Hell and Earth

– aye, Will, and thou art a soldier in them nonetheless.

“Anne’s Catholic too.” Burbage finished his buttons and lifted his chin for Will to pin his ruff. “I hear it put about that Arabella Stewart has a stronger claim than either.”

“Shall England be ruled by Queens forevermore?” But Will glanced around the screen at the slender, gracious blonde upon the dais, her fair head turned in appreciation of one of the many misguided seductions in his play. Disloyalty stabbed him as he regarded the fair head and the auburn one, one face masked in velvet and the other in swan‑white ceruse. And would Queens do a worse job of it than kings?

The Mebd was never Anne of Denmark. And the earring in Will’s ear weighed heavily as he opened his mouth to amend his speech – and Will Sly bumped him from behind. Will swore, and Sly flinched and steadied him with a hasty grip. “Zounds, Will, I’m not made of glass.”

Sly looked him hard in the eye and frowned. “Nay, Will. Nor so steady on thy feet as thou might be. Forgive it for a courtesy.”

“Nay, Will. ‘Tis an apology I owe thee. I am tired and in pain… . Dicky‑bird, thou’rt done.”

“Dicky,” Burbage snorted, and flashed Will his legended grin before he stepped away, in place for his entrance. Will’s eye followed him as Sly followed. He made sure neither man saw him cling to the edge of the tiring table.

The Mebd would have liked it if Orsinio got the rack. Elizabeth preferred the conventional ending. Alas.But both Queens praised the performance, and Will smiled in a childlike delight in being the only player there who knew how rare a thing that was. He didn’t smile at all when Sir Walter–with his fox‑mask pushed up over his carefully coifed hair and his beard dyed an unnatural, foxy red–cut him out of the crowd of players and drew him into the shadow of an arras. “The Queen should like to see thee in private, Master Playmaker.”

Will looked in Raleigh’s glittering eyes. His mouth was dry; he licked his lips before he answered. “What do you know about poets and poetry, Sir Walter?”

“Enough to pay Edmund Spenser a pension,” Raleigh answered. “And I did my bit to keep Kit Marlowe overdressed as well. Oh, you didn’t know that? No, I see you didn’t. I know it was foolishness what Jonson put out about Spenser’s death.” He grinned, showing blackened teeth. “And I parroted it to all those that liked Essex least. Pity about poor Ned, however.”

Will laughed. “Essex’s enemy is any poet’s friend?”

“When that poet is for England and her Queen, aye. Be careful tonight, Master Shakespeare. We can ill afford to lose you, too.” Raleigh laid a gloved hand on Will’s doublet sleeve just below the lacings and turned him away from the bustle of the room. “Come, I’ll show you where.”

Both Queens were in the retiring room when Raleigh ushered Will inside. He crossed–not rushes, but a thick carpet he almost recognized, doubtless a gift to Elizabeth from the Faerie Queen –and knelt before the gilded chairs in which the two monarchs sat, giggling behind their fans like girls. The image was shattered when he saw their faces, though: Elizabeth was no girl, and the Mebd seemed thin behind her mask.

The Mebd’s three knights flanked her chair; Will caught a glimpse of Kit’s pouting lower lip below the black velvet of his mask and bit his own lip hard at an utterly inappropriate flaring of desire. Behind Elizabeth’s chair stood Sir Robert Cecil and George Carey, the Secretary of State and the Lord Chamberlain. Carey carried the conceit of the fox and the wolf to completion: he was masked as a hunting mastiff, his ruff arranged in fantastic spikes like a bear‑baiting collar. His long jowls under the mask completed the picture. Sir Walter Raleigh went to join them. The Queen’s fox, her wolf, her hound.In contrast, the Mebd’s men wore black simply, and their masks were soft black velvet sculpted into stern vacancy.

Will, watching through his lashes, might have smiled at the perfect staging of it: a woman in sable scattered with diamonds, and a woman in white wrought with pearls, and behind each one three masked gentlemen all richly garbed in black.

And before them, slightly off center so his burgundy slashed doublet and round hose would be displayed at advantage against the fiery white of the Swan‑Queen’s gown, one supplicant poet with his hat upside down in his hand.

“Master Shakespeare,” said Queen Elizabeth, after a suitable time had elapsed. Her fan moved gracefully. “We wish to thank you for all that you have done for us. Please rise.”

“Your Highness’ thanks are unnecessary,” Will said, when he had collected himself and pushed himself up with his cane. “But welcome. Although a humble player might wonder what monarchs would make of him.”

Elizabeth glanced at her sister queen and smiled. Clever boy.Aye, and they both loved cleverness. Kit winked at Will over his Queen’s diamond‑studded shoulder, and Will’s knees half melted before he quite forced his gaze back to Elizabeth. Damn honor,he thought. And damn vows.

Which was why Will had told Kit what he had, about Annie and his promise to remain faithful. Because he understood by now that Kit wouldn’t offer where he wasn’t certain of his welcome, and that as long as Kit didn’t offer, Will could pretend he would refuse.

The world was full of other temptations too–pretty, willing goodwives and tiresses and innkeepers–Mistress Poley, who would gladly have him in Kit’s stead, he thought, and Jenet at the inn he often overnighted in along the way to Stratford. But surely he could manage a little continence after fifty years in Hell.

The Queen looked back. “Your heart is divided, Master Shakespeare.”

“As whose is not, Your Highness?” He’d scored. He saw it in the constriction of her mouth, and then the gracious tilt of her head, acknowledging the point. Somehow, the softness in her deep gray eyes was worse than censure or a Oueen’s cold wrath. “And yet I serve my Queen and Her England in all things, ” he concluded, making as pretty a bow as he could with his cane and his hat to contend with.

“In all things?”

“Over love or gold, ” Will said, and understood why he was being made to do this before Kit, and the Mebd. So show the whole world where thy loyalty lies. And I am sorry.It was true, what he said, as far as it went. Over love. Over gold. But not over the destiny of all Christendom.

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

This is not a Prince who Loves to kill.

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

Worse things had been done in those names, than in Elizabeth’s.

And yet –

“And what if thou didst think thou hadst choose between the Queen and thy England–no, do not answer, Master Poet. We would liefer know not. Little elf,” Elizabeth said, turning to regard Sir Robert. “Thou hadst a question with regard to Master Shakespeare. Good poet” –she turned back to Will, and now her eyes sparkled – “you may speak now as if privily before ourselves.”

Cecil smiled. He’s going to ask about the Bible,Will thought at first, and then realized – worse, he’s going to ask about the plays. All the plays produced under Oxford’s supervision, and subverting Oxford’s control– Will steeled himself not to dissemble or lie –

The high double doors behind him swung open, and a determined step hushed itself upon the carpet. Raleigh, Murchaud, and Kit moved as one man, coming around the Queens, rapiers hissing into a fence of steel between the women and the door. Will blinked even as he turned, realizing all three men had been armed in the Presence.

“Your Highness, ” the Earl of Oxford said, genuflecting as the door thumped back against its frame, “I must speak to you at once. This player” – a twitch of the head at Will – “is a traitor, and Your Highness is in very grave danger – ”

Will glanced at Oxford and blinked as he understood a number of things. Including the cost of refusing to dance to Oxford’s tune, and that someoneconsidered Will troublesome enough to be cheerfully rid of him. And that it had not been happenstance that Raleigh himself had come so publicly to fetch Will from the press. And what rumors and half‑truths have the Queen and her elves been circulating?

Enough to provoke de Vere into hasty action, for certain–

“Brave gentlemen,” Elizabeth said. “We can be in no danger from so loyal a servant as our noble Oxford.” She accepted Sir Walter’s hand as he stepped back to her side and sheathed his blade. She stood gracefully, making her knight’s gesture look like a courtesy, but Will saw him take the strain of her weight. And saw also the way her ungloved hand tightened on Raleigh’s, until the pallor of her fingers matched the white lead on her brow. Saw the way Kit’s rapier dropped until its point rested on the floor, though neither he nor Murchaud sheathed their swords or retreated behind their Queen. From his angle a little to the side of where Oxford stood, Will saw Cairbre slip a silver flute into his hand, and– good Christ–George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, draw a long‑barreled pistol and conceal it behind Elizabeth’s gilded chair.

I am on the wrong side of that dais.But Kit looked calm, and so did Carey. Sir Robert was actually smiling, one hand resting on the ornate back of Elizabeth’s chair now that she had risen. He leaned forward to speak in her ear, and she smiled. “As you say, little elf.” She gave Will a level, steadying glance before she turned her attention to Oxford. “What is it, sweet boy?”

Oxford looked from Elizabeth to the Mebd, still seated and anonymous behind her rich black veils and the bodies of her servants. “My Queen, I am not certain this is meet to discuss before strangers.”

“Ah,” she said, descending the steps coolly, her hand upraised in Raleigh’s like a courting swan’s neck. “But these are not strangers, my dear Oxford.”

Will watched her come, amazed, as the Earl of Oxford chose his words, seeming to understand that he had made some sort of an error and seeking to understand how grave it was. Close on, Will witnessed the frailty of Elizabeth’s neck, the hollows under her cheekbones, the lines of old pain set deep between her eyes. The scent of rosewater and marjoram surrounded her; he was reminded uncomfortably of Morgan and her eternal scent of rosemary. Elizabeth had nearly died–two years before Will was born – of the smallpox that had also disfigured her dear friend Mary Dudley, the mother of the poet Sir Philip Sidney. The candlelight outlined the scars on Elizabeth’s cheeks through her paint, and still she presented – almost–the illusion of vigor.

“That will suffice, dear Water.” She tugged her hand from Raleigh’s grasp, and she passed before Will and came and laid that same white, white hand on Oxford’s cheek. He smiled at the touch, and the Queen smiled back. “What is it, Edward? ”

“I am here to name this playmaker a traitor to Your Highness,” Oxford said, on a breath that didn’t quite manage the sneer he endeavored for. “I have evidence to present–”

Christ,Will thought, but Raleigh came to stand beside him as if about to take his elbow and block his route to the door, using the movement to cover a casual nudge.

“How convenient,” Elizabeth said, turning her back on Oxford while Will marveled at her seamless courage and dignity. “When here we have a tribunal of sorts.”

“A tribunal, Your Highness?”

“Of sorts,” she repeated, withdrawing up the shallow steps. She paused before her chair, made a sweeping turn to accommodate her train, and did not take a seat. “We are here to consider the crimes of Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Would he care to make a defense?”

Kit shifted at the left hand of the Mebd, although his face seemed impassive behind the mask. Will saw her lay one black‑gloved hand on the poet’s wrist. Kit glanced down and gave her a smile as edgy as the rapier in his hand. Will stepped away from Oxford, giving Raleigh the room to step between them if he needed, conscious of his blocking as if he moved away from the principals in a scene onstage.

“My Queen.” Oxford swept a low bow and stayed there, his hat in his hand as Will’s had been. “May I hear these – charges?” He glanced sidelong at Will, already arranging his face into a mask of dismissive scorn. “What has this player told you?”

“That playerhas told us nothing,” she said. Her hands looked terribly small against the massive white wall of her skirts; she folded them before the point of her flat‑fronted stomacher and twined the fingers together. “For we have not yet taken his evidence.” Disappointment edged her soft, sweet voice. “Edward. It has reached our ears that thou dost conspire with Catholic spies and agents, along with some others who are not presently welcome in our court – ” She sighed. “Honesty may redeem thee, Edward. How dost thou answer? ”

The look Oxford shot Will this time was nothing short of venomous, and Will had the distinct and elevated pleasure of smiling once and shaking his head with slow finality. Nay. Not me, my dear Earl. I wonder if it was Essex or Southampton threw him to the wolves?

One or the other. Elizabeth would not listen to many men over– Kit’s eye caught Will’s again, and Will nodded so slightly he thought only Kit and perhaps Cairbre might catch it– her own son.

“Your Highness.” Oxford had not yet risen. Will rather enjoyed seeing the back of his neck. “May I know by whose hand these charges have been leveled, then?”

“Mine,” said Kit, and stepped forward with a naked rapier still in his right hand, and it struck Will abruptly that better than half the men in the room had drawn weapons in the presence of not one Queen, but two–and no one seemed to think much of it. Meanwhile, Kit’s gloved left hand rose to strip the sculpted velvet mask from his face; he let it drop from his fingers to the floor behind, and smiled. “Hello, love. Art surprised to find me quick?”

Leaning on his cane, Will hitched himself back from the confrontation evolving in the center of the room.

Elizabeth’s smile was a mask as unyielding of true expression as the one Kit had left lying at her feet, and Oxford’s stiff‑backed bow didn’t survive the revelation. He straightened, reaching for the rapier he wasn’t wearing, and took a slow step away from Kit and from the Queen as Raleigh edged between him and the door.

Oxford hesitated a moment when his hand brushed the richly figured cloth at his hip. Will saw his moment of decision, the squaring of his shoulders and the little grimace as he moved forward, past Kit as if Kit were insignificant, an inconvenience to be shrugged aside. “Your Highness,” Oxford said, pausing at the foot of the steps and addressing himself directly to his Queen. “Surely you will not take the word of this” –his lip twisted, as if on words he would not say in the presence of a woman – “apostate, this perversion–”

Kit came the few steps back up beside Oxford on the left, and Will saw that his motion served to distract Oxford from Raleigh, who flanked the Earl on the right and just out of the periphery of his vision. Kit’s voice stayed level, amused, but there was a honeyed rasp in it that Will knew for sheerest hatred. “Baines told thee not that I was living, Edward? I wonder what else he’s kept from thee. Perhaps he reports directly to Southampton now.”

“Thou shalt not theeme, sirrah.”

Kit stopped close enough for Oxford to feel the heat of his breath, Will imagined, the naked blade angled between them as if laid down the center of a bed. “Or Essex; perhaps ‘tis why Essex saw fit to set thee adrift–”

Oxford looked up at the Queen. “Your Highness would take the word of this common playmaker and, and–”

“–or perhaps ‘tis Essex who wears Baines’ rein. What thinkst thou? Thou hast been cut from their string, hast not?”

The Oueen’s smile was strained white under the carmine of fucus. She held her silence. The Mebd and the four black‑clad men beside her might have been statues.

“–heretic, traitor. Catamite–” Oxford would not turn. Would not look at Kit, as Kit leaned closer. Will’s stomach clenched in sympathy at the tightness that edged Kit’s face, and never was heard in his voice.

“Ah.”

“Your Highness?”

“Ah,” Kit said a second time, and slapped Edward de Vere with the back of his gloved left hand.

It was a blow hard enough to turn the man’s head and leave a welt burning red across the pallor of his skin, and Will flinched at the report. Oxford fell silent, didn’t so much as raise a hand to cover the mark. Will imagined de Vere tasting blood, and the imagining troubled him not at all.

Kit tilted his head to one side like a crow thinking which eye to pluck from a dead man’s skull. He spoke clearly into the silence, and the knot in Will’s stomach wrenched into a wild, braying kind of love. “I cannot fault thine own experienced testament, my lord–”

“Master Marlowe, I am certain–”

“Sir Christopher, ” Elizabeth said.

“Your Highness?”

“Sir Christopher,” she said, as if reminding an idiot child. “Not Master. Sir.”

Oxford’s face went white before it went red. “Sir Christopher. I am certain I do not understand your implication–”

“Implication? My lord Oxford, I will testify.”The poet stripped his gloves off with an elegantly negligent gesture and smiled up at the Queens. Will wondered if anyone else could see what Kit’s smile cost him.

Oxford looked appealingly at his Queen, who ignored him in favor of gracefully resuming her seat, her skirts hissing about her like the foam on a moonlit sea. Oxford must have heard the rumors that the veiled blond beauty was the legendary Anne of Denmark, Queen of Scotland. Will could almost see the false assumptions heaping high in Oxford’s thoughts.

“Sir Christofer,” the Mebd asked in measured and musical tones, “are you suggesting that this my royal sister’s subject has made improper use of thee?”

Elizabeth glanced up from fussing her skirts, but it was Kit she looked to. “Sir Christopher?”

Kit smiled green poison, not at the Queens but at Oxford. “Oh, he made rather a proper job of it, I’d say. May it please Your Majesties.”

“Thou’lt burn with me.” Hissed, and Will rather thought it was meant for Kit’s ears alone, but in the still room it carried. Oxford flinched.

“I’m subject to another Kingdom now,” Kit answered, and gently reached up and kissed Edward de Vere on the cheek still reddened with that blow. Will bit his lip on a cheer, turned aside before it could bubble out of him, and met Raleigh’s amused and savage grin. He approved of our Kit too,Will thought, and gave the Oueen’s “Sir Water” back a flash of a smile as Kit stepped back. Will wonders never cease?

“And more,” Will said, understanding what he was here for, and where Cecil’s questions would have taken him. “From his own lips, I heard the Earl suggest that Your Majesty’s continued good health” –a bow to Elizabeth– “might be an impediment to the successful future of England.”

Kit stepped back and turned his sword so that the blade cast reflected light in a moving bar across Oxford’s breast and throat, all his polite attention to Will. The band of Kit’s mask had disarrayed his hair into fine tangled elflocks, and Will folded his arms to keep from brushing them straight.

“Have you proof, Master Shakespeare?” Raleigh’s voice. Oxford jumped at its closeness.

Will shook his head, pressing his arms against his chest, his cane dangling from his fingertips. “Only mine own sworn testimony, Sir Walter. Which will I give.”

Kit cleared his throat and addressed himself to Oxford, not Raleigh. “I also have heard with mine own ears that thou didst plot my murder, and treason against your anointed Queen. And I also will swear to it and give particulars. My lord.”

Raleigh looked across Oxford as if he were not there, catching Kit’s eyes. “Good to see you well, Kit – ” He cleared his throat and grinned. “Sir Christopher. I suppose that’s not for bandying about?”

“Good to see you at all, Walter.” Oxford moved, as if to shift from between them, and Kit halted him with a negligent tap of his blade. “Tut. None of that. And no, officially I’m quite dead and likely to remain so.”

Raleigh stepped closer. Kit moved back toward the dais, sheathing his blade as if Oxford were beneath concern. Oxford’s expression of thwarted wrath lightened Will’s heart, but the Mebd’s voice broke through his delight; soft and amused as Kit came back to her side, stooping only to retrieve his discarded mask. “Dost regret now how fine a gift thou hast given us, sweet sister?”

“Oh, sister,” Elizabeth answered, her voice rich and low over the colors of a grief Will imagined was almost like an old, familiar friend, “I’ve always been weak in the face of these rash, these beautiful boys.” Kit hid a laugh to hear himself so described, but Elizabeth’s eyes were on Raleigh and her face offered Oxford no sign of her pain. She’ll weep later,Will thought. She wept for Mary, they day, even as she signed the death warrant– “My sweet Sir Water. Sir Robert, my elf. See that our darling Edward tells us what he knows. Everything.”

Raleigh took Oxford by the elbow; the Earl gave him a glance that might have melted glass. “Unhand me, popinjay.” He pushed Raleigh back with the flat of his hands; Raleigh bore it like a standing stone, though pearls rained from his doublet like hail.

