Текст книги "Ink and Steel"
Автор книги: Elizabeth Bear
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Table of Contents
Title Page
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF THE PROMETHEAN AGE
Principal Players in Ink and Steel
Epigraph
Prologue
Act I, scene i
Act I, scene ii
Act I, scene iii
Act I, scene iv
Act I, scene v
Act I, scene vi
Act I, scene vii
Act I, scene viii
Act I, scene ix
Act I, scene x
Intra-act: Chorus
Act II, scene i
Act II, scene ii
Act II, scene iii
Act II, scene iv
Act II, scene v
Act II, scene vi
Act II, scene vii
Act II, scene viii
Act II, scene ix
Act II, scene x
Act II, scene xi
Act II, scene xii
Act II, scene xiii
Act II, scene xiv
Act II, scene xv
Act II, scene xvi
Act II, scene xvii
Act II, scene xviii
Act II, scene xix
Act II, scene xx
Intra-act: Chorus
Act III, scene i
Act III, scene ii
Act III, scene iii
Act III, scene iv
Act III, scene v
Act III, scene vi
Act III, scene vii
Act III, scene viii
Act III, scene ix
Act III, scene x
Act III, scene xi
Act III, scene xii
Act III, scene xiii
Act III, scene xiv
Act III, scene xv
Act III, scene xvi
Act III, scene xvii
Act III, scene xviii
Act III, scene xix
Act III, scene xx
Act III, scene xxi
Act III, scene xxii
Intra-act: Chorus
About the Author
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF THE PROMETHEAN AGE
Whiskey and Water
The many varied plots skillfully and subtly interweave into a finale withserious punch. Elizabeth Bear’ writing style is as dense, complex, andsubtle as her plots and characters. The style reminds me a little of Tolkien.This is definitely not a book to sit down to for a light, fluffy read. But ifyou immerse yourself in this rich, dark world, you will be rewarded withcharacters with layers of motivation and relationships that weave through theworld’ destiny like an intricate spider’ web.
SFRevu
[Whiskey and Water] reaffirms [Bear s] skill at creating memorable and memorably flawed characters as well as her sure hand at blending together themodern world with the world of the Fae. Her elegant storytelling shouldappeal to fans of Charles de lint, Jim Butcher, and other cross-world andurban fantasy authors.
Library Journal
Bear brings a new level of detail to the subject, and her magical creaturesare an interesting mix of familiar and unfamiliar traits.
Don D Ammasa, Critical Mass
Bear succeeds in crafting a rich world… . It’ a book that I couldn tput down, with a world in which I found myself easily enthralled andenchanted, not necessarily by Faerie, but by Bear’ poetic expression andknife-sharp narrative.
Rambles
Intrigued and delighted sum up my reaction to Whiskey and Water as a whole. Don’t think of it as a sequel, because it’ not: It’ the next part ofthe story, and just as rich, magical, and poetic as its predecessor. … I mhoping for another one.
The Green Man Review
The wonderful Promethean Age series just keeps getting better. Bear has aknack for writing beautifully damaged characters, who manage to be both alienand sympathetic at the same time, and then putting them in situations wherethey have no choice but to go through the fire. The result is glorious.
Romantic Times (Top Pick)
Cleverly designed and well written … a delightful tale filled with allsorts of otherworldly species. Alternative Worlds Blood and Iron “Blood and Iron takes everything you think you know about Faerie and twistsit until it bleeds.
Sarah Monette, author of The Mirador
Bear works out her background with the detail orientation of a sciencefiction writer, spins her prose like a veil-dancing fantasist, and neverforgets to keep an iron fist in that velvet glove.
The Agony Column
Complex and nuanced… . Bear does a fantastic job with integrating thesecenturies-old elements into a thoroughly modern tale of transformation, love,and courage. Romantic Times
Bear overturns the usual vision of Faerie, revealing the compelling beautyand darkness only glimpsed in old ballads and stories like Tam lin.
Publishers Weekly
This is excellent work. Bear confronts Faerie head-on, including thedangerous and ugly bits, and doesn’t shield the reader with reassuringhappily-ever-after vibes… . She also writes a few brilliant scenes andset pieces, the most memorable for me being … the beautifully handled(and beautifully explained) Tolkien homage near the climax… . I’m lookingforward to spending more time in this world. Eyrie… and for the other novels of Elizabeth Bear
A gritty and painstakingly well-informed peek inside a future world we’d allbetter hope we don’t get, liberally seasoned with VR delights andenigmatically weird alien artifacts… . Elizabeth Bear builds her futurenightmare tale with style and conviction and a constant return to the twistsof the human heart.
Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon
Very exciting, very polished, very impressive.
Mike Resnick, author of Starship: Mercenary
Gritty, insightful, and daring.
David Brin, author of the Uplift novels and Kiln People
A glorious hybrid: hard science, dystopian geopolitics, and wide-eyed sense
of wonder seamlessly blended into a single book.
Peter Watts, author of Blindsight
Elizabeth Bear has carved herself out a fantastic little world… . It’ rare to find a book with so many characters you genuinely care about. It’ aroller coaster of a good thriller, too.
SF Crowsnest
“What Bear has done … is create a world that is all too plausible, onewracked by environmental devastation and political chaos… . She conductsa tour of this society’ darker corners, offering an unnerving peek into afuture humankind would be wise to avoid. SciFi.com An enthralling roller-coaster ride through a dark and possible near future.
Starlog
[Bear] does it like a juggler who’ also a magician.
The Mumpsimus
combined with a selection of historical and literary figures as may be convenient to the reader.
Alleyn, Edward : (Ned) A player. Principal Tragedian of the lord Admiral’s Men.
Amaranth : A lamia
Arthur : A King of Britain. Mostly dead.
Baines, Richard : An intelligencer and Promethean
Bassano lanyer, Abilia : England’s first professional woman poet. Mistress of Henry Carey. Sadly, not appearing in this book because I did not have room for her.
Bassano, Augustine : Court musician to Elizabeth, Venetian Jew, father to Abilia, and intimate of Roderigo Lopez. Also not appearing in this volume,but I promise you, he and Abilia and Roderigo and Alfonso had manyinteresting adventures that Will never found out about. Someday I will write the Jews of Elizabeth’s Court book and you can find out all about it.
Bradley, William : Stabbed by Thomas Watson in Bankside. Dead.
Brahe, Tycho : An Astronomer
Burbage, Cuthbert : Brother to Richard Burbage
Burbage, James : Father to Richard Burbage. Owner of the Theatre in Bankside.
Burbage, Richard : A player. A Promethean. Principal Tragedian of lord Strange’s Men, the lord Chamberlain’s Men, and the King’s Men. Eventual Shareholder at the Globe.
Burghley, Baron : (William Cecil) lord Treasurer. A Promethean. Mbber of the Privy Council. Father to Robert Cecil.
Cairbre : A bard, the Master Harper of the Daoine Sidhe
Cecil, Anne : Wife to Edward De Vere, daughter to William Cecil, sister to Robert Cecil
Cecil, Robert : Secretary of State. A Promethean. Mbber of the Privy Council. Later, the Earl of Salisbury.
Catesby, Robert : A Catholic recusant
Chapman, George : a playmaker and poet
Cobham : Briefly, lord Chamberlain
Coquo, Oratio : Edward de Vere’s catamite, a former choirboy. I am not making that up.
Corinna : The love object in Ovid’s fifth elegy, and a character in Tamburlaine
Davenant, Jenet Shepherd and John : Innkeepers along the road to Stratford
Dee, Doctor John : An astrologer
Drake, Sir Francis : A privateer
Ede, Richard : A keeper at the Marshalsea prison
Edward : A player. A mbber of the company of lord Strange’s Men.
Essex, Earl of : (Robert Devereaux) A Promethean Faustus: A Scholar
Fawkes, Guido : A Catholic recusant
Findabair : A princess of Faerie. Dead.
Fletcher, John : A vile playmaker
Forman, Simon : A physician of sorts
Frazier, Ingrim : A servant to Thomas Walsingham
Ganymede : Jove’s cupbearer. Euphbistically speaking, a term for a catamite. A gardener
Gardner, William : Justice of the Peace for Southwark
Gaveston, Sir Piers : lban to Edward II, formerly King of England
Geoffrey : A Faerie, with the head of a stag
Green, Robert : A vile playmaker and pamphleteer
Henslowe, Philip : Owner of the Swan Theatre Holinshed: A historian, of sorts
Hunsdon, lord : (George Carey) lord Chamberlain. A Promethean. Mbber of the Privy Council.
Hunsdon, lord : (Henry Carey) lord Chamberlain. A Promethean. Mbber of the Privy Council. Father to George Carey.
