Hell and Earth

Elizabeth Bear Hell and Earth

Promethean Age – 4

The Stratford Man – 2

Author­s Note

This book is dedicated to William Shakespeare, Christofer Marley, and Benjamin Jonson –a glover’s boy, a cobbler’s son, and a bricklayer’s redheaded stepchild–for building the narrative foundations upon which we poor moderns now twist our own stories, as Ovid and others laid flagstones for them.

May this humble effort honor their memories, and what they have left us.

Touchstone:If thou beest not damn’d for this,

the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how

thou shouldst scape.

–William Shakespeare,

As You Like It,Act III, scene ii

Act IV, scene i

It is too Late: the life of all his blood

Is touch’d corruptibly; and his pure brain,

Which some suppose the soul’s frail dwelling‑house,

Doth, by the idle comments that it makes,

Foretell the ending of mortality.

–William Shakespeare, King John,Act V scene vii

London had never seemed so gray and chill, but Will was warm enough in the corner by the fire, at the Mermaid Tavern. He leaned back against a timber, a cup of warm wine in his hands, and sighed. A man taken by the Faeries can never truly be content again.And then he remembered Kit’s voice. You must not say such things

Nay, nor even think them, Christofer? I hope you’ve found us that Bible, my friend.

The wine was sweet with sugar and cinnamon, concealing the pungency of Morgan’s herbs. Will sipped a little, and held it in his mouth for the strength and the sting before allowing it to trickle down his throat. He stretched his feet toward the fire, dreaming, and almost spilled the steaming wine across his stockings when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder.

It was the playmaker Ben Jonson, his ugly countenance writhing into a grin. “An old man sleeping by the fire,” Ben said. He was gaining weight, and no longer resembled an over‑tall hat‑tree with a coat slung around it.

“A young cur snapping at his heels, ” Will answered irritably. He sat up and set his wine on the table, beside an untouched portion of beef‑and‑turnip pie.

Ben shrugged shamelessly and pulled the bench opposite out. “You’ve not been in London of late – ”

“Home with Annie,” Will said. It wasn’t at all a lie; he had been to Stratford. And before that, months in Faerie with Kit Marlowe, who had dwelled there since his murder. There he had met the Queen of Faerie, and another Queen, the redoubtable Morgan le Fey. Will cleared his throat, and continued. “But back now. Richard said he’d meet me. How went the construction of the new Theatre?”

“Dick’s calling it the Globe,” Ben said. He raised his chin inquiringly, searching for a servant. “‘Tis up. Have you seen the landlord, gentle Will? I’m famished–”

Will craned his neck but couldn’t spot the Mermaid’s landlord, who was also named Will. They heaped thick on the ground, Wills, as leaves on the streambank in autumn. “Here” –he pushed his pie to Ben – “I’ve no appetite tonight.”

“Pining for your lovely wife already? Will, you don’t eat enough to sustain a lady’s brachet.” But Ben took the food up and chewed it with relish; he was renowned a trencherman. “I hear you’ve a new comedy – ”

“You hear many things for a Saturday morning in January. Aye, ‘tis true. Not much like thine Every Man,though.” Will’s hands grew cold, and he retrieved his cup for the warmth of it. The worn blue door swung open, and a cluster of five or six hurried through it, unwinding their cloaks and mufflers just inside and shaking off the snow. “There’s the famous Richard Burbage now, with all his admirers.” Will waved to his friends, half rising from his bench. Morgan’s herbs made a world of difference; better than any cure the doctor Simon Forman could offer. “And there’s the landlord gone to take his wrap. Richard’s arrived in the world, Ben–what? Why’rt regarding me so?”

“Richard’s not the only one arrived,” Ben said. “And resting on his laurels, mayhap.”

Will deflected both flattery and chiding with his left hand. “Not after me to write a humors comedy again?”

“They fill seats – ”

“Aye,” Will said as if that ended it. “And so do I. Look, there’s Mary Poley. Can that great blond lout beside her be Robin?”

Ben turned to look over his shoulder. “In the apprentice blues? Aye, ‘tis. He’s the image of his bastard of a father, more’s the pity.”

Aye, he is.The lad–Will’s dead son Hamnet’s age, near enough, and Will pushed that thought firmly away–was growing from round‑faced boyishness into Poley’s sharp chin, his high forehead, and straight yellow hair that showed no signs of fading to honey‑brown with maturity. And should I tell Kit thus‑and‑such?

Mary’s eyes met his over Robin’s shoulder, and she smiled and tugged Burbage toward the corner.

– no.

Ben had turned on the bench and watched as Mary, Burbage, Robin, the poet George Chapman, the landlord, and the golden‑haired cavalier Robert Catesby made their way into the corner already occupied by Ben and Will. “Master Jonson,” Will the landlord said. “Ale, perhaps? Something else to eat?”

“Ale” – Ben coughed pastry crumbs and wiped his lips with the back of a hamlike hand – “would go nicely. Good morrow, Mistress Poley, Master Robin. George, Dick, Robert.”

“Good morrow,” Burbage said as the landlord departed, and slid onto the bench beside Will, who gestured Mary and Robin to sit as well.

“Good morrow, all.”

Robin Poley blushed his shy smile, too proud to step behind his mother the way he might have, a few years earlier. He bit his lip and rubbed calloused, burn‑marked hands on the wax‑stained blue broadcloth of his apprentice’s gown. “Master Shakespeare. Master Jonson.”

His voice cracked halfway through each name, and Will laughed. “Sit, lad. Master Catesby, I have news of your family from Stratford – ”

Robert Catesby, encumbered by his rapier, did not sit, but leaned against the wall on the far side of the fire. It popped and flared, spreading warmth, and he peeled off his meltwater‑jeweled gloves and tucked them into his belt. “You were home for Christmas, Master Shakespeare? Did you celebrate with my cousins, then?”

Will met the handsome man’s eyes, understanding the question. The Catesbys, like the Ardens and the Hathaways and the Shakespeares themselves, were among the Stratford families who clung to the old religion, and Robert Catesby was asking – obliquely–if his family had been to an outlawed Catholic Mass.

“All the families gathered,” Will said. “I understand your cousin Richard is betrothed.”

“Excellent news – ” Catesby grinned, showing good teeth, and Will looked down. “And all your family well?”

“My parents are growing old,” Will said. It galled him to admit it, and he hid the emotion behind a sip of wine. Time, lay thy whip down– “But my brothers and Joan are well, and mine own girls. My youngest brother Edmund is here in London, playing for Henslowe, poor fool – George, you look uneasy, sir.

Chapman shrugged, taking a steaming cup from the tray of the landlord’s daughter‑in‑law as she fulfilled their orders. “Speaking of Edmunds. Hast seen Edmund Spenser recently, Will?”

“I’ve been in Stratford,” Will answered, reaching out to tousle Robin’s hair. “And I barely know Spenser. He moves more in thy circles, George.” With his eyes, Will directed the question to Ben. Ben shrugged and pushed the ruins of the beef pie away, taking his ale from the young woman’s hands.

Nay, not in a week or more …” Jonson shrugged. “He’s not the common tavern sort. No matter how stirring the company.”

“Methinks I’ll pay his house a visit when my wine is done,” Chapman said.

“He may be with his patron, the Earl of Essex. Perhaps a letter?” Burbage leaned forward and pinched his nose between his fingers to stifle a sneeze. “Although they say Essex is back in Gloriana’s good graces, and Spenser never left them. They could easily be with the after‑Christmas progress.”

Burbage’s eyes were level on Will’s, and there was a warning there. Burbage, like Will, was a Oueen’s Man–an intelligencer in service of Elizabeth. And more: both of them were members of the Prometheus Club, using story and sorcery to sustain England against her many enemies. And the Prometheus Club was divided. Essex was not their ally, and Elizabeth had never hesitated to play one faction against another if she thought it would lend strength to her own position.

Will had, as he had said, been away. If Essex–with hisPromethean links–was in the Oueen’s graces, did that mean the Lord Chamberlain’s men were out of them? Or was there equilibrium again?

Will raised his eyebrows in silent question, but Richard had no chance to suggest an answer in such a crowd.

“Nay,” Catesby said. “I’m well known to the Earl, and came from his household but yestermorn. Spenser is not among Essex’s servants at this time.”

Mary patted Burbage on the back. “He might be ill,” she said slowly. “It took my brother Tom so quickly, I had not time even to visit before he died.”

Her quiet statement left the table silent. Tom Watson, the poet –and a Promethean as well–had died of plague with a young wife and a baby left behind. Plague was one of the weapons that Will’s faction spurned.

Essex’s group was not so fastidious.

Will glanced up at Chapman, who pursed his lips. “We’ll go when we finish our wine,” Chapman said. Ben nodded and inverted his tankard over his mouth. Will gulped what he could of his own wine through a narrowed throat, casting the herb‑tainted dregs among the rushes with a would‑be casual gesture and upending the cup on the table to drain the last droplets, lest he poison some unsuspecting friend on the wolfsbane Morgan had prescribed for his ague.

“I’m ready,” Will said as Ben stood. “Keep the bench warm for me, Robin.” He stepped over the boy with a smile.

Mary half stood, her hands wrapped white around the base of her cup. Catesby and Richard too would have quit their places, but Ben shook his head. “You’re cold: stay and get warm. Will and I will walk out – ”

“And George will walk out with you, ” Chapman said, raising his hand to summon the landlord from his place near the taps.

Despite snow, the streets bustled; after the idleness and revelry of the Twelve Days of Christmas, London had business. Will, halt with his illness, minced carefully on the icy stones, Chapman holding his elbow. “How much farther, Ben?”

Ahead, Ben checked his sweeping stride to allow Will and Chapman to catch him. He turned back over his shoulder. “Just down the street–”

Edmund Spenser’s lodgings in King’s Street were on the ground level, a narrow door opening on a narrower alley, leaning buildings close enough that Ben’s shoulders brushed one wall and then the other, by turns. Only a thin curtain of snow fell here, for the roofs all but kissed overhead.

The big man drew up by that doorway, waiting for Will and Chapman to come up behind him before he raised his fist to knock. His breath streamed out in the shadows under the storm clouds, reminding Will uncomfortably of other things. Will looked at the black outline of his boots against the sugared cobblestones.

Ben’s fist made a flat, hollow sound like a hammer. Will held his breath: no answer. Something about the door and the dark light in the narrow alley and the chillbreathing through the planks and the old, white‑washed stucco of the wall made it harder to release that breath again.

“He’s not here,” Chapman said, twisting his cloak between his hands.

Ben grunted, raised that maul of a fist, and hammered on the door again. I hope his glover charges him extra for the cheveril.

“Edmund! Spenser!Open the door.” Nothing. He rattled it on its hinges. Latched. “Shall I fetch his landlord, then?”

Will edged into the narrow crack between Ben and the house; he peeled off his glove, put his hand out, and laid the palm against the wood. That dank chill that was more than the January and the falling snow swept through his veins and gnawed at his heart, like a ferret through a rabbithole. Will gasped and cradled the hand to his chest, tugging it under his cloak to dispel the frost. He stepped away, leaned against the far wall of the alley. Not far enough.

“Ben,” he said, rubbing cold fingers to warm them enough so they’d uncurl and he could wedge them back inside his glove. “Break the door down.”

Ben hesitated only a moment, and glanced only at Will: never at Chapman. Will looked down at his hand and finished settling his glove.

“The door.”

“On your head be it, ” Ben said. He swept off his cap, handed it to Will, and hurled himself at the warped pine panels.

They never stood a chance. Will thought the door would burst its latch; instead, the panels splintered before Ben’s hunched shoulder with a sound like split firewood. The big man went through, kept his balance, and staggered three steps further, one hand on the broken wood to keep the door from bouncing closed. He covered his mouth with his free hand, doubling as if kicked in the bollocks. Will stepped forward after Ben as the cold within the room flowed forth. It clung to Will like icy water, saturating his body and dragging him down.

The cold.

And the smell.

Ben, to his credit, held his ground–gagging, but unflinching. Will paused with his hand on the splintered door frame, wishing blindly for a moment that Kit were there –for his witchlight, for his blade, for his witty rejoinders–and then kicked himself into movement. ‘Tis better than Sir Francis Walsingham’s deathbed,he thought, and then wondered if that were only because the room was so very, very cold. Colder than the cold outdoors, but well appointed, with two chairs, a stool, and a bench beside a table near the shuttered window on the front wall, for whatever light might edge through the gap between houses.

Will’s fingers wrapped something in his pocket: a sharp iron thorn. A bootnail, the one that Kit had asked back of Will before his departure from Faerie. Which Kit had passed through flame and fed strange words to, and dropped a droplet of his own blood upon. A talisman from a lover to a loved, and black witchcraft, and the sort of thing that damned one to Hell. And Will, clutching it so tight his signet cut his flesh, would have spat in the face of the man who said so.

The floor creaked under his feet, creaked again as Chapman stepped over the threshold and hesitated, his blocky body damping what little light entered. “George, step in or step out,” Ben said. Chapman lurched left, leaning against the wall inside the door, a kerchief clapped over his mouth and nose.

Contagion,” Chapman said, voice shaking. “You know what we’ll find.”

Despite Will’s earlier thought, he realized now that the smell was precisely the reek of Sir Francis’ sickroom. Will came within, noticing the door to a second room slightly ajar. What had killed Sir Francis– aye, and probably what carried off Lord Strange as well, and poor Tom Watson–was neither plague nor poison, but blackest sorcery. He knew because he felt its prickle on his neck, identical to the sensation of Kit waving his hand, bringing every candle in a room to light. Identical to the sensation he felt when an audience was rapt in his power–that prickle, of observance, as if something roused itself and watched. There were parchments on the table, beside a stub of candle. Will drew out flint and his dagger and kindled a light; the ashes in the grate had long gone cold. Ben lifted the pages toward the door. “The Faerie Queene,”he said. “Just one stanza. Over and over and over–

“When I awoke, and found her place devoid,

And naught but pressed grass, where she had lain,

I sorrowed all so much, as earst I joyed,

And washed all her place with watery eyed.

From that day forth I lov’d that face divine;

From that day forth I cast in careful mind,

To deck her out with labor, and long tyne,

And never vow to rest, till her I find

Nine months I seek in vain yet ni’ll that vow unbind. ”

Damme.Will understood almost without understanding, found himself chanting lines of poetry, anything that came to mind. A history play, Richard II,and Ben gave him an odd look and then nodded, understood, picked it up, murmuring lines of his own – clever epigraphs and riddles, damn his eyes, but Will was in no position to complain. “Poetry, George,” Will said, between verses. It was the only magic he had, and the only protection he had any hope for.

“What?”

“Poetry. Anything. Recite it – ”

George blinked like a frog, but obeyed –

“And t’was the Earl of Oxford: and being offer’d

At that time, by Duke Cassimere, the view

Of hid right royal Army then infield;

Refus’d it, and no foot wad moved, to stir

Out of hut own free fore‑determin’d course;

I wondering at it, asked for it his reason,

It being an offer do much for his honor. ”

Infelicitous,Will thought, but held his peace to murmur his own talismanic words.

I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire:

These high wild hills and rough uneven ways

Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome,

And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,

Making the hard way sweet and delectable. ”

Will’s voice and Chapman’s combined with Ben’s–

“At court I met it, in clothes brave enough,

To be a courtier; and looks grave enough,

To deem a statesman: as I near it came,

It made me a great face; I asked the name.

A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh, and blood,

And such from whom let no man hope least good,

For I will do none; and as little ill,

For I will dare none: Good Lord, walk dead still. ”

– a strange and uneven sort of round between the three of them, but Will felt the pressure ease reluctantly. Raising his voice, he lifted the candle and steeled himself to pull the handle of the half‑open interior door.

He thought himself prepared for what might confront him, he who had been to Hell and back again, who had stood watch over a wife’s near demise in childbed and the second death of Sir Francis Walsingham. He was prepared for the peeling cold, like a wind off the ice‑clotted moor, and he was prepared for the horrific stench.

He wasn’t prepared for the huddled shape under the blankets, Spenser’s form curled thin and frail into an agonized ball. Chapman stayed in the front room. The creak of Ben’s footsteps stopped at the bedroom door.

Will raised the candle and went forward, just in case, but Spenser’s open eyes and the hard‑frozen outline of his form – I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire–told him already what he would feel when he laid his left hand over Spenser’s right: cold stiff flesh like claws of ice, and the candle showed him Spenser’s pale eye rimed with frost and sunken like a day‑old herring’s.

“Contagion,” Ben said softly.

Will shuddered and crossed himself before he quite knew what his hand was about. Something cracked and yellow lay frozen at the corners of Spenser’s mouth; Will remembered Sir Francis and did not think the stuff was mustard. He stepped back, scrubbing his glove on his breeches, tilting the candle aside. “I am a stranger here in– God in Heaven, Ben. Let us quit this place and summon a constable of the watch.”

“Aye,” Ben said, and he and Will trotted from the rancid little room.

They leaned against the wall outside, breathing the cold, sweet air like runners, having dragged the rabbit‑frozen Chapman between them. Ben caught Will’s eye over Chapman’s head, and coughed into his palm. “Edmund Spenser, starved to death for lack of bread.”

“Essex would never–” Chapman began, and Will knew from Ben’s level, warning regard that the big man’s mind was already churning through some subterfuge.

“Go look at the body yourself,” Ben said, lowering his hand again. “Essex obviously hasn’t been keeping him very well, if it has come to this.”

“I don’t understand,” Chapman said, so softly Will barely heard him over the whisper of snowflakes through the air, over the squeak of their compression underfoot.

Will lagged back as Ben paused under the swinging sign for a cobbler, snow thick on his uncovered hair, and turned to look Chapman in the eye. “Twas no plague carried Spenser off,” he said. “But mere starvation. And I mean to see the whole world knows it.”

Will bit his lip in the long silence that followed. It wasn’t starvation either, but sorcery–but Will thought he understood the broad rationale of Ben’s untruth, and was content to let the younger man’s plot play itself out. They turned down the alleyway near the Mermaid before Chapman gathered his thoughts enough to speak again.

“You’re not doing yourself any favors provoking Essex.” Chapman pressed the worn door open on its hinges. The Mermaid had filled in their absence, and a commotion of warmth and noise and smells tumbled past Will as they entered. “If that’s what you mean to do with this accusation that he cares for his servants inadequately.”

“I care not for Essex,” Ben answered, making sure the door shut tight against the snow. “Especially when England’s greatest poet starves to death under his care.”

Act IV, scene ii

And to be conclude, when all the world dissolves

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene I

Kit turned, gritty stones under his feet: the broad rooftop pediment of a gray stone tower. The limitless sky lofted overhead. Ravens and swans circled in confusion, a tumult of cawing and jet and alabaster wings. Then a glitter of black pinions, white weskit, a shiny bauble in a smaller bird’s sharp beak as it settled on the battlements before Kit and cocked a bawdy eye.

The magpie spat something ringing on the stone. A silver shilling, spent until the face of the King upon it was smooth as a water‑worn stone. Kit crouched to pick it up and found himself eye to eye with the magpie, something–his cloak? –tugging at his wrist as he reached. The magpie chuckled softly and settled its feathers. Ware the Church. Ware the Queen. Ware the raven with the wounded wing.

“Doggerel?” Kit asked. It made perfect sense as he said it. “Can’t you, of all birds, do better than that?”

