As predicted, the room was deserted, dark, and close. A banked fire glowed on the hearth; the yeasty thickness of rising bread spread under oiled cloths made him sneeze. “A homely place. For now.”
He retrieved his glass and noticed that the level had dropped. “Ah, Will.”
“What?”
“It’s like Faustus, isn’t it? The scent of charred flesh. The heat of the ovens of Hell.”
A table along one wall held heavy knives and kitchen axes, a chopping block and hooks for fowl and roasts. An unfortunate hen graced the center peg. Destined for soup: Walsingham could manage little else.
“Kit, what are you about?”
But he didn’t answer. The taste of the liquor nauseated him, but he swallowed anyway. A fat hen on a hook. Not Will.
Will cleared his throat. “I need to know how to do what you did. How to write plays that Change things?”
“Aye.”
“I do not think my teacher understands what he says he understands.”
“Know you the Earl of Oxford? Edward,” Kit said. The firelight made the room dim, but he could see the ripples shaking through his glass.
“Aye, we are acquainted. That is to say, he is beknownst to me, and I to him.”
He glanced over his shoulder the long turn for his missing eye to make sure Will took his meaning.
“Have you noticed how he treats his wife?”
“I have not had occasion.”
“Ah.”
Kit turned and leaned against the table beside the chopping block, the hard edge pressing his back. The sensation quickened his breath in memory.
“Her name is also Annie. She’s Burghley’s daughter: Oxford was raised Burghley’s ward, as was Essex. Essex, who is not fond of Sir Walter.”
Kit brushed the black silk of his breeches, knowing Will would take his meaning: the habitual black of Raleigh’s disciples, matching the doublet Walsingham loaned him, which Kit had left in his room. The School of Night. Sir Walter Raleigh’s group of freethinkers and tobacco-smokers, opposed to Essex’s group as the men each sought favor with the Queen. To which Kit had been associated. The alliances are complex.
“Oxford wishes his daughter married to Southampton, Essex’s friend,” Will said quietly.
“Your little conspiracy has members on both sides of the game, then.”
“The Prometheus Club, I gather, is us.”
“The Prometheus Club is both factions,” Kit said. “It was one conspiracy, now sundered at the root.”
“One conspiracy of the Queen’s favorites? Sir Walter and Essex?”
“Oh, older than that. From the earliest days of her reign, before you or I were even conceived of, sweet William. The schism came later, and there are those in the other faction who place their own advancement above the Queen’s or England’s well-being. I believe myself that Good Queen Bess takes some pleasure in playing Essex and Raleigh for rivals and I wonder a bit if it was Essex who saw fit to have me removed, as I was Sir Walter’s friend.”
“I faith, Kit, is there any man in Elizabeth’s court you haven’t let buggeryou?”
“There’s a few I’ve buggered instead.” Kit waited for the chuckle. Will did not fail him. “Will. I said, friend. In any case, Oxford and Burghley have not been on good terms since Oxford decided that Anne was not to his liking.”
“Your doing.”
“Edward’s doing. Anne was blameless as poor Isabella, and kept her blamelessness better. And I’m not Gaveston. Tis not meet a good woman should suffer for no greater crime than a bad marriage.” He felt Will’s eyes on his face, and forced himself to match the gaze. “Tis true.”
“I believe you,” Will answered. Tremendous tension came out of Kit with the breath he had been painfully holding.
“Thank you.”
“But then why art thou dead, or playing at it? And why have you concealed yourself these months?” Will was angry, and the thought warmed Kit. How few true friends have you had since you entered this life? Only Walsingham.
“Tis a complicated story, but it suffices that all thought me dead, except perhaps Her Majesty, and I might have been dead indeed. All but Sir Francis still believe it.” He put a hand out, pleased with its steadiness, and clapped Will on the shoulder. “Art a true friend to me, Will. How it pleases my heart, I hope you know.”
Will’s lips thinned around a smile. “Is there some message I could pass your parents in Canterbury?”
“My … No. Since I left Cambridge to become a vile playmaker, they’ve regarded me as a cuckoo’s egg. Better leave me dead.”
“I must tell you …”
“That is?”
“I ran afoul of Poley and Baines at the Sergeant.”
Despite the warmth in his belly, Kit’s mouth ached around the words he couldn’t quite say. Oh, not Will. Not Will. Poley. And Baines together.
“Did they see you?”
“They threatened me.”
“Ah, no. Will, you have to break with Oxford and Walsingham now. Burbage too.”
“Now that you re returned, they can do without me. But I am pleased to defend my Queen, and if you teach me what you know, the art of your plays …”
“Don’t choose sides in this.” Kit wanted to take the other man by the shoulders and shake him, but he gave him pleading instead. “Flee. Take your Annie and get away. I’m not returned, man. I’m dead, and you’ll be dead with me if you stay.” He caught himself worrying his eyepatch, and forced his hand down. Put it on Will’s arm, instead, and clutched the broadcloth of his sleeve. “Some one of us is a traitor. Some one of us betrayed me, and will betray you. I trust only Walsingham. You cannot choose sides, Wilclass="underline" they’ll eat you.”
Will looked at him for a long moment, and then shook his hand off and moved away, close to a broken-backed chair pushed up beside the hearthstone.
“Run if they’ve broken you”
“Broken me! I’ll not be called a coward.” It stung as much as if Will had spoken the accusation plain, and Kit flinched and looked down.
In the dark kitchen that was very like the dungeon that Kit had come here to remember, William Shakespeare shook his head. “I mean to choose the side that’s right.”
Tamora: So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee;
No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Titus Andronicus
Langley’s kitchen grew hot and close while Will leaned against the arm of a broken chair and listened to embers crack on the grate. It was a long time before Kit answered.
“Tis not what side is right. Tis what side you’re on. Elizabeth and the Protestant Church. The third or fourth time you’re raped by a priest, you may start to regard the Church’s moral pronouncements with a jaundiced eye.”
Kit turned away, still cupping that glass, and ran the other fingers over the scarred wood of the block.
“Kit, from you of all people?” Will left the chair, came close enough to lower his voice and murmur through tightness. “Sodomy’s accounted a sin worse than any.”
“What? What two men do willing is a sin worse than rape or usury? Than murder? Than denying God? I know Church doctrine.” A deprecating tilt of his head to show how well he knew it.
Uncomfortable words through a stiff throat.
“Equal to witchcraft, they say. Then burn me for a witch and a playmaker. I thought better of you. ‘The unspeakable Christofer Marley, may he rot in Hell, and he got less worse than he deserved.’ Say it if you think it! It’s what the Puritans will write. Although by their own doctrine, and I understand it aright, I’ve as good achance of election to Heaven as any of them, for if all our acts and our salvation are predetermined, how can you condemn any man?”