He strode past a cutler's shop, then stopped, turned, and went back. The Widow Kendall had broken the wooden handle on her best carving knife not so long before, and had complained about it ever since.

She kept talking about taking the knife to a tinker for a new handle, but she hadn't done it. Like as not, she never would get around to doing it, but would grumble about what a fine knife it had been for the rest of her days. A replacement, now, a replacement would make her a fine New Year's present.

"Good morrow, sir, and a joyous New Year to you," the cutler said when Shakespeare stepped inside.

"What seek you? An it have an edge, you'll find it here." Shakespeare explained what he wanted, and why. The cutler nodded. "I have the very thing." He offered Shakespeare a knife of about the same size as the one Jane Kendall had used."Certes, 'tis a knife." Shakespeare tried the edge with his thumb. "It now seems sharp enough. But will't stay so?"

"The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge," the cutler replied, "but it hath a better blade than most, and will serve for all ordinary work. And surely she for whom you buy't hath a whetstone?"

"Surely." Shakespeare had no idea whether Jane Kendall owned a whetstone. He supposed she must; how could she keep a kitchen in good order without one? Setting the knife down on the counter, he asked the next important question: "What's your price?" When the cutler told him, he flinched. "So much?

Half that were robbery, let alone the whole of't. 'Tis for a tallowchandler's widow, not silver clad in parcel gilt for the kitchen of a duke."

They haggled amiably enough. Not for all his poet's eloquence could Shakespeare beat the cutler down very far. At last, still muttering under his breath, he paid. The cutler did give him a leather sheath for the knife. "The better your widow cares for't, the better 'twill serve her. Dirt and wet breed rust as filth breeds maggots."

"I understand." Shakespeare didn't intend to lecture his landlady on housewifery. What the Widow Kendall would say to him if he showed such cheek did not bear thinking about.

He took the knife back to his lodgings. On the way there, he slipped a halfpenny into the sheath. Giving the Widow Kendall the knife without the propitiatory coin would have been inviting her to cut herself with it.

"Oh, G.o.d bless you, Master Will!" she exclaimed when he handed her the knife. She gave him a muscular hug and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. That was another kiss he could have done without; her breath stank with eating toasted cheese. He did his best to smile as she said, "I've thought me of getting a new one since that handle broke, but. . . ." She shrugged.

But you'd sooner have done without, or gone on with the old marred one, than have fared forth yourself to a tinker's or a cutler's, he thought. "May you have good use of't," he said.

"I'm sure I shall," she said. "Come take a mug of ale, an't please you."

That mug was the only New Year's gift he had from her. Since he'd expected nothing more, he wasn't disappointed. But Christopher Marlowe came by the house later that day and gave him a copy of Tacitus' Annals--in the original Latin. "I dare hope you may find it . . . inspiring," the other poet murmured.

As was Marlowe's habit, he'd spent lavishly. The book was bound in maroon leather and stamped with gold. Shakespeare wanted to hit him over the head with it; with any luck, it would smash in his skull.

How much did Marlowe know? How much did he want Shakespeare to think he knew? How badly did he want to drive Shakespeare to distraction? That, more than the other two together, Shakespeare judged.

Showing Marlowe he'd drawn blood only encouraged him to try to draw more. With a smile, Shakespeare answered, "I'm sure I shall. The treason trials under Tiberius, perchance?" Ever so slightly, he stressed the word treason.

Marlowe bared his teeth in something that looked like a smile. "Treason? What word is that? And in what tongue? Tartar? I know it not."

"Perdie, Kit, may that be so," Shakespeare said. "May the day come when that Tartar word's cleanforgot in England."

Laughing, Marlowe patted him on the cheek, as an indulgent father might pat a son. "Our lines will fail or ever that word's routed from our . . ." He drew back, sudden concern on his face. "Will, what's amiss?"

"You will find a better time to speak of failing lines than when my only son's but a little more than a year in's grave," Shakespeare said tightly. His fists bunched. He took a step towards the other poet, whom he saw for a moment through a veil of unshed tears.

Marlowe backed away. "Pardon my witlessness, I pray you," he said.

"I will--one day," Shakespeare answered, angry still. Marlowe left the lodging house moments later.

Shakespeare wasn't sorry to see him go, not only because of what he'd said but also because he wouldn't linger to make more gibes about Tacitus and treason that might stick in someone's mind.

