name would Spenser weave a spell that led to his own destruction?
“This is Frankenstinian,” England says, “and it sodding well isn’t period-appropriate.”
***
The hour at which England calls upon Sir Robert Cecil is indecent by any century’s standards, even the twentieth’s. Fortunately, Elizabeth’s secretary of state sleeps lightly, if at all.
“I do wish you would use the door,” Cecil says as England climbs through the window. “The draught is dreadful.”
“My apologies; I had not the time.”
Cecil grunts, makes an effort to climb out of bed. England bids him sit, his twisted back propped against the headboard for support-my pygmy, Bess used to call him, though England has never met a pygmy, he imagines they would look much like Sir Robert: stooped, hunchbacked, stout. But Greece’s pygmies are said to be right fair and gentle, and one doesn’t become England’s spymaster by being gentle, even if the position is inherited. “What business is it that calls you at this hour?” Cecil asks.
“Thou needst not address me so,” England says. “Thou knowest me well, I should think.”
“‘Tis my office, good Nation,” says Cecil, inclining his head. “Thy dress is strange.”
He laughs, briefly. “Wouldst not believe me if I told thee why I was attired so.”
“Would I not? I have seen many a strange sight.”
“And art about to see stranger, I shouldn’t wonder,” England says, takes his seat at last in Cecil’s chair. The speech is coming back to him readily enough; he wonders how America’s faring with it, if America’s had to speak with anyone since he fled.
All right, he supposes he can crack a smile at that thought.
“What news does my Nation have for me?” Cecil asks. The man’s awake now, and from the way his eyes dart England imagines he’s cataloguing what he sees, sorting through the details of this visit and England’s dress and god knows what else and filing them away for future reference. No doubt his father would be proud, were he here.
“What news I have I will share,” England says. “But I require news of thee first. And a blanket, if thou canst spare one.”
“Whatever my Nation requires.” The set of Cecil’s mouth can’t quite be called a smile. He gestures to the trunk at the foot of his bed, which England sets to opening at once. His fingers have stiffened far too much from the cold already. “I am but his servant.”
“Shows of humility suit thee ill,” England says, snorting, and draws out the warmest-looking blanket of all of them, drapes it about his shoulders like a cloak. “Thou knowest me well, aye, and just as well do I know thee.” Hell, he might well know Cecil better than he knows himself, as he’s privileged to know several things about him that Cecil himself won’t discover for a few years. (Perhaps he really ought to have a word with the man about the Gunpowder Plot-but no, there’s time for that later, if at all.)
“Then thou knowest I am thy servant.”
He laughs. “Robert Cecil,” he says, “I know I can trust thee as far as I can throw thee.”
For a moment he wonders if Cecil even knows the meaning of that expression-his eyes narrow, his mouth twisting smaller, but then he too bursts out laughing. “Ay, and thine arm is weaker than even mine.”
“My arm is not weaker than thine.” England crosses them, flexing the muscle just enough. “When didst thou last draw a bloody longbow?” He might not have America’s strength, but-
America. England casts an anxious look out the window, wraps the blanket tighter ‘round his shoulders. The fae did promise to send word when they found him, but few of them like to accompany England into Cecil’s house; it reeks of iron, they tell him, iron and leather and other things crafted by men. Perhaps one of the fae found America, but fears to come in. Well, he oughtn’t tarry long, then. Doubtless Cecil will want his sleep.
“I yield,” Cecil says, holds his hands high, his smile not entirely gone. He ought to do it more often; it doesn’t make him handsome, precisely, but it enlivens his face. “Truly, thou givest me more trust than some.”
Considering how far I could throw you, yes, I suppose it’s nothing to sneeze at, England thinks, but doesn’t say. There are jests, and then there’s cruelty. “I trust thee to be what thou art.”
“And what is that? Nay,” he says, forestalling England, “needst not tell me, I have it from her Majesty and Essex oft enough, my Nation need not join in.”
“Her Majesty and Essex are speaking again?” England asks, tries to recall his own history. This is January of 1599; they’ll have been quarreling recently, though it’s hardly a new state of affairs for them. Again, England sighs. He did warn Bess that young men were not nearly so biddable as she thought them, but they’re all young men now, aren’t they? Leicester, Walsingham, Warwick, Hatton: all dead now, and what have they left behind?
“Ay, of a sort,” Cecil says, and doesn’t mask the note of smugness in his voice. England doesn’t begrudge him it. “He will not apologize for turning his back to her and reaching for his sword, she will not apologize for laying hands on him, but he is returned to court, and she has named him lord lieutenant of Ireland.”
“This does not displease thee.”
“The appointment is doomed,” Cecil says. “The Irish posting is poison, and all the court knows it. And it will keep that impertinent lout from Her Majesty’s side.”
“Ay, it will,” England agrees. “And it’s an ill-favored post, I’ll not argue with that.” Certainly not after knowing where the post leads Essex: to the Tower of London, and the chopping-block.
“And a venture bound to break our banks. We cannot sustain all these wars, my Nation-war with Spain’s merchants, war in the Low Countries-”
“And war with my sister,” England finishes. “I know, Cecil.”
