Christ. Ben Jonson is scared of me. Scared I’ll deduce him? Or scared I’ll overpower him and have my way with him?

Now therewas an image incongruous enough to send an exhausted poet giggling, and giggling touched Kit’s ravaged throat and turned to a hacking cough, which drew the worried glances of everyone in the room.

“Kit, thou’rt sickening–” Will, ignoring Jonson’s command.

Kit saw another measure of hurt cross the ugly young man’s face, and the half‑formed understanding crystallized into pity. Oh. Ben–

But there was nothing to be done for it, was there?

“No,” Kit managed, a stage whisper that almost started him coughing again. “Just talked raw. Will, Ben is right.” Morgan brought Kit more wine, and he drank it, enjoying Ben’s surprise at his intercession.

Will shook his head, looked up at Burbage. “Richard, why the twenty‑fourth, precisely? ”

The room got very quiet. Kit glanced from face to face, and realized everyone assembled knew the answer but for him. Like Will, he waited, calm enough in the knowledge that they would live. It was satisfying enough that he and Morgan and Tom–and Audrey and Jonson and Burbage and most of all, Will–had beatenBaines’ worst. No answer could trouble him.

It was Tom who cleared his throat, and answered, “Because Essex is to be executed on the twenty‑fifth, and Her Majesty wishes to see the play before she has her old friend drawn and quartered.”

Silence, as Kit struggled upright against the sugared grip of gravity, and his gaze met Will’s across the room. “Oh,” Will said. “Oh, poor Elizabeth.”

Act IV, scene xxii

The play’s the thing,

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act II, scene ii

The Queen in her goodness commuted Essex’s sentence from hanging and torture to a simple beheading; it was rumored that he had been reproved to choose his wardrobe the night before, and Will imagined he might be about his task even as Richard the Secondwound to its close. Will’s hands shook as he sponged the makeup from his face.

The dates of the other executions had not yet been set, and Will wondered if they would be, when news from across the Irish sea had Spanish Catholic troops again landing in alliance to the Catholics of that emerald isle.

A genteel cough at Will’s shoulder alerted him to the presence of a page. Will turned. “Yes?”

“Her Majesty wishes to see you, Master Shakespeare. In the red withdrawing room. Her Majesty said you would know it.”

“Aye, ” Will said, wiping his hands again to be sure he was free of paint, and reaching for his cane. He should have felt apprehension, he knew. But when he reached for emotion, there was nothing there at all. “Please tell Her Majesty I’ll be along presently. My balance is not what it was.”

Which was the curse of this disease; his strength didn’t leave him, or his intellect. Just his ability to make his body obey his lawful commands.

When the page opened the door and gave him admittance, Will was startled to realize that the Queen was alone. The page slipped out behind him and the door latched shut. Will suffered a second realization that hewas alone with the Queen.

Elizabeth stood by the far archway, a single candle warming her ice‑white ceruse. “Master Shakespeare,” she said, as he began to bow awkwardly. “Rise. ‘Twill be enough of that. And find a chair, young man: I can see thy legs are about to desert thee and I have no mind to pluck thee off my carpeting.”

“Your Highness,” Will said, and sat awkwardly although the Queen did not. I, she said, and not we. How interesting.“I am honored to be in your presence.”

Her lips assayed a smile and almost managed it. “I’ll kill a man tomorrow.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Trying to keep his Christian pity for Elizabeth from his face, and, he suspected, failing.

“I waged rather a grand battle to save him, Master Shakespeare, and failed. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Why you did try to save him, Your Highness? Or why you did fail?” Greatly daring, he thought, but she seemed to invite it. Indeed, she inclined her head under its great jeweled tire and made a come‑along gesture with one gloved hand. Will watched her face, trying to judge how bold he might be, but her ceruse made a mask. “I think you did try to save him for you loved him. And he failed to be saved because he loved himself.”

“Ah,” she said. “Thou art a poet indeed. When I am gone, wilt make a play of me as thou didst my royal father?”

“No mere play could capture Your Highness, and no boy could play you. As well set a pussycat to play a princely lion.”

“Flattery.” But she smiled, a real smile this time. Her voice was low and very sweet. “So in honesty, as a poet, and with no ears to hear but mine–what think you of this latest string of murders upon which I will filthy my hands?”

Will examined her face, and knew by the way she stood that she meant to seem only a woman. He could not trust that, however. Kit would be proud.“Monteagle’s just a foolish young gallant, Your Highness. Southampton–” Will shrugged. “Led astray, perhaps. Perhaps leading. I don’t know that they deserve to swing. Unlike Essex.”

“Who won’t. Swing, that is. He’ll get a clean death. My last gift. Perhaps I’ll spare the other two, if it pleases thee.” She cast about herself for a chair; Will hastened to rise and fetch her one, and she pinned him down with a look. “Obey thy sovereign.”

“I was there when they hanged Lopez,” Will said, once she had settled herself. “I was there when Sir Francis died.”

“Meaning?” Perhaps dangerous, those folded hands, that softly arched brow.

And what will she do? Cast thee in the Tower?“It seems, if it please Your Highness, that your enemies sometimes get the gentler side of your hand than your loyal friends. My Queen.”

“It does not please me,” she said. They faced one another across the dark red pattern on the carpet, faces dim in shifting candlelight. Will forced his hands to stay smooth on his thighs and swallowed against his worry that he had overstepped. “But it is true. And thou art correct in other things as well. I am sick of politics, Master Shakespeare. I am deathly tired.”

It was an understatement. He saw it in her face, heard it in the timbre of her voice. An old woman, Queen before Will was born and–he realized with a shock–not likely to be Queen much longer. Elizabeth had been eternal. Elizabeth was England.

Elizabeth was deathly tired. Perhaps this was Baines’ goal all along,Will realized. To force her hand to kill Essex, whom she loved for all his faults. It’s broken her at last.

“Your Majesty–”

“Aye?”

“Did anyone among your servants ever love you as much as you loved him? Or did they all betray you?” Will almost clapped a hand over his mouth when the words came out, but it was too late and they were flown. He watched them hang there in the candlelight, wishing them recalled, and did not look at the stunned placidity of Elizabeth’s face.

Until she laughed. She threw back her head and roared like a sailor, one hand clutched to her breast, her eyes squinted tight and tears of mirth smearing her kohl into her ceruse. Her mouth fell so far open in her laughter that Will saw the wads or batting that padded out her cheeks where her teeth were gone. “Oh, William,” she said. “Oh, you ask the finest questions. I should have made thee my fool–”

“Your Highness, I am sorry–”

“Apologize not.” Suddenly serious, as she dabbed the corners of her eyes. She sat and thought a little while, and smiled. “I think I have been loved,” she said at last. “Aye, my Spirit loved me –Lord Burghley, to thee. And Sir Francis, for all I was very wroth with him. And my good Sir Walter; caught up in his games, but I do think his love is true. It’s these others I cannot seem to choose with any–” Her voice cracked, and she waved her hand as if to show that the word eluded her, but Will thought it wasn’t tears of laughter that showed now in her eyes. “I am Great Harry’s daughter, Master Shakespeare. Great Harry, I am not,” she said simply. “I am not my sister. I am what I am.”