His flinch caught Morgan’s eye; she looked up. Even from this distance he could see her smile and the movement of her hair across tapestry brocade. He imagined what he looked like framed naked in the window, lust stirring as he recollected the scent of her, and stepped to one side, his face burning. She’ll be here in a moment, he thought, and considered for an instant meeting her naked and shameless at the door. She’d laugh. If his blushes wouldn’t set him on fire. Kit,he admonished. For a brazen libertine, an adulterer, a sodomite, an atheist, a fornicator, rakehell, heretic, godless playmaker and debaucher of innocents, you re a sorry state of affairs.
Self-mockery turned his mouth awry as he found a clean shirt, the yoke wrought with whitework, and the green breeches and pale gray woolen stockings that matched a green and silver velvet doublet. Morgan’s favorite colors. He judged it would take her a quarter hour or so to come inside, shed her cloak, and make her way through the palace, but he was still running a hurried comb across his hair when a tap rattled the door. He opened it a moment later, surprised to find not Morgan waiting beyond the door, but a broad-shouldered, black-bearded man: the Mebd’s bard Cairbre, snow still clotting the tops of his boots.
“I happened to chance upon your mistress in the Great Hall,” the bard said abruptly. “As I was on my way to my rooms, she asked me to bid you come to hers.” Kit straightened the lacings on his doublet, pulled his swordbelt from the rack, and stepped into the corridor. “Thank you, Master Harper.”
“Think nothing of it.” The bard’s cheek crinkled beside his eye, his lopsided smile disappearing into his beard. “When are you going to show me your poetry?”
Kit’s fingers slipped on slick black leather and he looked up from adjusting the rapier carriage at his left hip. “A year ago, had I known your interest.”
“I had thought—” A raised eyebrow to go with that angled grin. —“A poet likes a poet’s company, Sir Kit. And it seems to me that you have lovers aplenty, but perhaps could use a friend or two. In any case, your lady awaits.” The bard stepped back, melt water marking his footsteps on the rose and gold flagstones. “Stood I in your boots, I should hurry.”
When Kit looked back, Cairbre was still staring after, a bemused expression shadowing his face. A few minutes later, Kit stopped in the open doorway of Morgan’s room and raised a hand as if to knock on the doorjamb, then paused when he saw her settled on a bench, her skirts hiked above the knee in heavy folds as she struggled with fur-lined boots. Her bedroom window stood open, and a cool, moist breeze blew through it, carrying up a scent at odds with the midsummer colors of her window box of violet-gold heartsease. “My lady.”
“Kit. Your assistance, sir?” She extended a leg, and he knelt before her, taking the soft leather heel cap into the palm of his right hand and sliding the fingers of his left between the furred edge and the silk of her hose. The boot slipped into his hand, dripping melting snow between his fingers, and he turned her leg to kiss above the ankle bone, nubs of knit silk catching softly on dry lips. She cleared her throat, and he smiled and removed her other boot. There was a practiced trick to standing with a sword at one’s belt; he managed it neatly enough. She drew a fistful of skirt into the light to examine the water stains along the hem. She showed him a little more leg than she had to when she swung the skirts into place and stood.
“You summoned me,” he said, following her to the window. The vista was not so different from his, although overlooking the lawn and not the beech wood, and from a higher vantage. But the breeze that flowed through the open panes was a spring breeze, not a winter one, and her window box riotous in bloom.
“I’ve a letter for you,” she said, stroking a pansy with one fingertip as if oblivious to his consternation. “I intercepted it before your friend the Puck could get his hands on it. You and your friend have things yet to learn about keeping your confidences from the notice of the Queen.”
She wouldn’t look up. He caught the damp wool of her sleeve and turned her toward him. “My lady. A letter? Have you read it?” It was more emotion than he’d managed in months.
