Ink and Steel

Act II, scene xii

Jessica:

I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so:

Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice

Will stood against the painted cloth covering the wall of Sir Francis Walsingham’s bedroom, flanked by Richard Burbage’s fair hair on one side and Thomas Walsingham’s tall frame on the other. They leaned shoulder to shoulder, unspeaking, feet and lower backs aching, listening to the halting rhythm of a dying man’s breath, watching his daughter bathe his brow with cool water and fret his spindled hands. Lopez was dead, and even if another could have been trusted to keep the secret of his identity, Sir Francis would not have accepted the ministrations of strange physicians.

Tom Walsingham shifted, his shoulder brushing Will’s doublet. Will met his glance, but neither spoke, and they turned away again after a moment of consideration. Tom’s guarded eyes reminded Will of the expression in the mirror. They kept their vigil though the clock struck midnight and its hands began their long dark sweep through the downhill hours of the night. Sir Francis whined low on one intaken breath; his next expiration held a damaged clatter that Will knew better than he liked.

“Not long now,” Burbage murmured, and Tom shook his head no but it wasn’t a denial. Thus began the seventh of September, 1595: the sixty-third anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s birth.

One oil lamp guttered. The other had burned out by the time the bell struck three of the clock, leaving a thin white coil of smoke ascending from the wick. Will stepped away from the wall, across the rush matting. He didn’t understand how Sir Francis’ daughter Frances bore it; the stench of putrefaction rising from the dying man’s very pores and on his breath was enough to raise Will’s gorge from across the room.

There was oil in a cupboard. Wordlessly, with exquisite care, he filled the extinguished lamp and trimmed the wick, relighting it before snuffing the second and repeating the process. He set the light left-handed on the stand beside the bed, acknowledging Frances’ grateful glance with a smile.

“We should send a messenger to lord Burghley,” he said to Burbage and Tom as he returned to his post by the wall. “And a messenger to the Queen. He will not last the …”

“The Queen will not come.” A wheeze, a broken gasp followed by Frances’ command to lie back. Will turned in place and looked back to the bed with its coverlet drawn high and its curtains closed on two sides to keep the draft away.

“Sir Francis.” The old man was up on one elbow, waving his nursemaid irritably aside, pain furrowing his face. His voice fragmented.

“Master Shakespeare. Master Burbage, ah, Tom. Waste no time on the Queen. She wouldn’t come. Unless she forgave me.”

“Cousin, lie down,” said Tom, crossing the rush mat heedlessly. Frances moved out of his path in a graceful sweep of skirts and leaned against the window ledge to throw open the shutters, breathing gratefully of the rank Southwark night. Over the reek of the bear gardens, Will imagined he smelled fruiting lemons and apples ripening to the frost that would leave them sweet enough to be plucked. He brushed comforting fingers across Frances arm and moved forward. Burbage hung back beside her, his nostrils flaring in a drinker’s roseate nose. Tom crouched beside the bed, heedless of the reek, and Will stood over his shoulder.

“Cousin,” Tom said. Sir Francis coughed. Will flinched: the sound had torn flesh in it. Tom reached out and gripped Sir Francis hand.

“Cousin,” Sir Francis wheezed. “There’s papers. Under a false bottom in my clothespress. Thou wilt need them.”

“What are they?

“There are men who will work for the love of their Prince. And there are those who must be cajoled, brutalized, or bribed.”

“Your men,” Thomas said, understanding.

“Filthy linen,” Sir Francis answered. “Yes. Tis yours.”

“Sir Francis, Her Majesty would not come to your deathbed?” Will felt the vibration of his own voice, but did not at first understand that he had spoken. It took him longer to recognize the wet, desperate sound that escaped Sir Francis throat as laughter; it was like the sounds a man might make being broken on the rack.

Serve your Prince,” Sir Francis choked, waving Will closer.

