Ink and Steel Read Free

souls etc as required.

And since we all have suck’d one wholesome air,
And with the same proportion of Elements
Resolve, I hope we are resembled,
Vowing our loves to equal death and life.
    â€”CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1, Act II, scene vi

Prologue
    And since my mind, my wit, my head, my voice and tongue are weak,
To utter, move, devise, conceive, sound forth, declare and speak,
Such piercing plaints as answer might, or would my woeful case,
Help crave I must, and crave I will, with tears upon my face,
Of all that may in heaven or hell, in earth or air be found,
To wail with me this Loss of mine, as of these griefs the ground.
    â€”EDWARD DE VERE, 17TH EARL OF OXFORD, “Loss of Good Name”
    Christofer Marley died as he was born: on the bank of a river, within the sound and stench of slaughterhouses. The news reached London before the red sun ebbed, while alleys fell into straitened darkness under rooftops still stained bright.
    It was a bloody end to the penultimate day of May, in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of the excommunicate Elizabeth.
    The nave of the Queen’s chapel at Westminster lay shadowed when, at the secluded entrance of a secret room, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford hesitated. Edward de Vere pushed his hood back from fine hair and wiped one ringed hand across his mouth. The panel slid open at his touch, releasing the redolence of oil. The sputter of candles along the walls reassured him that he was not the first.
    Four men waited within the stifling chamber.
    â€œMarley is dead in Deptford.” Oxford tossed the words on the table like a poacher’s take. “Stabbed above the eye by your cousin’s man, Sir Francis. And we are lost with him: have you so thoughtlessly betrayed your Sovereign?”
    â€œMarley dead?” Sir Francis Walsingham’s chair skittered on stone as Elizabeth’s hollow-cheeked spymaster lurched upright.
    Seated beside Walsingham was Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon— the Lord Chamberlain—who blanched white enough that it showed in uncertain candlelight. Beyond him was the Queen’s physician— and Walsingham’s—Doctor Rodrigo Lopez. A final man stood by the wall—round, short, but of undeniable presence: the player Richard Burbage, famous already at twenty-six.
    â€œNot on my orders,” Walsingham said. “Is’t certain?”
    â€œWe are undone.” Oxford pulled a chair forth from the table and sat heavily, a dark metal ring on his thumb clicking. “The magic—we can perhaps manage that without Kit. I taught him what he knew, and it was not all I learned at Dee’s left hand.” Oxford concealed a tight smile; that learning ranged from the science of astrology to the arts of summoning succubae.
    Lopez, a swarthy Portugall and well-known a Jew, whatever his protests of conversion, leaned forward over folded hands. He stared at Walsingham with significance and said, “This is not the first attempt on one of our number—”
    â€œOur aims may have diverged,” Walsingham answered, “but the others have not forgotten our names.”
    â€œAnd there’s plague in the city,” Lopez said. “Think you ’tis unrelated to those other Prometheans?”
    â€œCan you discern a native plague from a conjured one, Physician?”
    â€œSome would argue there are no native plagues, but only devil’s work—”
    Oxford cleared his throat and his memories. “But with Marley, we lose the Lord Admiral’s Men, leaving us without a company—”
    â€œThere is my company,” Burbage put in, but Oxford’s voice rose over the player’s effortlessly.
    â€œâ€”and without a playmaker under whose name to perform our works. Never mind Kit’s ear for a verse.”
    Walsingham extended a long, knotty hand, bony wrist protruding from dusty velvet, skin translucent as silk over gnarled blue veins.