Fighting War


Christopher Marlowe awoke to the sounds of shouting and clanging. Each metallic clash seemed to rattle down to his teeth, contusing his hangover. He tried to shift to a more comfortable position but Cat was sprawled across the bed, seemingly filling the entire surface with purple feline.

Memories swirled up from the night before. Or was it a decade past? How many mornings had he awoken like this? Admittedly, generally with a more interesting companion. That night in… With… His mind wandered down red-tinged corridors of memory.

The noise outside faded, then returned with redoubled force as some mock attack took place. Although he was pretty sure that was an authentic scream. Putting swords in the hands of sailors often ended like that, he reflected.

Cat raised his furry head and Marlowe reached out to pet him, wincing as his brain throbbed within in skull. Then he heard his tired voice form unfamiliar and alien words: “Let’s go make peace, Plumbottom. Let’s go make peace.”

Cat raised a paw and batted Marlowe’s hand away. “She left me,” he said morosely. “She went off speaking foreign with that Spaniard. Said she’d finally found her Nicho, who-ever that is.”

“Be of good heart!” Marlowe said, wincing a little at the sound of his own voice. “We’ll put things right.”

“Last night you said we were all doomed and you wanted to die.”

“Well, I’d been drinking Sir Hyphen-Dash’s Mostly Elderberry Concoction. Anticipating the hangover.” He rubbed the top of his head gently and peered in the mirror. It did still seem to be attached. He’d forego shaving, though. Hands not quite steady enough.

Together he and Cat walked out into the village, so much changed form just a day before. Sir Hypen-Dash was calling out orders to the assembled sailors and villagers, who were promptly and with great discipline and consistency entirely failing to obey them.

“There you are, Christopher!” came a stern voice behind him. “It’s time you got Father sorted out!”

Lady Belinda brandished her parasol, “Look at them! He has the girls playing at soldiers!”

Marlowe squinted in the sunlight. He could see Grace and Felicity along with some of the older women carrying swords and the odd arquebus in the midst of the mostly male formation. Grace was holding a vaguely sword-shaped stick and looking resentful while apologizing to the people she accidentally struck with it. A sailor with a bloody bandage on his head kept his distance.

“Why shouldn’t they?” Marlowe asked roughly. “In my experience they die just as pointlessly as men.”

“But it’s wrong!”

“What, thinking that killing each other is a particularly efficient means of solving problems?”

“Of course not! What a ridiculous thing to say! But it’s men’s work!”

There was a wild call from beyond the gap-toothed stockade and villagers rushed in a disordered mass toward the sound, ignoring Sir Hyphen-Dash’s commands for order. He turned to Captain Stone, who stood stoically watching the scene. “Can’t you keep your crew in order, sir!?”

The captain shook his head slowly, “They’re good sailors. They understand ships and the sea. And bar-room brawls. Organized sailing and disorganized violence. They don’t really understand organized violence, I’m afraid. Neither do I, truth be told. The sea cannot be stabbed with a sword. And doesn’t Jesus teach us to forgive our enemies?”

“After we’ve given them a sound shellacking! Read your Bible, sir, and you’ll see what I mean!”

“Perhaps I missed that chapter,” the captain opined.

“What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?” Marlowe asked before Sir Hypen-Dash could engage in further theological expostulation.

“Victory!” Sir Hyphen-Dash replied to Marlowe’s question. “We are trying to accomplish Victory!”

Captain Stone and the poet exchanged a look. “As a matter of curiosity,” Marlowe asked, “will ‘Victory’ find the ship? Will it provide stores enough to tide us over the winter? Will it do us any good at all?”

“There’s no time for idle debate! The enemy are near! They could attack in just forty-five minutes!” The English leader strode off toward where the gate would have been had the village had a gate. Marlowe and Stone followed him with Cat trailing grumpily behind, mumbling about his lost love.

The villagers were variously disposed at the edge of the settled land, watching as their Fae opponents took the field. Don Diego commanded them from a gently swaying litter carried by four bearers. Slash waved her sword uncertainly at the head of a considerable mob. In the back, Bil could be seen juggling two swords, a knife and a well-trained baby goose.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Marlowe muttered, not for the first time.

Athis had felt control of events slipping away from him ever since Christopher Marlowe had uttered that strange word, “war”, which he had spent the night trying to understand.