Breathing shallowly, Will bent forward, extending a hand. Francis Walsingham’s yellowed nails dented the flesh of his wrist as the spymaster fell back against the bed.

“Do not expect thanks of her. Not if you serve her well.”

Will flinched. Blood and something thick and yellow crusted the corners of Sir Francis mouth. A thin trickle of watery red dripped from his nose, as if the effort of holding his head up had burst a vessel somewhere, one with barely any blood left in it.

“Sir Francis.”

For all its feebleness, Sir Francis voice brushed Will’s aside as casually as a hand lifting a curtain.

“You were young. When the Queen’s Men, I built for Gloriana toured Stratford, and they took you on.“

Will thought the sound of the dying man’s laugh would make him vomit. Dick Burbage shuffled forward as if through mud. Sir Francis didn’t release Will’s wrist, and Will stayed bent over the crouching Tom, wondering if Sir Francis could feel the tremor starting now in his biceps, shivering down his arm to his hand.

“Sir Francis.”

“Didst know what we had here, Dick?”

Wordlessly, Burbage shook his head.

“Ah.” Walsingham slipped lower in the bed. “Now we do.”

Tom dabbed his cousin’s upper lip, rubbing thin blood into his beard. Sir Francis hand slid from Will’s wrist and lay slack and open on the coverlet, as if waiting to receive.

“Let me be, Tom.” Sir Francis closed his eyes. “Let me be.”

Tom stood easily and backed up, looking up as he took a second step away from the bed. And then kept moving, stumbling, his left arm catching Will across the chest and bearing him away as Will too raised his eyes. A warm wind scented with tobacco smoke blew the bed curtains back. They rippled heavily, the lamps guttering in their chimneys. The sound that fell from Will’s parted lips was almost a quack.

The angel’s wings, white and strong as a swan’s, filled the room from floor to ceiling, even folded tight. Tom’s shove turned into a clutch; Will looked up at a serene, unsmiling alabaster face, blue eyes dark as the ocean stern under a mannered wheat-gold mane. Those candent wings rose not from robes, but a black silk-velvet doublet gleaming with ruby buttons, slashed in flame-colored taffeta and showing a gentleman’s cobweb lawn collar at the neck: nothing so lordlike unwieldy as a ruff. The rapier at his hip wore a matching ruby in its pommel pigeon’s-blood, and big as a pigeon’s egg. The angel’s neck was long and fine, his elegant chin unshadowed by beard. His curls hung in oiled array behind his shoulders, one snagged disobedient on his collar. His lips were palest pink as dog rose, matching the blush in his cheeks. A heavy chain of office lay across his shoulders, a golden circlet crossed his noble brow, but his head was crowned in twining, writhing shadows like silhouettes tormented by flames, and so Will realized he wasn’t exactly an angel.

“Be not afraid,” the Devil said in the voice of a harpsichord, and reached down to stroke Sir Francis matted iron-color curls. Then he raised those indigo eyes. They examined Tom’s face for a moment, then flicked to the side and studied Will more carefully.

“Master Shakespeare the playmaker.”

Will nodded. Tom gripped his arm tightly enough to leave a perfect handprint through the cloth of Will’s padded murrey doublet. “I am.”

“Will?” Burbage stepped forward. From the corner of his eye, Will glimpsed Frances a half step behind him. Both stared at him and Tom as if they had grown donkey’s heads. “Who are you talking to?”

The Prince of Darkness took no notice of the player, except to wait with elegant, amused politeness until Burbage had finished speaking. “I have enjoyed your Titus Andronicus. And your A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

“I haven’t written a play by that name.” Your Highness? Grace? That can’t be right. Get thee behind me, Satan God help me, if you hear me. Who would have thought the Devil so polite?

“You shall. As good a play as Master Marley’s Faustus, which I saw in Exeter. I understand I gave poor Master Alleyn quite a fright.”

He smiled, showing even white teeth. “No matter. We will meet again.”