“As my Queen commands,” Raleigh answered, one hand upon his sword. “Your Highness, when he has told us what he will?”

Elizabeth’s fan moved idly, crimson and alabaster feathers trembling above a grip made of gold set with mother‑of‑pearl. “I do not wish to set eyes on him again.”

Act IV, scene xiv

Since thou hast alt the Cards within thy hands

To shuffle or cut, take this as surest thing:

That right or wrong, thou deal thyself a King.

– Christopher Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris,Act I, scene ii

The two Queens removed themselves before Sir Walter or Sir Robert returned, and Lord Hunsdon and Cairbre went with them. Kit breathed a sigh of relief to be alone with Will and Murchaud in the mirrorless, close‑tapestried retiring room. “I don’t suppose there’s a bottle of wine on a sideboard somewhere?”

“I’ll find a servant,” Murchaud answered, stripping his mask off and tossing it on the red velvet cushion of the Mebd’s gilded chair. “Thou wert brave, Kit – ”

Kit shrugged. “One down,” he said, crossing glances with Will.

Will dragged a stool away from the wall and sat himself on it, balancing his cane carefully against his knee.

A liveried servant arrived with the wine; Kit intercepted the tray before Will could try to rise and serve his betters. The tightness in Will’s narrow shoulders pained him; the hesitant, calculated step and the nearness at hand of that cane broke his heart. He poured wine into a softly swirled blue glass and pressed it into Will’s hand, then did the same for Murchaud.

“And thou wert very brave indeed,” Will finished, tasting the wine. “It cannot have been easy, what thou didst – ”

“What, admitting my poor taste in lovers before every person who’s ever treated me with a scrap of dignity?” It had been humorous in his head; on his lips it tasted of bitterness.

“Not everybody,” Will said, while Murchaud bumped Kit companionably with a shoulder. “Tom wasn’t here – ”

“Oh, and I thank thee for that comfort… .” But Kit smiled, despite himself, and felt some of the painful unease in his belly loosen.

The door opened again and he looked up, expecting another servant, perhaps, or a summons. It was Sir Robert Cecil, his canine mask pushed up over his hair and his limp pronounced with tiredness. “Master Shakespeare – ”

“Sir.” Will stood, bracing himself with the cane. Kit stepped forward and relieved Will of his wine cup as the playmaker went to greet the Secretary of State.

Will didn’t lean on the cane heavily so much as balance with it, but his step was halt and his right hand trembled. Christ, how does he write?

Kit felt his face pinch, his eyes begin to burn. He looked away and caught Murchaud’s sideways glance. And knew that, too, for what it was, and shook his head slowly in the realization.

Slowly, aye. But Will was dying.

Sir Robert came forward and fell into step by Will, two men limping in unison. On stage, it might have been funny. “Master Shakespeare, I’ll need you to write out and sign a deposition.”

“Regarding the Earl of Oxford? I’ll do it gladly, Mr. Secretary. Will he… ?”

“–go to the Tower?”

A pleasant euphemism,Kit thought.

Sir Robert shook his head. “No, but I doubt you’ll see him in London again. Master Shakespeare, if you will?”

Will nodded in amusement at the pun, glancing over his shoulder to Kit. Kit waved him away with a pang, conscious of a breathless, drowning sort of agony filling his throat. Eight years and I’ve managed the downfall of Edward de Vere. And now–

Christ. I can’t stand watching this. What will it take? Half a decade? Two? I should have stayed in Faerie. I should have –

– let Baines have his way with Will?

Murchaud’s hand pressed the small of Kit’s back as Sir Robert steered Will out of the retiring room. Kit didn’t move away from the touch, for all it felt like sandpaper through his doublet and his shirt. The door closed behind Will and Sir Robert. Kit turned and looked up at the Prince, who pulled him into a stiffly awkward sort of one‑armed hug. “It gets easier eventually.”

“When they’re all dead?”

It was an idle, bitter comment. Kit was not prepared for the placid irony with which the Prince said, softly, “Yes.”

“Murchaud, why art thou kind? What dost thou wish of me?” It wasn’t quite what Kit had intended to ask, and he stiffened, but he still didn’t step out of the embrace, for all it was like standing among nettles. Murchaud turned his face into Kit’s hair, and Kit was suddenly giddy with sorrow and frustration and something that hurt sharply, a pressure under his breastbone he didn’t have a name for.

“Idiot. For I love thee,” the Prince said, and kissed the top of Kit’s head before he let him go. “What word hast thee of conspiracy, Kitling?”

For I love thee.Kit stared after the Prince, wondering if those words were true or calculated, or whether they could be both. “That depends of which conspiracy thou speakst, my Prince. This one or that one? I think we pulled a tooth of the dragon in London today – ”

Murchaud shrugged, pouring more wine. “Something was accomplished, in any case. And Oxford’s face when thou didst draw off thy mask was a worthy sight. With Oxford and Essex both out of court, that’s a little breathing room for Gloriana.”

“Will thinks the Puritans have gotten to Archbishop Whitgift.”

“The Puritans, or the Prometheans?”

“Is there a difference?” Kit leaned against a leather‑topped desk and watched Murchaud pace. “Essex’s Prometheans have their fingers deep in every pie. They play politics layered on politics, and their goals are opaque to me.”

“Their goals are very simple,” Murchaud replied, turning as if startled. “Power, earthly and divine. Revolution, and the overthrow of the old ways.”

“And our ways are better than theirs?” Kit breathed a little easier, the knot under his breastbone easing at having successfully diverted Murchaud. Robin, I do not know how long I can protect you. I do not even understand why it is that I choose to do so.Except Kit had seen men drawn and quartered for the sin of appearing on a list of names that he, Kit, drew up and provided. He thought of Will’s new play and grinned. To choose not is a choice.

“Our ways are what we have,” Murchaud said, reminding Kit of his own words to Will, so many years ago. “I wonder, sometimes, if a compromise could be reached–”

“Like the compromise with Hell?” Kit refreshed his own cup and Murchaud’s as well. He leaned back against the desk, turning the glass between his hands. The pale blue spirals running up the sides caught the light; the room seemed very rich and lush in half darkness.

“I should hope not,” Murchaud answered. He paced the edge of the room, letting his fingers wander over surfaces. “If the Archbishop of Canterbury is weakening, can the Church of England be far behind?”

“Murchaud”–a swallow of wine to loosen Kit’s tongue – “why has the Mebd come here? Not for a play. And not merely for my little masque and unmasking.”

“Oh, aye, for a play. And to discuss Elizabeth’s succession with her. And Elizabeth’s legend – ”

“Ah.” Kit set the glass down on the leather‑topped desk and stretched his fingers, working the ache out of them. “Edward has a jaw like an anvil.”

“‘Tis well thou didst not punch him, then. Is’t broken?”

“Only strained. Bruised a little.”

“Would kiss it well – ”

“Would that thou couldst.” Kit sighed. “What next?”

Murchaud shuddered. “We try to keep Gloriana alive as long as possible. We rid ourselves of as many of the false Promethean agents as we can find. Oxford is an excellent start. Skeres, not the victory I would have chosen, but something nonetheless.”

“We discover–” Kit coughed and lowered his voice. “We discover why Sir Robert is protecting Poley and Baines.”

“Is he?”

“There’s no other explanation.” Kit nodded with conviction. It came more plain to him even as he sought to explain it. “He sends Tom and Will to frame Baines, but it’s not Baines who takes the fall. He allows Will and I to remove Oxford, but only once Essex has discarded him. He opposes Will’s plan for a new Bible, and I would not be surprised if there’s more we don’t know. Yes, I think Robert Cecil is playing a very deep game indeed. And I think I need to talk to Sir Walter about it –

“Sir Robert,” Murchaud said, still pacing. “Believes in what he can grasp and hold. Sir Robert may already have plans for Elizabeth’s successor. Sir Robert may see a weakening of Faerie as bending to his advantage.”

“I can’t imagine that he doesn’t. I’m not sure that he understands that the Prometheans are something other than another chess piece.”

“He doesn’t see them as players?”

“Does he see anyone else as a player? I think he imagines that some tokens merely move themselves about the board when his hand is not on them.” Kit’s own hand was swelling still. He frowned at it. “I did hit Oxford harder than I intended. At least the fingers work.”

“Thou shouldst get Morgan to see to it–”

“Will Morgan see me?”

Murchaud’s lips twitched. “Aye, I imagine she would. There’s more we need to finish before Elizabeth passes.”

“Besides the Prometheans?”

“I set thee to find those who would conspire against my wife. I need names, Kit.”

Kit closed his eyes. “I suppose thou wouldst not believe me an I lied to thee?”

“Your heart is divided,” Murchaud quoted, and came to him. “Thou dost know something, and thou art loath to tell.”

“I know many things I am loath to tell, lover….”

Murchaud smiled at the endearment, but Kit could tell it would not encourage him to relent. He set his wineglass down. “Kit. It is my safety that thou dost put at stake. Mine, and Cairbre’s, as well as the Mebd’s. Thy friends and protectors. Hast thou no loyalty?”

“I have no wish to witness any more hangings in my lifetime, Murchaud.”

“Hah!” Murchaud stepped back, and as he stepped back he reached out with both hands and cupped Kit’s cheeks ever so gently. Kit steeled himself and bore the touch, and managed even not to flinch. “Kitling, we do not hang Faeries.”

“… we don’t?”

“We haven’t enough Faeries to hang, my love. No, the punishment will not be fatal. Or even, perhaps, painful, although the miscreants might find themselves sporting a pig’s head or a cow’s filthy tail. The Mebd has her own ways of enforcing obedience.”

Or ass’s ears,Kit realized, and then put his hand to his mouth as he realized also that he’d said it aloud. His expression must have offered whatever confirmation Murchaud needed, because the Prince nodded once, judiciously, and leaned close to kiss him on the forehead.

“Who else?”

“Geoffrey,” Kit answered, his voice helpless in his own hearing. “Geoffrey and Puck, and the Faerie oaks. That’s all I know.”

“It’s enough,” Murchaud said. “They can be made to tell.”

Act IV, scene xv

0 sir, we quarrel in print, by the book; as you have books for good mannerd: I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheque Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If.

I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an If as, ‘If you said do, then I said so;’ and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker; much virtue in If.

–William Shakespeare, As You Like It,Act V, scene iii

Spring came late in 1600; Will spent Lent in Stratford and returned in late March to his haunts in London. One cold rainy afternoon shortly after Easter, he leaned back on his bench at the Mermaid and rattled the dice across the planks to Thomas Nashe, who was leaned forward inspecting the backgammon board set between them. “I should have made you play chess.”

You win at chess,” Will answered complacently, reaching for his wine.

“Then perhaps we should alternate. I shouldn’t play at dice with you, Will. No one should. You’ve the Devil’s own luck–”

“If I have it, then he doesn’t. When you meet him, be sure to challenge him at dice.”

Nashe laughed, delighted. “I can count on you, Will. Have you seen Ben lately? ”

“He’s still not speaking to me over the poet’s argument,” Will answered unhappily. He steepled his fingers in front of his nose. “Burbage has hired Dekker to take a few cuts back at Ben. It’s all childishness; I have plays to write. And you – I hear you’ve given up playmaking and pamphleteering entirely, Tom.”

“Poetry for private patrons pays better,” Nashe said without rancor, rattling the dice on the tabletop. He swore softly and moved his chips with a hasty hand. “And poetry seems less likely to find me in jail again. Or my work burned in the market square.”

“At least you brought Harvey down with you.”

“A minor victory. It’s not hard to be funnier than Gabriel Harvey. Hullo, George.”

“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Chapman patted Will on the shoulder and settled his bulk onto the plank bench beside Nashe. And then looked up, exasperated, and started to heave his stout graybearded self up again. “Damme, I forgot I wanted sack.”

“I’ll get it,” Nashe said, pushing himself to his feet with a hand on either side of the board. “I wanted another ale. Mind you keep Will from ‘repairing’ the board while I’m up – oh, look. The Catholics are here again.”

He jerked his chin, and Will followed the motion. Robert Catesby caught Will’s eye and smiled; Will didn’t know the big, well‑favored redhead beside him, but the ridges of muscle on his arms and the scars on his hands said soldier,and he carried himself in the same manner that Ben did.

“At least we’re unlikely to see Puritans in a poet’s bar,” Chapman answered, stretching his feet toward the fire. “And Catesby’s a good sort.”

Nashe snorted and went to find the landlord. Chapman turned and offered Will a considering look. “Does your offer still stand, Master Shakespeare?”

Will blinked, trying to remember what offer he might have made, and shrugged. He pulled a tiny bottle from his purse and shook Morgan’s poisoned medicine into his wine cup, counting the droplets that fell from the splinter imbedded in the cork. “Which offer is that?”

Chapman glanced over his shoulder. “I’ve thought better of your idea. The Bible.”

Will swirled the wine to mix in the bitter herbs, aware of Chapman’s interest. “It’s a tincture for my palsy, George.”

“Oh.” Silence, as Will drank and felt the tightness in his muscles easing. “The Bible,” he reminded.

“Ben’s not speaking to me,”

“Ben thinks highly of himself,” Chapman commented dryly. We were young once too. It passes.”

Will laughed, tidying counters on the board. “I’m uncertain I was ever so young as that. The Bible’s been slow going. What changed your mind?”

Chapman shrugged as Nashe came back, juggling two wine cups and a mug of ale. He placed the cups before Will and Chapman, and settled in again, leaning forward to look at the board. “I bid you not to let him move my counters, George – ”

“I was only straightening,” Will protested. “Thank you for the wine, Tom.”

“I was up.” Tom brushed it aside as unworthy. “I interrupted.”

“Not at all,” Chapman said. “We were discussing the foibles of Master Jonson.”

Will sighed and nodded, glad that Chapman had failed to answer his question once Nashe returned. Jonson owes too much to Tom Walsingham to give away what he knows of our tasks. But I cannot help but wonder, sulky boy that he is, if I made a mistake recruiting him. Still, it wouldn’t do to have Tom Nashe wondering why I’ve cut him out of Bible study.

Nashe rolled his eyes. “Ben’s all wind and no rain,” he opined, toying with his ale.

“Easy to say, when you’re not somebody he’s brawled with or cudgeled with his own pistol. Ask John Marston what he thinks of Ben’s fists.”

Nashe grinned at Chapman. “He’ll wind up stabbed in unsavory circumstances. Mark my words.”

Will marked them, all right. And, sitting at the table between two other friends and collaborators of Kit Marlowe’s, found them less than comforting. Well, if I can trust anyone with the news of Kit’s survival, it would have been smarter Tom Nashe or George than Ben, now that I think on it. Oh, hell.He caught Chapman’s eye and nodded while Nashe was fussing with the dice, and Chapman returned the smile and sipped his wine complacently.

Act IV, scene xvi

She whom thy eye shall like, thy heart shall have,

Be she as chaste as was Penelope,

As wise as Saba, or as beautiful

As was bright Lucifer before his fall.

–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene i

Kit walked down the sweeping greens‑ward below the Mebd’s gold‑turreted palace and stopped on the bluff above the sea. A strange white tree grew there, where the lawn gave way to coarse and knotty salt grass. Kit let his viola swing from his hand, kicked the tree’s trunk with the side of his foot, and arched his head back to look up into the branches.

Murchaud told him it was a New World tree, or perhaps one native to Cathay. It flowered heavily, hung with white petals thick as paper and soft as the skin of a peach. A thick honeyed scent the sea breeze couldn’t leaven floated under the branches, cloying Kit’s throat.

It wasn’t what the tree was that interested Kit. It was who the tree had been. “Well, I hope thou’rt enjoying thy penance, Robin,” he said. “Can think of worse prisons…”

The branches whispered one on the other. Kit freed the bow and lifted the viola. “I came to play thee a tune. I thought it might lighten the weary hours….”

There was no answer, of course. But still he settled his instrument and played for an hour or two, there at the border between the sea and the land, with the tree reaching up to scrape the sky. He would have played longer, and perhaps stayed to watch the sunset under the white tree’s branches, but the heavy slip and sway of a caller’s approach across the grass distracted him.

He lowered the instrument and turned. “Good evening, Lady Amaranth.”

“A beautiful evening, Sir Poet,” she answered. “Play on, and lull me to sleep in this forgiving evening air.”

“Do snakes sleep?”

She smiled, that strange flat rearrangement of her face. “Snakes sleep with their eyes open, who was Christofer Marley.”

“Please,” he said, laying the viola down in a flat, dry patch of grass. He leaned back against the bark of the tree, wondering how long the Mebd would leave Robin stranded so before she deemed her lesson taught. “Call me Kit. ’

“Kit.” Her snakes moved like a lovely woman’s hair, tossed by the sea breeze. For a moment, he could almost imagine curls caught on her collar, limned like sculpture in the low angled light. “How likest thou the answers to thy questions?”

“The answers you’re guiding me to? ” He laughed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Mehiel. The oaks. Puck. Other things …”

She inclined her head, smile broadening, the picture of womanly waiting except for the flicker of her tail tip.

He pushed a hand into his hair, as much to hide his shaking as to hold the wind‑tossed strands out of his face. “How do you know what you know, Amaranth?” He’d meant to ask the question more subtly, to dance up to it.

She coiled aside and smiled, rising up to pluck a palm‑broad blossom from the branches overhead. She buried her face in the flower, inhaling deeply, and then tucked the twig behind her ear. Threadlike serpents coiled over the petals as Kit watched in fascination. She leaned back, as if considering.

Kit straightened against the tree and folded his arms across his breast. “You are more patient than I, my friend. Older and more knowing.”

“But thou’rt more stubborn, and I should take it into account?” She showed him a bit of fang when she smiled this time, and fussed the lace on the cuff of her flowing white shirt. “I know because I know, Kit. Because serpents are for knowing things.”

“And sharing them with mortals to their detriment?”

Oh, that was fang indeed, and the flicker of a long forked tongue in silent laughter. It brushed his cheek as she swayed forward, and all her hair hissed in sympathy. “If thou knowest thy scripture. Or all the myths of all the world.”

“Is there a difference?”

She settled back on her tail, watching him with an arch assessment that left him quite unsettled. “No. Now that thou dost mention it, there’s not.”

Something–the stubbornness she’d named, or just long‑smoldering rebellion, flared in his breast. “And hast come to send me on the next errand of discovery, then, my lady?”

“I haven’t. I came to hear thy music, Kit.”

He stepped away from the tree, brushed past her–not roughly, and not within reach of her hair–on his way out of the bower. “There’s my instrument. Be so good as to lay it by my bed when thou hast done with it.”

“And where goest thou, Sir Poet?”

Kit laughed and turned back over his shoulder. “I’m going to see a witch about a boy.”

Geoffrey, who was currently too much a stag to be much use for conversation, had said of Morgan’s cottage that one could only find it if one knew already where it was. Kit found it true: he found his way to the stream and across the bridge–after no troll appeared to greet his hail–and down among the roses without difficulty. If it were spring on the bluff above the ocean, it was high summer at the witch’s cottage, and the roses hung damasked red and white beside the door like a lady’s mantle thrown over her shoulder to display the embroidery. The red wooden door was propped open, and Kit heard a familiar voice raised in song over the splash and clatter of washing.