Don Diego, the strange hu’run who had accompanied them back to the tree city, had been of very little help, although once he found himself high in the arboreal fastness his aspect had improved.

“It is the in-between!” he had said ebulliently as his stomach settled. “I am sick on the rocking ship, and sick on the steady land, but the gentle swaying of the tree is the in between! It calms me.”

No one else was calm. “Just what does ‘war’ mean?” Athis asked.

Siduri: “Fighting that makes worse the ills ~ it was meant to solve.”

Bil: “I’ve just lately learned ~ our poetic speech excludes ~ all contradictions. / Inconsistencies ~ can’t be uttered in this form ~ but that comes so close.”

“We must smash them all!” Don Diego interrupted as the Fae looked on perplexed.

“Why not find their ship? ~ Then they could leave this, our home. ~ Return to their land,” Athis suggested.

“They will attack you if you try. They are dirty, duplicitous dogs!” Don Diego derided. “I will show you… in the morning… how to fight them.” His head was drooping as the swaying tree lulled him to sleep.

“I do not like this. ~ Fighting swords cannot resolve ~ questions hard or soft,” Siduri said, while Dagan, Slash and Bil nodded their heads in agreement.

“We must do something,” Athis told her. “Perhaps there is some trick here ~ some deep truth we miss.”

Slash asked, “We will play along?”

Athis: “Until the way is clearer ~ we will make like ‘war’.”

In the morning the First Fae Army took the field. The five council members had argued late into the night without any resolution, and in the end agreed to Athis’ plan of cooperating with the hu’run’s plan to have a ‘war’.

“If we do not go,” he said, “they will not solve their problems ~ in their people’s way.”

“I still do not see ~ how clanging swords can answer ~ questions on this day,” Dagan said sourly.

“Perhaps we will learn,” Bil opined optimistically, “some new magic from across ~ the vasty ocean.”

Looking around in the dawn light at the assembled people Athis hoped whatever magic they might learn would let him sleep better at the end of the day.

“Forward!” called Don Deigo and the Fae field force began to dance and skip and jostle and juggle its way slowly toward the English settlement, heading off to war.

Marlowe shook his head at the scene before him. Colourful Fae swords-people danced and feinted before the English foreguard. Stoic villagers did their best to attack, but the superior skills of their uncooperative enemy stymied them. Even Slash was more than able to keep the clumsy attackers at bay, using her sword like the practical tool it was, handy for fending off an angry stoat or hacking through dense bush.

Bil, having abandoned his juggling, advanced on Sir Hyphen-Dash as Marlowe watched in horror. Lady Belinda squeaked in fear as the older man’s swing went wild and the Fae causally touched him on the head with the flat of his blade, then stepped back and lowered it. “I must say I’m shocked ~ by how much fun this ‘war’ is. ~ We should do ‘war’ more!”

Sir Hyphen-Dash roared and stabbed. Bil danced away unscathed. There was a loud report as an arquebus exploded, followed by a scream from the sailor wearing it. “Attack!” shouted Sir Hyphen-Dash, and the English surged forward.

“STOP!!” cried Marlowe at the top of his voice, rushing into the fray and trying to stop the tide.

Marlowe may as well have been King Canute of old proving to his flattering courtiers that he was not in fact all-powerful.

The English villagers and sailors flailed their way forward while the Fae parted like smoke around them. In moments the one group had passed entirely through the other, and Sir Hyphen-Dash looked around him to realize that his entire force was now separated from the village by the Fae.

“Duplicitous dogs!” he cried. “They have taken our homes by stealth and subterfuge! ATTACK!”

Seizing the long moment of confusion while the villagers got themselves pointed in the right direction and the Fae broke from the group hug they had enjoyed after their first experience of this new thing, “war”, Marlowe rushed forward, leaving Lady Belinda to advance on Don Deigo and smack him with her parasol. “I trusted and befriended you, good sir! Is this fair recompense?”

Don Deigo looked at the unscathed but ineffectual force he was leading and shrugged apologetically.

Marlowe rushed into the gap between the gathered armies, such as they were, and found himself alone on the little battlefield, a field so far unblessed by the sacred blood of the fallen, or as he had come to think of it: polluted by the rotting bodies of the stupid.