Tom’s death grip, impossibly, tightened. Will clamped his lips shut on a squeak. Burbage froze, hands outstretched as if he confronted a madman; Will wondered what Burbage saw. The Devil looked down at Sir Francis breathless corpse and dipped his hands into the dead man softly as if tickling trout from a stream. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, with an expression of pure concentration, and a moment later he smiled.

“Master Shakespeare. Master Walsingham. Good day.” A bit of a bow as he withdrew something small and fragile, gleaming likeopal, from Sir Francis breast. The Devil caught Will’s eye one last time, winked, and turned away.

Frances washed her father’s body with sponges and warm water, the valet and the gardener assisting. White linen lay at her feet, neatly folded, for the winding sheets. Will sat forward on a bench in the corner, his elbows on his knees, and rested his face in his hands.

“Richard. Thou sawst nothing?”

Burbage sighed, back on his heels. He held in his hands the cup that Will hadrefused to take. “I saw you talk at nothing and then nearly faint into frothing fit upon the floor, Will. I’m taking you to a doctor on the morrow, Simon Forman, if he’ll see us and you’ll not be playing for Gloriana today.”

Will shook his head. “Sir Francis dead, on Her Majesty’s critical birthday.” Will felt the power stirring in London’s bones as he had not since that long-ago Twelfth Night. “I’m in that play. I must be in that play, Richard. Can’t you feel it?”

He must be there, to bring his strength to bear directly on the enemy. No intermediaries this time. His urgency must have informed his voice. Burbage gave him a curious glance, and nodded slowly. “It’s like that?”

“It is.”

“What play?” Tom asked in what could have been innocent curiosity, but Will rather thought was shock.

“Richard III.”

“Wilt thou be seeing visions on the stage before Her Majesty?”

“Tom.” Will turned to Walsingham.

Tom scratched behind his ear, dark hair sliding across his high forehead.

“I saw it. Him. As well. The Devil was in this room, Richard. And he spoke to Will and I, passing polite, and pinched my cousin’s soul out between his fingers like a ring.”

Will and Burbage exchanged a long stare. Will nodded. Burbage swallowed once, his Adam’s apple bobbing under his pointed blond beard.

“He spoke to thee?”

“He said he’d seen Faustus in Exeter.”

“God have mercy. We need a priest,” Burbage said, but Will shook his head, glancing to Tomfor permission. Tom nodded.

“Richard, what would we tell him? We were at the deathbed of the Queen’s spymaster, buried these five years, and Lucifer Morningstar showed up to drag him like Faustus to Hell?”

“Ah.”

Tom turned Sir Francis signet between his fingers. “I wonder why Will and I saw him, and you and Cousin Frances did not.” Silence followed, heavy with the thin scent of morning, broken as a cock’s crow was answered by rivals.

“We can discuss it later.” Will heaved himself to his feet. “I wish householders would leave the chickens in the countryside. They’re overloud when a man sleeps of a morning.”

Burbage laughed, then looked at Sir Francis corpse, abashed. “But what would you do for eggs?”

“There’s swans on the Thames,” Will answered. “They’re tolerably silent.”

“They re also,” Burbage reminded, “the Queen’s.”

“Then let her charge tuppence an egg.”

Will managed scarce three dream-torn hours before the nones bell dragged him from under his prickly woolen blanket. He pissed, washed, and dressed for court with a fussy, practiced care that would have amused his wife. Tightening the points on loose breeches, Will resolved to gain weight, if he had to subsist on possets and cream. His hand trembled with exhaustion; he glared at it until the tremors subsided enough to get his sleeve buttoned, then poured ale and broke bread for his breakfast.

The bread caught in histhroat; he crumbled it into the ale and choked the mess down, grimacing. His shoulders ached. He swore under his breath and left by the garden gate, in a vile enough mood that he wanted a walk to calm himself before he had to face company.

