I could have done it by other means but it feels best, carrying him. He has no legs to stand on and I do, novel things beneath me moving measured and one after the next. When we do not fly or ride, we walk as mortals do; to him it is a very simple thing.
When he mutters, the sound loses itself in fabric. These are solid things as the weight against my chest, the suggestion that my arms, were I another, should ache. My name is spoke. Divinity adieu.
–I would be home…
We are, though it is pity to go so fast. I sit him down and go for water, bread, what the boy leaves on the side. His master has been in Rome these three months yet he remains, not altogether faithful to the word but obliged and habitual. Pagan-holy lad – a tankard of wine sits on the table not an hour poured.
–Drink.
–I will not.
–You shall, will you or no.
He does not smile often, a solemn ink cap, but in his cups and the dark he does with eyes crinkling into cheerful black beetles. –Do you serve me, Mephistopheles? I will wear out my years altogether, drinking on command. To bed.
In the miles we have travelled, I think, arms full, my whole person that is not-so-neither would quake and moan from this carrying, protesting as does his boy when he runs there and there and there at his master's bidding in the space of a little hour. It would be a sweet sound indeed, to fill up my lungs with honest protest; I ache for an ache. There is too little of it in this borrowed trunk and still I do not grow weary.
So, to bed. He would have it that I stand sentinel and tall, a pretty wardrobe, a white shade, but the night makes frost from unlucky breathers and so the bed is a many-limbed creature. A fire, he whimpers, but there is only myself – I say only, but it is to that he clings, pushes his face, belches, gives half-closed looks. I warm as I warn. My duty and most humble service.
I lie unnatural, a fire still, as he kisses and strokes and makes drunken paws and declarations. – My own, he hisses, and – Thou camest to me – me, of all mankind, when thou couldst have – what thou wouldst, anything at all-
–I came as you bid me, Faustus.
–And would be a hell-beggar still, if thou hadst not. This, and his teeth to my ear, and I am hurt indeed so sudden and soon he is on his back crying out and I a fire no more growling in a bear's tongue.
–You are a whoreson fool to say that. You are a foolish, foolish man, you beast-you-mortal – you would not say so. You shall not say so.
He is all aquiver at the pain but barks still, dogged ever. –I will say as I like! Let me go – I would be free-
–And what if not? I say, but let him, hands loosening, weight abating, hips back, lips over teeth. This is altogether too much. I have studied what a body may do to another man's and sometimes the consequences are dire, even being as he is.
He has a calculating look and dark, shrewd and studious. Often he does not need to look for me, knows it not instinctively but by rote. It did not seem to me, in my experience, that such men are prone to leaning for the sort of work we have been about these dozen years; either this breed surprises still or Faustus is no ordinary creature. The latter is likely, to look at him so bright-eyed whilst lying tangled and breathless in the dark. –Wouldst thou disobey me, now? he asks, curious rather than angry. –After so many years in my service?
–I would not do Faustus such a wrong.
–After so many years my friend?
–To tell the truth, I say, and kiss to make him quiet so he opens hungry again. – But Faustus, I whisper once against his lips, for my man's heart drums out so bloody and wrong I fear it will do us both an injury, - I would not have thee talk of friends.
A dog-growl for this. –Is this not friendly, my Mephistopheles? Why not?
–You can still think on God, I whisper, for I have no other answer without saying mortal again and reminding him of what he accounts a great many more years of all this. He draws me in with a hush for saying so, but the name aloud strikes me with such a pain that all fire goes quite from me and the bed is made cold until dawn.
notes: A short thing, but I should say the style is taken considerably from Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man In Deptford, which is about Marlowe, my favourite book, and therefore a work I permanently associate with the man himself. Reviews are very welcome.