“Don’t flutter so.” She lifted her fingers to the collar of his shirt and let them trail up his cheek. Her eyes shifted again gray to green, this time, and drifting into hazel as she closed his left eye with a touch of her fingertip sand kissed him softly. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
Despite his effort to stay stern, a smile moved under her kiss. She drew her fingers down his face, and when he opened his eye his breath knotted in his chest, a ragged silken scarf. He let his hand slide down her sleeve, grasped her wrist, raised her fingers to his mouth, lowered them quickly when the gesture brought a memory of tearing cloth. “Don’t tease me.”
“No,” she said, studying his expression as she stepped away, their hands for a moment making a falling bridge between them. “It would be unkind to tease, would it not? Like taunting a tame falcon in a mews.” A little prick with the dagger of her tongue, and a twist to make the blood flow. It stopped him, when he might have heeled her across the room again. He’d had a sharp tongue of his own once, he recalled, but he couldn’t seem to find it after her kisses. “Lady, but give me a purpose, and I will be a falcon on the wing, answering only to your glove. A man is not a toy.”
“No?” But she smiled, and came back with a folded letter in her hand. The seal looked untouched, but he knew well the ways around that. It told him more that the creases were crisp and sharp, a splintered edge still showing where the sheet had cracked. The hand was Will’s untidy abomination, the scrawl of a man who wrote frequently, and hastily and it bore no name or address beyond C. M.
“Thank you,” he said, and tucked it into the pocket in his sleeve, ignoring Morgan’s arch expression. She tapped a knuckle against her lips and turned back to her window garden, pinching dead pansies away. Mint and melissa grew between the blossoms; her fingernails met like snips, filling the room with lemony aromas.
“You wish a purpose, Sir Kit? Poetry and pleasing your lady suffice not?”
“A man gets used to living by his wits. I was never merely a poet, madam.” She pinched another pansy a just-opening bud, this time and brushed it against his cheek. “There are roles for you to play,” she said, tucking the stem into a pink on the breast of the doublet. “But best perhaps if you play them innocent, Queen’s Man. I have your love?”
“Oh, a little,” he lied. “Love is ever increasing or ever decreasing, they say. So better a little love grow great than a great love grow little.”
“Or be lost.” He startled at the softness in her voice as she knotted her hands in her skirts and lifted them to step back. “For what mortal flesh can bear the true heat of an immortal love?”
There’s pain there.With the thought came the urge to go to her. He pressed his palms against his thighs instead. “You expect me to be courted by your enemies.”
“Ah,” she said. “The boy is clever. And that green looks well on thee: we’ll make an Elf-knight of thee yet.”
“When mine ears come to a point, or horns sprout on my forehead. Then, perhaps.”
“Horns, sweet Kit? Or antlers?” But she smiled and blew a kiss. “A task. Very well. When thou dost write thy William in return, see thou if canst encourage him to weave a few tales of his country youth into his plays.”
“Arthur and Guenevere?” Kit asked, letting a little of the irony filling his mouth soak the words.
“By the white hart, never!” Morgan laughed and shook her hair over her shoulder. “We’ll have enough of that from Spenser, I warrant. Although chance and legend alter us: I was as fair as Anne and Arthur, once upon a time.” She raised a fistful of hair black as sorcery and shook it in the light.
“Gloriana does like to play on the Faeries, and it strengthens us to be spoken of so I think it should please Master Shakespeare’s Queen and thine as well.”
“Madam. A little task. But something. Your wish is …”
“Oh,” she interrupted, giving him an airy wav
e at odds with her earthy grin. “And a play for Beltane, I think. Something we can see performed for Her Majesty the Mebd.”
Beltane. He tasted it. Short notice, but he’d had shorter. Ten weeks.“Have you a subject?”
“Intrigue.” She straightened the blossom on his breast. “And passion. Mayhap one of those great lost loves of which we spoke. Drystan and Yseult. Something ill-starred would suit us both, and Her Majesty. But mind that thou lookst wistful and sigh and fret while thou’rt composing, and see who chooses to speak with thee. And on what matters.”
