“They are.” Will edged one sheet a little farther from the lamp with a forefinger. Oil from his fingertip glistened on the paper. “Take them from my sight.”
“Will.”
“What?”
“I had supper with Ned Alleyn at the Mermaid last night. Most of the players, lord Strange’s Men and the Admiral’s Men have been whiling away an idle hour there now and again while the playhouses are shuttered. It wouldn’t do you any harm to be seen more often: you re missed, and some wonder if you’re well. But aside from that,” Burbage raised a hand to forestall Will’s interruption, “Ned said if I saw you, to tell you this: Robert Poley’s been looking for our Will, and in the company of a great oaf of a tradesman, blond as a Dane.”
Burbage mimicked Alleyn’s sonorous tones perfectly. Will would have laughed if he hadn’t recognized the description.
“Baines. Looking for me? Did Poley say why?”
“As it was Poley, I assumed you owed him money and he’d come to take it out of your back in one-inch strips. Chapman’s still in debt to the usurious bastard.”
“No. It’s not money. Thank you, Richard, and I’ll come by the Mermaid tonight and thank Ned myself.”
“Ned said the second man was near as big as Ned himself.” Burbage’s voice fell. There’s more on Strange, as well. Burghley as it happens, lord Strange was contacted by a Catholic conspiracy. They wished to see him as pretender to the Throne, and Elizabeth … done with.”
“Strange? Accused of treason?” Will’s voice too dropped to a murmur, as he thought of skulls painted red by the afternoon sun. “Surely not.”
“No, he reported the conspiracy to Burghley, and Burghley who has no fondness for Catholics of any stripe will use the information as best befits the Queen. All is well.”
What of the loyal Catholics who will be punished as well as the guilty?But Will didn’t say it, although he counted the silence more of a betrayal than failing to defend Kit. There was no way to raise Kit’s supposition that the Catholic enemy were not Catholic at all, not at their deepest roots. Because the man was, as far as Burbage knew, six months dead. Will comforted himself that Walsingham should know it, if Burbage didn’t.
“But by that action,” Burbage continued, “Strange has made of himself an obstacle to the plotters. Have a care, Will, and keep an ear to the wall.” He tapped the boards.
“Oh.” Will ordered the pages before he handed them to Burbage. “I will.”
Flakes of paint came away on Will’s fingertips as he pushed the Mermaid’s peeling plank door open. Edmund Spenser’s pointed visage and dull brown beard greeted Will’s eye, framed in a lace-tipped falling collar. And what does Spenser in London? Will had heard he was in Ireland, avoiding lord Burghley’s wrath. But no one man in London could keep track of the politics that attended his own name unless that name were Walsingham, never mind the ones that trailed like cloaks and hat-plumes about the shoulders of every man who was any man at all.
A coterie had gathered around England’s greatest poet. Spenser held forth, one hand curled around the base of his wine cup and the other moving through the air as if he drew strands of wool for spinning. Will paused, not to interrupt the tale, but he did not miss the broad-shouldered gentleman beside Spenser, greased black hair hanging over his untied ruff, slumming it amidst base players and poets and pamphleteers. It was not a usual thing for a patron to move among his servants in the theatre. The customary arrangement was for him to loan out his livery for whatever status or notoriety the players could provide; in exchange, the players were not classed masterless men, criminals, but servants to a lord.
Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange, turned only slightly as Will entered, offering the playmaker bare acknowledgement. But his dark eyes drifted past Ned Alleyn, big as a chalk giant, who had taken up the thread of conversation now, bony hands moving like angel’s wings. Will followed Strange’s glance and nodded, skirting the crowd wooly-faced. Chapman jostled his elbow in silent greeting and went to fetch a bench. Will kicked rushes aside so they wouldn’t snag under the wooden legs when he dragged his prize back. The other men gave him room to sit beside his patron. Strange himself waved for the wine, never disrupting the flow of Ned’s monologue.
“My lord.” Will poured two cups as the door swung open on a frigid blast. The breeze blew Kemp and two Burbages, Richard and his brother Cuthbert, into the room; Cuthbert shut the door firmly.
“Tis an unusual pleasure to see you here.”
“You are to perform for the Queen.” Strange leaned so close Will could smell his hair pomade. A stout man, Strange, and soft around the middle despite bad teeth but his hands showed tendon. The right one moved in a manner Will memorized as a character detail, turning like a leaf moored to the stem.
“We are.” Strange hid his mouth behind the rim of his cup, the interior belling back his voice. “Thou knowest Southampton is the enemy’s dupe.”
It was only a player’s presence of mind that kept Will’s startlement from his face. He was glad attention was focused on Richard Burbage and Ned Alleyn, circling one another like a terrier and a mastiff who might decide to be friends and who also might not.
“The enemy, my lord?” Will sipped his wine.
“Don’t blanch so. I would not be Burbage’s and thy master if I did not know some things.” Strange’s slick hair broke in locks as he turned a lopsided smile on Will. “Have a care. I may not be able to protect thee, but Burghley will. As long as thou dost remain useful to him.”
“Burghley? Not Oxford?”
Strange lifted one shoulder eloquently, appearing to watch the verbal sparring between rival players ride the edge between wit and acrimony.
“Oxford was a mistake. Oxford thinks Southampton can be convinced. Thou wouldst get better odds on Raleigh.”
“Noble rivalries, my lord?”
Burbage had caught Alleyn’s elbow and drew him away from the fire. The taller man bent his head to hear the smaller’s arguments. The cross Alleyn had worn ever since a particularly disastrous performance of Faustus dangled from its cord as he leaned down.
“If you like.” Fingers against the table, a nervous, rilling tap. “Don’t trust Edward de Vere, Master Shakespeare. And don’t trust too much in the patronage of Southampton, for all thou dost flatter him with thy poetry. He’s a boughten man.
“You know this, my lord?” Will noticed the dark line furrowed between Strange’s dark eyes. “Aye. You know it.”
“I know too much.” Strange finished his wine. He inverted his cup and pushed himself to his feet; the other men at the table jumped up as a lord stood. “I am expected home to sup. Finish the bottle, Master Shakespeare.” Strange threw coins on the table.
His tired smile struck Will hard. There was too much resignation in it. “Don’t give up hope on your poor players, my lord,” Will said, hoping that Strange would hear both his words and the meaning under them. “The playhouses will be open soon.”
Lord Strange turned back from the door and smiled. “See that you make me proud, Master Shakespeare. Masters Burbage, Master Kemp.” And with that, Ferdinando Stanley collected his hat from the peg by the door, and went.
Will’s letter to Annie dispatched the following morning netted only a stony silence in reply. He meant to send a second one a week after the first, but good intentions were lost in the whirl of rehearsal and rewrite and frenzied preparation of two plays at once: the tragedy Titus Andronicus, for which Will need not only learn his roles but also face down Oxford in a series of hour-murdering meetings; and a light-hearted comedy which was finally, after much argument, entitled The Taming of the Shrew.