Heads turned his way on both sides as the villagers bristled and brandished and the Fae smiled and waved. He could see Grace looking fierce with her vaguely sword-shaped stick pretending to ignore young Ea, who was surreptitiously watching her while casually flipping his sword end-to-end and catching it by the hilt. Off to one side Cat and Daphne were nose to nose.

The air of festive expectation from the Fae met the opposing grim determination of the English and was beginning to wither under the onslaught. Marlowe could see a frown pass across Athis’ face as he got an inkling that there was more to ‘war’ than harmless pomp and accidental circumstances.

For a long cold moment Christopher Marlowe felt the world turning on its axis about him. He stood in the centre. He began to speak.

Accursed be he that first invented war!
I put those words into a fool’s mouth
thinking myself clever! I was myself
the fool: for war solves nothing but the glut
of happy living men who walk the Earth.
Our life is frail, and we may die today
without a single voice protesting war.
Shall our swords play the orators for us?
Are these the men that all the world admires,
who charge over the edge of battle’s cliff
to death’s unknown dominion far below?
And when our power in swordplay is displayed
do we win favour and renown? For what?
For killing, and destruction of the good
and useful things that better men have made?
Where is the fame in that? Where is renown?
Who would come home to happy spousal arms
and brag, “I killed a man today! And too,
I smashed the work of patient generations!
Now what, Good Wife is there for my supper?
For killing’s hungry work. I’ve had my fill.”
What pride could e’re be taken in such acts?
What honour in destruction? A child destroys
when by a tantrum taken; and yet reproved
by loving parents may in time mature
to build and love and sing, not go to war!
It is a pretty toy to be a poet,
an honour above all: this making art
from words, the stuff of thought, alone in us
the ruler of base passions, if we so will.
Yet here we are, upon the field this day,
pursuing war where reason should hold sway!
There was a moment of silence after Marlowe’s soliloquy, and then Sir Hyphen-Dash strode out into the empty battlefield and raised his sword.

He shouted, “For Saint George, for Elizabeth, for ENGLAND…”, then turned an even brighter shade of red than usual and slowly fell down, like bagpipes with the air let out, settling to the ground with a quiet ease he had otherwise lacked for all his life.

In the uncanny silence that remained Marlowe could hear crows cawing and cackling in the trees surrounding the village. He fancied they were discussing their coming feast.

He knelt beside the fallen man but knew what he would find. The body was still.

He looked up and caught Lady Belinda’s eye where she stood, stricken. For once he needed no words.

“FATHER!” she and Grace screamed as the battlefield erupted into chaos.

In the middle of the empty battlefield Marlowe stood over Sir Hyphen-Dash’s still body as the distant villagers milled about in shock. One of the women moved to support Grace, who stood still as a stone in their midst. Lady Belinda fainted gracefully on top of Don Diego.

Then he heard a calm voice say, “He is in distress. ~ Now we must go to his aid! ~ It is what we do.”

He turned to see Athis and the rest of the Fae advancing rapidly. Even Bil looked serious.

Behind him there was a flurry of motion and a renewed cry of “Father!” from Grace. A glance showed him she was rushing toward him with the English close behind. The Fae on the other side gathered speed.

He held up his hands, one to each group, to no avail. “This is what the metal feels as the blacksmith’s hammer falls upon the anvil,” he thought, reluctantly drawing his sword, wondering what on Earth he was going to do with it.

Grace and Fae boy Ea were by dint of youth the first to reach the body, and they dodged around Marlowe’s attempts to grab them. “Please let me help you!” Ea said, keeping out of reach of Grace’s vaguely sword-like stick. “Your father may yet be saved ~ if my people help.”

“My name is Graceful Saxifrage. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” She took what should have been a wild swing at him and was astonished when it connected with his head, hard enough to make a loud “THUNK” and causing him to shout, “Be careful with that!” to which she replied, “This is simpler than it looks!” and he ducked under her next swing saying, “You have a talent!”

They fenced for a few moments more, sword against stick. Her every motion was swift and, Marlowe had to admit as he tried to intervene, graceful. Somehow she had grown out of her awkward spurt and found the truth of her name, though he didn’t know why she had called herself “Saxifrage”.

Before he could separate them the villagers and Fae converged and he found himself in the midst of a melee, standing over their leader’s body, trying to make peace with the point of his sword. Without hurting anyone.