“My lady. Drystan and Yseult. No, Orpheus, I think.” But he was smiling as she took his elbow and led him to her door, her stockinged feet whisking against the flagstones like a cat’s white paws. A stalking horse. I’ve played that role before.
‘Dearest & most-esteemed leander:
Your letter does indeed find me very well, if exceeding busy. I fear I have not had occasion to converse with my wife since our last encounter but I shall pass your felicitations when I may. The subject is complex, but suffice to say I have hopes for rapprochement. I am attending your request for books & broadsides: they will follow under separate cover. You will be amused to read that, following hard on the discovery of a poisoning plot against the Queen of which you will no doubt have heard, plays about Jews are once again popular in London, & we are becoming reacquainted with some names that languished in danger of loss. I hope these humble words find you well. In any case, thinking of you I am moved to remember Sir Francis & a certain incident with a lemon bush. I wonder if my predecessor had such a sour experience of his own.
April 29th, year of our lord 1594.
Your true and honest friend Wm… .’
Incident with a lemon bush. Kit set the letter down on a marble-topped table below the window, and smiled. Clever William. How I miss thee, and wrangling late into the night on scansion and wordplay and line. Lighting a taper at the hearth, Kit remembered Cairbre’s invitation. Poets are so often thought solitary. But we need the society of our fellows as much as any tradesman.
The taper lit a clever lamp, which burned a blue spirit flame, and this Kit bore to the table beside Will’s letter. It would cost him the seal, but that little mattered. What mattered were the pale words, written painstakingly in invisible lemon juice, that slowly caramelized into visibility as he toasted the letter a few inches above the flame, holding his breath lest it flicker and the edge of the paper catch light. When the words burned dark enough to read, Kit laid the letter in the light from the window and leaned forward to blow out the flame. He tucked a few strands of hair behind his ear and closed his eye for a moment, then reluctant, frowning bent forward. And read. And blasphemed. And read it once again.
Act II, scene iv
Beatrice:
Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth
with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado About Nothing
‘My beloved Adonis I read with disquiet your words & the implication that unsavory individuals have taken an interest in your activities. In pursuance, I would consider it a great kindness if you should contact Mary Poley in Winding lane. She is the abandoned wife of one Robert Poley, with whom you are acquainted, but more to the point she was the sister of the late Dr. Thomas Watson, the poet, who was long a friend to me & her husband is greatly unfelicitous to her, & to her son. You need have no fear that she will expose you to him, and she may be a great source of intelligence as to his actions.’
Will tilted the letter into the light of the candle which he had used to scorch the concealed words from between lines more innocuous and manifest. The heated lemon juice was only pale brown against the cream-colored paper, but Kit’s precise hand was easy to discern.
‘Poley will not see to their maintenance & so, in Tricky Tom’s memory & out of mine own friendship with the lady, I have been of what assistance I could to her in the past, & so I believe she should be grateful for a kind word or two, even from a stranger who mentioned my name as the name of a friend. She may be of assistance in warding yourself from that same Robert, her husband; Mistress Poley is a good woman, & much concerned with the future prospects of her son, a likely lad.
Will’s nose wrinkled in amusement. Her son. Kit. Are you insinuating the lad is your bastard? And then he frowned, and nibbled the edge of an ink-stained thumbnail, uncertain why the thought made him so uneasy.
My mistress has asked that I bid thee, my beloved friend & only begetter of whatever joy is afforded me, remember the pastoral fancies of thy callow years & find ways to set them into verse. I am minded of county ballads & old tales, I imagine you too are conversant with, of Nimue, & the Irish & Welsh stories & those of Yorkshire & Scotland: Finvarra & Oonagh & their kin.’
You want me to tell fairy tales to the Queen, sweet Kit? He sounds lonely. You should sound lonely, exiled from home and friendships, and worried about the ones you’ve left behind.
Will closed his eyes. When he opened them, he read more quickly, and without pause.
