“I am tasked to root them out for the Prince,” Kit answered, fussing with his well‑cleaned fingernails. “We have sought them in Faerie a half decade now, and I could hope they revealed themselves somehow here. Were less cautious, or – ”

Will shrugged, and saw Kit watching the trembling of his hands, the nodding of his head out of the corner of his eye. “All I know – ” Will swallowed and tried again. “All I know, ‘twas Lucifer told me the oaks murdered my boy. Faerie oaks.”

Kit looked up, startled, something yellow as topaz gleaming in the smoky quartz of his right eye. He quoted a rhyme Will would as soon not hear again. “Oak, he hate– Damme, Will. What thou toldst me now, hast told any other? Annie? Amaranth? Anyone?”

The quick answer was easy, but Kit’s intensity caused him to pause and think through the past months. “No,” Will said, after several seconds dripped by. “Not a one, but for thee.”

Kit reached up as if to run a hand through his curls and laughed when he touched the black velvet of his hood instead. “Amaranth told me to talk to the trees. She knows more than she ever speaks, that one.”

“Aye,” Will said, worry blossoming dark in his heart. “And I’ll lose no other piece of my soul to a witch‑hearted tree – ”

“Peace, Will.” He saw the twitch of Kit’s hand toward his arm, saw it fall back among the folds of Kit’s bright, shifting cloak. “I’ll come to no harm. Must do this thing in any case: wilt trust thy vengeance to thine Elf‑knight, love?”

It hurt, the fear. But Will saw the promise on Kit’s face, and nodded nonetheless, and remembered something that Kit should know, that might link one group of enemies to another. “Robert Poley. Kit, Poley was in Stratford when Hamnet died. I thought he’d come to threaten me – ”

“Will? What are you doing, standing muttering in corners to yourself– ” Ben Jonson’s big hand clutched Will’s shoulder, turned him half around. Will put up a hand to cover Ben’s and saw his pupils widen. “I beg your pardon, sir,” Ben said to Kit, pulling the hand back to rub his eyes. “I did not see you there in the shadows.”

“By all means,” Kit said, his voice dangerously soft as he drew his cloak about him.

Ben glanced at Will and at the door. Will shook his head. “The Queen said no.”

“Damn,” Kit said, in unison with Ben. “How could she … ?”

“Who is this fellow, Will?” Ben’s hand on Will’s shoulder again, possessive, and Kit’s eyes almost glowed in the shadows of his hood. Who is this fellow to know so much of our affairs?

Oh, this it not how I would have chosen to handle this.“Kit Marley,” Will said. “Meet Ben Jonson. Ben, this is Christofer “ And God ha’ mercy on my soul.

“Please. Call me Merlin,” Kit said, his face very still, and Will knew at once that he had made a mistake. A very bad mistake indeed. Both in introducing Kit first to Ben, and more, in letting Ben lay that companionable hand on his shoulder in Kit’s view.

“Marlowe?” Ben blinked. “The poet.”

“The dead one,” Kit said irritably. “Aye.” And moved along before Ben could react. “And your fellow conspirator, though I see Will has informed you not. So. No dispensation for our Bible. Damme. Again.”

“That’s fine,” Ben answered, after a moment of slow consideration in which he apparently decided to deal with supernatural manifestations some other day. “We’ll write it anyway.”

“Against the Queen’s word?” Will shook his head.

Ben dismissed it with a gesture, and spoke without much lowering his voice. “She won’t be Queen forever, Will.”

Act IV, scene iv

Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;

If thou lovest me, think no more on it.

– Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene i

Such a small grave, neatly tended, evergreen branches laid atop the snow and the marker swept carefully clean. Two or three sets of footsteps; Kit couldn’t be sure. He crouched in the snow beside it and tugged his glove off, touched the frozen needles of a pine branch, the soft bow of a red velvet ribbon not yet faded by the wet and the sun. “Merry Christmas, little man.”

He sat back on his heels, the leathern bag over his shoulder almost overbalancing him, and glanced around the churchyard. The horizon already glowed orange with winter’s early sunset. Unobserved, he decided, and quickly freed the bit of ribbon from the greenery. He folded it inside the palm of his glove; the edges of the wet cloth itched and made a splotch on gray kidskin.

I’m sorry, lad. If anything, ‘twas my fault, what befell thee, and not thy sire’s. And a measure of Will’s kindness that for all he could have blamed me for every ill that’s touched his life since Sir Francis dragged him into this unholy mess, he never held me responsible for a bit of it.

Well, I did nearly put his eye out with a hot poker trying to reason with him– Kit shook his head as he stood, shaking his cloak to snap the snow from the hem. “Bloody hell.” So it’s Robert Poley and the Fae, is’t? Well. One more blood debt for Robert Poley. One more shouldn’t bother him a little.

Kit’s hand clenched around the bit of ribbon. Pity I can only cut his heart out once.

It wasn’t much work to find the New Place, as Will’s grand house was called. “The playmaker’s done well for himself,” Kit said, pausing on the roadway and looking up at the five peaked gables, the smoke drifting lazily from several of the chimneys. He paused, scuffing his feet on the frozen earth. Come, Kit. Put a bold face on it–

He squared his shoulders and stepped up to the door, tapping squarely. It opened a moment later, so promptly that someone must have seen him standing on the road. He hoped he’d looked like a man considering if he had the right house, only.

The dark‑haired girl within might have seen fourteen winters, or fifteen. Kit bowed as low as he would to any lady of the Mebd’s shining court, and swept his hat off too, making a flourish with his patchworked cloak. “You must be Mistress Judith,” he said. “And as lovely as your father described–”

“He said no such thing !” she said, and stepped forward to block the door. “And who are you, you fabulous tatterdemalion, to pretend to such a gallant tongue?”

Kit straightened and let his cloak drop in natural folds. The girl’s eyes sparkled: she knew her advantage, and Kit rather thought the tart‑tongued wench would have him twisted around her finger in a moment. “I am expected, I hope,” he said. “My friend Master Shakespeare said he would send word ahead of my visit, and that I might be assured of my welcome here. I see he underreported the sweetness of his daughters’ speech – ”

“Did he say so?”

“That he underreported your sweetness? Nay–

“Nay, that you could be assured of your welcome here.” She cocked her head back, her black hair spilling over her shoulders, and stared up at him. Kit bit his lip: her eyes were the same dark blue as her father’s, and made him shiver.

“Judith? Judith, if thou wishest to warm the out‑doors, build a fire behind the stable – ” Annie Shakespeare paused in the doorway, her faded eyes narrowing at the corners when she caught sight of Kit standing on the path. He waited while she examined him from boots to hair. A thoughtful moment, until she nodded and tugged Judith out of the doorway. The braided ribbon around Mistress Shakespeare’s neck caught Kit’s eye; he smiled in spite of himself, bitter and sweet. And joy you in it, Will.

“Welcome, Master Marlin.” After the country fashion, she kissed him in greeting when he came through the door.

Kit forced himself to stillness, to returning the quick peck she offered, but he knew from the lift of her brow that she noticed his discomfort. She reached out, deft as a bird, and brushed his hair behind his ear, her fingers quick on the rounded tip. He shied like a startled horse, and she nodded satisfaction as he shifted from foot to foot.