“Had we made peace with Spain before the rout at Blackwater-” Cecil shakes his head, and his hunched shoulders lower. “My father did try.”
“He tried valiantly.”
“Ay, and died in the midst of the trying, only for Essex to take my father’s place by her Majesty’s ear.”
“She listens to thee,” England says, resists the urge to rub his eyes. Oh, what a tangled web is woven here; he navigated it all once, knew the steps to the careful dance Bess played with her court and with the Continent, laughed with her as she withheld and redirected and teased, made thousands of promises that promised nothing. But those days were centuries ago-or were, at any rate, before something dragged him back. And if he is as out of practise as he suspects, he’s buggered.
And America with him. He steals another glance out the window. How long does it take the fae to search a city, even one London’s size? It isn’t as though America’s any good at not drawing attention to himself.
Cecil snorts, scratches his back, winces as the wind beats itself against the window (now closed, thankfully). “Ay, when it suits her. Jesu, hast thou ever met such a woman?”
“Nay.” Nor shall he again. He tears his gaze from the window. “But she is more than woman.”
Cecil makes a dry bureaucratic sound, almost an ah. “Thou hast read Spenser’s poem, then?”
“Of Gloriana?” England would smile, but he can’t remember Spenser’s verses without seeing that black mark seared onto the back of his hand. “Ay. ‘Twas Spenser I came to thee about.”
Cecil glances at his desk, not at the papers scattered atop it but at the drawer on the top right, the one with a false bottom where he keeps the bulk of his correspondences. “He has fallen out of favor with Essex, it seems, or Essex with him. He takes a room on Kings Street and sends letters to his friends at court, seeking loans-but none to Essex, and Essex has sent him nothing.”
“‘Twould do Spenser little good, were he to send it now,” England says. “Spenser is dead.”
“Merciful heavens,” Cecil breathes, and what little colour there is in his face drains from it. “When?”
“Just this night.”
“How?”
Murder most foul certainly hasn’t crept into the vernacular yet, so England leaves it at, “Murder.”
“Thou art certain of it?”
“Ay,” he says. “I smelt the poison in the cup, and he told me as much with his dying breath.”
“Did he name his killer?”
England shakes his head. “He said only to find Will Shakespeare.”
“The playmaker?”
“Ay, the playmaker. Thy father’s playmaker,” England says, and before Cecil’s eyes can narrow any further, adds, “and he is not the murderer.”
“Were I to die, I would name the man who killed me,” Cecil says, strokes his chin in thought. “And the playmakers are a violent lot.”
“Not all of them-”
“Gabriel Spencer?” Cecil cuts in.
“The man came at him with a candlestick; it was self-defence.”
“And Ben Jonson slew him in self-defence?”
“Ben Jonson is, perhaps, too fond of dueling,” England admits through gritted teeth.
Cecil’s face is at its most placid, which still isn’t very placid at all, not with how his eyes glitter, not with the edge of his nose gleaming sharp in the starlight. “To say nothing of Christopher Marlowe.”
-England stands and slams Cecil’s chair to the side, his knuckles trembling around the wood. “You will do me the courtesy of leaving him be,” he says, emphasizes the you.
“Would that he had done the same-”
“I said enough!” England shouts, and the glass rings with the force of it. Even the fae shrink back, and England’s glare keeps them at bay until the pounding of his heart slows to something manageable. Fuck. He runs his fingers through his hair, looks askance. This has been a fucking awful day, he decides, so fucking awful that he can’t think of a word strong enough to describe it. Well, if he runs into Will, he’ll ask for his help on that.
Kit’s been dead for four hundred six years, you, he reminds himself. Or six, now, but the result’s the same, isn’t it?
“I will never understand your fondness for the theatres,” Cecil says, shifting into the same mode of speech England adopted, and draws his blankets closer to his chin.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” England mutters, “you’re a Puritan.”
“Come again?”
“Pay it no mind.”
“My Nation,” Cecil says, a bit stiffly.
“I want your men to search for Spenser’s murderer,” he says, hesitates. “Yours, and Dee’s.”
Cecil blanches; it’s visible even in the silver of the starlight, tinges even his beard ashen. “Dee, my Nation?”
“A mark was burnt on the back of Spenser’s hand,” England says, grimly, “and I was attacked by something that ought to have lain dead.”
England only catches half of the oaths Cecil mutters under his breath, but he’s impressed to see Cecil blaspheme so well. Why, he didn’t know the man had it in him. “A goat, Cecil?”
“Never mind the goat,” Cecil says, jerks his hand to the side as though to brush the matter away, “this is a matter of-”
“Sorcery, yes.”
“I like not what that portends.” Cecil’s fingers curl tighter around the coverlet.
“Nor I, Cecil. Nor I.”
Something tugs at the nape of his neck; England clasps his hand to his hair and pulls a pixie away. She chitters at him, too quickly at first, but once England bids her to slow her speech, he makes out her message.
“It appears I’ve found Will Shakespeare,” he says, just as the cock crows for the third time. Dawn will be breaking soon. Cecil draws his eyebrows together, but says nothing. He’s been privy to such conversations before, he knows how they work. “I will see what part he plays in this. Thank you,” he tells the pixie, “and search for a young man-well, not a man, you know what I-hm?”
