“Oh, older than that. From the earliest days of her reign, before you or I were even conceived of, sweet William. The schism came later, and there are those in the other faction who place their own advancement above the Queen’s or England’s well-being. I believe myself that Good Queen Bess takes some pleasure in playing Essex and Raleigh for rivals and I wonder a bit if it was Essex who saw fit to have me removed, as I was Sir Walter’s friend.”

“I faith, Kit, is there any man in Elizabeth’s court you haven’t let buggeryou?”

“There’s a few I’ve buggered instead.” Kit waited for the chuckle. Will did not fail him. “Will. I said, friend. In any case, Oxford and Burghley have not been on good terms since Oxford decided that Anne was not to his liking.”

“Your doing.”

“Edward’s doing. Anne was blameless as poor Isabella, and kept her blamelessness better. And I’m not Gaveston. Tis not meet a good woman should suffer for no greater crime than a bad marriage.” He felt Will’s eyes on his face, and forced himself to match the gaze. “Tis true.”

“I believe you,” Will answered. Tremendous tension came out of Kit with the breath he had been painfully holding.

“Thank you.”

“But then why art thou dead, or playing at it? And why have you concealed yourself these months?” Will was angry, and the thought warmed Kit. How few true friends have you had since you entered this life? Only Walsingham.

“Tis a complicated story, but it suffices that all thought me dead, except perhaps Her Majesty, and I might have been dead indeed. All but Sir Francis still believe it.” He put a hand out, pleased with its steadiness, and clapped Will on the shoulder. “Art a true friend to me, Will. How it pleases my heart, I hope you know.”

Will’s lips thinned around a smile. “Is there some message I could pass your parents in Canterbury?”

“My … No. Since I left Cambridge to become a vile playmaker, they’ve regarded me as a cuckoo’s egg. Better leave me dead.”

“I must tell you …”

“That is?”

“I ran afoul of Poley and Baines at the Sergeant.”

Despite the warmth in his belly, Kit’s mouth ached around the words he couldn’t quite say. Oh, not Will. Not Will. Poley. And Baines together.

“Did they see you?”

“They threatened me.”

“Ah, no. Will, you have to break with Oxford and Walsingham now. Burbage too.”

“Now that you re returned, they can do without me. But I am pleased to defend my Queen, and if you teach me what you know, the art of your plays …”

“Don’t choose sides in this.” Kit wanted to take the other man by the shoulders and shake him, but he gave him pleading instead. “Flee. Take your Annie and get away. I’m not returned, man. I’m dead, and you’ll be dead with me if you stay.” He caught himself worrying his eyepatch, and forced his hand down. Put it on Will’s arm, instead, and clutched the broadcloth of his sleeve. “Some one of us is a traitor. Some one of us betrayed me, and will betray you. I trust only Walsingham. You cannot choose sides, Will: they’ll eat you.”

Will looked at him for a long moment, and then shook his hand off and moved away, close to a broken-backed chair pushed up beside the hearthstone.

“Run if they’ve broken you”

“Broken me! I’ll not be called a coward.” It stung as much as if Will had spoken the accusation plain, and Kit flinched and looked down.

In the dark kitchen that was very like the dungeon that Kit had come here to remember, William Shakespeare shook his head. “I mean to choose the side that’s right.”

Tamora: So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee;

No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Titus Andronicus

Langley’s kitchen grew hot and close while Will leaned against the arm of a broken chair and listened to embers crack on the grate. It was a long time before Kit answered.

“Tis not what side is right. Tis what side you’re on. Elizabeth and the Protestant Church. The third or fourth time you’re raped by a priest, you may start to regard the Church’s moral pronouncements with a jaundiced eye.”

Kit turned away, still cupping that glass, and ran the other fingers over the scarred wood of the block.

“Kit, from you of all people?” Will left the chair, came close enough to lower his voice and murmur through tightness. “Sodomy’s accounted a sin worse than any.”

“What? What two men do willing is a sin worse than rape or usury? Than murder? Than denying God? I know Church doctrine.” A deprecating tilt of his head to show how well he knew it.

Uncomfortable words through a stiff throat.

“Equal to witchcraft, they say. Then burn me for a witch and a playmaker. I thought better of you. ‘The unspeakable Christofer Marley, may he rot in Hell, and he got less worse than he deserved.’ Say it if you think it! It’s what the Puritans will write. Although by their own doctrine, and I understand it aright, I’ve as good achance of election to Heaven as any of them, for if all our acts and our salvation are predetermined, how can you condemn any man?”

Will had no answer. It was different, to know generally enough for coarse laughter what men and boys did in small rooms and shared beds, and to look into the face of his friend and see a rough, kind sort of honesty that begged him to understand it. He moved some steps as if Kit’s sin could taint him. Kit picked at the mortar between stones with a fingernail, eyes downcast.

“More get at it than you might imagine, Will. Some hypocrites touch and kiss and clip and never call it what it is. But I am a lover of discourse, good William, and as I have said before, I would liefer lose my life than my liberty of speech.” A pause, and Kit chuckled. “And as I prophesied it, so it has come true.”

“No. But I would hear you say you’ve never enjoyed the pleasures of a beardless boy, who cries rape now.”

“Never one who took no enjoyment in return.” Kit met Will’s gaze a moment, then turned his head and spat upon the floor. “Oh, unfair, Shakespeare. What do you take your Marley for?”

The cellar stone was cool as Will pressed his hand against it. He thought of his friend’s beautiful hands and lips turned to acts his stomach coiled to think on, and struck out savagely to deny the image. “Is that why you refused holy orders? Because you couldn’t trust yourself around boys?”

Kit half turned back. He shrugged, and Will saw the bitter edge of a smile, as if Kit had expected no less. “Call it an unwillingness to practice hypocrisy, and another—unwillingness to abandon the pleasures of the flesh. I should not expect anyone to understand who does not know for himself; and there was Rheims. Richard Baines was at Rheims.”

“Rheims? Where the Romish seminary is?

“I went to France for Walsingham and Burghley, and made pretence to study among the Papists while they plotted. It almost got me barred from my Master of Arts at Cambridge, but the Privy Council interceded. They knew what I had done to preserve our Gloriana. I did not tell them all I suffered.”

“This same Baines who has slandered you since your death?”

A transparent attempt to turn him aside, but Kit was inexorable.

“Tis not surprising. Gloriana has said that she would rather a loyal Catholic than a Puritan: our Queen is a freethinker, for all Burghley and his son Robert Cecil would like to see every Catholic hanged.” Kit looked up, folding one hand into the crook of his elbow as he lifted his glass to his lips.

“Some of them are Prometheans. Ours, theirs. Does Baines accuse me of atheism and sodomy? Of blaspheming and railing?”

“He does, and puts about the word that you died drunken, cursing God after a knife-fight in some filthy alley.”

Would that I were drunken at Rheims, when they put the irons to my skin. There’s an art to it, did you know? You burn a little, and a little more. A finger’s breadth at a time, and never so deep as to numb sensation.” Kit’s voice was level and soft as a tutor’s, his eye unfocused. “And sodomy? Aye, and five men by turns, and one an Inquisitor. As for cursing God? Baines should know how I blasphemed in Rheims, before Baines stopped my mouth with a black scold’s bridle. Baines was there, also acting as an agent for the Crown. I could never prove treason against him, though I professed it: he swore he thought I was the Pope’s own man and not the Queen’s when he betrayed me. All lies. He belongs to them, though he pretends service to the Queen; but what man cares that outrages are perpetrated against a catamite, or a heretic, or a poet?” Kit scratched his wrist, half idly, a cat attending to its paw.