“Ale would go kindly. Served warm, and in a leather cup.”

“Ale it will be. Is there news from London, Will?”

Will shrugged. “There’s starvation in the streets, want and privation, consumption and plague. The usual, only worse.”

“Preserve us from cities.”

Footsteps from the more occupied corner of the tavern, and a voice unexpected enough to knock the shilling from his fingertips to clatter on the trestleboard. “Oh, Master Shakespeare. Surely if London were so unhealthy as all that, none of us city rats would ever return, given a view of the country and a breath of fresh air.”

Will held the mouthful of ale until it could trickle past the tightness in his throat. He laced his fingers under the table and let the silver spiral, jingling, to a stop.

“Master Poley,” he said, and didn’t look up. “What brings you to Stratford?” Expecting the easy charm, the intelligencer’s lie. Surely Poley wouldn’t try to start an argument here, surrounded by Will’s childhood friends and his family’s neighbors.

“I came to look in on your family,” Poley said, swinging a leg over the bench opposite Will. “I’m a father myself. It seemed the least I could do, considering the care you’ve taken of Mary. And little Robin, too.”

Will did raise his eyes then, and dropped his voice. “Am I intended to understand this as a threat?”

“Understand it as you wish.” Poley’s trustworthy smile turned Will’s stomach. The intelligencer held up a pair of silver tuppence to catch the landlord’s eye, and traded them a moment later for a cup of wine.

“Have you considered how much your family must miss you? How much the worst it would be if anything should befall you in London, so far from home? Cities are dangerous.”

“And your family? Do you consider the future of your son?”

Poley just smiled, and it struck Will like a kick in the gut. I am not like this man. I am not like this man. But how, then, do we differ?

Will unlaced his fingers, lifted his tankard with his left hand, and only touched the ale to his lips. He wiped his beard to cover the smile.

“My wife may curse me to my face,” Will said. “And I can’t deny she’s a reason to. But neither my Annie nor your Mary will cross the street not to catch mine eye.”

“My Mary?” Poley turned his cup between the flats of his hands, scraping the board. “I haven’t a virgin thought in my head. Many a cheerful one, but not of Mary. Take her.”

“Tis not so.”

“Pity for thee, Will. She’s a wildcat.”

“I’ll not be thee’d by thee, either. Master Poley.”

“Ah.” The shilling lay shining between them. Poley picked it up, balanced it on edge.

“An old one. A toy. Too debased to spend. It rings fine.”

“It’s shaved to half its size,” Will said, as Poley made it jingle against the table again, the note of silver bell-clean.

“But the loyalty it buys is a whole loyalty, no?”

“Your point, man?”

A scrape as Poley pushed the rough bench back, quaffed his wine and stood. He extracted a short knife from his belt and pared his fingernails over thetable. Will edged his cup away.

“Mine only point is this.” A flick nimble as a cutpurse’s razor. Poley wore hammered rings on both thumbs, rings that glittered the dark hard radiance of steel. “You made an enemy in Essex.”

“My clumsiness is renowned.”

“A wonder you can stay on a stage at all but no matter. Think hard, Master Shakespeare.”

“Think on what, Master Poley?”

“Think whether your family might be better served by your return to Stratford. Or by your choosing a master longer for the world than lord Burghley. Or lord Hunsdon. Or Tom Walsingham.”

“Tom’s young.”

“Aye,” Poley said, and sheathed his dagger again. “Nearly of an age with you and Kit Marley, as I recall.”

Will neither stood nor looked up as Poley moved toward the door; nor did he finish his ale. He sat for some time in silence, and then he picked that poor shaved shilling up with his fingertips and rolled it twice across their backs as Tarleton had shown him, almost a decade before and made it vanish into his sleeve.

“Well, he said under his breath, that was interesting. Bill.” The last louder, so the landlord looked up. “Will?”

“Is John the carriageman still in residence?”

“Not in at the moment, but he did say he’d be staying as long as you did.”

“Send me a tally,” Will said. He stood. “Let him know I’ll be a week or so here, and then back to Kent. “If he needs to attend his master I’ll find other transportation. I shall.”

“For home already? It’s barely noon.”

“For home,” Will said, and went.

Rome if thou take delight in impious war,

First conquer all the earth, then turn thy force

Against thy self: as yet thou wants not foes.

M. ANNAEUS LUCANUS, Pharsalia, First Book (translated Christopher Marlowe)

It begins in a confessional at nightfall. The subtle bitterness of myrrh, the richness of frankincense, the sweat of the penitent lingering in age-calmed wood. Kit bows his head, leans close to the grille. Above the frankincense, the perfumed soap of the Spanish priest on the other side. With the cloying scent came cloying fear, knotting his belly like hunger, although he is successful. Accepted. Soon, he will be going home.

Christ, not this one. Not this

Kit heard his own voice, latin, the words of ritual. He fixes his eyes before him. Tis a good ritual. Comforting.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Indeed, my child, you have. But fear not. Your penitence will be adequate before Heaven.”

English, and a voice he knows. Blurs, a jumble of unclarity, of time slowed beyond time. The door of the confessional slides open, Kit blinking in the light as he moves to stand. Each heartbeat distinct as enormous hands close on his wrists, implacable as iron manacles, haul him up; he tries to kick

Kit: slender, not tall, barely bearded, without yet a grown man’s shoulders. He might break nine stone after a hearty supper. Richard Baines simply lifts him off his feet like an ill-tempered child, like a spitting virago, veins bulging in Baines muscle-ribboned forearms as the black robes fall back. Baines bounces him, once, and nausea fills Kit’s throat as his shoulder rips inside like twisted cloth snagging on thorns.

“There’s our cat, Fray Xalbador. Oh, don’t like that much, do you, puss? Got your claws now.” Baines shakes Kit; white flashes occlude Kit’s vision. Hands fumble his belt as the Spaniard claims his dagger.

“Where shall we have him, Fray?”

The priest’s accented voice. “The basement, I think. Tis pity my tools are not here.”

Baines answers, “Mine are.” Baines iron rings pinch Kit’s flesh. The skin at his wrist breaks; blood trickles. He fights, but the other Kit, who watched him, already knowing that Kit curled tight and hugged himself in resignation. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

“I’ll see him settled, wildcat!” another bounce, with a kind of a twist to it, and this time Kit screams as his shoulder pops with a sound like a drawn cork, “well, that should make him easier to manage.”

“Broken?”

“Just slipped, I think. Fetch the others, Fray Xalbador.”

This Kit chokes on pain, keening the agony as Baines twists his dislocated arm behind his back to make him march This Kit thinks “Others. This is the core. These are the names Sir Francis needs. ALL I have to do is talk my way out of this. ALL I have to do is live through this.”

That Kit wept for his own innocence. He blinked, and this Kit closes his eyes in pain and opens his eyes in pain, in a room prepared with a half-dozen torches, two braziers, and a fireplace for warmth. Dark, clean, the floor of rammed earth and the walls of mortared stone. Long tables against the walls, and Kit sees chalk, a small heap of candles, twine, and some things he can’t identify as Baines shoves him to his knees and twists his left arm behind him. He opens his mouth to argue, and Baines bends the arm higher. Not much, an inch.