Though it was snowing hard on Sunday, Shakespeare made a point of going to Ma.s.s at the church of St.

Ethelberge the Virgin. It was, by Pope Gregory's calendar, the fourth of January--by England's old reckoning, December twenty-fifth. He wanted to be sure he was seen at Catholic services that day. If he were not, he might be suspected of observing Christmas on the day the Spaniards--and the English Inquisition--deemed untimely. Since he truly deserved suspicion, he had all the more reason not to want to see it fall on him. The pews in the little church were more crowded than usual. Maybe--probably--he wasn't the only soul there making a point of being seen.

He went to St. Ethelberge's again two days later, for the feast of Epiphany, the twelfth and last day of Christmas. A gilded bra.s.s Star of Bethlehem hung from the rood loft. Some of the parishioners put on a short drama about the recognition of the Christ Child by the Three Kings. Shakespeare found the performances frightful and the dialogue worse, but the audience here wasn't inclined to be critical. In the Theatre, the groundlings would have mewed and hissed such players off the stage, and pelted them with fruit or worse till they fled.

After Twelfth Night pa.s.sed, the mundane world returned. When Shakespeare went off to the Theatre the next day, he carried with him the finished ma.n.u.script of Love's Labour's Won. He flourished it in triumph when he saw Richard Burbage. "Here, d.i.c.k: behold the fatted calf."

Burbage just jerked a thumb back toward the tiring room. "I care not a fig to see't, not until Master Martin hath somewhat smoothed it."

With a sigh, Shakespeare went. Geoffrey Martin, the company's prompter and playbook-keeper, would indeed dress the fatted calf he carried. He had a habit of writing elaborate, impractical stage directions.

And, like any author in the throes of enthusiasm, he sometimes made mistakes, changing a character's name between appearances or giving a line or two to someone who happened not to be on stage at the moment. Martin's job was to catch such things, to have scribes prepare parts for all the princ.i.p.al actors in a play, and to murmur their lines to them if they faltered during a performance.

Martin also worked closely with Sir Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, who made sure nothing blasphemous or treasonous appeared on stage. If Lord Burghley's plan was to go forward, Martin had to be part of the plot.

The prompter was about forty. He'd probably been handsome once, but nasty scars from a fire stretched across his forehead, one cheek, and the back of his left hand. The work he had--precise, important, but out of the public's eye--suited him well.

"Good morrow to you, Master Shakespeare," he said, looking up from a playbook. "Here at last, is it?We've waited longer than we might have, to see what flowed from your pen."

"I know, Master Martin," Shakespeare said humbly. "I'm sorry for't." Facing the prompter made him feel as if he were back in school again, the only difference being that Geoffrey Martin wielded a pen of his own, not a switch.

He read faster and more accurately than anyone else Shakespeare knew. That pen of his drank from the ink pot on the table in front of him, then darted at the ma.n.u.script of Love's Labour's Won like a striking asp. "When will you learn to put stage directions in a form players can actually use?" he asked, more in sorrow than in anger: he said the same thing every time Shakespeare handed him a ma.n.u.script.

"Your pardon, Master Martin," Shakespeare said. "I do essay precision, but--"

"You succeed too well," the prompter told him, also not for the first time. "With directions such as these, you break the action like a man disjointing a roast fowl. Simplicity, sir--simplicity's what wins the race."

Shakespeare wasn't convinced Martin was right. Like any playwright, he wanted things just so, with all the actors moving at his direction as Copernicus and his followers said planets moved around the sun.

But the prompter's word carried more weight in such matters than his. As Martin went from one page to the next, Shakespeare did presume to ask, "What think you?"

"Aside from these wretched stage directions, very pleasant, very gay," Geoffrey Martin answered.

"Without a doubt, the company will buy the play of you. And then you'll put all your work towards the new King Philip, is't not so?"

"As much of it as I may, yes," Shakespeare answered. The prompter's question gave him the opening he needed: "Tell me, Master Martin, what think you of--?"

But before he could finish the question, Martin lifted a hand. "Hold," he said, and such was the authority in his voice that Shakespeare fell silent. "Here in your second act, you have entering three lords and three ladies."

"I do," Shakespeare agreed, looking down at what he'd written--the second act seemed a long way off these days.

