The coming of April Elgar was harbingered by Enderby's coming onto the top sheet of his Holiday Inn bed. So, at least, he was to surmise. The lavish ejaculation was unwonted. It woke him at the useless hour of 4 a.m. Remarkable in man of your age, Enderby. He had not been dreaming of anything very specific. Later he was to see this as confirmation of the power of a woman he had not even seen and knew to be, which was pretty far away, in Miami, Florida. But she was having her bags packed for Terrebasse, Indiana, or rather for the Sheraton Hotel in Indianapolis, she being above Holiday Inns. And she was shooting out powerful erotic rays.

Holiday Inn bedrooms always had two beds, a thoughtful provision. Before getting into the so far untouched dry one, Enderby tugged the wet sheet free of its anchorage and then wondered what to do with it. Leave it to dry naturally and it would dry crinkled, announcing to the world of gossipy chambermaids the poverty of Enderby's sexual life. So he soaked the defiled patch in hot water and stretched it over a flat matt heat source. Then, naked as he was, he put on his glasses to examine himself with some care. There was no prevision in this: it was the marginal response to a marginally erotic situation, to wit an unpurposed seminal discharge. But there was also the matter of a long bathroom mirror. In Tangiers he had only a round shaving glass. Here you were cordially invited to look at yourself all over, no extra charge. He looked with interest at a naked man with spectacles on and no teeth in. This latter deficiency he fumblingly rectified. Better, but how much better?

There was fat there, but it was not slugwhite fat. He had got brown in Tangiers. Occasionally he climbed to the roof of La Belle Mer to sun himself. The sun was there and might as well be used. Bronzedness had a flattening effect: the Enderby that looked with interest and even faint approval out of the mirror was a less three-dimensional Enderby than the one he had occasionally seen before in the old days, that was to say, in other bathrooms. The encroaching baldness he did not approve. There were one or two members of the troupe who wore cowboy hats all the time, and one who wore a kind of Balaclava helmet of leather with earflaps. But they all had ample uncombed hair beneath. There was a shop near to the hotel with toupees in it. There was also, in Enderby's suitcase, a flat tout's cap with a peak that went back a long way and whose provenance was now very vague. The cook Arry he had known so long ago? Cut out a art shairped croutong with a art cootter. For piling on damson jelly as an accompaniment to joogged air. Enderby removed his spectacles and dug the cap out. Naked, he squinted at himself with the cap on. Anything went down all right in this mad America.

Enderby turned up at the theater next morning but one in the tout's cap and an overcoat of faded plum. He removed the overcoat to reveal blue linen trousers, an open yellow shirt with crimson foulard and a seagreen cardigan. He wore no spectacles. He could see enough, and some things he did not wish to see – the face of Toplady in full definition, for instance. He had to read a new scene to Toplady. There was no music in it really, so Silversmith did not have to be there. Before Will's sexual triumph following Richard III it had been decided to bring in brief homosexuality, espionage, violence and frightful death, in other words Christopher Marlowe. This was to scare Will and make him pack his and Hamnet's traps and ride back to Stratford, but then the Earl of Southampton was to appear and tell him not to. That would lead to Dark Lady and Southampton taking her from Will and her getting mixed up with the revolutionary party led by Essex. Toplady sat behind his desk apparently wondering at Enderby's new appearance while Enderby read aloud. First, though, Enderby sort of sang.

"There will we sit upon the rocks

And see the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals."

"Oh, good that, you must admit," says Marlowe. "Will Shakespeare here could not do as well."

"Give me time."

"Give us all time," says Frizer.

"Amen," says Skeres. "But for some the time is ordained to be short."

"Ah," says Marlowe, "very mystical and occult."

"All may be clarified in time," says Poley. "Though not, of course, to everyone. You have worn a good cloak, Kit."

"From the best tailor," says Marlowe.

"I mean," says Poley, "the figurative cloak of your pretty songs about shepherds, and your loud brawling stageplays and your even louder atheism that the Privy Council chooses to ignore."

"Ignore?" says Marlowe. "I have been up before the Privy Council but recently. A matter of some blasphemous papers found in Tom Kyd's rooms. You know Tom Kyd, Will?"

"He wrote one good play," says Will. "The Spanish Tragedy."

The three men titter, and Will wonders why. Skeres says:

"That is not too apt. Much depends on what happens in the last scene. It is too soon to talk of the Spanish tragedy."

"Come, come," says Frizer, "this is intended to be a merry meeting. Give me the lute and I will sing you a song, though not about passionate shepherds." He takes the lute that Marlowe has been absently plucking and sings:

"As you came from the holy land of Walsingham,

Met you not my true love by the way as you came?"

"Ah," says Poley, "he knows the name Walsingham. It was, after all, his master's. His ears pricked like a dog's."

"Sir Francis Walsingham," says Skeres. "Dead these two years, but once head of Her Majesty's Secret Service. He recruited you, Kit."

"Sing him more," says Poley, so Frizer sings:

"I sing of a spy, of a spy sing I,

That under the cloak of tobacco smoke

And drink and boys and blasphemous noise

Had sharp enough eyes for other spies.

"Meaning that he was, or is, a counter-spy, matching the Counter-Reformation."

"Will," says Marlowe, frightened, "go and call in those men. The Privy Council men we told to wait in the garden." Will tries to get up, quick enough on the uptake, but finds Skere's drawn sword at his chest. Skeres says:

"Nay, stay, we beg you, Mr Shakejelly. Play stuff, Kit," he says to Marlowe, "apt for the stage but not for real life."

"I admit," says Marlowe, "real life has more surprises. I had no idea my three friends were creatures of King Philip of Spain."

"You still have no idea, Kit," says Frizer. "You have no idea who we are working for, or, if thou wishest, para quien nosotros estamos trabajando. Why, we may also be working for Her Majesty's Secret Service, and that organization may deem it desirable to be rid of unreliability."

"Look," says Poley, his eyes stern on Will, "this one here. Must he not too -?"

"He is not quite a gentleman," says Skeres. "He carries no sword. He may freely report what he is about to see. The judgement of God on an atheistical roarer." They all have their swords drawn. Will remains rigid in his seat. Frizer says:

"Draw your dagger, Kit. Let us have some little argument about the honour of a wench or who shall pay the reckoning." He lunges at Marlowe. Marlowe draws his dagger. Frizer laughs, keeping at a sword's length's distance. He says:

"Ah, Mr Shakeshoes, are you not now in the great world? Did you not dream of all the glory of this London life when you wiped your snotty country nose on your sleeve?"

"Tell them, Will," says Marlowe. "Tell them what you have seen."

"He may tell them," says Poley. "He shall corroborate all." So all three now have their swords out, but they clatter them to the floor. "Strike, Kit," says Poley, "strike, you passionate shepherd." Marlowe holds his dagger indecisively. "Now," says Poley. All three seize Marlowe's dagger hand and drive the dagger into his frontal lobes. Marlowe screams. Will is petrified.