Winding lane bustled. Will stepped around a woman whose dark orange skirts swayed over a farthingale, his left shoulder almost brushing the dark wood frontage of shops and houses under the overhang. Pale scars from that summer’s violent hailstorms marked the facade; they might take years to fade.

He at last turned westward on Leadenhall Street, following it out Aldgate and then south outside of the city wall so he would not have to walk within sight of the Tower gallows and its somber-feathered attendants.

The Queen was not at Westminster, but rather at her favorite palace in Greenwich. Will sought the barge that would carry the lord Chamberlain’s Men and their carts of props and costumes down the Thames; it was docked above the city, as convenient to the Theatre some two miles north as possible, without hauling carts through London. Burbage was aboard, eyes red-rimmed, hair damp. He eyed Will critically, a corner of his expressive mouth twitching upward, as Will came up the gangway. Will smiled at how Burbage found his frame between the pilings and the upturned poles at the front of the cart: a master player’s unconscious authority of whatever stage he trod.

“Slept?” Burbage asked.

“We’ll sleep in the grave,” Will answered.

Burbage coughed. “So long as we don’t die tonight.”

“On the stage?”

“Or after it.”

“The company is aboard?”

“But Kemp is late.”

“Kemp is drunk, you mean Kemp is late,” William Kemp called from the dockside. “Some of us hold our liquor better than others, sweet William. Now, Burbage drunk, I’d believe it. And you not drinking; tis put about that you’re unfriendly. Step aside and let your betters in the boat.”

“Not so much unfriendly as unhumored for it.” Will moved three steps towar dthe heavy-necked Suffolk who dozed at the center of the barge. These were the horses he grew up with, placid liver mares with flaxen manes braided over the brands at their crests.

Kemp danced up the gangplank backward, his sack thrown carelessly over his shoulder, looking at any moment as if he might fall. He never did, of course, and Will laughed. “I will write a clown as hero one of these plays, Will.”

“I will you to it, Will.” Kemp grinned and folded himself onto a pile of well-stuffed wool bags. Wherries and skiffs flitted across the sunlit surface of the Thames behind him. “Wake me in Greenwich.”

The barge slipped with the current between green muddy banks scattered with half-timbered or brick or stone houses that swam into view and subsided behind. The tide was with them, but Will’s belly rumbled for dinner before Greenwich Palace’s riverside face appeared, pink-red and white, leaden roofs gleaming obscurely. Towers and chimneys stood bravely against a blue September sky and the rich green of the trees.

The horror of the night before could have been but another pageant; devils and men dying in their own rot had no place in the same world as this concrete dignity.

The players barge passed through the water gate just as the Queen’s might, and Burbage clapped Will on the arm and grinned. Will pushed a hand through his hair and walked forward past the dozing mare, holding a rail, to watch as the barge bobbed up to the stair that ran down the bank to the landing.

“Lovely,” Kemp said over Will’s shoulder. “How do we get the mare and the cart up that?”

With difficulty, it proved, but they had made the river passage with hours to spare before the performance, and Will helped haul trunks with a light heart. His hands didn’t shake and his balance didn’t fail, although he was aware of Burbage’s supervision. In case I should glimpse a Devil, doubtlesss.Will punched his thigh with a fist, stilling a shiver. We re here to play a play.

Servants showed them within, through tapestried halls whose floors were covered like any housewife’s with a scatter of herbed rushes. The presence chamber was large, Queen Elizabeth’s chair already in place and identifiable by its weight of gilt and crimson cushions.

Burbage, son of a carpenter, got down on one knee among the rushes and poked his head under the stage as soonas their escort withdrew.

“Will, a light.”

Will looked up, and Kemp did too, but Kemp was the first one to go in search of a candle and spark. Will simply mounted the stair and tested the boardswith his weight, so that Burbage pulled back cursing and brushing sawdust out of his blond-red hair.