The magpie chuckled again and hopped off the battlement, climbing to dart between circling ravens and swans. Kit pulled against the cloak, but it seemed to bind his wrists tighter. He stood and spread his arms, stretching against the fabric. The wind caught and luffed under the patches, ruffled his feathers, stroked his pinions. Lifted him, and he fell into flight as naturally as breathing. His dark wings rowed the sky; he arrowed in pursuit of the magpie – faster, more agile, more deft, his barred tail flicking side to side like a living rudder as he avoided the broad wings of the regal swans and ravens. One of the ravens limped through the air; Kit saw a spot of bright crimson on its wing, vivid as a tuft of rags and feathers, as it spiraled down to rest within the Tower’s walls.

Hawk Hawk Hawk,the ravens cried in alarm, which was foolishness. Kit’s sharp triangular wings showed him a falcon, no hawk. And no threat to anything as big as a raven. Or a swan. A merlin,he realized, amused, as the magpie led him flitting over the rooftops and marketplaces of London. St. Paul’s Churchyard, where the booksellers were. King’s Street, and the merlin caught a glimpse of a balding human who seemed familiar, somehow, leaning against a stucco wall between a big man and a stout man, all three of them shaking, slumped, breaths smoking in the cold.

Blackfriars, Whitefriars. Charing Cross and then somehow it was sunset, it was nightfall, and through the gray twilight five men were unloading a barge on a bank near Westminster. One a cavalier with shining golden hair–hair that glowed,even in the gathering dark–and to look at him, the little falcon’s wings skipped a beat in fear and distant–or perhaps forward?–memory. He dropped several feet before he caught himself, and went back for another look. A big man stood in the barge, handing barrels up the bank to the other four: a broad‑shouldered soldier with a luxuriant red mustache and a kind, hooded eye.

The merlin circled over their heads. The magpie flew out over the river, dipping and diving, chattering still. The air sustained other sounds and odors, as if there were a wood across the water and not the stews and bear‑pits of Southwark: dry leaves and tannin, a hollow knocking like the rattle of a stag’s autumn‑velveted tines among the low branches of oaks.

And then a cry, a lamentation or a sugared moan of delight, a voice too sweet, chromatic, resonant to reveal the difference.

The belling of a stag, the entreaty of a falcon, the toll of a carillon. Wingbeats. A name that seemed to resonate over his taut‑drawn skin like shivers through a tapped drumhead.

Mehiel.

Mehiel.

Mehiel

Kit woke curled tight in the layers of his cloak, the French seams he’d stitched flat still prickling his skin, a name on his lips. Mehiel.Sweat soaked his brown‑blond hair and his face itched with dried salt, eyes burning, scars burning. The fists pressed to his face smelled of tears, so very like blood.

So very like blood indeed. “Not a night terror, at least,” he said, sitting up, at sea in a giant bed. “There was a prophecy in that one, I wot.” His bedroom was empty; he spoke only to the walls and to the sunrise beyond his window. Mehiel.He knew the name. An angel’s name, by the sound of it.

He was sure he had heard it before.

He stood and washed, cleaned his teeth, relieved himself, combed his hair. Once he had dressed, he gritted his teeth, tugged down his doublet, and made his way to the hall to break his fast. The patchwork bard’s cloak he swung around his shoulders smelled of smoke and sweet resin and strong whiskey, so every time he inhaled it was as though the Devil’s hand traced his spine.

He had anticipated the silence in the hall when he entered, still mincing on feet worn sore by barefoot climbing the steps from Hell. He’d known heads would turn and voices would still, that the clink of silver on Orient porcelain would halt. And he’d called himself ready for it.

His steps didn’t slow. He was Christofer Marley, brazen as they came, and he would walk down the center row between the long tables and find his breakfast of porridge and honey and sheep’s milk–such homely stuff, for Faerie, but man did not live by thistledown and morning dew alone–and take a seat, and he would dine. And let them mutter what they would. He was Christofer Marley.

Except he wasn’t. The name had no power over him, for good or ill. It was no longer his.

He had sold it.

His stride did lag when he recollected that, and he nearly stumbled on the rushes. But he recovered himself and squared his shoulders, thinking Needs must replace my rapierwhen his hand went to his belt to steady the blade, and found it absent. That, too, was left in Hell.

He carried on, limping more heavily now that he’d hurt his foot again. But chin up, eyes front, not because he was Christofer Marley but because he was not willing to bow his head today.

When he was halfway to the board, the silence broke. At first, when but a single pair of hands struck together, he thought the clapping ironic. But then another joined, and a third, and by the time he stood ladling porridge into a bowl, he did so at the center of a standing ovation.

Two days previous, he would have set the bowl aside and turned and given them a mocking bow. But he was not the man he had been, two days previous. He had passed through that man, passed beyond him, been transformed on his quest to retrieve his beloved Will from the devil’s grasp. And as with Orfeo, there was no looking back to see where he had been.

Now, he was a man who had been to Hell and back again, and whose feet still hurt with the journey. He turned, and nodded blindly to the room, and found his seat with as little ceremony as possible.

When he sat, and hunched over his bowl, the rest sat too, and that was the last that was said of it.

It’s time wert about thy duties, Kit,he thought, half hearing the rattle of antlers on wood. Thou hast charged from the Queen and thy Prince that thou hast much neglected, in pursuit of love and poetry.

He would to the library, and see what he could find there. And perhaps start researching Will’s crackpot scheme to retranslate the Bible.

For once, Amaranth was not in the library. Kit sought through old texts until near the dinner hour, and found nothing on the names and ranks of angels, and little after the fashion of Bibles. Which should not have surprised him, he knew: there was little of Christian myth in the Queen of Faery’s archive. Hast never heard to know thine enemy, and keep him close?And then Kit laughed. Why, no. Of course not. I wonder if the Book itself ‘could do them injury.

He wiped dusty hands on his doublet and then cursed the mouse‑brown streaks across its front. A wave of his hand spelled them away again. It seemed frivolous to use hard‑won power for such petty purposes, but there was no reason not to. No one told me witchcraft was so useful. If word gets out, ‘twill be all the rage indeed.

He cast one more lingering glance around the room before he left, but lunch–truthfully–held a greater allure. And mayhap I can find Puck or Geoffrey there.It suddenly occurred to him to find it odd that a being with a stag’s head would eat beef and bread like a man, but he shrugged as he stepped through the open double doors of the hall and walked silently across the fresh‑strewn rushes.

The Mebd, Queen of the Daoine Sidhe, sat at the high table, although she did not usually take her dinner in public, and the Prince, her husband, sat beside her. Kit might have slipped aside and taken a seat just above the salt–there was one near Amaranth, on the bench she had pushed aside to make room for the bulk of her coils–except Prince Murchaud raised his head and smiled, and beckoned with one refined oval hand.

Kit turned his head to get a glimpse of Amaranth through the otherwisevision Lucifer had awakened in his right eye. She seemed to him a long spill of dark water, a black surface shattered with ephemeral reflections of light. Murchaud and the Mebd – all the Fae – shimmered like dust motes in dawnlight as Kit walked down the center aisle of the hall between the long trestles. He didn’t need the second sight to show him every eye guardedly upon him. It was there again, the way they had stared in the morning, before the applause. Climbing the steps to the dais, Kit realized belatedly what it was. You’re among the legends now, Marley.

Or not‑Marley, as it were.

The Fae were in awe of him, mortal man in a journeyman bard’s cloak who had gone to Hell in pursuit of his mortal lover–and brought them both back out again, alive and to all appearances whole, no matter how much a lie that might be. “Your Highness.” Kit bowed low before the Mebd, scraping his boot on the floor. The only sound it made was the rustle of rushes: damned elf‑boots.

The Queen of Faeries smiled and inclined her head. She seemed drawn, her rose‑petal skin pinched beside her eyes, and as if she–always willow‑slender–grew thin.

“Prince Murchaud,” Kit said, with a bow almost as low. Murchaud favored him with a sideways glance, and nodded to the empty chair at his left hand. Kit circled the table with some trepidation to take it, not allayed when Murchaud laid a buttered roll on his trencher and served Kit with his own hands.

Kit picked idly at the roast laid before him, trying to find his appetite again. “Thank you, my Prince.”

Murchaud laid a hand half over Kit’s. A carefully casual gesture, and Kit would not shame him in public by flinching away as if struck. “Kit,” he said, tilting his head to hide his lips against Kit’s hair. “I am not sorry I tried to prevent thee going, love. But nor am I sorry thou art home and safe; I did not lie when I said I cared for thee. Can we not be friends at least, if thou canst abide not my closer company? ”

“Aye,” Kit found himself answering, and then halted. “Tis not thee,” he said, as something in Murchaud’s tone ripped him to honesty. “I would fain – ”

“Aye?” Murchaud’s voice, and close and tight.

Kit bowed his head over his hands, and stifled a chuckle at the image of saying grace over fey victuals. He stole a sideways glance at Murchaud’s pale, intense blue eyes, the midnight coils of his hair, the elegant line of his nose, the faint sequined glitter of magic behind it. “Thou didst seek to protect me,” Kit said.

“I did wonder when thou wouldst notice.”

“And,” Kit continued, unperturbed, “I might… call thee friend. An thou wouldst permit it.”

Murchaud drew a breath. “Is’t so bad, Kit?”

“‘Tis worse,” Kit said, and busied himself with his bread and beef. A little later he looked up, and waited for the quiet conversation between the Mebd and Murchaud to flag. He spoke when it did, knowing the Mebd could hear him as well as the Prince. “I have not been about my duties – ”

“Thou’rt absolved,” the Prince answered, absently.

“Nay,” Kit said, still wondering at the words that seemed so inevitable as they passed his lips. “‘Tis time I accepted my place, here in Faerie. ‘Tis time I chose a side.”

Kit missed Amaranth leaving the hall by a few moments, and hurried his step as he followed the flicker of her tail through cool, sunlit corridors. Her progression was stately enough; he caught her up by the doors to a balcony overlooking the rose garden. “Lady Amaranth.”

“Sir Poet? How may I be of service?” She turned from the waist, her long body twisting like a ribbon, and extended a cold hand in welcome.

He bowed over it and mimed a kiss. Her chuckle sounded as if it rose the length of her in bubbles. “I had hoped you might assist me in finding a book. Some information on an angel–I think an angel, by his name. And perhaps a very old Bible.”

“In Faerie?” She drew her hand back as he straightened, and gestured him to accompany her. Not to the gardens after all, but down the corridor and back toward the library where he had spent the morning. “A Bible? New Testament and Old? Apocrypha? I might have one of those. How old?”

“Whatever you have. And as old as possible,” Kit answered.

Amaranth laughed. “Read you Aramaic?”

“A little Hebrew,” he admitted. “Greek would be better.”

She shrugged fluidly, dropping her body to a merely human height to grasp the handle of the library door and twist it open. “I can teach you a spell ‘twill render tongues –human and otherwise – comprehensible to thee. It can be done with music also, now thou art both bard and warlock, but the bardic spell lasts only as long as the song.”

“Rumors fly, I see,” Kit said. He followed Amaranth’s train into the room and turned to shut the door behind them. She draped a coil of herself over a massive dark wood table with legs as thick as Kit’s thigh; Kit hopped up on the table opposite, hugging a knee.

“Some of us see more than others,” Amaranth said. “And you came back from Hell and an interview with Satan with mismatched eyes. Tell me, Christofer –how look I to thee, now?”

“A bottomless sea in moonlight. Are mine eyes mismatched?” She smiled, her hair writhing about her head. “You have not looked in a mirror since you came back from Hell, I see – ” How could I? There are no mirrors in Faerie.”

“That is a difficulty.” She slid from the table edge like a fall of silk and crawled off among the rows of bookshelves. “I shall return,” she said. “Take your ease.”

Kit obeyed her, listening to the rustle of her scales over stone and carpet as she searched the shelves. “And so you will teach me more magic, Lady Amaranth? To what end?”

The room smelled of serpent’s musk and dried autumn leaves. Kit breathed deeply. Her voice drifted back, muffled as if the paper and leather absorbed its tones. “Fondness for thee and thy mortal poet are not answer enough?”

“And I should trust a Fae’s fondness?” He lay back on the weighty table and looked up at the gilt plaster relief netting the ceiling, letting his feet dangle over the edge.

“I’m not a Faerie,” Amaranth reminded him, over the sound of sliding books and rustling pages. “And just as happy not to be. William told me before he left that he thought the Fae might be responsible for the murder of his son.”

“More than thought. Had on good authority–”

“Aye.” The lamia sneezed, a sharp and diminishing hiss. “Did he tell you the culprits, then?”

Kit shook his head. “He did not say he knew them. I had assumed whomever it is who supports Baines and Essex’s faction of Prometheus, if they are still allies.”

“You know,” she said, emerging from behind a monumental book‑case with a black, leathery tome resting on the flat palms of her hands, “the spell I shall teach you can also be used to talk to trees. If the trees are forthcoming.”

“And if they’re not?”

“Many a wood hates man for wrongs wronged in centuries past.” Noncommittally. “Men generally win, when they go forearmed to deal with trees. Will you talk to Geoffrey, then?”

Why should I care to talk to trees?“I had meant to ask you if you knew where he was to be found,” Kit said, sitting up. “Why this sudden interest in politics, Lady?”

“Oh,” she answered, tipping the dust‑stippled Bible into his hands with an amused hiss. Her hair darted forward, every black eye bright with curiosity. “I care not for politics.”

“Then what is your interest?”

She shrugged. “Snakes are always interested in mysteries,” she said. “And Mehiel is well‑enough known. You can no doubt find him easily when you do return to London to speak with your friends. Now –about that spell – ”

Forty‑five minutes later, Kit was halfway up the stairs, holding the fragile old Greek Bible reverently in both hands, when he realized that wherever Amaranth had gotten the name Mehiel,it wasn’t from Kit’s lips at all.

Act IV, scene iii

If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for

thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,

thou shalt not escape calumny.

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act III, scene i

In January of 1599, Edmund Spenser was buried under the towering pale vaults of Westminster Abbey alongside England’s greatest poets – save Marley,Will thought uncharitably, blowing on his reddened fingers. As if stung by the whispers of his criminal neglect of Spenser in the hour of his need, the Earl of Essex paid for an elaborate funeral, which the Queen herself attended. And eight of the poet’s most renowned fellows carried the body down the memorial‑cluttered aisle and laid it into a cold hole in the stones beside the grave of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Elizabeth slumped heavily in a cushioned chair as if she could not stand through the burial, and her courtiers clustered about her. She turned as the prayers ended and the mourners moved forward, a still‑regal gesture, and caught the eye of Shakespeare upon her. And Will, standing a little apart from Chapman, Jonson, Fletcher, and the rest of the small band of poets and playmakers hurling flowers and pens into Spenser’s open grave– and how our number is lessened from what it was ten years ago … and why did I never stop to wonder at that before?–saw her lift one elegiac hand and beckon him.

He came forward, stepping past the crowded graveside, and shakily genuflected before the Queen. Long‑faced Essex stood behind her, all in white with his wooly beard oiled into ringlets, and the ascetic Sir Robert Cecil stood at her right hand. The Queen acknowledged Will and gestured him to rise; Sir Robert’s eyes asked a question over her shoulder, and Will met them, inclining his chin in a nod. We’ll speak later, my lord.

Before his sojourn in Faerie, and then Hell, Will and Thomas Walsingham had arranged to plant counterfeit coins in the home of Richard Baines, Promethean and mortal enemy of Will’s faction. Will wondered what Tom had told Sir Robert about their ill‑fated attempt at reverse burglary. Add Tom to the list of people I must make time to speak with, and sooner than tomorrow.“Highness,” Will said, and inclined his head again.

“Master Shakespeare.” Elizabeth, swaddled in furs against the cold, leaned back in her chair rather than sitting stiffly upright under the weight of her massive tire. Her cheeks were hollow under the fine high line of her bones, and her wrists seemed fragile as twigs and wire below the heavy jeweled points of her sleeves. She tilted her head to Sir Robert and then to Essex; both men moved back, withdrawing without seeming to. “We missed your presence in our revels this winter.”

“I missed as well the privilege of performing for Your Highness,” he said. “I was – ”

A small pursing of her painted lips might have been a smile. “In attendance upon our sister Queen. Aye, and we know it. We trust we may rely upon your presence in our court for Lady’s Day – ”

“The New Year? Madam, I would be honored beyond words.”

“Wilt have a new play for us, then?” Her eyes flickered past Will’s shoulder, and her mouth twisted to one side. It could have been distaste or amusement for whatever she saw; her eyes would not give him enough to say and he could not in politeness turn to see what she had deigned to acknowledge.

“It will be as Your Highness wishes.” He looked into her sharp, averted eyes, and pushed back a memory of Morgan. Nipping kisses and temerity, and he was shocked to suddenly see Elizabeth – Gloriana– as a woman, a lover, and haunted by love. Has she ever been kissed like that?And then another thought, of Edward de Vere and his trust in his immunity.

She probably beheaded de Vere’s father,Will realized, half his mind on history. Had she ever loved where she has not had to kill?“A comedy or a tragedy? Or a history, my Queen?”

Her eyes came to his face again, and she opened her fan with a rustle of lace, but did not stir the air with it. “We are weary of history, poet. Give us a comedy.”

As you like it,he thought, and inclined his head with its treacherous tendency to nod, and folded his shaking hands. “Your Highness, I would beg a favor of you –”

His voice trailed off at her expression. She chuckled, and it sounded as if it hurt her. “A favor, Master Shakespeare?”

“Aye – ” He swallowed, bowed again. “I have it in my heart to make a poetical translation, a new edition of the Bible, with great and glorious words to uphold the great and glorious Church of England– ”

“And there is something amiss with the Bible as we use it?” She turned her head and caught Sir Robert’s eye; he limped closer. Will caught the sparkle of her humor in the gesture, and decided to risk a joke. “It could be better poetry.”

He caught his breath when she looked back at him, gray eyes hard over the narrow, imperious arch of her nose. And then the corners of those eyes crinkled under her white‑lead mask, and she looked up at Sir Robert. “Robin, my Elf, how are we predisposed to new translations of the Bible?”

Sir Robert rose from his bow to regard the Queen, and then glanced at Will. “Surely we have all we need, Your Highness – ” “Aye,” she said. “‘Tis as we believed. We’d rather have plays of thee, Master Shakespeare.”

Will bowed very low, aware of Sir Robert’s eyes measuring him. “You forbid it, Your Majesty?”

“We do,” she agreed, her voice low and sweet. She extended her hand to Sir Robert, who helped her from her chair. Will did not miss how white her knuckles seemed on the arm as she pushed herself to her feet. “We trust we will have the pleasure of thy company for Lady Day, then, and that of thy Company.” She smiled, pleased at her pun.

“An it please Your Majesty–” He held his genuflection until the Queen moved away, her ermine trailing her like the wings of some vast white bird, Sir Robert in his austere black attending like a gaunt‑cheeked raven and Essex following a few steps behind.

Well, that could have gone better.Will stood, trembling more than he liked, and turned over his shoulder to see if he could make out what had caught his Queen’s attention. The poets had withdrawn from the graveside, and most of them dispersed, although Will saw Ben’s tall shape bent down to spindly crook‑toothed little Tom Nashe further down the eastern aisle. And then a flicker of movement by the graveside drew his gaze, and Will focused his attention more plainly on the shadows between the statues there.

