“Master Shakespeare,” said Queen Elizabeth, after a suitable time had elapsed. Her fan moved gracefully. “We wish to thank you for all that you have done for us. Please rise.”
“Your Highness’ thanks are unnecessary,” Will said, when he had collected himself and pushed himself up with his cane. “But welcome. Although a humble player might wonder what monarchs would make of him.”
Elizabeth glanced at her sister queen and smiled. Clever boy.Aye, and they both loved cleverness. Kit winked at Will over his Queen’s diamond‑studded shoulder, and Will’s knees half melted before he quite forced his gaze back to Elizabeth. Damn honor,he thought. And damn vows.
Which was why Will had told Kit what he had, about Annie and his promise to remain faithful. Because he understood by now that Kit wouldn’t offer where he wasn’t certain of his welcome, and that as long as Kit didn’t offer, Will could pretend he would refuse.
The world was full of other temptations too–pretty, willing goodwives and tiresses and innkeepers–Mistress Poley, who would gladly have him in Kit’s stead, he thought, and Jenet at the inn he often overnighted in along the way to Stratford. But surely he could manage a little continence after fifty years in Hell.
The Queen looked back. “Your heart is divided, Master Shakespeare.”
“As whose is not, Your Highness?” He’d scored. He saw it in the constriction of her mouth, and then the gracious tilt of her head, acknowledging the point. Somehow, the softness in her deep gray eyes was worse than censure or a Oueen’s cold wrath. “And yet I serve my Queen and Her England in all things, ” he concluded, making as pretty a bow as he could with his cane and his hat to contend with.
“In all things?”
“Over love or gold, ” Will said, and understood why he was being made to do this before Kit, and the Mebd. So show the whole world where thy loyalty lies. And I am sorry.It was true, what he said, as far as it went. Over love. Over gold. But not over the destiny of all Christendom.
And he could see from the smile in Elizabeth’s eyes, the rapid flicker of her fan, that she understood. Understood, and approved? Will swallowed despite the lump that now always blocked his throat, and with a flash of the insight that had given him Hamlet,William understoodhis Queen in return. Not the ragged, painted, old woman before him, but the girl who had led a man like Francis Walsingham to beggar himself in her service, when with his dying breath he had known she could never show him gratitude. A woman who had given Kit Marley to the Faeries, when it would have been easier and safer to end his life and let him tumble into an unmarked grave. It doesn’t matter if Essex betrays her. It doesn’t matter what Scottish Mary did or did not know when she was Led to the block. Elizabeth understands that every drop of that blood stains her own hands. She knows. She knows she goes to judgement to face each life she’s wasted. And she’s always known.
This is not a Prince who Loves to kill.
His heart filled up with something vast and terrible at the realization, a shadowy whirl of wings and storm and light, and he knew why men died for Elizabeth. He would have died for Elizabeth himself. And he understood as well that there were things bigger than Elizabeth, bigger than England, for all they were things for which he did not have a name. Faith. God. Liberty.None of it was enough.
Worse things had been done in those names, than in Elizabeth’s.
And yet –
“And what if thou didst think thou hadst choose between the Queen and thy England–no, do not answer, Master Poet. We would liefer know not. Little elf,” Elizabeth said, turning to regard Sir Robert. “Thou hadst a question with regard to Master Shakespeare. Good poet” –she turned back to Will, and now her eyes sparkled – “you may speak now as if privily before ourselves.”
Cecil smiled. He’s going to ask about the Bible,Will thought at first, and then realized – worse, he’s going to ask about the plays. All the plays produced under Oxford’s supervision, and subverting Oxford’s control– Will steeled himself not to dissemble or lie –
The high double doors behind him swung open, and a determined step hushed itself upon the carpet. Raleigh, Murchaud, and Kit moved as one man, coming around the Queens, rapiers hissing into a fence of steel between the women and the door. Will blinked even as he turned, realizing all three men had been armed in the Presence.
“Your Highness, ” the Earl of Oxford said, genuflecting as the door thumped back against its frame, “I must speak to you at once. This player” – a twitch of the head at Will – “is a traitor, and Your Highness is in very grave danger – ”
Will glanced at Oxford and blinked as he understood a number of things. Including the cost of refusing to dance to Oxford’s tune, and that someoneconsidered Will troublesome enough to be cheerfully rid of him. And that it had not been happenstance that Raleigh himself had come so publicly to fetch Will from the press. And what rumors and half‑truths have the Queen and her elves been circulating?