As homely a sight and sound as he’d ever imagined. He let his feet crunch on the gravel path as he came along it, and on a whim raised his voice in harmony. The clinking of pottery stopped, but the singing continued, and a moment later Morgan le Fey poked her head around the corner and smiled. And Kit blinked, because her hair was as red as the red roses that grew by the door, and her skin gone as pale as the white.

“Morgan?” He stopped and blinked, midverse, his hands hanging limp by his sides. “You’ve changed,” he said, and walked closer when she summoned him.

“It happens,” she said, tugging a long red lock out to inspect it. “I blame Spenser. All Queens are Elizabeth, now.”

“Really?”

“No. Only in stories. I imagine Arthur’s still blond in his bower, though. Isn’t he?”

Rather than answer, Kit reached with numb fingers to lift the curl out of her hand. The hair felt coarse and real, not harsh with dye. He fought the sudden ridiculous impulse to lift it to his lips and taste it; instead he said, “You knew about Mehiel.”

She smiled and flicked her curl out of his hands, as Lucifer had flicked his wing. “Yes, Sir Poet. I knew about Mehiel. And I’ve underestimated thee, I see now.” She stood away from the door, gesturing him into her house.

He followed. “I scream within,” he assured her. “How knewest thou?” It was strange to speak to her so again, after such a long time, but he bit back a smile and thought, If thou canstthee Lucifer, Prince of God’s Angels, then thou canstthee Morgan le Fey.

“I have my sources.” She smiled mysteriously and went to stir something in the kettle over the fire, while he tried to decide if he liked her hair that brilliant shade.

Morgan–” He had layers and layers of questions. Careful, teasing questions that he’d written out and memorized before committing the sheets to the fire. He had a thousand interrogations troubling his soul, and moreover, he thought he had the right to know the answers. And what he said was, “My Queen, what is it thou dost desire?”

It was the right thing to ask. God help him. He knew it by the way she straightened, and wouldn’t look at him, but dipped a wooden mug in the spice‑scented decoction seething over the fire and stood and stared at the mud‑chinked wall while she drank it. “The impossible, Kit.”

“How impossible?” He came to her, his slowly lengthening cloak brushing aside the rushes on the fresh‑swept floor.

“Time to add another layer,” she said. “Or thou’lt find thyself tripping whenever thou dost step back.”

“Then I’ll have to learn not to step back,” he said, and touched her wrist with three fingers. “Answer me, Morgan.”

She turned her head away. Her throat had a fine, strong line, flowing into a stubborn chin. He lifted the hand from her wrist, caught that chin, and turned her face back to him, amazed at his own audacity. More amazed when he felt her shiver, before she brushed his hand aside and stepped back. “Peace. I want peace, Christopher Marlowe.”

“I’ll offer thee no war if thou wilt offer me none.” She smiled, but he knew from the way her breath fell that it wasn’t what she meant, and he returned her smile with a slight, thoughtful nod. “Thou’rt correct. It is impossible.”

“Most things worth fighting for are.”

“And is there anything thou’rt not willing to sacrifice to get it, my Queen?”

“Thou shouldst know the answer to that by now, Kitten,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. “And the more we love it, the more likely it becomes that it will be stripped from us.”

“Oh, thatI know.” He stepped back and bowed, a practiced gesture with his cloak. “May I be of service to a lady, then? What may I do?”

She laughed. “Don’t look back. Don’t step off the path. And never trust the guardian.”

“I’ve heard that somewhere before,” he said. She nodded.

“I know. I imagined he would tell you.”

“Geoffrey?”

“Geoffrey the Hart.” She smiled, and reached out to brush his lips with her fingers, and very carefully reached out and opened his collar to expose the brand high on his chest.

Her touch burned, but he bore it irritably. Thou dost inflict this pain thyself.

“It’s inevitable now, what happens, Kitten. The wheels are in motion. But I managed a little trick you might approve of.“

“Yes?”

“The battle–”

“The one when Elizabeth dies?”

“Not when Elizabeth dies any longer, ” she said, and dragged her fingers through her long, red hair. “It cost me something of myself, though it was Spenser op’ed the way. The Prometheans will have to manufacture their rift in the collective soul of London themselves. Elizabeth’s legend will linger past her death. Gloriana will not die with the Queen.”

“Gloriana,” he mouthed, and cocked his head at her. At the fine hooked arch of her nose and the cheekbones like panes of glass, and caught his breath.

“Elizabeth the First,” Morgan le Fey said on a breath like awe. “England’s greatest ruler. So shall she be remembered.” The sorceress offered him a bittersweet smile, and he knew that what she gave herself was not just peace, but a suitable sort of vengeance, after all these endless years. “A mere woman.”

Kit studied her. “There are no mere women.”

Her eyes shifted green to gray, smile rose‑pink as her lips compressed. She said nothing, amused.

He liked her in triumph. “It’s your revenge on Arthur.”

“Arthur and not Gwenhwyfar? Art certain?”

He was. He wondered, for a moment, what the legends might have been if this woman, and not her half brother, had been King. “Does the Mebd know what you’ve done?”

“She’ll learn soon enough. Come. Sit and have tea.”

Act IV, scene xvii

Some day that ever ‘gainst that season comes

Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;

The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act I, scene i

Will had learned by now to recognize the tingle of lifting hair at the nape of his neck that presaged Kit’s sudden appearances. The specter showed first flat as a painting or an image in a glass, and then stepping forward as if he rose through water into three‑dimensional reality. Will didn’t move from his place by the fire – hard won, in Tom’s cold parlor, and he wouldn’t sacrifice it willingly. Tom himself only nodded, but George Chapman –

Will hid his laughter behind his sleeve as Chapman turned to face the outlandish figure of Kit Marlowe–who had just materialized before the big window in his gaudy cloak – and dropped his half‑empty goblet on the floor. Tom didn’t even try to conceal his mirth as straw‑colored wine spilled over the rushes and Chapman’s jaw fell open, a red cavern within the bramble of his beard. He never even glanced down at the wine soaking his shoes, but when Kit smiled kindly at him and said, “Oh. Hullo, George. I hear you’ve been expurgating my poetry,” his eyes rolled up and only Tom Walsingham’s swift intercession kept him from dashing his brains out on the sideboard.

Kit considered the tableau for a moment, and then glanced over his shoulder and raised both eyebrows at Will. “He’s a prankster, our Will.”

Said direct to Will’s face and not in Tom’s direction at all, but it was Tom–tipping Chapman into a chair–who answered. “He is at that. Happy birthday, Kit.”

“Is it?” Kit glanced out the window, as if expecting rain and buttercups, and blinked at the cold gray slates and February darkness.

“February sixth, sixteen hundred.”

“It is,” Kit said wonderingly, putting his hand on the glass. He pressed the other against the center of his breast in a gesture that was becoming a habit, and one that quietly troubled Will. “Is’t afternoon or morning?”

“Before sunrise,” Will said. “We’ve been waiting up for thee–”

“And didst not tell poor George I was coming. Shame, William.”

Will grinned. “Congratulations, Kit. You’re thirty‑seven.”

“Strange, he doesn’t look a day over twenty‑nine.” Tom finished settling Chapman into the chair and pushed one long hand through hair that was streaked with gray now, like a careless daub of whitewash at the temples. Will’s attention was more on Kit, though, and he saw Kit flinch when Tom continued, “Worry not, Kit. Forty’s not the end of the world, for all they say it’s middle age and death on the horizon.”

“Aye, Sir Thomas,” Kit said, and crossed the room to crouch by Chapman’s chair. “Thou’rt forty now? It cannot be. ‘Twas only yesterday thou wert outriding and outshooting me day in and day out, and soon Thou’lt be as toothless as old Chapman, here” – he chafed Chapman’s wrists –“George, wake up. That was a cruel trick Will played thee–water, Will. If thou hast stopped the old man’s heart I shan’t forgive thee.”

“Old Chapman,” Tom scoffed, standing back. “Aye, he’s two entire winters on me.”

Will had left his cane by the door, and managed with some pride to fetch cold water and a cloth for Kit without stumbling. “As the youngest and baldest of the lot of you,” Will said, “I feel I should contribute, but–alas–I find myself at a loss to compete with elder wits.”

Kit snorted and ignored him, applying the cold soaked cloth to Chapman’s neck until the woolly poet opened his eyes and groaned. “Kit. A ghost? It can’t be Kit, so unchanged after a decade.”

“Not a decade, George,” Kit said, rising to his feet. “Eight years, a little less–”

Near enough a decade,” George answered, struggling upright, and Will saw Kit flinch again. “And not a wrinkle on thee–”

“Death is kinder than aging in that way,” Kit said, and walked to the sideboard to pour himself wine and sugar it lightly. “I hear a rumor thou’rt holding Ben’s pen for us now that the bricklayer has gone on to greener pastures.”

Chapman blinked, and cast about himself for the cup that he’d let fall. Will took pity and retrieved and refilled it, to Chapman’s effusive thanks. “Shall we begin?”

Kit sipped and laid his cup aside, turning to retrieve the precious Bible from its shelf while Will dragged a low table with ink and paper between himself and Chapman. But Tom raised his hand and cleared his throat, and Kit paused before he was properly begun. “What is it, Sir Thomas?”

Tom smiled at Will. “You didn’t tell Kit about his birthday gift, Master Shakespeare…”

A blush turned Will’s face hot.

Kit looked up, frowning. “Will… ?”

Wary as a stag at bay, and Will couldn’t blame him. “Supper at the Mermaid,” he said. “Everyone will be there. Tom Nashe, Mary Poley, and the lot–” ALL that are Left Living. And let him Look on young Robin with his own eyes, and make his own decisions, then.

Kit’s eyes grew wide. “Her Majesty would never permit it,” he said, when he finally found something to say at all. “Christofer Marley must stay dead, Will–”

Will grinned. “Aye, but Thomas Marlowe of Canterbury, a young man of, oh, perhaps twenty‑five, might just be of the age to have finished his prenticeship and come to London to meet the men his brother knew. What better excuse wilt thou ever have, my Christofer?”

Kit blinked and swallowed. Will saw his eyes too bright and his throat swelling above his collar, and hoisted himself out of his chair again. He crossed the floor and draped his arm over Kit’s patchworked shoulders, damning the trembling in his limbs for an inconvenience and a bother. He was as proud of Kit for not pulling away as he had ever been of anything, and prouder still when his friend leaned into the embrace.

“How didst thou know I had a brother?”

Will grinned to stop the sharpness that would have filled up his own eyes, and found himself supporting Kit as much as clasping him. “I wrote thy mother, fool, to tell her the rumors attending the ignominy of thy death were false, and that she could be proud of her eldest son. We’ve had quite the correspondence, since.”

Then Kit did pull away, and set the Bible down, and hid his face against the window glass. No one spoke for long moments, until he straightened his shoulders and forced his voice steady. “What time is supper, then?”

Will had to encircle Kit’s shoulders with his arm again to chivvy him through the Mermaid’s door: the fair‑haired poet froze with one hand on the door pull as if it were he and not Will who were halt. “Come on, Tom,” Will said, tapping the side of Kit’s shoe with his toe. “Your brother’s friends are waiting to meet you.”

“Tom,” Kit said softly, and shook his head. “I always was beset by them. A veritable thicket of Toms–Will, I cannot go in there and pretend to be mine own brother.”

“Hush. No one questions a truly outrageous lie. ‘Tis the niggling inconsistencies ‘twill trip thee.” Will shifted his clasp to Kit’s elbow, fumbling the cane in his other hand to free fingers for gripping. He grinned, and reached past Kit to open the door, pausing for one last inspection of his victim.

Kit wore the ill‑fitting brown doublet that Tom had loaned him as if it pained him, constantly tugging at the too‑long hem. His child‑fine hair was twisted into a club and greased so not a trace of curl remained, and Will had brushed blackener through both it and Kit’s fair reddish beard. The effect was to make Kit’s dark eyes unremarkable rather than startling, and a subtle blur of kohl underneath had made them seem deep‑set and a little sullen. He was thinner and fitter than he’d ever been in London, every inch the hard‑muscled tradesman.

He looked at Will pleadingly, and Will shook his head.

“Come, love. Put on a demure demeanor and keep the pipe‑weed in thy pocket, and no one will know thee for a Marlowe at all.”

“That’s half what I’m afeared of,” Kit answered, but he let Will bring him through the door.

A cheer went up as they entered. Will supposed God would forgive him for concealing from Kit the sheer number of well‑wishers, nostalgic friends, and curious bystanders who might be expected to populate the gathering, but his friend’s white pallor under wine‑red cheeks made him wonder if Kitwould do likewise. “See, Tom?” Under his breath, leaning close to Kit’s ear as Kit tugged back, edging for the doorway. “Your brother did have friends.”

Will thought he might need to interpose himself physically between Kit and the door, but then Tom Nashe extricated himself from the gawking crowd and hurried over. As one fish slipping through a weir is followed by a school, suddenly every body in the room moved toward them, and the erstwhile Tom Marlowe was surrounded and embraced and drawn into the center of the crowd so thoroughly that Will wondered if he would ever escape.

Nashe claimed Kit with a firm arm, introducing first himself – “Kit’s school friend, also Tom, he’ll have told you what we got up to at Cambridge with that play that almost got us all expelled. And why, when in London, didst thou to that hack Shakescene and not thy brother’s old friend Tom!”–and then every member of the great and varied crowd. Burbage neatly cut Phillip Henslowe off Kit’s other arm, and between him and Nashe they got Kit seated and feted and served with warmed wine.

Will himself smiled and tucked his hands into his pockets, and went to slouch at the fireside beside Ned Alleyn, who looked tall enough to have been leaned there for a prop. “We don’t see you out much these days, Ned – ”

“I’ve money enough not to miss slogging through the mud behind a cart on tour. Why are you still at it, Will?”

Will paused and stretched his shoulders against the rough fieldstone chimney. Robin Poley brought him a cup, and Will ruffled the boy’s hair before he remembered that Robin was too old for that now. “It’s in my blood,” he said at last, hopelessly. “The playing and the poetry. I’ll be too sick to tour soon, I suppose – ”

“Aye,” Ned answered. “Enjoy it while you can. I hope poor Master Marlowe doesn’t think his brother always received so warm a reception.”

Will shrugged. “Let him take the news home to Kit’s parents. It can’t have been easy on them.” He fell into the role of innocence so easily that it took him a moment to remember that the dark‑haired young man holding court in the corner, looking charmingly flustered and confused by the attention–and then perhaps not as shocked as he should have been when Mary Poley all but slid into his lap in a tangle of dark hair and kilted skirts–wasn’t Tom Marlowe at all, and wouldn’t be taking any tales home to Canterbury.

Will watched Kit’s face as Mary introduced him to Robin, and saw Kit’s eyes narrow a little before his brow smoothed, and he took the young man’s hand in a firm, unhesitant greeting. And then Burbage was leaning forward into the conversation, and Will caught enough of his shouted anecdote to know that he was telling “Tom Marlowe” an embellished version of the story of the ghost of Kit Marlowe accosting his killers on a rainy street –

To which Kit responded with startled and delighted laughter. And Will sighed, contented, and went to see the landlord about bringing out the feast.

It being a Friday, alas, they would eat fish. Not out of Papist superstition any longer, ironically, but of Elizabeth’s desire that the good fisherfolk and fishmongers of England not be put out of trade by something so frivolous as a change of religion. Still, as befitted the name, the Mermaid was known for its fish in pastry, so all was not lost.

Will encountered his brother Edmund returning across the hall, and made it back neither to Ned Alleyn’s side nor the table where Kit and Mary and Nashe and Robin and Burbage formed the focal point of the party. Rather he found himself standing in a little enclave with Edmund and John Fletcher, haphazardly snatching bites from passing trays and laughing as he hadn’t laughed in –

– months.

An abundance of food lowered the rumble of conversation to a contented mutter, and when Will turned to check on Tom Marlowe nй Christofer again, it took a moment to locate him. Finally, Will raised his eyes to the gallery and saw Kit standing with young Robin Poley, leaned against the railing like old friends, the boy pointing down and across at something that the man had leaned close to comment on. Kit caught Will’s eye, and the smile he sent down might have melted Will like a candle end.

Lovesick fool,Will thought, and looked down before someone could notice his silly grin and draw an entirely correct conclusion.

A bustle near the door drew Will’s attention from the careful study of his boots and the much‑trod rushes. Will turned, hoping with all his heart that it wasn’t Ben Jonson intent on troublemaking, but instead it was a pair of tall young men, one fair and one dark, each better favored than the other and both fabulously clad in white and gold. The blonder and taller was Robert Catesby, dressed as a member of a Lord’s retinue. The darker and broader wore a Baronet’s ruff and a knight’s chain about his neck, as if they had just come from court or some festivity.

The sight of the two of them there, in the Mermaid, killed Will’s smile and had him moving toward the door, his cane hitting the floorboards in steady staccato as he closed the distance. Edmund fell into step, the amiable redheaded hack John Fletcher on his other side.

“Will,” Edmund asked, “what’s Will Parker doing here?”

Will shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s Baron Monteagle now, though – ” And Essex’s man, knighted by him in Ireland along with the rest of the useless retinue.

“Who’s Will Parker?” asked Fletcher, blinking.

“Francis Tresham’s brother‑in‑law. Which makes him Edmund’s and my cousin by marriage,” Will said, and somehow despite his limp outpaced Fletcher and Edmund enough that when he bowed before Parker the other two were half a step behind him. “Lord Monteagle.”

“Cousin,” Monteagle addressed him, in that rich dark voice that the player in Will had always envied. “I have a business proposition for you and your partners in the Globe. Perhaps we could discuss it in private?”

“A business proposition?” Will smiled, the fearful tautness in his chest easing. For one mad moment he had thought something had gone terribly wrong, but if it was only a favor to a relative, even if he was a peer –“We have a patron, cousin.”

Catesby fell in beside them as they turned. Edmund led Fletcher aside, and Will caught Burbage’s eye, and Will Sly’s, and summoned them over with a stagy jerk of his head.

Monteagle laughed. “Oh, no. It’s just, I had planned a party tomorrow for a friend, and the arrangements. Well. Your Globe rents for performances, does it not? ”

Burbage joined them, Sly a half step behind. Will opened the door to one of the private dining rooms at the back of the Mermaid and poked his head inside; a quiet conversation broke up and a group of players made themselves scarce for the unexpected appearance of a peer. Places were exchanged, and Sly shut the door firmly.

“Can you three speak for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Master Players?” Catesby, his voice not so rich and refined as Monteagle’s, but clearly precise. Monteagle wandered away, trailing a white‑gloved finger along the woodwork like a master of servants in search of dust.

“I can,” Burbage said, with a smile that softened it. “As much as can any man speak for a parcel of rogues.”