"See you here, though. Only two of these ladies speak: the one Rosaline, the other Katharine. What point to the third one, the one you style Maria?"

"Why, for to balance the third lord, of course," Shakespeare answered.

Geoffrey Martin shook his head. "It sufficeth not. Give her somewhat to do, or else take her out."

"Oh, very well," Shakespeare said testily. "Lend me your pen, then." He scratched out a name and subst.i.tuted another. "Now hath she this pa.s.sage, once Katharine's."

"Good enough." Martin read on. After a bit, he looked up and said, "I am much taken with your Signor Adriano di Armato, your fantastical Venetian. Some poets I need not name might have sought instead to make of him a Spaniard, the which the Master of the Revels would never countenance."

Shakespeare's first thought had been to make him a Spaniard, to get the extra laughs mocking the invaders would bring. But he too had concluded Sir Edmund would never let him get away with it. Again, though, he had the chance to ask the question he wanted, or one leading towards it: "What think you, Master Martin, of having to take such care to keep from rousing the Spaniards' ire?""Working with the Master would be simpler without such worries, no doubt of't," the prompter replied.

"But you'll not deny, I trust, that heresy's strong grip'd yet constrain us had they not come hither. I have now the hope of heaven. Things being different, h.e.l.lfire'd surely hold me after I cast my mortal slough."

"Ay, belike," Shakespeare said, none too happily. Without a doubt, Geoffrey Martin had given him an honest answer, but he hadn't said what Shakespeare wanted to hear.

"Why? Believe you otherwise?" Martin asked--he'd heard how half-hearted Shakespeare's answer sounded, which the poet hadn't wanted at all.

"By my troth, no," Shakespeare said, this time using his experience on the stage to sound as he thought Geoffrey Martin would want him to.

"I should hope not, sir," the prompter said. "King Philip, G.o.d keep him, is a great man, a very great man.

He hath from ourselves saved us, and in our own despite. Of whom else might one say the like, save only our Lord Himself?"

"Even so," Shakespeare said, and got away from Martin as fast as he could. The players he'd sounded had all been willing, even eager, to help try to expel the Spaniards from England. The tireman had been noncommittal. The prompter, plainly, took the Spaniards' part. And if Geoffrey Martin suspected treason, he knew important ears into which to whisper--or shout--his suspicions.

"Why the long face, Will?" Burbage called when Shakespeare wandered out onto the stage again.

"Mislikes he the mouse your mountain at last delivered?"

"Nay, the jests seemed to please him well enough," Shakespeare answered. "But he hath . . .

misgivings . . . in aid of . . . certain other matters."

Someone clapped him on the shoulder. He jumped; he hadn't heard anybody come up behind him. Will Kemp's elastic features leered at him. Cackling with mad glee, the clown said, "What better time than the new year for a drawing and quartering? Or would you liefer rout out winter's chill with a burning? I'll stake you would."

"Go to!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "Get hence!"

"And wherefore should I?" Kemp replied. "I know as much as doth d.i.c.k here." Before Shakespeare could deny that, the clown continued, "I know enough to hang us all, than the which what could be more?"

Put so, he had a point. Burbage said, "The object is not to let others know enough to hang us all--others now including a certain gentleman (marry, a very certain gentleman he is, too) who all too easily can confound us."

"Knew you not that Geoff Martin hath his nose in the Pope of Rome's a.r.s.ehole?" Kemp said with another mocking smile.

" 'Steeth, Will--soft, soft!" Shakespeare hissed, the ice outside having nothing to do with the chill that ran through him. "He need but c.o.c.k his head hither and he'll hear you."

"He's right, man," Burbage said. "D'you want your neck stretched or your bowels cut out or the flesh roasted from your bones? Talk too free and you'll win your heart's desire."

"O ye of little faith!" Kemp jeered. "Dear Geoff's prompter and book-keeper. He hath before him a new play--so new, belike the ink's still damp. What'll he do? Plunge his beak into its liver, like the vulture withPrometheus. A cannon could sound beside him without his hearing't."

Burbage looked thoughtful. "He may have reason," he said to Shakespeare.

"He may be right," Shakespeare said. "Right or wrong, reason hath he none. Where's the reason in a man who will hazard his life for nothing but to hear his own chatter? G.o.d deliver me from being subject to the breath of every fool, whose sense no more can feel but his own fancies."

