Ink and Steel

“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.”