“Growing. Susanna’s tall as a willow. They’re with thy sister Joan. Come home, Will.”

He left the door unlatched and plumped down on the boards beside the bed in the flickering lamplight, the window thrown open despite the stench and sound of the streets. “Thou knowst I can’t.” He reached up without looking, caught her skirts, and tugged until her legs slid over the edge of the bed and her feet dropped into his lap. “I’m good at this, Annie. And …” The door swung open at John’s tap. Will moved Anne’s legs aside and rose to relieve the boy of his bucket and the cold pork and bread. Will latched the door and set the food on the table, shoulders aching as he hefted the bucket.

Anne peeled her stocking down, her leg raised in the air, her skirts in disarray and a wanton gleam in her eye. “Wash my feet for me, Will.” Her bare foot ran up his calf, tickling the back of his knee.

“Annie.” He set the bucket down and sat on the bed beside her, a careful six inches away. “Dost want thy supper?”

“Tis not supper I’m hungry for.” She curled against his back, pressing her soft bosom against his shoulder, her hair across his shoulder like a veil. She smelled of dust and travel, of sweat and great distances, and of sachet lavender.

“I won’t risk thy life for another babe, Annie.”

“Tis not a babe I crave, sweet William. I’m too old to catch.”

“Oh, Annie.” He turned and put his hands through her hair, and closed her eyes with a kiss. “Not so old as that, I warrant. They say a love match never comes out well, but after all I went to winning thee, Wife, would I risk thee? Another birth like the twins would finish thee, and thou wert younger then.”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“There was blood through the ticking, Anne.”

“There’s someone else.” Flatly, a dead inflection that squeezed his heart like a fist.

“A player’s dalliances. No one who matters. A husband’s prerogative, in the absence of his wife.”

She tugged her skirts out from under his leg and squatted beside the bucket, unlacing her bodice and pushing aside her smock as if the bitterness in her voice were the tones of idle conversation. He watched her wash her arms and neck, the shadows under the well-nursed softness of her breasts. The lamplight streaked her hair with an unfair quantity of gray.

“I’m well provided for. Where does the money come from, Will?”

“I’m in favor at the court. And living over a tavern.” He looked around the Spartan room, seeing it through her eyes. “I’m not here often,” he said at last. “I should see to better lodging.”

“Thou canst write plays in Stratford. Thou canst see thy children grow. I’ll content myself with stable-hands.

He turned to her, startled, and saw her rock back on her heels and smile. “If a husband may seek comfort elsewhere, Husband Mouse.”

“Thou wouldst not.” She sighed and stood, her hands linked palm to palm before her thighs. “If thou’lt not risk me, should I risk myself? I die of idleness, Will.”

“Three children and a cottage are not enough housewifery for thee?”

She kilted her skirts up, standing first on one leg and then the other to wash the grime from her feet. Will watched her toes flex, the arch of each foot grip the floor. “I’ll clean my hair tomorrow,” she decided, and stepped around the bucket, leaving footprints like jewels on the boards. Her hands on her hips again, challenging, and the curve of her clever neck. Not so different than she’d been when they’d conspired to marry over family objections, all those years ago.

He coughed into his hand. “If thou wilt not tumble me,” she said as she came to him, “wilt at least come to thy bed and comfort me with thine arms?” He blew out the lamp and did as she asked, and pretended not to hear her weep.

Until the small hours, when the noise from the street below grew slighter and she moved against him, mumbling into the dark. “I want a business, Will. If thou hast playmaking, then give me something other than stitchery and child-chasing to fill the hours.”

“What wouldst thou?” He felt her smile against his shoulder, and knew he was lost.

My lord husband. I could make thee a wealthy man. A long pause, and shimmering wryness. I want to buy land.

Which she could do only in his name and person.

“With the income I send?”

“And mine own portion.” Her held breath stilled against his cheek, he considered.

“Annie,” he said, and still heard no hiss of breath through her lips. “Send me what needst my mark,” he said.

“Mean old biddy. Stripling,” she answered, and kissed his cheek above the beard, and he was sorry that was all.

Can kingly lions fawn on creeping Ants?

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II

“Sweet Kit.” Murchaud shook his head, black curls uncoiling across the silver-shot gray silk taffeta of his doublet. He reclined beside the fire, an octavo volume propped on his knee. Kit looked up from the papers spread on his worktable and smiled through the candlelight, wary at Murchaud’s tone.

“You must not weary yourself on the affairs of mortals, my love. It will bring sorrow.”

Kit blotted his quill and laid it across the pen rest. Methodically, he sanded black words, setting the letter aside unfolded when he stood. “A command, Your Highness?”

Murchaud set his book aside and stretched on the divan, gesturing Kit closer, but Kit stood his ground.

“Nay, my lord.”

“Kit.”

“Nay, my lord.” He scraped a bootheel across the flags and frowned, turning to look into the flames of the cross-bricked hearth.

“Where has Morgan been?”

“What mean you?”

“I mean,” Kit said, watching ash crumble at the edges of a cave among the embers that glowed cherry red as a dragon’s eye, “she has not summoned me in … How long has it been?” He shrugged, running his tongue across the cleft in his upper lip and then frowning as he nibbled his mustache. “—some time.”

Kit heard the Elf-knight stand, his almost-silent footsteps as he closed the distance on Kit’s blind side.

“She has a cottage where she flees the court. It lies behind yonder beech wood. I will see that she knows of your sorrow. There’s worse to come.”

“What mean you?” The hesitation was long enough for Kit’s gut to clench.

“I’m leaving in five days. The Mebd sends me on diplomacy.”

“Where?”

“I cannot say. But it will be hard for you; Morgan must keep her distance now, and you must seem alone while I am gone. It must seem she has tired of you. You’ve played this game before. She said she warned you.”

Kit looked up. “That I might be needed for skills beyond poetry. Am I naught but a Queen’s toy, Murchaud?”

The Elf-knight smiled. “Is that so terrible a thing to be? You courted Papists for your former Mistress. There are factions in Faerie that are not so fond of your new one, or the Queen. You’ll be attractive to them.”

“The ugliness of the intelligencer’s lot,” Kit said. “Win a man’s trust. Become his friend. Whisper words of love in his ear as you slip in the knife. Catholicism is as excellent a religion as any, I suppose, so I have no reason to prefer Protestants to Catholics. Nor this Fae to that Fae, Murchaud.”

“No,” Murchaud answered, a gentle hand on his elbow. “But thou didst serve a Queen those Papists would have seen murdered, didst not?”

Kit turned back to the fire. “I did.”

Murchaud bent close amid a scent of new-mown grass. “And now you serve another, whose enemies are also manifold. Shall you serve her less well?”

“That other service, for all its blackness, I chose.” Kit sighed and nodded, and Murchaud draped an arm around his shoulders. The Prince’s tone grew intimate.

“You mourn your other life? You miss smoky, brutal London and its pox-riddled stews, its painted Ganymedes, and its starving pickpockets, soon to be hanged?”