Will exchanged glances with the other two players. “What do you need, Master Catesby? ”

He cleared his throat as if to answer, but it was Monteagle who spoke, cleaning his fingertips daintily on a lace‑edged handkerchief as he turned back. “A command performance? On a bit of an extreme schedule, I’m afraid.”

“Extreme?” Burbage, in charge.

“Tomorrow,” Catesby clarified, looking uncomfortable. “The facilities we had planned to use became unavailable.”

“Tomorrow!” Sly touched his lips with his fingertips, and cleared his throat. “I mean, sirs, it would be a challenge, may it please my lord.”

“It would have to be a play in repertory,” Burbage said thoughtfully.

“Richard the Second.”

“Oh.”

Will laid a hand on Burbage’s shoulder. “The Master of Revels–cousin, Her Majesty has let it be known that she is not overfond of that play– ”

The Baron smiled. “The Earl of Southampton will be in attendance, dear cousin, and he is very fond of Richard the Second.Surely, for our family’s sake, you could see your way to a private performance.”

And will a gang of players, sturdy villains all, deny a request on behalf of an Earl?Burbage moved a half step back; Will recognized the gesture. Richard was giving him the floor.

“Cousin. We could play something fashionable, and give better value.”

Monteagle smiled. “It’s Harry.” Meaning Southampton, of course. “You know how he is when he has his heart set on something.”

“We’ll pay forty shillings more than your ordinary fee, cousin,” Catesby added.

Again the look, Burbage to Sly to Will.

An Earl and a Baron. There’s no way to refuse without risking the company.

For forty pieces of silver.

Indeed.

“All right,” Will said, and Burbage nodded.

It wasn’t until Catesby had counted the silver into Will’s hand that Monteagle added, “Of course, you must include the scene in which Richard loses his crown.”

Act IV, scene xviii

I know sir, what it is to kill a man,

It works remorse of conscience in me,

I take no pleasure to be murderous,

Nor care for blood when wine will quench my thirst.

–Christopher Marlowe,

Tamburlaine the Great,Part II, Act IV, scene i

Mary Poley’s voice had never been musical. It was as gypsy‑wild as her mad black hair, but she leaned close to Kit now and leveled it as she laid a hand on his arm. “Thou didst send Will to look after us, Master Marlin.”

I told Will this was a bad idea.He turned to look her in the eye, his back to the gallery railing. “Mistress Poley, I’m not certain I take your meaning–”

She looked up at him and shook her head. “Can’t fool old Tom Watson’s sister, Kitling. Shall I kiss each of thy scars to prove I know thy body well?”

She dropped her gaze from his eyes and seemed to be looking past him, but he didn’t turn to see where. “Mary–”

“Hush, Kit. I’m grateful. And Robin is too. He’s courting his master’s daughter, you know. She’s to go in service at the end of the year, but I do think he’ll marry her when she returns and his apprenticeship is done.”

“He seems a fine lad.”

“For all his looks, Kit, he’s a sweet soul. More like thee than my husband, damn him to hell.”

“I’m working on it,” Kit answered dryly. She laughed, and closed her hand around his arm. “Thou hast nothing to justify to me, Mary.”

“Not all men would see it so. Why didst thou not get me word thou hadst lived? I hope it was not that thou hadst no trust in Robert Poley’s wife.”

“I told no one. I was on the Oueen’s business.”

“And now art home?” There was hope in it, like a razor dragged lightly over Kit’s skin. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. She blinked. “Christ. Thou hast aged not an hour.”

“Not home,” he said. “Christofer Marley is as dead as Tom Watson, I fear.”

“Then why hast thou returned?”

The railing was rough against his back. He turned to lean forward, looking down over the Mermaid, the bustle of poets and players and drunks. He rubbed fingers over the time‑polished dark wood of the railing and lost an argument with a frown. “To say good‑bye.”

“Ah.” She stepped up beside him and snuggled close, a compactly elfin warmth. No great beauty, Mary Poley, but a comforting sort of fey. He bent and kissed the top of her head; there weren’t many women Kit was tall enough to perform that office upon. “Wilt pass Will somewhat of interest for me, Kitling? I’ve had no luck in cutting him out of the crowd for a privy conversation.”

“Aye, I will.” Will.A name that still had the power to stop his breath. Aye, and I’d traffic with Hell for thee all over again, for moments such as this.Kit searched the crowd below, but there was no sign of Will. Or, come to think of it, Burbage. There stood Edmund Shakespeare, talking with Henslowe and Alleyn, John Fletcher watching with interest. Ben Jonson had finally arrived and was carrying on a conversation with Chapman that looked at once animated and hushed, involving much waving about of hands.

Mary gulped breath; he felt it swell her slight body where she curled under his arm. “Robert’s about something.”

“Not Robin your lad?”

“No, Robert my husband – ”

“‘–damn him to Hell.’ ”

“Precisely.”

“What is he about, Mary?” She had Kit’s complete attention now but he maintained the casual pose, a man in flirtation with a likely woman, both of them watching the flow and ebb of the gathering below.

A grunt, her little noise of frustration. “I know not. Mistress Mathews at the Groaning Sergeant is a friend of mine, and she says Robert and Richard Baines were in there of a morning, well pleased and talking of duping some Earl.”

“That could be important. What Earl, and how duped? Dost know more?”

“The Queen’s old favorite, I think, from what Mistress Mathews overheard. Essex, I mean. Robert Devereaux. I do not know what it is they mean to have him do, but she said that Baines was positively gloating about compelling such a man to do his bidding.”

Kit shuddered, having some experience with Baines’ compulsions. Even the quiet ones. “What else did she say?”

“Only that men and prentices came and went and met with the two of them all the morning, and a good deal of silver seemed to change hands – ”

She stopped speaking suddenly. Kit knew from the way her breath halted that his own body had gone entirely rigid in her offhand grasp. It could be but a resemblance,he cautioned himself. Especially from this angle.“Mary,” he said carefully. “What is the name of that man, the blond one coming out of the back room beside Will and Dick?”

“Why, Robert Catesby,” she answered, all innocence.

His left hand tightened on the railing. His right pulled her close. “Oh, holy Hell,” he blasphemed. “Mary, thou’rt a princess among women, and a canny one at that. I’ll carry my affection for thee to a second grave, if I get one. So please, please, do not take it amiss that I needs must talk to Will on this instant, my dear, and that I may not have the chance to bid thee farewell again.”

He stepped back. She caught his coarse linen shirt collar in her reed‑fine hand and tugged him down to lightly kiss his mouth. “Go with God.”

He laughed as he turned away. “Oh,” he said. “If only.”

Act IV, scene xix

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of all too precious you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 86

This can only end ill,” Kit said. Will, hurrying fresh‑barbered and clean‑scrubbed through the streets to the bank where he meant to hire a wherry to Southwark and the Globe, glanced over at his friend and nodded. “Aye, there’s no clean way clear of this mess, love. But then, we knew the truth of that when we stepped into it.” Sudden worry diverted his conversation. “Kit, this is thy second day out of Faerie–”

Kit smiled, a steadying hand on Will’s elbow as they clambered down the steps to the bank. The Thames had never frozen over, this winter, and the banks were clear of ice by now. A sign, perhaps, that Baines’ Prometheans were losing ground at last.

“I’ve one more at least before it troubles me. What concerns me more is that I’ve dreamed of Catesby–my ill dreams–and I’ve verily seen him in a room, talking privily with Baines. I can’t think but that his presence on this errand with Lord Monteagle means that there will be trouble over this play.”

“Trouble for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men–” Kit handed Will into the boat as if Will were a lady in a farthingale, and Will glowered at him but didn’t resist. Mind thy Limitations, Master Shakespeare. Or like as not thou’lt tumble into the muddy brown Thames and drown.

“Aye,” Kit continued once they were seated, leaning close that the boatman wouldn’t overhear. “And intentionally so. They know your strength now.”

They were silent then, as the river flowed under them.

“Kit,” Will murmured, and coughed to ease the scratch in his throat. “I cannot think but there’s more to it than that. If Baines is gloating that Essex has done something foolish–”

“Something foolish that Baines has directed him to do,” Kit amended, paying the boatman as they reached the opposite bank. “It must be more than a play.”

“Aye. It must. And we must find out an answer quickly. Before it finds us out.The earth was thawed beneath a layer of frost, crunchy‑sticky underfoot. Kit helped Will up the bank and made no comment when Will struggled.

Kit had not seen the Globe before, and Will paused to let him tilt his head back and take in the scope of the massive whitewashed polygon. “It’s built on timbers over a ditch to keep the footings dry,” Will explained. “I stayed in that little house beside it a while last year. ‘Tis very snug.”

“Clever,” Kit said. “There were times I swear the groundlings at the Rose were to their knees in mud and worse things. The south bank’s very wet – ” He paused and lifted his chin in the direction of a tall woman swollen with her babe, her hair modestly covered and her skirts kilted to the ankle to keep them out of the mud. She was making for Will and Kit with grave determination, and her stride was not that of a workworn good‑wife. “Marry, Will. That woman hurrying to meet us–”

“Aye?”

“I know her.”

And a moment later, Will did too, for all he had met her only once before, in a little room where her father lay rotting alive. “Frances Walsingham Sidney Devereaux,” he said under his breath. “I never did understand what Walsingham’s daughter and Sir Philip Sidney’s widow could see in that strutting popinjay Essex.”

Kit gave him a sidelong look. “She married him to inform on him to her father, Will. Shortly after Sir Francis faked his death. There was rather a lot of suspicion in our group that it was Essex behind the … ‘poisoning’ attempt. Much as he was behind the hideous death of the Oueen’s physician, poor Doctor Lopez.”

“She married the man she thought tried to kill her father?” Will felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind or the half‑frozen earth underfoot settle into his belly.

Kit shrugged. “She’s a Walsingham, Will.” Will stared at him, and Kit folded his arms and continued, “Tom’s no different when you scratch him deep enough. All for Queen and country, and not even honor for themselves. Perhaps thou shouldst see what she wants, thinkst thou not?” And Kit clapped him on the arm and moved away, leaving Will leaning on his cane and awaiting the attentions of the Countess of Essex.

She came before him bare of face and with her luxuriant dark brown hair coiled in demure spirals below a stolidly middle‑class headdress. The style reinforced the prominence of the Walsingham nose: a convincing portrait of a housewife, but she didn’t remember to curtsey. “Master Shakespeare.”

“Mistress Sidney,” he answered, and was rewarded by a sparkle of a smile. He stepped closer and bent his head down beside her bonnet, leaning propped on his cane. “If your purpose is to warn me off the misguided performance upon which I am about to embark, by all means, Madam, consider that I am as forewarned as a man might be. And as entrapped–”

She took his elbow lightly and walked with him toward the playhouse. Will was conscious of Kit a few steps behind and several yards off to the side, seemingly out of earshot and varying his distance to look unassociated. “My father thought highly of you. And I have been unable to speak to my cousin–”

Tom, of course.Will nodded, brushing beads of sweat from his forehead with his gloved left hand. “You know something the Queen needs to hear?”

“Aye,” she said. “The Earl of Essex plans a rebellion tomorrow. He means to ride through London in a grand procession, if you can credit it, and exhort the people to rise and make him King. Your play, of course, will make them ready to accept his glorious reign–”

Will snorted laughter, and regained himself only with effort. “And he thinks this will work?”

“He thinks it will work. Southampton, Richard Baines, and Robert Catesby convinced him it would work. That their– magic”–as if the word filthied her mouth– “would ensure it.”

“Christ on the cross,” Will swore. “That’s insanity. He’ll be beheaded.”

“I know,” she said. “And you will be imprisoned at the least, and very likely hanged, unless you have resources of which I am not aware.”

“I have Tom,” Will said, and turned his head to cough thickly.

The Countess of Essex squeezed his arm. “Tom might suffice. And you might have Cecil as well, and perhaps the Lord Chamberlain. I’d say you have me, but as I am shortly to be widowed a second time”–there was no regret in her voice when she said it, only a kind of military firmness, and Will remembered her iron control as she bent over her father’s deathbed– “I believe mine energies will be quite well spent in keeping mine own head.”

“See that you do,” Will answered, feeling a sudden rush of affection for this woman. “Do you know what Baines and so forth are about?”

She shook her head, already moving away. “My husband’s downfall is a blind for something; he’s a stalking horse, as well as a peacock. Where, and what, I have no better information than I have given you. And now, Master Shakespeare, I have three children and one unborn who very much need not be in London when the sun rises.”

“Godspeed,” he said, because there was nothing else to say. She turned and walked away, and stopped a few short strides up the verge.

“Master Shakespeare?”

“Yes, Mistress Sidney?”

“Did you really see the Devil by my father’s deathbed?”

He sorted and discarded answers long enough that her eyebrow rose. He gave it up for a bad business and spread flat the hand that did not hold his cane. “Yes, madam.”

She tilted her head charmingly. Her eyes were large and dark, dewy and doelike: the eyes of a young and beautiful girl. “Hmm,” she said, turned her back on him, and walked away without another glance.

Will sighed on a long ragged breath, and turned to Kit as he came up. “Is that what Tom Walsingham does to you?”

Kit grinned and shook his head, very slightly. “Hedoes it without trying, damn his eyes. Come on–” He tugged Will’s sleeve, very slightly.

“What?”

“I contrived to eavesdrop, and make sure no one else was doing so. You have a play to perform. And we have an appointment with history, my love.”

The performance, to neither poet’s reassurance, went off without a bobble. When the body of the players retired to the Mermaid Tavern, Will–coughing–pled pain and exhaustion and Kit excused himself with an invention about a long ride home to Canterbury on the morrow. Later that evening they presented themselves to Sir Thomas Walsingham with news that all three men deemed of interest to the Queen.

“Thank you, my dears,” Tom said, and seated himself right before them in order to pen a hasty message to Cecil.

Accounts varied as to whether three hundred men rode through London with Essex or only one hundred, but Robert Catesby and the Baron Monteagle were indubitably among them. Will himself could not attest. Kit had returned to Faerie via the mirror in Tom Walsingham’s study, and Tom–over Will’s feeble protests–had put the playmaker to bed in a spare room. Will’s brother Edmund came to help nurse him in the morning, for there Will remained, sick with a fever and a heavy cough.

Act IV, scene xx

View but his picture, in this tragic glass,

And then applaud his fortunes as you please

Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part I, lines 7‑8

Kit had come to think of the Darkling Glass as a sort of convenience, reliable as a faithful hound, and it annoyed him to no end to find the thing suddenly misbehaving. He’d long ago ascertained that it couldn’t be used to spy over the shoulders of Richard Baines or Robert Poley, who must have warded themselves from its power somehow. Nor was it useful in the Presence of Elizabeth herself, or in any of her palaces–a wise precaution, he thought, and one he wished to apply himself to solving when he found a quiet moment.

He was accustomed to its vagaries, and resigned to them. But today, when he needed it most, the thing’s damnable unwillingness to hold a single steady image frustrated him to swearing, and he had to restrain himself when he would have driven his fist against the glass. He hit the wall instead, which was less satisfying and hurt more, but had the advantage of not putting a priceless magical artifact at risk.

A priceless magical artifact which gave him nothing,except the useless information that Will was still abed in a darkened room, and Edmund and Jonson and Tom talking quietly in the withdrawing room hard by it. He looked for Baines, Catesby, Poley–and got only flickering darkness and useless pictures. A flock of ravens circling the Tower of London–a cold chill touched him at the image so reminiscent of his dreams–the sound of chanting men, and a swirling flicker that resolved into the streets of London strangely silent, every ear tuned to the ringing hoofbeats of some hundred or hundred and fifty horse. Essex, all in white, was unmistakable at their head.

They vanished as they headed for the palace and the Queen, and Kit’s vision resolved on the old monastery, later playhouse, currently vacant hall of Blackfriars on the west end of London, just inside the city walls. Men filed into it, men in monk’s robes, as they should not have been in Protestant London. As they should not have been in the second playhouse owned by the sharers of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, which those Men had never been able to use as a theatre because of the opposition of its neighbors, although Ben Jonson’s plays were performed regularly by the boy players at Paul’s.

And isn’t that a little odd?Kit asked himself. That there was no such opposition to another such establishment almost across the street?Kit pressed both hands against the glass as the image swam again. He pushed it back toward Blackfriars, but it slid through his control like the reins of a fractious horse, leaving him grasping after nothing.

Baines must be there. This is whatever Essex’s stupidity is intended to conceal. It is a juggler’s flourish: while all eyes are on the Earl, Richard Baines sweeps a treasure into his pocket. And odd that Will should come down hard sick this day of all days.

And anything at Blackfriars, which should be closed tight and all but abandoned, is another chain linking the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to Essex. Layers and layers deep, this: better than anything Poley could have managed on his best day.

God in Hell, I wish I knew what wad going on. Who does any of this benefit? Not Essex, not Southampton. Baines?

There had been eight or ten robed men, he thought, although he’d only had a glimpse of them. There was no way one lone Elf‑knight and sometime poet could manage so many, but Walsingham’s London residence wasn’t far from Blackfriars, and there were Tom, and Ben, and Edmund too– if Edmund can be trusted. If Ben is not a member of two conspiracies at once.

Kit shrugged at his own suspicions, and pushed through the Darkling Glass.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Edmund–obviously already nervous in the presence of a knight–stood blinking by the window as Kit appeared in the center of the room, and Jonson broke off midsentence, glowering, reaching across a belly grown as mountainous as his self‑importance to grasp his swordhilt. But Tom turned away from the two of them and smiled. “Welcome back,” he said.

Jonson grudgingly released the handle of his weapon as Edmund found his voice. “T‑tom Marlowe? What sorcery–”

“No time to explain,” Kit said, his eyes on Tom Walsingham. “Does it seem strange to you that Will should be taken so ill yesterday, immediately afterhe gave the performance he had to give to suit the Promethean’s plans?”

“God,” Tom said. “Yes. Essex rides–”

“I know–”

“–What must we do?”

Kit swallowed and glanced from Ben to Edmund. Edmund looked at Jonson, who nodded. “Baines is at Blackfriars,” Kit said. “With eight or ten magicians. Whatever happens, happens now–”

“And thou mean’st to interrupt?”

“Aye, Sir Thomas. If I can request a few able‑bodied men.”

“There’s that in this room,” Jonson said. “All this keeping secrets is hard on the use of hirelings.”

“That it is.”

“I’ve a few sturdy souls about the house who would suffice. Kit–”

Edmund glanced over his shoulder once, at the door into Will’s sickroom. His head snapped back at the name Tom used, and his eyes widened. Kit bowed, his arms spread wide under his cloak. “At your service, Master Shakespeare. There’s still no time to explain. What seems to be the problem, Sir Thomas?”

“The sturdiest of those souls is one Ingrim Frazier.”

Kit’s stomach clenched. From loose readiness for action to seasick horror in a second, but he gritted his teeth and kept his voice level. “As he’s earned your forgiveness, Tom, I’ll live with it. But–” But I want to talk to him first.Except there was no time for recriminations now, was there? Not with Will’s life and Elizabeth’s crown on the line. “I’ll endure,” he said, and ended whatever comment Tom might have made next with an abrupt flip of his hand.

