“Have you aught else to report? Anything of Thomas Walsingham?” Baines voice, the first part lost under the rumble of the thunder and the vsudden agony of Kit’s throat constricting. You broke it off, Kit. You were young. You learned. You never meant a thing to him. Edward.

“… Thomas Walsingham’s trust is secure. I’ve made evidence that Marley was involved with enemies of the Queen, and Thomas has accepted Master Poley’s judgement. With some tearing of the hair. I gather they were bosom friends.”

Kit straightened his arms against the beam overhead. Cold water dripped onto his forehead and ran down his arms as he let his head loll back. It mingled with slow heat leaking down his cheek, dripped burning against the back of his throat. He tasted salt and didn’t lower a hand to wipe it dry. ‘Edward,’ he mouthed. Oh, unhappy Marley. He’d blamed poor Thomas for his murder all unfairly, and it was fickle Edward all along.

Baines said, “Walsingham suspects nothing, my lord.”

“Excellent. What news from the Continent?”

A band of heavier rain swept the alley, and Kit couldn’t bear in any case to listen longer. The pang that wracked his belly was the final consideration: he couldn’t be sure if it was hunger, or the doom that would drive him back to Faerie, but he didn’t dare stay wedged under the stair. He slung a leg over the crossbrace and locked his ankles around the timber again, thinking, At least going down will be easier than coming up.

Except his hand slipped on slimy wood as he shifted his hip off the crossbrace, and he grabbed wildly for the timber and got a slick handful of rain-soaked bark that peeled free. He wasn’t sure how he remembered not to shout as he skidded two feet, asmear with whitewash and crumbs of wood, that splinter lodged so deeply now he thought he’d die of it, his eyepatch tearing loose a knot of hair as it went into the gulf underneath. His sword stayed blessedly fast in its scabbard, though, and for a long moment Kit hugged the timber and just breathed long, slow rattling breaths that hurt more coming out than going in.

Somehow he made it to the ground and stood against the timber, shaking more with his realization about Oxford than with the terror of the climb. He knew the length of such reports to the minute, and Poley and Baines would be emerging soon. What’s another betrayal? I already knew what he was. At least I’ve confirmation. Edward II stung him. Although perhaps more than I intended.And then a bright flare of hope, quickly doused. It wasn’t Tom. And so what if it wasn’t? The thought that must concern me is whether Edward is our only traitor.

Kit pulled himself away from the timber and bent to retrieve his cloak. He couldn’t find his eyepatch; the rainwater felt odd trickling over the drooping eyelid and the scar on his blind side. But at least with the cloak too sodden to wear, it was unlikely anyone would look past the whitewash daubing his form, the blood and mess and the long-healed wound to recognize a dead man’s profile. He needed Morgan. He needed to get another message to Francis, that his cousin was innocent and Oxford the man not to be trusted. We, We. Kit, there is no we any more. You serve a different Queen.He would have laughed if he’d dared: first the sinking horror of betrayal and then relief that left him giddy. Edward, not Thomas. Why is it so much better to be betrayed by one former lover than another? Because it is better to have a vile impression of someone once cared for reinforced, than to have one’s heart shown irreparably flawed.

He picked his way out into the steadier traffic of the street, too weary and pained to keep to the shadows though passersby were offering his bloody, whitewashed, rain-streaked visage curious stares and wide berths. There was a rain barrel up on bricks a half block further on, and he thought he might wash his face. Kit kept his eye on his shoes, cautious of the slick cobbles. He wouldn’t have looked up at all if a hurrying figure hadn’t drawn back a startled step and gasped.

“M Marley? God’s blood.”

Kit looked into the eyes of a narrow little man with a narrow little face. He was well dressed and well wrapped against the rain, and he skittered back three steps and bared his teeth like a trapped rat as Kit advanced, reaching across his body for the rapier.

“Nicholas Skeres,” Kit muttered between the draggled locks of his hair. He tasted lime and blood and soot, and spit them out upon the road. “Thou murdering bastard. I’ll see thee hang.”

Skeres eyes widened so the white showed in a ring. He gave a scream like a startled girl and shuffled backward, tripped on a stone, and sat down hard in the slops.

“Kit, stay thy hand.””

“As thou didst stay Ingrim s?” Another step forward, the naked blade in Kit’s hand pointed at Skeres left eye, only a few short steps distant. The damage is done. You’re recognized. You may as well get the pleasure of his blood

Passersby were halting, drawing back, staring and muttering.

“Tis Master Marley’s ghost.” A woman’s shocked voice: one he knew not, but he’d been well enough known. The murdered playmaker. From some window open to the rain, a drift of music followed. Kit turned his head to regard the semicircle ranged on his blind side.

A half-dozen men and women huddled in the rain, frozen with fear or fascination. He ran a cold eye over them and they drew back. He was all over whitewash and blood, and he knew what they must see: a tattered figure smeared with the lime of the grave, the blood of his fatal wound rolling from the socket of his missing eye, leveling a naked blade at a sobbing killer.

It was too much for a player’s imagination. And a few reports of a dramatic revenant wouldn’t risk the sort of intelligent questions that a dead man returning from the grave to slaughter his own murderer might. Skeres claiming a visit from Kit’s ghost could be drunken fancy. Or Hell a ghost, for all that. Kit had been careless and greedy, and he wouldn’t have Will or Francis or a true innocent like Burghley’s changeling cousin Bull caught in the net of that carelessness. Kit smiled through the blood and tilted his head to look his prey in the eye.

You’ll die screaming, Nick Skeres, he whispered. The man flinched down into the gutter, a fresh reek of urine hanging on the rain-wet air, and Kit whirled on the ball of his foot. Silent in his nail-less boots, carrying his naked blade, he ran into the storm and made himself gone.

Pedro:

I shall see thee ere I die, look pale with love.

Benedick:

With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord,

not with love: prove that ever ILoose more blood

with love then I will get again with drinking, pick

out mineeyes with a Ballad-maker’s pen, and hang me

up at the door of a brothel housefor the sign of

blind Cupid.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado About Nothing”

“Thou didst send for me, and I am here.”

Annie lay on his bed, her shoes lined side by side beneath it, her hair unpinned and spread like a river on his pillow, spilling over the hand and arm she propped her head upon. “I stink with travel, Will. Wouldst call up water?”

Will, fussing with the lamp, smiled. Her terseness had the welcome sound of home.

“I’m glad thou didst come.” He stepped out the door and down the stairs, found the landlord’s ten-year-old boy, Jack, dozing in the common room.

“Warm water for my wife.” Will dropped half a silver penny on Jack’s lap. “And see if there’s any of the pig left.” He’s only a little older than Hamnet.

Jack vanished into the kitchen so fast he blurred. Will clumped back up the stairs, dizzy with the effects of a long day’s work in the heat. “Water is imminent. And thy supper, too, if thou likst. How are Hamnet and the girls?”