Will coughed again, too weak to raise a rag to his lips. Annie did it, and when she lowered the cloth it was spotted red. Will did not miss the look she traded with Kit, or the way Kit looked down and to the left. “Do you suppose I’ll be damned for sorcery, like poor Sir Francis?” Which wasn’t quite what Will had planned to say, but talking weakened him too much to retract the question and start over.
“You must not think such things,” Annie said. “Tomorrow’s thy birthday, husband. Surely thou’lt heal?”
Kit met her eyes again when Will did not manage an answer, and set the basin aside. Annie cleared her throat and turned hastily away. “Sorcery was the least of Sir Francis’ sins, ” Kit said, stroking Will’s hair back from his brow.
“I’ve lost my ring, Kit,” Will said. “At Judith’s wedding–” His trembling fingers tried to tighten, and Kit took them in a savage grasp.
“You won’t need a ring with Annie and I to hold your hand.”
Will turned his head to regard the smooth line of Kit’s jaw behind the beard. “Thou didst age nary a day, my love.”
“The price for dying young.” Kit stepped away to make room for Annie as she came back with a cleaner rag.
“Love,” she said. “Thou shouldst rest. Thou shouldst sleep, and thou wilt heal–”
Will closed his eyes. The cold water did help, but his thoughts were startlingly clear for a fevered man, and from what he knew of deathbeds, that was no hopeful sign. “I don’t want to go to Hell, as Sir Francis did.”
“Thou dost wish not the Promethean Heaven, either. You’d know not a soul.” Kit, still joking, but his fine‑fingered hands were knotted in the sleeves he had folded them over.
Will forced a wavering chuckle. “Nay… . Oh, there’s going to be such poetry, Kit. I am sorry that I will miss it.”
Annie cleared her throat. “You’re not going to Hell, gentle William,” she said, and wet her cloth again. Kit rose when she gestured him away and left the fireside to lean against the wall. Will saw his face, and turned his face away. Oh, Kit. Were you ever privileged to love where love was not given first elsewhere? Even once?
“Annie. Kit will tell you–”
“Kit told me,” she said, and Kit cleared his throat and looked down at the floor. “Will, the priest is here.”
“Priest?”
“A Romish priest,” she said firmly. “If after thirty‑four years of marriage, you think I’m going to Glory without you, you’re a bigger fool than I imagined, Will Shakespeare!”
Kit, leaning against the wall, stood suddenly upright, turned his head, and laughed. “Annie, you’re brilliant.”
“Hardly,” she said, taken aback. She twitched her hair over her shoulder and turned.
Kit’s expression practically shone with excitement. “A Romish priest. Whose doctrine is that bodies must be buried in hallowed ground, and that the soul remains with the flesh until the End of Days.” He paused, and looked down at the rushed floor, laughing harshly. “Apparently, God can’t be arsed to check under the cushions for the souls that slip out his purse.”
“Aye,” she said. “It’ll give you a chance to get what you owe Will sorted out before Judgement Day, and find this kinder God you’ve been pratting about for the last three days. Lord knows, Kit Marlin, it’s likely to take so long, for thee.”
Will huddled under his muffling blankets, sick with stubbornness. Repent of your sins and be forgiven.No. He would not. He would not repudiate Kit, on his deathbed or for any reason. “Nay. I shall not repent of thee.”
“Will‑“
“Wife,” he said. “Do not ask it.” He looked to Kit for support, but Kit, looking as if his heart were squeezed in a bridle, shook his head.
“Do you,” Kit commanded, and Will flinched–not at the command, but at the distancing–and saw Annie look away. “Do you repent of me, and you are Heaven bound. Thou didst brave Hell for me one time. ‘Twill serve.”
Will glared. “And wilt thourepent, Kit?”
“I will not.”
“I will not leave thee alone in Hell.”
“You will. Imprimus, I have no plans to die. Secundus, you married Annie. You willhonor your loyalty to her.”
“The world…” Will said, frustrated. And turned his face aside. He would not see Kit weep. Kit would not care to have him do so. The list of what the world would not allow was long for mourning over.
