Emilia

1596–1604

is 27–35

lay on her belly on the edge of the stream, with little Henry beside her. "Like this, Mama?" he asked, picking a tiny white stone from the sediment of the bank in Paris Garden.

"That is a perfect one, my darling," she said, kissing his copper hair where the sun crowned him. "Where shall we place it?"

"On the queen's throne," Henry said. "Because the king is so naughty."

She gently nudged the stone into position in the little tableau they had created. It was a faerie garden like the ones she used to make when she was little.

There were times like this—when the city was not its usual gloomy gray and when she and Henry could pass an afternoon eating cream biscuits and making up stories—that could let herself imagine another life. If her family had stayed in Bassano del Grappa, would she be married to a musician she'd known since birth? Would she never have entertained the thought of writing?

What if the Countess had not remarried but had encouraged to keep learning? Would she chafe even more than she did now?

What if she had never gotten pregnant, and was still living with Hunsdon, a nightingale in the loveliest of cages?

She watched her son reach into the water again with his chubby fist. Well. She knew exactly what she would be missing, if that had been her lot in life.

"Why would the king make his queen love someone else?" Henry asked.

He was quiet and wise for his years. "Because sometimes the only way to value love is to lose it first," said.

She had spooled forth the old story she'd told her little cousins a decade ago, about the faerie king who wanted to play a trick on his queen. But had added four lovers in the woods, entangled in the same errant magic, so that two men now fell for the same woman.

Henry rolled onto his back. "But it's silly to love a donkey."

Bess, who'd been hovering nearby, slid a glance at . "?'Tis true, little master, that it's no easy thing being wed to an ass."

bit her cheek to keep from laughing. It was easy to joke about Alphonso while he was away on his far-flung military campaigns. She did not know how he was faring and she did not care. And in his absence, she had fashioned a different kind of family.

"When you are in love, young Henry, there is nothing silly about it," a deep voice said behind her. She turned to see Southampton striding toward them. "What your lady looks like doesn't matter, as long as you can lay eyes on her. Where she comes from doesn't matter, as long as she is headed toward you."

He knelt beside , twining his fingers with hers in the folds of her skirt. They were careful with physical affection around Henry, because he was a child and could not be trusted with secrets—but Southampton had been introduced as Mama's good friend. When he could, he joined them in the gardens.

"My lord," she murmured, smiling. "Do you compare me to a donkey?"

He squeezed her hand. "Only if I am the burden of such a beast." He hunkered down beside Henry. Sometimes caught the similarities of their profiles, sometimes she believed she was looking too hard for meaning where there was none. In the end, it did not matter. Southampton was the father figure Henry deserved, no matter how it had come about.

"Sir, have you seen the bears?" Henry asked Southampton. The boy was craning his neck to watch the throngs of people heading into the bear pits not far away.

"I have indeed."

"Mama says I am too little."

"Your mama is right. They can be dangerous. Why, once I saw a man go in and then come out again…"

"That doesn't sound dangerous…" Henry pouted.

Southampton grinned. "He was being pursued by a bear."

She watched Henry's face light up as Southampton told the story. The bear and bull gardens were far from the only entertainment. The new theater, the Swan, was in its finishing stages—built by Francis Langley, who'd erected it on the site of the old Paris Garden manor house.

In another life, she and Southampton would take in a performance in the sumptuous new building. Perhaps, after she watched emotions play across his features in reaction to sentences she had penned, she would confess that she was the one who had written them.

It was just as outlandish and impossible a thought as any other. Southampton was a tremendous supporter of the arts, having racked up far more dedications than just the ones in the poems she had given Shakespeare years ago. He and often talked about plays, but she had never admitted that she had written some of his favorites. If Southampton recognized himself in the character of Romeo, he'd never mentioned it.

She made a mental note: a story about faeries and lovers and a man with the head of an ass was too particular to be coincidental; if Southampton ever saw it performed he might be suspicious. would have to make sure to change the story she told her son, so that it wasn't identical to the play she would eventually provide to Shakespeare.

"Master Henry," Southampton asked, "might I borrow your mother for a moment?"

Her son was dropping pebbles in the stream and seeing how fast they sank; with a nod to Bess, let the Earl help her to her feet. She watched her maid crouch beside Henry, taking a leaf and sailing it like a little boat, to his utter delight.