The battle was in earnest now and rapidly spiraling out of control, as battles are wont to do. Marlowe shouted and declaimed and at one point found himself throwing an errant but imperturbable goose at Bil, but the struggle had taken on a life of its own as each side reacted to the other’s actions with redoubled efforts. If not for the superb swordsmanship of the Fae blood would have been spilled already, and Marlowe knew that soon enough it would happen. And blood once spilled, in his experience, could never be put back, though he’d once known a surgeon who claimed to have tried.

He caught a glimpse of Grace and Ea, far off to the side of the field now. The Fae boy was holding his sometime opponent, who was crying and staring toward where she thought her father’s body was. Her sister, Lady Belinda, was being helped to her feet after her faint by the Spaniard Don Diego.

He flinched as a sword swung past his face and shouted again for peace but none would listen. Sir Hyphen-Dash’s body was cooling between his feet. He didn’t know what to do next, and was thankfully saved the trouble by the sound of a “RAAWWER” from the direction of the bay.

A hush fell as Rothgar the sea-bear lumbered on to the battle-field, past Lady Belinda frozen into still-remonstrative silence beside Don Deigo, past Ea and Grace kneeling together, his arms around her as Rothgar shouldered her way through the still tableau of war to the centre of the melee. Marlowe again heard a crow caw in the silence, this time sounding circumspect and disappointed.

The sea-bear stood up on her hind legs and surveyed the field, sniffing the air while she did so. Fighters drew away from her in pairs, sticking close to their partner like interrupted dancers.

One of the juggling geese fluttered awkwardly down to land on Bil’s head, where it settled into sleep.

Marlowe glanced down at a motion near his feet, and saw Athis had reached Sir Hyphen-Dash’s body. The Fae’s hands made quick probes and touches, tapping above the heart and pressing his ear to the chest as if listening for an echo. He caught Marlowe’s eye and shook his head, regret full on his face.

Once she had everyone’s attention, Rothgar the sea-bear began to speak.

“September is the cruelest month, breeding
poppies out of the dead men, mixing
mud with rain where once a forest stood.”

The big sea-bear paused and looked around
at the forest encirling the village. Somewhere
far away the thunder spoke. Marlowe couldn’t
quite make out what it said.

“In this awful moment you must dare:
dare to surrender.” There was a momentary
stiffening of the English ranks. The
Fae looked on curiously, wondering what
“surrender” meant. “It is by this alone
you will exist,” Rothgar continued. She
turned and spoke directly to Marlowe:

“You will not cease from exploration
and the end of all your exploring
shall be to arrive where you started
and know the place for the first time.”

Marlowe nodded. He understood.

“What about us?” Athis asked.

“You shall beat your swords into plowshares
and your spears into pruning hooks:
Fae shall not lift up sword against human,
neither shall you learn war anymore”

“But it was just getting fun!” muttered Bil as
Rothgar disappeared back toward the open sea.

The silence left in the sea-bear’s wake lay like a heavy cloak of snow over the battlefield. Fae and humans looked at their weapons as if wondering quite what they were for.

Grace left Ea and Belinda left Don Diego to approach their father’s body. Marlowe stood back, but before the inevitable weeping could begin he said, “He died well, in the manner that he lived. I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me. But I respected his integrity. He was no hypocrite: friend or foe you knew where you stood with him, and that’s a virtue far too rare.”

Grace looked up at him, incipient tears in her eyes. “What do we do now?”

Marlowe looked around and saw everyone looking back at him. Even Captain Stone. Apparently he was the leader now. It was a pretty toy to be a poet, he thought. He realized his face was wet. He looked up and saw the sky was clearing.

“For I have seen blue skies… through the tears… in my eyes, and I realize… we’re going home,” he said, for no reason he could properly account for.

“We’re going home,” Marlowe said again, and Grace gave him an uncomprehending look.

“The ship…” was all she could say.

“The ship?” Marlowe replied, reality interrupting his imagined voyage back across the sea. “Oh shi…”

“The ship!” came a cry from the path that led to Abundance Beach.

All heads turned to see Hope, disheveled and dirty and with leaves tangled in her hair.

“The White Hart!” she said, breathing hard. “On the white sand!”

She pointed toward the distant beach, and Marlowe lifted up his eyes to where the path falls and where the path rises, and knew Rothgar’s words were all true.