“I cannot see you without London as a backdrop. As I cannot see myself on any other stage. And I need to write, Richard. The stories press me.”

“Then you re stuck.” Burbage led him out of the narrower streets of Southwark, toward a more open lane where a few trees straggled betweenmassive houses. Will blinked as sunlight abraded his eyes. “Well and truly.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To solve all your small problems and grant you large ones.” Burbage produced a heavy key and unlocked a round-topped wooden gate in the garden wall of a mortared brick dwelling. Will glimpsed green leaves and blossoms beyond; a sweet scent put him in mindof a haymow.

“This is Francis langley’s house. The owner of the Swan. The moneylender.”

Burbage ignored the comment, holding the gate to let Will pass. “You’ll need to find a way to make it appear that the money comes from legitimate sources, and not be seen to be wealthier than the run of playmakers, at least here in London. Can your Annie run a business as well as a household?”

“Money? My Annie can run… my lords!” The grass was wet with nighttime rain under his knee as his bow turned into a stagger and he swept his hat from his head. Will put a hand down and tried to make it look intentional. Burbage laughed behind him as he closed and locked the gate.

“Oh, that was unkind of me, Will,” Burbage said as a heavy hand fell on Will’s shoulder.

Will angled his head. The hand wasn’t Burbage s. Neither was the following voice. “On your feet, William Shakespeare: we speak as the Knights of the Round Table here. In defense of their Sovereign, all men are equal. And that’s a little excessive even if we weren't.”

“My lord.” But Will got to his feet and looked into the downturned eyes of Edward de Vere. Over his left shoulder, William Cecil, the Baron Burghley and the lord Treasurer, bulked large in embroidered brocade, side by side with the lord Chamberlain, lord Hunsdon. Doctor Lopez, the Queen’s Physician, loomed sallow and cadaverous a little behind them. And Sir Francis Walsingham stood narrow and ascetic on the right, leaning against the wall among the espaliered branches of a fruit tree. Heavy dark sleeves dripped from bony wrists; he tossed a lemon idly in one hand.

Will’s jaw slackened, words tumbling from his tongue as he rose to his feet, looked to Burbage for reassurance. “A ghost…”

“Merely, the Queen’s dead spymaster and Secretary of State,” he replied, wry sympathy informing his tone, “—a startling resemblance to one, Master William Shakespeare. I’m both Walsingham and quick, I assure you. And lucky to be. I’ve been in hiding these three years past, that my Queen’s enemies may think they succeeded in removing me. But Lopez here preserved my life.”

The doctor bowed, a heavy ruby ring glinting on his hand, while Walsingham drew a breath. Before Will could speak, the spymaster made a shift of direction quick and forked as lightning. “You know that Marley studied with John Dee, the astronomer.”

“There are rumors.”

“There frequently are.” Oxford stepped away as Walsingham came closer. Burghley, a massive shape in rustling brocade, folded his hands before his ample belly.

Will felt their eyes running questions up and down his frame.

“The rumors are true. Marley was well, no magician. But a playmaker with an art for it, and a loyalty to Britannia.”

“I had heard he was associated with the Catholics.”

“Where a man goes, and what a man seems to do, are not always the truest indications of a man’s loyalties.”

“You want an apologist,” Will said on a rush of breath he hadn’t known he held. “I can do that, in service to Gloriana.”

“Ah,” Burghley answered. “Would it were so meet and simple. Aye, that’s half what we need of you. The other half is a sort of science, or philosophy.”

“Will saw the deaf old man’s eyes trained on his lips as he waited for Will to answer. “Black Art? You can’t be seriously … My lord Treasurer,” Will finished, suddenly aware that the nobleman was eyeing him quite seriously indeed, a small smile rounding Burghley’s cheeks under the white carpet of his beard.

Will raised a hand to press to his breast, realized his action half completed, and let the hand fall again.

“Oh, I can,” Burghley responded. “And not Black at all. Just the gentle art of persuasion, my shake-spear.”

A sharp scent of citron filled the walled garden, a drift of coolness brushing Will’s hand. Citrus oil: Walsingham had driven a thumbnail sharp as a knife into the rind of the lemon. He tugged, revealing white pith and bright pulp. The pearls of oil in the rind burst and misted, hanging on the soft moist air.

“Like persuading lemons to fruit in May,” Walsingham said, offering half the rent fruit to Will. Will took it numbly. The skin was still warm with the touch of Walsingham shand, and Will followed the gesture of that hand toward the espaliered tree.

He blinked. Lemons hung along one branch in late-summer profusion, olives on another. The third grew heavy with limes.

“Just an art,” Walsingham said. “Like grafting and gardening. In London, you can make surprising things grow.”

“You want me to hide spells in my plays? As Marley is said to have done in Faustus?”

“We want you to change hearts and raise the rabble to the old tales of kings and princes and ladies fair. To show the danger of damn’d ambition, and the virtue of keeping one’s troth. As Kit did.”

“I cannot write as Kit did.”

“You will,” Lord Hunsdon promised. “You’ve a gift in you, man in your Comedy of Errors, and your Henry VI. You’ll write as Kit did, and better.”

“And wind up like Kit as well, no doubt, with a knife in the eye.”

Henry was half Marley’s, Will thought, but didn’t correct the lord Chamberlain. Juice dripped over Will’s hand, but Will did not raise the fruit to his mouth.

“There is that risk,” Oxford allowed. A light wind ruffled his fine hair as the day brightened and warmed. A dove greeted the sunlight with cooing, and starlings fluttered on the grass.

“We have enemies.” Lopez’s accent was less than Will had imagined. He tucked his hands inside the drooping sleeves of his black robe, posture imperious, expression cold. “Mistake it not. Our society was quite infested by traitors, loyal to Spanish Philip or to themselves. We’ve picked them from the ranks, but Kit is not the first of our number to fall to their machinations.”

Perhaps it was the chill in Lopez’s manner, the dismissal. But Will rallied against it, when he might have bent under greater sympathy.

“It’s whispered in the kitchens, Doctor, that your swarthy hand was behind the poisoning of Walsingham.”

“Aye,” said Lopez. “And who spreads the whispers, playmender?”

“Will,” Burbage whispered.

“Won't.”

Burbage took a step back. Will felt six men lean toward him. “Won’t wind up like Kit,” he amended. “I mean to die in mine own bed, warm and comforted. There’s no way out of this once I’ve accepted, is there?”

“There’s no way out of it now, Walsingham said kindly. I won’t lie to you: we stand only for Elizabeth, and nothing else. No Church or love of God or man may come between us and the love of our Queen. Our enemies stand against us with weapons fouler than a knife in the eye.”

“What? Cannon? Sedition? Gunpowder?”

“Plague,” Hunsdon answered. “Poison. Sorcery. Politics. The wiles of men who should be removed from secular things; the Catholic and Puritan factions who plot against the Queen are their dupes.”

“Puritans and Sorcery? Odd bedmates indeed.”

“I’ve seen odder, Walsingham replied, a shadow darkening his brow. “They are puppeted by shadowy hands. Including, it seems, hands I have trusted in the past.” Walsingham’s gaze dropped to the lemon in his hand. He raised it to his mouth, lips pursing tight when he tasted the juice.

Will contemplated his own half fruit. “And all I must do is write plays?”