“Lord Oxford, as you’ve summoned us,” Burbage said, taking a stool. Will doffed his hat, reseated it, and sank onto a bench and stretched his legs.

Oxford nodded to the player, but turned his bright eyes to Will.

“How comes the play, gentle William?” The question he’d been dreading, and Will twisted his hands inside the cuffs of his doublet, folding his arms. He almost laughed as he recognized Kit’s habitual pose, defensive and smiling, but kept his demeanor serious for the Earl. An Earl who studied him also seriously, frowning, until Will opened his hands and shrugged.

“Not well, my lord. The story’s all in my head, but Times being as they are…”.

“Yes. I understand thou hast tried thy hand at some poetry. A manuscript called Venus and Adonis has been commended to me. Compared to our Marley’s,” Oxford’s nostrils flared momentarily, as if he fought some emotion unfinished work. “I’d see it read.”

Heat rose in Will’s cheeks as he glanced down at his shoes.

“You’d see my poor scribblings gone to press, my lord?”

“I would. And command some sonnets. Canst write sonnets?”

Oh, that stiffened his spine and brought his hands down to tighten on his knees. Burbage shifted beside him, and Will took the warning.

“I’ve been known to turn a rhyme,” Will answered, when he thought he had his tongue under control.

“I need a son-in-law wooed,” Oxford said. He stood and poured wine into three unmatched cups. Will raised an eyebrow when the Earl set the cups before Burbage and himself. More than mere politeness, that.

“Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton: I’d see him married to my daughter Elizabeth, where I can perhaps keep him from trouble. He’s close to Essex and to Raleigh, no mean trick. Kit’d befriended Sir Walter’s lot, their School of Night, so-called and learned a few tricks by me of the philosopher Dee. It’s trouble waiting to happen: too many of the Queen’s favorites in one place and rivalries will brew.”

Will’s eyebrow went even higher at the familiar form of Marley’s name.

“And you wish me to Dedicate thy book of poems to Southampton.”

“As if thou didst seek his patronage. Afflict him with sonnets bidding him marry. Raleigh is an enigma: there’s no witting which way he might turn in the end. Essex is trouble, though.”

“Though the Queen love him?” Burbage said, when Will could not find his tongue. Robert Devereaux, the second Earl of Essex, was thought by many a dashing young man, one of Elizabeth’s rival favorites and a rising star of the court. But her affections were divided, the third part each given to the explorers Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake. And there was something disingenuous in the look Oxford drew across them both, just then; Will was player enough to recognize bad playing.

“Sonnets. Sonnets, and I couldn’t write a good word to spare myself the chopping block.”

“Gloriana,” Oxford said, toying with his wine, “is a shrewd and coy Queen, equal to the title King of England which she has once or twice claimed. Despite her sex. Ah, would that she had been a man.”

That tripped Will’s tongue. “Do you suppose she mouths those same words, when she feels herself alone?”

Oxford tilted his head as if he had not considered it. “Master Shakespeare, I would not disbelieve should I hear her Maid of Honor mutter such gossip to the bees.” He stared past his guests to the smoky vista beyond the open door.

“So. Thou wilt write me these poems? Or write Southampton these poems? And bring me the manuscript for Venus and Adonis, that the ages might know it?”

“Will you see Hero and leander published as well?” Will hesitated at the cloud that passed Oxford’s face. He liked Kit as well. And then Will smiled. Kit had had that about him, the ability to inspire black rage or blind joy.

“It’s fine work, isn’t it?” Oxford didn’t wait for Will’s nod. He knocked the dottle from his pipe and began to pack the bowl again. “Chapman, another of Raleigh’s group proposes to complete it and see it registered. In Kit’s name, not his own. Decent.”

Burbage rocked back in his stool, rattling the legs on the floor. “My lord, you’ll put Will in a place where, if Southampton is flattered, they may become friends. Even if the courtship fails, we’ll have an eye in Southampton’s camp.”

“There’ve been a dozen attempts on Queen Elizabeth’s life in as many years: your Kit’s sharp wit helped foil two of them, and he was friendly with Essex’s rival, Sir Walter. Now we have neither a hand close to Essex, nor one close to Sir Walter. Intolerable, should what I fear come to fruition. Essex has links to the…” He stopped himself.

Will observed calculation in that pause. “What you fear, my lord, or what fears Walsingham?”

Surprise and then a smile. “The two are not so misaligned. We were one group, the Prometheus Club, not too long since. All of us in service of the Queen. But Essex and his partisans are more interested in their own advancement than in Britannia. So, Will. Wilt woo for me, and win for my daughter?”

Will swallowed, shifting on the hard bench. “I was to write you plays, my lord. And you would show me how to put a force in them to keep Elizabeth’s subjects content and make all well. I was not to spy for you.”

Oxford tapped a beringed finger on the table. “I’m not asking thee to spy, sirrah. Merely to write. Not plays No. The playhouses are closed, Will, and they’ll be closed through the New Year. We’ll try our hand there again, fear not: but in the current hour, the enemy has the upper hand.”

“The enemy. This plot against the Queen. Closing the playhouses is a sort of a skirmish? An unseen one?”

Oxford smiled then softly. “You begin to understand. They know what we can do with a playhouse. Art is their enemy. Puritans. Naught but a symptom. Walsingham and Burghley are ours, after all.” Oxford drained his cup. “I offer you a poet’s respect. Nothing is so transient as a play and a playmaker’s fame. Except a player’s.”

Will looked at Burbage, who sat with his hands folded between his knees, thumbs rubbing circles over his striped silk hose. Burbage tilted his head, eyes glistening. Twas true.

“The poem’s the thing, then,” Will said, when he thought he’d considered enough. “Give unto me what you would impart, and I will wreak it into beauty with my pen.”

Oxford twisted his palm together, fingers arched as if to ease a writer’s cramp. “Excellent.” Another intentional hesitation. “Your play. Titus Andronicus. Send it me. I fancied myself something of a poet in my youth. Perhaps I can be of some small aid.”

My lord,” Will answered, covering discomfort. “I shall.”

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul; see, where it flies!

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Faustus

Kit’s heartbeat rattled his ribs inside his skin. He clutched the balustrade in his left hand, Morgan steadying him on his blind side as she led him down the sweeping marble stair and into the midst of creatures diabolic and divine. His riding boots clattered on the risers: inappropriate to an audience with the Queen of Faeries, he thought inanely. But it was homely and reassuring that they hadn’t had time to make him boots and that the doublet, for all its fineness, bound across his shoulders.

“Breathe,” the ancient Queen whispered in his ear. “You’ll need your wits about you, Sir Kit, for I can offer thee but small protection, and my sister the Queen is devious.”

He turned his head to glimpse her; the movement brought a twisting sharpness to the savaged muscles of his neck and shoulder, which were stiffening again. Morgan must have seen him wince, for her fingers tightened. “Thou’rt hurting.”