“The reason Elizabeth protects Oxford. And what will make your task all the harder, though Essex has o’erplayed his hand.”

Will studied Kit’s face, its deadly earnest placidity except for a sort of valley worn between the eyes. “I listen.”

“You know Edward de Vere was raised as William Cecil, Baron Burghley’s ward after the sixteenth Earl of Oxford died. At the Queen’s request.”

“I do.”

“This does not leave this room.”

“I understand.” Kit drank off his wine at a draft, and plucked the dagger from the tabletop to clean his nails.

“Oxford is Elizabeth’s bastard son.”

Mortimer:

Madam, whither walks your majesty so fast?

Isabella:

Unto the forest, gentle Mortimer,

To live in grief and baleful discontent;

For now my lord the King regards me not,

But dotes upon the love of Gaveston.

He clapshis cheeks and hangs about his neck,

Smiles in his face, and whispers in hisears;

And, when I come, he frowns, as who should say,

“go whither thou wilt, seeing I have Gaveston.”

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II

Kit tugged his hood higher. “Latch the door after I leave.”

Will folded his arms. “I fail to see what errand could be of so much import that you must risk yourself in the street.”

“Some things,” Kit said, “a man must simply do. I’ll return by dawn. I swear it.”

“I’ll be at the Mermaid if you want me, then,” Will said, shaking his head in stagy frustration.

Kit walked through London with a feeling in his breast like freedom, his left hand easy on the hilt of a silver rapier forged as hard and resilient as steel. Carts clattered in the twilight, whorish girls and boys called from doorways, and men and women hustled home from market or out to taverns for their dinners. A commonplace scene, London in the sunset, and one at odds with the determination that coiled in Kit. He kept his eyes downcast and let his hair fall in front of his face, concealing as best he could his eyepatch.

A sunny day for staging a vengeance tragedy, Marley. Tis not vengeance,he told himself. Tis preclusion.

Two hours walking and half the Faerie gold in his purse bought him the location of Richard Baines home: a house rather than a lodging, on Addle Street. He’d done well for himself. Kit skulked through an alley almost too narrow for his shoulders to pass without scraping the wall on either side. The house had a little garden: he hoisted himself to peer over the wall, but every window was darkened. Damn. At the Sergeant, do you suppose?A bell tolled nine of the clock, and he let himself drop on the outside of the wall.

Wherever Baines is, Fray Xalbador will not be far behind.

Kit stroked the hilt of his sword again, thinking perhaps he should try his hand at finding Oxford, instead. A dead man may accomplish many things a live one might balk at. But he wanted Baines blood, that was the truth, and wanted the false Inquisitor’s more. He could scale the wall and lie in wait, since it seemed not even a servant was at home. Or he could go in search, aimlessly pacing. His feet decided for him. He walked through the much-thinned crowds, amused at how little apprehension he felt at strolling London’s streets in the darkness. Dead men lay their burdens down. But it was a lie, and he knew it. With an intelligencer’s assessment of risk and reward, Kit knew that Fray Xalbador was worth Kit’s own lifeblood to put an end to. More than worth. Might as well trade Faerie gold for a good English sovereign. But as much as Kit would have liked to hunt Robert Poley to his death at the Groaning Sergeant, Kit knew his life wasn’t worth Poley’s. His secret wasn’t even worth Poley’s life. Surprised at a familiar voice, Kit stopped, looked up, stepped away from the square of light cast by an open door. A slow baritone, with something of the luff and fill of thoughtful sails behind it.

“Chapman,” he murmured. And indeed, his wandering footsteps, no doubt primed by Will’s words on where to find him, had led him into Cheapside and onto Bread Street. As he looked up he saw George Chapman’s portly girth silhouetted against the open door of the Mermaid. Laughter followed Chapman’s unheard bon mot. Kit drew into the shadows, hoping Chapman didn’t think him a cutpurse or lurcher lying in wait. He need not have feared: Chapman never saw him, but set out whistling down the street, swinging a stout stick and holding a half-shuttered lantern.

Kit glanced longingly at the sharp-cut panel of lamplight on the cobbles, and swore. He could hear Will’s laughter now, too, and someone else, Tom Nashe? a voice cut clean by the closing door. He turned on his heel and followed Chapman. At least I can see him safe home. Arrant fool, walking through London alone after curfew.

But Chapman moved east, and Kit followed at a little more distance, now curious more than worried as his old friend let that stick tap lightly on the cut stone kerb.

Dark houses loomed: a crack of stars were visible only directly overhead, and only a few lights gleamed through the slits in shutters, stars of a different sort. The rats grew bolder after dark, and twice Kit heard the squealing of their private wars.

Chapman was walking to Westminster Palace, a goodly night’s jaunt. The lantern was a godsend: its light both steered Kit and blinded Chapman, so Kit need fear neither recognition nor the loss of his quarry in the dark. He fell back a little as they passed Blackfriars: there were carriages in thestreets, parties of walkers, and groups of armed men to keep the Queen speace. King’s Street was quieter, once they passed through the gates, and there was little traffic beyond Charing Cross.

Kit turned once at a footstep behind him, wary of a sense of being watched, but he saw only a few figures. Another lantern-decked carriage rattled over the cobbles, forcing one pedestrian against the wall. Probably just Morgan watching me through her damned Glass. Matched bays drew the coach a two-in-hand and the gelding on the near side had one white sock on a hind foot, which flashed in the lantern light along with the footman’s livery.

Oh, that’s just too much of a coincidence.Kit stepped up his pace, eyes trained forward. But of course it wasn’t a coincidence at all. He had been following Chapman. And Chapman had been en route from supper and conversation with his friends and fellow playmakers to meet his patron. His patron, who had been Kit’s patron as well. And friend. And more. Thomas Walsingham.

The June night was warm, the air humid enough that it felt as if Kit walked through veils of silk that clung and slipped. He followed the slowing carriage as he had followed Morgan, one footstep and then another. But this was thoughtful rather than blind obedience. The meaning comes in the silences. Momentum comes from the instant before the foot leaves the ground.

The white-footed gelding stamped as his mate jostled him, tugging the rein as the coachman drew them in. Kit heard the creak of leather, the rattle of iron-shod rims on stone. Someone hallooed Chapman; a lantern flickered. Kit laid one hand on the wall and watched from the shadows, as if turned to stone.

Or salt,he thought, as the coach door opened. I could wish that. A pillar of salt, to melt in the endless London rain and flow down the Thames to the ocean. Like a river of tears. Oh, stop it, Marley. That’s not even an original image.And still he could have wept at the contrast between what he felt, now, suddenly, that had been so long stepped upon and the desperate, thoughtless, compliant passion that had marked his loves in Faerie. Loves? How couldst even thou have mistaken that for love, Kit Marley?More to be ashamed, for he knew what love was. It was the thing that held him now, a breathless kind of clarity that kept him in the shadows, waiting for one last glimpse of the man whose life and home he had shared before.