Kit stole a glance at the Mebd and past her to his master and his mistress. Morgan saw him; he raised his brows in question. Her eyes sparkled as she tilted her head. Yes. They delight in being shocked. The question is, can I manage more than a half-dozen lines by the time the subtlety’s presented?

He leaned toward the Puck as the meats were passed, and the Mebd made her selections.

“Why am I seated at the high table, Master Robin?”

Robin’s bells jangled, a scent of peppermint arising. “Because it amuses someone to see you here.” Twig-fingers tapped the back of Kit’s hand as the poet broke his bread into tidbits. “Your manners are dainty for someone who is not accustomed to eating with nobility.”

“Not unaccustomed to it,” Kit answered. “I’ve done my share of dining above my station.”

“And what is your station, Sir Poet?”

Kit stopped, a buttered morsel of bread to his lips. There was more to the question than the obvious: the glitter in the Puck’s huge soft eyes, wide and wicked as a goat’s, made that plain.

“It varies with the weather,” he said at last, picking up a cup he had no taste for just to feel the wine swirl within it. “Cobbler, preacher, poet, spy. Which would you have me?” The Puck chewed noisily, dipping greasy fingers in a bowl of rose-water after setting a leg of swan aside. He swallowed, enough of a mouthful that his throat distended. “Lover, killer, playmaker, thief…”

“Never a thief. But all the others, if that’s the one that stings. Only a vile playmaker in the end,” Kit answered, with a shrug he himself wasn’t sure was acknowledgement. What turns a cobbler into preacher, Kit? Or a preacher into a Queen’s Man? That too.Kit opened his mouth on a glib lie and shut it. He glanced over Robin’s shoulder, where the Mebd sat, and beyond her, her husband, and beyond her black Morgan le Fey.

“When I was thirteen,” he said, “my father beat his apprentice so badly he was fined by the Guild. I thought I’d rather a scholar’s beatings than a prentice’s. I entered King’s School at fifteen.” The words came quietly, and he was proud of that. “I was too old. They took me anyway. I went to Cambridge on a scholarship. My family were proud. Some years later, I came to find that the vocation I thought I had was a lie, for the Church’s God was no God of mine. Or if it was true, then I was called by mistake. If God makes that sort of mistake.” Kit stopped and sat back in his chair.

The Puck slid a bit of roast meat before him. Kit lifted his dagger and poked at it, but did not eat.

“And then?”

“And then it was live by my wits or live not at all. Tis easy to starve in London. And unlike the Church, the only thing Gloriana asks of her servants is that they love her above breath and fortune. Why am I telling you this?”

The Puck laughed. “Because you need a friend, Sir Kit.”

Kit looked up. He set his knife aside. “Do I? Aye. Well, then I wot I do.”

“Eat, Puck said. You’ll need strength when you tell your poetry.”

Mercutio:

Oh, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet

The second letter arrived in cold, wet April a week or two before Will schristening-day, after the playhouses were reopened from a lent that Will had hoped and failed to spend in Stratford. It was in Kit’s hand, or a clever forgery, and written with some care: no words were scratched out or blotted, and the ink was black as jet on creamy parchment. The tone was much as the first letter. Gold to dross, Will thought, refolding the letter and examining the seal once more though he was growing late for his meeting with lord Hunsdon. The seal was of brittle green wax, imprinted with an image of a goose feather. All carefully chosen to lead Will to an inevitable conclusion.

Gold to dross.

Will Shakespeare had been a country lad, where the reek of frankincense and superstition of Papism still clung. Even if he hadn’t seen in manuscript a few cantos of Spenser’s poem in praise of England’s own Faerie Queene, he would have known the signs as well as any man, although a rational a properly Protestant mind might reject them. Kit’s with the Faeries. Or he’s mad: there’s always that. But he somehow knows mine acts almost as soon as I perform them. And he repeats his plea that I inform him, through Walsingham, of politics and players, and anything else that might befall.

Easily enough done, and no more risky than reporting to Walsingham himself. Which Will still intended. But

I should burn this letter.

But it would be noticeable to carry it downstairs and slip it into the fire, and there was no hearth in Will’s room. After some consideration and a few false starts, he lifted the ticking off the bed and tucked the letter between the ropes and the frame, where it stuck quite nicely. Completely concealed, even with the ticking off: Will crawled under the frame to be sure. Then he got his arms around the rustling ticking and wrestled it back into place, poking the flannel to settle the straw inside the bag. He sneezed at the dust, wiped watering eyes on his sleeve, and twitched the bedclothes smooth.

Mid-April was still sharp enough that Will layered a leather jerkin over his doublet. He hurried through the streets, mindful of slush in the gutters, and crossed London Bridge with the sun still high in the sky. There was no concealment of this meeting: Will reported to the scowling gray Tower itself. He presented himself to the Yeoman Warder at the main gate, struggling to hide the uncertainty of his glances toward the prison while assuring the guards that he was expected. After showing his letter from the lord Chamberlain, he was ushered through, and walked down the long, rule-straight lane within.

The inside of the massive knobbed stone walls was no more comforting than the exterior had been, and he considered uneasily what the murders and covenants of ravens along the edges of the rooftops dined upon. Legend claimed that should the ravens leave the Tower, England’s fall would not be far behind.

Will was not expecting the lord Chamberlain and the lord Treasurer to be waiting for him, apparently at their leisure, a half-played game of chess set on a small cherrywood table between their chairs along with wine and glasses. The footman who opened the door did not accompany Will into the opulent little chamber. A hearth blazed, and a brazier as well the room dryly hot in deference to old men’s bones. Will spared a glance for the figured leather on the walls as the door clicked shut behind him. Burghley and Hunsdon looked up in unison; Burghley turned a chess piece, a white rook, in one crabbed hand.

“My lords.” Will bowed with a player’s flourish.

“Master Shakespeare,” Burghley said, flicking Will upright with irritable fingers. The hand that pinched the ivory castle indicated a third chair.

“Drag that over, won’t you?” Will obeyed, and sat where he was bid to be seated: a little back from the table, well within the cone of warmth from the hearth. He tugged his mittens off, an excuse to look down at his hands. “My lords. From the summons, I had expected we should all be present for this interview.”

“Ah, yes.” Burghley returned the rook to the little army of white pieces haunting his side of the table. The only indication of Burghley’s deafness was by how close he watched Will’s lips, and a slight tinny loudness when he spoke. “We will speak to Master Burbage individually. Master Shakespeare …” The hesitation in his voice was all the warning Will needed.

“My lord, Will said. Not the Earl of Oxford?”

“No.” Hunsdon leaned forward and picked up his goblet. He refilled it from the bottle, then extended the cup as if not noticing the dignity he did Will. Will accepted it and sipped. It could be poisoned, he thought, too late, as heady fumes filled his senses. The wine was red and sharp, not sweet, but with a tannic richness that made him bold. “If your lordship would have pity …”