Ben almost reached out to lay a filthy hand on Will’s shoulder, but caught himself and withdrew it. I should be grateful for the rain, he said, wiping streaked dirt from his face on a grayed linen sleeve. [I told him naught, Will. Well,”

“What?”

“I had to tell him something, or he’d assume I had something to hide.”

“So?”

Ben’s eyes flickered sideways, and his heavy jowls twitched with humor. I told him the William the Conqueror story.”

“Christ on the cross,” Will swore. “And I was hoping that one would die a deserved death.”

“If you’d seen the disconsolate look on Burbage’s face when he wandered in to the Mermaid alone, you’d think it worth it.

“There are greater challenges than to out charm Richard,” Will said. “And the citizen in question a comely lass. But tis not the gentlemanly thing to spread tales.”

Ben choked. “Not gentlemanly at all,” he agreed. “And yet some spread them anyway ah, here we are.”

Will opted for the barbering after all, and saw Ben decently clothed and fed at a tavern by the time the rain began to taper. Ben ate with the appetite Will associated with stevedores, while Will picked through a mincemeat pastry, choking down what he could. Finally, Ben wiped his mouth on his new, clean kerchief and sat back with a sigh. “Unwell, William?”

“In pain,” Will answered, rinsing his mouth on the dregs of the wine. “I shall be fine in a bit.” He tucked his hand into his pocket and stood. “Art content?”

“Aye. Ben pushed his bench back. “Whence?”

“Upstairs,” Will said, turning away. “He’s waiting for us.”

“He?” Will nodded. “Sir Thomas Walsingham.” He turned his head and glanced over his shoulder. The well-worn shilling was between his fingers. On an impulse, he drew it forth and tumbled it through the air on a high, lamplit arc.

Ben was quicker than he looked. Blunt fingers plucked the shilling at the apex of its climb; he frowned. “What’s that?”

A grand gesture,Will thought, and smiled. “Come on, Queen’s Man. Thou hast a craft to learn.”

“Do I have an option?” But Jonson fell into step beside him, although Will took his elbow to lead him up the stairs.

”Not if you expect to write plays like that and live.”

Eleven months and two weeks later, Tom Walsingham leaned against the shutters in Ben’s lodging, which were closed against an unseasonable late-September chill, and tossed a gray kidskin pouch idly in his hand. Something jingled within it. By Tom’s smile, Will had a pretty clear idea what. He rose from his perch on a three-legged stool beside the hearth and crossed to where Ben crumpled his tallness over a trestle, papers unrolled and weighted at the corners with an ink horn, a candlestick, and a pot of sand. Will leaned over his shoulder.

“What’s Tom brought us, then?” Ben’s thick finger tapped the middle of the paper, shifting it under theweights. It was a plan of a house and garden, well drawn in black lines, with a steady hand Will envied. Ben raised his eyes to Tom, who was still fighting that inscrutable smile. Richard Baines house and garden, Ben guessed. “How did you come by these?”

“Bribery,” Tom said succinctly. “Catch.”

He tossed his bundle through theair; Will fumbled it, and it landed on the map with a clunking sound entirely unlike the fairy jingle of silver or the sharp clean sound of gold. Will struggled with the knot, the fingers of his right hand momentarily failing to answer, and got it untangled. He upended the pouch and dragged it, whistling as it spawned a river of coin. “There must be a hundred pound here.”

“Hundred fifty,” Tom said. “Or a few pounds worth of pewter,” he said, that grin returning. It seemed appropriate, somehow, given Baines has used the trick himself. “I thought it best to attend to Cecil’s, pardon, Sir Robert’s demands regarding the inestimable Master Baines while he was still occupied with the affairs of his late father.”

How do you intend to pass it to them? Plant, not pass. Tom drew his dagger and picked at a cuticle with the point, not quite as idly as Will thought he meant to make it look. Interesting, Will said. I don’t see you clambering in windows The clambering is Ben’s part.

“Sir Thomas.” Ben looked up from arranging the debased nobles and sovereigns in tidy rows across the face of the map.

“You re youngest, Ben. And,” a circular gesture of the knife, “strongest.”

Ben sighed, his brow wrinkling like that of a bull-baiting dog. “Aye. And once the coins are placed, Sir Thomas, how do we make sure Baines spends them rather than dispensing with them?”

“The property will be searched.” Tom sheathed his knife and picked up a silvery coin, turning it in the light. “Leave that to me. These are better than some I’ve seen.” Will wasn’t sure what drew his attention to the window; a shadow across theshutters or the faintest of sounds. Ben, he said in Jonson’s ear, is there a stair out your window?

“A drainpipe,” Ben answered in an undertone, following his gaze. “Over the kitchen garden.”

“Sir Thomas, you were followed but far from the best.”

“I’m minded of a time in France,” Tom continued, never missing a beat as he drew his sword and moved to the window in silent footsteps. Ben came around the board, catching his sword from the back of the chair it hung on and easing it from the soft leather sheath. He caught Tom’s eye, and Tom nodded as Will hastily scooped the jingling counters of a hanging offense back into their bag. Ben hurled the shutters open and Tom lunged, reaching, cursing softly and jerking back a moment later.

“Missed him,” he said, over a rustling crash and then the sound of running footsteps. “Ben, go after.”

Jonson didn’t hesitate. He dropped his rapier inside the window and planted one hand on the sill, vaulting over with a grace that belied his height. Will winced at the thump from ten feet below, but Ben sounded unhurt as he calledup “BLade! He must have stepped aside as Tom snatched the sword up and dropped it, point-first so it would stick in the earth.

“Tis Gabriel Spencer.” Tom was already moving for the door. Will grabbed his sleeve as he went by. Tom couldn’t: too much chance of being spotted and recognized, even in that nondescript, unfashionably blue doublet that was too broad across the shoulders.

“No.” A moment’s startled regard, and then

“Will?” Tom’s voice was suddenly his cousin’s, his eyes as full of cold necessity as Sir Francis had ever been.

“Make sure Ben understands.”

“Oh, Christ on the Cross.” Will nodded and stuffed the coins inside his doublet, hitching his stubborn right leg as he stumbled for the stairs. He wasn’t about to catapult out a window like a man eight years younger, but Will was surprised how fast his halting gait, assisted by a grip on the banister, brought him into the courtyard.

Ben must have caught up with Gabriel Spencer by the innyard gate. He had the smaller man lifted off the ground by the collar, Spencer’s hand and a dagger pinned high against the timbers.

I’m about to order a man to kill.Will swallowed, as best he could, conscious of the clunk of the coins insidehis shirt. Tyburn hanging,he thought, and then he thought about Kit in a hearth-warmed kitchen, trying so hard and so falsely to smile.

“Ben,” Will said. Let him down.

Ben turned over his shoulder, startled. Will nodded, and picked up the blade that Ben must have dropped when he manhandled Spencer against the wall. Will held the rapier toward Ben, hilt-first, careful of the edge. Ben dropped Spencer, more tossed him to his feet and stepped back far enough to grasp it, keeping a questioning sideways attention on Will.

“He heard everything,” Will said in an undertone, hearing a different voice in the place of Spencer’s sudden, comprehending pleading. “This is what a Queen’s Man is. This is what a Queen’s Man does. Why, so it is.”