“Seems sturdy,” Will said, hiding a hesitation in his right leg that wanted to become a limp. Burbage opened his mouth to curse and sneezed instead, his eyes screwing into slits.

Edward, well bearded now and beyond playing girls, hauled rolls of painted cloth, stifling a laugh.

“As sturdy as thee, thou beggar.” Burbage levered himself up against thestage. “Twill serve. If thou dost not stomp like a carthorse.”

“What’s the hour?”

“Two of the clock. Her Majesty will enter after six.”

Burbage brushed fragments of rush from his knee. “So let us make haste.”

The sets were less even than what they used on the bare boards of the Theatre, but the rig to hold the painted backdrop took three cursing players to erect. Will stayed back, knowing he hadn’t the remaining strength to be more than an annoyance. Instead he sorted through trunks and laid out costumes and changes in the order they would be needed, taking advantage of a trestle that had been provided for the players convenience and concealed behind a red-and-green tapestry.

By the time servants came with lamps to augment the failing light from the windows, the whole improbable structure was cobbled together and stood up to Edward swinging on the crossbeam to test its strength. The players tidied themselves and dressed and hastily ate, beer and bread and a bit of cold meat.

We’ll have an appetite for our suppers,Will thought, pinning gold lace with his fingers while Will Sly basted it. They were just finishing when the lord Chamberlain arrived, his starched ruff standing high under a gray fringe of beard. Lord Hunsdon wore a black doublet fretted with golden stitchery, a sapphire glinting almost black on the little finger of his broad left hand. He drew up a few steps short of Burbage, who hopped quickly down from the stage and bowed. Will thrust the mended costume at Sly and moved to flank Burbage, bowing also.

“Master Burbage, Master Shakespeare. Is all in order?”

“My lord.” Burbage glanced at Will, who nodded. “All is well.”

“Expect Her Majesty within the hour. The court will be admitted first: the players may stand at the back of the reception line. Where are your liveries?”

“Ready, my lord.”

Lord Hunsdon nodded. His eye caught Will’s. “Master Shakespeare.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“I must speak with you a moment.” His gesture made it plain he meant for Will to follow him, so Will fell in behind.

Hunsdon lowered his voice as they walked to the center of the presence chamber, far from the tapestried walls. He paused beside a heap of jewel-toned cushions intended to provide comfort to the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting as they sat upon the floor.

“Tell me what you saw last night, William.”

Will looked up, surprised. “My lord, how did you hear?”

Hunsdon just smiled.

“I believe I saw the Prince of Darkness. My lord.”

“Well, I cannot say Sir Francis lived in a good expectation of God’s eternal grace, but that is unsettling. And a bad omen on top of ill auguries, and Dee’s horoscope for the coming year.” Hunsdon rubbed his chin one-handed, hard enough that Will heard the wiry rasp of threads of beard against hiss kin.

“This is the Queen’s nine-times-seventh birth day, and Dr. Dee’s charts indicate that it will be an auspicious night to bring forces to bear against her such as we have not yet encountered.”

“Worse than the plague?” No answer but a level look, and Will swallowed and glanced up at the beamed ceiling, far overhead.

“Yes. What think you of Tom Walsingham?” A level look from the lord Chamberlain. Kit trusted him. But that wasn’t what Hunsdon asked. Will closed his eyes, feeling in a pocket for the slick outline of his now-habitual shilling. He turned it in his fingers, staring down in thought.

[Mine impression of him is very fair, my lord. Quick to act. Protective of those around him.”

“Could he serve his Queen?”

“As well as any man, I warrant, although I’m not sure he has his cousin’s …”

Hunsdon, inimitably plainspoken, smiled. “Ruthlessness?”

“Yes.”

“That can be achieved. You may find yourself opposed tonight.”

“My lord, how does one oppose a play?”

Hunsdon’s elaborate doublet, covered by a gown, rose and fell over the narrow old-man’s shoulders it padded. He knotted his fingers to control their palsied trembling; Will looked away.

