“When I awoke, and found her place devoid,

And naught but pressed grass, where she had lain,

I sorrowed all so much, as earst I joyed,

And washed all her place with watery eyed.

From that day forth I lov’d that face divine;

From that day forth I cast in careful mind,

To deck her out with labor, and long tyne,

And never vow to rest, till her I find

Nine months I seek in vain yet ni’ll that vow unbind. ”

Damme.Will understood almost without understanding, found himself chanting lines of poetry, anything that came to mind. A history play, Richard II,and Ben gave him an odd look and then nodded, understood, picked it up, murmuring lines of his own – clever epigraphs and riddles, damn his eyes, but Will was in no position to complain. “Poetry, George,” Will said, between verses. It was the only magic he had, and the only protection he had any hope for.

“What?”

“Poetry. Anything. Recite it – ”

George blinked like a frog, but obeyed –

“And t’was the Earl of Oxford: and being offer’d

At that time, by Duke Cassimere, the view

Of hid right royal Army then infield;

Refus’d it, and no foot wad moved, to stir

Out of hut own free fore‑determin’d course;

I wondering at it, asked for it his reason,

It being an offer do much for his honor. ”

Infelicitous,Will thought, but held his peace to murmur his own talismanic words.

I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire:

These high wild hills and rough uneven ways

Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome,

And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,

Making the hard way sweet and delectable. ”

Will’s voice and Chapman’s combined with Ben’s–

“At court I met it, in clothes brave enough,

To be a courtier; and looks grave enough,

To deem a statesman: as I near it came,

It made me a great face; I asked the name.

A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh, and blood,

And such from whom let no man hope least good,

For I will do none; and as little ill,

For I will dare none: Good Lord, walk dead still. ”

– a strange and uneven sort of round between the three of them, but Will felt the pressure ease reluctantly. Raising his voice, he lifted the candle and steeled himself to pull the handle of the half‑open interior door.

He thought himself prepared for what might confront him, he who had been to Hell and back again, who had stood watch over a wife’s near demise in childbed and the second death of Sir Francis Walsingham. He was prepared for the peeling cold, like a wind off the ice‑clotted moor, and he was prepared for the horrific stench.

He wasn’t prepared for the huddled shape under the blankets, Spenser’s form curled thin and frail into an agonized ball. Chapman stayed in the front room. The creak of Ben’s footsteps stopped at the bedroom door.

Will raised the candle and went forward, just in case, but Spenser’s open eyes and the hard‑frozen outline of his form – I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire–told him already what he would feel when he laid his left hand over Spenser’s right: cold stiff flesh like claws of ice, and the candle showed him Spenser’s pale eye rimed with frost and sunken like a day‑old herring’s.

“Contagion,” Ben said softly.

Will shuddered and crossed himself before he quite knew what his hand was about. Something cracked and yellow lay frozen at the corners of Spenser’s mouth; Will remembered Sir Francis and did not think the stuff was mustard. He stepped back, scrubbing his glove on his breeches, tilting the candle aside. “I am a stranger here in– God in Heaven, Ben. Let us quit this place and summon a constable of the watch.”

“Aye,” Ben said, and he and Will trotted from the rancid little room.

They leaned against the wall outside, breathing the cold, sweet air like runners, having dragged the rabbit‑frozen Chapman between them. Ben caught Will’s eye over Chapman’s head, and coughed into his palm. “Edmund Spenser, starved to death for lack of bread.”

“Essex would never–” Chapman began, and Will knew from Ben’s level, warning regard that the big man’s mind was already churning through some subterfuge.

“Go look at the body yourself,” Ben said, lowering his hand again. “Essex obviously hasn’t been keeping him very well, if it has come to this.”

“I don’t understand,” Chapman said, so softly Will barely heard him over the whisper of snowflakes through the air, over the squeak of their compression underfoot.

Will lagged back as Ben paused under the swinging sign for a cobbler, snow thick on his uncovered hair, and turned to look Chapman in the eye. “Twas no plague carried Spenser off,” he said. “But mere starvation. And I mean to see the whole world knows it.”

Will bit his lip in the long silence that followed. It wasn’t starvation either, but sorcery–but Will thought he understood the broad rationale of Ben’s untruth, and was content to let the younger man’s plot play itself out. They turned down the alleyway near the Mermaid before Chapman gathered his thoughts enough to speak again.

“You’re not doing yourself any favors provoking Essex.” Chapman pressed the worn door open on its hinges. The Mermaid had filled in their absence, and a commotion of warmth and noise and smells tumbled past Will as they entered. “If that’s what you mean to do with this accusation that he cares for his servants inadequately.”

“I care not for Essex,” Ben answered, making sure the door shut tight against the snow. “Especially when England’s greatest poet starves to death under his care.”

Act IV, scene ii

And to be conclude, when all the world dissolves

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene I

Kit turned, gritty stones under his feet: the broad rooftop pediment of a gray stone tower. The limitless sky lofted overhead. Ravens and swans circled in confusion, a tumult of cawing and jet and alabaster wings. Then a glitter of black pinions, white weskit, a shiny bauble in a smaller bird’s sharp beak as it settled on the battlements before Kit and cocked a bawdy eye.

The magpie spat something ringing on the stone. A silver shilling, spent until the face of the King upon it was smooth as a water‑worn stone. Kit crouched to pick it up and found himself eye to eye with the magpie, something–his cloak? –tugging at his wrist as he reached. The magpie chuckled softly and settled its feathers. Ware the Church. Ware the Queen. Ware the raven with the wounded wing.

“Doggerel?” Kit asked. It made perfect sense as he said it. “Can’t you, of all birds, do better than that?”

The magpie chuckled again and hopped off the battlement, climbing to dart between circling ravens and swans. Kit pulled against the cloak, but it seemed to bind his wrists tighter. He stood and spread his arms, stretching against the fabric. The wind caught and luffed under the patches, ruffled his feathers, stroked his pinions. Lifted him, and he fell into flight as naturally as breathing. His dark wings rowed the sky; he arrowed in pursuit of the magpie – faster, more agile, more deft, his barred tail flicking side to side like a living rudder as he avoided the broad wings of the regal swans and ravens. One of the ravens limped through the air; Kit saw a spot of bright crimson on its wing, vivid as a tuft of rags and feathers, as it spiraled down to rest within the Tower’s walls.