A whirl of color, patches like autumn leaves tossed in a wind, and when Will squinted just right, knowing what he was looking for, he could make out a slender man huddled under a black velvet hood, his shoulders aswirl with a cloak that caught the light through the leaded windows in all colors and none. When Will looked at him directly, he seemed to fade into transparency and shadows.

“Kit,” he said softly, coming up behind the sorcerer. “I should have known you’d come.”

The black hood lifted and tilted to encompass Will, and he caught the glitter of Kit’s dark eyes. “Pity about this,” he said, and with ritual solemnity he held out his right hand and let something fall into Spenser’s grave. It caught the light, shining, and spun like a thistle seed as it fell; a white, white feather, the tip stained with ink and cut as a quill.

A feather from the Devil’s wing.

“I know what that is,” Will said softly. “Edmund might not appreciate the symbolism, though.”

Kit shrugged, stepping away from the grave. “I’ve all the gifts I need of that one, I think. He’s got no claim on my poetry, and I shall offer him none.”

“Wise Kit,” Will said, falling into step beside him. “Didst come to London only for the funeral?”

“Nay…” A sigh. “To see thee, and ask of thee a question. And ask one of a priest as well.”

“A priest?” Will swallowed worry.

“Oh, ‘tis nothing. A name I heard, the name of an angel. I wondered who in God’s creation he might be. No, I wanted to speak to thee of thy son Hamnet – ”

“Ah, Kit.” Unexpected. Will glanced over his shoulder at Spenser’s grave, and swallowed. Sharp tears suddenly stung his eyes. “That pain is – ”

“Aye.” Kit clapped Will on the shoulder, and Will looked up, surprised by the contact, and then sighed as Kit abruptly dropped his hand, his fingers writhing as if he’d touched something foul. Since the Devil, human contact hurt him.

He’s trying.Will forced his tongue to stillness until he could say, “Lucifer tried to cast blame on the Faeries.”

“Which Faeries?”

Will stopped walking and turned to meet Kit’s gentle, measuring gaze. “Those that love not the Mebd, he said. Nor Gloriana. Didst think to root them out for me, Kit?”

“I am tasked to root them out for the Prince,” Kit answered, fussing with his well‑cleaned fingernails. “We have sought them in Faerie a half decade now, and I could hope they revealed themselves somehow here. Were less cautious, or – ”

Will shrugged, and saw Kit watching the trembling of his hands, the nodding of his head out of the corner of his eye. “All I know – ” Will swallowed and tried again. “All I know, ‘twas Lucifer told me the oaks murdered my boy. Faerie oaks.”

Kit looked up, startled, something yellow as topaz gleaming in the smoky quartz of his right eye. He quoted a rhyme Will would as soon not hear again. “Oak, he hate– Damme, Will. What thou toldst me now, hast told any other? Annie? Amaranth? Anyone?”

The quick answer was easy, but Kit’s intensity caused him to pause and think through the past months. “No,” Will said, after several seconds dripped by. “Not a one, but for thee.”

Kit reached up as if to run a hand through his curls and laughed when he touched the black velvet of his hood instead. “Amaranth told me to talk to the trees. She knows more than she ever speaks, that one.”

“Aye,” Will said, worry blossoming dark in his heart. “And I’ll lose no other piece of my soul to a witch‑hearted tree – ”

“Peace, Will.” He saw the twitch of Kit’s hand toward his arm, saw it fall back among the folds of Kit’s bright, shifting cloak. “I’ll come to no harm. Must do this thing in any case: wilt trust thy vengeance to thine Elf‑knight, love?”

It hurt, the fear. But Will saw the promise on Kit’s face, and nodded nonetheless, and remembered something that Kit should know, that might link one group of enemies to another. “Robert Poley. Kit, Poley was in Stratford when Hamnet died. I thought he’d come to threaten me – ”

“Will? What are you doing, standing muttering in corners to yourself– ” Ben Jonson’s big hand clutched Will’s shoulder, turned him half around. Will put up a hand to cover Ben’s and saw his pupils widen. “I beg your pardon, sir,” Ben said to Kit, pulling the hand back to rub his eyes. “I did not see you there in the shadows.”

“By all means,” Kit said, his voice dangerously soft as he drew his cloak about him.

Ben glanced at Will and at the door. Will shook his head. “The Queen said no.”

“Damn,” Kit said, in unison with Ben. “How could she … ?”

“Who is this fellow, Will?” Ben’s hand on Will’s shoulder again, possessive, and Kit’s eyes almost glowed in the shadows of his hood. Who is this fellow to know so much of our affairs?

Oh, this it not how I would have chosen to handle this.“Kit Marley,” Will said. “Meet Ben Jonson. Ben, this is Christofer “ And God ha’ mercy on my soul.

“Please. Call me Merlin,” Kit said, his face very still, and Will knew at once that he had made a mistake. A very bad mistake indeed. Both in introducing Kit first to Ben, and more, in letting Ben lay that companionable hand on his shoulder in Kit’s view.

“Marlowe?” Ben blinked. “The poet.”

“The dead one,” Kit said irritably. “Aye.” And moved along before Ben could react. “And your fellow conspirator, though I see Will has informed you not. So. No dispensation for our Bible. Damme. Again.”

“That’s fine,” Ben answered, after a moment of slow consideration in which he apparently decided to deal with supernatural manifestations some other day. “We’ll write it anyway.”

“Against the Queen’s word?” Will shook his head.

Ben dismissed it with a gesture, and spoke without much lowering his voice. “She won’t be Queen forever, Will.”

Act IV, scene iv

Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;

If thou lovest me, think no more on it.

– Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene i

Such a small grave, neatly tended, evergreen branches laid atop the snow and the marker swept carefully clean. Two or three sets of footsteps; Kit couldn’t be sure. He crouched in the snow beside it and tugged his glove off, touched the frozen needles of a pine branch, the soft bow of a red velvet ribbon not yet faded by the wet and the sun. “Merry Christmas, little man.”

He sat back on his heels, the leathern bag over his shoulder almost overbalancing him, and glanced around the churchyard. The horizon already glowed orange with winter’s early sunset. Unobserved, he decided, and quickly freed the bit of ribbon from the greenery. He folded it inside the palm of his glove; the edges of the wet cloth itched and made a splotch on gray kidskin.

I’m sorry, lad. If anything, ‘twas my fault, what befell thee, and not thy sire’s. And a measure of Will’s kindness that for all he could have blamed me for every ill that’s touched his life since Sir Francis dragged him into this unholy mess, he never held me responsible for a bit of it.

Well, I did nearly put his eye out with a hot poker trying to reason with him– Kit shook his head as he stood, shaking his cloak to snap the snow from the hem. “Bloody hell.” So it’s Robert Poley and the Fae, is’t? Well. One more blood debt for Robert Poley. One more shouldn’t bother him a little.

Kit’s hand clenched around the bit of ribbon. Pity I can only cut his heart out once.

It wasn’t much work to find the New Place, as Will’s grand house was called. “The playmaker’s done well for himself,” Kit said, pausing on the roadway and looking up at the five peaked gables, the smoke drifting lazily from several of the chimneys. He paused, scuffing his feet on the frozen earth. Come, Kit. Put a bold face on it–

He squared his shoulders and stepped up to the door, tapping squarely. It opened a moment later, so promptly that someone must have seen him standing on the road. He hoped he’d looked like a man considering if he had the right house, only.

The dark‑haired girl within might have seen fourteen winters, or fifteen. Kit bowed as low as he would to any lady of the Mebd’s shining court, and swept his hat off too, making a flourish with his patchworked cloak. “You must be Mistress Judith,” he said. “And as lovely as your father described–”

“He said no such thing !” she said, and stepped forward to block the door. “And who are you, you fabulous tatterdemalion, to pretend to such a gallant tongue?”

Kit straightened and let his cloak drop in natural folds. The girl’s eyes sparkled: she knew her advantage, and Kit rather thought the tart‑tongued wench would have him twisted around her finger in a moment. “I am expected, I hope,” he said. “My friend Master Shakespeare said he would send word ahead of my visit, and that I might be assured of my welcome here. I see he underreported the sweetness of his daughters’ speech – ”

“Did he say so?”

“That he underreported your sweetness? Nay–

“Nay, that you could be assured of your welcome here.” She cocked her head back, her black hair spilling over her shoulders, and stared up at him. Kit bit his lip: her eyes were the same dark blue as her father’s, and made him shiver.

“Judith? Judith, if thou wishest to warm the out‑doors, build a fire behind the stable – ” Annie Shakespeare paused in the doorway, her faded eyes narrowing at the corners when she caught sight of Kit standing on the path. He waited while she examined him from boots to hair. A thoughtful moment, until she nodded and tugged Judith out of the doorway. The braided ribbon around Mistress Shakespeare’s neck caught Kit’s eye; he smiled in spite of himself, bitter and sweet. And joy you in it, Will.

“Welcome, Master Marlin.” After the country fashion, she kissed him in greeting when he came through the door.

Kit forced himself to stillness, to returning the quick peck she offered, but he knew from the lift of her brow that she noticed his discomfort. She reached out, deft as a bird, and brushed his hair behind his ear, her fingers quick on the rounded tip. He shied like a startled horse, and she nodded satisfaction as he shifted from foot to foot.

“Some Elf‑knight,” she said, when Judith was out of earshot, scampering into the house to let Cook and the maid know the company had come. “You look like an overdressed university lad, if you ask me, which you haven’t. Will you eat beef and bread and apples like a mortal man?”

“Madam,” Kit said, stamping the snow from his boots. “And glad of it. Mistress Shakespeare, you keep a fine house.”

“I do when I can,” she answered, and hung his cloak on a peg once he handed it to her. “Will wrote to say you were here on his business – ”

A note of suspicion in her voice, and not unwarranted. Kit let his gaze wander as she led him to the hearthside, concealing a swelling blister of sorrow. Will’s an idiot not to come home more often. Had I a family such as this– “And he told you I was an Elf‑knight?”

“Nay, he told me my rival was an Elf‑knight under a curse, who could not endure a mortal touch. ‘Twas not too difficult a study to know of whom he spoke, once presented yourself at my door in your hobgoblin cloak and your boots of green chamois.”

“Ah.” Kit kept the little bubble of–not homesickness, exactly–behind his smile as she led him to a chair by the fire and pressed a mug of warmed wine into his hands. “Your rival, madam?”

“Not his words,” she admitted. “But you’re no elf, Master Marlin, or I am very much mistaken.”

“Changeling,” Kit said with a shrug he meant to be casual. He closed his eyes, afraid of what Mistress Shakespeare might glimpse in them, and then opened them again, uneasy when he could not see. “It makes little difference in the end; I was born mortal, but it seems I am mortal no more.”

Mistress Shakespeare glanced over her shoulder, assuring their privacy, before she sat across the hearth from Kit. She lowered her voice so it would not ring through the house. “What is my husband to you?”

Kit’s breath stopped half in and half out of his chest. “My” – he swallowed wine to cover his hesitation, and managed only poorly, by the look in her eyes – “oh, there is no one easy word, madam. What did he say to you of me, to put that savagery in your gaze?”

Silence, and the dent of her teeth in her lip. Her skirts, twisted between her fingers, showed him a flash of red flannel petticoats. “He said he loved you.”

“Ah.” There is no answer that can make that better.“Mistress, and I him.”

She shrugged. Her skirts fell smooth. Her small foot twisted on the hearthstone, clad in a shoe of good blue leather, the stitching stretched over the rise of her great toe.

“I could mend that for you,” Kit said, pointing with his chin.

She started, expression darkening as if he indicted her housewifery, and then saw the angle of his gaze and looked down, extending a hearty ankle to inspect her shoe in the firelight. “A seamstress, are you?”

“I can darn a stocking, too,” Kit said. “Such it is with students.” The wine was sugared, sweet and thick. It heated his cold feet at least as much as the fire did. “Especially the overdressed ones.”

A laugh, but not a warm one. Aye, and she’s a reason to love thee, Kit?She tucked her shoe away under her skirts and dusted her hands together, as if about to rise. “Your supper will be a little while longer – ”

“‘Tis no matter,” he said, sipping his wine, trying to puzzle out what the even tone of her comment meant. Is she inviting some sort of a battlefield alliance, I wonder? Or running her banner up over Will’s castle?“The company is good.”

She blushed dark; Kit rather enjoyed imagining Will’s reaction to his flattery. He smiled wider when she absently brushed fingers across the pouch resting against her bosom. “I wanted to hate you,” she said.

“You would not be the first. Or likely the last.”

“He came home – Master Marlin, why did you send him home again? And healed. Half healed, at least. …”

“Aye, and I wish I could claim his health my doing,” Kit said. They matched gazes a little while, and Kit finished the wine. “Madam, I thank you. That was very pleasant.”

“And unpoisoned, ” she said, with a little shrug and half a chuckle. She leaned to lift the cup from his fingers, turning it with her own. “This time, at least. You did not tell me why.”

Her answer was so dry he had to laugh before he hoisted himself to his feet and swept a bow. “Mistress Shakespeare. I beg your sympathy, madam, and I pray you understand that there is nothing in me so base as would take a man from his wife and children. Even could I.”

Mistress Shakespeare lowered her voice. The firelight fell across her face; Kit liked the way it outlined the high, arrogant arch of her brow. “If he knew them better, that might be more of a promise, Master Marlin.”

Ah. Touch й . And the heart of the matter.“Madam,” Kit said, as kindly as he could through an ache and a coldness that ran from his throat all the way down to his fingertips, “Will’s heart is yours. No matter what else transpires – ”

“Words are easy,” she answered, but she didn’t rise.

“They are. And they are yet all I have, and all I have ever had.” Kit sighed, and stared down at his boots. Hanged for the lamb is hanged for the ewe.“Did Will tell you why he sent me?”

She swallowed, a little bobble behind the worn silk of her throat, and whispered, “Hamnet.”

With his witch’s sight, Kit wouldn’t have had any problems walking through the woods after sunset, as long as there was some little starlight. But he was not eager to go among Faerie oaks in the darkness and the dark of the moon, and less eager even to drag Annie Shakespeare out into the snow and the night. “Tomorrow. When it’s light. Can you show me where he died? That is all I need of you; I can stay the night at the inn.” Aye,” Mistress Shakespeare answered, and gathered her skirts to rise, his cup still dangling from her fingers. “Your supper will be ready. Come join us at board, Master Marlin. And then Peter, our lad in service, will show you up to bed. There is no need for any lover of my Will’s to share a buggy inn bed.”

She turned then, and Kit stopped her with the quick brush of fingers across her sleeve. “Madam …”

“Master Marlin?”

He coughed, a prickling throat. It was all inadequate, anything he could say, any flowery line he could quote, in the face of her grace and her strength and her composure. “If I had someone such as you at home, I would not leave her a moment.”

She regarded him evenly, only the corners of her eyes giving a trace of a smile. “As well‑favored as you are,” she said. “How can it be that you do not?”

* * *

Snow creaked over crunching leaves as Kit left Mistress Shakespeare at the edge of the Arden wood and tromped forward, feeling her gaze on his back. His rucksack swayed against his shoulder. There was no path under the trees. Their black branches shone wet and rough against a dawning sky of pale porcelain blue; the white powder underneath was trellised with fallen laceworks of snow, but only Kit’s footprints marred it.

Not even a crow or a fox. And canst blame them?He glanced around, tugging the velvet collar of his cloak higher as if to ward the gaze of chilly eyes from his neck. The trees leaned over, their wind‑stirred fingers interlaced like bones. Kit found himself ducking as if through low doorways whenever he looked up, and drawing shallow breaths that tasted of moss and musk and mildew.

His right eye showed a smoky power moving within the coarse‑barked trunks. The trees were young, saplings scattered among a few old giants; the wood had been cut in living memory, and Kit wondered if that were the reason for the appalling stench of hate and old blood clotting his senses.

The bit of ribbon had bunched in the palm of his glove. He tugged his digits free and wiggled his hand out, checking over his shoulder to make sure Will’s wife was out of sight behind the barren oaks. Her silhouette had vanished. He stretched the band of scarlet velvet between his fingers – one hand gloved, the other bare –and blew a cloud of steam into the still morning.

His cherry‑varnished viola was in his pack. Kit crouched and slid it out, the ribbon dangling from his fingers as he balanced the case on his knee and opened it reverently. He tied the ribbon around the viola’s waist, under the strings, with a tidy bow at the back, returning the case to his pack to keep it dry before he stood. He would have hung the whole affair on a low branch, but given the wood and his purpose here, he thought perhaps that would be unwise.

That smoky pall of force began to shift as soon as he plucked the strings to tune, mentally apologizing both to the fae bard Cairbre and to the fine old instrument for bringing it out in such chill and unwholesome air. The smoke was not the only vitality in that wood: there was a power in the viola’s pregnant belly and graceful neck as well, a strength as red and resonant as its stain.

Kit felt the oak wood tremble, expectant, bathinghim and his music, and every mortal touch and scent on his soul and on his skin. He shrugged his cloak back from his shoulders and raised the viola and the rosined bow.

The trees screamed when he scraped the first note from the strings. Branches wore on branches like chalk on slate, a sharp grinding that sent Kit’s shoulders up around his ears and all but drowned the hollow lucidity of the viola’s tone. He persevered, found the upswing into a reel, planted his feet wide in the snow, and leaned into the music as best he could.

He would have closed his eyes and found the rhythm, submerged himself in the song, but a witch’s otherwisesight showed him that smoky puissance rising in the trunks of the oaks and the coiled crimson, potent as lifeblood, in the music streaming from his fingertips, and he didn’t dare let his attention waver.

Gauzy tendrils reached out and brushed his hair, his face, his moving hands. Kit felt a slight resistance, a child’s plucking fingers, and fiddled through it. The tendrils struck his cloak, the oaks’ gnarled branches grasping after; both slid back like oiled hands clutching ice and Kit played faster, fingers sailing over the viola’s neck, bow flying back and forth like the shuttle on a loom. He stumbled a note, almost hesitated as the crimson light quailed before an onslaught of dark– smoke and firelight–staggered, found his theme again, twisted his reel around it, and made it his own, gliding the tune over the discord of branch on branch that sought to drown him out.

The music soared. The chafe of wet bark became –not words, but something like enough words that Kit understood them, though the voices raised the hair along his spine. Witch. Witch. Witchery.

Aye,” Kit said, lowering the viola a moment, and holding the red light no other’s eyes would see steady about himself. “Witchery. And I command you in the names of my dread master Lucifer and of the Queen of the Daoine Sidhe to answer my questions, and answer them true.”

Like a saw on bone. Terrible, those voices. Thy master. Witch. Thy queen.

Not ours.

Not ours.

Not ouurzzz.

The black hands grasped as the first golden fingers of dawn filtered through branches. Kit stood fast, telling himself his shiver was cold and the morning mists, nothing else. The black hands touched his cloak and pressed it against his body, but could not push past. “Be that as it may. I am here, and I command you.”

A rattle of branch on branch, a stag knocking velvet from new tines. No. Witch. Witch. Not ours.

A white pain flared over his breastbone, and he flinched. Hell.No, not Hell; what burned was the mark over his heart, the final brand left on his skin when Richard Baines and his Prometheans had raped and tortured him in Rheims, when he had been a mortal man and innocent. Then, like a lightning caress down Kit’s belly and thighs, wherever the irons had touched, the same pain, brighter, so sharp it was almost sweet. He tasted blood but did not scream.

