Two men were slumped together in the lee of the wall. One of them was undoubtedly Galileo, although Speroni had five witnesses who said that the Paduan had been killed the day before. Dead he wasn't, but he was snoring fit to wake those that were. His face was covered in bruises. The other man looked at first glance like Cardinal Bellarmine, but what would a Cardinal of Rome be doing slumped, blind drunk, in an alley?

"Did you know I used to build ships?" Speroni said suddenly.

"Sorry sir?" the guard said, but Speroni wasn't really listening.

"Fifteen years I spent working in the a.r.s.enale, man and boy.

Fifteen good years. I learned a trade. I was proud of what I did.

And then they made me a Lord of the Night.w.a.tch." He sighed.

"Life used to be so simple."

The water of the ca.n.a.l lapped against the brickwork. It sounded to Speroni like the distant chuckling of some malign demon whose job it was to make his life as unpleasant as possible.

Before he knew what he was doing, he had risen to his feet.

"What do you want to do with them, sir?" the youth said.

"Do what you wish," Speroni replied, feeling a fluttering in his chest as if something with wings had been released from a cage. He began to walk away, down the alley. "I don't care any more."

"But sir!" the guard called. "What do you - where are you going?"

"I'm going back to the a.r.s.enale!" he shouted back, feeling a smile spread over his face. "I'm going to do something important with my life, before I forget how. I'm going to build ships."

The sun was just rising above the golden domes and stone towers as he walked out of the alley, casting a rosy light across the entire city. He felt as if he had just been released from the deepest, darkest dungeon in the Doge's Palace. He took a deep breath, turned towards the sun and walked away from it all.

EPILOGUE.

April, 1616 "Father, a visitor for you."

The sound of his daughter's voice from downstairs roused him from a dream full of sound and fury. He found himself in his bed, tangled in sheets that were damp with fever-sweat. For a moment the bedroom looked strange to him, as if the laths were not straight, and the plaster was leaning in towards him. His head ached, and there was a churning in his stomach. It was all he could do to stop himself from rolling over and throwing up, but as his mind cleared he knew that it would do him no good. He had felt this way for three days now, and nothing made any difference - not poultices, nor purges, nor medications of any sort. The inaudible and noiseless foot of time was creeping up on him.

"Send -" His voice was a croak, and he paused to clear his throat.

"Send him up." A cart rattled past the window, and he could smell hay. Footsteps creaked on the stairs. He levered himself into some semblance of sitting upright, but bile rose in the back of his throat at the effort.

"William Shakespeare?" The man who stood in the doorway was tall and thin, his hair falling across his forehead. Shakespeare knew that he had never seen the man before, and yet there was something curiously familiar about him. He had a lean and hungry look about him, as though he thought too much.

"Yes, I am Shakespeare. I apologize for my condition, but I have fallen most greviously ill."

The man nodded. "My name is Braxiatel," he said, "Irving Braxiatel."

"Forgive me," Shakespeare said, "but have we met before? Your face floats most oddly in my memory."

Braxiatel nodded. "We did meet, some seven years ago now, in the city of Venice."

Venice. A dry cough racked Shakespeare's body for a moment, turning his throat to fire. "I remember little of my time in Venice, good sir," he said finally. "I contracted brain fever during the voyage, and awoke to find myself in England again. If I did you injury there, then I apologize."

Braxiatel shook his head. "No injury," he said. "At least, nothing that lasted. In fact, I may have done you more of an injury than you did me."

Shakespeare felt a flicker of interest within his breast. "You intrigue me, sir. Speak on."

"I come to offer you a bargain," Braxiatel said carefully. "I took something from you in Venice that I could return."

Shakespeare chuckled weakly. "If I have not missed it for seven years, what use would it be now?"

"I'm talking about your memory," Braxiatel said calmly, and Shakespeare felt his heart thud hard within the cage of his chest.

"The memory of what happened during those few lost days."

Another cart creaked past the window. Shakespeare's gaze wandered away from the man's face and drifted across the rough walls. His thoughts grew quiet for a moment, and when he glanced back at Braxiatel he wasn't sure whether he had briefly fallen asleep or not. "My memory? Even if I believed you, what makes you think that I would want it back?"

"Because you are dying, and you want to die whole. Because that gap in your mind has always plagued you, like a rotted tooth."

Braxiatel smiled briefly. "I have read between the lines of your plays. I know that it bothers you."

Dying. The word should have shocked Shakespeare, provoked him to paroxysms of anger, but he had guessed. He was dying, and he thought he knew who was responsible. "Ralegh," he murmured. "That wh.o.r.eson Ralegh. He has poisoned me."

Braxiatel nodded. "He was released from the Tower of London five weeks ago. He is here in Stratford under an a.s.sumed name and slipped poison into your wine in a tavern."

Shakespeare smiled weakly. His head throbbed with a sick, hot pain. "I drew up my will a month ago," he whispered, "as soon as I was told of his release. I knew that he bore malice against me.

What man would not, after thirteen years of incarceration?" He closed his eyes, intending only to blink, but the call of the darkness almost pulled him in. "Still, a man can die but once," he murmured, "and we all owe G.o.d a death." Forcing his eyes open, he said, "You talk of a bargain. What have I to offer?"

"You have some ma.n.u.scripts," Braxiatel replied, "plays that did not find favour with the Monarch. Rather than see them lost with your death, I would like to see them placed on display in a library that I am in the process of building."

"A library? Of my works? Why?" Shakespeare was having to concentrate harder and harder on the conversation.

"The Library of St John the Beheaded," Braxiatel said quietly, "is dedicated to preserving works of science, literature and philosophy that would otherwise be lost. Your plays Love's Labours Won, The Birth of Merlin and Sir John Oldcastle might not survive your death if someone does not act to preserve them now."

"Minor works, they do not deserve to survive." Shakespeare broke off as a shudder ran through his body. Sweat sprang out across his scalp and forehead, and trickled greasily across his skin to the pillow, "But you may have them. You may have all my ma.n.u.scripts. They are in the bottom drawer of the dresser over there by the window." He tried, but failed, to move his head as Braxiatel walked across to the dresser and bent down. Moments later the man straightened up with an armload of quarto sheets covered with Shakespeare's sprawling handwriting.

"Thank you," he said.

"And now for your side of the bargain," Shakespeare whispered. "I could have counted myself happy these past seven years, were it not that I have had bad dreams. If you have a physic to restore to me that which was lost, I would fain die happy." Braxiatel balanced the pile of papers in the crook of his left arm while his right hand reached into a pocket of his coat. When it emerged it was holding a small metal device with a fleck of green gla.s.s in one end. He pointed it at Shakespeare's head and pressed a stud on its side.

"Now cracks a n.o.ble heart," he quoted softly. "Good night, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Shakespeare did not see him leave. In his mind's eye it was as if a curtain had been drawn back, revealing a stage populated with characters and random fragments of scenery. Here, standing by a window, was an old man with long, white hair; there at a tavern table was an older Kit Marlowe with his devilishly beautiful smile. An Italian with a bushy beard quaffed a flagon of wine while, in the background, an island floated above the towers and gilded domes of Venice.

Demons stalked the stage too; some with scarlet wings and armoured skin, others like bags of bones. And there was more - so much more - places, people, sights and sounds and smells that crowded at the edges of his mind and jostled for position.

Effortlessly he summoned up the remembrance of things past, holding them like pieces of a jigsaw, trying one against another as if to a.s.semble a coherent story from the fragments. And, while so engaged, he did not even notice that he had died.