Edmund seemed still at a loss. He tapped his fingers on the window ledge, his voice level and calm. “Will’s told me a bit of these poet‑wars, and that they have been quiet of late. His sickness is related?”

“To these sorcerous doings? Aye.”

“Then I will come.” He paused. “If I may consider your presence an invitation.”

Kit laughed and turned to follow Tom as Tom moved toward the door. “Stuff your Warwickshire politeness, Ted. It’s time to go to war.”

It wasn’t any easier to turn his back on Ingrim than he’d thought it would be. And Ingrim was keeping a weary weather eye on Kit as well, and Tom’s broad shoulders between them. Kit thought, if Frazier could manage it, he might have turned invisible, or hidden himself behind Ben Jonson’s bulk completely.

Ben, bless him for a foul‑tempered young mule, was having none of it. He walked alongside Kit, an outward show of alliance that left Kit puzzled and looking for the trap, but the possibility existed that Jonson saw in Kit a more likely ally than Walsingham. Or possibly he just didn’t care to run shoulder to shoulder with the servants, and wanted the buffer of Kit’s velvet doublet and hooded cloak.

Kit sighed and turned away from another sidelong glance of Frazier’s. And the whole world knows Kit Marley lived. Thou couldst just have hired a herald to cry it through the streets, Kit.

Seven men, including two servants whose names Kit had failed to overhear, walked swiftly west on Cheapside, which had begun to bustle again in the wake of Essex’s dramatic ride. It didn’t matter, to Kit’s way of thinking; it wouldn’t be long before Essex was riding back again. He overheard talk in the crowd: witnesses reported that Essex, due to a delay over choosing his outfit for the revolution, failed to prevent Sir Robert Cecil from publicly proclaiming the insurgents traitors, and that the people of London likewise failed to rise and make Essex their King.

The crowds made way for the seven afoot; Tom’s height and Ben’s sheer bulk were impressive, and Kit expected they all had the look of men with intention.

They were almost in sight of Newgate (‑where Kit had once spent an unpleasant two weeks, detained on charge of murder) when their route turned south; in a matter of minutes they drew up under an overhang a few hundred yards from the playhouse. Kit stripped his glove off his right hand carefully, lest it interfere with his grip on his rapier.

“Well,” Jonson said in his incongruous tenor, “time’s a‑wasting – ”

“Aye,” Kit answered. “Shall we be clever about it?”

“You’re too clever by half, if you ask me – ”

“Which no one did.”

“Gentlemen.” Tom didn’t bother to glare, but Kit subsided like a chastised schoolboy and Jonson fell silent too. They both had cause to know that tone. “The time for subtlety is past,” Tom continued, and drew a snaphaunce pistol from his belt. I wish we had Will or Dick here. It would give a little more credence to the story that we shot ten men for looting if one of us had somewhat to do with the property.”

Kit shrugged. “Forgiveness is cheaper than permission. And we’re unlikely to shoot more than one or two at the most unless you’re handing out petards, Tom.”

“Aye,” Tom answered. “Sadly, I’ve but the one. Come on then; let’s bloody our hands.”

It wasn’t exactly a charge: more a concerted rush. Jonson reached the door first and–to Kit’s surprise–merely tried the handle. Tom, nervy as a colt, jumped when the hinges creaked, and Ben stopped with the portal open no more than a quarter inch. “Dammit, Ben – ”

“We’ll be silhouetted against the street when we open the door,” Jonson said with a soldier’s calm. He braced the door with his toe to hold it in place while he drew, cocked, and primed his own pistol. “We have to enter quickly, divided to each side, and fan out in case they have firearms within.”

Edmund shot him a glance with a question behind it, and Ben shook his head. “Fought in the Low Countries,” he murmured. “Ready, lad?”

“Aye.”

“Good. Stay at my shoulder. Keep moving. Master Marlowe? Sir Thomas?”

Kit nodded tightly, not sad to see Jonson take control. As much as he bragged on his brains, Kit thought, drawing his sword, Jonson was very much in his element as a man of action.

“Go, Ben,” Tom said over the hammering of Kit’s heart, and Jonson shoved the door open and went in, head down and shoulders hunched like a charging bull. The rest rushed through behind, slipping aside like court dancers into the dimly lit interior. Somehow, Kit wound up pressed against the wall beside Frazier, shoulder to shoulder, but neither had a glance for the other now as their eyes strained into uncandled dimness, searching for a flicker of movement that might reveal the shift of a pistol or a blade. To Kit’s otherwisesight, the figures of any conjuring sorcerers should have stood out plainly, but he saw nothing in that breathless moment but a few dust motes hung on a crack of light.

And then Jonson cursed, moving forward, and bent over some dark shapes outlined on the floor. Kit moved away from Frazier and the wall, deciding there was no need for quiet and that he was damned if he’d let Ingrim rattle him badly enough that Kit wouldn’t turn a shoulder on him with five other men there to ward his back. Kit crossed to where Ben crouched. “Master Jonson?”

“Too late,” Jonson said, and used the blade of his rapier to prod a pile of sad‑colored cloth. “Monk’s habits. Theatre costumes, I think, and quite abandoned. Are those your robed men, Master Marlowe?”

“Fuck me for a whore,” Kit said, turning his head to spit on the floor. “I just played right into his god‑be‑damned hands. Again.”

Tom turned to search his face, and Kit forced himself to meet the expressionless gaze. “What meanst thou, Kit?”

“I mean this was a feint as well, a trap laid for any that might have followed Baines or sought to scry after him. And while we were here, and the Oueen’s troops distracted by Essex, and Will struck down sick in his bed, Baines and his fellows have been about whatsoe’er they wished to be about, utterly undisturbed.”

“Ah.” Tom braced his hands before himself and settled back against the wall. “So what do we do now?”

Jonson, strangely, clapped a hand on Kit’s shoulder–and drew it back again, quickly, as if scorched. “We go back to your house, Sir Thomas. And we fight like cats to save our Will, and pray we make more of a success of it than we did with saving Spenser.”

Kit flinched. “And Lord Strange. And Walsingham.”

Act IV, scene xxi

For why should others’ false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 121

In his fever, Will dreamed that Elizabeth attended him. He dreamed her long fair hands, her hair like ruby glass when the light shone through it. He dreamed Elizabeth, but her breath was sweet as a maiden’s and her eyes as much green as gray.

His flesh burned until he thrust the blankets aside, and then he shivered with the cold. He was distantly aware that he whined like a child and fussed at the tender hands restraining him, while voices gentle, cajoling, and bitterly frustrated by turns spoke over him. One voice – “Annie?” It could have been Annie–and then a second.

There was a rhythm to that other one: halting, hiccuping, but a meter and a tenor he knew. “It’s not the King’s Evil,” the voice said pettishly. “The touch of a Oueen’s hand won’t heal him – ”

Linen abraded his skin like coarse wool. His muscles ached as if knotted. Sickly sweet fluid trickling past his teeth made him gag, and he batted the hands that wrung a damp rag into his mouth and other, stronger hands that held him down. He screamed when they covered him, but it was a mew weak as a kitten’s, and he shivered when they did not. He clawed at a blanket with a texture that puzzled him, for it was sometimes velvet soft and sometimes silk‑slick under his hands.

The rag was withdrawn. Someone leaned into his ear and whispered poetry. A thread of logic and meter and beauty wound through the madness of the fever and the visions and the knotting pain –

“Come live‑with me and be my love

And we will all the pleasures prove–”

“As hills and–dammit. Dammit, William, thou’lt not be quit of me so easy. These words thou knowest. There’s virtue in them. Say them with me, damn you to Hell, just a little breath–”

Dear voice, and so frightened, so thick with frustration and hurt. He reached for it, or tried to reach, tried to do what it bid him and shape the words, find the power behind them. There was nothing, no movement, no reach.

Such a dear voice.

And so far away.

There will I make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.

– Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

Kit pressed the heels of his hands to his eyelids to keep the tears locked in. A terrible odor rose from Will’s papery skin. Kit wiped his nose on his cuff and looked up at Morgan hopelessly. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Keep fighting.” Succinctly, and not looking up from whatever she was steeping by the fire. She stood and came toward him, the steaming cup held in her hands.

Kit reached to restrain Will’s hands, so Morgan could again trickle her medicines into him. Will’s skin felt thin enough to crackle to the touch, hot as the side of a lantern.

Morgan shook her head. “Kit, ‘tis for thee.” She held the mug out and he took it, cupped it in hands too tired to lift it to his mouth.

“Thou wert wrong about me, Morgan.”

She nodded, straightening Kit’s cloak across Will’s breast as he tossed and shivered. They did not know if its magic would help Will, but there was no harm in trying. “I underestimated thee.”

Somehow, Kit got the cup to his mouth. Perhaps even the steam was fortifying. It tasted of bitter earth and summer sun and the unshed tears still clogging his throat. “What if he dies?

“What if he dies now,thou meanest?” She bent and kissed Kit’s hair as if he were a child. “We endure.”

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own …

–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 121

Will fell deeper. Sometimes it seemed those hands held him, caressed him, cooled his brow. Sometimes he thought he plunged through darkness eternally and heard nothing but the Devil’s amiable laughter, and knew nothing but the heat of his own Hell. Nothing could touch Will in the void; he knew somehow that he needed poetry, needed the power of his words, but in his jumbled consciousness he could not put one line of a poem with another.

But through the darkness came that dear, distant voice again, and that voice gave him poetry. “Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain, full charactered with lasting memory…”

Will turned to the faint glimmer of sound, if turning it could be called. Heat cupped his body, pressed his skin. He writhed away from it, sure that there were flames and that the flames had seared his eyes from his head, because surely there could be no such agony in darkness.

The pain left him amazed.

“Which shall above the idle rank remain, beyond all doubt ev’n to eternity–”

Iambs.

Not blank verse though, and blank verse was important. Blank verse, the enjambed line, the rhythm of natural speech carrying an incantation’s power.

“Or at the least so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist;

Till each to razed oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be missed.”

A sonnet.

It’s a sonnet.

A sonnet he knew, although he could not remember from where. He swam through blackness, pushed and pulled, following the thread of that voice –a voice that cracked with weariness or emotion, and in cracking broke Will’s heart and made him strive the harder, because he knew, somehow, that the pain he heard could somehow be healed if he –

“That poor retention could not so much hold,”

– could only –

“Nor need I tallies thy dear… dammit. Thy dear love to,

to score,”

–pierce –

“Therefore to give them from me was I bold,”

–that –

“To trust those tables that receive thee more.”

–blackness.

The heat was more. The pain, the burning. Will pressed at it, and it was not like walking through flames, because flames cannot push back. His body trembled, and he understood that it was his body, suddenly, soaked in sweat, cloyed under blankets in a room where the fire roared beyond all sense and the bed was pulled so close beside it that the bedclothes smelled scorched where they weren’t soaked in sour sweat and stinking fluids. And he was cold, shivering cold, and Kit was bent over a book beside the bed. Kit was wiping away the sweat that must be stinging his sleepless eyes, then angling a tablet in dim light to read the poem in a voice that creaked with overuse.

Will’s hand darted out like a snake, all his reserves gone in one flash of motion, and he caught Kit’s wrist, and Kit’s eyes came up, widening.

“To keep an adjunct to remember thee,” Will finished, or tried to finish, because coughing racked him into an agonized crescent. Kit steadied his head, pressed a handkerchief to his mouth, which filled with ropes and clots of something that had the taste of iron and the texture of boiled brains. Will choked, coughing until he would have vomited if there were anything in his belly but bitter yellow froth, until he sobbed, half wishing for death.

He would have curled up again in misery, but Kit held his shoulders until he finished, and wiped his mouth again, and touched his forehead, which was slick and wet.

And then Kit smiled, and said, “Were to import forgetfulness to me, ” which Will understood was the end of the invocation, the end of the poem. And then Kit finished, “Thy fever’s broken. Praise God,” and hugged him hard enough to make his bones creak.

“I’m hot,”Will said petulantly, and Kit burst out laughing with relief and got up to knock the fire apart until it died down a little, all the while shouting for Morgan.

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty lambs we pull,

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckled of the purest gold.

–Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

After the fateful ride, the Oueen’s men escorted Essex, a wounded and dignified Catesby, a profusely apologetic Monteagle, the estimable Francis Tresham, and a few dozen others to their temporary quarters in the Tower of London, from whence they would be tried. The revolution ended, most said, more or less as ineffectually as it began. And it was Richard Burbage who brought the news to Tom Walsingham’s house, where he had come in search of Will.

“It’s good that thou’lt live,” Burbage said, perched on the stool at Will’s bedside as Audrey Walsingham spooned broth into the sick man, out of mercy for his shaking hands. The bed had been pulled back from the fire and Kit’s cloak aired and returned to him. Will himself was sitting up against pillows, the crusted lesions at the corners of his mouth almost healed and his eyes their normal calm blue, not dull with fever.

Kit leaned back on a settee against the wall and cupped between his palms the mulled wine that Morgan had given him. His voice at last had failed him utterly, and he drooped, inches from sleep, in a warmly contented state of exhaustion that was too pleasant to abandon for bed. Beside that,he thought, I’d rather sit in a corner and watch that man make faces over unsalted bouillon than ever sleep again. Even if the whole room draped in red cloths to combat fever does make of thy place a scene out of Dante.

Morgan and Tom and Ben Jonson had crowded into the tiny sickroom now, Tom by his wife’s shoulder, Morgan not far from Kit, and Jonson as geographically distant from the slumping Marley as the closet’s confines would allow.

Will, concentrating on swallowing the soup without choking, did not answer.

“‘Tis good thou hast survived,” Burbage repeated, “because Her Majesty would be most wroth with me if thou hadst not.”

“Her Majesty?” Will’s voice was weak but clear. He laid a hand on Audrey’s wrist to restrain her when she would have poured more sustenance into him, and turned to Burbage. “Richard, what meanest thou?”

Burbage sighed. “She requests the Lord Chamberlain’s Men perform for her on the twenty‑fourth of the month. Shrove Tuesday. That’s thirteen days hence; thou hast lain fevered for three. And the play she wants is Richard the Second,and she very especially mentioned your name among the company of players she wishes to see perform it. I was half afeared” – Burbage’s hand on Will’s thin shoulder belied the brusqueness of his tone – “I would have to send word you were detained in a churchyard.”

“Not dead yet,” Will answered before taking more soup. “Thirteen days. Richard the Second.I may be able to do it.”

“I won’t have you killing yourself over a play, Will.” Jonson, forgetting himself, moved from his nervous post by the door and then stopped. He cast a wary glance at Kit, who knew his chin had started sagging to match his eyelids, and Kit struggled with a half‑formed understanding.

Christ. Ben Jonson is scared of me. Scared I’ll deduce him? Or scared I’ll overpower him and have my way with him?

Now therewas an image incongruous enough to send an exhausted poet giggling, and giggling touched Kit’s ravaged throat and turned to a hacking cough, which drew the worried glances of everyone in the room.

“Kit, thou’rt sickening–” Will, ignoring Jonson’s command.

Kit saw another measure of hurt cross the ugly young man’s face, and the half‑formed understanding crystallized into pity. Oh. Ben–

But there was nothing to be done for it, was there?

“No,” Kit managed, a stage whisper that almost started him coughing again. “Just talked raw. Will, Ben is right.” Morgan brought Kit more wine, and he drank it, enjoying Ben’s surprise at his intercession.

Will shook his head, looked up at Burbage. “Richard, why the twenty‑fourth, precisely? ”

The room got very quiet. Kit glanced from face to face, and realized everyone assembled knew the answer but for him. Like Will, he waited, calm enough in the knowledge that they would live. It was satisfying enough that he and Morgan and Tom–and Audrey and Jonson and Burbage and most of all, Will–had beatenBaines’ worst. No answer could trouble him.

It was Tom who cleared his throat, and answered, “Because Essex is to be executed on the twenty‑fifth, and Her Majesty wishes to see the play before she has her old friend drawn and quartered.”

Silence, as Kit struggled upright against the sugared grip of gravity, and his gaze met Will’s across the room. “Oh,” Will said. “Oh, poor Elizabeth.”

Act IV, scene xxii

The play’s the thing,

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act II, scene ii

The Queen in her goodness commuted Essex’s sentence from hanging and torture to a simple beheading; it was rumored that he had been reproved to choose his wardrobe the night before, and Will imagined he might be about his task even as Richard the Secondwound to its close. Will’s hands shook as he sponged the makeup from his face.

The dates of the other executions had not yet been set, and Will wondered if they would be, when news from across the Irish sea had Spanish Catholic troops again landing in alliance to the Catholics of that emerald isle.

A genteel cough at Will’s shoulder alerted him to the presence of a page. Will turned. “Yes?”

“Her Majesty wishes to see you, Master Shakespeare. In the red withdrawing room. Her Majesty said you would know it.”

“Aye, ” Will said, wiping his hands again to be sure he was free of paint, and reaching for his cane. He should have felt apprehension, he knew. But when he reached for emotion, there was nothing there at all. “Please tell Her Majesty I’ll be along presently. My balance is not what it was.”

Which was the curse of this disease; his strength didn’t leave him, or his intellect. Just his ability to make his body obey his lawful commands.

When the page opened the door and gave him admittance, Will was startled to realize that the Queen was alone. The page slipped out behind him and the door latched shut. Will suffered a second realization that hewas alone with the Queen.

Elizabeth stood by the far archway, a single candle warming her ice‑white ceruse. “Master Shakespeare,” she said, as he began to bow awkwardly. “Rise. ‘Twill be enough of that. And find a chair, young man: I can see thy legs are about to desert thee and I have no mind to pluck thee off my carpeting.”

“Your Highness,” Will said, and sat awkwardly although the Queen did not. I, she said, and not we. How interesting.“I am honored to be in your presence.”

Her lips assayed a smile and almost managed it. “I’ll kill a man tomorrow.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Trying to keep his Christian pity for Elizabeth from his face, and, he suspected, failing.

“I waged rather a grand battle to save him, Master Shakespeare, and failed. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Why you did try to save him, Your Highness? Or why you did fail?” Greatly daring, he thought, but she seemed to invite it. Indeed, she inclined her head under its great jeweled tire and made a come‑along gesture with one gloved hand. Will watched her face, trying to judge how bold he might be, but her ceruse made a mask. “I think you did try to save him for you loved him. And he failed to be saved because he loved himself.”

“Ah,” she said. “Thou art a poet indeed. When I am gone, wilt make a play of me as thou didst my royal father?”

“No mere play could capture Your Highness, and no boy could play you. As well set a pussycat to play a princely lion.”

“Flattery.” But she smiled, a real smile this time. Her voice was low and very sweet. “So in honesty, as a poet, and with no ears to hear but mine–what think you of this latest string of murders upon which I will filthy my hands?”

Will examined her face, and knew by the way she stood that she meant to seem only a woman. He could not trust that, however. Kit would be proud.“Monteagle’s just a foolish young gallant, Your Highness. Southampton–” Will shrugged. “Led astray, perhaps. Perhaps leading. I don’t know that they deserve to swing. Unlike Essex.”

