Ink and Steel

Act I, scene i

O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Othello

“Will”.

“What?” The leather-bound planken door swung open; the playmaker lifted his head from the cradle of his fingers. He cursed as the hastily cut quill snagged lank strands, spattering brown-black iron gall across his hand, his cuff, and the scribbled page. “Richard, you come hand in hand with fortunetonight. You did perchance bring wine?”

“No such luck.” Burbage shut the door, then hooked a battered stool from beside Will’s unmade bedstead with one booted toe and perched without waiting to be asked. He grunted as he leaned forward, elbow on knee, and tugged his doublet straight. “Tis early for wine, and I’m in no mood for a public house and ale with my bread. So—” he thumped a pottery bottle on the trestle —“it’ll have to be spirits.”

“Morning?” Will set down the handkerchief with which he’d been dabbing his sleeve and looked up at a shuttered window. Beside his elbow, a fat candle guttered, and his commonplace book was propped open before it.

“Morning. You’ve worked the night through. And your chamber-mate … won’t be returning.”

Will shrugged. He hadn’t noticed the hour, though the absence weighed on him. Or not the absence—Kit was often at the beck of patrons or conquests— but the irrevocability of it.

Burbage accepted his silence. “Have you cups?”

Will stood and moved to a livery cupboard, patched shoe scuffing rough boards. “What ails you, friend?” He turned with two leather tankards in his hand and came around the front of the table.

Burbage dragged the cork from the bottle with his thumbs and poured. “To Kit.”

Will lifted the second cup and held it, wincing, below his nose. “To Kit.” He closed his eyes on an image of a man smug as a preening cat and soaked in his own red blood. Will drank, leaning a hip against the table as if it were too much effort to reclaim his chair. “You’ll have heard the rumors he was working for the Papists, or the Crown.”

“I would not hazard myself to hazard a guess,” Burbage replied, hooking a boot heel over a rung. “It’s noised about that it was a drunken brawl, and Kit’s been in his cups of late, as poets sometimes go when they’ve had a little triumph…” Jokingly, he reached as if to pull the tankard from Will’s hand, and Will shielded it deftly. “But”, Burbage continued, “Kyd gave evidence against him, and Kit was still at liberty, as Kit seemed to stay no matter the charge levied against him. So there’s something there. What’s the manuscript?”

“Titus Andronicus.”

“Still? The plague will have us closed into winter, Will. It’s five thousand dead already. And Titus a terrible story. We need comedy, not blood. If we ever see a stage again.”

“It’s not the story,” Will answered.

Burbage was a shareholder in the troupe lord Strange’s Men and as such he was half Will’s employer.

The brandy tingled on the back of Will’s throat and his tongue felt thick. Still, he reckoned even harsh spirits a more welcome mouthful than blood. Kit killed. Would he risk everything … ? But Kit had been rash. And brilliant, and outrageous, and flamboyant. And young. Two months older than Will, who was just barely twenty-nine. He sipped again.

“They can’t all be genius.” Burbage laughed and tipped his mug. “Did you ever pause to wonder why not?”

Oh, the brandy was making Will honest. “Heady stuff,” he commented. “If my skill were equal mine ambition, Richard” Will shook his head. “What will we do for money if the playhouses can’t open? How long will lord Strange champion players who cannot play? Anne and my children must eat.” He’d picked up the quill. He turned it over, admiring the way candlelight caught in its ink-spotted vanes.

Burbage waved the bottle between his nose and the pen. “Have another drink, Will.”

“I’ve a play to write.”

“Which opens tomorrow, doubtless?”

“ And poor Kit undeserving of a wake? Unfair!” But Will lifted the tankard and breathed the smoky fumes deep, feeling as though they seared his brain. “Poor Kit… ”.

“Indeed. Would serve your Queen so, Will? Serve her to the death?”

That brought him up short. “Is that what poor Marley did? Not stabbed for treason, or murdered by his conspirators before he could name their names. Nor killed for his,” Will lowered his voice “—atheism, and the talk of …” He drank again, but held his hand over his cup when Burbage would have filled it. “I can’t write.”

“Drink will fix it.”

Will did not uncover his tankard. “Drink fixes little, and what it doth fix can oft be not unfixed again.”

