“I would not hazard myself to hazard a guess,” Burbage replied, hooking a boot heel over a rung. “It’s noised about that it was a drunken brawl, and Kit’s been in his cups of late, as poets sometimes go when they’ve had a little triumph…” Jokingly, he reached as if to pull the tankard from Will’s hand, and Will shielded it deftly. “But”, Burbage continued, “Kyd gave evidence against him, and Kit was still at liberty, as Kit seemed to stay no matter the charge levied against him. So there’s something there. What’s the manuscript?”

“Titus Andronicus.”

“Still? The plague will have us closed into winter, Will. It’s five thousand dead already. And Titus a terrible story. We need comedy, not blood. If we ever see a stage again.”

“It’s not the story,” Will answered.

Burbage was a shareholder in the troupe lord Strange’s Men and as such he was half Will’s employer.

The brandy tingled on the back of Will’s throat and his tongue felt thick. Still, he reckoned even harsh spirits a more welcome mouthful than blood. Kit killed. Would he risk everything … ? But Kit had been rash. And brilliant, and outrageous, and flamboyant. And young. Two months older than Will, who was just barely twenty-nine. He sipped again.

“They can’t all be genius.” Burbage laughed and tipped his mug. “Did you ever pause to wonder why not?”

Oh, the brandy was making Will honest. “Heady stuff,” he commented. “If my skill were equal mine ambition, Richard” Will shook his head. “What will we do for money if the playhouses can’t open? How long will lord Strange champion players who cannot play? Anne and my children must eat.” He’d picked up the quill. He turned it over, admiring the way candlelight caught in its ink-spotted vanes.

Burbage waved the bottle between his nose and the pen. “Have another drink, Will.”

“I’ve a play to write.”

“Which opens tomorrow, doubtless?”

“ And poor Kit undeserving of a wake? Unfair!” But Will lifted the tankard and breathed the smoky fumes deep, feeling as though they seared his brain. “Poor Kit… ”.

“Indeed. Would serve your Queen so, Will? Serve her to the death?”

That brought him up short. “Is that what poor Marley did? Not stabbed for treason, or murdered by his conspirators before he could name their names. Nor killed for his,” Will lowered his voice “—atheism, and the talk of …” He drank again, but held his hand over his cup when Burbage would have filled it. “I can’t write.”

“Drink will fix it.”

Will did not uncover his tankard. “Drink fixes little, and what it doth fix can oft be not unfixed again.”

“Ah.” Burbage shifted his attention to his own cup as Will stood and paced. “In vino veritas. Is a Queen worth risking your life for, Will?”

“Why ask you these things of me?” Splinters curled from the wainscot shelf. Years of dry heat and creeping chill had cracked the wood long and deep between cheap plaster. Will picked spindled wood with one ink stained fingernail. He’d papered the walls with broadsheets, which also peeled. A Queen. The idea of a Queen… .

“The reality not worth your time?”

Burbage leaned on the wall, brandy-sharp breath hot on Will’s cheek. He thrust Will’s cup into his hand; Will took it by reflex.

“It’s her got Kit killed, isn’t it? Blood and a knife in the face. That’s what Queens get you.”

“Treason,” Will whispered.

Burbage’s face was flushed, his cheeks hot, red-blond hair straggled down in his too-bright eyes. Like a man fevered. Like a man mad.

“You speak treason.” His hands were numb. The tankard slipped out of his fingers, and the brandy made a stream that glistened in the candlelight like liquid amber as it fell. The stink filled his room, sharp as the bile rising up Will’s throat. “That’s treason, man!”

“Treason or truth? A ragged old slattern, belike. Bastard, excommunicate daughter of a fat pig of a glutton, a man who might have invented lust and greed he liked them so well…”.

Will’s hand acted before his mind got behind it; he struck Burbage across the face, a spinning slack-handed blow. Drunker than he’d thought, he overreached; the fallen tankard dented under his knee as he landed on it.

Fie! Brandy soaked his stocking. At least he thought it brandy, and not blood.

“Get from me!” Will pointed at the door with a trembling hand, though the player towered over him. “I’ll find another company an those are your sentiments!”

But Burbage, pink-cheeked from the blow, extended his own hand to help Will to his feet. Will could only stare at it.

“Your eloquence does desert you when you’re drunk enough. On your feet, man. You’ve passed the test.”

“Test?” Will wobbled up, one hand on the wall, refusing Burbage’s aid. “You’ve maligned the Queen.”

Burbage winked stagily, while Will limped to his abandoned stool. “Her Majesty would smile on it. Come.”

“I’ll go nowhere with you until you make yourself plain.” A burning sting told Will the brandy had found a cut under his stocking. “You’ve bloodied me.”

“I’ll pay the danegeld, Burbage answered. I can’t tell you, Will. You have to come meet them.”

“Who?” Blood soaked through light-colored wool, but only a drop. Will winced and picked cloth away from the cut.

“Your coconspirators.”

Will looked up as Burbage rested a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Didst not hear me say?”

“I heard thee clear”, Burbage answered. “Since thou’rt so loyal then, come on with me and find why Marley was killed. The rumors are true, Will: he was a Queen’s Man, sure.”

Will blinked. His skull was still thick with drink, though the pain cut through it somewhat. “What do you need me for?”

Burbage smiled, and Will thought he saw the edge of pity in it. “Will. To take his place.”

Will followed Burbage into a cool, overcast morning. The gutters hadn’t yet begun to stink, but Burbage picked his way fastidiously, one arm linked through Will’s to steer the still-unsteady playmaker across a maze of slick cobbles and night soil.

“Why not go home to Stratford-upon-Avon?” he asked. “Go back to merchanting. Look at this place: half the shops shuttered, the playhouses closed. I’m a player. And a playmaker. Besides….”

They passed a hurrying woman in russet homespun, her skirts kilted up and a basket over her arm. She clutched a clove-studded lemon to her nose, and Burbage snorted as she shied away from them.

“I have a wife and children in Stratford.”

“A player? Might as well be a leper, for all the respect they give us,” Burbage pointed out companionably, turning to watch the servant or goodwife pass. Her shoulders stiffened and she walked faster. Burbage looked down and grinned, then tilted his face up at Will.

“I’d die there. Suffocate under dry goods.”

“You’ll suffocate under vermin here.” Burbage tugged him out of the path of a trio of rangy yellow and fawn dogs in low-tailed pursuit of a sleek, scurrying rat. “If the money concerns you, go home.

I need this, Richard. Your father’s a playhouse owner. You’ve grown up with it. For me…”.

“It’s worth abandoning wealth and family?”

“I support them,” Will answered, ignoring the twist of guilt his friend’ words brought. Slops spattered down behind them, and Will stepped into the shelter of an overhang, Burbage following with an arm still linked.

“I’ll bring them to London once I make a success.”

“Bring them to this?” Burbage dropped Will’s arm, his gesture expansive.

Will admired how Burbage framed himself against the darkness of a brown-painted door in a pale facade, sweeping his arm up beside his hat, every inch the unconscious professional. Will shook his head. Burbage was younger. Younger, but raised to the theatre and knowing in his bones things Will struggled to learn.

“Keep them home, Will. Away from the plague and the filth. I’d go backto Stratford myself, if I could.”