Ink and Steel

There was oil in a cupboard. Wordlessly, with exquisite care, he filled the extinguished lamp and trimmed the wick, relighting it before snuffing the second and repeating the process. He set the light left-handed on the stand beside the bed, acknowledging Frances’ grateful glance with a smile.

“We should send a messenger to lord Burghley,” he said to Burbage and Tom as he returned to his post by the wall. “And a messenger to the Queen. He will not last the …”

“The Queen will not come.” A wheeze, a broken gasp followed by Frances’ command to lie back. Will turned in place and looked back to the bed with its coverlet drawn high and its curtains closed on two sides to keep the draft away.

“Sir Francis.” The old man was up on one elbow, waving his nursemaid irritably aside, pain furrowing his face. His voice fragmented.

“Master Shakespeare. Master Burbage, ah, Tom. Waste no time on the Queen. She wouldn’t come. Unless she forgave me.”

“Cousin, lie down,” said Tom, crossing the rush mat heedlessly. Frances moved out of his path in a graceful sweep of skirts and leaned against the window ledge to throw open the shutters, breathing gratefully of the rank Southwark night. Over the reek of the bear gardens, Will imagined he smelled fruiting lemons and apples ripening to the frost that would leave them sweet enough to be plucked. He brushed comforting fingers across Frances arm and moved forward. Burbage hung back beside her, his nostrils flaring in a drinker’s roseate nose. Tom crouched beside the bed, heedless of the reek, and Will stood over his shoulder.

“Cousin,” Tom said. Sir Francis coughed. Will flinched: the sound had torn flesh in it. Tom reached out and gripped Sir Francis hand.

“Cousin,” Sir Francis wheezed. “There’s papers. Under a false bottom in my clothespress. Thou wilt need them.”

“What are they?

“There are men who will work for the love of their Prince. And there are those who must be cajoled, brutalized, or bribed.”

“Your men,” Thomas said, understanding.

“Filthy linen,” Sir Francis answered. “Yes. Tis yours.”

“Sir Francis, Her Majesty would not come to your deathbed?” Will felt the vibration of his own voice, but did not at first understand that he had spoken. It took him longer to recognize the wet, desperate sound that escaped Sir Francis throat as laughter; it was like the sounds a man might make being broken on the rack.

Serve your Prince,” Sir Francis choked, waving Will closer.

Breathing shallowly, Will bent forward, extending a hand. Francis Walsingham’s yellowed nails dented the flesh of his wrist as the spymaster fell back against the bed.

“Do not expect thanks of her. Not if you serve her well.”

Will flinched. Blood and something thick and yellow crusted the corners of Sir Francis mouth. A thin trickle of watery red dripped from his nose, as if the effort of holding his head up had burst a vessel somewhere, one with barely any blood left in it.

“Sir Francis.”

For all its feebleness, Sir Francis voice brushed Will’s aside as casually as a hand lifting a curtain.

“You were young. When the Queen’s Men, I built for Gloriana toured Stratford, and they took you on.“

Will thought the sound of the dying man’s laugh would make him vomit. Dick Burbage shuffled forward as if through mud. Sir Francis didn’t release Will’s wrist, and Will stayed bent over the crouching Tom, wondering if Sir Francis could feel the tremor starting now in his biceps, shivering down his arm to his hand.

“Sir Francis.”

“Didst know what we had here, Dick?”

Wordlessly, Burbage shook his head.

“Ah.” Walsingham slipped lower in the bed. “Now we do.”

Tom dabbed his cousin’s upper lip, rubbing thin blood into his beard. Sir Francis hand slid from Will’s wrist and lay slack and open on the coverlet, as if waiting to receive.

“Let me be, Tom.” Sir Francis closed his eyes. “Let me be.”

Tom stood easily and backed up, looking up as he took a second step away from the bed. And then kept moving, stumbling, his left arm catching Will across the chest and bearing him away as Will too raised his eyes. A warm wind scented with tobacco smoke blew the bed curtains back. They rippled heavily, the lamps guttering in their chimneys. The sound that fell from Will’s parted lips was almost a quack.