“Ah.” Burbage shifted his attention to his own cup as Will stood and paced. “In vino veritas. Is a Queen worth risking your life for, Will?”

“Why ask you these things of me?” Splinters curled from the wainscot shelf. Years of dry heat and creeping chill had cracked the wood long and deep between cheap plaster. Will picked spindled wood with one ink stained fingernail. He’d papered the walls with broadsheets, which also peeled. A Queen. The idea of a Queen… .

“The reality not worth your time?”

Burbage leaned on the wall, brandy-sharp breath hot on Will’s cheek. He thrust Will’s cup into his hand; Will took it by reflex.

“It’s her got Kit killed, isn’t it? Blood and a knife in the face. That’s what Queens get you.”

“Treason,” Will whispered.

Burbage’s face was flushed, his cheeks hot, red-blond hair straggled down in his too-bright eyes. Like a man fevered. Like a man mad.

“You speak treason.” His hands were numb. The tankard slipped out of his fingers, and the brandy made a stream that glistened in the candlelight like liquid amber as it fell. The stink filled his room, sharp as the bile rising up Will’s throat. “That’s treason, man!”

“Treason or truth? A ragged old slattern, belike. Bastard, excommunicate daughter of a fat pig of a glutton, a man who might have invented lust and greed he liked them so well…”.

Will’s hand acted before his mind got behind it; he struck Burbage across the face, a spinning slack-handed blow. Drunker than he’d thought, he overreached; the fallen tankard dented under his knee as he landed on it.

Fie! Brandy soaked his stocking. At least he thought it brandy, and not blood.

“Get from me!” Will pointed at the door with a trembling hand, though the player towered over him. “I’ll find another company an those are your sentiments!”

But Burbage, pink-cheeked from the blow, extended his own hand to help Will to his feet. Will could only stare at it.

“Your eloquence does desert you when you’re drunk enough. On your feet, man. You’ve passed the test.”

“Test?” Will wobbled up, one hand on the wall, refusing Burbage’s aid. “You’ve maligned the Queen.”

Burbage winked stagily, while Will limped to his abandoned stool. “Her Majesty would smile on it. Come.”

“I’ll go nowhere with you until you make yourself plain.” A burning sting told Will the brandy had found a cut under his stocking. “You’ve bloodied me.”

“I’ll pay the danegeld, Burbage answered. I can’t tell you, Will. You have to come meet them.”

“Who?” Blood soaked through light-colored wool, but only a drop. Will winced and picked cloth away from the cut.

“Your coconspirators.”

Will looked up as Burbage rested a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Didst not hear me say?”

“I heard thee clear”, Burbage answered. “Since thou’rt so loyal then, come on with me and find why Marley was killed. The rumors are true, Will: he was a Queen’s Man, sure.”

Will blinked. His skull was still thick with drink, though the pain cut through it somewhat. “What do you need me for?”

Burbage smiled, and Will thought he saw the edge of pity in it. “Will. To take his place.”

Will followed Burbage into a cool, overcast morning. The gutters hadn’t yet begun to stink, but Burbage picked his way fastidiously, one arm linked through Will’s to steer the still-unsteady playmaker across a maze of slick cobbles and night soil.

“Why not go home to Stratford-upon-Avon?” he asked. “Go back to merchanting. Look at this place: half the shops shuttered, the playhouses closed. I’m a player. And a playmaker. Besides….”

They passed a hurrying woman in russet homespun, her skirts kilted up and a basket over her arm. She clutched a clove-studded lemon to her nose, and Burbage snorted as she shied away from them.

“I have a wife and children in Stratford.”

“A player? Might as well be a leper, for all the respect they give us,” Burbage pointed out companionably, turning to watch the servant or goodwife pass. Her shoulders stiffened and she walked faster. Burbage looked down and grinned, then tilted his face up at Will.

“I’d die there. Suffocate under dry goods.”

“You’ll suffocate under vermin here.” Burbage tugged him out of the path of a trio of rangy yellow and fawn dogs in low-tailed pursuit of a sleek, scurrying rat. “If the money concerns you, go home.

I need this, Richard. Your father’s a playhouse owner. You’ve grown up with it. For me…”.