“On a day when devils arise from Hell to pull down our allies, anything is possible.” He stepped away, turned back, the pointed tip of his beard quivering. “Long live the Queen.”

“Long live the Queen,” Will replied.

16 August 1596

I write not knowing if I will have the courage to send this, or, if I attempt its dispatch, if or when it may reach thee. Forgive the abomination of my much distorted secretary’s hand: I scribble this missive in the belly of Tom Walsingham’s coach, where I have begged a ride for as thou knowst I am no assured horseman & I have need of very much haste: we were touring in Kent near Tom’s house when the news came, for the new lord Chamberlain has closed London’s playhouses. I race ahead. I race ahead. I may burn it, the letter I mean: I have no secret inks & no privacy in which to use them, although I suppose I could thrust my quill into an onion & squeeze the milk thereof. But that will come later. First I must acquaint thee with a year & two months that have passed since last we spoke. Thou hast been true to thy word in keeping from me, & I have not wished to trouble thee with my letters. Forgive me for writing now: I am very much in need of the comfort of thy presence in this hour; Sir Francis is dead. I do not know if thou wilt have heard, he passed this Sep. previous, attended by devils as befits the sorcery he oversaw. God forgives not crimes in good cause. The devil is fair; if thou shouldst encounter him be not o’erawed by his beauty, as I was. The morn of that night lord Hunsdon’s Men no, we were still at that date the lord Chamberlain’s Men & myself did betake us to Greenwich, where we performed Richard III before the Queen & her court to much approval. It was her anniversary of her birth, & my master commended me to have extra care in the performance, that forces might oppose us. Kit, they did. It is Essex & his troupe, and I think them allied to Baines & yr Inquisitor. The Queen might have died that night or fallen ill: it was a terrible thing, a black miasma that seemed to overtake the performance, made us stumble lines & the prompter lose his place. I could feel it, as if I waded the current when the Thames drops with the tide & thou canst walk the breadth standing upright, the water not even cresting thy knee, much to the dismay of the watermen. But I contrived to trip on a board that was really not so loose after all & drop a bladder of pig’s blood over Essex & some book he was reading in his lap, where he sat beside the stage. Her Majesty, thankfully, was unstained. With that action came an easing of the tide & brief interruption of the play although Her Majesty being much amused insisted we continue to completion. Much to Essex’s dismay. The ensuing acts proceeded smoothly, & all could recall their lines as necessary. That little action has earned me Oxford’s enmity: I believe he has decided with Sir Francis death of which he seemed unaccountably early advised, for I know neither Tom Walsingham, Burghley, Burbage, nor the lord Chamberlain informed him that he may well end his pretense of alliance with us & show his true colors in courting Essex. Fortunately with lord Hunsdon’s protection I shall be safe. Our little magic worked, Essex’s counterspell so I believe it being thwarted, & our gracious Queen was in very good spirits after & consented even to dance with rude players & commend her ladies likewise, for as I am sure thou knowest she is a great dancer esp. of galliards. Forgive thee me if I ramble overmuch. I find the core of this tale wiggles from my quill like a fish in weir; penned, but seeking escape. In November of last year, a book was published which caused great furor, but it seemed the Queen’s will & a playmender’s small magics still held all things concise. That book was called A Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England, & dedicated to Essex, which I am sure thou wilt see as the bold move on the part of his supporters it was. While I am not o’ermerry at the thought of James VI as our next King, there are those in mine acquaintance who think it no bad thing, & the Queen herself seems to have made him the best of a bad lot. Oh, I shall have to burn this letter, my friend & surely he would be better than that popinjay Essex, whose sole recommendation is that Gloriana once thought him handsome. The fuss that followed was something to behold. My distant cousins Robert Catesby and Francis Tresham were jailed in London with many Catholics and suspected Essex sympathizers; I did make shift to see them fed & clothed during their stay at the Queen’s hostelry, although it was not so long as some.

