“Burghley? Not Oxford?”

Strange lifted one shoulder eloquently, appearing to watch the verbal sparring between rival players ride the edge between wit and acrimony.

“Oxford was a mistake. Oxford thinks Southampton can be convinced. Thou wouldst get better odds on Raleigh.”

“Noble rivalries, my lord?”

Burbage had caught Alleyn’s elbow and drew him away from the fire. The taller man bent his head to hear the smaller’s arguments. The cross Alleyn had worn ever since a particularly disastrous performance of Faustus dangled from its cord as he leaned down.

“If you like.” Fingers against the table, a nervous, rilling tap. “Don’t trust Edward de Vere, Master Shakespeare. And don’t trust too much in the patronage of Southampton, for all thou dost flatter him with thy poetry. He’s a boughten man.

“You know this, my lord?” Will noticed the dark line furrowed between Strange’s dark eyes. “Aye. You know it.”

“I know too much.” Strange finished his wine. He inverted his cup and pushed himself to his feet; the other men at the table jumped up as a lord stood. “I am expected home to sup. Finish the bottle, Master Shakespeare.” Strange threw coins on the table.

His tired smile struck Will hard. There was too much resignation in it. “Don’t give up hope on your poor players, my lord,” Will said, hoping that Strange would hear both his words and the meaning under them. “The playhouses will be open soon.”

Lord Strange turned back from the door and smiled. “See that you make me proud, Master Shakespeare. Masters Burbage, Master Kemp.” And with that, Ferdinando Stanley collected his hat from the peg by the door, and went.

Will’s letter to Annie dispatched the following morning netted only a stony silence in reply. He meant to send a second one a week after the first, but good intentions were lost in the whirl of rehearsal and rewrite and frenzied preparation of two plays at once: the tragedy Titus Andronicus, for which Will need not only learn his roles but also face down Oxford in a series of hour-murdering meetings; and a light-hearted comedy which was finally, after much argument, entitled The Taming of the Shrew.

The clownish Will Kemp was appointed lord of Misrule chief of Christmas festivities for lord Strange’s Men, thus ensuring that drunkenness and disorder would ride sovereign over the frantic preparations for the Twelfth Night play. And between a tailor’s visit or three, rehearsals all day and all night (and drinking at the Mermaid), occasional church services and the Twelve Days festivities, the first time Will had a moment’s silence between his own ears was on January 5. And only because a thin-lipped, towering Ned Alleyn, who, plied by Burbage with liquor and conversation, would perform with lord Strange’s Men this once, threw the entire company out of the Mermaid Tavern and into the street to ‘go home, the lot, and rest your heads so as not to lose them before Her Majesty!’

Will’s stomach had been too sour for much drinking, and now, as he lay in his bed against the warmth of the chimney, it was too sour for much sleeping.

Perform before the Queen.

He sat up in bed and let the bedclothes slip aside. A draft came between the floorboards as he set his feet down; he stood anyway, shivering with his coverlet wrapped around his shoulders, and crossed to light a candle. After unrelieved darkness, the glow warmed him as much as a fire. Perform before the Queen and her rival favorites, and remind them that their duty is to their sovereign, and not to their quarrels. Oh, I wish Annie were here to see this.

He set the candle on the sideboard and opened an oaken cupboard, drawing out the soft wine red velvet drape of his new doublet. Kit would have loved it: it fit like a second skin, snug at the waist and broad at the shoulders, slashed in peach taffeta and buttoned with knotted gilt. Kit would have been much calmer, Will thought, as he picked up a clothes brush and polished the nap of the already spotless velvet. The steady rasp of the brush on the cloth helped him think: his racing, exhausted thoughts rocked instead of spinning, and Will forced himself to breathe and contemplate.

Put on the role, and play it. Turn a trembling hand into a swordsman’s confidence, and quivering voice into an arrogant sneer. I’m a player, if I’m not a Burbage. I can manage a role indifferent well. So tomorrow I’ll be a role. And then the day after tomorrow, I will write to Annie, and see if she’ll have me home for lent.

January the sixth Twelfth Night dawned with a cold that settled over London like the locking of a chest, but even in winter of a plague year, festivity could be found. A solemn sort of merriment fought with nausea as Will peered through a gap in the draperies, amazed at the splendor of Westminster Palace bannered in holly and ivy and ablaze with more candles than a church. The great Gothic hall echoed with the busy footsteps of players and tirers, servants flitting like shadows through the bustle on any pretext to get a glimpse of the great Richard Burbage, of the famous Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was easy enough to mark: broad-shouldered as a monolith, his lips moving silently as he reviewed his cues. Burbage vanished twice for not above half an hour each time, and each time Will noticed a serving girl went missing simultaneously. One sweet dark-haired lass caught his own eye, and if it hadn’t been for fear of rumpling his doublet, he might have sought a kiss.

Just for luck.

But it was past time for that, and time to be tending to paint, reddening boys lips with carmine and lacing them into their corsetry. A black wig for Katharine and a blond wig for Bianca. Will swallowed his own fear: the younger boy, also named Edward, was trembling as Will made a mirror for his paint.

“Tis only a Queen you perform for,” Will said in the boy’s ear, tidying his kohled eye with a cloth. “Surely that’s happened before.”

Edward giggled, for all his cheeks stayed white as a bride s. Will patted Edward on the shoulder above his bodice before walking away. At least your name’s not under the title. He went to have Burbage mend his own painting. And found the round little player pacing five short steps, back and forth and back again.

Richard considered. “Too much on the lips.”

Too much indeed, Will thought, standing what seemed a moment later just out of the audience’s view.

There was the Queen, her chair surrounded by her admirers. Sir Walter Raleigh, glossy in his black, leaned to murmur in Her Majesty’s ear. Her hand came up to brush his shoulder, and the loosely sewn pearls on his doublet scattered at the snap of a thread. Will could plainly see the Queen’s condescending amusement at her favorite’s expensive conceit.

On her other side, ferret-faced Henry Wriothesley Southampton frowned at the dashing Earl of Essex in his white-and-gold, who frowned more deeply still at Raleigh, while Raleigh affected not to notice. Will noticed for all their posturing that it was Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, to whom the Queen most often bent, and spoke, and smiled.

All fell silent as the prologue began. What would Marley do?The expected confidence did not burgeon Will, although Burbage stepped close enough to bolster him with a shoulder. But Marley was dead, or as good as: Will on his own, and‘boy: let him come, and kindly’— There’s my cue.

Will swallowed a painful bubble, let his hands fall relaxed to his sides, and stepped out on stage amid a swirl of trumpets, half convinced his voice would fail him.

“Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds:

Brach Merriman the poor cur is embossed;

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach.”

This is the stupidest thing I have ever written. She’ll have me whipped around town for stepping above my station.

A nothing part, a pompous lord, and Will had been playing on stage six years now. Still, his hand shook. The Queen. I am no Richard Burbage, to collect hearts like so many butterflies.