John : A carriagban
Jonson, Ben : A vile playmaker, son of a bricklayer, educated at Westminster. Formerly a soldier in the low countries.
Kbp, Will : A player. Clown for the lord Chamberlain’s Men
Kyd, Thomas : A vile playmaker
Langley, Francis : A moneylender
Lanyer, Alfonso : A court musician, and husband to Abilia Bassano. Sadly,also not appearing in this volume.
Lavinia : A victim of rape and dismbberment in Titus Andronicus
Lopez, Doctor Roderigo : A Promethean. Queen’s Physician and Ambassador from Antonio, pretender to the throne of Portugal. Of Jewish descent.
Lucifer Morningstar : An Angel, once, and most dearly loved of God. Gave Ned Alleyn rather a bad turn, on one occasion. A mare
Marley, Christofer : (Kit; Christopher Marlowe; Sir Christofer) A Promethean. The dead shepherd. A playmaker and intelligencer. Dead (to begin with).
Marley, John : Father to Christofer Marley, a Master Cobbler of Canterbury
Marley, Tom : Brother to Christofer Marley
Mathews, Mistress : landlord of the Groaning Sergeant
Mebd, the : A Queen of Faerie
Mehiel : An Angel of the lord Mephostophilis: A dbon of Hell
Merlin : A legendary bard
Monteagle, Baron : William Parker, a cousin of William Shakespeare
Morgan le Fey : The half sister to Arthur, King of England. The Queen of Air and Darkness. And, formerly, Cornwall and/or Gore.
Murchaud : Morgan’s son, a Prince of Faerie
Nashe, Tom : A vile playmaker
Northampton, Earl of : A friend to Sir Walter Raleigh
Nottingham, Earl of : The lord Admiral, a patron of players.
Orpheus : A legendary musician who sought to rescue his love from Hell
Oxford, Seventeenth Earl of : (Edward de Vere) A Promethean, alleging himself a poet
de Parma, Fray Xalbadore : A Promethean. An Inquisitor.
Plantagenet, Edward : (Edward II of England) A historic king, the title character of Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
Peaseblossom : A Faerie
Poley, Mary : Sister to Thomas Watson, estranged wife to Robert Poley, mother of Robin Poley
Poley, Robin : Son of Mary Poley
Poley, Robert : A Promethean. A moneylender and intelligencer. Eventually, a Yeoman Warder of the Tower.
Raleigh, Sir Walter : A sea captain, sympathetic to the Prometheans A lame raven
Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) : A Faerie
Rosalind, also Ganymede : The heroine of As You like It
Sackerson : A bear.
Shakespeare, Anne : (Annie) Wife to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Edmund : Brother to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Gilbert : Brother to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Hamnet : Son to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Joan : (Joan Hart) Sister to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, John : Father to William Shakespeare. A glover of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Shakespeare, Judith : Daughter to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Mary : Mother to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Richard : Brother to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Susanna : Daughter to William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, William : A vile playmaker. Principal player of lord Strange’s Men, the lord Chamberlain’s Men, and the King’s Men. Eventual Shareholder at the Globe.
Sidney, Sir Philip : A respected poet. Husband to Frances Walsingham. Dead.
Skeres, Nicholas : An intelligencer
Sly, Will : A principal player with the lord Chamberlain’s Men A sorrel gelding
Southampton, Earl of : (Henry Wriothesly) Patron to William Shakespeare,Promethean
Spencer, Gabriel : A player
Spenser, Edmund : A respected poet
Strange, lord : (Ferdinando Stanley) A Promethean, and patron to players
Stuart, James : (James VI, James I): King of Scotland and eventually England
Stuart, Mary : (Mary, Queen of Scots) Mother to James VI of Scotland. Dead.
Stubbs, Philip : A Puritan, dismbbered for treasonous writings
Taliesin : A legendary bard Tam lin: A legendary noblban kidnapped by Faeries
Thomas the Rhymer : A legendary bard
Topcliffe : The Queen’s torturer
Tresham, Francis : A Catholic recusant A troll
Tudor, Elizabeth : (Elizabeth I, Bess, Gloriana) The Queen of England, or perhaps Pretender to its throne
Tudor, Henry : (Henry VIII of England, Great Harry) Dead
de Vere, Elizabeth : Daughter of the seventeenth Earl of Oxford
Wade, William : The Queen’s other torturer, clerk of the Privy Council
Walsingham, Etheldreda (Audrey) : Wife to Thomas
Walsingham, Frances : (Frances Sidney, Frances Devereaux) Daughter to Sir Francis, widow of Sir Philip Sidney, wife of the Earl of Essex
Walsingham, Sir Francis : A Promethean. Spymaster to the Queen. Formerly, her Secretary of State.