“Who won’t. Swing, that is. He’ll get a clean death. My last gift. Perhaps I’ll spare the other two, if it pleases thee.” She cast about herself for a chair; Will hastened to rise and fetch her one, and she pinned him down with a look. “Obey thy sovereign.”

“I was there when they hanged Lopez,” Will said, once she had settled herself. “I was there when Sir Francis died.”

“Meaning?” Perhaps dangerous, those folded hands, that softly arched brow.

And what will she do? Cast thee in the Tower?“It seems, if it please Your Highness, that your enemies sometimes get the gentler side of your hand than your loyal friends. My Queen.”

“It does not please me,” she said. They faced one another across the dark red pattern on the carpet, faces dim in shifting candlelight. Will forced his hands to stay smooth on his thighs and swallowed against his worry that he had overstepped. “But it is true. And thou art correct in other things as well. I am sick of politics, Master Shakespeare. I am deathly tired.”

It was an understatement. He saw it in her face, heard it in the timbre of her voice. An old woman, Queen before Will was born and–he realized with a shock–not likely to be Queen much longer. Elizabeth had been eternal. Elizabeth was England.

Elizabeth was deathly tired. Perhaps this was Baines’ goal all along,Will realized. To force her hand to kill Essex, whom she loved for all his faults. It’s broken her at last.

“Your Majesty–”

“Aye?”

“Did anyone among your servants ever love you as much as you loved him? Or did they all betray you?” Will almost clapped a hand over his mouth when the words came out, but it was too late and they were flown. He watched them hang there in the candlelight, wishing them recalled, and did not look at the stunned placidity of Elizabeth’s face.

Until she laughed. She threw back her head and roared like a sailor, one hand clutched to her breast, her eyes squinted tight and tears of mirth smearing her kohl into her ceruse. Her mouth fell so far open in her laughter that Will saw the wads or batting that padded out her cheeks where her teeth were gone. “Oh, William,” she said. “Oh, you ask the finest questions. I should have made thee my fool–”

“Your Highness, I am sorry–”

“Apologize not.” Suddenly serious, as she dabbed the corners of her eyes. She sat and thought a little while, and smiled. “I think I have been loved,” she said at last. “Aye, my Spirit loved me –Lord Burghley, to thee. And Sir Francis, for all I was very wroth with him. And my good Sir Walter; caught up in his games, but I do think his love is true. It’s these others I cannot seem to choose with any–” Her voice cracked, and she waved her hand as if to show that the word eluded her, but Will thought it wasn’t tears of laughter that showed now in her eyes. “I am Great Harry’s daughter, Master Shakespeare. Great Harry, I am not,” she said simply. “I am not my sister. I am what I am.”

“You’re England, Gloriana,” he said, and rose–against her command–and with his cane as a welcome prop he kneeled down at her feet.

Act IV, scene xxiii

Strike off their heads, and Let them preach on poles.

No doubt, such lessons they will teach the rest,

As by their preachments they will profit much

And learn obedience to their lawful king.

–Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,Act III, scene ii

Thomas Nashe was buried on the last day of July 1601, some five months after the execution of the Earl of Essex. They had been quiet months, and Kit Marlowe (or Marlin, or Merlin) had a sense that both sides were holding their breath, ·waiting for the next sally to follow the removal of Essex.

There was no question anymore that Baines would sacrifice anyone without a thought, and no supposition that he had any allies among his pawns.

Kit Marlowe (or Marlin, or Merlin) attended Nashe’s funeral in a plain brown cloak and a workman’s tunic. He stood well toward the back, his hood raised in a manner inappropriate to the heat, supplementing the illusions with which he had veiled himself. He left before the body was lowered into the grave.

He felt Will’s eyes upon him as he left the church, but Will didn’t turn to follow, and Kit thought they’d meet later in Will’s rooms, anyway. Maybe. Kit wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about Tom, thought maybe he wasn’t ready to talk about Tom. Tom who had been acerbic, witty, abrasive–and Kit’s oldest friend.

Tom, who alone among his friends Kit had managed to keep clear of the damned war with the Prometheans and its black world of espionage and sorcery and murder. Tom who should have grown old and fat and retired none the wiser, and raised up babies and perhaps named one Christofer.

Tom, who had not even died for a cause–of poison, of sorcery, of a knife in the eye–but who had died simply because he’d tripped on a paving stone and been crushed to death under the wheels of a carter’s haulage.

Kit wandered London like a homeless man, a sturdy vagrant or a tradesman out of doors. He startled a feral hound or two and smiled at a feral child, who was equally startled. Slow clouds came over one by one, but none of them promised any rain, and his cloak was stifling. His feet baked inside their boots. St. Paul’s,he thought, the churchyard where the stationers had their booths. But something drew him west instead, beyond the old cathedral, until he stood in the shadow of Newgate and then passed through. Prisoners were being loaded into a cart outside the walls of London; Kit spared them a sideways glance and barely prevented himself from stopping in his tracks.

One of the men on the cart, his hands bound with rope and his face pinched with privation, was Nicholas Skeres.

The cart lurched as one of the oxen shifted. Skeres fetched up against the rail and yet did not look up, and the milling guards largely ignored him. Kit tapped one on the arm.

“What?”

Kit showed the man a pair of silver shillings, cupped in his palm. “Those prisoners there. Where are they bound?”

The guardsman grunted and glanced over his shoulder to see if they were observed. He held out his palm, and silver jingled into it. “Bridewell,” he said. “Questioning and execution. Counterfeiters and a cutthroat or two, not that you asked.”

“No,” Kit said. “I didn’t. Thank you.” Questioning and execution.Torture and execution, more like. Kit stepped away from the guardsman and kept walking, putting a few hundred yards between himself and Newgate before an ox lowed and the rattle of the cart alerted him that the prisoners were moving. He stepped to the verge and waited.

Nick Skeres, the Little bastard. And Baines and Poley throw him to the wolves as well, and the rescue Will and I expected unforthcoming. I wonder how he outlived his usefulness.And then a softer thought, hesitant. I could do somewhat. I could find a way to rescue him. Sorcery is good for something….

Who was Christofer Marley, is that a glimpse of forgiveness I see in thee?

Kit poked it, considering, and shook his head within the mantle of his hood. No,he decided, and slid his hood down before the cart reached him, stepping forward to draw Skeres eye. The little man looked, and startled, and looked again. Kit left his hands folded tidily under the cloak and lifted his chin, meeting Skeres’ eyes, watching the condemned men pass.

There,he thought, when the press of bodies kept Skeres from turning to watch him out of sight. There was a touch of fate in that one.

Something witnessed.

Later that evening, he leaned forward on the floor before Will’s chair and gritted his teeth. He bundled his shirt in his arms and held it to his chest, covering the scar there, as Will ran cool hands that almost didn’t tremble down the length of his back. The touch itched; Kit forced himself to think of it in the same terms as that long‑ago evening, when Morgan had painstakingly stitched the wound over his eye.

“Kit, does it hurt thee?”

‘It makes me want to crawl over broken glass to escape, but no, it does not hurt me. And it may, perhaps, be better than last time.” A little,he amended, forcing himself not to cringe as Will laid his palms flat on the tops of Kit’s shoulders. A simple touch that should have been warming, and it was all he could do to permit it.

“If it doesn’t help,” Will said, “we won’t do this.”

“I don’t know yet if it helps,” Kit said. “Distract me. What shall we talk of? Not poor foolish Tom–”

“No, not Tom. Essex? I didn’t attend the execution.” Nor I. But our Sir Francis and poor Lopez are avenged.”

“Some vengeance,” Will answered, pressing harder. The firmer touch was easier to bear. “Elizabeth didn’t commute Lopez’ssentence from hideous torture to clean beheading.”

“There’s a moral there, my William.” Kit flinched away finally, the need to withdraw too great to bear. He hugged his shirt tighter and bent forward, fighting useless tears. Will poured him wine, and he dropped the shirt in his lap to take it. They had swept the rushes aside, and a splinter on the floorboards snagged Kit’s breeches.

“What’s that?”

“‘Tis better to be pretty than to be skilled.”

Intra‑act: Chorus

In the forty‑fifth year of Elizabeth’s reign, twenty‑five months to the day after the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed Richard IIbefore her on that Shrove Tuesday in 1601, Will leaned over the garden gate of the house on Silver Street. Snowdrops bloomed in profusion about his boots, but Will was insensible to them. Hands folded, head cocked, he listened to the amazing present weight of something he had never heard before and would never hear again.

Silence in the streets of London Town.

The church bells hung voiceless. The criers and costermongers and hustling shoppers had deserted the streets. The playhouses stood empty, the markets deserted, the doors of every church open to the cold and any in need of refuge, or of comfort, or of prayer.

Elizabeth of England was dead.

Act V, scene i

But Faustus’ offence can ne’er be pardoned: the serpent

that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus.

– Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act V,scene ii

My dearest Kit:

I hope this finds thee well, & her Majesty the Mebd recovered from her weary illness when Gloriana passed. I have thought of her often, although I have refrained from offering prayers on her behalf, as she will no doubt understand.

As for myself? I am thick with news, & will make haste to lay it before thee. James of Scotland & England is King, & all is not well, my love.

Ev’ry bell in London tolled his welcome.

The King landed at the Tower of London on eleventh May, having taken some care to ensure hid progress from the north would be suitably stately that his arrival would not encroach on Elizabeth’s state funeral. Ben designed the triumphal arch through which he entered the city, and Ned Alleyn, a bit coldly clad, delivered a speech penned by Tom Dekker. The poets will have their day– and Ben got a charm into his working, which may help or it may not. Sir Robert Cecil came with him, having ridden north to York to greet our new Monarch. I did hear later that the ravens at the Tower flew up to greet the King’s barge, & that the small zoo of lions within that ancient stronghold’s precincts roared him welcome from their cages.

Gossip had been running through the streets on a river of wine & ale, &– between performances– I soak it in from my accustomed chair at the Mermaid. I am become quite the fixture there; thou wilt be pleased to know I have made a fine recovery of my fever, & in fact feel stronger now than I did before it.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for London. James had been crowned in a time of plague such as London has not suffered since thy murder, dear friend. Almost a decade since, & again crosses mark doorboards & whole families sicken. ‘Tis not, methinks, auspicious.

One of the dead is Ben’s son. Still when they cannot have us, they strike at our children.

Ah, but on to those gossips. They say, dear friend, that the new King is as great a hunter & lover of sport as the old Queen. They say ‘tis time England had a man’s hand on the tiller again. They say James dances at court & tumbles with his children: he has three, & another in his fair Queen’s belly. They say that that Queen loves dancing as well, & plays– which bodes well– & the masques of Ben Jonson.

Moreover. They day she is Catholic, & her husband the King Protestant. & I am not the only one who has breathed a low sigh of relief & permitted himself a giddy measure of hope at that small truth.

We players wore scarlet for the coronation: we are the King’s– rather than the Lord Chamberlain’s– Men now, & Grooms of the Bedchamber. Which one would suppose might give me some greater power to tug the King’s earlobe & press the suit of our Bible, but alas, ‘tis the Great Chamber only, and not the Privy– ‘tis but a ceremonial toy, as someone I know was wont to day. And James has adopted Cecil, & raised him to the peerage no less, & Cecil will not see it done.

I’ve managed to remind Monteagle of my assistance in seeing him & Southampton released from the Tower, & that may serve us well. Elizabeth’s good Sir Walter, I fear, has taken their place in duress, for James does not trust him. Many changes are afoot, & I for one shall tread most carefully.

Still, Annie is well, the girls tall as trees. Tom sends his affection, & Ben has rejoined our fold along with Chapman. All of us would like to see thee come again to our evening’s entertainments, if I may call them that. Well, all but Ben perhaps, & he will endure. I cannot say age has settled him, precisely, except it has. After a fashion. Or it may simply be that his wife is in London now, and it may be that they will reconcile. And if she will not content him, he has the wives of other men to hawk after–

Have a care. The Prometheans are very quiet. The plague notwithstanding. Young master Benjamin Jonson buried at seven years notwithstanding, as well. Though, if anything, that has made our Ben more determined. He speaks not of it, but he’s cold with purpose now.

We have that in common.

Oh, Kit, shouldst see what I am writing. Our adventures in Lucifer’s demesne–I know so neither of us talk of them o’ermuch, but the plays I am making now, daresay, are not like anything thou hast seen before–nay, I shall not tease thee.

But come, love.

I have things to show thee.

thy Will

The door of the library swung open, and Kit looked up from quiet conversation with Amaranth to see Murchaud framed against its dark red wood. “Kit,” the Prince said, smiling, “a moment of your time?”

“Your Highness,” Kit answered, not unironically. He made a bow over Amaranth’s hand and turned to follow Murchaud. They went in silence up the stairs; Murchaud led Kit to his rooms and unlocked the door with quiet concentration.

Kit followed calmly. Oh, won’t this inspire gossip in the court.“Murchaud?” he asked, when the door was latched again.

The Elf‑knight’s shoulders drooped like wings as soon as their privacy was assured. “She’s no better,” he said shortly, and went to pour wine for them both.

Kit followed at his heels, trying not to think that he must have looked like a faithful cur at his master’s boot. “Is she worse?”

“No. I’ve never heard of anything like. ‘Tis possible the Faerie Queen grew so linked with Gloriana in the minds of England’s folk that Gloriana’s passing could take the Mebd with it. And if the Mebd dies without loosing her bonds, all those Fae who are knotted in her hair die with her.”

“Would she do that? Take you all to the grave?” Kit was unprepared for the barb of panic that stabbed his breast; he took the wine–littered with bits of peppery nasturtium flowers like confetti–and covered his face with the rim.

“Come, sit.” Murchaud gestured him to one of two chairs on either side of the low table near the window. There was a chessboard set up, and beside it lay a book marked with a ribbon that Kit had been reading–before Will came to Faerie. And Murchaud has not seen fit to return it to the Library.Kit planted himself in the chair and set his glass down. Murchaud settled opposite. “She might,” the Elf‑knight said, nodding judiciously “Wilt fight for her, Christofer?”

“Poetry?”

“Aye.” Murchaud swirled his wine as much as drank it, seeming to savor the aroma.

“I will, ” Kit answered. A familial silence fell between them, and at last Kit succumbed to the siren song of the book on the table. He picked it up and thumbed through, trying to see if he remembered what led up to the place where the ribbon lay.

Murchaud let the quiet linger long enough that his voice startled Kit when he spoke again. “Dost trust me, my Christofer?”

Kit raised his eyes over the top of his book and met Murchaud’s gaze. “Thy Christofer? Surely not–”

Murchaud braced his boot on the low table between them, turning a black chess knight between his fingers. “Then whose else art thou?”

Which gave Kit pause. “The Devil’s. I suppose.”

“And not thine own?” Murchaud stood, a movement too fluid to seem as abrupt as it was, and began to pace, revealing to Kit that this was not an idle conversation.

“Had I everthat luxury?”

Which made Murchaud turn his head and blink softly. “Does any man?

“Or any elf? No.” Kit sighed. “Aye, my Prince. I trust thee as much as I might trust any Elf‑knight.”

“Which is to say not at all.”

Kit shrugged and set his book aside, then reached for the wineglass on the table. He raised it in salute, watching Murchaud roll the chess knight across the back of his fingers, as Will was wont to do with coins. “Why all this sudden concern with trust?”

“There is a wound festers in thee.”

“Who, me?” Kit sipped his wine and managed an airy dismissal with the back of his left hand. “I assure thee, I am festerment‑free.”

“Not that Idistrust thee…” Murchaud smiled and closed the distance between them. He dropped the chessman into Kit’s wineglass, where it vanished with a plop and a clink, and crouched beside Kit’s chair. When Kit turned to him, startled, Murchaud knotted Kit’s hair tight in both hands and kissed him fiercely, with a seeking tongue.

Kit bore it as long as he could, but couldn’t stop the sudden backward jerk of his head – a painful yank against Murchaud’s grip on his hair–or the sharp, humiliating whimper.

“Aye,” Murchaud said, breath hot on Kit’s ear before he sat back on his heels. “Thou’rt perfectly fine. Stubborn fool.”

“Murchaud–”

“Silence. I can heal thee, Kit.”

“Heal?” His heart accelerated; he drew back the hand he had braced on Murchaud’s chest and brought his wine to his mouth. The chessman bumped his lips as he swallowed.

“Heal thee or break thee.”

“That is curiously like what Lucifer said.” The wine was gone, except for a little pool under the ebony horse’s head at the bottom of the glass and bits of orange petals adhered to the rim. Kit set the goblet on the table. “What dost thou propose?”

“There’s a ritual of sacred marriage,” Murchaud offered slowly, after a long pause.

“A barren. marriage ‘twould be, between thee and me.” Kit shook his head. “My problem is Mehiel. I think I could bear mine own discomfort, to speak quite plainly. His–the distress of angels–is something else.”

“And what would it take to free Mehiel, then?”

Kit leaned forward. He pulled the chess piece from the glass and sucked the wine from its surface, then polished it dry on his handkerchief. He set it down on the tabletop with a pronounced, careful click, amazed at his own calm. “He’ll have to come out sooner or later, I suppose. And it would frustrate all our enemies enormously–Lucifer, the Prometheans, the lot.”

“Kit?”

“My death, Murchaud. It will take my death, I am told.”

Act V, scene ii

Some holy angel

Fly to the court of England and unfold

His message ere he come, that a swift blessing

May soon return to this our suffering country.

–William Shakespeare, Macbeth,Act III, scene vi

Alas, my Romeo–

– the Mebd is no better; I have visited her with poetry to comfort her weary hoard, & she seems somehow… faded. We must contrive to convince the world of the currency of Faerie Queenes. I don’t suppose a revival of thyMidsummer Night’s Dream might be possible?

I hear what thou sayest of James; I suppose thou knowest there are rumors that he finds his favorites among the young men at court. It might be worth thy while to befriend such, as they will have His Majesty’s–attention– & if the Queen is so fond of Ben ‘d work, then it may well be that Ben can find succor for our projects with her.

You might visit Sir Walter in his immurement, if he is permitted guests– I know Southampton was–for if he be nothing else, Raleigh is a poet and a poet sympathetic to our cause. & clever in politics. Gloriana is gone: we are not just for England now, but for Eternity, our little band of less‑mad Prometheans.

I will rejoin your Bible studies, of course. Even working piecemeal and catch as catch can, methinks we’ve accomplished too much to abandon our plans now.

My kindest regards to thee and to thine Annie, to little Mary and her Robin, to Tom and Audrey and George and Sir Walter should you see him. And my love most especially to Ben.

– in affection,

thy Mercutio

Will made his final exit on cue and elbowed John Fletcher in the ribs in passing as he quit the Globe’s high stage. “By Christ,” he said, as Fletcher slapped him across the back, “another plague summer. I can’t bear touring another year, John. On top of learning six new plays in repertory. Ah well. At least they’ve more or less mastered Timon,which has to recommend it that ‘tis not Sejanusagain. Gah–” Will scrubbed sweat from his face on a flannel and tossed it away. “How are we to endure it?”

