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Speculative Historical Fiction Quotes

Browse 195 quotes about Speculative Historical Fiction.

Speculative Historical Fiction Quotes

“Will swallowed despite the lump that now always blocked his throat, and with a flash of the insight that had given him Hamlet, William understood his Queen in return. Not the ragged, painted old woman before him, but the girl who had led a man like Francis Walsingham to beggar himself in her service, when with his dying breath he had known she could never show his gratitude. A woman who had given Kit Marley to the Faeries, when it would have been easier and safer to end his life and let him tumble into an unmarked grave. It doesn’t matter if Essex betrays her. It doesn’t matter what Scottish Mary did or did not know when she was led to the block. Elizabeth understands that every drop of blood stains her own hands. She knows. She knows she goes to judgment to face each life she’s wasted. And she’s always known. This is not a Prince who loves to kill.”

“His heart filled up with something vast and terrible at the realization, a shadowy whirl of wings and storm and light, and he knew why men died for Elizabeth. He would have died for Elizabeth himself. And he understood as well that there were things bigger than Elizabeth, bigger than England, for all they were things for which he did not have a name. Faith. God. Liberty. None of it was enough. Worse things had been done in those names than Elizabeth’s.”

“It was the last of the dancers whom my Master embraced next. He caught the man’s face in his hands as if it were love, and drank again, grasping at the man’s throat so that I saw the blood just for an instant, a veritable deluge which my Master then covered with his mouth and his bent head. I could see the blood pump into my Master’s hand. I couldn’t wait for him to raise his head, and this he did very soon, sooner even than he had left his last victim, and he looked at me dreamily and his countenance afire. He looked as human as any human in the room, even crazed with his special drink as they were with their common wine.”

“Let me have the boy!” “Beg pardon?” “You mean to kill me, so do it. But let me have the boy. A kiss, Sir, that’s all I ask. A kiss, that is the world. I’m too drunk for anything else!” “Please, Master, I can’t endure this,” I said. “Then, how will you endure eternity, my child? Don’t you know that’s what I mean to give you? What power under God is there that can break me?” He threw a fierce glance at me, but it seemed more artifice than true emotion. “I’ve learned my lessons,” I said. “I only hate to see him die.” “Ah, yes, then you have learnt. Martino, kiss my child if he’ll allow it, and mark you, be gentle when you do.” It was I who leant across the table now and planted my kiss on the man’s cheek. He turned and caught my mouth with his, hungry, sour with wine, but enticingly, electrically hot. The tears sprang to my eyes. I opened my mouth to him and let his tongue come into me. And with my eyes shut, I felt it quiver and his lips become tight, as if they had been turned to hard metal clamped to me and unable to close. My Master had him, had his throat, and the kiss was frozen, and I, weeping, put out my hand blindly to find the very place in his neck where my Master’s evil teeth had driven in. I felt my Master’s silky lips, I felt the hard teeth beneath them, I felt the tender neck. I opened my eyes and pulled myself away. My doomed Martino sighed and moaned and closed his lips and sat back in my Master’s grip with his eyes half-mast. He turned his head slowly towards my Master. In a small raw drunken voice, he spoke. “For Bianca…” “For Bianca,” I said. I sobbed, muffling it with my hand. My Master drew up. With his left hand, he smoothed back Martino’s damp and tangled hair. “For Bianca,” he said into his ear. “Never…never should have let her live,” came the last sighing words from Martino. His head fell over my master’s right arm. My Master kissed the back of his head, and let him slip down onto the table. “Charming to the last,” said he. “Just a real poet to the bottom of his soul.”