Still our grip held steady, & I felt it safe to return to Annie & my children for lent when the playhouses were closed; I had seen to Robin and Francis comfort, & all in London quiet. & I thank the lord my God for the grace that I did that thing. Oh, Kit. London is terrible. I cannot know what has changed, or how what we have done was broken, but I feel the power gone out of our mighty lines & I feel Oxford must have poets to oppose us. Spenser is returned to London: lord Hunsdon has informed me that Edmund is one of ours & always has been (I wonder at the secrets kept & the acts of one hand kept hidden from the other, but who can truly trust whom in a game where crowns are hostage?), but I fear he is not well; although he struggles to complete his Faerie Queen I cannot feel but that we will soon lose his light. There is famine in the streets: it is all I can do to provide for Annie, as so many starve that there are carts come to collect the bodies as in a plague year. Babes swim not in their mother’s blood, but rather starve & sicken for there is no milk at the breast no, I will write no more of it. On Easter Sunday, Burghley saw men taken into service through the timely expedient of impressing those able-bodied who attended Easter service for communion, as is of course required by law. England’s stronghold at Calais is fallen to the Spanish: I see thy Fray Xalbador’s hand in this event. Drake’s ship has returned: Drake has not, & it has very much taken the heart out of our Queen that her other Sir Francis is dead. Essex won some favor, the knave, taking a fleet to Cadiz by leave of thine old patron the lord Admiral, where they sacked that Spanish city. There is a new playmaker in London, a University man & the son of a bricklayer or some would have it the posthumous son of a priest. I have enclosed some of his pages: he fancies himself a comedian. His name is Jonson, & I have some thought of bringing him into the fold if I can prove he is not Essex’s man. Not easy to do, as I myself have served Southampton a man’s patron does not show his heart. Chapman is too pompous to trust. Also there is a man Spencer, Gabriel is his Christian name, who is not related to Edmund the poet & who seems to wish to attach himself to lord Hunsdon’s Men. I have spoken to Richard of it. There are players & there are players, & I suspect this one is both. Thou wilt laugh to learn that I am under interdict with Francis Langley, owner of the Swan, by a Southwark justice of the peace, one William Gardner, who says we have threatened him bodily. I have not done so, but thou mayst be assured I will see to it does he trouble us further. These are petty lawsuits, & I, thou seest my hand is fairer now, & I write this by candlelight in the Davenant’s Inn where I rest my night before resuming my pell-mell flight on the morrow but I believe this Gardner is one of the whoresons in Poley’s employ. Of course if Oxford no longer believes the players under control such petty harassments can only continue. & since the death of Henry Carey & his son George’s accession to his place as lord Hunsdon we are less secure. The new lord Chamberlain, Cobham, is of Puritan sympathies, & he would the playhouses closed, torn down, & I think the players & playmenders hung, drawn, & quartered. Or at least whipped through the town. I wonder at how much of our famine is his doing, he must be Theirs. It is down to Burghley now, & the Queen still loves him, but he is ill, Kit, & in his dotage he grows enamored of oppressing the Catholics rather than defending his Gloriana. I am desperate. Soon it shall be only Tom, lord Hunsdon, Robert Cecil, & myself. We are not the men our forerunners were… . No. I will not send thee this letter. I will write it for mine ease of spirit & I will burn it, for I will not tempt thee with troubles to return to a world that thou hast sanely left. We starve & we bleed & we die. & yet the only grief in my heart that is too deep for speaking, the thing that I must write now & never send to thee. The reason I am again in thy Tom’s coach rattling over unsanded roads & Roman ditches, & yet there is no haste that can carry me home in time. I cannot write these words. Kit, I am going home to Stratford because my son is dead. Dead seven days now of this writing. Dead & in the ground before I knew of it. Kit, what have I done?