Enough to provoke de Vere into hasty action, for certain–
“Brave gentlemen,” Elizabeth said. “We can be in no danger from so loyal a servant as our noble Oxford.” She accepted Sir Walter’s hand as he stepped back to her side and sheathed his blade. She stood gracefully, making her knight’s gesture look like a courtesy, but Will saw him take the strain of her weight. And saw also the way her ungloved hand tightened on Raleigh’s, until the pallor of her fingers matched the white lead on her brow. Saw the way Kit’s rapier dropped until its point rested on the floor, though neither he nor Murchaud sheathed their swords or retreated behind their Queen. From his angle a little to the side of where Oxford stood, Will saw Cairbre slip a silver flute into his hand, and– good Christ–George Carey, Lord Hunsdon, draw a long‑barreled pistol and conceal it behind Elizabeth’s gilded chair.
I am on the wrong side of that dais.But Kit looked calm, and so did Carey. Sir Robert was actually smiling, one hand resting on the ornate back of Elizabeth’s chair now that she had risen. He leaned forward to speak in her ear, and she smiled. “As you say, little elf.” She gave Will a level, steadying glance before she turned her attention to Oxford. “What is it, sweet boy?”
Oxford looked from Elizabeth to the Mebd, still seated and anonymous behind her rich black veils and the bodies of her servants. “My Queen, I am not certain this is meet to discuss before strangers.”
“Ah,” she said, descending the steps coolly, her hand upraised in Raleigh’s like a courting swan’s neck. “But these are not strangers, my dear Oxford.”
Will watched her come, amazed, as the Earl of Oxford chose his words, seeming to understand that he had made some sort of an error and seeking to understand how grave it was. Close on, Will witnessed the frailty of Elizabeth’s neck, the hollows under her cheekbones, the lines of old pain set deep between her eyes. The scent of rosewater and marjoram surrounded her; he was reminded uncomfortably of Morgan and her eternal scent of rosemary. Elizabeth had nearly died–two years before Will was born – of the smallpox that had also disfigured her dear friend Mary Dudley, the mother of the poet Sir Philip Sidney. The candlelight outlined the scars on Elizabeth’s cheeks through her paint, and still she presented – almost–the illusion of vigor.
“That will suffice, dear Water.” She tugged her hand from Raleigh’s grasp, and she passed before Will and came and laid that same white, white hand on Oxford’s cheek. He smiled at the touch, and the Queen smiled back. “What is it, Edward? ”
“I am here to name this playmaker a traitor to Your Highness,” Oxford said, on a breath that didn’t quite manage the sneer he endeavored for. “I have evidence to present–”
Christ,Will thought, but Raleigh came to stand beside him as if about to take his elbow and block his route to the door, using the movement to cover a casual nudge.
“How convenient,” Elizabeth said, turning her back on Oxford while Will marveled at her seamless courage and dignity. “When here we have a tribunal of sorts.”
“A tribunal, Your Highness?”
“Of sorts,” she repeated, withdrawing up the shallow steps. She paused before her chair, made a sweeping turn to accommodate her train, and did not take a seat. “We are here to consider the crimes of Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Would he care to make a defense?”
Kit shifted at the left hand of the Mebd, although his face seemed impassive behind the mask. Will saw her lay one black‑gloved hand on the poet’s wrist. Kit glanced down and gave her a smile as edgy as the rapier in his hand. Will stepped away from Oxford, giving Raleigh the room to step between them if he needed, conscious of his blocking as if he moved away from the principals in a scene onstage.
“My Queen.” Oxford swept a low bow and stayed there, his hat in his hand as Will’s had been. “May I hear these – charges?” He glanced sidelong at Will, already arranging his face into a mask of dismissive scorn. “What has this player told you?”
