–No. Not quite true. Somewhere far above, he heard… not so much the sound of footsteps as the echo of the sound. “I might as well be at the bottom of a well,” he said out loud, to hear something besides the half‑panicked rasp of his own hurried breaths. His voice echoed too, peculiarly: from above, rather than from any of the sides.

Carefully, wary of his head and his dizziness, Kit stood in the darkness and extended his arms. His palms lay flat against the walls on either side – masoned stone, he thought–and whatever rings encircled his fingers clanked on the blocks. A harsh, heavy clank, and not the ring of silver or the clink of gold.

He lowered his hands, feeling the moist earth under his feet – heels, ball, toes–and drew another deep breath. The stench of a place men have died in, aye.

And something else.

Thick and raw, the stench of the Thames.

“The Pit, ” he said, and sat down on the floor again, shaking his head. “I dreamed this.”

He knew where he was now, and he knew who had him. He was in the oubliette at the Tower of London, and he was in the power of Robert Poley. And by extension, of Richard Baines.

In absolute blackness, Kit paced the cramped circle afforded him. His right hand trailed on the damp stones of the wall. He had no fear of tripping; his feet knew the path, and the dank earth was where he slept when he grew too tired to walk. Wasting energy,he thought, but he could not sit still. “The sink wherein the filth of all the castle falls,” he mumbled, but it wasn’t, quite. More an old, almost‑dry well, lidded in iron as much to keep light out as the prisoner in, for the sides were twenty foot and steeply angled.

He had paced forever.

He would be pacing forevermore.

The iron rings–or so he thought them, groping in the darkness –on his hands wouldn’t come off. He’d tried, and all he’d gotten for his trouble was a clicking pain as if he were trying to yank each finger individually from its socket. Upon pulling harder, there had been the stretch of tearing flesh and a slow, hot trickle of blood, but the rings had not shifted.

A strange sort of irritation, first an itching and then a raw, hot pain, grew in patches on his torso and his thighs. To pass the time and to stave off whatever sorcery Baines might be working, so far out of reach above, he told himself stories. Bits of verse –Nashe’s plays, half memorized, Kyd’s Tragedy,Will’s Titus,and Kit’s own words. The Greeks and the Romans and the Celts. The Bible.

Anything to keep from thinking of his own predicament, and worse. To keep from remembering how he had failed Will. Because when the throbbing in his head had subsided, he’d remembered how he’d been surprised.

Coming to Will’s rescue.

Just as Baines would have known that he would, having seen it before. Stupid, Kit, to leave anyone alive who know what William means to thee–

He’d stepped from the Darkling Glass, his sword in his hand and witchcraft on his lips –and straight into a sorcerer’s trap.

He slept twice more. His belly cramped with fear more than hunger, and his dry throat turned his recitations into a mumble. He dragged his ringed fingers along the stone, and thought to dig through the floor with his fingers, but all he did was tear his nails and score his fingertips on buried rocks. He came to know his domain intimately, an oval four feet by five feet, with a slimy, echoing drain that stank even worse than the earth but at least ensured he wasn’t sleeping in his own piss.

The cramping belly reminded him of something, and he smiled. If Baines plans to use me for whatever blackness he had planned on the fifth–

–won’t he be surprised when Faerie kills me for my absence in a couple of days?

Kit closed both eyes. It made no difference: he walked, and turned, and walked, and turned in a blackness as deep as if his eyes had frozen into ice. He hadn’t seen real darkness since Hell; he barely remembered it, but whatever bound his magic bound his otherwisesight as well.

Mehiel’s brands burned on his chest and sides. “All very well,” Kit said to the angel, a whisper like a rasp dragged over his throat. “Couldst speak to me, thou knowest. Would help to pass the hours. And ‘tis not as if we’re unacquainted.” A cracked‑lip grin, blood paying for a pun. And not a good one at that.

The chafe of unoiled hinges served his warning of the shaft of light that seemed to boil his eyes from his head. Kit covered his face in his hands, swearing, and hated it that he knew who saw him cringe.

“Art yet hungry, puss?”

Sweet God in his heaven.Kit could never speak loud enough to be heard from the depths of the oubliette, with the fire in his throat. And damned if he would plead and whisper. He stood, looking up, and shaded his left eye with his hand. Nay,he thought, wishing he had the wherewithal to speak. But could use a drop of wine, hast it to spare–

Things dropped. A cloth wrapped bundle, a wineskin– praise Christ–something round and heavy that Kit’s blurry eyes could not quite make sense of. The objects variously thumped and clanked; Kit blinked back tears. “Good puss,” Baines said. “Make it last a day or two. I’ll be back for thee when I can.”

Dignity, Kit.It was what he could do to walk to the edge of the pit rather than scramble. He reached for the wineskin and paused, fingers trembling like Will’s.

The scold’s bridle lay beside the skin, tilted on its side, a maniacally grinning iron skull face that gaped open, unlocked.

Ignoring it, Kit reached for the skin. It sloshed, and he hoped it was water or ale, and nothing stronger. Still, he wouldn’t drink in front of Baines. A few more minutes.His hands ached with desire.

“Puss, be brave.”

Oh, that turned his stomach enough to give him strength. He looked up again. Baines–resolving now as Kit’s eyes adjusted to the light–leaned down, his hand on the enormous lid of the oubliette. “Hast made the acquaintance of thy friend Edward the Second’s ghost yet, pussycat? They tell me he still screams.”

Stupid bastard. Edward died at Berkeley.

Kit made a rude gesture and swore without breath. Baines grinned–a white flash of teeth–and lowered the lid silently, without even the catharsis of a ringing slam. The silence lingered. Kit lowered his head in the darkness. His laugh came forth a voiceless sob.

He sat on the floor and drank half the lukewarm small beer, rationing it, then laid his face down on his arms and cried.

I have to get out of here. The bastards have Will.

Act V, scene viii

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, inform and moving how express and admirable, in action how Like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act II, scene ii

It was Robert Poley who unhooded Will, much later, in a candlelit room with an arrow slit that showed only blackness but admitted the stink of the Thames. There was a narrow pallet on the floor, a straw tick and some blankets, and a single sweet‑smelling beeswax pillar flickering in the embrasure.

Will didn’t speak at first. Poley stepped back, a rough dark brown woolen sack dangling from his fingers, and gestured with his other hand to the oversized roaring boy holding Will’s elbow. Thick fingers released the knotted ropes at Will’s wrists; he gasped at sudden prickles, white‑hot pins and needles jabbing his fingertips and palms. “I beg your pardon, Master Shakespeare, for the undignified circumstances of your appointment here, ” Poley said.

“Appointment?” Will pressed his useless hands together, trying to squeeze blood back into the veins. “In absolute precision of language, Robert, thou must admit this is an abduction, and not a social call.”