Walsingham, Thomas : Cousin to Sir Francis, Patron to Christofer Marley
Watson, Thomas : A poet and intelligencer. A Promethean. Dead.
Divers demons, ifriti, faeries, prentices, goodwives, publicans, recusants, damned souls etc as required.
And since we all have suck’d one wholesome air,
And with the same proportion of Elements
Resolve, I hope we are resembled,
Vowing our loves to equal death and life.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1, Act II, scene vi
And since my mind, my wit, my head, my voice and tongue are weak,
To utter, move, devise, conceive, sound forth, declare and speak,
Such piercing plaints as answer might, or would my woeful case,
Help crave I must, and crave I will, with tears upon my face,
Of all that may in heaven or hell, in earth or air be found,
To wail with me this loss of mine, as of these griefs the ground.
EDWARD DE VERE, 17TH EARL OF OXFORD, loss of Good Name
Christofer Marley died as he was born: on the bank of a river, within the sound and stench of slaughterhouses.
The news reached London before the red sun ebbed, while alleys fell into straitened darkness under rooftops still stained bright. It was a bloody end to the penultimate day of May, in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of the excommunicate Elizabeth.
The nave of the Queen’s chapel at Westminster lay shadowed when, at the secluded entrance of a secret room, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford hesitated. Edward de Vere pushed his hood back from fine hair and wiped one ringed hand across his mouth. The panel slid open at his touch, releasing the redolence of oil. The sputter of candles along the walls reassured him that he was not the first. Four men waited within the stifling chamber.
“Marley is dead in Deptford.” Oxford tossed the words on the table like a poacher’s take. “Stabbed above the eye by your cousin’s man, Sir Francis. And we are lost with him: have you so thoughtlessly betrayed your Sovereign?”
“Marley dead?” Sir Francis Walsingham’s chair skittered on stone as Elizabeth’s hollow-cheeked spymaster lurched upright. Seated beside Walsingham was Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon the lord Chamberlain who blanched white enough that it showed in uncertain candlelight. Beyond him was the Queen’s physician and Walsingham’s Doctor Rodrigo Lopez. A final man stood by the wall, round, short, but of undeniable presence: the player Richard Burbage, famous already at twenty-six.
“Not on my orders,” Walsingham said.
“Is it certain? We are undone.” Oxford pulled a chair forth from the table and sat heavily, a dark metal ring on his thumb clicking. “The magic we—can perhaps manage that without Kit. I taught him what he knew, and it was not all I learned at Dee’s left hand.” Oxford concealed a tight smile; that learning ranged from the science of astrology to the arts of summoning succubae.
Lopez, a swarthy Portugall and well-known a Jew, whatever his protests of conversion, leaned forward over folded hands. He stared at Walsingham with significance and said, “This is not the first attempt on one of our number.”
“Our aims may have diverged,” Walsingham answered, “but the others have not forgotten our names.”
“And there’s plague in the city,” Lopez said. “Think you tis unrelated to those other Prometheans? Can you discern a native plague from a conjured one, Physician?”
“Some would argue there are no native plagues, but only devil’s work.” Oxford cleared his throat and his memories. “But with Marley, we lose the lord Admiral’s Men, leaving us without a company.” “There is my company,” Burbage put in, but Oxford’s voice rose over the player’s effortlessly. “—and without a playmaker under whose name to perform our works.”
“Never mind Kit’s ear for a verse.” Walsingham extended a long, knotty hand, bony wrist protruding from dusty’velvet, skin translucent as silk over gnarled blue veins. “Oxford.”
But Oxford shook his head. “I have not Kit’s grasp on an audience, Sir Francis.” Hunsdon’s hands lay flat on the scarred tabletop. He closed his eyes. “It risks Elizabeth.” Walsingham’s chin jerked sharply. “We’ll find another way.”
He stared down at his hands until his attention was drawn outward again when Burbage coughed. “What is it, then?”
Burbage drew himself up. “I know a man.”
O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Othello
“Will”.
“What?” The leather-bound planken door swung open; the playmaker lifted his head from the cradle of his fingers. He cursed as the hastily cut quill snagged lank strands, spattering brown-black iron gall across his hand, his cuff, and the scribbled page. “Richard, you come hand in hand with fortunetonight. You did perchance bring wine?”
