Mary gulped breath; he felt it swell her slight body where she curled under his arm. “Robert’s about something.”
“Not Robin your lad?”
“No, Robert my husband – ”
“‘–damn him to Hell.’ ”
“Precisely.”
“What is he about, Mary?” She had Kit’s complete attention now but he maintained the casual pose, a man in flirtation with a likely woman, both of them watching the flow and ebb of the gathering below.
A grunt, her little noise of frustration. “I know not. Mistress Mathews at the Groaning Sergeant is a friend of mine, and she says Robert and Richard Baines were in there of a morning, well pleased and talking of duping some Earl.”
“That could be important. What Earl, and how duped? Dost know more?”
“The Queen’s old favorite, I think, from what Mistress Mathews overheard. Essex, I mean. Robert Devereaux. I do not know what it is they mean to have him do, but she said that Baines was positively gloating about compelling such a man to do his bidding.”
Kit shuddered, having some experience with Baines’ compulsions. Even the quiet ones. “What else did she say?”
“Only that men and prentices came and went and met with the two of them all the morning, and a good deal of silver seemed to change hands – ”
She stopped speaking suddenly. Kit knew from the way her breath halted that his own body had gone entirely rigid in her offhand grasp. It could be but a resemblance,he cautioned himself. Especially from this angle.“Mary,” he said carefully. “What is the name of that man, the blond one coming out of the back room beside Will and Dick?”
“Why, Robert Catesby,” she answered, all innocence.
His left hand tightened on the railing. His right pulled her close. “Oh, holy Hell,” he blasphemed. “Mary, thou’rt a princess among women, and a canny one at that. I’ll carry my affection for thee to a second grave, if I get one. So please, please, do not take it amiss that I needs must talk to Will on this instant, my dear, and that I may not have the chance to bid thee farewell again.”
He stepped back. She caught his coarse linen shirt collar in her reed‑fine hand and tugged him down to lightly kiss his mouth. “Go with God.”
He laughed as he turned away. “Oh,” he said. “If only.”
Act IV, scene xix
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 86
This can only end ill,” Kit said. Will, hurrying fresh‑barbered and clean‑scrubbed through the streets to the bank where he meant to hire a wherry to Southwark and the Globe, glanced over at his friend and nodded. “Aye, there’s no clean way clear of this mess, love. But then, we knew the truth of that when we stepped into it.” Sudden worry diverted his conversation. “Kit, this is thy second day out of Faerie–”
Kit smiled, a steadying hand on Will’s elbow as they clambered down the steps to the bank. The Thames had never frozen over, this winter, and the banks were clear of ice by now. A sign, perhaps, that Baines’ Prometheans were losing ground at last.
“I’ve one more at least before it troubles me. What concerns me more is that I’ve dreamed of Catesby–my ill dreams–and I’ve verily seen him in a room, talking privily with Baines. I can’t think but that his presence on this errand with Lord Monteagle means that there will be trouble over this play.”
“Trouble for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men–” Kit handed Will into the boat as if Will were a lady in a farthingale, and Will glowered at him but didn’t resist. Mind thy Limitations, Master Shakespeare. Or like as not thou’lt tumble into the muddy brown Thames and drown.
“Aye,” Kit continued once they were seated, leaning close that the boatman wouldn’t overhear. “And intentionally so. They know your strength now.”
They were silent then, as the river flowed under them.
“Kit,” Will murmured, and coughed to ease the scratch in his throat. “I cannot think but there’s more to it than that. If Baines is gloating that Essex has done something foolish–”
“Something foolish that Baines has directed him to do,” Kit amended, paying the boatman as they reached the opposite bank. “It must be more than a play.”
“Aye. It must. And we must find out an answer quickly. Before it finds us out.The earth was thawed beneath a layer of frost, crunchy‑sticky underfoot. Kit helped Will up the bank and made no comment when Will struggled.
Kit had not seen the Globe before, and Will paused to let him tilt his head back and take in the scope of the massive whitewashed polygon. “It’s built on timbers over a ditch to keep the footings dry,” Will explained. “I stayed in that little house beside it a while last year. ‘Tis very snug.”
“Clever,” Kit said. “There were times I swear the groundlings at the Rose were to their knees in mud and worse things. The south bank’s very wet – ” He paused and lifted his chin in the direction of a tall woman swollen with her babe, her hair modestly covered and her skirts kilted to the ankle to keep them out of the mud. She was making for Will and Kit with grave determination, and her stride was not that of a workworn good‑wife. “Marry, Will. That woman hurrying to meet us–”
“Aye?”
“I know her.”
And a moment later, Will did too, for all he had met her only once before, in a little room where her father lay rotting alive. “Frances Walsingham Sidney Devereaux,” he said under his breath. “I never did understand what Walsingham’s daughter and Sir Philip Sidney’s widow could see in that strutting popinjay Essex.”
Kit gave him a sidelong look. “She married him to inform on him to her father, Will. Shortly after Sir Francis faked his death. There was rather a lot of suspicion in our group that it was Essex behind the … ‘poisoning’ attempt. Much as he was behind the hideous death of the Oueen’s physician, poor Doctor Lopez.”
“She married the man she thought tried to kill her father?” Will felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind or the half‑frozen earth underfoot settle into his belly.
Kit shrugged. “She’s a Walsingham, Will.” Will stared at him, and Kit folded his arms and continued, “Tom’s no different when you scratch him deep enough. All for Queen and country, and not even honor for themselves. Perhaps thou shouldst see what she wants, thinkst thou not?” And Kit clapped him on the arm and moved away, leaving Will leaning on his cane and awaiting the attentions of the Countess of Essex.
She came before him bare of face and with her luxuriant dark brown hair coiled in demure spirals below a stolidly middle‑class headdress. The style reinforced the prominence of the Walsingham nose: a convincing portrait of a housewife, but she didn’t remember to curtsey. “Master Shakespeare.”
“Mistress Sidney,” he answered, and was rewarded by a sparkle of a smile. He stepped closer and bent his head down beside her bonnet, leaning propped on his cane. “If your purpose is to warn me off the misguided performance upon which I am about to embark, by all means, Madam, consider that I am as forewarned as a man might be. And as entrapped–”