She walked beside Southampton for a while, until they were out of sight. Then he caught her up in his arms and kissed her, fitting himself against her like the key to a lock. "I did not think to see you today," breathed. He was supposed to be at court. "It is the best of surprises."

"You will not believe so," Southampton murmured against her temple. He held her a little tighter. "He is dead, ."

Her first thought: Alphonso. She felt herself starting to float, tethered only by Southampton's arms, but he braced her against him. "Hunsdon," he said.

stilled. The Lord Chamberlain was an old man; this was not unexpected—but it did not make it any easier. The list of people who had known and cared for her was thinning out. She wondered how long it would be before she could count only on herself. "May his memory be a blessing," she whispered.

"I wanted you to hear it from me."

She touched her hand to his cheek. "Thank you," she said simply, and he nodded.

"Let me escort you home," he offered.

She shook her head. He always offered, and she always said no. In the first place, an earl wandering down Mark Lane would be too conspicuous. In the second, it was Alphonso's home, and he might arrive unexpectedly at any moment.

Ever since Southampton had turned down the Earl of Oxford's daughter, other potential brides had been suggested to him, or thrown into his arms on dance floors. She imagined he extricated himself from every snare with the grace and charm for which he was known, so that the lady in question did not even realize she was being dismissed. She did not know how long he could avoid marriage, however. The Queen would want him to have an heir.

In another life, young Henry…

She would not even let herself think on that.

knew Southampton did not see it this way, but she was the stone dragging him down, and it was only a matter of time before he either freed himself or sank. Here he was trying to save her from sorrow, and she could do nothing but cause him eventual heartache.

"I think I would like to be alone for a bit," she said. "Would you tell Bess?"

She turned toward the Thames, approaching the Swan worksite. It felt right to pay homage to Hunsdon here, at a place of theater. listened to the ringing of hammers and she imagined the quiet cocoon of Hunsdon's study, the rustle of pages on his desk, the way he would sometimes hum as he struck a line through an objectionable phrase. She remembered how proud he was when he grew a potato from a root brought back by Sir Francis Drake, and how they'd tried the delicacy boiled in prunes and soaked in wine and crusted in ashes and finally had to declare it fit only as chicken feed. She imagined Hunsdon's hands on her—not taking her virginity but helping her out of a carriage as if she were a true lady, and sponging her brow when she was feverish. He had paid for her body, but he'd valued her mind. More important, he'd made her value it, when it would have been so much easier to believe that she was worth only the pleasure her flesh could bring a man. He was not a father figure and not a lover but something in between. And he had been kind.

She turned away from the clatter of the construction site, brought her hands to her kirtle, and she tore the neckline of the fabric. Just two months ago she had lit what would have been a yahrzeit candle for the anniversary of Kit's death.

Grief was the tax of having something precious.

By the time she reached the unlikely group of a maid, a common boy, and a courtly earl blowing maple seeds across the stream with gusts of their own breath, had wiped away her tears and boxed up her memories of Hunsdon. She sat beside Southampton, whose astute gaze fell to the rip in her clothing. "What happened?"

"A branch," she lied.

Southampton had told young Henry that there was nothing silly about love—but there was: its untested arrogance.

He could love only the parts of her he knew about. But she would never tell him she was a hidden Jew. A playwright. That she had conceived, and aborted, his child. And if he didn't know those things, did he truly love , or just the person he thought she was?

—

Southampton walked them to the Paris Garden stairs to take the ferry across the Thames. He ruffled Henry's hair and kissed 's hand, his teeth scraping against the inside of her wrist and his lightning eyes searing hers as he helped her onto the boat. A wind whipped out of the north, chasing off the temperate day and bringing a thunderstorm that shook the flatbed of the ferry. Henry, frightened, hid in the folds of her skirt between her legs.

It was a rainy walk back to Mark Lane, and by the time opened the door, she, Henry, and Bess were all soaked to the skin.

Canted back in a chair, with his dirty, bare feet propped on the oak table, was a barely recognizable Alphonso. His hair was shorn close to the skull and he reeked of liquor, evident even from a distance. A pile of rags—a uniform?—was puddled on the floor in front of the hearth, which he had not bothered to light. When a smile oiled over his face, she saw that he was missing a tooth. "Hello, Wife," he drawled. "Did you miss me?"