“No such luck.” Burbage shut the door, then hooked a battered stool from beside Will’s unmade bedstead with one booted toe and perched without waiting to be asked. He grunted as he leaned forward, elbow on knee, and tugged his doublet straight. “Tis early for wine, and I’m in no mood for a public house and ale with my bread. So—” he thumped a pottery bottle on the trestle —“it’ll have to be spirits.”
“Morning?” Will set down the handkerchief with which he’d been dabbing his sleeve and looked up at a shuttered window. Beside his elbow, a fat candle guttered, and his commonplace book was propped open before it.
“Morning. You’ve worked the night through. And your chamber-mate … won’t be returning.”
Will shrugged. He hadn’t noticed the hour, though the absence weighed on him. Or not the absence—Kit was often at the beck of patrons or conquests– but the irrevocability of it.
Burbage accepted his silence. “Have you cups?”
Will stood and moved to a livery cupboard, patched shoe scuffing rough boards. “What ails you, friend?” He turned with two leather tankards in his hand and came around the front of the table.
Burbage dragged the cork from the bottle with his thumbs and poured. “To Kit.”
Will lifted the second cup and held it, wincing, below his nose. “To Kit.” He closed his eyes on an image of a man smug as a preening cat and soaked in his own red blood. Will drank, leaning a hip against the table as if it were too much effort to reclaim his chair. “You’ll have heard the rumors he was working for the Papists, or the Crown.”
“I would not hazard myself to hazard a guess,” Burbage replied, hooking a boot heel over a rung. “It’s noised about that it was a drunken brawl, and Kit’s been in his cups of late, as poets sometimes go when they’ve had a little triumph…” Jokingly, he reached as if to pull the tankard from Will’s hand, and Will shielded it deftly. “But”, Burbage continued, “Kyd gave evidence against him, and Kit was still at liberty, as Kit seemed to stay no matter the charge levied against him. So there’s something there. What’s the manuscript?”
“Titus Andronicus.”
“Still? The plague will have us closed into winter, Will. It’s five thousand dead already. And Titus a terrible story. We need comedy, not blood. If we ever see a stage again.”
“It’s not the story,” Will answered.
Burbage was a shareholder in the troupe lord Strange’s Men and as such he was half Will’s employer.
The brandy tingled on the back of Will’s throat and his tongue felt thick. Still, he reckoned even harsh spirits a more welcome mouthful than blood. Kit killed. Would he risk everything … ? But Kit had been rash. And brilliant, and outrageous, and flamboyant. And young. Two months older than Will, who was just barely twenty-nine. He sipped again.
“They can’t all be genius.” Burbage laughed and tipped his mug. “Did you ever pause to wonder why not?”
Oh, the brandy was making Will honest. “Heady stuff,” he commented. “If my skill were equal mine ambition, Richard” Will shook his head. “What will we do for money if the playhouses can’t open? How long will lord Strange champion players who cannot play? Anne and my children must eat.” He’d picked up the quill. He turned it over, admiring the way candlelight caught in its ink-spotted vanes.
Burbage waved the bottle between his nose and the pen. “Have another drink, Will.”
“I’ve a play to write.”
“Which opens tomorrow, doubtless?”
“ And poor Kit undeserving of a wake? Unfair!” But Will lifted the tankard and breathed the smoky fumes deep, feeling as though they seared his brain. “Poor Kit… ”.
“Indeed. Would serve your Queen so, Will? Serve her to the death?”
That brought him up short. “Is that what poor Marley did? Not stabbed for treason, or murdered by his conspirators before he could name their names. Nor killed for his,” Will lowered his voice “—atheism, and the talk of …” He drank again, but held his hand over his cup when Burbage would have filled it. “I can’t write.”
“Drink will fix it.”
Will did not uncover his tankard. “Drink fixes little, and what it doth fix can oft be not unfixed again.”
“Ah.” Burbage shifted his attention to his own cup as Will stood and paced. “In vino veritas. Is a Queen worth risking your life for, Will?”
“Why ask you these things of me?” Splinters curled from the wainscot shelf. Years of dry heat and creeping chill had cracked the wood long and deep between cheap plaster. Will picked spindled wood with one ink stained fingernail. He’d papered the walls with broadsheets, which also peeled. A Queen. The idea of a Queen… .
“The reality not worth your time?”