Kit spoke through grinding teeth, forcing his spine straight. I’ve felt worse.“Who ordered the death of Hamnet Shakespeare?”

Not ours.

Witchery.

He touched the red ribbon on the red viola with the tip of his bow. “Who ordered the death of Hamnet Shakespeare?”

No answer this time, just the clawing and sawing of the branches, the leaning threat of the sapling trees bent over him, their limbs poised like daggers. Smoky fingers coiled and drifted, wavering thick as banners now, redolent of hate. Somewhere, not too distant, a dead branch crashed to earth. A sort of croaking moan followed, the splintering resonance of splitting wood. Kit turned, following the path of the smoke of power against the wind, and yelped. He dove aside, a deadfall landing close enough to heave snow and splinters on him. He kept his grip on the viola, clutched it close when he rolled, guarded it with his body when he rose with a swordsman’s grace.

“Dammit,” he swore, and took a deep breath. Snowmelt trickled from his hair, down his neck. “Third time I command you then –as I am a man and the master and shepherd of trees since the wild God of the World gave Adam their naming – answer me not, and I shall return with fire.”

Silence, shivering silence. Kit spoke into it, each word measured and plain. “Who ordered the death of Hamnet Shakespeare?”

A breath held. A silence like the silence of any mortal wood in the golden sunrise, in the January snow. The smell of rotten wood, of loam under snow. No whispers. No mutters. No ghosts.

But a name.

Robin Goodfellow,the wood said.

Puck.

Act IV, scene v

Salisbury: God’s arm strike with us! ‘tis a fearful odds.

God be wi’ you, princes all; I’ll to my charge:

If we no more meet till we meet in heaven,…

–William Shakespeare, Henry V,Act IV, scene iii

Will glanced around the candlelit confines of a smoky little room in the chapel of Westminster Palace–almost more of a hallway with a narrow table and six tall chairs in the center–and sat himself down with a sigh. At the head of the table, near the flickering candelabra. He plucked a beeswax taper from one arm of the fixture and toyed with it while he waited, letting the wax drip along its sides in layered arabesques, making the shadows dance.

No matter how he tilted the taper between his fingers, the flame rose upright through the biting chill, shivering slightly in response to his palsy. He shook free beads of liquid wax and rising bubbles of smoke, amused by their transformation from transparency to a milky crystallized splash when they struck the cold wood of the table.

Beyond the windowless walls, a clock struck seven. And Sir Robert did not come. Am I forgotten? Or is this meant to teach me humility?He tilted the taper further, and this time the wax that fell dripped down the wick and flamed as it scattered through the air. A good effect,Will thought. ‘Tis pity there’s not a safe way to adapt it for the stage. ‘Twould be too fine a detail to read well, anyway.

The door opened, admitting the spare black‑robed shape of Robert Cecil; Will twisted the candle upright and stood, hot wax splattering his fingers as his trembling knocked it loose. He bowed, careful not to set himself on fire, and tucked the candle back into the candelabra. “Mr. Secretary.”

“Master Shakespeare, ” Sir Robert said, and shut the door firmly. “Sir Thomas passed along your note regarding the disposition of your … investigation … of Masters Baines and Poley. I would have preferred a personal report.”

“I am afraid that was impossible,” Will said, coming forward. “If I had been in London, I believe I would be dead.”

Cecil limped to the end of the table. “We’ve had the house under observation.” He pulled a chair out but did not sit. “The Inquisitor’s body has not turned up.”

“Then it’s still in the house, ” Will said, as if the situation could not be more plain. He picked wax from the crease of his thumb with his left hand, steadying his right when it would have trembled. It didn’t help, and he dug in his purse for a shilling, hoping the gesture looked absent. “He’s most certainly dead, Mr. Secretary.”

“I did notreceive a satisfactory explanation from Sir Thomas of how you yourself managed to escape, although I’ll not complain of any man who brings me the demise of a Papist pawn.

Will looked down, watching the silver coin cartwheel across his knuckles in the candlelight. “You’ve not had Baines arrested yet?”

Threadlike lips writhed as Sir Robert tried and failed to repress a smile. “We are arranging a suitable frame for your painting of Baines as counterfeiter. And an excuse to search the house. If he’s buried a body in his cellar, so much the better; at the very least, we can force Essex to act to protect him, and perhaps the Earl will show a soft underbelly.” Cecil sighed. “You know he supports James as the heir.”

“I know the Queen thinks it treason to speak of it, Sir Robert,” Will said.

Cecil coughed into his hand. “And yet speak of it we must.”

“Nay, Mr. Secretary.” Will shook his head. “Baines, Oxford, and Essex, and their Prometheans, are my concern, and the safety of the Queen we have. When that changes, I’ll address it, but I leave finer matters of politics to those who are equipped to understand the implications.”

Cecil watched Will silently, running his hands over the back of the chair, his brow furrowed as if he added sums in his head. “Marlowe would have argued the succession for an hour.”

“Marlowe cared about such things,” Will answered, feeling disloyal. Well. He does.

“And what do you care for, Master Shakespeare?”

Marley,Will almost said, and stopped himself just in time. It wouldn’t have been worth Cecil’s bewildered look. “The realm,” he said, which at least was true. Cecil stayed silent, and Will couldn’t resist. “The coins are hidden in the straw tick of a bed on the second floor. You’ll want to have the house searched before spring.”

“Before the housemaid turns them out with the straw, to dry in the sun of the garden?” It drew a smile, at least. “Very well, Master Shakespeare. One thing more – ”

“Aye?”

Sir Robert pushed the chair he had not sat in back against the table. “Your play for Her Majesty?”

“Aye.”

“Make it a potent one. An you value the realm of which you speak.”

Will nodded, running his thumb across the raised profile of Queen Elizabeth on the coin in his hand. And decided not to tell Robert Cecil just yet that he wasn’t entirely certain that the magic the Queen’s poets put into their words was still effective, given the fate of Edmund Spenser, and the way Elizabeth herself seemed to crumble before his very eyes.

Will wasn’t surprised to find Kit waiting in his rooms when he returned to Silver Street, shaking the cold rain and the night out of his hair. Half a dozen candles gleamed on table and mantel, and Will didn’t like the dark circles under Kit’s eyes, like the smear of an ink‑marked thumb, or the snarls drying in Kit’s uncombed hair. Or the hollow expression he turned on Will when Will opened the door and came in, already unlacing his jerkin, his cloak bunched over his arm.

Will paused just inside, making sure the door latched behind him. “Ill news.”

“Aye.” Kit stood and stretched, crossing to the fire he’d built up either to warm himself or in anticipation of Will’s return. He was dressed in a plain linen shirt and black wool breeches; another, waterlogged, shirt and a jerkin were laid across the back of a chair not far from the fire. “Where hast thou been?” “Sir Robert,” Will answered. He stepped out of soggy boots and found a flannel for his hair. “The entrapment of Baines and Poley proceeds apace. We hope. Art planning to impart thy news?”

“Bulldog.” Kit rose and came to Will, close enough that he could feel the warmth and moisture rising through Kit’s shirt, steaming from curls sprung tight in the humidity. Kit reached out and took the flannel from Will’s hands to dry his hair. Will ducked to permit the intimacy, smiling. “Dost think thine entanglement of Baines will succeed? ”

“He’s close to Essex,” Will answered. He reached to touch Kit’s arm, and Kit stepped away with a smile that was half apology. “And he and Poley both useful to the Queen – ”

“Aye, I think it unlikely too. Still, perhaps we can give him a bad moment. I went to Stratford, Will.” “And?”

“Thou toldst me not that Annie knew something of us.” “Ah.” Will nodded, half to himself, and crossed the room, intending to pour wine for both of them. “I should have known she’d read through the riddle of thy presence. What didst thou tell her?”

A low chuckle, honeyed with that pleased smugness that always put Will in mind of a satisfied tomcat. “That, dear William, is her business and mine. An thou wishest to know such things, shouldst arrange to be present when they are discussed. Thou’rt still wet through, love: take off thy shirt and dress thyself dry. I brought thee that Bible, but Ben or I shall have to read it thee.” “Greek?”

“Aye.”

Will turned in time to catch the clean woolen shirt Kit tossed. He tugged soft, scratchy cloth past his face while Kit cleared his throat once or twice, fussing with the wine cups; by the time Will had the shirt comfortably settled, Kit pressed a goblet into his hands. Kit’s hesitance–the way he turned his eyes aside when Will tried to catch his gaze – burrowed into Will’s composure as if with hook‑tipped nails. “Kit.” Will disciplined himself, leaning back against painted plaster, long fingers curved around the bowl of his cup. “Is thy news so dire?”

“Dire enough. I interviewed the oak wood – ”

“Interviewed the oak wood.” Will said it more to taste the sound of the words than because it needed saying. “What didst thou discern?”

Kit shrugged, staring at Will as if he expected Will to look down. The fireglow and the candlelight snagged in his right eye and flickered golden, the left side of his face cast into shadow. “I’ve questions to ask in Faerie before I come to thee with final answers.”

“Dammit, Kit – ”

“Nay.” A clipped, flat gesture with Kit’s right hand. Will swallowed his protest with a hasty mouthful of wine, and waited for Kit’s explanation. “I won’t lead thee to a hasty conclusion on a matter so dear. Don’t ask it of me.”

There was more darkness in Kit’s eyes than the angle of the light, Will decided. “What thou’rt doing– It takes a toll of thee, this witchery. Does it not? ”

Kit turned down, away. He brushed a bit of lint off the shoulder of his shirt. “It leaves me stronger than before,” Kit answered. “Full of strange echoes of power, and knowing things no mortal man should know. I know not who I am, Will.”

That hollowness–the only word Will could think of– echoed in Kit’s voice, and Will itched to go to him. “Thou’rt Christopher Marlowe,” he said. “Poet, playmaker, Queen’s Man, and the friend and lover of a lucky few who cannot hope to deserve thee –

He didn’t understand why Kit flinched at his name, or the watery grin which he offered Will when Will’s voice trailed off. “Aye, thou dost deserve better,” Kit muttered, and set his cup aside and turned to open a shutter. “‘Tis raining still.”

“‘Tis.” Will straightened away from the wall, turning his cup in his fingers to steady his hand, and scuffed a foot through the winter‑rank rushes on the floor. “We must put paid to Baines and Poley, Kit. Sir Robert didn’t say as much, but from him I have the impression that Gloriana is– unwell.”

“When she passes – ” Kit chewed his lower lip. He glanced down at his hands, and latched the shutters again. “It will have repercussions in Faerie. We’ll deal with it when we must. Needs must move faster than we have, in any case – ”

“Sir Robert won’t like it.”

Kit grinned. “Sir Thomas will. And your side of beef, Jonson, or I miss my guess.”

Will snorted. “Jonson is ever eager. Now that he knows you live, I may as well tell Burbage too. Wilt meet with us at Tom’s house, and we can start our Bible? If you have the book – ”

“Aye, I have the book.” Kit’s fingers drummed on the window ledge.

The pattern was erratic, a touch too quick, and ragged. It made Will’s heart feel as if it beat irregularly, in counterpoint. He kicked his heel against the wall, waiting for Kit to continue.

“Did Sir Robert say the Queen was dying? Dying now?”

“He insinuated she had not a year left in her.”

“Damme,” Kit said. “We need more strength, Will. If things go the way I think they will in Faerie, I may very well provoke a war. What that means for England I am not sure, but Morgan and Murchaud and others all have told me that there will be battle when Elizabeth dies. And I suspect Elizabeth’s passing may not go easy on the Queen of Faerie, either: the two are story‑linked. We’re weak, our faction. Damned weak – ”

Will exhaled. “There’s the witchcraft you got in Hell.”

“Aye, and if I’m clever I may make Baines regret his alliances. I mean to go there from here, and try my hand at the evil work of an evil eye. But there’s Oxford and Essex and our old friend Southampton – ” He shook his head.

“We can’t trust Sir Robert either, ” Will said, at last putting a name to the conviction the evening’s meeting had left in him. He’s already searching for the place he’ll put his feet when the Queen is gone. He’s not his father’s vision – ”

“Nor his father’s shortcomings, I hope,” Kit answered bitterly. “So it’s thee and me and Tom and Jonson and Dick Burbage against half the peerage and two of England’s greatest intelligencers.” His lips pursed as if it pained him to admit as much of Baines and Poley. “We need to take control back: we’ve lost the initiative utterly. Thy Lady Day play. Whatever Jonson’s working on. Has anyone talked to George?”

“Can we trust George?”

“Can we fail to?” Kit slumped, forehead to the shutters, taking his weight on locked elbows, his hair parting in ringlets at the nape of his neck. “He may already know more than we suspect. Tom was George’s patron before he was mine.”

“I’ll tell Richard,” Will said. He turned his cup over on the window ledge by Kit’s hand, and fumbled in his pocket for the silver coin so he wouldn’t reach out to tidy Kit’s hair. “I’ll ask Tom about George – ”

“Feel George out.” Kit pushed himself upright and turned to the chair by the fire, sliding his jerkin off the back and testing the dampness of the leather with curious fingertips.

“I will.”

“Who else have we?”

Will stopped and closed his eyes. “Edmund.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids and bowed his head.

“Edmund? Spenser? Will–”

“No,” Will said. “Edmund my brother. He’s playing at the Curtain now, Kit.”

“And thou wouldst risk him?”

Will laughed, slicking both hands back over his ever‑rising brow, and met Kit’s gaze more squarely than he felt the need to. “He’d be furious with me if I kept him from participating in any justice meted to Hamnet’s murderers. He had more to do with my son’s raising than I did myself– ”

He let the sentence hang, and Kit left it there long enough that Will filled the silence. “And thee?”

Kit shrugged the jerkin on, and found a bit of rawhide in a pocket to twist his unruly curls into a tail. “I’m going to try to kill Richard Baines.”

Act IV, scene vi

Behold and venge this Traitor’s perjury!

Thou, Christ, that art esteem’d omnipotent,

If thou wilt prove thyself a perfect God,

Worthy the worship of all faithful hearts,

Be now reveng’d upon this Traitor’s soul,

And make the power I have left behind

(Too little to defend our guiltless lives)

Sufficient to discomfit and confound

The trustless force of those false Christians!–

–Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part II, Act II, scene ii

The January rain drew cold fingers through Kit’s hair and down the back of his neck. The only lover’s touch you’re like to feel again.He shivered and tugged his cloak higher, settling the weight of his rapier at his hip as he made the turn from Muggle Street onto Silver. His fingers brushed the red velvet of Hamnet’s ribbon, tied to the hilt, and he laughed to himself at the irony. So Will raises Poley’s son– who might be Kit’s son, rather–and Edmund raises Will’s son.

And what dost thou contribute to the equation?

Blood. Blood and more blood.

That is all.

Kit left his hood down. The streets were deserted with the early winter curfew, leaving him without company except the odd stray dog and the odder feral pig, and the shadows he called would conceal his passage from most casual eyes. He pursed his lips and whistled an air, summoning a swarm of greeny‑gold glowing midges out from darkened alleys. They swirled like a minuscule waterspout over his open palm; he blew his breath and his music across it and they flocked like swallows and schooled like fish.

There was one useful thing in the marks Baines had branded into his flesh. They were a palpable trace of the man, and Kit could use their resonance to find him. “Richardum Baines mei invenite,” he commanded. The motes rose and sparkled, darted and flitted, arrowed in a general easterly direction and then jigged back and forth like a dog leading its master to the gate, impatient for supper. As Kit followed the guiding will‑o’‑the‑wisp through London’s slick, dark streets, the night grew colder. Water froze in his hair.

White flakes superceded the icy rain, turning the footing slushy and treacherous. Snow whispered on the reddish roofs as Kit’s guides led him to the theatre inns near Bishopsgate, each one closed for the night, narrow doors barred for curfew, and then through the twelve‑foot archway into the innyard of the Green Dragon.

Some candlelight still glowed through shutters on the second and third floors. Kit leaned back, shading the snow from his eyes with a hand held flat, and contemplated the diamond‑patterned railings on the galleries. Despite his better intentions he found himself glancing about the innyard; he’d lodged here when he first came to London, and seen several of his own plays performed to audiences that crowded those very galleries and the pavement upon which he now stood.

His witchlights twinkled along the railing by one shuttered window, a handful of emeralds set out in the sun. The second gallery, of course, and he wondered why it was that he never needed to scale a trellis in dry sunshine and gentle warmth.

I wish I’d brought a pistol.Aye, ‘Marlowe,’ ” he muttered. “If a sword and black magic won’t suffice, perhaps thou shouldst ensure thou hast a firearm so thou canst blow thine own clumsy fingers off when the damned thing misfires. How am I going to get up that gallery with the front door closed and no doubt barred?”

Add burglar to thine accomplishments.

He huddled under shadows in the innyard, watching the soft green jewels of his will‑o’‑the‑wisps shifting like sleepy doves on the railing, glowing dimly through the downy fall of snow. The chill on his skin, the numbness of his hands and tongue, couldhave been the cold. Aye, and thou hast lied to thyself so many times before.

Kit looked down at his hands, knotted in front of his belly. Courage, puss.” His own words, meant for irony, startled him; he’d captured Baines’ calming tone–the voice a man might use on a skittish animal – better than he’d expected. He drew a breath and kept on: intentionally now. “Come, kitten. It’ll soon be over. Be a little brave – ” He tasted blood, and couldn’t decide if it was real, or a ghost of memory. But his cheek stung; he’d bitten it hard enough to break the flesh. He turned and spat into the snow. Blood and more blood.

He looked up, untangling his fingers from their knot and then tangling them again when they wanted to creep up and press his jerkin and his shirt against the scar in the center of his breast. Fist doubled in fist, Kit punched himself in the thigh and snarled, “Baines was right. Here standeth as God‑damned a white‑livered coward as needeth a keeper to wipe his arse. Now get thee up there, Marley, and do thou what thou camest for.” If thou’rt going to whore thyself for the power to do, it ill befits thee to stand shaking in terror when couldst bedoing.

He shuffled forward, eyeing the lower gallery. White flakes dusted it, caught in the ripples on toothy icicles, but it wasn’t more than ten feet above the pavement, and Kit rather thought he could get his fingers over the lip. If he didn’t slip and dash his brains all over the pavement.

Here standeth a fine gallant figure of a hero.

Kit scrubbed his hands on his doublet one more time, made sure his sword was settled, and tucked his cloak tight. Then he took a breath and crouched, and leapt into the air.

I should have thought to sand my hands.But he grabbed and held, right hand burning on the ice, something gouging the softer flesh between ring and middle fingers. He wedged his left hand through the trellising, fingers around a rail post and jammed by the narrow gap, and he hung there, kicking.

And didn’t fall.

He wasn’t sure he could have managed what he did next when he was a student or a poet, and soft. But he had relentless Murchaud and their fencing sessions to thank for the easy strength across his shoulders and in his forearms that let him drag his leaden body higher. He levered himself up to the gallery and twisted to get an elf‑booted foot over the lip, then pushed himself upright amid a rattle of dislodged ice. He froze against the timber, calling his shadows about him, and listened for any sign that the landlord or his custom might have heard.

The whisper of snow softened everything. In the stable, a courier’s or a courtier’s steed snorted, stamped. Somewhere a church bell tolled, and that was all.

