Schitt and I were left looking at one another.

‘Looks like we’re on the same side, Miss Next.’

‘Sadly,’ I replied disdainfully. ‘You want the Prose Portal. I want my uncle back. Acheron has to be destroyed before either of us gets what we want. Until then we’ll work together.’

‘A useful and happy union,’ replied Schitt with anything but happiness on his mind.

I pressed a finger to his tie.

‘Understand this, Mr Schitt. You may have might in your back pocket but I have right in mine. Believe me when I say I will do anything to protect my family. Do you understand?’

Schitt looked at me coldly.

‘Don’t try to threaten me, Miss Next. I could have you posted to the Lerwick LiteraTec office quicker than you can say “Swift”. Remember that. You’re here because you’re good at what you do. Same reason as me. We are more alike than you think. Good-day, Miss Next.’

A quick search revealed eighty-four towns and villages in Wales named Penderyn. There were twice as many streets and the same number again of pubs, clubs and associations. It wasn’t surprising there were so many; Die Penderyn had been executed in 1831 for wounding a soldier during the Merthyr riots—he was innocent and so became the first martyr of the Welsh rising and something of a figurehead for the republican struggle. Even if Goliath could infiltrate Wales, they wouldn’t know which Penderyn to start with. Clearly, this was going to take some time.

Tired, I left to go home. I picked up my car from the garage, where they had managed to replace the front axle, shoehorn in a new engine and repair the bullet holes, some of which had come perilously close. I rolled up at the Finis Hotel as a Clipper-class airship droned slowly overhead. Dusk was just settling and the navigation lights on either side of the huge airship blinked languidly in the evening sky. It was an elegant sight, the ten propellers beating the air with a rhythmic hum; during the day an airship could eclipse the sun. I stepped inside the hotel. The Milton conference was over and Liz welcomed me now as a friend rather than as a guest.

‘Good evening, Miss Next. All well?’

‘Not really.’ I smiled. ‘But thanks for asking.’

‘Your dodo arrived this evening,’ announced Liz. ‘He’s in Kennel five. News travels fast; the Swindon Dodo Fanciers have been up already. They said he was a very rare Version one or something—they want you to call them.’

‘He’s a 1.2,’ I murmured absently. Dodos weren’t high on my list of priorities right now. I paused for a moment. Liz sensed my indecision.

‘Can I get you anything?’

‘Has, er, Mr Parke-Laine called?’

‘No. Were you expecting him to?’

‘No—not really. If he calls, I’m in the Cheshire Cat if not my room. If you can’t find me, can you ask him to call again in half an hour?’

‘Why don’t I just send a car to fetch him?’

‘Oh God, is it that obvious?’

Liz nodded her head.

‘He’s getting married.’

‘But not to you?’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Me too. Has anyone ever asked you to marry them?’

‘Sure.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said: “Ask me again when you get out.”‘

‘Did he?’

‘No.’

I checked in with Pickwick, who seemed to have settled in well. He made excited plock plock noises when he saw me. Contradicting the theories of experts, dodos had turned out to be surprisingly intelligent and quite agile—the ungainly bird of common legend was quite wrong. I gave him some peanuts and smuggled him up to my room under a coat. It wasn’t that the kennels were dirty or anything; I just didn’t want him to be alone. I put his favourite rug in the bath to give him somewhere to roost and laid out some paper. I told him I’d move him to my mother’s the following day, then left him staring out of the window at the cars in the carpark.

‘Good evening, miss,’ said the barman in the Cheshire Cat. ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’

‘Because there is a “B” in “both”?’

‘Very good. Half of Vorpal’s special, was it?’

‘You must be kidding. Gin and tonic. A double.’

He smiled and turned to the optics.

‘Police?’

‘SpecOps.’

‘LiteraTec?’

‘Yup.’

I took my drink.

‘I trained to be a LiteraTec,’ he said wistfully. ‘Made it to cadetship.’

‘What happened?’

‘My girlfriend was a militant Marlovian. She converted some Will-Speak machines to quote from Tamburlaine and I was implicated when she was nabbed. And that was that. Not even the military would take me.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Chris.’

‘Thursday.’

We shook hands.

‘I can only speak from experience, Chris, but I’ve been in the military and SpecOps and you should be thanking your girlfriend.’

‘I do,’ hastened Chris. ‘Every day. We’re married now and have two kids. I do this bar job in the evenings and run the Swindon branch of the Kit Marlowe Society during the day. We have almost four thousand members. Not bad for an Elizabethan forger, murderer, gambler and atheist.’

‘There are some who say he might have written the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare.’

Chris was taken aback. He was suspicious, too.

‘I’m not sure I should be discussing this with a LiteraTec.’

‘There’s no law against discussion, Chris. Who do you think we are, the thought police?’

‘No, that’s SO-2 isn’t it?’

‘But about Marlowe—?’

Chris lowered his voice.

‘Okay. I think Marlowe might have written the plays. He was undoubtedly a brilliant playwright, as Faust, Tamburlaine and Edward II would attest. He was the only person of his age who could have actually done it. Forget Bacon and Oxford; Marlowe has to be the odds-on favourite.’

‘But Marlowe was murdered in 1593,’ I replied slowly. ‘Most of the plays were written after that.’

Chris looked at me and lowered his voice.

‘Sure. If he died in the bar fight that day.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘It’s possible his death was faked.’

‘Why?’

Chris took a deep breath. This was a subject he knew something about.

‘Remember that Elizabeth was a Protestant queen. Anything like atheism or papism would deny the authority of the Protestant Church and the Queen as the head.’

‘Treason,’ I murmured. ‘A capital offence.’

‘Exactly. In April 1593 the Privy Council arrested one Thomas Kyd in connection with some anti-government pamphleteering. When his rooms were searched they revealed some atheistic writings.’

‘So?’

‘Kyd fingered Marlowe. Said Marlowe had written them two years ago when they were rooming together. Marlowe was arrested and questioned on 18 May 1593; he was freed on bail so presumably there wasn’t enough evidence to commit him for trial.’

‘What about his friendship with Walsingham?’ I asked.

‘I was coming to that. Walsingham had an influential position within the secret service; they had known each other for a number of years. With more evidence arriving daily against Marlowe, his arrest seemed inevitable. But on the morning of 30 May, Marlowe is killed in a bar brawl, apparently over an unpaid bill.’

‘Very convenient.’

‘Very. It’s my belief that Walsingham faked his friend’s death. The three men in the tavern were all in his pay. He bribed the coroner and Marlowe set up Shakespeare as the front man. Will, an impoverished actor who knew Marlowe from his days at the Shoreditch theatre, probably leaped at the chance to make some money; his career seems to have taken off as Marlowe’s ended.’

‘It’s an interesting theory. But wasn’t Venus and Adonis published a couple of months before Marlowe’s death? Earlier even than Kyd’s arrest?’

Chris coughed.

‘Good point. All I can say is that the plot must have been hatched somewhat ahead of time, or that records have been muddled.’