“I asked if the magics you saw were familiar to you,” Cecil says.
God, England’s tired, everything makes him want to laugh. The pixie still tugs at his sleeve; he bids her leave for the moment, doubtless he'll have a chance to learn more from her later. “Cecil, this is all most strange and most familiar all at once. Wouldst thou like to know a secret?”
“I am always in the market for new ones,” he admits.
“I’m dressed as I am because I am most strange and most familiar. I come from the future. Thy future,” he continues, and perhaps he’s only confessing this because it’s been centuries since he’s seen Cecil start at anything, but the start he gives is one of the best England’s seen. “I am thy Nation, four hundred years hence.”
“I have never known thee to jest so, my Nation,” Cecil says, as though the words themselves feel strange on his tongue.
“It’s no jest.”
“Then why tell me this?”
“Because if thou speakst of it to anyone, they will think thee mad,” England says quite conversationally. “And to illustrate something, perhaps. I have what I was within me still. I am the Nation you know, and other things beside.” Which would explain why he hasn’t encountered a second version of himself, come to think of it.
“Ay,” Cecil says, his brow still knotted.
“Thy father, likewise, is with thee still-but thou wilt be other things beside him.”
At last, Cecil’s brow softens. “An almost pagan sentiment, my Nation.”
“Oh, it is.”
***
Judging from the shouts swelling behind the tavern doors, Shakespeare and the Chamberlain’s Men are either rehearsing or arguing. Knowing what England does of actors, he suspects both. Terrible etiquette to interrupt a rehearsal, but he does so regardless, seizes the door’s handle with both hands and heaves it over.
“Sir Kirkland!” Thomas Pope cries, spotting him.
England smiles. “Well met, Master Pope.”
Even Kemp rises from the table, script in one hand, ale in the other. “Welcome, Sir Kirkland!”
“Wait. Sir Kirkland?” America says, spinning around on the bench-
-America.
“You!” England shouts.
“Me?”
“Master Jones?” asks Kemp, thumps America on the back to stop him from choking on whatever he’s shoved in his fool mouth.
“Master Jones?” England echoes, the colour rising in his cheeks. Is this the fae's idea of a joke?
Well. Yes, most likely. Damned little buggers.
“Sir Kirkland?” America sputters, attempting to roll his eyes and hack up something at the same time, which fails spectacularly.
Augustine Phillips clears his throat. “Sir Kirkland?”
England gestures violently to America, means to say what the fucking hell is he doing here? but all he manages is, “Master Jones!”
“Master Jones?” Phillips repeats, frowning.
“Yes! Master Jones!”
“I daresay,” says Will Shakespeare, descending the steps and trying desperately not to laugh from the way the corners of his mouth twitch, “that explanations are in order.”
---
--
Dialect notes, again:
Obviously, I’m not writing this thing in full-out Elizabethan, because I’m not that footnote-crazy, and quite frankly I don’t trust myself to. I’ve tried to keep in a few elements of Elizabethan speech for flavor, though, and I’ll explain those here.
First, the pronouns! Elizabethan pronouns are pretty similar to ours, except they had an informal “you” pronoun, thou. (It’s like the tu/Usted distinction in Spanish.) You use “thou” for inferiors and people you’re close to in informal contexts, and it’s a bit rude to thou people you aren’t familiar with-so when the guards switch over to using thou with America, they’re trying to put him in his place. Thou is declined like so:
Subject: thou. (Thou liest, shag-eared villain!)
Direct/indirect object: thee. (I give thee thanks, or Let me clutch thee.)
Possessive: thy (thy face), or thine before a vowel. (thine eye).
They also had ye for the second-person plural, though there’s increasing usage of “you” for both singular AND plural second-person.
Verb endings are mostly the same, except for second- and third-person singular. Let’s look at the verb to have:
I have
Thou hast/You have
He hath
We had
You/Ye had
They had
I’m mostly omitting the -eth/th ending on the third person singular in this fic, because it reads weird to modern eyes, but it might crop up with a few words.
Robert Cecil was kind of a dick, but he was good at his job. He took over the position of secretary of state from his father, Lord Burghley, and the position of spymaster from Sir Francis Walsingham, and was Elizabeth’s foremost advisor in the last years of her reign. He was also small and hunchbacked, so he didn’t quite get the same respect his father got. He and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex really didn’t get along. At all. They both vied for the queen’s favor, and Bess liked to play them off each other when she could. At the time of the fic, she and Essex were on decidedly cool terms because Essex was a lot less willing to defer to her authority than her other favorites had been, and you can imagine how well she took that.
Also, there’s this war with Ireland going on, and it’s not going too well. Elizabeth is about to send Essex there as her lord deputy, and Essex is-well, you’ll find out more about Ireland soon.
And Ben Jonson killed a dude. Actors really were violent back then. Didn’t help that most of them knew how to fence and liked to drink.
It might help to have some background on The Faerie Queene, too.
There might be a two-week break between this chapter and the next, given exam season and all that, but believe you me, this project is anything but abandoned.
.