Kit leaned his forehead against the timber and gasped, holding the beam as close as a lover. I should have begged Lucifer for wings, while I was begging.And then he found himself pressing his free fist against the hollow of his chest like a man in panic, a pain like a cramp flexing his ribs.

Christ wept.

Aye. And is weeping still.

The witchlights gleamed under their icing of snow. A gentle glow: it put Kit in mind of sunlight through fine worked jade, or the new leaves of spring. Infinite riches.

And not a man would give a penny for them.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

A grin to himself and one for Will, and no look down at the knotty cobbles behind and below his boots. Infinite riches.Aye, and they showed him precisely where to place his reaching hands.

The second gallery was harder, as it matched the overhang of the first. Kit hoisted himself, still clinging to his post, and balanced himself on the ice with trepidation. Still, his boots never slipped and the witchlights gave more guidance now that he pressed his hands into the snow between.

He lifted himself over the railing on the second gallery; his guidelights vanished as if snuffed. Kit stood in the heady darkness, sweat freezing with the rain under his hasty ponytail, and drew ragged breaths of the dank night air. A crack of brightness gleamed under the shutters of the nearest window, and he smiled and pressed his ear against the wall.

There were spells for listening, too, and for hearing more plainly. Easy enough: he mouthed one and cupped a hand.

No words, but Baines’ voice and then another, cultured and cultivated, and the rattle of bottle neck on cup. And if thou hadst not been as paralyzed with fear as a maid on her wedding night, thou wouldst have paused to wonder why Baines was sleeping in a coaching inn instead of his own good well‑warmed house. Arrant fool. Arrant. Bloody. Fool.

Damme.

Ah well,he thought, and resigned himself to more murders than one. It profits us not to damn fate nor ourselves, but rather we must trust in Providence.Which almost made him giggle. Not Poley with so cultivated a tone. Nor de Vere. Even now, I would know Edward–

Still. ‘Tis a familiar voice–

The snow fell harder, but, under the gallery roof, Kit was dry. He shook his cloak free of his belt and drew his rapier into his hand, frowning as he leveled himself at the door, which would be barred, without a doubt.

And can I not charm a bar from its pegs?

The tune he whistled under his breath. It didn’t matter: magic had no need to be loud.And then Kit leaned back and kicked with all his might at the door latch.

He felt the wood deflect under the ball of his foot, the door springing back an instant before the wood splintered under the impact and the bar jumped free of its slots. The door had rebounded against the frame by the time Kit’s foot touched the floor; as he started forward it swung open again and he blocked it with his left hand, brandishing the silver rapier in his right as he came into the presence of Richard Baines.

Richard Baines, who stood by the hearth in the bare little room, leaning against the warm stones, handsome and only a little wide‑eyed as he reached for the rapier at his hip. “Kit!” he said, smiling as the cold steel extended his reach. “What a pleasant surprise. What’s happened to thine eye?”

Beside him, rising from the stool he’d been straddling, another man Kit recognized – blond and well‑favored, a broad‑shouldered Adonis with eyes as heavenly as Lucifer’s. Robert Catesby, and Kit made sure his flinch didn’t show on his face. Just a dream.

Catesby’s sword was not at hand; the stool clattered and rolled as he scrambled after it, getting his back into the corner by the bed that was the only other bit of furniture in the room. Neither as cool as Richard Baines, nor as deadly smooth.

Kit stepped through the door and closed it with his heel, sealing plank to frame with a sandpaper‑surfaced word. Baines’ sword‑tip never wavered but Kit saw his head tilt, his brow wrinkle in a genteel manner that had never presaged aught but ill. “Interesting,” he drawled, examining Kit from his dripping hair to the slush‑stained boots and then slowly back up again. “Did he heal all thyscars, my darling?”

The word had left Kit’s throat as raw as a coughing fit. He managed to get his teeth apart enough to speak clearly, but it took courage. “Where’s Robin, Dick?”

Catesby lifted his chin, and his blade did waver, but Baines knew which Robert Kit meant. “Poley’s on errantry,” he said. Some matter, no doubt, of direst import for the Queen. Thou knowest how valuable she finds him.”

“Indispensable. Of course. Master Catesby, my apologies”– Kit didn’t turn his head, but he could see from the blond cavalier’s stance that Catesby knew what end of a sword was which, and it did not comfort him – “I’m afraid your presence here does not bode well for your continued well‑being. I’ve come to kill this man.”

“Arrogant puppy.” There wasn’t any harshness in Baines’ voice; only that controlled, chilling amusement. Catesby moved to put himself between Baines and Kit. Baines stepped forward, blocking him. “Don’t worry, Robin. I can handle this.” Baines drew himself up, smiling rather than sneering down at Kit. “Becoming Lucifer’s leman has made thee bold, I wot. Although whoring should be nothing new to thee – ”

The words were like a wall. The dismissal in them, the amusement, Baines’ quiet confidence and mastery. As if he could not even be bothered to despise Kit. Kit leaned into them, forced himself a step forward. Catesby would break first, he thought, would not permit Baines to shuffle him aside so easily, not to judge by the stallion set of his neck.

“At least I’ve never held down a boy half my size while five grown men forced themselves on him,” Kit answered, trying for something of Baines’ bantering tone. What got out between his teeth was bitterness.

“No, thou hast an easy time finding lords and libertines to make of thee their Ganymede. Thou didst think not thy patrons kept thee for thy poetry.”

“Bastard – ” Kit moved forward, a firm step where his feet wanted to shuffle, and called on the rage and the roiling power stewing in the hollow of his gut.

Baines only laughed. “Going to scratch mine eyes out, puss? Come on, then – ” and came forward to meet him. Catesby moved at the same moment, supporting Baines, two swords pressing as Kit sidled sideways to get his back into the corner by the door.

Kit freed his main gauche before the bigger men got within sword reach, hoping the cramped quarters would cause them to foul each other. Catesby had to come around the bed, at least, and hop over that tumbled stool. Baines advanced straight in; Kit’s right eye showed him something dark and potent twist itself around Baines’ left hand, as if he swung a cape of some black force to supplement the bright blade of his rapier.

Baines never took his eyes off Kit’s face when he spoke, and that unconscious caution made Kit feel suddenly lighter. “Don’t kill him, Robin,” Baines said. “Not until I get a look at him with his shirt off– ”

“As if you could manage my death,” Kit scoffed, and whispered a few words in a pidgin of bastard Greek and the sleek, fluid language that Satan had taught him. He looked Baines in the eye when he said them, but Baines’ left hand moved, that cloak of darkness flickering around his fingers, and it was Robert Catesby who slumped to his knees and fell back upon the floor, his sword blade ringing when it dropped from his fingers, a wide snore drifting from his parted lips.

Kit never looked away from Baines, but Baines looked down at Catesby and then back at Kit with a nod that might have been edged with respect. “Nicely done.”

Kit drew a ragged breath and formed his sleeping spell again. Baines shifted onto the balls of his feet, and for half a drawn breath neither man moved. Then …

Fuck this for a Lark–

It wasn’t the sleeping spell that Kit spat hastily–as Baines lunged – but an older, wilder magic; something Lucifer had shown him but had not bothered to explain. A curse, very simply, simple and uncontrolled, related to the old weird magic the black Prometheans used to call down God’s wrath in plagues and famines and the strange wild storms of winters such as no living man remembered– winters that froze the Thames, and plagues that killed men like Edmund Spenser and Ferdinando Stanley.

Die like Sir Francis,Kit thought, and hoped a subtler magic wouldn’t slip off Baines’ black spell‑cloak like water off oiled silk. The words didn’t slow him: Kit hastened to parry Baines’ gliding serpent of a blade. He stepped to the right, hopped over Catesby’s sprawl, and found himself with his back to the spell‑locked door.

Baines had the reach and the weight and the heavier blade; he came in hard, let Kit parry, and took the stop‑thrust of Kit’s main gauche through the meat of his own left forearm with little more than a grunt and a curse. “Blast – ”

Steel ground on silver; Kit’s head spun with the clean, sharp reek of Baines’ sweat, the cedar from his doublet. Baines shoved Kit’s sword and his right hand hard against the wainscoting with all his oxlike shoulder behind it. A close bind: Kit released his main gauche, still fast in Baines’ arm, and dropped to his knees between Baines and the wall, dragging his rapier free with a sound that should have showered sparks on both their heads. I should have twisted the damned knife. I should have run him through the neck and not the arm.

Dammit, Kit, fight better than this.

You know how to fight better than this–

Too close in to use the rapier. Baines brought his knee up before Kit could dive aside – a great reckoning in a Little room,Kit thought, as the blow under his chin slammed his teeth together, his head knocking a dent in the plaster of the wall. His mouth was full of blood: Baines’ blood, dribbling from the wound in his arm, and Kit’s own blood streaking his teeth and roping down his throat. He gagged on it, rolled aside, and almost got his rapier up in time.

Baines kicked him in the belly, hard, and Kit went down with his head between his knees and the acid burn of vomit chasing the stringy sweetness of blood from his mouth. “Christ,” he whimpered, and Baines kicked the sword out of his hand. It rang like a dropped coin when it struck the wall and fell, blade angled like a broken wing, into the corner. Another kick, one more, center of his chest and Kit felt something flex and twist over his heart, a green buckling noise like a twisted stick.

Christ.

And then, ridiculously, as he doubled up, gagging again: I’m sorry, Will.Something else rang on the floor. Kit’s main gauche, Baines swearing heartily as he yanked it free and cast it aside. “That’s two scars I owe thee, puss.”

Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.But Baines’ hands were gentle, lifting Kit against the wall, smoothing the wet curls that had escaped his ponytail out of his eyes. Kit spat blood and bile in Baines’ face, slamming the side of his hand down on the dagger wound still weeping blood from the left forearm. Baines grunted, grimaced, and let go of Kit. Kit folded like a corpse, trying to push the sharp words of a witchcraft into his mouth. But whatever he had done–the twist and rill of the curse he’d spat out earlier – seemed to have stripped the power out of Kit, and the words were nothing more than doggerel.

‘Christ, Puss,” Baines said, half irritated and half pleased. Stay where I put thee for once. There’s a pet – ”

Kit slumped, wheezing. Almost got a leg under himself, but Baines’ command held him to the floor like the clink of chains. Something rattled. Something splashed. Tearing cloth and cursing: Baines must have been binding his arm. Kit forced himself to one knee again and again fell, defeated. Surely if he could stand he could reach his sword, a few short feet away, just in the corner by the hearth.

Every breath hurt enough to dizzy him. Baines crouched in front of Kit and washed the blood and vomit from his face with a wine‑soaked rag. “Hush for a moment,” he said, and slapped Kit’s cheek backhanded when Kit–‑weakly–fought him. “Hush, puss. This wouldn’t happen if you didn’t fight me so.” His fingers probed.

Kit winced and swore, squirming back against the wall, not liking the strange, concerned gleam in Baines’ eye.

“Oh, thou’rt not bad hurt. A cracked rib is all.” And then he doubled both hands in the lawn of Kit’s collar and shredded the shirt as if ripping up rags, tearing it down to the lacings of the jerkin that Kit wore on top.

“Come, puss. Give us a kiss.”

He leaned forward. Kit slammed himself against the wall, harder than Baines had managed, feeling the strain in his neck as he twisted his face aside. Kill me and get it over with,Kit thought, shivering.

Instead Baines grunted in satisfaction, mock‑loving fingers outlining the scar on Kit’s breast, and let him go. “Good. That saves us time. Now get out, Marlowe. Before Catesby wakes.’

Kit blinked, focus eluding him. He got a hand and a knee on the floor; the effort made the walls spin. “Get out?”

Baines had turned his back on Kit and was wiping the blood from his hands. “I can’t keep thee in a bird cage until I have use for thee. And thou’rt no good to me dead: surely even a poet could have deduced that by now. I’ll be back for thee when I need thee, never fear.”

Back for thee when I need thee.Kit made it to a crouch, steadying himself on the wall. Stood, and staggered to the corner to retrieve his sword. Bending over was a trick; he managed it with one hand braced on the wainscoting, trying not to hear Baines whistling merrily as he washed and rebandaged his wound. Kit staggered for the door.

Baines’ voice arrested him. “Don’t try this trick again, or I’ll see thy friend Shakespeare on the rack. Dost hear me?”

“Aye,” Kit said, and somehow released his own spell on the door and tumbled through it onto the gallery and into the cold. At least,he told himself–trying not to giggle– at least from here thou canst leave by the interior stairs, and out through the front door. Because thouwouldst dash thy brains out if thou hadst to climb down now by the way thou camest.

Past the house‑cleaning landlord, it turned out, who raised a questioning eyebrow as Kit came across the common room to the barred front door. “Master Catesby’s guest,” he said, tugging his cloak tight and hoping the shadows would conceal the ruin of his clothes.

“‘Tis past curfew.” Friendly enough. “Stay the night.”

“My mistress expects me. I’ll mind the watch – ”

“See that you do,” the man said, and came around the bar to lock the door after him.

The cold cleared his head. He staggered into an alleyway and leaned against the wall, under the overhang. Damme. I won’t make that mistake again. Next time, it’s a shadowy alley and a bullet in the back of the head, you son of a whore.

He wants me alive. He’s wanted me alive all along, except when I made it too difficult to keep me that way.Kit pressed his back against the timber and plaster, tasting acid and bitterness, remembering Rheims, remembering the taste of blood and gentle hands holding his hair back while he vomited, again and again.

As if that, as if anything, could clear the poison and the filth from his body. Remembered pleading for his life, and braced his hands on his knees and vomited again, into a rain‑pocked slushpile this time. In Rheims, Baines had argued for his life. Had told the others that if they spared him, they could use the same vessel.

He never meant to kill me.

No.Kit forced himself to stand, to ignore the ragged ache in his chest. He rinsed his mouth with dirty snow, scrubbed more on his face for the chill and abrasion of the icy granules. His brands ached like blisters. His hands stung with the cold. No. He just means to keep me alive for however long it takes and then what? Rape me again? Something else?

God in heaven.

I don’t want to know.

Kit used the frozen surface of a public basin for his mirror – more Promethean witchery, that, that London grew cold enough to freeze her fountains of a winter–and slipped through it and into Faerie with a sigh that was very much relief, even though the court’s fey night shadows twisted around him and small things scurried in the dark. All it would have taken to make my night complete would be to be caught short out of Faerie, and die in some alleyway.

Still staggering, steadying himself with one hand on the wall, Kit moved at first automatically to Morgan’s room and then stopped himself. Not welcome at court.Hell. But Murchaud’s room was closer anyway, and only one flight of stairs away.

The flagstones whirled under Kit’s boots. He pressed his shoulder to the wall, as if the palace needed his assistance to stand as much as he needed its. They leaned together, shoulder to shoulder, flying buttress and cathedral –

A better image than most, for once.He ran his right hand up the banister, cool stone against his ice‑abraded palm, and pulled his torn shirt collar closed at the hollow of his throat, and forbade himself to weep. A command he managed to obey until Murchaud opened his door in a nightshirt Kit had given him, blinking sleepily. “Kit. Thou’rt hurt – ”

“Not so sorely,” Kit answered, and fell through the door.

Murchaud bound his ribs in linen, tight enough to squeeze like a giant’s fist whenever Kit drew a breath, and ignored Kit’s feeble remonstrations over the undressing and the necessary handling. Murchaud warmed water for him–with his own hands, when Kit wouldn’t permit him to call for servants –and combed Kit’s hair, and dressed him in a nightgown twice as large as it needed to be, and carried him–as he had carried Kit that first night in Faerie –to the big chair by the fire. Murchaud settled him there with his feet up and a cup of warmed wine in his hands. It was a blur of action, with Kit trembling like a trapped fox under the Prince’s care and reminding himself not to bite.

Kit drank half the wine without tasting anything but the alcohol’s sting in his lacerated cheek, and then he raised his chin to look Murchaud in the eye. “Thou’rt alone,” he said, wondering.

Murchaud turned away and squatted to poke the fire higher, turning a smoldering log so the bark would catch alight. “I’d be in the Mebd’s rooms if I weren’t, love. She does not come to visit my chambers.”

No, ‘ Kit said. He covered his discomfort with a sip of wine. “I’d have thought – ”

Murchaud shrugged and looked up from his angle‑kneed crouch, shapely limbs protruding from his nightshirt this way and that. “I’ve all the lovers I want,” he said, and stood, limber as a cat, and went to pull the bedcurtains back. The covers were as disordered as Murchaud’s hair; the prince had struggled out of a sound sleep to answer Kit’s knock, and Kit felt a rush of sudden, hopeless gratitude.

And then a moment of wry self‑exasperation. “Damme – ” Kit set his cup down with a click.

“What?”

“I left Cairbre’s viola in Will’s lodging.” He made to stand; his knees failed him, and he slumped back in the chair. “Thou didst drug the wine, ” he accused, as tiredness pressed the center of his chest like a broad, flat palm. His fingers curled on the textured brocade of the chair cushion, but failed to shift his body.

“I’ll save that trick for when I need it,” Murchaud said. “I rather thought the wine would be enough. Come, let me take thee to bed.”

“Murchaud, I – ”

“Hush. I’ll carry thee to thine own rooms if thou likest. Or thou canst sleep in that chair. But I don’t believe thee when thou sayest thou dost wish to be left alone, this night.”

Kit subsided, his eyelids too rough and heavy to hold up. Liar. He did drug the wine.

It didn’t matter. He hadn’t even the strength to protest the discomfort of the Prince’s touch when Murchaud lifted him and laid him in the bed and drew the feather comforter up to his neck. “Puck,” he said, remembering.

“What about him?” A dry kiss on Kit’s forehead. Lights and candles, the dimming of the room. The pressure of a body in bed beside him, and then an arm across his waist. Over the covers. Almost tolerable so, and Kit hadn’t the strength to roll away.

Puck is the villain,Kit meant to say. But then he remembered, he owed Puck a chance to answer the charges to his own face. Before he, Kit, named another friend for treason. As he had named so many before.

He’d seen too many friends hang.

“Nothing,” he said, but he wasn’t sure the word took breath before the darkness folded him deep.

Act IV, scene vii

Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full

Of the wars’ surfeits to go rove with one

That’s yet unbruised: bring me but out at gate.

–William Shakespeare, Coriolanus,Act IV, scene i

Will crouched in the chair by Tom Walsingham’s fire, his damp boots draining onto a rush mat, turning Kit’s glorious old Greek Bible in his hands. Will’s Greek had never been good, worse even than his grammar‑school Latin, but he could tell from the handscript, the margins, and the way the sections abutted in the glove‑soft, gold‑embossed red leather of the binding that he held three or four books stitched together. Their pages had been carefully trimmed to match in size; now scallop‑shell flakes roughened the fragile gold edge. He held the book close to his face, open, cupped in the palm of his hands, inhaling the oak‑leaf scent of the pages. “George, have you ever seenanything like this?”

Chapman set his wineglass on the mantel before he came closer, crouching before Will to get a better look at the text. “Seen? Aye. Never with such a freedom to read as I pleased, however …” Chapman reached forward, hands like wings on either side of Will’s, but didn’t touch.

Teasing, Will pulled the book closer to his chest and hunched over it like a mantling hawk. “Ah – ”

“Can you read it, Will?” Ben, who leaned against the window frame, his dark eyes hooded as if with weariness.

