Ink and Steel

“It’s fine work, isn’t it?” Oxford didn’t wait for Will’s nod. He knocked the dottle from his pipe and began to pack the bowl again. “Chapman, another of Raleigh’s group proposes to complete it and see it registered. In Kit’s name, not his own. Decent.”

Burbage rocked back in his stool, rattling the legs on the floor. “My lord, you’ll put Will in a place where, if Southampton is flattered, they may become friends. Even if the courtship fails, we’ll have an eye in Southampton’s camp.”

“There’ve been a dozen attempts on Queen Elizabeth’s life in as many years: your Kit’s sharp wit helped foil two of them, and he was friendly with Essex’s rival, Sir Walter. Now we have neither a hand close to Essex, nor one close to Sir Walter. Intolerable, should what I fear come to fruition. Essex has links to the…” He stopped himself.

Will observed calculation in that pause. “What you fear, my lord, or what fears Walsingham?”

Surprise and then a smile. “The two are not so misaligned. We were one group, the Prometheus Club, not too long since. All of us in service of the Queen. But Essex and his partisans are more interested in their own advancement than in Britannia. So, Will. Wilt woo for me, and win for my daughter?”

Will swallowed, shifting on the hard bench. “I was to write you plays, my lord. And you would show me how to put a force in them to keep Elizabeth’s subjects content and make all well. I was not to spy for you.”

Oxford tapped a beringed finger on the table. “I’m not asking thee to spy, sirrah. Merely to write. Not plays No. The playhouses are closed, Will, and they’ll be closed through the New Year. We’ll try our hand there again, fear not: but in the current hour, the enemy has the upper hand.”

“The enemy. This plot against the Queen. Closing the playhouses is a sort of a skirmish? An unseen one?”

Oxford smiled then softly. “You begin to understand. They know what we can do with a playhouse. Art is their enemy. Puritans. Naught but a symptom. Walsingham and Burghley are ours, after all.” Oxford drained his cup. “I offer you a poet’s respect. Nothing is so transient as a play and a playmaker’s fame. Except a player’s.”

Will looked at Burbage, who sat with his hands folded between his knees, thumbs rubbing circles over his striped silk hose. Burbage tilted his head, eyes glistening. Twas true.

“The poem’s the thing, then,” Will said, when he thought he’d considered enough. “Give unto me what you would impart, and I will wreak it into beauty with my pen.”

Oxford twisted his palm together, fingers arched as if to ease a writer’s cramp. “Excellent.” Another intentional hesitation. “Your play. Titus Andronicus. Send it me. I fancied myself something of a poet in my youth. Perhaps I can be of some small aid.”

My lord,” Will answered, covering discomfort. “I shall.”

   Act I, scene iv

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul; see, where it flies!

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Faustus

Kit’s heartbeat rattled his ribs inside his skin. He clutched the balustrade in his left hand, Morgan steadying him on his blind side as she led him down the sweeping marble stair and into the midst of creatures diabolic and divine. His riding boots clattered on the risers: inappropriate to an audience with the Queen of Faeries, he thought inanely. But it was homely and reassuring that they hadn’t had time to make him boots and that the doublet, for all its fineness, bound across his shoulders.

“Breathe,” the ancient Queen whispered in his ear. “You’ll need your wits about you, Sir Kit, for I can offer thee but small protection, and my sister the Queen is devious.”

He turned his head to glimpse her; the movement brought a twisting sharpness to the savaged muscles of his neck and shoulder, which were stiffening again. Morgan must have seen him wince, for her fingers tightened. “Thou’rt hurting.”

“Fair face of a witch you are,” he answered with a stab at good humor. “Without herbs or simples better than brandy to dull a man’s pain.”

She paused on the landing above the place where the stair began to sweep down and made a show of fussing right-handed with her skirts. He leaned on the rail and on her other arm while the pale gold-veined stairs reeled. “I’d dull your pain,” she answered, glancing at him before ducking her head to flick the soft moir one last time. “And thick your tongue, and set you rhead to reeling. Which canst ill afford when you go before the Mebd, Sir Poet.”