Burbage leaned on the wall, brandy-sharp breath hot on Will’s cheek. He thrust Will’s cup into his hand; Will took it by reflex.
“It’s her got Kit killed, isn’t it? Blood and a knife in the face. That’s what Queens get you.”
“Treason,” Will whispered.
Burbage’s face was flushed, his cheeks hot, red-blond hair straggled down in his too-bright eyes. Like a man fevered. Like a man mad.
“You speak treason.” His hands were numb. The tankard slipped out of his fingers, and the brandy made a stream that glistened in the candlelight like liquid amber as it fell. The stink filled his room, sharp as the bile rising up Will’s throat. “That’s treason, man!”
“Treason or truth? A ragged old slattern, belike. Bastard, excommunicate daughter of a fat pig of a glutton, a man who might have invented lust and greed he liked them so well…”.
Will’s hand acted before his mind got behind it; he struck Burbage across the face, a spinning slack-handed blow. Drunker than he’d thought, he overreached; the fallen tankard dented under his knee as he landed on it.
Fie! Brandy soaked his stocking. At least he thought it brandy, and not blood.
“Get from me!” Will pointed at the door with a trembling hand, though the player towered over him. “I’ll find another company an those are your sentiments!”
But Burbage, pink-cheeked from the blow, extended his own hand to help Will to his feet. Will could only stare at it.
“Your eloquence does desert you when you’re drunk enough. On your feet, man. You’ve passed the test.”
“Test?” Will wobbled up, one hand on the wall, refusing Burbage’s aid. “You’ve maligned the Queen.”
Burbage winked stagily, while Will limped to his abandoned stool. “Her Majesty would smile on it. Come.”
“I’ll go nowhere with you until you make yourself plain.” A burning sting told Will the brandy had found a cut under his stocking. “You’ve bloodied me.”
“I’ll pay the danegeld, Burbage answered. I can’t tell you, Will. You have to come meet them.”
“Who?” Blood soaked through light-colored wool, but only a drop. Will winced and picked cloth away from the cut.
“Your coconspirators.”
Will looked up as Burbage rested a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Didst not hear me say?”
“I heard thee clear”, Burbage answered. “Since thou’rt so loyal then, come on with me and find why Marley was killed. The rumors are true, Will: he was a Queen’s Man, sure.”
Will blinked. His skull was still thick with drink, though the pain cut through it somewhat. “What do you need me for?”
Burbage smiled, and Will thought he saw the edge of pity in it. “Will. To take his place.”
Will followed Burbage into a cool, overcast morning. The gutters hadn’t yet begun to stink, but Burbage picked his way fastidiously, one arm linked through Will’s to steer the still-unsteady playmaker across a maze of slick cobbles and night soil.
“Why not go home to Stratford-upon-Avon?” he asked. “Go back to merchanting. Look at this place: half the shops shuttered, the playhouses closed. I’m a player. And a playmaker. Besides….”
They passed a hurrying woman in russet homespun, her skirts kilted up and a basket over her arm. She clutched a clove-studded lemon to her nose, and Burbage snorted as she shied away from them.
“I have a wife and children in Stratford.”
“A player? Might as well be a leper, for all the respect they give us,” Burbage pointed out companionably, turning to watch the servant or goodwife pass. Her shoulders stiffened and she walked faster. Burbage looked down and grinned, then tilted his face up at Will.
“I’d die there. Suffocate under dry goods.”
“You’ll suffocate under vermin here.” Burbage tugged him out of the path of a trio of rangy yellow and fawn dogs in low-tailed pursuit of a sleek, scurrying rat. “If the money concerns you, go home.
I need this, Richard. Your father’s a playhouse owner. You’ve grown up with it. For me…”.
“It’s worth abandoning wealth and family?”
“I support them,” Will answered, ignoring the twist of guilt his friend’ words brought. Slops spattered down behind them, and Will stepped into the shelter of an overhang, Burbage following with an arm still linked.
“I’ll bring them to London once I make a success.”
“Bring them to this?” Burbage dropped Will’s arm, his gesture expansive.
Will admired how Burbage framed himself against the darkness of a brown-painted door in a pale facade, sweeping his arm up beside his hat, every inch the unconscious professional. Will shook his head. Burbage was younger. Younger, but raised to the theatre and knowing in his bones things Will struggled to learn.
“Keep them home, Will. Away from the plague and the filth. I’d go backto Stratford myself, if I could.”
“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.”