“A word here and there, ” Will said. He looked up as Tom returned to the study, two bottles of wine in his hands. “It’s missing some rather large bits, Kit says. We’ll have to resort to Tom’s Erasmus, too. Tom – ”

The bottles clattered on the sideboard as Tom dug in his purse for a penknife to draw the corks. Ben cleared his throat and tossed one, pearl‑handled, which glittered in the afternoon sunlight as it tumbled across the room. Tom’s hand came up; he plucked it from flight. “Thank thee, Ben – ”

“Not at all, Sir Thomas.”

“Will? Thou wert about to speak?”

Will looked from Tom to Chapman, to the book in his own hands, and shrugged. Ben concealed a smirk behind his sleeve, his regard steady on Will. Chapman stood, puzzled, looking from one man to the other, until Tom smiled. “Why not?”

“Gentlemen?”

“We’ve a plan to translate the Bible into English,” Will said. Wouldst care to engage in it?”

Chapman looked down at the book open on Will’s palms again. “From the Greek, Will? May I‑“

“Aye.” Will held the book up.

Chapman lifted it reverently, in broad fingers knobbed from hours of holding the pen. “There are translations – ”

“None like ours shall be,” Ben put in from his place by the window. He set his cup down and went to relieve Tom of the wine bottles. Ben poured first for their host, who watched, amused, and then filled a cup for Will now that the precious book was out of his hands.

“Will.” Chapman’s voice was barely a breath. He looked up, across the pages, awe on his broad‑cheeked, broken‑nosed face. “Wheredidst come by this book?”

“Kit gave it me – ” Will said distractedly. He covered his slip with a coughing fit and rinsing his mouth with wine, but Chapman paused, bald forehead wrinkling over bushy brows.

Tom stepped in. “It was Marlowe’s. It went to Will after his death.”

“He thought highly of thee.” Chapman touched the book the way a man might stroke flower petals. “How he ever afforded such a thing – ”

“It must have been a gift,” Will said.

Chapman shook his head sadly. “Rare skill, had he. And a foolish manner of spending them–you’ve heard his Ovid’sto be burned?”

“Burned?” Tom,unbuttoning the neck of his doublet, looked up.

“Aye.” Chapman shrugged sadly and set the precious Bible down on a high table, away from the fire, the wine, and the window. “The Archbishop of Canterbury’s men seized copies from St. Paul’s on Monday. Along with everything of Nashe’s, and Gabriel Harvey’s. If you’ve your own copies, you’ll want to keep them quiet. Perhaps even out of the city–

“Burned?” Will heard his own voice as the echo of Tom’s, and thought a chorus. Yes.“Well, Harvey’s no loss to posterity. But Nashe?”

“It’s the Isle of Dogsback to haunt him,” Ben said. “That and his wrangling with Harvey: the Puritans are growing stronger, Will, and it’s foolish to deny it. There’s something to be said for masques.”

“Aye, nobody ever finds a bit of meaning in one, to want to burn it. Gods, poor Tom. I suppose that means they’ll be burning Dido,too, with Kit’s and with Tom’s hand all over it. How can there be any sedition in a translation of Ovid,of all things, to draw Archbishop Whitgift’s ire? It’s Love poems–”

“It’s the Puritans,” Ben said, pouring himself another cup of wine. The big man moved like a cat, for all his weight bent the floorboards under their rush mats. “It’s the Puritans, as I said. They think the translation lewd, and Whitgift bends his neck to the bastards. An Archbishop.” Ben looked as if he wished to spit.

Baines,Will thought. And Essex behind him. Another attack on the poets–

“The Queen’s ministers grant them more power, aye. I suppose they think, better Puritans than Catholics.” Chapman leaned against the mantel, but he didn’t lift his cup again. Instead, he edged closer to the popping grate, as if the fire could warm him. “I wonder who would give Kit a book like that,” he mused.

Will saw Tom’s glance, and didn’t need it. “I’m sure I don’t know. So what think you, George, of our Bible in poetry? ”

Chapman shrugged. “It could never be published. And a man must eat– ”

“Drudge,” Ben said. “Toiling only for coin – ”

Tom laughed with him, and Chapman dismissed both with an airy wave of his hand. Will might have joined them, but the cough that followed bent him over with his hands on his knees, and only Ben thumping his shoulders gently with those massive bricklayer’s hands put an end to it before he choked.

Only two days later, Will scratched another line out and crumpled the scribbled palimpsest that had been meant to become act II, scene I of a tragedy into a fist‑sized ball, which he pitched into the grate. He glanced up again at the steel mirror over the mantel and the single candle burning before it–despite the daylight through the open shutters–‑with a sealed letter propped against it, and swore under his breath. “Dammit, Kit. A week is too long to make a man wait for news.” He could have returned to Faerie, and an hour or less gone by in his world. Thou wouldst have heard something if aught had gone wrong.

And if thou hadst not, Tom Walsingham would have.That Tom also said that Richard Baines was, to all reports, alive and well and fulfilling his obligations told Will only that Kit might be biding his time. Kit was certainly crafty enough – crafty as Tom himself, or Sir Robert.

I am not like these men,Will thought, not for the first time. I cannot see as they see, in shades of advantage and degrees of subtlety.He sighed, and glanced at the light on the wall: the noon bell would toll any moment. He couldn’t leave the candle burning in an empty room, and he couldn’t put off meeting the rest of the Globe’s shareholders for another instant. He pushed his stool back from the table and stood, scuffing the rushes aside as he limped to the hearth. Dick’s had me playing old men for ten years now. A shuffle and a quaver in my voice won’t limit my roles.

Perhaps there is prophecy in the stage after all.

Will blew out the candle, banked the fire back, and picked up his jerkin and cloak, fumbling the door latch a moment before managing to twist it open. He chose to walk through the garden rather than the house, using the side gate onto Silver Street as the bells finally tolled.

London bustled on a sunny Tuesday in February. Kit’s birthday,Will realized, and cursed himself for thinking about Kit. He’d hard to kill.

He’d also terrified to the soled of his shoes when it comes to Baines,he thought, turning sideways to edge between a goodwife arguing with a carter and the wall. At least the overhang kept the heavily laden carts and the tall draught horses to the middle of the road, although it seemed the crush of hireling carriages grew thicker each year. And frightened men make mistakes–

“Master Shakespeare ! ”

The hailing voice of Edward de Vere broke Will’s musings open like an egg on cobblestones. He turned and strove to hide his limp. His hand found a coin in his pocket and he tugged it back again, resisting the temptation to fuss it forth and spin it across his knuckles, over and over again.

‘My lord,” Will said, bowing as best he could. Oxford swept his tall hat off as he ducked the overhang and came up before Will. “I am surprised to see you afoot, my lord, and so far from your usual – lairs.”

Oxford paused, his hat in his hand – a dramatic gesture ruined by the revolted wrinkle of his narrow nose. “Master Shakespeare,” he said. “I had thought you might prove more amenable to a personal visitation, as you have returned my notes unopened. You” –careful choice of the formal pronoun, and a careful stress against it, to be certain Will noticed the respect – “have done me good service in the past, and I am inclined today to remember it. You are too fair a poet to fall with Cecil and Raleigh and Walsingham. And fall they will, make no mistake.”

Will blinked. Oxford stepped closer and let his voice drop. “Essex’s star is rising, Will, and it’s said Scottish James is fonder of masques and entertainments even than the Queen.” He coughed. “There’s no guarantee the Lord Chamberlain your patron will remain in favor after the succession. It would be a pity to see the Globe go empty, her players all jailed as sturdy vagrants and masterless men.”

“If I wrote masques I should be more interested.” Wondering where he got the courage to brush past a peer on the street, he nodded curtly to Oxford and turned his back on the man.

“Master Shakespeare. Halt your step.”

“My step is halt enough,” Will said, but he paused, although he did not turn. What could be dire enough that the Earl of Oxford would call after a common playmaker on a busy street?“As you have no doubt observed, my lord.”

Oxford laughed and strode up beside Will, seating his towering cap once more on his head. His ruff was starched fashionably pale pink, maiden’s blush, stiff enough that it rustled against his beard. Will smiled, glad of his own plain murrey doublet. Puritan,he thought, and then pushed the memory of Kit’s teasing away. “There’s more,” Oxford said. “What you offered Her Majesty at Spenser’s funeral did not go unremarked by all, Master Shakespeare. Nor did the disgrace with which she refused your gift. I have friends – ”

“More than one?” Oh, Will. You shouldn’t have said that.No, but he couldn’t close his ear to de Vere’s simpering tone, and hearing it he recalled some measure of Kit Marlowe’s close and thready rage. And wonder of wonders, de Vere laughed and forced a smile, although he dragged his fine kid gloves between his hands hard enough to stretch the cheveril.

“If it’s a Bible you want to write, Master Shakespeare. There’s those would pay you to get it. Our side” – he cleared his throat, as if it were distasteful to him – “has an interest in the nature of god as well.”

Will swallowed. Politics. And yet– He turned slowly, feet shuffling, cursing the slow, nodding oscillation of his chin, and looked Oxford in the eye. And yet he’s a bad enough poet I rewrote mine own plays under his eye, and he never saw the power I put in them. I could manage. Work fortheir Prometheans and undermine their very agenda from within. Ben and Kit and I could manage very well–

“What would you wish of me, my lord? In return for such patronage?” Although he already knew what Oxford would demand.

The Earl smiled, reaching up to tilt his hat at the proper angle as he stepped back into the hurly‑burly of Silver Street. “Don’t answer today,” he said. “But the Lord Chamberlain’s Men perform before Her Majesty on the Feast of the Assumption.”

“We do,” Will said, struggling with feet that wanted to step back into the shadows, get his back to the Avail of the tack shop he stood before.

Consider,” Oxford said, smiling, “whether your play will be a success, and the Oueen’s reign will be sustained. That is all. Consider it. And consider whether your Bible means more to you, William Shakespeare. These friends of mine. Friends of ours, I should say. Mutual friends. They’re impressed with your work. They could give you everything you need. And you know” –a lowered tone –“her Majesty isunwell. And what’s one old woman, past her three score already, in the face of the future of all Christianity? ”

Will fixed a smile on his lips, thin as stage paint. His throat tightened. Just the palsy, doubtless. Everything you need. Freedom to work. Yes, and all it cost is a brave old woman’s life.

He hesitated, watching Oxford grin ironically, touch his hat –as if to an equal, or a rival –nod, and turn away. One old woman’s life.

That’s all.

Sweet Christ. This could be trouble for the whole company. I need to talk to Dick Burbage about this right away.

Act IV, scene viii

What virtue id it that id born with ad?

Much less can honour be ascribed thereto;

Honour id purchased by the deeds we do.

–Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander

Kit’s heart weighed like a dreadful lodestone inside the linen that still bound his aching chest, but he pressed fingertips to the carved frame of the Darkling Glass and bent his will on Robin Goodfellow. He grasped the Puck’s image without difficulty, surprised at his own confidence, and brought it close. The bandy little elf sat cross‑legged in the embrace of a shaggy great willow, a triple pipe held in his hands and his head bowed over it. He blew breath through the reeds, but his fingers poised unmoving and the sound that whispered forth was more the wind through withies than any tune that Kit could call.

Kit clapped a hand on the pommel of his sword to steady it and grasped the rim of the mirror more firmly, pulling himself up as he stepped over the frame–the threshold –and through.

And down into crunching twigs and crisp leaves under a crown of swaying yellow boughs like enchanted snakes. Kit landed lightly, with flexed knee, sudden movement still sharp as a dagger in his breast. The silver sword flickered out like a tasting tongue as he advanced. He didn’t level it – quite–but he let it sway lightly in his hand. “Robin – ”

The Puck looked up, ears rising to attention, but the flute didn’t drift an inch lower. “Sir Poet. So fierce.”

So many words, and so few of them useful. Kit made himself steel and closed his heart to remembered kindnesses, pushing on. ” – tell me thou had naught to do with the murder of Will Shakespeare’s little child?”

Puck drew his knees up and draped gawky arms about them, letting his pipes dangle from his fingertips. “Interesting you should phrase the question thus‑and‑such, Sir Poet.”

“Intentional. But should you lie to me, Robin, I’d know.”

The Puck stood, somehow graceless and fluid all at once, gangling as a colt. He hung the pipes on his belt and stretched up along a bough. “Poets are too precious to sacrifice carelessly,” he said, his long mouth downturned at the corners. “It had to be something other than Shakespeare himself.”

The blade of Kit’s sword grew heavy, as if a hand pressed down the flat. He let it sag until it touched the gnarled root of the enormous tree, and came a step forward. “Robin.” Whatever the next word might have been, it hung unvoiced on the air between them, leaden with betrayal. Kit shook his head, slowly, and forced his heavy arm to raise his sword as he tried again. “Will Shakespeare was my friend. Even when thou didst this thing, he was my friend– as thou knewest then. And I thought I was thine.”

Which was the heart of it, Kit knew. Of all the folk he’d met in Faerie, there were only three he might have called that, friend.And Puck foremost among them.

Robin shrugged and leapt down from the tree branch, passing over Kit’s sword like a tumbler. He leaned back against the trunk in a deceptively insouciant slouch. “There were reasons,” he said.

“Reasons.”Kit’s hand shook on his blade. The wire grip cut his palm, and every breath hurt him. “What reasoncould possibly suffice for the murder of a boy barely old enough to prentice?”

“What’s one mortal boy, more or less? They die soon enough, and one can always get another. Breed like rabbits, mortals do. And I needed thee, Kit, and needed thee fighting and thinking, not drowning in the dark. I thought if thy Shakespeare stepped back from his Queen, and thou didst go to comfort him, that there was a chance thou wouldst see the Mebd and dark Morgan for what they were, and win thy soul free. And it worked, it worked. How canst condemn me for that, when I had thee at heart, my dear?”

Oh, it was no use. He couldn’t hold the sword up, and he couldn’t have run little Robin through like a game hen on a spit even if he managed to lift the point. “It worked,” Kit said. “Aye. And so Morgan sent me to Hell.”

And thy Shakespeare won thee back, and thou him free. And the tithe paid, and thou what thou art.” Robin grinned. See me? How clever?

“Familiar demon,” Kit said, unbearably weary. He dropped the sword on the leaves and stones, and sat down beside it on a willow root. Puck came closer, sat down beside him, companionate but not touching. “Robin, what hast thou done? Mortal boys are not for slaughtering like cattle. And why dost thou undertake that which harms thy mistress?”

The little Fae turned his head and spat. “That for my mistress, Kit. Slave I am, bound in her hair, and so I may not defy her. We are all her slaves, all but Morgan, who is too strong for binding, and besides, I think me that Morgan knows the Mebd’s name, and the Mebd knows not Morgan’s.”

“So how is it that you do oppose her? If she holds thee in thrall?”

“She never thought to forbid me of the deaths of mortals not taken in her service,” Puck said, and shrugged. “If you tell her what I’ve done, she’ll punish me.”

“And if I kill you myself? ” Kit made no effort to pick up his sword, and Puck made no effort to move away from him on their impromptu bench. Kit buried his head in his hands, fingers knotting in the dirty tangles of his curls.

The Fae leaned back, kicking his toadlike feet. “She might be displeased. Of course, you could prove I conspired against her.” He laid a hand on the crease of Kit’s elbow and squeezed; Kit shied away, twisting from the waist and leaning back. “And yet I imagine you of all people, Kit Marlin, would understand.”

Kit nodded, savagely. “Aye. I know her glamourie. And Morgan’s too, and would not feel the touch again.”

“Imagine thou couldst not fight it,” Puck replied. “What then wouldst do to be free?”

Kit had no answer. He shook his head. He bent down between his knees and picked the hilt of his sword off the earth. “What if I told Will?”

“What of it? Would he ask thee to take his vengeance, in his name?”

“I know not,” Kit answered. He turned the blade over and over in his hands, watching dappled light ripple on the temper marks. “Thou hast done what thou hast done in accordance with thy nature and understanding. And thou hast preserved my life and freedom. Aye. And I do understand the freedom which thou dost seek. What, thee and Geoffrey too? Who else?”

“I cannot disclose to thee–”

“Never matter. I understand. And yet thouwilt understand that I cannot be thy friend, Master Goodfellow.”

“ ‘Twas thee thyself that saidst thou wouldst liefer lose thy life than thy liberty of speech, Sir Poet.”

Aye, ” Kit said, standing. These are not people. Lest you. ever forget. The Fae are not people. And who am I to judge someone who has done what he has done because he did it?“I do recall saying it. And I do recall dying for it too, Master Puck. Good day to you.”

“Wilt speak to thy Shakespeare?”

“Probably…” Kit answered, sheathing his sword and walking away. “Not,” he finished, halting for a moment where the willow’s ring of branches touched his hair. “Nor am I like to tell my Prince of thy machinations. And thus I am a traitor again to every soul I name friend.”

“A traitor? Or a man?”

“Is there a difference?” Kit asked, and turned toward the palace again, and the mirror, and the pain of old injuries. And a conversation and a lie that he did not want to have to tell.

Act IV, scene ix

Edgar: The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale. Hoppdance cries in Tom’s belly for two white herring. Croak not, black angel; I have no food for thee.

–William Shakespeare, King Lear,Act III, scene vi

On the last day of 1599, in a receiving room at Greenwich Palace, Will leaned into the glow of an inconveniently placed lamp and frowned over his own atrocious penmanship, one of several players camped singly or in clumps in the puddles of light around the great dark hall. The windows were shuttered against a March storm, but the Queen was said to be in renewed spirits with the turning of the year, and the show must go on. He bent over his lines again, cursing the tremor in his hand that made the words shiver on the page, and trying not to think of his last, strange conversation with Kit and the long silence since, broken only by hasty letters.

A cultured voice interrupted his concentration. “Hast thought upon our offer, Master Shakespeare?”

Will glanced up from his part‑script and frowned before he remembered to bow. He’d thought the contact would come from Oxford, perhaps in a form as simple as a note. He wasn’t prepared to meet the ferrety countenance of Henry Wriothesly, the Earl of Southampton. The Earl was clad in snowy velvet, trimmed in white lace at the wrists. Whatever beauty the man had had in youth had dissipated, though he still wore his hair long enough to drape his shoulders and oiled in lovelocks like a girl’s under his hat. His one visible hand was silk‑soft, long, and white; he idly tapped its back with the cuff of the embroidered glove he held in the other. Will frowned to see the ring on Southampton’s smallest finger: black steel, edged in a band of gold.

“You’re wearing iron, my lord.”

“And thou art not.” A tilt of the head and a carefully elevated eyebrow.

Will did not press his fingers to his doublet to feel the iron nail in its soft leather pouch against his breast. Southampton drew his glove between his fingers. He switched it, Will thought, like a cat switching her tail.

“Master Shakespeare. Thy play today, what is it called?”

“Ad You Like It,my lord.” And Will had thought hard about performing that one before the Queen, it was true, and deemed it not unmeet to prick Her Majesty’s conscience a little. And if Essex were offended, or Oxford, so mote it be.

Even Southampton’s smile was greasy. “And if I like it not?”

“Then may it please the Queen.” Bandy word not with me, cockerel. I may be a nodding invalid and a common player, and you an Earl. But I fence with the likes of Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, and you limit yourself to sycophants and tyros.

Honesty forced him to, And Queens,but Will couldn’t imagine Southampton had ever won a round with Her Majesty.

An oily ferret, perhaps, but as dogged as a weasel. The Earl stepped back, a little further into the light, so it gleamed on his careful curls. “Dost expect it might?”

