Ink and Steel

“Richard, what would we tell him? We were at the deathbed of the Queen’s spymaster, buried these five years, and Lucifer Morningstar showed up to drag him like Faustus to Hell?”

“Ah.”

Tom turned Sir Francis signet between his fingers. “I wonder why Will and I saw him, and you and Cousin Frances did not.” Silence followed, heavy with the thin scent of morning, broken as a cock’s crow was answered by rivals.

“We can discuss it later.” Will heaved himself to his feet. “I wish householders would leave the chickens in the countryside. They’re overloud when a man sleeps of a morning.”

Burbage laughed, then looked at Sir Francis corpse, abashed. “But what would you do for eggs?”

“There’s swans on the Thames,” Will answered. “They’re tolerably silent.”

“They re also,” Burbage reminded, “the Queen’s.”

“Then let her charge tuppence an egg.”

Will managed scarce three dream-torn hours before the nones bell dragged him from under his prickly woolen blanket. He pissed, washed, and dressed for court with a fussy, practiced care that would have amused his wife. Tightening the points on loose breeches, Will resolved to gain weight, if he had to subsist on possets and cream. His hand trembled with exhaustion; he glared at it until the tremors subsided enough to get his sleeve buttoned, then poured ale and broke bread for his breakfast.

The bread caught in histhroat; he crumbled it into the ale and choked the mess down, grimacing. His shoulders ached. He swore under his breath and left by the garden gate, in a vile enough mood that he wanted a walk to calm himself before he had to face company.

Winding lane bustled. Will stepped around a woman whose dark orange skirts swayed over a farthingale, his left shoulder almost brushing the dark wood frontage of shops and houses under the overhang. Pale scars from that summer’s violent hailstorms marked the facade; they might take years to fade.

He at last turned westward on Leadenhall Street, following it out Aldgate and then south outside of the city wall so he would not have to walk within sight of the Tower gallows and its somber-feathered attendants.

The Queen was not at Westminster, but rather at her favorite palace in Greenwich. Will sought the barge that would carry the lord Chamberlain’s Men and their carts of props and costumes down the Thames; it was docked above the city, as convenient to the Theatre some two miles north as possible, without hauling carts through London. Burbage was aboard, eyes red-rimmed, hair damp. He eyed Will critically, a corner of his expressive mouth twitching upward, as Will came up the gangway. Will smiled at how Burbage found his frame between the pilings and the upturned poles at the front of the cart: a master player’s unconscious authority of whatever stage he trod.

“Slept?” Burbage asked.

“We’ll sleep in the grave,” Will answered.

Burbage coughed. “So long as we don’t die tonight.”

“On the stage?”

“Or after it.”

“The company is aboard?”

“But Kemp is late.”

“Kemp is drunk, you mean Kemp is late,” William Kemp called from the dockside. “Some of us hold our liquor better than others, sweet William. Now, Burbage drunk, I’d believe it. And you not drinking; tis put about that you’re unfriendly. Step aside and let your betters in the boat.”

“Not so much unfriendly as unhumored for it.” Will moved three steps towar dthe heavy-necked Suffolk who dozed at the center of the barge. These were the horses he grew up with, placid liver mares with flaxen manes braided over the brands at their crests.

Kemp danced up the gangplank backward, his sack thrown carelessly over his shoulder, looking at any moment as if he might fall. He never did, of course, and Will laughed. “I will write a clown as hero one of these plays, Will.”

“I will you to it, Will.” Kemp grinned and folded himself onto a pile of well-stuffed wool bags. Wherries and skiffs flitted across the sunlit surface of the Thames behind him. “Wake me in Greenwich.”

The barge slipped with the current between green muddy banks scattered with half-timbered or brick or stone houses that swam into view and subsided behind. The tide was with them, but Will’s belly rumbled for dinner before Greenwich Palace’s riverside face appeared, pink-red and white, leaden roofs gleaming obscurely. Towers and chimneys stood bravely against a blue September sky and the rich green of the trees.

The horror of the night before could have been but another pageant; devils and men dying in their own rot had no place in the same world as this concrete dignity.

The players barge passed through the water gate just as the Queen’s might, and Burbage clapped Will on the arm and grinned. Will pushed a hand through his hair and walked forward past the dozing mare, holding a rail, to watch as the barge bobbed up to the stair that ran down the bank to the landing.

“Lovely,” Kemp said over Will’s shoulder. “How do we get the mare and the cart up that?”