“Because we have no choice.” Fletcher tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear, revealing a half‑moon of moisture under the arm of his shirt. In the unseasonable June of 1604 he’d left his habitual crimson doublet thrown over the back of a nearby chair. “Speaking of Sejanus,at least Ben is behaving himself of late.”

“If thou deemst getting himself fined for recusancy again behaving.”

“At least he’s not getting the playhouses shut down.”

“No,” Will answered bitterly, thinking of Baines’ faction and the endless stalemate fought back and forth between the groups of Prometheans. “The plague manages that just fine.” He unbuttoned his doublet, opening the placket to entice some breath of cool air in. “Come, Jack. I’ll stand thee a drink.”

John caught up his doublet and regarded it with distaste. “Tell me it will be cooler in the Mermaid and I’ll follow thee anywhere.” He took Will’s arm, steadying him down the stair.

“I doubt it’s cooler in the Thames. Or any better smelling. I wonder what Ben thinks he’s about. I should not like to be Catholic in England under James.” Will bit his lip in silent worry – for Edmund more than Ben. Ben wasn’t the only one who could stand to hide his sympathies a little better.

“‘Tis true. It’s hard to believe it could be worse than under Elizabeth. …” They came out into the sunlight, and John looked doubtfully toward the crowds along the way to London Bridge. “By water?”

“Indeed.” Even with his cane to steady him, and the new strength in his strides that led him to believe there was something more sinister than merely an unfortunate patrimony behind his palsy, Will didn’t intend to brave the long walk in the afternoon heat. “I suppose bankrupting the Catholics with fines is one way to deal with it. Still, Ben’s tastes in religion don’t seem to affect his popularity at court. Well, now that the problem of Sejanusis settled.” It had, Will must admit, been in questionable taste to deliver a play on the downfall of a sodomite Emperor’s favorite to the stage just as a reputedly sodomitical King was coming to the throne. Still, it wasn’t as if James could claim to be the target of the satire, and Ben had weathered the inquisitions well enough, all wide‑eyed pretense at innocence.

“There is a divide,” Fletcher noted, “between Queen Anne’s entertainments and King James’ policy.” And that was where the conversation ended along with their privacy to speak freely, for they embarked on the wherry to cross the Thames.

The Mermaid was cooler than the Globe, in fact, and if possibly not cooler than the Thames, fresh rushes and sawdust on the floor assured it wasbetter‑smelling. And–as if Will’s very conversations were attaining some magic with the raw new power that charged his poetry–the tavern was empty of all save the landlord and Edmund Shakespeare, who sat on a bench against the wall, pushing turnips about in his stew.

“Ted!” Fletcher pushed Will unceremoniously toward his brother and went to ask the landlord for dinner and ale.

“Jack,” Edmund answered. “Will, come sit.”

Will remembered something and turned over his shoulder. “John, I said I’d stand the meal–”

“Stand it tomorrow,” Fletcher answered, juggling two tankards as he returned. “Henslowe paid on time, for once. Ted Shakespeare, that’s an interesting expression thou’rt wearing. What news?”

Will blinked, and glanced back at his youngest brother. It wasa knowing expression, as catlike smug as anything Kit might have worn. “All right, Edmund.” He tasted his ale, which was dark and sweet. “Fletcher’s right. I can see the mouse’s tail through thy teeth. Out with it.”

Edmund let his grin broaden until it stretched his cheeks. He took a swallow of his ale and waited for silence, then fixed Will with a steady gaze. “Edward de Vere is dead.”

Edmund’s timing was precise, and Will sprayed ale across the table. “Oxford?” he spluttered, reaching for his handkerchief.

“Aye.”

“How?”

“Plague.”

Of course.Will dabbed his chin and the table dry, and picked up his ale again. When one outlived one’s usefulness to the dark Prometheans, they are not shy about making it plain.Will hefted his tankard thoughtfully and clinked it against Edmund’s.

“To the former Earl of Oxford,” Edmund said. “And not a moment too soon. They say he died very nearly in penury: he’s had to sell all his properties, and left almost nothing to his son.” His eyebrows went up; he looked to Will. And Will sucked his own lower lip, thinking that those who played politics danced with a snake that swallowed itself.

“I didn’t know you were acquainted with the Earl, ” Fletcher said, as the landlord brought their supper to the board.

“Aye,” Will said. “Unpleasantly so.” He wished he found the news more comforting: the end of an old enemy. But all it confirmed was what he had suspected. The Prometheans were moving–again–and Will hadn’t the slightest idea what about, or how to stop them.

This was easier when I had someone to tell me what to do,he thought, and picked up his bread and his spoon. And laid them down once more, hands shaking with the realization that it wasn’t necessarily the Prometheans who were responsible for the death of Edward de Vere, now that the Earl was utterly without the royal protection that had kept him alive so long.

Kit would have told me if he were contemplating cold‑blooded murder.

Wouldn’t he?

Act V, scene iii

As for myself, I walk abroad o ‘ nights

And kill sick people groaning under walls:

Sometimes I go about and poison wells.

– Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta,Act II, scene iii

Edward de Vere, Kit thought with a certain cool satisfaction, did not look well at all. But he didn’t think the man was sick with plague, as had been put about. Rather Oxford looked … shrunken, against the rich brocades of his sweet‑smelling bed. He seemed as if he dozed, a book open on his lap, and he did not look up when Kit stepped through the Darkling Glass and into the shadows at the corner of the room.

Kit cleared his throat, right hand across his waist and resting on the hilt of his rapier. “How does it feel to be ending your life on charity, my lord?”

The Earl of Oxford awoke with a start, the book snapping shut as his body twitched. He blinked and struggled to push himself upright against the pillows as Kit came out into the sunlight, but his arms seemed to fail him and his face contorted in pain. “Kit Merlin,” he said in wonder, his voice unsteady. “Of all the faces I did not look for–”

And even be cannot recall my name.

“I wasn’t looking for thee either,” Kit admitted, lounging against the bedpost. He let his hand fall away from his hilt. The carved wood wore into his shoulder, a reassuring discomfort. He pressed himself against it, parting the bed curtains, and with his right eye saw the light of strength draining from a man he used to fancy was his lover. “The Darkling Glass sent me here.”

“Sent thee?”

Kit took pity on the struggling Earl and moved forward, propping the pillows behind thin shoulders. It was like touching a poppet, a bundle of kindling wrapped in a silk nightgown. “Aye.” Grudging. “I was looking for Richard Baines. It showed me thee.”

Oxford nodded weakly. “He’s warded against thee–”

“He’s warded in general.” Something stirred in Kit’s breast. He closed his eyes, leaning heavily on the head of the bed as a wave of dizziness exhausted him. “Edward, how dost thou bear the weight of thine own skin?”

“My skin, or my sin?” It was a weak chuckle, barely an effort. From his right eye, Kit could see how the darkness within Oxford seemed fit to devour the fragile, flickering candle flame that was his life. “It matters not. Baines is consuming me.”

“I see that.” Kit tugged Oxford’s covers higher, then wiped his own hands fastidiously on his breeches. “Thou wert never better than an adequate poet, Edward. What made thee think thou couldst turn thy back on Prometheus, and live?”

“Kit,” Oxford said, and held forth a knotty hand. Kit took it, oily paper over bone. “Why thinkst thou I meant to live?”

An excellent question. Kit sat himself down on the edge of the bed and laced his fingers around his knee. “I loved thee, thou bastard,” he said in what was not meant to be a whisper.

“Pity, that.”

“Thou’lt never know how great a one. I hope thou knowest what thou spurned, my Edward.”

Oxford’s mouth twisted; Kit thought it was pain. “A bit of a poet and a catamite?” de Vere asked, and Kit flinched.

“Christofer Marley,” he said. Naming himself as if the name meant something. “A name to conjure with, or so I am assured.”

“Why didst thou come here? To mock me on my deathbed?”

Kit bit his lower lip savagely. This is not going well.“To discover why thou didst appear in my glass when I sought Richard Baines.”

Oxford laughed. It might have been a cough. “Because I can tell thee something about the Prometheans.”

“Aye?”

“Aye,” de Vere said. “What is Prometheus but knowledge?” He coughed, and had not the strength to cover his mouth with his hands. “What is God but mercy?”

“Is God that?” But the light in his breast flared into savagery, and–unwitting–Kit laid a hand on Oxford’s shoulder. It was not his own hand, quite: he could see the glare and the power gleaming behind the fingernails. Mehiel. God’s pity, at least. Does Oxford deserve that?

“When we need him to be.” Oxford smiled, his teeth white as whittled pegs behind liver‑colored lips. “Those that steal from the gods, those that defy God, they are punished. How couldst thou, with the divine fire of thy words, expect to escape?”

Kit thought of Lucifer’s exquisite suffering, and nodded. “Aye. Punished.”

Oxford smiled, and Kit still knew him well enough to read the pleasure in his eyes. The pleasure of a chess player who has successfully anticipated his opponent. Kit blinked. “You summoned me.”

“Did I?”

“Aye.”

“Aye–” Oxford’s cough racked Kit as well, and both of them pressed their fingers to their mouths. “I summoned thee. I cry thee mercy, Kitten.”

“I owe thee nothing.”

“Except revenge?”

“It’s no longer worth it to me.” Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.“Thou’rt dying.”

“I never said,” Oxford answered, his gaze perfectly level on Kit’s, “that thou shouldst seek vengeance on me. But there are other purposes my death might serve.”

“Baines is consuming me.”

Kit nodded, understanding. Then gasped as Mehiel answered Oxford’s words from within, a flare of panicked strength that Kit thought might stream from his fingertips, halo his head like the inverse of Lucifer’s shadowy crown. The angel–was afraid. And moved to pity, both. Don’t you remember bow this man used us, Mehiel? How he plotted to have us slain?“Thy death might serve my purposes quite well, Edward.”

“Didst ever ask thyself what Prometheus might want?”

“Other than a new liver?”

“Thy wit has always been thine undoing,” Oxford said tiredly. “Kit, mock me not when I have the will to aid thee, this one last time. Baines has used me as much as he has thee–”

“How fast they run to banish him I love, ”Kit said, just to see Oxford wince. “What, Edward? What does Prometheus want?”

“It’s a riddle. It depends on when thou dost meet him. Is he climbing to the heavens, or is he hurled back down? Is he chained on a rock, moaning for release? Would he seek immortality, or would he entreat thee take it from him, and make him but a mortal man again?”

Kit shook his head. Oxford was always one to speak in riddles, enjoying teasing others with what he knew and they didn’t, and Kit had no stomach for it now. “What vile task wilt thou bid me to? Why is’t I should not break thy wretched neck?”

“No reason,” Oxford answered. “Do.”

“Do what?”

“Do break my neck. If that is how thou preferest to end this.” Oxford’s hands pleated the blankets across his thighs. “I did serve England–”

“Thou didst serve thyself and thine own furtherance. The Prometheans were meant to seek God and the betterment of Man, thou bastard. Thou–” Kit swallowed the shrillness that wanted to fill his voice. “Thou wert nothing but a spendthrift, a wastrel, a posturing cockerel.”

“Think it as thou wilt.” A sigh, exhaustion. The traceries of light that tangled Oxford were nothing like the dull red of the fever that had so nearly killed Will. “I will not serve MasterRichard Baines, once ordained a priest. Kill me, Kitten.”

A blatant request, and Kit blinked on it. “Killthee.”

“Aye.” Fumbling, Oxford tried to pluck the pillow from behind his neck. Kit helped him with it, careful not to touch the Earl’s fevered skin as Oxford lay back flat. Kit stepped back, the pillow clutched to his chest. Oxford closed his eyes. “Wilt let Baines have the use of me, Kitten? Kill me tonight.”

God,Kit thought. I’d imagined this as somehow satisfying.He looked down at the pillow in his hands and closed his eyes.

Amaranth’s touch did not trouble Kit in the slightest, perhaps because she was more beast than woman. So when he was done with Edward de Vere and had left the Earl of Oxford’s body laid out tidily under the coverlet of his borrowed bed, it was Amaranth that Kit sought.

She lay on her back on the grass under the honey‑scented tree that had been Robin Goodfellow, the creamy white scales of her belly exposed to the dappled sun and her slender, maidenly arms stretched high over her head. She wore a shirt of thin white lawn spotted with embroidered violets, startlingly feminine on a creature that was anything but. Kit dropped into the grass beside her, far enough away that he wouldn’t startle her hair, and crossed his legs, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. She twitched her tail, acknowledging him without opening her eyes, and tapped a coil against his hip.

“Thou’rt pensive, Sir Poet.”

“I am more than pensive. I am troubled.”

Her scales were soft and leathery, warmer than the grass when he ran his hands over it. As comforting as a hot‑sided beast in a byre, and she smelled of autumn leaves or curing tobacco, musky as civet; mingled with the sweetness of the flowers, it put Kit in mind of expensive perfume. He lay down on the grass, his head propped on his knuckles, and sighed. She reached down lazily and stroked his hair. “And what troubles thee, Kit?”

“Prometheus,” he said, leaning into the luxury of a touch that did not make him cringe. She shifted to pillow his head on her coils, the gesture more motherly than predatory. “Someone has made an interesting suggestion to me, just now.”

“Interesting?”

Her voice was drowsy in the warmth; it relaxed him as smoothly as if it were a spell. “What if Prometheus–as in, the Prometheus Club–were a person, an individual. A role. As much as he is a symbol of what they intend to accomplish, that is to say, stealing fire from the gods? Or God? And if so, what are we to do about it?”

Sss.” A ripple of muscular constriction passed down her length. Her hand stilled in his hair for a moment, and then resumed smoothing the tangles that always formed at the back of his neck, where his hair snagged on his collar. “Comest thou to a snake for sympathy, Sir Poet?”

“I come to a snake for information. Which may be equally foolish.”

She laughed and levered herself upright without disturbing the section of coils upon which Kit rested. He rolled on his back, her wide belly scales denting under the weight of his head, and looked up her human torso as she rose. Sunlight shone through the cobweb lawn of her shirt; it bellied out on a breeze, offering him a glimpse of her maidenly belly and the underside of her breasts, the embroidered violets casting shadows like spots upon her skin.

“Come along,” she said, and gave a little shudder to shake him to his feet. He rose, dusting bits of grass from his doublet, and fell into step beside her.

She led him down the bluff by the water, holding his hand–her arm extended to keep him well away from any aggressive gestures from her hair–and across the sand. “Wait,” he said, and stripped off his boots and ungartered his stockings so he could feel the sand between his toes. Amaranth didn’t stop, but slithered forward at a stately place, leaving a wavy line through the sand. Kit had only to walk a little faster to catch up. “What is it thou dost not wish the Puck‑tree to overhear, Amaranth?”

“There is a Prometheus,” she said, and turned to look at him through matte steel‑colored eyes. She smiled liplessly. “Ask me another mystery, man.”

He swallowed. The sea broke over her bulk and foamed around his bare feet, drawing the sand from under his soles as if sucked by mouths. “Where do I find this Prometheus?”

The white foam ran down her dappled sides. She bent to trail her fingers through the waves. “In the mirror, Sir Christofer. In the eyes of a lover. Under an angel’s bright wings. All of those places and none. One more question. Come.”

I’ve fallen into a fairy tale.“How did I earn three questions of a serpent, my lady Amaranth?”

“Is that the question thou wishst to waste?” But her voice was kind, a little mocking. “I shall not count the answer, though. The answer. Which is, thou hast earned nothing, but this I give thee as a gift. Ask.”

Another wave, and this one wet him to the knee, spray salting his cheek and lips. The flavor was as musky as the lamia’s scent, salt and depth and thousands of deaths over thousands of years, all washed down into the endless, consuming sea. Kit shivered. And if everything has a spirit, what do you suppose the ocean’s soul is like?His chin lifted, as if of its own accord, and he turned to look out over the sea and its breakers like white tossing manes on dark stallions’ necks.

Amaranth coiled around him, an Archimedean screw with Kit the column at its center, and rested her seashell fingers on his shoulder, her head topping his by two feet or more. “Ask,” and the hiss of her voice was the hiss of the waves.

“What magic is a sacred marriage capable of, Amaranth?”

“Ah.” She settled in a ring about him, a hollow conduit with a poet at its center, sunlight glazing her scales as it did the dimples on the surface of the sea. “A grave risk, such a ritual. To work, it would need to be more than a ritual sacrifice. Thou wouldst die of it, who was Christofer Marley.”

“A grave risk. And? ”

“A potential triumph. It could be salvation: it’s so hard to tell. So much depends on–”

The waves came and went.

“Circumstance? ”

“Mehiel, ” she answered. “Mehiel, and how badly tormented the heart or the soul of an angel might be.”

“Badly,” Kit answered, but he was thinking of Lucifer Morningstar and not the sudden, fearsome heat and pressure in his chest.

Act V, scene iv

To this I witness call the fools of time

Which die for goodness, who have Lived for crime …

–William Shakespeare, from Sonnet 124

Will held his wrist out, turned over so the unworked buttons showed. “Ted, couldst see to these? Thank thee–”

“Court clothes,” Edmund said. “So high and mighty is my brother now–”

“Hah.” Will picked his wine up with his other hand and drained the goblet down to the bitter, aconite‑flavored dregs. He polished the cup with his handkerchief and set it on the trestle, upside down. “I am summoned to attend, is all. The King’s Men are no different at court from drawing‑room furniture: meant to fill up the corners, but hardly of any real use. Hast thou any news for me?

“Robin Poley,” Edmund said, fastening the final button on Will’s splendid doublet.

“Robin Poley? Or Robert Poley?”

“The elder.”

“What of him?”

“Is a Yeoman of the Guard of the Tower of London now.”

Will paused in the act of tugging his sleeve down over his shirt cuff. “… really.”

“Aye. Cecil’s doing, again. Although I suppose I must call Cecil the Earl of Salisbury now–”

“Where ears can hear, you must. Christ on the Cross. Sixteen hundred and five, and I have no better mind what old Lord Burghley’s second son is after than I did twelve years ago, Ted. He plays the white and black pieces both, a double game that defies all understanding. But he has got himself raised an Earl, so I suppose whatever his game might be, he is winning it. Do I look grand enough for church with a King?”

Edmund stepped back, sucking on his lower lip until he nodded once, judiciously. “Cecil’s at odds with the King, they say–”

“Aye.” Will checked the mirror over his mantel, and ran both hands along the sides of his neck to pluck what remained of his hair from his collar. “Well, is and is not. The King wants Scots around him, but he needsSalisbury. What he’s got is good Calvinists, and he’s still urging that the Bishops be diligent in their pursuit of Catholics.” For all his own proclivities are not so Calvinist as that. Gloriana’s failings were what they were, but she was never a hypocrite.Will stopped, and fixed Edmund with a look. I wrote to Anne and told her to see she got herself and the girls to church, Edmund. And I want to see thee in attendance too.”

“Will–” Edmund sighed. “‘Tis my faith thou dost so lightly dismiss.”