“Lies it within my power. ” Will found his shaking hand tightening on the sheaf of playscript; he raised the pages against his breast like a buckler, like a talisman. He glanced over Southampton’s shoulder, across the room to where Burbage and two of the Wills bent Titian curls and dark over their part‑scripts. Burbage posed between the taller, browner players so that they leaned over him like framing trees. He must have felt Will’s gaze, because he glanced up; for a moment their gaze bridged the darkness from one puddle of light to the next.

“I rather hoped thou mightst have missed my patronage, Master Shakespeare.”

Will’s eyes asked a question. Burbage’s lips pursed, a gesture meant to be read. He glanced at the back of Southampton’s head and shrugged once, softly, as if to say do what thou must, I trust thee.And then Burbage lowered his head again, and Will loosed a breath he hadn’t realized he’d trapped, and fixed Southampton on an arch look that would have done Ned Alleyn proud.

“I am content,” Will said, covering his cough with the back of his hand. He was aware that those three words were as bold a declaration of war as any he had penned into the mouth of an upstart lord. He bowed, but would not look down until Southampton nodded, slowly, and withdrew in a cloud of civet and rosewater.

The show must go on.

* * *

And go on it did, disrupted only slightly by the storm whining against the shutters and by Her Majesty’s rattling cough, which diminished–Will thought–as the acts proceeded. She laughed at Touchstone the clown, and at Will’s own appearance as a countrified version of himself, speaking direct to the audience for a moment’s wit. He thought that boded well, and hoped perhaps he had been mistaken that the enemy had overcome the power of his words, although he wished her lead paint gone so he could see if her cheeks were flushed with fever or with delight.

It would in any case have been hard to tell by candlelight.

Spring wound into summer and high heat brought a resurgence of the plague and a cessation of the cough that had haunted Will all through the cold months. The winter’s rain presaged a breaking of the long drought, and though the theatres were not closed for the inevitable plague, Will circulated sonnets and Ben staged poetical dinners. Under their influence the famine eased with the early crops and the fat spring lambs.

It was well it did, for in June Will heard the first rumors that the Spanish had landed at the Isle of Wight. Rumors he might have discounted if Elizabeth hadn’t sent Essex and his men to Ireland to suppress rebellion abetted by Spanish Catholic troops.

Will himself stood and watched as rattling chains with links a man could wear as bracelets were draped from shore to shore across the Thames, the inconvenience to shipping judged slight against the threat of the Spanish. There was talk in the nervous streets that the city might be defended by a bridge of boats, if the Spanish sailed up the mighty river; the city gates were locked and curfew enforced as it had not been in Will’s memory, and all London breathed shallowly under threat of invasion. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed Alarum for London,transparent fearmongering – but if Baines, Oxford, Southampton, and Essex’s faction had hoped to use the threat of Catholic conquest to raise emotions against the Queen, Will was satisfied that he and Burbage had done what they could to thwart the plot.

My darling friend–

I send with great news, and some of it ill. Much of it, to tell you true, for oh, how I regret our old masters. Though Sir Francis labored under many a failure, and though he was as much a prince of lies as any Lucifer, still I did not doubt his loyalty. Now, I know not which spymaster nor weasel‑keep to turn to in any extremity.

Sir Robert Cecil finally came forth with the order to raid the London home of a certain Richard Baines, my dear Mercutio. And I find my eyes big with wonder at the timing, for who did Cecil’s men find a‑slumbering in the deadly bed but Nicholas Skeres? And so it was Skeres arrested for counterfeiting, though he swore he knew not from whence the pewter coinings arose.

The house was searched on this evidence, but– worse luck–no bodies were discovered, buried in the earthen cellar or otherwise. Ben was beside himself with wrath, and had strong words with Tom Walsingham, as you might imagine. Tom, of course, had naught to do with the delay; so he says and so I believe him. Cecil, I fear, plays one of his double games.

Will rested the quill on the stand and frowned, rubbing his aching hand. He could tell Kit about young Robin Poley’s golden hair–and why hint to the man that the boy he’d cared for as his own was the scion of the knave who helped to murder him?–or he could tell him about seeing Richard Baines in the crowd watching poetry, broadsides, and playscripts all burned in the bookseller’s yard at St. Paul’s, under the supervision of none other than that selfsame Sir Robert Cecil, the Queen’s Secretary of State.

That last, yes. Kit should know.

Will leveraged his pen once more.

There is some small joy. Essex has returned from Ireland disgraced and defeated: the Queen would not see him. Ben is writing for the boys’ companies. He grows stout and quarrels with everyone. It would include me, if he could raise my ire. Since I will not take the bait, he turns his venom on Chapman and Dekker and Marston–and especially Dick Burbage.

But Cecil’s duplicity is manifest in what he burns, dear Mercutio. He is the very consuming flame, leaving only charred scraps of knowledge for those who come after. We attended his book‑burning, Dick Burbage and I, and it was Dick who whispered in my ear, ‘and now we are on our own in troth, gentle William.’

I fear me he is only right. We cannot rely on princes and their agents any longer, gentle Mercutio. We must act by the strength of our own hands, if we are to preserve what we have won.

Come to London. Meet us at Tom Walsingham’s study. We will craft our Bible no matter who says us nay.

And at the end of the long, fat, flyblown summer, Burbage and I and the others will open the Globe.

May it be our final weapon.

With love, my friend.

Your Romeo

Act IV, scene x

Lucifer: Tut Faustus, in hell is all manner of delight.

–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene ii

Kit leaned against the wall beside a bright window in Tom Walsingham’s salon and watched Tom pace, and Will nod, and Ben trim the nib of a pen and smooth its shaft with a knife Kit thought was likely sharp enough to shave with. Which reminded him of his own need for a barbering, and he brushed his hand across rasping cheeks. Unlikely as you are to be kissing anyone that cares. Or anyone at all, for that matter.He sipped his wine and swirled it in the goblet, wishing bitterly that he could close the distance to the little coven by the fire and be one of them again. Wishing he could remember the touch of Will’s hand, the press of Tom’s mouth, without tasting the enormous soft emptiness that threatened to open like black wings and enfold him.

“Master Marlowe, if you are sufficiently refreshed, we could resume?” An otherwiselight swirled from the tip of Ben’s pen as he dipped it and bent over the papers spread on the table before him, never looking at Kit.

Kit set his wine well aside and came back to the musty‑smelling book, gently sliding the ribbon aside to resume his place on the page. “Matthew?”

“Thereabouts, ” Ben answered.

Kit bristled at the big man’s tone, backing down chiefly because Will turned enough to catch his eyes. Kit angled the Bible for better light and began to read aloud, in Greek, with, he thought, fair facility. Ben scribbled a literal and far from poetic translation, and Will read over his shoulder. Kit tried not to watch the casual camaraderie between the two, or the way Tom lounged by the fireplace, smiling his pleasure at the poets hard at work in his salon.

Kit’s shoulder itched under his doublet. He reached up and over without pausing in his reading–nearly a recitation by heart, to be truthful–and absently rubbed at the tenderness of the witch’s mark before he realized what he was about and forced himself to stop. As if in response, the scars on his torso and thighs flared white pain. He jumped and yelped, almost dropping the book. “Edakrusen o iesous! ” Damme, while Lucifer was healing things, he could have healed those too.

“Christ,” Ben growled. “Is there a cinder in your eye, now?”

“An old injury,” Kit said, straightening the hang of his rapier. “Shall we continue?”

“Can we do it without interruptions?”

“Gentlemen – ” Will, standing and moving between them. Kit cringed at the way his steps seemed hobbled, and set the Bible down, careful of its pages and spine.

“Your pardon, Will, ” Kit said, as Ben dropped his quill into the inkpot and turned over the chair back to face Kit.

“Tell me, Master Marlowe,” he said. “Is it true a witch kisses the Devil’s bunghole to pay for his powers?”

“Master Jonson,” Kit replied, letting his left hand fall from the hilt of his sword as he moved away from the wall. “Come, kiss mine and find out.”

“If I were to play the sodomite, I should choose, I trust, a less slant‑heeled paramour.”

“Gentlemen.” Tom Walsingham, this time, stepping away from the fireplace to lend the support of his stature to Will’s plea for peace.

“As a point of fact,” Kit said, through that same imperturbable smile, “that’s only part of the process. An enjoyable one, if performed faithfully”–ignoring Will’s livid blush, and Tom’s sudden coughing fit–“and I might offer to demonstrate, but I prefer my bedfellows agreeable in–”

“Christofer, so help me God – ”

“–body andtemperament, and you, dear Ben, are neither, and have neither – ”

“Kit!”

“Yes, Sir Thomas?” Sweetly, with his best and gentlest smile.

“Enough. Just enough, both of you.”

“Yes, Sir Thomas – ” Kit gasped and doubled over as another ripple of fire caressed his body. He went to one knee, pushed both hands before him to keep from collapsing to the floor, and bit down on a scream. “Will, my cloak.

Will was already moving; not fast enough, as Jonson levered his bulk from the chair and swept Kit’s cloak from the pile in the corner. He threw it about Kit’s shoulders and tugged it tight. Kit leaned back on his heels, breathing again, gripping the collar in his left hand.

They crowded him, and he waved them back, wobbling to his feet with assistance and a warning glance from Tom. Kit looked from Tom to Will, and Will to Tom. “What, sweet Thomas, not devilish enough for thee?” But he gave himself over to the half a smile that bubbled up, despite his frustration, and offered it to Tom as an indicator of peace before turning back to Ben. “A kindness, Master Jonson,” he said. “I will not forget it.”

“What was that?” asked Tom, concerned.

Kit shrugged and reached for his wine. “The Prometheans seeking me through old scars, perhaps.”

Jonson’s mouth twisted as he nodded. “Then shall we continue?”

But Kit felt a hot wind ruffle his cloak, and saw Ben’s eyes suddenly widen.

:Come:

The light that streamed past Kit was brighter than that from the window. White, and not the pale gold of winter afternoons. Kit set down his cup and turned into it, facing a jeweled, starlit darkness that seemed to unscroll within the room. He tugged his cloak close.

“Kit.” Will and Tom, as one, and Ben a moment behind: “Master Marlowe–”

«Come, my love»

I have to go,” Kit said, turning over his patchworked shoulder to regard the other three. “He’s calling me.” He looked away with effort and squared his shoulders, and stepped into the light.

Angels singing, and cries–those cries that might be ecstasy or might be grief: he could not say. Broad arms, white wings, enfolded him in comfort; the last lingering burning of his scars faded into cool and calm as Lucifer held him close and stroked his hair.

“What have you done to me?” Kit asked, recovering himself enough to step away, for all the brush of those wings fanned the longing in him to a sharp, pale flame. He stood beside the Devil as if on nothingness, surrounded by stars. Despite himself, he threw back his head, his hair brushing his collar, and stared up into the vaulted, sparking void above.

«Not I» Lucifer regarded him, smiling, a vision in black breeches and a billowing shirt of ivory silk, which seemed dark against the milk and roses of his skin. He cupped a wing forward, extended a hand: fingers and feathers swept down Kit’s arm as one. :Those scars and what they contain came into thee before I did:

“Why did you not heal them when you did mine eye?”

«They suit me»

“Can the enemy find me through them?”

«Perhaps. But what touched thee just now was the reaction of that which lies within thee to the Word» Again the caress, a drawing close, the encirclement of those sheltering angel wings.

Ah.Kit pulled back. “I do not wish your touch, Father of Lies.”

«Who knows a lie when he hears one. What other touch dost crave, who was Christofer Marley?»

There was no answer, and Lucifer knew it. Kit turned to track a blazing comet tumbling across the heavens. “What do my scars contain?”

Silence. He turned and looked Lucifer in the eyes. The Devil’s soft smile never altered.

“Will said, Morgan said something similar–” Something shifted in Kit’s breast, an emotion seemingly just beyond the brush of his fingers. “I do not understand what you wish of me, Morningstar, or why you have come to me now.”

«I came for that within thee calleth me in his suffering, at his grief to hear the Word»

“That within me?”

Silence, and a smile.

Kit shook his head like a horse reined too tight. “Surely you have poets aplenty, and one more damned soul cannot mean much to such as you.”

«How many damned souls» the Devil said, his words no more than the susurrus of wings, «dost suppose have ever gazed on me with pity?»

“Oh.” Damn me,Kit thought. And here I thought Edward was my masterpiece.“A companion heart.”

«Neither am I permitted such» Even in darkness, Lucifer’s wings shed light – a deep and subtle glow like moonbeams, that seemed to turn every detail of Kit’s clothing and form into a thin sketch in charcoal, echoing his heart. «And only the damned believe in me»

“Is that what you need them for? The damned? To believe?”

«Canst feel God here?»

“No.”

«Nor can I.» Lucifer’s eyes were dark, and bright. «Ask again what thou containest, and I will tell thee.»

“Morgan said to Will that I could not bear to know it.”

«Neither canst bear what thou hast locked in thy breast, my love.»

“Lucifer. ”Kit put his hand to his mouth, shocked at the name that escaped his lips, the exasperation in it.

«Thou hast not said that name in my hearing before.»

“I wrote it .”

«Aye. His waxen wings did mount above his reach / And melting, heavens conspir’d his overthrow–I have paid thee for the poetry, in mine own coin, and thou hast bought what else thou hadst from me. Wilt treat with me now as a friend?»

“If such as I could be friend to such as … thee.”

«We are alike – damned and not‑damned, abjured by God for that which he created us. An he be all he claims, who was Christofer Marley, has he not failed in creating us irredeemable?»

“The Catholics would redeem us,” Kit said, crouching to warm his hands before a star that grew and flowered close beside his feet. They stood on one of the crystal vaults of heaven: far below, he could discern the shifting blue‑white orb of the Earth. “If we forswore all for the love of God.” He paused, pressing his fingers to the crystal, so pure it was invisible. “An we were closer, I might amend some maps.”

A laugh, and the brush of feathers along his spine, affectionately disarraying his hair. «I keep the damned because the damned believe in me, my love, and belief is my power. Ask me thy question again, an thou wouldst hear mine answer»

“Lucifer.” Fear darted on bright wings in his breast as he stood. He’s right. I do not wish to know the answer. And yet I must –“What sorcery did Richard Baines work upon and through me?”

«A binding and a sealing within. A rape to abrogate the barriers of thyself, and a star burned into thy flesh to lock within that which thy prayers lured into thee, when thou didst raise thy voice to God for aid, and aid was sent»

Kit turned to look the Devil in the eye. “Thou”–an effort to say it, and Satan’s amusement made it worse–“sayest I have a cage for an angelburned on my skin?”

«Aye»

“Why?” Kit staggered. His scars flared so hot he thought they might burn through his doublet, and he drew his cloak tight as Lucifer cupped his shoulders with one bright wing. Kit hunched into the Devil’s arms. “And moreover, how?”

«Tell me who the angel Mehiel is.»

Kit closed his eyes, thinking. Mehiel.Amaranth had been right: he’d found the name easily in London. “Protector of poets, authors, and lecturers. He’s also the angel under whose wardenship my birthday falls, if thou dost believe such things. But those are papist superstitions – ”

«Are they?» The golden brows rose, rumpling the ivory forehead. «Tell me, then, which of my brothers would come to thee in thy hour of need, Sir Poet?»

Oh, God.

«Nay. But a bit of His creation, more kindly disposed to thee than most, to help thee bear thy pain. And now he hears the name of God and seeks to burst his prison, but his prison is thy mortal flesh:

“No,” Kit said. He pressed his fist against his chest, heart thundering against the backs of his fingers. “No. It is not so.”

«If devils may be bound» Lucifer murmured, pitiless, «why, so may God’s angels, for we are brothers, all»

“But why?”Such a small voice, Kit could hardly believe it came from his own throat. He would have fallen if Lucifer’s white wings and arms hadn’t borne him up; the pain in his breast was incapacitating, his eyes burning so hot he could not think anything but fire flowed down his cheeks.

Lucifer lifted the folds of Kit’s patchwork cloak with a wing tip, violent colors draped over the whiteness of his feathers, and held it before Kit’s eyes. It caught the light of all the vaults of heaven, the planets spinning below and the stationary stars all around. «The magic of sympathy,» he said. «To bind the angel within thee, and then to bind thine own magic and thy voice, and then to take thee in servitude, and cripple thy power with fear and loathing and the hatred of thine own weakness they put in thee. ‘Tis half the reason their opposition of thy plays, and Shakespeare’s, has been so successful. That thou hadst any success at all is a testament to the power of thy will–and thy Will, also.»

God,Kit thought, understanding finally why it was that Richard Baines had let him live, until he’d proven once and for all that he would notlet them control him. Why everyone–Prometheans, Faerie, Hell–seemed bent on owning him, no matter the cost. “But why would God send an angel to–me?Why would He care?”

«God will not save thee.» A knowing voice, and one burning with pain like embers banked and buried in the ash. «But He will of a time give thee the strength to endure what horrors His servants do visit upon thee.»

Kit swallowed, hearing the voice, feeling that filthy caress on his filthy hair – ‘If we have a chance to complete the wreaking in London, it would help to use the same vessel. Even more if he were willing, of course. Although mayhap our little catamite liked it, considering his tastes.’

‘Did you like it, puss?’

They raped an angel. Through me. They raped an angel in my body. My angel.It wasn’t rage he felt, but a great disbelief and weariness; the rousing of an exhausted, possessive jealousy.

Condummatum est.Lucifer’s gentleness made Kit want to retch. “He wasn’t only talking to me, was he?” ‘Bid you like it, puss?’“It was a promise to–what they put in me. Something to think about.”

«Aye»

“I thought the dark Prometheans thought they were – God’s chosen.”

«They are.» Lucifer answered calmly. «The God they intend to create. And what is bound in thee is part of that creation, a chink in the armor of the Divine. As thy cloak offers thee a symbol of the scrap of protection and grace offered thee by each one who contributes to it–so what is done to thee is done to Mehiel, and that which is done unto Mehiel is done unto God.»

The spaces underfoot and overhead made him dizzy. This is Hell too,he thought. For it is not Heaven.“If this works,” Kit asked, a spark of doubt flaring in his soul as he thought of Will and Ben hard at work over verses and translation, “‑why have you not taken it on yourself to make a God of your own?”

«Sweet Poet.» Mockery, and a warm wing across his shoulders. «Have I not? Why didst think I chose thee, my love? What dost thou think thy Faustuswill create, given history and the acclaim it deserves?»

“I have an angel burned on my skin,” Kit said, wondering. “What happens if I set him free?”

«If thou canst discover how. I do not know that he can be freed without the destruction of the prison that contains him.»

“Me.” Kit sagged, and turned his face to the silk of Satan’s shirt when the angel embraced him once more. The tears were dry on his face, if they had been water and not flames, and he leaned into the embrace and the scent of smoke and forgetfulness that surrounded Lucifer, and the warmth of those wings, and the cold starlight gleaming between his boots and on his hair. God sent an angel to bear my pain. And I have hated God all these years for failing to answer my prayers.

As they said in Faerie, all stories were true. But some stories were more true than others.

‘Did you tike it, puss?’

«Well?» Lucifer asked, some eternity later. «Was Morgan correct, again? Has’t broken thee, this knowing?»

“Yes,” Kit said, and somewhere found a last black scrap of humor, and managed not to shiver as he spoke. “At least for today.”

