Ink and Steel Read Free Page A

“Oxford—”
    But Oxford shook his head. “I have not Kit’s grasp on an audience, Sir Francis.”
    Hunsdon’s hands lay flat on the scarred tabletop. He closed his eyes. “It risks Elizabeth.”
    Walsingham’s chin jerked sharply. “We’ll find another way.”
    He stared down at his hands until his attention was drawn outward again when Burbage coughed.
    â€œWhat is it, then?”
    Burbage drew himself up. “I know a man.”

Act I, scene i
    O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!
    â€”WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Othello
    Will".
    "What?” The leather-bound planken door swung open; the playmaker lifted his head from the cradle of his fingers. He cursed as the hastily cut quill snagged lank strands, spattering brown-black irongall across his hand, his cuff, and the scribbled page. “Richard, you come hand in hand with fortune tonight. You did perchance bring wine?”
    â€œNo such luck.” Burbage shut the door, then hooked a battered stool from beside Will’s unmade bedstead with one booted toe and perched without waiting to be asked. He grunted as he leaned forward, elbow on knee, and tugged his doublet straight. “ ’Tis early for wine, and I’m in no mood for a public house and ale with my bread. So”—he thumped a pottery bottle on the trestle—“it’ll have to be spirits.”
    â€œMorning?” Will set down the handkerchief with which he’d been dabbing his sleeve and looked up at a shuttered window. Beside his elbow, a fat candle guttered, and his commonplace book was propped open before it.
    â€œMorning. You’ve worked the night through. And your chamber-mate . . .” . . . won’t be returning.
    Will shrugged. He hadn’t noticed the hour, though the absence weighed on him. Or not the absence—Kit was often at the beck of patrons or conquests—but the irrevocability of it.
    Burbage accepted his silence. “Have you cups?”
    Will stood and moved to a livery cupboard, patched shoe scuffing rough boards. “What ails you, friend?” He turned with two leather tankards in his hand and came around the front of the table.
    Burbage dragged the cork from the bottle with his thumbs and poured. “To Kit.”
    Will lifted the second cup and held it, wincing, below his nose. “To Kit.” He closed his eyes on an image of a man smug as a preening cat and soaked in his own red blood. Will drank, leaning a hip against the table as if it were too much effort to reclaim his chair. “You’ll have heard the rumors he was working for the Papists, or the Crown.”
    â€œI would not hazard myself to hazard a guess,” Burbage replied, hooking a bootheel over a rung. “It’s noised about that it was a drunken brawl, and Kit’s been in his cups of late, as poets sometimes go when they’ve had a little triumph. . . .” Jokingly, he reached as if to pull the tankard from Will’s hand, and Will shielded it deftly. “But,” Burbage continued, “Kyd gave evidence against him, and Kit was still at liberty, as Kit seemed to stay no matter the charge levied against him. So there’s something there. What’s the manuscript?”
    â€œ Titus Andronicus .”
    â€œStill? The plague will have us closed into winter, Will. It’s five thousand dead already. And Titus a terrible story. We need comedy, not blood. If we ever see a stage again.”
    â€œIt’s not the story,” Will answered. Burbage was a shareholder in the troupe—Lord Strange’s Men—and as such he was half Will’s employer. The brandy tingled on the back of Will’s throat and his tongue felt thick. Still, he reckoned even harsh spirits a more welcome mouthful than blood. Kit killed. Would he risk everything . . . ? But Kit had been rash. And brilliant, and outrageous, and flamboyant. And