“Sawst thou not, boy, how Silver made it good

At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault?

I would not lose that dog for twenty pound.”

But the Queen was leaning forward in her chair, the last three fingers of her left hand moving in a faint, dismissive gesture when Essex tried to draw her attention. The Earl looked down sulkily, fiddling something in his lap. Over his shoulder, lord Burghley standing near to his son and a little further from the Queen caught Will’s eye. The boards creaked under Will’s foot. He upstaged the huntsman, forcing him to turn, so Will could follow Burghley’s gaze and catch a glimpse of Essex’s task. The Earl riffled the pages of a little book, an octavio, of a size for tucking in a sleeve or a pocket. He couldn’t be reading the playscript; it wasn’t published. And Southampton was leaning forward over Essex’s shoulder, his lips moving.

Interesting.

“Thou art a fool,

Will said.

If Echo were as fleet”

There was something, a pressure. Almost as if a stiff wind sprang up. But the Queen was laughing, and Will leaned on that, camped his dialogue, airy turn of a sleeve to offset a pompous thundering. The scene was almost all his, and he carried it. The prologue ended, and Will beat his retreat with a glance across the audience.

Engaged. Alive, at least. He gulped ale through a tight throat and leaned against a pillar, listening. It was a mistake to recruit Alleyn he’s too overblown for comedy, no, he’s managing it. Oh, this may work.He fretted his hands, one over the other, feeling the power rise up in opposition to his work. Feeling the play itself, its rhythms and stresses, the connection between player and playgoer. The surge of emotion and thought that bound the audience to the performance, and the energy that ran between them, like lovers giving one another all.

I should have taken out the jokes about tongues and tails. Not before Her Majesty.

But Elizabeth laughed again, a provoked and provoking sound that carried over the sedate chuckles of her courtiers, and Will grinned despite himself.

Tis no different before the Queen. But there’s a power here.

It was a heady thing, and he finished the ale and straightened against the wall as he grasped it. This is what Kit was trying to show me. This. This power. This consensus. This is the thing we manipulate. I can do this thing.

Will toweled the paint from his face, tossing the spotted cloth onto a pile. Someone thrust a cup into his hand. He quaffed it, choked when he found wine instead of ale, and turned to Burbage’s grin.

“You re a success. We re a success.” Will embraced Richard. His own shirt was transparent with sweat when he stripped it over his head, and he wet a cloth and wiped the salt from his chest.

Burbage, of course, looked pressed and dapper. “Hand me my clean shirt, wouldst thou? We must go be charming and earn our bread.”

“As long as tis Kemp singing for his supper, not thee.”

“What? I am a very nightingale.” Will tucked the shirt into his breeches and pulled his doublet on.

“In that thou shouldst sing only after dark, when they cannot see thy face to hunt thee, aye.” Burbage clipped Will about the shoulders while Will was still fussing with laces, and steered him back out into the hall. The Queen had risen from her chair to lead a galliard. Will let his gaze sweep the room, wondering if he could catch the eye of that dark-haired girl again, but instead found Essex’s gaze. Will bowed to the Earl, who affected a habit of white silk that contrasted sharply with Raleigh’s glossy black. Burbage, still holding Will’s elbow, caught the bow and echoed it in unison, making Will smile. Richard was many things. And the best at most of them. The players straightened as the Earl turned away, his brow thundering, his arms crossed as if he slipped something into a sleeve pocket. “He does not approve,” Will murmured.

“More intrigues. He’s of the other camp, and I no longer doubt it. Did you mark his ring?”

“Nay.”

“Some of the Prometheans wear them. But then again, so too do some mere mortals who meddle with magics. An iron ring on the finger, or steel in the ear. Who is that he spoke to?” Burbage arched his neck, as if searching the crowd. “The tall fellow with the lovely hair? In gold pinked with white. The very one.”

“The one coming toward us?”

“Why Will,” Burbage said, “that’s Master Thomas Walsingham.” A glance aside to Burbage, and Will swore under his breath.

Burbage’s color was high. Will noticed a drinker’s vein or two blossoming on his cheeks, that hadn’t been there a year before and his smile set.

“Kit’s … patron.”

“Kit’s betrayer, and ours, as I have it from Oxford. But yes, they shared a house and rumor says that isn’t all, though Master Walsingham a married man. That’s his wife, Etheldreda they call her Audrey, there. The gingery one.”

The lady was breathtaking in a rose-colored gown, cut low across her bosom, a mass of hair, Will thought, was probably nearly all her own, tired high. He shifted his attention back to Tom Walsingham, whose progression toward the players was slow but inexorable.

“Waste of a fine old Saxon name.”

“She rather looks like a Saxon Queen, doesn’t she? Ah,” Burbage said. “Will you have wine?”

“You re leaving me to his tender mercies?”

“He wants you. I’m only in the way. Drag him for information if you may: he’s got his hooks in Chapman too, and has a taste for poets, I’ve heard.”

“Chapman?” Will blinked to clear the unlikely vision from his head. “Oh, you mean his patronage.”

Burbage laughed and clapped Will on the shoulder as he moved away. “Just don’t mention Marley and you can’t go far wrong. I’m going to collect our payment from the steward.”

Will swallowed the last acid taste of the wine and pretended engagement with the dance. Gloriana’s grace was legend, her long oval hands raised high as she let her partners move her. Even in her sixtieth year, she moved as if the mass of her skirts and jewels and her gold-red jeweled tire weighed nothing. She dined alone by habit, Will knew, and imagined it was as much to conceal the unladylike appetite her exertions must give her as for fear of poison.

“Master William Shakespeare?” It was a smooth voice, a touch of Kent in it, and Will turned and met Thomas Walsingham’s querying gaze. Will had to lift his chin; Tom had a hand on him, at least, in height and half that across the shoulders, and might have been wearing heeled shoes for court.

“Master Walsingham.”

“An excellent performance.” Walsingham lifted a glass; the wine it held was clear dark yellow in torchlight. “I’m sorry we haven’t met. I’ve seen one or two of your plays from the galleries, and been impressed. Master Marley first commended you to mine attention, and after him George. You know Chapman.”

“Very well,” Will answered, glad he hadn’t a glass of his own, lest he choke on the contents. and you can’t go far wrong. Oh, excellent advice, Richard. Excellent advice.

“Master Marley? Of a truth?”

Walsingham’s lips seemed to vanish for a moment. “Though he was never a one to cast broad credit.”

“No,” Will said, and thought interestingagain. “I had understood you ended on bad terms.”

“Aye,” Walsingham answered, “in that he ended badly. But tis not a topic I wish to dwell on overmuch. That was a fine play, by a fine group of players performed.”

“I will convey your compliments.”

“Convey more than that.” Walsingham reached out, and Will almost flinched from his calloused, elegant hand. Will studied it, Burbage’s comments on rings fresh in his mind, but contrary to fashion Walsingham didn’t affect any. Instead he slipped a paper into Will’s doublet, smoothing the nap of the velvet before drawing away. “Convey that note to mine exchequer. He’ll see your company rewarded for lightening the Queen’s burden.”