“Why, I have not another tear to shed.”

That’s good, I warrant. It does sing true: to read it, you can see the man smile, and it is terrible.” Crisp pages rustled; Kit held each up, opened along the folds to read slowly, tasting the words. Learning them,Will thought. Is he truly so blind to the irony?

He found himself looking at his friend’s face for a shadow of pain, and saw only a player’s concentration, a thin line etched between Kit’s dark brows. Will went to the window. He rested a hand on the glass and stood looking over the garden, watching yellowing leaves twist in a soft October breeze.

“If you mean to go about London unnoticed, you might dress less like Christofer Marley and more like a cobbler’s son. I can bring a false beard from the Theatre, and a bit of gum. No one will see aught but that and the eyepatch, an you play the role.”

“A cobbler’s son.” Amusement in that. “Only a man who dresses like a glover’s son would say so.”

One more rustle, then silence as the pages stopped turning.

“We’ve come from close places, haven’t we, Will? And worn very different roads to the same end: poetry and service.”

“Your father saw the value of an education.”

“As yours did not. I may have to teach you latin.”

Shakespeare snorted. Another leaf tugged loose of a pear twig before Kit spoke again. “I shan’t be in London long.”

“Where will you go?”

“I cannot tell.”

“Where can I write to you?”

“I do not know.”

Will paused. “You’ll be on some mission for Her Majesty,” he said, considering. “I understand.”

“No,” Kit answered. “I go tonight, under cover of darkness, to beg my service back from Gloriana, in point of fact. I have been offered refuge by a foreign monarch, that I might live.”

“That you might live?” Will set his rump on the window ledge. Kit still stared at the pages, but his eye no longer scanned the lines.

“What mean you?”

“I am …” A breath, and a sigh. Kit’s shoulders rose and fell as he stepped back from the desk, scrubbing his nails on his doublet. The motion arrested;he plucked at the material, pulling it into the light to examine. “It is a little Kit Marley, isn’t it? No matter. I’m poisoned, Will, with a slow poison, and the cure lies in a foreign land. If I do not return I shall die.” He ruffled paper. “Horribly, I am assured.” Which was truth, Will decided, watching Kit. Or as much of a truth as anyone was like to get from Marley.

“I shall worry.”

“And I for thee. You’ll be in more danger. But I shall discover how a letter may find me, if a letter may find me, and send you word on the means.”

“I may take a month in Stratford come Christmas time. If the plague stays in London. If the playhouses stay closed. If you send a letter.” Will resumed his chair and reached for a fresh sheet. He could feel Kit’s smile resting on him.

“Annie is speaking to you again.”

“Annie thinks I should see my children, as she had Susanna write me, before we’re grown and gone. I’ll be sleeping in the third-best bed with Hamnet, I imagine. And she’s yet a better wife than I deserve, Kit: there’s few enough women who would even pretend to understand why a man might leave kith and kin to crawl through the gutters of strange cities, all for the grace of a poem.”

“There’s few enough men who understand it,” Kit replied. “And, here or in Stratford, I may be capable to make a visit, now and again.”

“From overseas?”

“Not so much overseas as under them,” Kit said cryptically. He glanced at the window, measuring the light, and fanned the folded sheets upon the desk.

“Shall we work on these a little, before I must disguise myself for Her Majesty?”

“Will Sir Francis loan you a cloak?”

“A hood should suffice in a carriage.”

“Keep the doublet: you’ll want to look pretty for the Queen. Otherwise she won’t believe you re Marley.”

“At least I don’t dress like a Puritan,” Kit answered, with a scornful glance for Will’s brown broadcloth, and reached across the desk for a pen.

Dido :

What stranger art thou that doest eye me thus?

Aeneas:

Sometime I was a Troian, mighty Queene:

But Troy is not, what shall I say I am?

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Dido, Queen of Carthage

‘You’ll want to look pretty for the Queen.’ Kit caught himself examining his fingernails in the light of the candles burning on a gilt wooden table, and let his hands fall to his sides. There was ink along the knuckle of his forefinger, but that was nothing unusual, and at least he was tidier than Shakespeare. Will took no pride in his appearance or his scribing whatsoever.

And writing lines such as his, he does not need false pride. Anyway, tis Sir Walter’s duty to look pretty for his Queen, and not mine. Queens will jus thave to take me as they find me.

Gallant thoughts, for a man alone in a small white marble room with no escape, when anything could be coming down the narrow passageway he’d entered through. A long table and a few narrow windows dominated the room, lit between flickering shadows by a rack of candles like stag’s antlers. He wondered if he were quartered in a priest’s closet, or some stranger appurtenance and how riddled the walls of Winchester might be. Walsingham had led Kit through a secret passage within a chapel at Winchester Palace, and then taken Kit’s dagger and abandoned him. Kit wasn’t sure what garden the small, tight window looked over, but it admitted a breath of air, and over the flowers he could smell the river. At least it wasn’t an abattoir, as in Deptford. The Queen was letting him cool his heels. He examined the ink stain on his fingertip again: it resembled a map of Italy. He pressed back a mousy handful of hair. At last, soft footsteps sounded beyond the panel, and Kit turned with a question on his lips, hoping it would be Walsingham come to retrieve him but fearing it could be another sort of visitor altogether one armed with sharp steel and a quarrel. The panel slid open, and Kit stepped forward. And met, open-mouthed, the masterful gaze of his Elizabeth. Alone and without escort.

“Highness!” he stuttered, and bent a knee somewhat credibly, for all his head-kicked foolishness. His breath hurt his throat, but he held it and kept his eyes on her shoes. Gold cloth, sewn with pearls. Toe-pointed slippers clicked daintily on the marble as she stepped forward, her hem so stiff with lace that it made a sound brushing the threshold like a curry down a horse’s back. The scent of herbs and musk as she hesitated, and Kit wondered for a moment if she might strike him. She was not unknown to lay her wrath on those who displeased her.

“Sir Christofer Marley,” she said, after a while. He choked on that, held breath and looked up at her despite himself. Into a prescient smile under the crimson tower of her wig and eyes wide with mockery and amusement. Yes, we know something of your adventures. Stand up straight, lad: even Queens tire of bended necks when they haven’t an axe to hand. He stood. “Your Highness is well-informed.”

“We pay a great deal for the privilege,” she answered. “In gold and coin, and in the flesh and blood of our loyal subjects. Has she claimed thee?”

“Your Highness?”

“The Queen of Faerie,” she said, with a lift of her chin. She shut the panel behind herself and claimed the center of the narrow chamber. Kit’s pulse fluttered in his throat: a different sort of awe than what the Faerie Queen produced. This was the awe of temporal power, of strength and age and a wit equal to any man’s.

“She is the pillar the sky is hung from. The beautiful pitiless lady. Has she claimed you?”

“She wishes to, madam,” he answered. “But her sister, called Queen Morgan, was the one who knighted me.”