Kit, his face strangely taut, turned to Annie and clapped her on the arm. “Only a woman would think to stall God to her convenience. Well‑reasoned, chop logic.”
She nearly smiled, and touched Kit on the shoulder lightly. And Will almost imagined he heard, nearby, the flicker and settle of massive wings.
Author’s Note
First and foremost, I would like to thank Mr. Tony Toller, trustee of the Rose Theatre Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the remains of Bankside’s first theatre, the Rose. It was through the kindness of Mr. Toller that I was able to visit the site of that theatre, and stand – quite literally– where Ned Alleyn, Philip Henslow, and Christopher Marlowe stood, although the Rose was not then an archaeological site housed in the damp, breathing darkness under a modern skyscraper.
Plans are afoot to preserve the site and continue excavations and research, and as of this writing, fundraising for these projects is under way. If you are interested in learning more about this important historical and archaeological work – or in supporting it –details may be found at www.rosetheatre. org.uk.
This pair of novels has been a labor of years, and over the course of that time a lot of people have offered comment or listened to me whine. I also wish to thank first readers, bent ears, inspirational forces, and others both on and off the Online Writing Workshop (and the denizens of its invaluable writers’ chat) and various other online communities: Kit Kindred, Matt Bowes, Lis Riba, Sarah Monette, Kat Allen, Stella Evans, Chelsea Polk, Dena Landon, Brian and Wendy Froud, Liz Williams, Treize Armistedian, Rhonda Garcia, Leah Bobet, Chris Coen, Ruth Nestvold, Marna Nightingale, Hannah Wolf Bowen, Amanda Downum, Rachele Colantuono, John Tremlett, Gene Spears, Mel Melcer, Larry West, Jaime Voss, Walter Williams, Kelly Morisseau, Andrew Ahn, and Eric Bresin. I would also like to thank Ellen Rawson and Ian Walden, who graciously opened their home in England to me when I visited on a research trip in 2006. I’d also like to thank my editor, Jessica Wade, and my agent, Jennifer Jackson. Most sincere gratitude to my copy editor, Andrew Phillips, who is not only something of an Elizabethan historian in his own right, but also meticulous and intelligent. And I’m sure I’ve forgotten several people who deserve to be here, but as I’ve been writing this book since Christmas of 2002, I hope they will forgive me.
The present work would have been impossible to complete without the recent outpouring of popular scholarship concerning the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and in particular Mssrs. Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe. In addition, I consulted the work of multifarious authors, dabblers, artists, and historians. I have never met Park Honan, Anthony Burgess, Stephen Booth, Peter Ackroyd, Charles Nicholl, Michael Wood, Liza Picard, Stephen Greenblatt, David Riggs, David Crystal, Constance Brown Kuriyama, Peter Farey, Jennifer Westwood, Antonia Frazier, Alan H. Nelson, C. Northcote Parkinson, Elaine Pagels, Jaroslav Pelikan, Lawrence Stone, Gustav Davidson, Richard Hosley, Alan Bray, Michael B. Young, Peter W. M.. Blayney, Katharine M. Briggs, or any of the other wonderfully obsessed individuals whose work I consulted in preparing this glorious disservice to history. However, I owe them all an enormous debt of gratitude, and I spent immeasurable pleasant hours in their company while in the process of writing this book.
A couple of historical and linguistic quirks for the reader’s interest: the Elizabethan year began on Lady Day, in late March, rather than January 1. In result, Christofer Marley was, to his contemporaries, born at the end of 1563 and William Shakespeare at the beginning of 1564. To a modern eye, their birth‑dates would be in February and April, both of 1564.
I have chosen to preserve this quirk of the times, along with a characteristic bit of English in transition: at the time to which the writing refers, the familiar form of the English second‑person pronoun (thee) was beginning to drift out of use, but had not yet lost the war, and the plural pronoun (you) had–under French influence–come to be used as a singular pronoun in more formal relationships, but was not exclusive. As a result, conversation between familiar friends showed a good deal of fluidity, even switching forms within a single sentence, depending on the emotion and affection of the moment.