“Shakespeare,” Hunsdon said. “Your master, Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange, is dead.” It was as well that Will had finished the wine in the cup, for it tumbled from his nerveless fingers and bounced off a rich hand-knotted carpet, spilling a few red drops on the dark red wool. “Dead.”

“By poison,” Burghley answered. “Or, some say, sorcery. Ten days to die, in terrible agony, Will.” Hunsdon’s voice, his given name.

Will blinked and realized he was standing, his hands knotted on the relief that covered the gilded arms of his chair.

“My lords.”

“Master Shakespeare, sit.” Will sat. “Good.”

“My lords.””

“There is more.” Will leaned forward to hear Burghley’s weary voice more clearly.

“Our Queenis threatened, Master Shakespeare. I have ordered the Irish aliens to present themselves and make explanation of their presence in England. And Essex has accused the Queen’s own physician of treason and conspiring to poison her.”

“Lopez,” Will said. And then quoted sardonically, “The vile Jew.”

“Lies,” Burghley said flatly. “Essex’s machinations. More and more, I believe Essex and Southampton dupes of the enemy. If anything other than the black half of the Prometheus Club, it was a Papist plot. But Lopez has confessed.”

“Confessed? Topcliffe?” It was the name of the Queen’s torturer, the man who had broken Thomas Kyd, and Will spoke it softly.

“William Wade.” Hunsdon breathed out softly through his nose. “Clerk of the Privy Council. Instrumental in bringing low Mary, Queen of Scots, and exposing her treachery. He … showed Lopez the instruments.”

“Ah.” Will gulped, remembering the sear of a red-hot iron by his face.

“My son Robert attended the hearing,” Burgley said. “He and Essex have been dueling in the Queen’s favor for Lopez for months, you understand. We had a hope of saving Lopez until Strange died. Eight times Essex pressed her to sign the writ, and eight times she refused. But now … Essex will prevail, and Lopez will die. Would that Gloriana were a man, and not turned by a pretty man’s face.”

He stopped, as if hearing himself on the brink of treason. “Lopez has been a valued ally, and preserved Sir Francis when we had thought all hope lost. But it may be that now we must sacrifice him.”

“Like Kit,” Will said. If he had intended the words to cut Burghley, they were futile. The old man only nodded. “After a fashion.”

Will coughed against his hand. “How may I serve Her Majesty?” He thought Burghley smiled behind his beard.

“We’ll have Richard revive The Jew of Malta”

“Is Kit not out of favor?”

“Favor or not, we have no other play that may distract the masses and offer a channel to their wrath. Until you write one.”

“My lord?”

“Master Shakespeare. Give me a play about a Jew. Before there are riots in London. Essex’s plot will see innocent persons lynched, and there is naught we can do to prevent it.” Hunsdon covered his mouth with his hand. “I am not a Jew-lover, but it is not they who must be blamed for this outrage.” Burghley tapped the edge of the chessboard in exasperation. Put your damned hand down, Carey, if you want me to understand what you say.

“My lord, Will said. I have never known a Jew.”

“I have one for you,” Burghley answered. “I must warn you. Like Marley’s—” and Will noticed no reluctance in Burghley’s naming of the forbidden poet’s name,—“ your Zionist may not be charming: the groundlings I think would not understand it, were he. But neither must his enemies be. Lord Strange dead. Murdered. And Lopez to hang for it.”

“As my lord wishes,” Will said, and bent to pick his fallen goblet off the floor.

Love is not full of pity, as men say,

But deaf and cruel, where he means to prey.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and leander

Summer bled to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to the first cold trickle of spring and then through summer until the cycle repeated itself. The seasons in Faerie did not proceed quite as Kit was used to them, but rather each one smoothly into the next without fits and starts, each day a sort of idealized image of what a day in summer, or autumn, or winter should be. He concealed his iron-nailed boots in the bottom of his clothespress in the spacious quarters he was given, and he soon found himself moving through the court, at first as a curiosity and then as a fixture. And while he saw the Mebd often enough at court functions, he was not again summoned before her, or given to understand any purpose in his presence at her court.

Murchaud kept him at arms practice outside, in the slick scattered leaves of the beech wood behind the palace and then in courtyard snow; then in the Great Hall and the armory when that snow drifted over their knees. Kit filled the time between as best he could. He was not accustomed to idleness, and he chafed, and paced, and read and wrote when he had the patience, though all his words seemed hollow and he woke alone most mornings. Some of those mornings, the shape of Murchaud’s or Morgan’s body lay already cold in his bed, an ache filling his belly and a hopelessness behind it. He never lost himself again, as he had after his visit to Sir Francis, but the threat of it hung over him always like black wings. He took to courting Morgan with a practiced distance that seemed to please her very well, while the Elf-knights and ladies treated him as some exotic pet. Like Elizabeth’s wizened little devil monkey on its chain.

One cold February morning, Kit lay against his pillows and watched a dry snow coil and blow beyond the diamond-paned windows. He turned on his side, blew a jet-black hair and days barren of scent from the other pillow. The coverlet of silk and down on his bare skin, the fur-trimmed tapestries on the bed, the transparent diamond panes themselves were luxuries lost on him as he stood and went to the window. He didn’t notice the cold, and only half noticed that the glass did not lay his reflection over the snow.

He was leaner and harder, for all of Faerie’s rich food. Murchaud drove him hard. Kit’s breath frosted the glass. You should have known when you swore off love that you would only tempt fate to bind you in her wicked chains. Still he reached out and idly drew a lance-pierced heart in the misted window, amused by the obvious symbolism, then glanced over his shoulder as if someone might have seen him. When he raised a guilty hand to wipe it clear, he saw the flurry was tapering away, and saw as well a silhouette wrapped in a figured cloak making her way across the drifts below. Ebony locks rustled unbound across her shoulders; something whiter than the snow fluttered in her milk-white hand.

His flinch caught Morgan’s eye; she looked up. Even from this distance he could see her smile and the movement of her hair across tapestry brocade. He imagined what he looked like framed naked in the window, lust stirring as he recollected the scent of her, and stepped to one side, his face burning. She’ll be here in a moment, he thought, and considered for an instant meeting her naked and shameless at the door. She’d laugh. If his blushes wouldn’t set him on fire. Kit,he admonished. For a brazen libertine, an adulterer, a sodomite, an atheist, a fornicator, rakehell, heretic, godless playmaker and debaucher of innocents, you re a sorry state of affairs.

Self-mockery turned his mouth awry as he found a clean shirt, the yoke wrought with whitework, and the green breeches and pale gray woolen stockings that matched a green and silver velvet doublet. Morgan’s favorite colors. He judged it would take her a quarter hour or so to come inside, shed her cloak, and make her way through the palace, but he was still running a hurried comb across his hair when a tap rattled the door. He opened it a moment later, surprised to find not Morgan waiting beyond the door, but a broad-shouldered, black-bearded man: the Mebd’s bard Cairbre, snow still clotting the tops of his boots.