“That playerhas told us nothing,” she said. Her hands looked terribly small against the massive white wall of her skirts; she folded them before the point of her flat‑fronted stomacher and twined the fingers together. “For we have not yet taken his evidence.” Disappointment edged her soft, sweet voice. “Edward. It has reached our ears that thou dost conspire with Catholic spies and agents, along with some others who are not presently welcome in our court – ” She sighed. “Honesty may redeem thee, Edward. How dost thou answer? ”
The look Oxford shot Will this time was nothing short of venomous, and Will had the distinct and elevated pleasure of smiling once and shaking his head with slow finality. Nay. Not me, my dear Earl. I wonder if it was Essex or Southampton threw him to the wolves?
One or the other. Elizabeth would not listen to many men over– Kit’s eye caught Will’s again, and Will nodded so slightly he thought only Kit and perhaps Cairbre might catch it– her own son.
“Your Highness.” Oxford had not yet risen. Will rather enjoyed seeing the back of his neck. “May I know by whose hand these charges have been leveled, then?”
“Mine,” said Kit, and stepped forward with a naked rapier still in his right hand, and it struck Will abruptly that better than half the men in the room had drawn weapons in the presence of not one Queen, but two–and no one seemed to think much of it. Meanwhile, Kit’s gloved left hand rose to strip the sculpted velvet mask from his face; he let it drop from his fingers to the floor behind, and smiled. “Hello, love. Art surprised to find me quick?”
Leaning on his cane, Will hitched himself back from the confrontation evolving in the center of the room.
Elizabeth’s smile was a mask as unyielding of true expression as the one Kit had left lying at her feet, and Oxford’s stiff‑backed bow didn’t survive the revelation. He straightened, reaching for the rapier he wasn’t wearing, and took a slow step away from Kit and from the Queen as Raleigh edged between him and the door.
Oxford hesitated a moment when his hand brushed the richly figured cloth at his hip. Will saw his moment of decision, the squaring of his shoulders and the little grimace as he moved forward, past Kit as if Kit were insignificant, an inconvenience to be shrugged aside. “Your Highness,” Oxford said, pausing at the foot of the steps and addressing himself directly to his Queen. “Surely you will not take the word of this” –his lip twisted, as if on words he would not say in the presence of a woman – “apostate, this perversion–”
Kit came the few steps back up beside Oxford on the left, and Will saw that his motion served to distract Oxford from Raleigh, who flanked the Earl on the right and just out of the periphery of his vision. Kit’s voice stayed level, amused, but there was a honeyed rasp in it that Will knew for sheerest hatred. “Baines told thee not that I was living, Edward? I wonder what else he’s kept from thee. Perhaps he reports directly to Southampton now.”
“Thou shalt not theeme, sirrah.”
Kit stopped close enough for Oxford to feel the heat of his breath, Will imagined, the naked blade angled between them as if laid down the center of a bed. “Or Essex; perhaps ‘tis why Essex saw fit to set thee adrift–”
Oxford looked up at the Queen. “Your Highness would take the word of this common playmaker and, and–”
“–or perhaps ‘tis Essex who wears Baines’ rein. What thinkst thou? Thou hast been cut from their string, hast not?”
The Oueen’s smile was strained white under the carmine of fucus. She held her silence. The Mebd and the four black‑clad men beside her might have been statues.
“–heretic, traitor. Catamite–” Oxford would not turn. Would not look at Kit, as Kit leaned closer. Will’s stomach clenched in sympathy at the tightness that edged Kit’s face, and never was heard in his voice.
“Ah.”
“Your Highness?”
“Ah,” Kit said a second time, and slapped Edward de Vere with the back of his gloved left hand.
It was a blow hard enough to turn the man’s head and leave a welt burning red across the pallor of his skin, and Will flinched at the report. Oxford fell silent, didn’t so much as raise a hand to cover the mark. Will imagined de Vere tasting blood, and the imagining troubled him not at all.
Kit tilted his head to one side like a crow thinking which eye to pluck from a dead man’s skull. He spoke clearly into the silence, and the knot in Will’s stomach wrenched into a wild, braying kind of love. “I cannot fault thine own experienced testament, my lord–”
“Master Marlowe, I am certain–”
“Sir Christopher, ” Elizabeth said.
“Your Highness?”
“Sir Christopher,” she said, as if reminding an idiot child. “Not Master. Sir.”
