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stood – and see no ghost there – or at least only the actor playing Old Hamlet. ‘I am sorry, Thomas,’ she said. ‘ ’Twas your performance, seeing your father’s spirit. I swore I saw him too.’ It was not the most heartfelt of her deliveries so she hurried on. ‘I apologise.’ She looked across at Tarbuck. ‘And to you, Bill. May I try again?’
    With a grunt, Betterton resumed his position and flung his arm out. He said his line, she replied promptly, and carried on thus to the end of the scene. The feeling did not matter, this last rehearsal was about precision not passion. The audience, it was hoped, would stimulate them to that. It was understood in the theatre that all final run-throughs must be poor to make the first performance great.
    The scene ended. It was the last one they would rehearse. ‘To your preparations, all. Admit the audience!’ Betterton bellowed and as other actors hurried away, he took Sarah’s arm, ungently. ‘And you, ma’am, get some food into you. Every moment I think you are going to faint upon the stage.’ He looked pointedly at her belly. ‘Your baby still irks you?’
    It was said with no concern for her, only himself. He had been persuaded that Sarah’s illness was a passing thing and that she could undertake roles still. She had to maintain him in that belief. She did not know what she would do for money if she could not act, with the babe’s birth still five months away and Coke in his new and uncertain trade. ‘Nay, ’tis fine, Mr Betterton,’ she said, patting her stomach and smiling. ‘Indeed, I am quite recovered. You are kind to ask.’
    It was the best performance she’d given that day. Betterton walked away, muttering. And as soon as he did, Sarah moved to the opposite side, to the bucket she’d discreetly placed there, parting her long auburn hair just in time to void a thin stream. She crouched, awaiting more, remembering. Why had her William’s shade visited her like that? He was not dead. She would have known it instantly if he were, Coke’s presence being as strong as that of their child within her. She may not have had all hermother’s gifts as a cunning woman, a communicator with the departed, but she could still tell a ghost apart from…a premonition? What had he been trying to tell her, this future William? He was clad as if for the sea. Must he go abroad? Must they?
    Shivering, she bent again to heave nothing into the bucket.
    She felt a hand, gentle upon her back. ‘Sarah?’ came a voice as soft as the touch.
    ‘It’s all right.’ She raised herself, managed a little smile. ‘I’m well.’
    Dickon’s eyes wandered as they ever would, as did his other hand through his hedge of wheaten hair. William had rescued the orphan from his doorway three winters since and had restored him to health, though his full wits would probably be ever beyond him. ‘You are s-sick, Sarah,’ he said.
    ‘I am.’ She put her hand over her belly. ‘ ’Tis the baby.’
    ‘The cap’n’s baby.’ He smiled, then frowned suddenly. ‘The cap’n –’
    Chill, brought by the memory of a premonition, displaced the heat on her brow. ‘Any news?’
    ‘Nay, n-none.’
    The boy would get upset too long apart from his ‘cap’n’ – especially if he suspected his guardian was in any peril. ‘All is fine, I am sure,’ she said quickly. ‘They are celebrating success in some tavern, sure.’
    It worked. ‘In some tavern, sure,’ Dickon repeated, then frowned again. ‘The b-baby? Why does it make you sick?’
    ‘I do not know. It was not so last year…’ She cut herself off. She did not want to think of that lost child, nor of the man who had fathered the babe, the man whose name she still carried – herlate husband, John Chalker. There were enough ghosts about the stage of the Duke’s Playhouse already, especially as she had last seen him, a torn and bloody carcass.
    She closed her eyes, rose from her crouch, mastered her stomach – for