Ink and Steel

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.”

“There are rumors.”

“There frequently are.” Oxford stepped away as Walsingham came closer. Burghley, a massive shape in rustling brocade, folded his hands before his ample belly.

Will felt their eyes running questions up and down his frame.

“The rumors are true. Marley was well, no magician. But a playmaker with an art for it, and a loyalty to Britannia.”

“I had heard he was associated with the Catholics.”

“Where a man goes, and what a man seems to do, are not always the truest indications of a man’s loyalties.”

“You want an apologist,” Will said on a rush of breath he hadn’t known he held. “I can do that, in service to Gloriana.”

“Ah,” Burghley answered. “Would it were so meet and simple. Aye, that’s half what we need of you. The other half is a sort of science, or philosophy.”

“Will saw the deaf old man’s eyes trained on his lips as he waited for Will to answer. “Black Art? You can’t be seriously … My lord Treasurer,” Will finished, suddenly aware that the nobleman was eyeing him quite seriously indeed, a small smile rounding Burghley’s cheeks under the white carpet of his beard.

Will raised a hand to press to his breast, realized his action half completed, and let the hand fall again.

“Oh, I can,” Burghley responded. “And not Black at all. Just the gentle art of persuasion, my shake-spear.”

A sharp scent of citron filled the walled garden, a drift of coolness brushing Will’s hand. Citrus oil: Walsingham had driven a thumbnail sharp as a knife into the rind of the lemon. He tugged, revealing white pith and bright pulp. The pearls of oil in the rind burst and misted, hanging on the soft moist air.

“Like persuading lemons to fruit in May,” Walsingham said, offering half the rent fruit to Will. Will took it numbly. The skin was still warm with the touch of Walsingham shand, and Will followed the gesture of that hand toward the espaliered tree.

He blinked. Lemons hung along one branch in late-summer profusion, olives on another. The third grew heavy with limes.

“Just an art,” Walsingham said. “Like grafting and gardening. In London, you can make surprising things grow.”

“You want me to hide spells in my plays? As Marley is said to have done in Faustus?”

“We want you to change hearts and raise the rabble to the old tales of kings and princes and ladies fair. To show the danger of damn’d ambition, and the virtue of keeping one’s troth. As Kit did.”

“I cannot write as Kit did.”

“You will,” Lord Hunsdon promised. “You’ve a gift in you, man in your Comedy of Errors, and your Henry VI. You’ll write as Kit did, and better.”

“And wind up like Kit as well, no doubt, with a knife in the eye.”