Ink and Steel

“Never a thief. But all the others, if that’s the one that stings. Only a vile playmaker in the end,” Kit answered, with a shrug he himself wasn’t sure was acknowledgement. What turns a cobbler into preacher, Kit? Or a preacher into a Queen’s Man? That too.Kit opened his mouth on a glib lie and shut it. He glanced over Robin’s shoulder, where the Mebd sat, and beyond her, her husband, and beyond her black Morgan le Fey.

“When I was thirteen,” he said, “my father beat his apprentice so badly he was fined by the Guild. I thought I’d rather a scholar’s beatings than a prentice’s. I entered King’s School at fifteen.” The words came quietly, and he was proud of that. “I was too old. They took me anyway. I went to Cambridge on a scholarship. My family were proud. Some years later, I came to find that the vocation I thought I had was a lie, for the Church’s God was no God of mine. Or if it was true, then I was called by mistake. If God makes that sort of mistake.” Kit stopped and sat back in his chair.

The Puck slid a bit of roast meat before him. Kit lifted his dagger and poked at it, but did not eat.

“And then?”

“And then it was live by my wits or live not at all. Tis easy to starve in London. And unlike the Church, the only thing Gloriana asks of her servants is that they love her above breath and fortune. Why am I telling you this?”

The Puck laughed. “Because you need a friend, Sir Kit.”

Kit looked up. He set his knife aside. “Do I? Aye. Well, then I wot I do.”

“Eat, Puck said. You’ll need strength when you tell your poetry.”

   Act II, scene ii

Mercutio:

Oh, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet

The second letter arrived in cold, wet April a week or two before Will schristening-day, after the playhouses were reopened from a lent that Will had hoped and failed to spend in Stratford. It was in Kit’s hand, or a clever forgery, and written with some care: no words were scratched out or blotted, and the ink was black as jet on creamy parchment. The tone was much as the first letter. Gold to dross, Will thought, refolding the letter and examining the seal once more though he was growing late for his meeting with lord Hunsdon. The seal was of brittle green wax, imprinted with an image of a goose feather. All carefully chosen to lead Will to an inevitable conclusion.

Gold to dross.

Will Shakespeare had been a country lad, where the reek of frankincense and superstition of Papism still clung. Even if he hadn’t seen in manuscript a few cantos of Spenser’s poem in praise of England’s own Faerie Queene, he would have known the signs as well as any man, although a rational a properly Protestant mind might reject them. Kit’s with the Faeries. Or he’s mad: there’s always that. But he somehow knows mine acts almost as soon as I perform them. And he repeats his plea that I inform him, through Walsingham, of politics and players, and anything else that might befall.

Easily enough done, and no more risky than reporting to Walsingham himself. Which Will still intended. But

I should burn this letter.

But it would be noticeable to carry it downstairs and slip it into the fire, and there was no hearth in Will’s room. After some consideration and a few false starts, he lifted the ticking off the bed and tucked the letter between the ropes and the frame, where it stuck quite nicely. Completely concealed, even with the ticking off: Will crawled under the frame to be sure. Then he got his arms around the rustling ticking and wrestled it back into place, poking the flannel to settle the straw inside the bag. He sneezed at the dust, wiped watering eyes on his sleeve, and twitched the bedclothes smooth.

Mid-April was still sharp enough that Will layered a leather jerkin over his doublet. He hurried through the streets, mindful of slush in the gutters, and crossed London Bridge with the sun still high in the sky. There was no concealment of this meeting: Will reported to the scowling gray Tower itself. He presented himself to the Yeoman Warder at the main gate, struggling to hide the uncertainty of his glances toward the prison while assuring the guards that he was expected. After showing his letter from the lord Chamberlain, he was ushered through, and walked down the long, rule-straight lane within.

The inside of the massive knobbed stone walls was no more comforting than the exterior had been, and he considered uneasily what the murders and covenants of ravens along the edges of the rooftops dined upon. Legend claimed that should the ravens leave the Tower, England’s fall would not be far behind.