“It’s worth abandoning wealth and family?”

“I support them,” Will answered, ignoring the twist of guilt his friend’ words brought. Slops spattered down behind them, and Will stepped into the shelter of an overhang, Burbage following with an arm still linked.

“I’ll bring them to London once I make a success.”

“Bring them to this?” Burbage dropped Will’s arm, his gesture expansive.

Will admired how Burbage framed himself against the darkness of a brown-painted door in a pale facade, sweeping his arm up beside his hat, every inch the unconscious professional. Will shook his head. Burbage was younger. Younger, but raised to the theatre and knowing in his bones things Will struggled to learn.

“Keep them home, Will. Away from the plague and the filth. I’d go backto Stratford myself, if I could.”

“I cannot see you without London as a backdrop. As I cannot see myself on any other stage. And I need to write, Richard. The stories press me.”

“Then you re stuck.” Burbage led him out of the narrower streets of Southwark, toward a more open lane where a few trees straggled betweenmassive houses. Will blinked as sunlight abraded his eyes. “Well and truly.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To solve all your small problems and grant you large ones.” Burbage produced a heavy key and unlocked a round-topped wooden gate in the garden wall of a mortared brick dwelling. Will glimpsed green leaves and blossoms beyond; a sweet scent put him in mindof a haymow.

“This is Francis langley’s house. The owner of the Swan. The moneylender.”

Burbage ignored the comment, holding the gate to let Will pass. “You’ll need to find a way to make it appear that the money comes from legitimate sources, and not be seen to be wealthier than the run of playmakers, at least here in London. Can your Annie run a business as well as a household?”

“Money? My Annie can run… my lords!” The grass was wet with nighttime rain under his knee as his bow turned into a stagger and he swept his hat from his head. Will put a hand down and tried to make it look intentional. Burbage laughed behind him as he closed and locked the gate.

“Oh, that was unkind of me, Will,” Burbage said as a heavy hand fell on Will’s shoulder.

Will angled his head. The hand wasn’t Burbage s. Neither was the following voice. “On your feet, William Shakespeare: we speak as the Knights of the Round Table here. In defense of their Sovereign, all men are equal. And that’s a little excessive even if we weren't.”

“My lord.” But Will got to his feet and looked into the downturned eyes of Edward de Vere. Over his left shoulder, William Cecil, the Baron Burghley and the lord Treasurer, bulked large in embroidered brocade, side by side with the lord Chamberlain, lord Hunsdon. Doctor Lopez, the Queen’s Physician, loomed sallow and cadaverous a little behind them. And Sir Francis Walsingham stood narrow and ascetic on the right, leaning against the wall among the espaliered branches of a fruit tree. Heavy dark sleeves dripped from bony wrists; he tossed a lemon idly in one hand.

Will’s jaw slackened, words tumbling from his tongue as he rose to his feet, looked to Burbage for reassurance. “A ghost…”

“Merely, the Queen’s dead spymaster and Secretary of State,” he replied, wry sympathy informing his tone, “—a startling resemblance to one, Master William Shakespeare. I’m both Walsingham and quick, I assure you. And lucky to be. I’ve been in hiding these three years past, that my Queen’s enemies may think they succeeded in removing me. But Lopez here preserved my life.”

The doctor bowed, a heavy ruby ring glinting on his hand, while Walsingham drew a breath. Before Will could speak, the spymaster made a shift of direction quick and forked as lightning. “You know that Marley studied with John Dee, the astronomer.”

“There are rumors.”

“There frequently are.” Oxford stepped away as Walsingham came closer. Burghley, a massive shape in rustling brocade, folded his hands before his ample belly.

Will felt their eyes running questions up and down his frame.

“The rumors are true. Marley was well, no magician. But a playmaker with an art for it, and a loyalty to Britannia.”

“I had heard he was associated with the Catholics.”

“Where a man goes, and what a man seems to do, are not always the truest indications of a man’s loyalties.”

“You want an apologist,” Will said on a rush of breath he hadn’t known he held. “I can do that, in service to Gloriana.”

“Ah,” Burghley answered. “Would it were so meet and simple. Aye, that’s half what we need of you. The other half is a sort of science, or philosophy.”