“Aye,” Will answered. “And I am eldest now, with Father gone, and thou dost owe me that much duty. Thy life is worth more, and thy family’s safety. Catholicism has been outlawed,Edmund. Recusants are not tolerated now. You will obey me.”

“What’s a life worth without faith?” Edmund looked Will square in the eye, but Will would not glance down.

“I won’t forbid thee whatever–diversions–thou dost seek,” Will said. “But thou wilt to Church. I’ll not see thee stocked or hanged.”

His brother matched gazes with Will for what seemed like an hour, but Will–frankly–had the weight of experience. And the authority of the eldest son behind his edict. Edmund dropped his eyes to the floor.

“As you bid.” Edmund glanced up again as a church bell tolled the hour. “And now thou must hurry. Or thou wilt be late for thy King.”

Infirmity, if not age, granted Will the consideration of a stool in the corner near the fire, but he found it rather warm for a midmorning. Especially when Burbage, also resplendent in James’ livery, had cleverly staked out the corner nearest the wine on the sideboard – incidentally doing his usual fine job of framing himself against dark wood that showed off his fair curls to advantage.

If it weren’t for the King’s scarlet, however, Will would vanish against the paneling like a ghost. Which suited his mood admirably, come to think of it; his mood was fey, and dark lines of poetry taunted him.

Burbage refilled his goblet a second time before Will could think to forbid it, and Will swore himself solemnly to drink no more after this last cup. “Thou’lt have me drunk before the King, Richard,” he said from the corner of his mouth.

Matters not,” Burbage answered. “I’m drunk every day, and it’s done me no harm–”

“Not until thou diest of yellow jaundice,” Will said dryly. “Or thy belly swells up like a berry full of juice.”

“Well, a man’s got to die of something.” That bit of philosophy accomplished, Burbage turned to check Will’s reaction. “The King,” he hissed, and dropped a flourishing bow even as Will was turning to make his own obeisance.

“Your Highness,” Will and Burbage said, speaking in unison as if rehearsed. And after fifteen years playing together, ‘tis no surprise if we pick up the cue.

“Master Players.” James the First of England had ruddy cheeks, contrasting with slack, pale skin and a sad‑eyed, wary expression. Will thought he looked haunted, and he had not lost a trace of his thick Scottish accent in two years in the south. Can we hope you are about plotting some new masterwork to entertain us with?”

“Always plotting,” Will answered. “What would please the King?”

James made a bit of a show of thinking. “You know our Annie loves masques and divertissements. We had Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blacknessat court just this winter past. But perhaps something a little more exciting, for the lads. I worry a bit at their mother’s influence: women are such frivolous things, and she has her ideas.”

“Ideas, Your Highness?” Will was grateful that Burbage spoke to fill the King’s expectant silence.

“I fear being so beset by witches as we were at our old lodgings has made her dependent on Papist rituals to keep ill spirits away,” James said frankly, dropping into the informal speech that was his habit. “Silly conceits, and a woman will have them. But I do not want her leading my boys from good Protestant ethics. I’ll see my little Elizabeth crowned queen before Henry or Charles king, if she turns them Catholic.” The King shrugged, carelessly tipping some drops of wine over the edge of his cup. “So perhaps something with Scottish kings and the mischief of witchcraft–”

“Do you have a plot in mind, Your Highness?”

“We saw a Latin trifle at Oxford at the beginning of the month. That Ouinn fellow. You know him?”

“Tres Sybillae. ”

“That’s the one.”

“Your Highness wishes a play about King MacBeth.”

“The usurper, rightfully deposed.” It was a gentle rebuke, as such things went, delivered with a smile. The King turned to acknowledge Robert Cecil as the new Earl of Salisbury came up alongside him. “It will serve a welcome distraction in a time of plague. I’ve prorogued Parliament for fear of it: we’ll meet in colder weather. And a good morning to you, my fine Earl Elf. What think you of the fifth of November?”

“It’s a fine day for a hanging, I suppose. Or did you have something else in mind, Your Highness?”

“Parliament. We’ll have some bills come due that must be paid, sooner rather than later–”

“Ah, yes.” Salisbury nodded an acknowledgement as Will filled a cup for him and dropped a bit of sugarloaf in. “Thank you, Master Shakespeare. I think we must talk a bit about expenditures too, Your Highness.”

The King snorted. “A parsimonious elf. Canst not transform some oak leaves to gold, Salisbury, and refill our coffers?”

“Alas–” Salisbury laid a hand on the King’s elbow, and the two men turned aside. But Robert Cecil’s last tenacious glance told Will there would be another conversation, later, out of earshot of the King.

“Is he still opposed to thy Bible?” Burbage asked quietly, when the King and his minister were very well out of earshot.

Will blinked. “How didst thou know about the Bible, Richard?”

Richard Burbage paused, his cup frozen halfway to his mouth as his attention turned inward. He pursed his lips, and answered at last, “Mary Poley mentioned it to me as if it were common knowledge. I thought she must have had the word from thee.”

“No,” Will said, feeling his blood drain from his limbs. “I told her no such thing.”

Will wrote by candlelight, late into the warmth of the evening, and was not surprised when a familiar cough interrupted his study. “Good evening, Kit.”

“Hello, my love. I brought thee supper–”

Will glanced at the window surprised to see that twilight had faded to full dark. “Thou’rt considerate.”

“Thou’rt like to starve to death, an I did not. What is it has thy fancy so tightly, Will?” Kit laid his bundle on the edge or the table, well away from Will’s papers, and unwrapped linen to produce a pot of steaming onion soup and a half loaf of brown bread folded around a still‑cold lump of butter that was just melting at the edges.

“Fey food,” Will said, and pushed his papers aside. “Or the homely sort?”

“Both,” Kit answered. “Morgan’s cooking. Thou didst not answer my question – ”

“Oh, a tragedy,” Will answered. “Something to catch James’ fancy. Witches and prophecies. We have problems and problems, Kit. Thou didst not speak to Mary Poley of our testaments, didst thou?”

“Nay,” Kit answered. He pushed the crock of soup in front of Will, and laid a spoon alongside it. “Talk while thou dost eat.”

“Someone did.” The soup was good, thick with onions cooked transparent. Will reached for the bread, which he could manage more comfortably through his stiff throat if he soaked it well in the broth. “Or worse, she heard it from Robert Poley and his flock.”

“How would Poley know?”

Will shrugged, surprised at his own appetite. “Salisbury? They’ve made Poley a Yeoman of the Tower, Kit.”

“They?”

“Salisbury. Who was Sir Robert Cecil.”

“Thou sayest it as it were a refrain.”

“More and more it seems to be. And I am at a loss to ferret out why. You probably haven’t heard that Essex was the Master of the Armoury before his ill‑fated ride.”

“Master of the Armoury, and then beheaded there.” Kit propped a hip on the window ledge, his back to the embrasure, and adjusted a folded‑back cuff as if hiding his pleasure at the irony. “Hast spoken with Sir Walter?”

“Words in passing, only. I’ll see if I can bring this play to him for comment before I make the fair copy. It might cheer him.” Will pushed the soup away, his appetite fading. “He needs cheering, Kit.”

“Shall I steal him away to Faerie, then?”

“Would he go?”

“Not unless he could conquer it for England.” Kit grinned. “So ask thyself what Cecil wants, Will.”

“What Salisbury wants.”

“Whatever.”

Will sighed. “I’d like to stamp him as his father’s son, and a servant of the Crown even when he does not agree with the Crown’s objectives. But I think he has been unafraid to manipulate even Princes, when it serves his goal. And his goal may be no more than ambition.”

“He’s Secretary of State. Surely that’s enough to satisfy any ambition.”

“I am not sure that’s so. In any case, he’s ordered Ben Jonson and me to infiltrate the Catholic underground in London.” Will looked up in time to see Kit flinch. Kit drew his knee up, bootheel hooked onto the window frame. “That means Catesby and Tresham.”

“Catesby is cheek by jowl with Poley,” Kit commented. “If Poley is truly such a fine friend of Ce – of Salisbury’s, then one would think he could get Poley to risk himself playing intelligencer in this case.”

“Except Salisbury knows Poley’s linked to the Prometheans through Baines – ” Will shrugged. “I’ll be damned if I understand it, Kit. Mayhap Salisbury expects to see the whole mess of them eradicate one another. And–” Realization stopped his voice.

Kit leaned forward. “Will?”

“–Poley must have heard about the Bible from Salisbury. But Salisbury is not supposed to know it’s being writ. Tom Walsingham would never tell him.”

“Tom Walsingham doesn’t tell his teeth what they’re chewing,” Kit said fondly. “So from whom would he have heard it, then?”

“Christ,” Will said. “I hope not Ben. But more on Catesby–now, it seems, is the ideal time to move. There is a rumor he’s looking for men of strong Catholic belief to join some agency of his. He’s been seen about with Poley, aye, and Richard Baines as well. And Salisbury says he has a letter from a Captain Turner that says Catesby and a fellow named Fawkes are planning what he ever so helpfully terms ‘an invasion.’ The good Earl wants Ben and me to play at being disloyal Catholics.”

“Baines is ordained a Roman Catholic priest, Will, for all I think his faith plays the hypocrite more even than mine own. If Catesby wants Catholics–Well. Poley and Baines both know thou art more than a mere Catholic.”

Will nodded. “But Poley also knows” –a pressure in his throat, but he did not let it change his voice–“how Hamnet was buried, and how often my family’s been fined. Monteagle will vouch for me, in any case: he owes me his life after that damned stupid rebellion, and he knows it. A new King, and worse times for the Catholics, and things change. Men change their opinions, and all Catholics are not Prometheans.”

“Any more than all Puritans are.” Kit nodded, as if seeing the logic. “Your opposition is not to Catesby. Only to those who use him, so unwittingly.”

“As they used Essex, and discarded him when they were done.”

“Hell,” Kit said. “As they used and discarded one Christofer Marley, playmaker – ” He stopped, fingers tight on the cloth of his sleeves, and closed his eyes for a moment. “I beg thy pardon, Will. Pray continue.”

I made the right choice not to ask him what became of Oxford,Will thought. “Catesby had been imprisoned for recusancy again, but he’s out, and building a … congregation”

“A congregation and not a private army?”

“Is there a difference, in this age?” Will sighed. “I haven’t a choice. Remember old Sir Francis and his damned lemons out of season?”

“It was a good conceit.” Kit stood and crossed the rush‑covered floor in a few short strides. “He swallowed enough bitterness for his queen to know the taste of it. I do not think Robert Cecil is such a civil servant as that. But be cautious, Will: it’s easy enough to hang for treason even when one acts on the orders of the crown. I’ve seen it happen, King’s Man.”

“Queen’s Man,” Will corrected, with a smile. “I’m only a player for James.”

“Good,” Kit said, and laid both hands carefully on Will’s shoulders, with a precision that belied the force of choice behind that action. “I’d hate to think I had to defend thy virtue from a king.”

“He suits my fancy not at all,” Will answered, and let his head fall back against Kit’s belly. “I’d find something better to be forsworn for, if I were of a mind to be forsworn.”

Kit bore the touch for a moment and stepped back. “I dreamed of thee again. Thee, and a pouch full of silver coins, every one of them tainted in poison. I knocked them from thy fingers – ”

Will pivoted on his stool, away from the table, so he could watch Kit pace. “And?”

“And a flock of ravens arose, startled by the sound, and then the ravens dove on the coins and were transformed into magpies. And the magpies touched the silver – it was shillings, all shillings. Forty of them.” Kit’s face went dreamy as he pressed a palm to the window glass.

Will stood, a bit unsteadily, and came up beside him. “And then what happened?”

“The magpies died. Every one. And turned into gray‑feathered doves as they fell. Damned if I know what to make of that for a prophecy.” Kit’s shoulders rose – slowly – and then dropped.

“I do,” Will answered, shaking his head just a little, remembering the weight of a pouch of coins in his fingers on the eve of the Essex Rebellion. Remembering Robert Catesby’s considering glance as Will took it from his hand. “The plague. And that sickness that almost killed me, four winters back.”

“And did kill Spenser and Walsingham. Aye.”

“Coins. It’s spread on coins, Kit. Ensorcelled silver, that taints any hand that touches it.”

Kit turned to him and blinked, candlelight cupping his cheek like a hand. “By God,” he said. “Thou’rt right. Thou must be.” And then he stopped and crossed his arms before his breast, and visibly swallowed. “How does a man fight something like that?”

Will just shook his head. “I do not know.”

Act V, scene v

But while I have a sword, a hand, a heart

I will not yield to any such upstart.

– Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,Act I, scene i

She’s asking for you,” Murchaud said from the doorway, and Kit laid down the book, open to a page he’d read three times over and never seen.

He stood and twisted his rapier back into place in its carrier. “The Mebd’s awake?”

Murchaud didn’t answer, only beckoned. Kit came to him and they passed through the corridors side by side, not speaking until they reached the threshold of the Mebd’s privy chamber. He paused, his hand on the doorknob, and glanced over his shoulder at the Prince. “Thou’rt not coming in?”

“No,” Murchaud said. “My royal wife said Kit, and Kit alone. So alone thou goest.”

“What does she want of me?”

“Thy company, I presume.” He smiled a worried smile, one that made the corners of his pale, soft eyes turn down.

“It’s the teind year. Sixteen naught Five, and less than a month to choose the sacrifice – ”

“No.” Murchaud’s headshake was slow. “Thy William went willing, Kit. Even though thou didst retrieve him – mad poets, the both of you–the debt is paid for seven times seven years. Go on, my love.”

Kit shivered at the endearment, set his jaw, and opened the door.

A cool breeze ruffled silk curtains, admitting sunlight on dancing rays. The chamber smelled of lavender and peppermint, and thick rush mats muffled Kit’s footsteps.

The Mebd lay on a daybed by the window’, embroidered pillows behind her shoulders and her thin violet gown draped over one bent knee, a bare graceful foot showing beneath the hem. Her head was turned, her gaze trained out the window, her hair down on her shoulders in a thousand braids as fine as golden wire.

Kit bowed, then straightened when she summoned him with an airy wave.

“Sir Kit.”

“Your Highness.”

She smiled as he came closer, her eyes as violet now as twilight, matching the shadows that surrounded them and lay under her cheekbones. The lines of her collarbones glinted like knives, and he could see the rings of her larynx through the translucent skin of her throat. He thought the bones of her fingers might crumble if he simply reached out and took her hand; even her amazing hair was lusterless and dry in its floor‑long braids. “Sit,” she said. “I’m healing at last. England’s King is secure upon his throne. Faerie will endure.”

“Was it wise of you to risk Faerie so far?” Kit asked, because he felt secure enough in his Bard’s patched cloak to do it. He reached out softly, and took a few of her long yellow plaits in his hand. “There are many lives braided here, my Queen. Lives that would be lost if you were.”

“The war’s not over,” she said. “I understand thou hast been speaking with Morgan, yet.”

“Aye.”

“Her politics?”

“What are her politics, you mean, Your Highness?” When she nodded impatiently, he continued. “She says she wants peace.”

“She does,” the Mebd said. “But she’s never understood that compromises can be required to assure it, and sometimes the Devil you know is to be preferred to the Devil you don’t.” She smiled into his eyes as he leaned forward, and turned her gaze out to the garden again. “I have a task for thee, one that shall burden thee a while, and one which I cannot ask my bounden subjects. And one which thou wilt never speak of, Sir Kit. I charge thee.”

“And what task is that, Your Highness?”

And she smiled again, never looking back, and handed him a comb.

Act V, scene vi

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portendno good to us: though the wisdom of nature canreason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itselfscourged by the sequent effects: love cools,friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities,mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces,treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son and father.

–William Shakespeare, King Lear,Act I, scene ii

Just before dawn on September 17, 1605, Will was dragged from a companionable reverie in the garden of the Silver Street house by an urgent hand on his sleeve, reaching awkwardly backward. “Will,” Kit said. “Look at the moon.

They were huddled under blankets, back to back on the bench. The wine was finished; the night’s conversation drifted into sitting and dozing, watching the night. Will turned over his shoulder and gasped; the full pewter disk was eaten away on one edge, as if someone had taken a bite from the disk, and a dim red glow shone through it. “An eclipse.”

“Not a full one, I think,” Kit answered. “Remember old Doctor Dee, Gloriana’s astrologer?”

“I remember his beard,” Will said, picturing its white luxuriance. “The Queen used to ride out to his house on horseback and scandalize the court. He’s still alive, you know, though James won’t have aught to do with him.”

“Is the old bastard?” Kit’s smile shone through his voice. “I always liked him better than Northumberland. And he was right more often, too. Thou knowest his horoscopes for Elizabeth were sealed as state secrets?”

“Out of favor now, though.”

“We could ride out and see him, as Elizabeth would have – ” Kit’s voice swelled, a momentary flight of fancy on what a pageant that would be. And then he stopped himself, and shivered. “Nay. Unwise at the extreme.”

“So what would he say about that?” The moon continued to darken, even as the eastern sky grew pale. A third of the disc had vanished into shadow, and Will caught his breath at the beauty of it, and the danger. “That’s a portent, Kit.”

“The sky is full of portents.” Kit stood, and walked from one wall of the garden to the other, studying the sky. “But that’s an especially bad one. The moon is devoured in the dragon’s tail, or so the expression goes–the moon, astrologically speaking, equates the psyche.”

“What does it mean?” Will’s voice, still and small. He moved to stand beside Kit, as if the warmth of another body in the chill fall air would make a difference to his pounding heart.

“It means,” Kit said, “that the Mebd is right. And the war is nearly on us. And everything we have believed in, fought for – Gloriana, England, Faerie–is coming to an end.” He dropped his eyes from the sky; Will could see the yellow witchlight gleaming behind his right eye when he turned. “Will, just remind me. What day did Elizabeth die?”

“March twenty‑fourth,” Will said. “Very early. Or perhaps late the night before.”

“The last day of the year,” Kit said softly. “The sun would have been at fifteen Aries when she died if she had held on one day longer. The brave old bitch almost made it.” Tears clotted whatever he would have said next.

“Kit?”

Nodding, a sniffle in the darkness as the moonlight reddened and dimmed.

“I don’t know what that means,” Will said at last, plaintively, and was relieved when Kit laughed and threw an arm around his shoulders, as if they both needed the support.

“Fifteen Aries is when you sacrifice a King,” Kit answered. Whispered, really, though it had almost the quality of a pronouncement to it. “So that his blood may replenish the land, and make it strong. ”

“Oh,” Will said, only half understanding the shiver that rocked Kit’s body. “You’re saying she died for England.”

“I’m saying she tried her best.” Kit folded like a dropped marionette and sat down on the ground, his knees drawn up and his arms “wrapped around them to pull them close. “I’m saying we’relosing, and there’s our proof. That” – a shaky hand waved at the setting, half‑eaten moon – “means the end of an old way, and violence, and upheaval.

Will sat down too, and cleared his throat. “Couldn’t the end of an old way mean the Prometheans, just as well?”

“It means Elizabeth,” Kit said with quiet conviction, both his fists pressed against his chest as if his heart might burst right between his ribs, and there was no arguing then.