"Doth thy other mouth call me?" Will Kemp retorted. He strode away, then stopped, bent, and spoke loudly with his other mouth.

"Wh.o.r.eson beetle-headed, flap-eared knave," Shakespeare burst out--but quietly. He remembered all too well that, if he angered Kemp, the clown could betray him, too.

"A bacon-fed knave, very voluble," Burbage agreed, "but when have you known a clown who was otherwise?" He too spoke in a low voice. After a moment, he went on, "And what, think you, may we do about Martin?"

"In sooth, I know not," Shakespeare said miserably. "Would we could just sack him, but the company'd rise in revolt--and with reason (that word again!), did we try it without good cause."

Burbage nodded. "True. Every word of't true."

"But this business cannot go forward without him, nor with him in opposition," Shakespeare said.

"Look you to your part of't," Burbage told him. "Write the words that needs must be writ. Think on that, for none else can do't. As for the other--haply you misread Martin's mind and purpose."

"That I did not," Shakespeare declared.

"Well, as may be," Burbage said with a shrug. "But I say this further: we are embarked here on no small enterprise, is't not so?" After waiting for Shakespeare to nod, he went on, "We may be sure, then, we are not alone embarked. We need not, unaided, solve all conundrums attached hereto."

"It could be," Shakespeare said after some thought. "Ay, it could be. But, an we solve them not, who shall?"

"That is hidden from mine eyes, and so should it be, for what I know not, no inquisitor can tear from me,"

Burbage said. Shakespeare nodded again, a little more heartily; he'd had the same thought. Smiling, Burbage continued, "But to say it is hidden from mine eyes is not to say it hath no existence. Others, knowing little of the parts we play, will be charged with shifting such burthens as an o'erstubborn prompter. Is that not so?"

"It is," Shakespeare said. "Or rather, it must be. But would I knew it for a truth, not for an article of faith."

"As what priest or preacher hath not said?" Burbage answered with a laugh. "Write the words, Will.

When the time comes, I'll say 'em. And what follows from thence . . . 'tis in G.o.d's hands, not ours."

He was right. He was bound to be right--which went some way towards setting Shakespeare's mind at ease, but not so far as he would have liked. It did let him get through the day at the Theatre without making a fool of himself, which he might not have managed had Burbage not calmed him.

A couple of evenings later, as the poet was making his way down Sh.o.r.editch High Street towards Bishopsgate after a performance, a man stepped out of the evening shadows and said, "You're MasterShakespeare, are you not?"

"I am," Shakespeare said cautiously. "And who, sir, are you?"

He used that sir from caution; had he felt more cheerful about the world and the people in it, he would have said sirrah. The fellow who'd asked his name looked like a mechanical, a laborer, in leather jerkin and laddered hose. When he smiled, he showed a couple of missing teeth. "Oh, you need not know my name, sir," he said.

"Then we have no business, one with the other," Shakespeare answered, doing his best to sound polite and firm at the same time. "Give you good den." He started on.

"Hold!" the stranger said. As he set a hand on the hilt of his belt knife to emphasize the word, Shakespeare stopped. In grumbling tones, the fellow added, "Nick said you were a tickle 'un. There's a name for you, by G.o.d and St. George! You ken Nick Skeres?"

Skeres had led him to Sir William Cecil. "I do," Shakespeare said reluctantly.

"Well, good on you, then." The stranger gave him another less than rea.s.suring smile. "Nick sent me to your honor. You've someone in your company more friendlier to the dons than an honest Englishman ought to be?"

From whom had Skeres heard about Geoffrey Martin? Burbage? Will Kemp? Someone else altogether?

Or had this bruiser any true connection to Skeres at all? With such dignity as he could muster, Shakespeare said, "I treat not with a man who hath no name."

"d.a.m.n you!" the fellow said. But he didn't draw that knife. Instead, exasperated, he flung a name--"Ingram!"--at the poet.

Christian name? Surname? Shakespeare couldn't guess. But the man had given him some of what he wanted. Shakespeare answered him in turn: "Yes, there is such a one, Master Ingram."

"His name's Martin, eh? Like the bird?" Ingram asked. With odd hesitation, Shakespeare nodded. So did the other man. "All right, friend." He touched the brim of his villainous cap. "G.o.d give you good even," he said, and vanished once more into the deepening shadows. The poet stared after him, scratching his head.