Ink and Steel (14 page)

He couldn't kiss her mouth. Couldn't bear that intimacy. He dragged her into an embrace, teeth against her throat, half sensible that he first crushed her, scratched her against the embroidery and jeweled fixtures of his doublet and then slammed her to the wall, cold stone against his knuckles, her naked body twisting in his grip, her hair knotted in his fist.
Christ
.

It
hurt
. He bloodied his hand on the rough stone dragging it from behind her, fumbled the points on his breeches, the warmth of her sex against his scraped flesh like a siren song.
What am I doing?

No, he was a juggernaut. Automaton. She whimpered as he tore at her shoulder with his teeth, tasted the salt of her tears, his tears, remembered a mouth full of more blood than this and the pain of torture, rape, confession. He strangled on a scream he couldn't quite voice, unlaced an erection he thought might just burst—
Christ, she's pliant
—and end his suffering, pinned her to the wall as she squirmed against the velvet and silk and rough decoration of his clothes.

“Christofer.” A murmur. One hand, light on his collar.

God
. Almost a whisper. More of a groan. His hand cupped her sex. He might have been a statue. “Morgan.”

“Not yet.”

“What?” He ached, twitched. Writhed toward her warmth—

“I'm not ready.”

He stroked her breasts with bloodied hands. Caressed the curve of her belly, the amplification of her thighs. Fell down on his knees before her. Kissed the arch of her hips, the black-forested delta below. She tasted of vinegar, rosemary, honey.

He wept. He made her scream and knot
her
hands in his hair, pulling until heat seared his scalp. When she gave consent at last, he took her—there, on the floor by the window, her naked body arching against his black-velvet-clad one—and she licked hot tears from his cheeks and laughed.

Act I, scene x

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Twelfth Night

For once, Burbage knocked before he entered. Or possibly, he tried the handle and found it latched. A new habit.

Will rose from his seat against the chimney—his room had no hearth, but the heat from the ground floor's giant fireplaces kept the corner nearest the bed tolerably warm except in the coldest hours of morning—and carefully laid his quill aside before crossing the wide floorboards to answer. His fingerless gloves made his grip on the wooden doorpull uncertain, but he fumbled it open after a moment's struggle.

December cold flushed Burbage's cheeks as he came into Will's drafty single room. He unwound and dropped his muffler on the table next to Will's squat lamp and the papers, where it shed a few flakes of snow. “Will, I have word from the Lord Chamberlain. He's spoken to Lord Strange, and the playhouses will open in January. We'll start rehearsals for
Titus
, and see if we can break the plague once and for all.”

Will leaned back against the wall, stretching limbs stiff from too long hunched over his writing. “Will it suffice?”

“I don't know.” Burbage laid his hands against the chimney bricks, warming fingers tinged white. “There's more. The Queen requests a comedy for Twelfth Night. The word through Burghley is that she wishes to see weddings and beddings in no particular order. Have you something?”

Will handed Burbage the first two or three of the folded sheets scattered across his table. “Almost the last words I heard from poor Kit Marley were that I should not short myself for comedy.”

“Katharine, eh? A likely name. Why Padua?”

“In the cold months, a man likes to dream of warm places.” Will shrugged. “She's a shrew no man will marry, and—well, 'tis a metaphor. As a wise and gentle woman respects her lord, so must a land bow to its sovereign. I'll finish it in time for Oxford and Walsingham to dig the nibs of their spells between its lines, and then for mine own hand to correct their scansion.”

Will picked up the page he had been working on, judged it dry, and held it closer to the poor light. “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, / Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, / And for thy maintenance commits his body / To painful labor both by sea and land, / To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, / Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; / And craves no other tribute at thy hands / But love, fair looks, and true obedience; / Too little payment for so great a debt. / Such duty as the subject owes the prince, / Even such a woman oweth to her husband—”

Will glanced up. Burbage was smiling.

“ 'Twill serve?”

“ 'Twill please the Queen: she has little use for women.”

“ 'Tis a trick I had from Kit—”

“Will.” Burbage shook his head. “You know Strange won't hear Marley spoken of, and has forbidden us to rehearse his plays. It is a risk to so often speak his name. He's dead, man, and there's little you can do to stem the tide of scandal now.”

