He did not delude himself that Elizabeth Darcie loved him or that they could ever have any sort of future together. That wasn’t how he thought of her in any case, and he knew it certainly wasn’t how she thought of him. But he recalled how terrified she had been and could not believe it was a lie, as both Shakespeare and Burbage thought.

Clearly, she had not seen Gresham killed, for here he was, in the too, too solid flesh, not even remotely ghostlike and very much alive. So then, if he was to assume she had not lied, what had she seen? She was not a girl given to the vapors. She had been apprehensive last night at Granny Meg’s, even frightened at first, and yet, she had gone through with it, with neither fainting nor faint-heartedness. And when she came to him and told him what she’d seen, she had seemed very much in earnest. Not even the great Ned Alleyn, he thought, could act a part so well. Therefore, assuming that she had been telling him the truth, she must have seen what she had only thought was Gresham being murdered.

Could she have been mistaken? He thought back to her words. They had been most definite. She had said that Gresham fell against her, so heavily that he had dragged her down with him, as if he were dead weight. Dead weight, indeed. With a dagger plunged to the hilt between his shoulder blades. Which meant it had been thrown with considerable force, and by someone who knew what he was doing. She had left him then, a corpse upon the ground. Except here he was, alive. So if Elizabeth had told the truth, then it must have been a trick, an elaborate deception. And if that was the case, then Gresham must have been behind it.

But why?

What could be his motive? Elizabeth had said that Gresham had already been toying with her, making her out to be a liar and a shrew, the better to seem undesirable for wedlock, even in her parents’ eyes. With the arrangement already made, a daughter who suddenly began to act erratically, to the point of lying or having flights of fancy she could not control, could certainly induce a wealthy father to increase the dowry, thereby making the prospective husband more eager for the marriage and perhaps more likely to overlook the daughter’s faults.

According to Elizabeth, Gresham had even gone to the extent of using his servant, Drummond, to lie for him. Smythe remembered Drummond from that night back at the inn, and again the day that he had met Elizabeth for the first time, outside the Theatre. An officious, unpleasant, arrogantly boorish man. Smythe had disliked him from the start. And according to Elizabeth, Drummond had denied that he had even been there.

Elizabeth had said that Drummond had been driving the carriage when she had met Gresham on the street, and that Gresham had sent him on ahead, supposedly because by following them slowly in the carriage, he had blocked the way. A convenient ruse, perhaps? If he had slowed the carriage to the pace of two people walking, he would have blocked the street, of course. There were more and more carriages and coaches on the streets of London every day, so much so that they were causing blockages all over. So Gresham could have had Drummond follow until someone came up behind him and started to cause a commotion about it, then Gresham would wave him on ahead… Meet me at the Darcie residence. And Drummond drives on, out of sight, then has ample time to leave the carriage somewhere and double back on foot… so that the two of them could stage a little drama of their own?

As if he could feel Smythe’s gaze upon him, Gresham turned and glanced toward him. For a moment, their eyes met. Smythe did not look away. Gresham arched an eyebrow, frowned faintly, and then turned back to the others in the group. “No,” Smythe said softly, to himself, “by God, Elizabeth is not the liar here.”

He met her gaze again and nodded. She saw it. And she understood.

The remainder of the rehearsal was no improvement over his previous performance. If anything, it was even worse. He kept forgetting his one line, or else he came in on the wrong cue and stepped on Kemp’s line, or else missed the cue entirely, or came in on cue only to miss his mark and move too far downstage, thereby unintentionally upstaging Kemp, which only served to further infuriate the irritable comedian. Nor did it do very much to improve Shakespeare’s disposition. Since Shakespeare had punched up the old play with a new rewrite, he was, naturally enough, the logical person to function as the bookholder and prompter during the production, and therefore, the responsibility of the production running smoothly from start to finish had set-tied largely on his shoulders. It was an important job, and Shakespeare knew it represented an equally important opportunity for him in the company. Consequently, he was less than pleased with Smythe’s performance.

Smythe knew the only reason he had his small role was because Shakespeare had recommended him for it. By botching it thoroughly, he was making his roommate look bad. He hated that, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He just couldn’t get it right, no matter how hard he tried. It was almost as if he were under some sort of a curse.

They finally decided to abandon the scene altogether and move on, though Kemp had kept demanding that Smythe be replaced with someone who had more intelligence, such as one of the mules from the stable. Smythe held his temper in check in the face of Kemp’s relentless and abusive sarcasm, in large part because he knew that in the present circumstance, Kemp’s remarks were thoroughly well deserved. For almost as long as he could remember, Smythe had dreamed of being a player, and now that he had his opportunity at last, he was making a complete mess of it.

He kept telling himself that it was because he could not get his mind off the situation with Elizabeth, but deep down inside, he was beginning to wonder if that truly was the reason. Perhaps the truth was that he was never meant to be a player. He pushed that thought aside. It was his dream. This was what he’d always wanted. He would get the hang of it. He was still new to it and he was nervous, overanxious, and… preoccupied. He could not do justice even to his one miserable little line so long as he kept thinking of Elizabeth.

It certainly did not help that she had been right above him, looking down from the gallery seats, where James Burbage had taken them to watch the company rehearse and give them a good overview of the entire theatre. And every time they had run through his scene… well, his line, in any case… and he had bungled it, he had heard their laughter from the upper gallery. Gresham ’s laughter, in particular. The miraculously resurrected Sir Anthony had one of those throw-your-head-back, arch-your-back, and roar-out-to-the-heavens laughs that rang throughout the Theatre. It was booming and infectious, and Henry Darcie and James Burbage both joined in, as did many of the players. Each time, Smythe could feel his ears burning… and each time, he could feel the burning gaze of Will Kemp searing scorn into him like a branding iron.

When they became exasperated and decided to stop working on that scene and move on, Smythe left the playhouse quickly, before anyone could have a chance to speak to him. In part, it was his embarrassment and anger with himself that made him seek escape, but at the same time, it was his overwhelming desire to learn the truth about what truly had transpired the previous day. The only problem was, he was not quite sure just how he was going to go about it.

His first instinct was to follow Gresham and the Darcies when they left the Theatre, and then observe them from a distance until he could have a chance to speak with Elizabeth alone. Unlike Shakespeare and Burbage, he could not accept that she had lied to them. Her terror had been all too real. She had truly believed that she had seen Sir Anthony Gresham murdered. So what must she be thinking now? To see a man slain right before your eyes, to be convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was dead, only to have him apparently come back to life and act as if nothing had happened… to someone already driven to distraction by people questioning her motives and veracity, it had to seem as if she were descending into madness.