“Will saw the deaf old man’s eyes trained on his lips as he waited for Will to answer. “Black Art? You can’t be seriously … My lord Treasurer,” Will finished, suddenly aware that the nobleman was eyeing him quite seriously indeed, a small smile rounding Burghley’s cheeks under the white carpet of his beard.

Will raised a hand to press to his breast, realized his action half completed, and let the hand fall again.

“Oh, I can,” Burghley responded. “And not Black at all. Just the gentle art of persuasion, my shake-spear.”

A sharp scent of citron filled the walled garden, a drift of coolness brushing Will’s hand. Citrus oil: Walsingham had driven a thumbnail sharp as a knife into the rind of the lemon. He tugged, revealing white pith and bright pulp. The pearls of oil in the rind burst and misted, hanging on the soft moist air.

“Like persuading lemons to fruit in May,” Walsingham said, offering half the rent fruit to Will. Will took it numbly. The skin was still warm with the touch of Walsingham shand, and Will followed the gesture of that hand toward the espaliered tree.

He blinked. Lemons hung along one branch in late-summer profusion, olives on another. The third grew heavy with limes.

“Just an art,” Walsingham said. “Like grafting and gardening. In London, you can make surprising things grow.”

“You want me to hide spells in my plays? As Marley is said to have done in Faustus?”

“We want you to change hearts and raise the rabble to the old tales of kings and princes and ladies fair. To show the danger of damn’d ambition, and the virtue of keeping one’s troth. As Kit did.”

“I cannot write as Kit did.”

“You will,” Lord Hunsdon promised. “You’ve a gift in you, man in your Comedy of Errors, and your Henry VI. You’ll write as Kit did, and better.”

“And wind up like Kit as well, no doubt, with a knife in the eye.”

Henry was half Marley’s, Will thought, but didn’t correct the lord Chamberlain. Juice dripped over Will’s hand, but Will did not raise the fruit to his mouth.

“There is that risk,” Oxford allowed. A light wind ruffled his fine hair as the day brightened and warmed. A dove greeted the sunlight with cooing, and starlings fluttered on the grass.

“We have enemies.” Lopez’s accent was less than Will had imagined. He tucked his hands inside the drooping sleeves of his black robe, posture imperious, expression cold. “Mistake it not. Our society was quite infested by traitors, loyal to Spanish Philip or to themselves. We’ve picked them from the ranks, but Kit is not the first of our number to fall to their machinations.”

Perhaps it was the chill in Lopez’s manner, the dismissal. But Will rallied against it, when he might have bent under greater sympathy.

“It’s whispered in the kitchens, Doctor, that your swarthy hand was behind the poisoning of Walsingham.”

“Aye,” said Lopez. “And who spreads the whispers, playmender?”

“Will,” Burbage whispered.

“Won't.”

Burbage took a step back. Will felt six men lean toward him. “Won’t wind up like Kit,” he amended. “I mean to die in mine own bed, warm and comforted. There’s no way out of this once I’ve accepted, is there?”

“There’s no way out of it now, Walsingham said kindly. I won’t lie to you: we stand only for Elizabeth, and nothing else. No Church or love of God or man may come between us and the love of our Queen. Our enemies stand against us with weapons fouler than a knife in the eye.”

“What? Cannon? Sedition? Gunpowder?”

“Plague,” Hunsdon answered. “Poison. Sorcery. Politics. The wiles of men who should be removed from secular things; the Catholic and Puritan factions who plot against the Queen are their dupes.”

“Puritans and Sorcery? Odd bedmates indeed.”

“I’ve seen odder, Walsingham replied, a shadow darkening his brow. “They are puppeted by shadowy hands. Including, it seems, hands I have trusted in the past.” Walsingham’s gaze dropped to the lemon in his hand. He raised it to his mouth, lips pursing tight when he tasted the juice.

Will contemplated his own half fruit. “And all I must do is write plays?”

“All you must do,” Burbage answered when no one else would, “—is write plays. And love Gloriana. Welcome to the Prometheus Club, Master Shakespeare. Long live the Queen.”

When he bit down, Will tasted shocking sour and bitterness, and the salt of Walsingham’s hand.