“He was your friend, Richard.”

“Aye, and dead, I say again. And you are my friend as well, and quick. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Will answered, but rebellion soaked his heart.
Not so dead after all,
he wanted to retort. But he remembered Kit's words:
One among us is a traitor
.

It could be anyone
. A chill settled into Will's bones. He tossed the scribbled leaf upon his table and stepped back beside Burbage, against the warmth of the chimney wall. “Twelfth Night—” and then he paused, another dread setting in. “I promised Annie I would come to Stratford for Christmas. I was to leave on Monday morn.”

Richard tugged his mittens back on. “Send her a letter. Bid her to London: quote those lines you just quoted to me. Surely they will stir a woman's heart to understanding. Are these ready for Oxford?” A gesture indicated the pages on the table.

“They are.” Will edged one sheet a little farther from the lamp with a forefinger. Oil from his fingertip glistened on the paper. “Take them from my sight.”

“Will.”

“What?”

“I had supper with Ned Alleyn at the Mermaid last night. Most of the players—Lord Strange's Men and the Admiral's Men—have been whiling away an idle hour there now and again while the playhouses are shuttered. It wouldn't do you any harm to be seen more often: you're missed, and some wonder if you're well. But aside from that”—Burbage raised a hand to forestall Will's interruption—“Ned said if I saw you, to tell you this:
Robert Poley's been Looking for our Will, and in the company of a great oaf of a tradesman, blond as a Dane.
”

Burbage mimicked Alleyn's sonorous tones perfectly. Will would have laughed if he hadn't recognized the description.
Baines
. “Looking for me? Did Poley say why?”

“As it was Poley, I assumed you owed him money and he'd come to take it out of your back in one-inch strips. Chapman's still in debt to the usurious bastard—”

“No. It's not money. Thank you, Richard, and I'll come by the Mermaid tonight and thank Ned myself.”

“Ned said the second man was near as big as Ned himself.” Burbage's voice fell. “There's more on Strange, as well. Burghley—as it happens, Lord Strange was contacted by a Catholic conspiracy. They wished to see him as pretender to the Throne, and Elizabeth . . . done with.”

“Strange? Accused of treason?” Will's voice too dropped to a murmur, as he thought of skulls painted red by the afternoon sun. “Surely not—”

“No, he reported the conspiracy to Burghley, and Burghley—who has no fondness for Catholics of any stripe—will use the information as best befits the Queen. All is well.”

What of the loyal Catholics who will be punished as well as the guilty?
But Will didn't say it, although he counted the silence more of a betrayal than failing to defend Kit. There was no way to raise Kit's supposition that the Catholic enemy were not Catholic at all, not at their deepest roots. Because the man was, as far as Burbage knew, six months dead. Will comforted himself that Walsingham should know it, if Burbage didn't.

“But by that action,” Burbage continued, “Strange has made of himself an obstacle to the plotters. Have a care, Will, and keep an ear to the wall.” He tapped the boards.

“Oh.” Will ordered the pages before he handed them to Burbage. “I will.”

Flakes of paint came away on Will's fingertips as he pushed the Mermaid's peeling plank door open. Edmund Spenser's pointed visage and dull brown beard greeted Will's eye, framed in a lace-tipped falling collar.
And what does Spenser in London?
Will had heard he was in Ireland, avoiding Lord Burghley's wrath. But no one man in London could keep track of the politics that attended his
own
name—unless that name were Walsingham—never mind the ones that trailed like cloaks and hat-plumes about the shoulders of every man who was any man at all.

A coterie had gathered around England's greatest poet. Spenser held forth, one hand curled around the base of his wine cup and the other moving through the air as if he drew strands of wool for spinning. Will paused, not to interrupt the tale, but he did not miss the broad-shouldered gentleman beside Spenser, greased black hair hanging over his untied ruff, slumming it amidst base players and poets and pamphleteers.

It was not a usual thing for a patron to move among his servants in the theatre. The customary arrangement was for him to loan out his livery for whatever status or notoriety the players could provide; in exchange, the players were not classed masterless men, criminals, but servants to a lord.

Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, turned only slightly as Will entered, offering the playmaker bare acknowledgement. But his dark eyes drifted past Ned Alleyn, big as a chalk giant, who had taken up the thread of conversation now, bony hands moving like angel's wings. Will followed Strange's glance and nodded, skirting the crowd— wooly-faced Chapman jostled his elbow in silent greeting—and went to fetch a bench.

Will kicked rushes aside so they wouldn't snag under the wooden legs when he dragged his prize back. The other men gave him room to sit beside his patron. Strange himself waved for the wine, never disrupting the flow of Ned's monologue.

“My lord.” Will poured two cups as the door swung open on a frigid blast. The breeze blew Kemp and two Burbages—Richard and his brother Cuthbert—into the room; Cuthbert shut the door firmly. “ 'Tis an unusual pleasure to see you here.”

“You are to perform for the Queen.” Strange leaned so close Will could smell his hair pomade. A stout man, Strange, and soft around the middle despite bad teeth—but his hands showed tendon. The right one moved in a manner Will memorized as a character detail, turning like a leaf moored to the stem.

“We are.”

Strange hid his mouth behind the rim of his cup, the interior belling back his voice. “Thou knowest Southampton is the enemy's dupe.”

It was only a player's presence of mind that kept Will's startlement from his face. He was glad attention was focused on Richard Burbage and Ned Alleyn, circling one another like a terrier and a mastiff who might decide to be friends and who also might not.

“The enemy, my lord?” Will sipped his wine.

“Don't blanch so. I would not be Burbage's and thy master if I did not know
some
things.” Strange's slick hair broke in locks as he turned a lopsided smile on Will. “Have a care. I may not be able to protect thee, but Burghley will. As long as thou dost remain useful to him.”

“Burghley? Not Oxford?”

Strange lifted one shoulder eloquently, appearing to watch the verbal sparring between rival players ride the edge between wit and acrimony. “Oxford was a mistake—”

“Oxford thinks Southampton can be convinced.”

“Thou wouldst get better odds on Raleigh.”

“Noble rivalries, my lord?” Burbage had caught Alleyn's elbow and drew him away from the fire. The taller man bent his head to hear the smaller's arguments. The cross Alleyn had worn ever since a particularly disastrous performance of
Faustus
dangled from its cord as he leaned down.

“If you like.” Fingers against the table, a nervous, rilling tap. “Don't trust Edward de Vere, Master Shakespeare. And don't trust too much in the patronage of Southampton, for all thou dost flatter him with thy poetry. He's a boughten man.”

“You know this, my lord?” Will noticed the dark line furrowed between Strange's dark eyes. “Aye. You know it.”

“I know too much.” Strange finished his wine. He inverted his cup and pushed himself to his feet; the other men at the table jumped up as a Lord stood. “I am expected home to sup. Finish the bottle, Master Shakespeare.”

Strange threw coins on the table. His tired smile struck Will hard. There was too much resignation in it. “Don't give up hope on your poor players, my lord,” Will said, hoping that Strange would hear both his words and the meaning under them. “The playhouses will be open soon.”

Lord Strange turned back from the door and smiled. “See that you make me proud, Master Shakespeare. Masters Burbage, Master Kemp.” And with that, Ferdinando Stanley collected his hat from the peg by the door, and went.

Will's letter to Annie—dispatched the following morning—netted only a stony silence in reply. He meant to send a second one a week after the first, but good intentions were lost in the whirl of rehearsal and rewrite and frenzied preparation of two plays at once: the tragedy
Titus Andronicus
, for which Will need not only learn his roles but also face down Oxford in a series of hour-murdering meetings; and a light-hearted comedy which was finally, after much argument, entitled
The Taming of the Shrew.
The clownish Will Kemp was appointed Lord of Misrule—chief of Christmas festivities—for Lord Strange's Men, thus ensuring that drunkenness and disorder would ride sovereign over the frantic preparations for the Twelfth Night play. And between a tailor's visit or three, rehearsals all day and all night (and drinking at the Mermaid), occasional church services and the Twelve Days festivities, the first time Will had a moment's silence between his own ears was on January 5. And only because a thin-lipped, towering Ned Alleyn, who—plied by Burbage with liquor and conversation—would perform with Lord Strange's Men this once, threw the entire company out of the Mermaid Tavern and into the street to
go home, the Lot, and rest your heads so as not to Lose them before Her Majesty!