Oxford’s face went white before it went red. “Sir Christopher. I am certain I do not understand your implication–”
“Implication? My lord Oxford, I will testify.”The poet stripped his gloves off with an elegantly negligent gesture and smiled up at the Queens. Will wondered if anyone else could see what Kit’s smile cost him.
Oxford looked appealingly at his Queen, who ignored him in favor of gracefully resuming her seat, her skirts hissing about her like the foam on a moonlit sea. Oxford must have heard the rumors that the veiled blond beauty was the legendary Anne of Denmark, Queen of Scotland. Will could almost see the false assumptions heaping high in Oxford’s thoughts.
“Sir Christofer,” the Mebd asked in measured and musical tones, “are you suggesting that this my royal sister’s subject has made improper use of thee?”
Elizabeth glanced up from fussing her skirts, but it was Kit she looked to. “Sir Christopher?”
Kit smiled green poison, not at the Queens but at Oxford. “Oh, he made rather a proper job of it, I’d say. May it please Your Majesties.”
“Thou’lt burn with me.” Hissed, and Will rather thought it was meant for Kit’s ears alone, but in the still room it carried. Oxford flinched.
“I’m subject to another Kingdom now,” Kit answered, and gently reached up and kissed Edward de Vere on the cheek still reddened with that blow. Will bit his lip on a cheer, turned aside before it could bubble out of him, and met Raleigh’s amused and savage grin. He approved of our Kit too,Will thought, and gave the Oueen’s “Sir Water” back a flash of a smile as Kit stepped back. Will wonders never cease?
“And more,” Will said, understanding what he was here for, and where Cecil’s questions would have taken him. “From his own lips, I heard the Earl suggest that Your Majesty’s continued good health” –a bow to Elizabeth– “might be an impediment to the successful future of England.”
Kit stepped back and turned his sword so that the blade cast reflected light in a moving bar across Oxford’s breast and throat, all his polite attention to Will. The band of Kit’s mask had disarrayed his hair into fine tangled elflocks, and Will folded his arms to keep from brushing them straight.
“Have you proof, Master Shakespeare?” Raleigh’s voice. Oxford jumped at its closeness.
Will shook his head, pressing his arms against his chest, his cane dan
gling from his fingertips. “Only mine own sworn testimony, Sir Walter. Which will I give.”
Kit cleared his throat and addressed himself to Oxford, not Raleigh. “I also have heard with mine own ears that thou didst plot my murder, and treason against your anointed Queen. And I also will swear to it and give particulars. My lord.”
Raleigh looked across Oxford as if he were not there, catching Kit’s eyes. “Good to see you well, Kit – ” He cleared his throat and grinned. “Sir Christopher. I suppose that’s not for bandying about?”
“Good to see you at all, Walter.” Oxford moved, as if to shift from between them, and Kit halted him with a negligent tap of his blade. “Tut. None of that. And no, officially I’m quite dead and likely to remain so.”
Raleigh stepped closer. Kit moved back toward the dais, sheathing his blade as if Oxford were beneath concern. Oxford’s expression of thwarted wrath lightened Will’s heart, but the Mebd’s voice broke through his delight; soft and amused as Kit came back to her side, stooping only to retrieve his discarded mask. “Dost regret now how fine a gift thou hast given us, sweet sister?”
“Oh, sister,” Elizabeth answered, her voice rich and low over the colors of a grief Will imagined was almost like an old, familiar friend, “I’ve always been weak in the face of these rash, these beautiful boys.” Kit hid a laugh to hear himself so described, but Elizabeth’s eyes were on Raleigh and her face offered Oxford no sign of her pain. She’ll weep later,Will thought. She wept for Mary, they day, even as she signed the death warrant– “My sweet Sir Water. Sir Robert, my elf. See that our darling Edward tells us what he knows. Everything.”
Raleigh took Oxford by the elbow; the Earl gave him a glance that might have melted glass. “Unhand me, popinjay.” He pushed Raleigh back with the flat of his hands; Raleigh bore it like a standing stone, though pearls rained from his doublet like hail.
“As my Queen commands,” Raleigh answered, one hand upon his sword. “Your Highness, when he has told us what he will?”
Elizabeth’s fan moved idly, crimson and alabaster feathers trembling above a grip made of gold set with mother‑of‑pearl. “I do not wish to set eyes on him again.”
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