No footfalls disturb the hush as the man -- not nearly so young as he appears -- passes down the corridor, floating as if he walks on the shadows that surround him.
His whisper drifts through the air, echoing from the damp stone of the walls.
"She loves me...she loves me not."
His clothes are rich, thick velvet and shining satin, black and silver against pale skin that has not seen sunlight for decades. His dark hair hangs loose, not disciplined into curls, and his face is smooth. As she prefers it to be.
"She loves me...she loves me not."
The slender fingers pluck at something invisible in his hands, as if pulling petals from a flower, one by one, and letting them fall, forgotten.
"She loves me...she loves me not."
He stops abruptly, peering into the shadows, then reaches up with one shaking hand to touch his eyes. "She wants to take them from me, you know," he confides to whatever he sees -- or thinks he sees. Years in this place have made reality a malleable thing to him, a volatile one, shifting without warning. "She spoke of it again today. Taking my eyes...Tiresias was blind. He was also a woman betimes; did you know that? He had a daughter. I have no daughter." Breath catches in his throat. "I had a family once. Brothers, sisters, a mother and father...I was in love. I might have had a daughter. But they are all gone now. I have only her, in all the world. She has made certain of that."
He sinks back against the wall, heedless of the grime that mars his fine clothing, and slides down to sit on the floor. This is one of the back tunnels of the Onyx Hall, far from the cold, glittering beauty of the court. She lets him wander, though never far. But whom does she hurt by keeping him close -- him, or herself? He is the only one who remembers what this court was, in its earliest days. Even she has chosen to forget. Why, then, does she keep him?
He knows the answer. It never changes, no matter the question. Power, and occasional amusement. These are the only reasons she needs.
"That which is above is like that which is below," he whispers to his unseen companion, a product of his fevered mind. "And that which is below is like that which is above." His sapphire gaze drifts upward, as if to penetrate the stones and wards that keep the Onyx Hall hidden.
Above lies the world he has lost, the world he sometimes thinks no more than a dream. Another symptom of his madness. The crowded, filthy streets of London, seething with merchants and laborers and nobles and thieves, foreigners and country folk, wooden houses and narrow alleys and docks and the great river Thames. Human life, in all its tawdry glory. And the brilliance of the court above, the Tudor magnificence of Elizabetha Regina, Queen of England, France, and Ireland. Gloriana, and her glorious court.
A great light, that casts a great shadow.
Far below, in the darkness, he curls up against the wall. His gaze falls to his hands, and he lifts them once more, as if recalling the flower he held a moment ago.
"She loves me...
"...she loves me not."
