“Perhaps the problem lies less with the quality of players than with the quality of plays,” said Shakespeare.

“Eh?” said Burbage, as if noticing him for the first time. “And who might you be?”

“Shakespeare is the name. William Shakespeare.”

“Oh. I remember you. The chap from Stratford, was it? You wanted work.”

“My friend and I were hired as ostlers,” Shakespeare said. “Admittedly, not quite what we had in mind when we applied to you, but ‘twas the best, you said, that you could offer us at present. However, it would seem that present circumstances have undergone somewhat of a change.”

Burbage grunted. He reached out to refill his tankard from the large clay pitcher. “Aye, ‘twould seem so.” He grimaced. “So what do you want, Shakespeare? To act?”

“Well, Tuck and I would both be pleased to help the company in whatever capacity ‘twas deemed we best could serve,” said Shakespeare. “For my part, acting is certainly within my compass, but more to the point, I also happen to be a poet. ‘Tis there that my true vocation lies. And, if I may be so bold, perhaps ‘tis in that capacity that I may best serve the company.”

“A poet,” Burbage said. He nodded. “I remember. Marlowe sent you. But I also recall you said you had no formal academic training.”

“True,” said Shakespeare, nodding. “And yet, no amount of academic training can teach a man to write if he has not the talent. Marlowe and Greene are both university men who hold degrees as Masters of the Arts. But do both hold talent in equal degree? I am not a university man, ‘tis true. But then, neither are most members of your audience. All I ask is a chance to show what I can do.”

Burbage glanced at Fleming.

Fleming merely shrugged. “What do we have to lose?”

Burbage glanced at Speed, but Speed was unconscious. Burbage merely rolled his eyes. He sighed. “Very well, Shakespeare. You shall have your chance. Our next performance is tomorrow. The play is not working and we have just lost our leading player. We have some eighteen hours in which to salvage something of this mess. Let us see what you can do.”

7

WHEN HE CAME HOME TO discover that his daughter had gone somewhere to meet with her intended, Henry Darcie was very much displeased. For one thing, he had no idea where she had gone, and he did not like not knowing things or not being in control. For another, he knew his daughter all too well, and knew she had inherited his willfulness and stubbornness, two qualities which had served him well in achieving his success, but which, he felt, were unfortunate and highly undesirable in women. And when Elizabeth came home later that night, delivered to her door by a coach that pulled away as soon as she stepped down, Henry Darcie became absolutely furious.

His worst fears were realized when he discovered that Elizabeth had done precisely what he had been afraid she’d try to do, given the opportunity. She had somehow managed to convince Anthony Gresham that she was utterly unsuitable. In just a matter of hours, Henry Darcie saw all the work that he had done in trying to arrange the match coming undone right before his eyes. The problem was, he was not sure what, if anything, he could do to remedy the situation.

“You are a miserable, ungrateful, spiteful little wench!” he shouted at his daughter, when she had told him how she spent her evening. “How could you do this? Do you have any idea what you have done? You have ruined your future!”

“I have done no such thing!” Elizabeth protested. “Anthony Gresham made his own decision.”

“Made upon seeing your behavior, no doubt, which must have been disgraceful!”

“There was nothing wrong with my behavior, but a great deal wrong with his,” she said, following the story they’d agreed upon. She kept her voice very calm, as if struggling to do so despite great inner turmoil. “I accepted his ill-timed and presumptuous invitation-much to Mother’s dismay, I might add-because I believed you would have wished for me to do so. And having already displeased you, I did not wish to further anger you.”

“That is true,” her mother said, nodding emphatically. “I was very much against it, but believed you would have wanted Bess to go.”

“Indeed? How good of you both to consider my feelings for a change,” her father said, sarcastically. “And Bess had no feelings of her own in this regard, I take it?”

“I have told you before that I wish to love the man that I would marry,” said Elizabeth, “but in Mr. Gresham’s case, that would be utterly impossible. He is an ill-mannered, loutish boor who found me unsuitable in all respects, from the moment that he first laid eyes upon me. He had his mind made up before I even spoke a word.” That much, she thought with some amusement, was actually true. “He found me unbecoming and had the lack of grace to say so.”

“ What! You mean he said so to your face?“ her father replied, astonished.

“He said it plainly. I was not at all to his taste.” “He truly said so? Just like that?”

Elizabeth decided that there was no harm in embellishing a bit. After all, it was what they had agreed to, more or less, and since they would, in all likelihood, not be seeing Mr. Anthony Gresham again, there seemed to be no reason not to embroider a bit more, purely for effect.

“He said I was too skinny,” she said, “and that my bosoms were too small.”

“Good God!” Her father looked aghast.

“And he thought I was a bit too horse-faced for his liking.”

“Horse-faced!” His jaw dropped.

Her mother gasped.

Elizabeth wondered if this was, perhaps, going a bit too far. She knew that she was pretty, and bore a strong resemblance to her mother. It would not be immodest to suppose that it would be a stretch in anyone’s estimation to call her horse-faced, but the very idea of his daughter being so horribly insulted made her father apoplectic, especially since, given the resemblance between mother and daughter, it was an insult to his wife, as well. His face turned bright red and he sputtered with outrage. Her mother, meanwhile, had turned as pale as a ghost.

“Horse-faced!” he repeated, with stunned disbelief. “ Elizabeth…” He reached out and took her by the shoulders, looking her straight in the eyes. “ Elizabeth, are you quite certain you are telling me the truth?”

She had expected this and she was ready. She widened her eyes, as if with shock that he should question her veracity after what she had been through, and allowed her lower lip to quiver slightly. “Oh, Father!” she cried. “Oh! How could you?“

She pulled away from him and ran out of the room, sobbing.

She listened, afterward, from the other room, as her father shouted, paced and blustered, expressing his outrage and threatening to demand satisfaction, though Elizabeth was fairly certain that was nothing but a bluff, merely idle threats to soothe his injured pride. For of course, it was his pride that was injured and not hers. He cared less about her feelings than about the fact that it was his daughter who had been called horse-faced and unsuitable, thereby impugning not only his abilities to raise a daughter properly, but even his very humors, which had produced her. It was the seed of his loins that had been found defective and he took it as a personal insult. Elizabeth went to bed content and secure in the knowledge that there would be no marriage now. At least not with Anthony Gresham.

She was, therefore, caught completely unprepared when Gresham came calling the very next day, bringing with him a bottle of fine Portuguese wine for her father, a handsome gold brooch for her mother, and a lovely bouquet of red roses for her.

Her father was at work when Gresham arrived, but her mother was at home and when she summoned Elizabeth, sending one of the servants to tell her that she had a caller, Elizabeth had absolutely no idea who it might be. When she came in and saw that it was Gresham, she was absolutely stunned.