‘Have a care for Poley, Will. If he & his have realized that you are my replacement, you may find yourself with dangerous enemies: have a care not to be associated too plainly with Hunsdon, Burghley, Oxford & their friends. I will dare declare Robert Poley & Thomas Walsingham scions of the enemy, & ask you be wary of them. It is of import that you acquaint yourself with the politics, if you have not already done so: Essex’s group do support the Queen, although they are more interested in their own advancement than the stability of the crown. Raleigh is a little better: I can like the man for his ideals, at least, which are intellectual & inquisitive, but he is a popinjay. (Those are not sentiments to be repeated, sweet Will, lest you withal blacken my name further than mine enemies have already.) More dangerous are Poley & Baines (& I now think Thomas Walsingham), who have made themselves so seeming indispensable that their word be taken even over mine, & I have proven my worth to Gloriana in great extremis. I read with great delight the pages of yr. Merchant you included with the books, & have returned some suggestions along with mine own current project. Also, I am quite engaged with your character of Beatrice; she reflects your Annie, does she not? but feel Hero could be stronger or mayhap more delicate of constitution; her speeches now show nowt but woman scorned, & women (even scorned) are no force to be trifled with. You may wish if you can so contrive to seek Her Majesty’s approval. Gloriana fancies herself something of a poet, & was of infinite service making that infamous she-wolf Isabella more a breathing woman than the Dragon of legendry. Further…’
It went on for a page and a half, line-by-line comments on the play, ending wryly,
‘have enclosed some notes for the play or more like masque my mistress has commissioned of me, something of an orgy & something of a revel, & I am feared only half-suited to my poor talents. I wish you would examine them with some haste, & return post to me through the usual channels. I think on thee & London daily. With all love & affection, your dear friend leander.’
Will read the letter over again, permitting himself a few more smiles. Very well then, if Her Majesty will sully her hand with playmaking, I will offer her mine own poor words to dirty herself on. He stopped, and frowned, and looked up at the darkened window. And then he fetched quills the stained one for the iron gall, and the white one for the invisible ink and sat down at the table and composed himself to write.
Beloved companion of mine art
Will stopped, brushing the nub of vane that lingered on his quill against his upper lip. He glanced at the stack of pages beside his elbow, the ink on Kit’s manuscript so black it gleamed, and frowned.
‘ Have a care not to be associated too plainly with Hunsdon, Burghley, Oxford &’ Kit, how do I write to tell thee that lord Hunsdon has claimed Burbage, Kemp and I withal into a playing company, now that Strange is dead? That we are become the lord Chamberlain’s Men?
He ran a hand through his hair, streaking it for once with lemon juice instead o
f ink. And then he pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward himself, and wrote ‘Dearest Annie’ instead.
Three days later, Will and Burbage trudged through a cloying summer rain to the Spread Eagle, a tavern near the bear baiting pits that could be forgiven a certain lack of charm for the virtue of its pies, although for safety’s sake Will wouldn’t drink anything weaker than ale. A filthy floor and walls dark with smoke and grease did nothing to brighten its face, but Will had forgotten to eat through the afternoon, and his stomach grumbled painfully when the wench—another attraction of the Eagle—slid his supper under his nose. Burbage looked up at the sound and laughed, pushing bread through bloody juices, then stuffing the soaked sops into his mouth.
“You’ll waste away to a ghost,” he said. Will broke the pie open and scooped aromatic meat and onions to his mouth. Gravy trickled into his beard; he wiped it on the back of his hand.
“Oxford’s help isn’t help,” he said in a low voice. “If I suspected he were competent, I’d believe he meant to impede rather than assist. At least Jew and Merchant are showing a success, for all I’m hard-put to believe we staged them so swiftly as we did.”
“Has there been word of Lopez?”
Burbage, chewing thoughtfully, only turned his head from side to side. “He’ll hang, for all Burghley can do. We may be lucky enough that our work will fend off riots and worse, however. And the hunt is on for Papists. I marked adozen recusants in stocks today. Tis a time to keep your hand in your sleeve, methinks.”
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