«Brave Poet.» the Devil said, and held him among the darkness and the stars for a little while longer, until Kit raised his face from the soft white curve of Satan’s wing.

“There’s a shining sort of irony in Lucifer giving God back to a man God doesn’t want.”

«Poetry grows through the broken places, brother.» The wings opened around him; Kit stood under their arch, but they no longer restrained or warmed him.

Within and yet without, and boldly he laid his hand on the feathers again and ruffled them up, stroked them smooth. Whatever moved in Kit was vast and slow, a symphony of emotion that swelled from discord into something complex and bittersweet and whole. “Brother … an we are friends, then. And thou dost value my friendship – ” It wouldn’t come into words, exactly, but he knew perfectly well that Lucifer could read his tangle of emotions and half‑formed thoughts as plainly as a poem. The Devil might claim he could not see in human hearts. But Lucifer was, after all, the Prince of Lies.

And when those lies went cloaked in truth, so much the better.

Lucifer tilted his head, considering, watching Kit’s hand linger among his feathers. «The pain and sickness thou feelst at thy lovers’ touch. And yet not at mine.»

“If we are to be friends–”

«Sir Poet.» When Satan ducked his head and smiled crookedly at Kit, it folded sharp creases from the corners of his long, slightly crooked nose to the corners of his mouth. The blue eyes crinkled in an interested sort of mockery, and Kit felt suddenly as if some bright fluid buoyed him. «‘Tis thine own soul’s wreaking, and a sensible one; ‘tis but that the wall Mehiel and thyself didst build about thy garden of suffering–and his–after Rheims has fallen.»

“… fallen?”

«The angel Mehiel has seen the truth, that hiding thy pain from thee has not made thee strong, but concealed the flaw within. He hath lifted his wings, and thou must needs now tend the blasted heath within. Friend Poet, heal thyself, and thou wilt be whole.»

“The blasted heath? Or the blastedheart?” Kit asked wryly, but he found himself stepping back from the angel and the devastating truth in his words. Something within Kit’s breast stirred with a pain like trapped and beating wings. “How many men does the Devil call friend?”

The broad wings folded with a breeze that savored of lavender. Lucifer too stepped back. “As many as offer him understanding.”

Barely on a breath, a murmur, a whisper–and the sound of Lucifer’s spoken voicestaggered Kit nonetheless. It resonated through the crystal under Kit’s feet, through the chamber of his lungs and heart, striking sparks from his hair and his fingertips. That tolling bell, that falcon’s cry, that shriek of joy and agony that Kit recognized from his dreams hung inside his mind, and he knew it now for the voice of the angel within.

“Oh, my,” Kit whispered, as the Devil reached out and took his forearms in white fingers, and smiled again, and met his gaze. Lucifer’s eyes shone transparent, blue as the sunlit vault of Heaven, and Kit held his breath. Thou art–

«I always suspected that thou didst thy Mephostophilis love, a little.»

Kit laughed and would have broken the eye contact, but the Devil’s smile held him. He shivered and swallowed, and with an act of raw will managed to look down. “Rather I fancied myself a sort of Mephostophilis – ”

«And not Faustus?»

“Who would wish to be Faustus?” Kit said, and stepped forward, and boldly, chastely, kissed Lucifer on the mouth. The Devil permitted the caress, returned it–a gentle, considering tasting as unlike the blinding passion of another time as kiss from kiss could be. Kit did not step back after, but spoke against Lucifer’s smooth‑skinned jaw, feeling the prickles of his beard rasp the angel’s cheek. “Poor damned fool, reaching beyond any sane measure of wisdom for something he could see, but scarcely understand. I would not wish to be him, but aye–I understood and pitied him.”

«And hast thou who wert Christofer Marley not reached all thy life for that which eluded thy grasp?»

“Thou must find somewhat less unwieldy by which to address me,” Kit said, but the Devil would not be diverted.

«If thou art Mephostophilis»–Lucifer spread wide his bright, beckoning wings – зthen I am Faustus. Come and teach me thy pity again.»

Act IV, scene xi

Antonio: A witchcraft drew me hither:

That most ingrateful boy there by your side,

From the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouth

Did I redeem; a wreck past hope he was:

His life I gave him and did thereto add

My love, without retention or restraint,

–William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night,Act V, scene i

Curfew and the failing light forced Will home before sunset that night; he walked through London’s crowded streets, his breath streaming before him like a cart horse’s in the cold. He turned his ankle on an icy stone, but a passerby caught his elbow and saved him from a nasty fall, and he made it to the double‑gabled house on Silver Street intact. And wasn’t sure if he was startled or passionately unsurprised to find Kit waiting for him, curled on the narrow bed with his back to the corner, his cloak pulled up to his chin like a child’s favorite blanket. Will saw with gratitude that Kit had built the fire up and set wine to warm beside it.

“Back from Hell in one piece, love?” Will tossed his gloves on the table and crouched at the hearth, pressing his palms to rough, ashy stone for the warmth.

“Never out of it,” Kit replied. “It turns out Mephostophilis was right. Who would have imagined it?”

“Thee.”

“Aye – ” He sighed, and didn’t stand. “If thou’rt pouring the wine, bring me some.”

“Of course.” Will did, and stood, and leaned on the edge of the bed facing Kit. “Ben rather didn’t handle thy vanishment well. But thank thee for coming to prove thy health to me – ”

“I imagined he might not.” Kit sipped the wine Will pressed into his hands, and made a face. “I let it sit too long.”

“‘Tis better than a chill in the belly ” Will answered complacently. “No, Ben’s troubled on many fronts. He’s started a little war of wits with the redheads, and Chapman has it he’s angry with me because Her Majesty–much improved in health, I mention in passing – ” Kit grinned, showing wine‑stained teeth, ” – has commissioned a play for Twelfth Night. Another comedy.”

“I saw the pages on the table.”

“Thou’rt incorrigible.”

“I am. I liked the tragedy you’ve half done better, and the history was quite good.”

“Kit, how long have you been here?”

“An hour or six.” Kit hid his face behind his wine. “Her Majesty was never much for blood when she could be made to laugh. Pray, continue.”

“A masque of Ben’s was passed over.” Will shrugged and drank his wine, redolent of the spices Kit had stewed in it. “He’s fussing.”

“Over a masque?”

“Times have changed,” Will said, and set his cup aside. “Masques and satires are all the rage. I have to finish the Henry quickly: there’s a rumor that history plays will be forbidden. Books have burned, and not just Catholic treatises – ” He stopped himself. Kit raised his chin and blinked long, dark gold lashes.

“Books?”

“Nashe,” Will said unwillingly. “Harvey too. And new printings forbidden. I think our enemies have some hold over the Archbishop now. Whitgift. Or perhaps he simply fears the Puritans and their rising strength. And Elizabeth doth love him.”

“Oh, poor Tom.” Kit fell silent for a long moment, and leaned back against the wall. “Masques and satires the fashion. And comedies.”

“Aye, and comedies – ”

Kit smiled. “But the great William Shakespeare is immune to fashion. I’ll wager what you like that your Hamletwill out‑draw whatever Ben puts on.”

“Kit – ” Ah, what do you say, and how do you say it?“Oxford and Southampton have been making… grappling runs. They want me to poison the queen.”

“With arsenic? A pretty trick, when she will not dine in company.”

Will shook his head, and said, “With poetry.” And then he turned and twisted his hand around his wrist, and said, ” ‘Twere treason even to hear them, Kit.”

Kit licked his lips. “Wilt testify to what they asked?”

Will snorted. “Would Elizabeth hear me?”

Something in what he said had started Kit thinking. His fingers moved idly on the base of his cup; a line drew itself between his brows. “Mayhap,” he said, and then finished his wine at a draught and gave the cup over to Will for disposal. He hitched himself forward and let the cloak fall open over his habitual black doublet, this one sewn with garnets and tourmalines.

“You’re a sumptuary fine waiting for a magistrate,” Will said cheerfully, abandoning other concerns.

Kit laughed. “They may leave the writ with my landlord. Will–” He reached out, and to Will’s startled pleasure, laid hands on his shoulders where the neck ran into them, pressing slightly. “I’ve looked into Hamnet’s death.” Murder.Kit didn’t say the word, but it shone in his eyes.

“And?”

He sighed, squeezed once more, and drew back. “I’m – investigating.”

“You know something.”

Kit’s supple lips pressed thin, twisting at the corner. “I know who gave the order and why.”

“Kit.” A forlorn pain he’d almost managed to forget drained the blood and breath and warmth from Will’s body, left his fingers wringing white and shaking. Kit laid a hand over Will’s, and almost managed to make it look as if the gesture did not pain him.

“Will – ” Kit sighed. “It’s a fey thing. I don’t know if human justice … Dammit. Yes. I could kill someone. And I know whom to kill. And I could bring thee his head on a pole, and call it thy son’s murderer brought to justice, love.”

“But…?”

Kit waved his other hand hopelessly in the direction of the table and its neat stacks of foul copy. “I would do it for thee. Will do it an thou but ask. And it will turn into Titus.”

“A revenge tragedy. Oh.” Will squeezed Kit’s hand tight enough that the palsy deserted him. Kit flinched; Will saw it in the tightness at the corners of his eyes, and let the contact ease. Slowly he drew his hands back and folded them on his knee. He swallowed painfully and met Kit’s eyes very carefully as he changed the subject. “Nick Skeres hasn’t been executed yet. Or even convicted.” “Strange – ”

“Aye, it puts me in mind of some other irregularities.”

“Like a man on capital charges before the Privy Council, and free to ride where he list?” Kit looked up at Will, a sparkle of dark eyes through lowered lashes, and Will’s breath hurt in his chest. “Dost thou ever wonder why it is we so pour our souls out, Will, for churls and Queens and Earls with nothing better to do than seek power?”

Will laughed. “It’s not for them. It’s for the groundlings. Ben will never understand that, either.”

“For the groundlings?”

“A man must see that a man has a voice, and passion, and a right to them and to his loves. And to his choices. For all he has to pay for what he chooses, in the end.”

“Ah.” Kit’s smile was something out of a fairy tale, Will thought. If a smile could truly light a space like a candleflame– “Lucifer put me in mind of that this very day.”

“Lucifer?”

“Aye – ‘Poetry grows through the broken placed,’ he said, as if it were speedwell forced up between cobblestones.”

“Isn’t it?” It was like the old days, he thought, wine and a fire and an argument.

“Aye,” Kit said. “It is.” And leaned forward suddenly, caught Will’s face between his palms, and kissed him on the mouth, shivering like a fawn. Will caught Kit’s wrists and held him as long as Kit would permit it, and then couldn’t quite frame the question he knew Kit must be reading in his eyes.

“Lucifer said I was doing it to myself,” Kit said, and fidgeted his hands out of Will’s careful grip and drew his knees up tight to his chest under his cloak. “Damn him. He’s right.”

“He’s always right,” Will answered. “Kit. I promised Annie – I can’t… .” I can’t be forsworn to her again.

“We have what we have,” Kit answered. “I’m not–prepared for anything else, to tell thee true. So it will serve. And thou deservest not that woman, Will.”

“I never have. More wine?”

“Oh, aye.”

Act IV, scene xii

… The guider of all crowns,

Grant that our deeds may well deserve your loves:

–Christopher Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris,scene xii

‘Twere a far easier thing to obtain an audience with the Queen in Faerie than with the Queen in London, and Kit was grateful for it. At the appointed hour, he presented himself–not in her presence chamber, but in the red study she used for privy conversation. Kit had never seen her private chamber, and expected he never would.

Robin Goodfellow showed him within and drew shut the door, and Kit stood blinking in the dimness, bowing before a shadow he thought might be the queen.

“Stand up,” the shadow said, a rustle of stiff embroidery punctuating her words. “Come, Sir Christopher. Kindle a light; there are candles all abound.”

“I have no flame, nor spill,” he answered.

“Need you such?” And oh, the stark mockery in her voice. She knew he did not.

Silent, he touched every wick in the room into dazzling light.

“How prettily you answer,” she said, while he frowned to see her. The Mebd looked gray and drawn, her golden hair dry in its braids and rough as hay. She curled in a great chair, knees drawn up under her robes so the skirts draped empty down the front.

“Your Majesty,” he said, stepping forward. “You seem – ”

She smiled, and the smile silenced him. “Your audience, Poet,” she said. “Use it fitly.”

He swallowed, and nodded. “Your Majesty. I have evidence of a plot against your sister Queen, and thus by extension, against your own person. And I have witnesses willing to give that information.”

“And you come to me, Sir Christopher, and not your Elizabeth?”

He closed his eyes, and hoped she would not see it for the depth of his genuflection. “You are my Queen,” he said. “And Elizabeth may hear you, my lady, where she will not hear another.”

Act IV, scene xiii

Words before blows: if it so, countrymen?

–William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar,Act V,scene i

The winter saw their translation of the New Testament creeping forward between other commitments, and the Christmas season passed without incident. On January sixth Will found himself again in Greenwich, helping Burbage with his paint and wondering at the boys who, only a handspan of years before, had shivered in their boots at the thought of a court performance. The play was Twelfth Night,which Will thought was a bad title, but it suited the day. “Thou drinkst too much, Richard,” he said, smearing the broken veins on Burbage’s nose with ceruse. “‘Twill be thy death–”

“–if playing isn’t,” Burbage said, indifferent. “Thy lips are pale.”

“We’ve fucus and vermilion enough to paint a court.” Will suited action to words, dabbing a brush into a pot, and then bending over Burbage’s face. The hand that bore the pot trembled. The one holding the brush did not.

“We should drop that vile old history of John from the repertory.”

“Vile?” Will jabbed Burbage lightly on the lip. “What wouldst replace it with?”

Burbage leaned back to give Will more light and a better angle. He arched a calculated brow. “Thou’lt write me somewhat. And if not thee, Dekker– ”

“Dekker will pen thee somewhat that will stand ten playings, half to half a house. Hardly worth the learning of the lines.” Will grinned wickedly. “Mayhap I’ll to Henslowe–”

“You wouldn’t.”

Will shrugged, and Burbage laughed. “Aye, he’ll pay thee eight pound for five acts, and get Tom to mend it bloodier.”

Will set down his brush, a warmth like a good hearth lightening his limbs. “Here, look thou in the mirror–” Will glanced up, feeling someone’s regard on his neck. He turned, caught a glimpse of patchworked cloak in the sunlight through the windows, and patted Richard on the shoulder. “Remember thy kohl.”

“Will‑“

“I must see a man,” Will said, and retrieved his cane from where it leaned against the makeup table. He trailed the swing of the patchwork cloak into the shadows, caught a glimpse of dark hair and the heavy sway of layers upon layers of cloth, and knew it was not Kit he followed.

Cairbre waited for Will in a niche between a massive pillar and the painted, embossed leather upon the walls. Light reflected from the spotty snow beyond the window and brightened the little space; the Faerie Oueen’s bard turned and laid a gloved hand against the glass. “So cold,” he said.

“Faerie had no cold like England; rather it had the dream of cold, and the memory of frost.”

“Master Tattercoats.”

“Master Poet.” Cairbre turned and smiled. “You must visit us again. Your plays are missed, and you keep our own Sir Kit so busy on your errands he scarce has time to sing for us.”

Will blinked – my errands? I do not think so –and remembered to smile before he gave the Fae anything for free. He came to stand beside Cairbre, who stepped aside to offer him half the view. The Thames stretched long and ice‑rimed between her banks, the tide brimming. The snowbanks along the palace’s walkways slumped. No new snow had fallen to make them fresh and crisp again. “You’ve come on Twelfth Night to castigate me for o’erborrowing your poet?” he asked, dryly ironical.

Cairbre glanced over, warmth rounding his cheeks. “No, I’ve come to tell you that the Queen of the Daoine Sidhe will be in your audience tonight, by special invitation of the Queen of England. Under glamourie of course – ”

“Morgan?” Will coughed, put his player’s game face on and corrected the stammer. “I mean, will Morgan le Fey be here as well?”

Cairbre chuckled, raising his eyes to the horizon. “That, he said, shrugging his cloak off one shoulder, “is for Fata Morgana to decide. If anyone has informed her of the expedition. Or if she has discovered it through means of her own.” He glanced sidelong at Will and winked. “She’s not invited, if that’s what you mean.”

Will sighed and nodded, unsure if the lightness in his belly was relief or disappointment. “If I am invited, Master Bard, I would love to return to Faerie some day.”

A long gloved hand touched Will’s earring, and the black‑haired bard smiled. “You would be welcome,” he said, white teeth flashing behind his beard. “And now you must see to your painting, player. Your audience awaits.”

The play was plainly unopposed, although Oxford and Southampton lingered uncomfortably close throughout. Will attributed that as much to Essex’s absence as the power of his own words. Sir Walter Raleigh was in attendance, his star evidently on the ascendant given his post close beside the Queen – as Oxford’s seemed to be waning. Raleigh’s black doublet glistened with pearls, reminding Will painfully of Kit whenever he turned his eyes to the audience. Raleigh was masked as a fox, and Will thought it went very well with his expression; Sir Robert Cecil was a natural as a wolf on the Oueen’s other hand.

Elizabeth herself wore a red little smile, painted lips twitching with restrained mirth above the fabulous abundance of her red‑and‑white feathered fan, her face unmasked but her hair twined with pearls and swan’s feathers, and her gown all white and worked to look like snowy plumage. More interesting to Will was the chair of estate set close beside Elizabeth’s and only a little lower, against whose cushioned surface reclined a lady whose pale golden hair was dressed in a jeweled tire tall enough for a Queen. Her face was concealed behind a black velvet mask strewn with diamonds, and diamonds gleamed in the candlelight among the gauzy black silk of her veils. The Queen of Air and Darkness,Will thought, meeting the eyes of the black‑clad and velvet‑masked man who was the smallest of three identically clad standing at her left shoulder.

Kit blew Will a kiss across the gathered courtiers as Will made his final exit, and Will tripped on the smooth boards of the stage. Burbage caught his elbow, and–with playerly flamboyance–made it look like a bit of business as they exited left. Not what Kemp would have managed before he left them, but the Queen threw back her head to laugh.

“Hast heard who the mysterious beauty by the Queen might be, Richard?” Will wondered what the court gossip said. He knew very well who the lady was, with Prince Murchaud of the Daoine Sidhe, Cairbre the bard, and Sir Christopher Marlowe standing like a bishop, a rook, and a knight at her back.

Burbage glanced over his shoulder as they stepped off the boards. “There’s a rumor ‘tis Anne of Denmark.”

“Anne of Scotland, thou meanst? James’ Queen?” It wasa delicious rumor. Will resolved to spread it at every opportunity.

“One and the same,” Burbage allowed, shrugging his doublet off. “By any name a Queen.”

It had been Will’s last exit; he helped Burbage hastily with the change. “Why should such a woman come to England?”

Will buttoned from the bottom; Burbage buttoned from the top. “‘Tis said Gloriana favors Scottish James. ‘Tis not impossible she would send for his Queen, to be taught the ways of the court.”

“Essex favored James–”

“Aye, and Essex is out of favor, with Oxford. I wonder that Gloriana has not noticed how her health improves when they are sent from her side. But see how close Cecil stays by his Queen? Like a hound on a lead.”

“What of it?”

“Cecil favors the Archduchess Isabella, they say.”

“A Spanish Queen,” Will said. “After all his father’s wars on the Catholics?” Only a player’s practice kept the bitterness out of his voice. These wars are meaningless–