—

had not realized that when your landscape was missing a piece of scenery for months you could convince yourself it had never existed. "Alphonso," she said. "How good to see you."

She realized her mistake immediately—she had greeted her husband as if he were a stranger in his own home. He stood, swaying. "What you mean is: how good of me to let you remain in my lodgings while I was abroad."

"Yes, of course," she said, scrabbling in her pocket for a coin. She pressed this backward, blindly reaching for Bess, who would know what to do. The last thing she wanted was for Henry to set out in the driving rain again, even if it were to purchase a sweet or whatever bribe Bess could afford with the coin had given her, but—

No, actually. The last thing she wanted was for Henry to bear witness to what was going to happen.

She heard the door shut behind her, and she breathed a sigh of relief. "You…are on leave then? From battle?"

"You could say that. But permanent, like." He stumbled, knocking over the bottle of alcohol, which dripped from the table onto the rushes on the floor. "They couldn't even prove it was me who was poaching. It was dark enough, I made sure of it."

closed her eyes. "You were poaching? From the lord you were supposed to be serving under?"

"It was a fucking rabbit, " Alphonso said. "If they gave us more to eat, I wouldn't have had to do it."

She wondered how much of her settlement Alphonso had scrubbed through. She wondered how long ago he had been discharged from the Queen's service. But she could not figure out a way to ask either of those questions without angering him further.

His eyes locked on her face as he moved closer, and instinctively, she backed up against the door. "Is that any way to treat an English hero?" Alphonso asked.

"You must be exhausted."

"I'm hungry."

She edged past him toward the larder. "Let me see what we have to eat."

"Not for that." He snatched her hair in his fist before she could reach the shelved alcove. He pushed her down so that her cheek rested in the puddle of alcohol on the table and lifted her skirts. "You haven't forgotten how to do this, I hope."

No.

did not realize she had said the word out loud until Alphonso pressed down harder on her temple. "What did you say?"

"No," she whispered.

She might have been answering his question. But they both knew that was not the case. His answer was to push himself into her, sweating and grunting against her back while she closed her eyes, pinned by his weight. It was over in seconds. She felt her skirts skim the backs of her calves again, and then her legs gave out and she slid to the wet floor.

"The whores that followed the camp don't act like they're carved out of marble," Alphonso said. "They couldn't wait to lie with me."

"They were paid to lie with you," murmured.

She thought he would strike her, but Alphonso just laughed. "As I was paid to lie with you, " he pointed out. "No wonder the old prick couldn't wait to get rid of you." Then he straightened, throwing his arms akimbo. "Welcome home, Alphonso," he announced to nobody, and left her steeped in a mess of his making.

Master Shakespeare,

May the Almighty preserve you in good health.

I humbly ask if we might hasten our next transaction for gloves. It has become a matter of dire importance.

Thus indebted to you,

Mistress Lanier

Mistress Lanier,

I fear I cannot accommodate your request for gloves as I have returned to Stratford indeterminately. My son Hamnet now sleeps with angels.

The rest is silence.

Thus I commit you to God's protection.

Wm. Shakespeare

—

For a long time, stood in her chamber, rereading Shakespeare's missive. She knew he was married, and that his wife lived apart from him in the country, but she had not known he had children. If she had, she would have wondered at his ability to choose a career that required him to stay away when there was so little time to watch them grow.

She thought about the little redheaded girl she sometimes dreamed of, still, who never would be. This was the first time felt anything for William Shakespeare that resembled compassion.

She admired Shakespeare for his singular passion for making money. She was uncomfortable at the ways in which he did that. Recognizing her limited choices, she accepted their partnership.

When Alphonso entered the chamber, she turned her back hastily. "What have you there?" he asked, and she shook her head, the note already stuffed between her breasts.

"Just the linens," she said, pulling them off the bed in a cloud, bustling past her husband to the washtub outside.

From the corner of her eye, as she left, she saw Alphonso lift up the mattress, searching.

—

Over the next few weeks learned that Alphonso had squandered nearly all the money that Hunsdon had settled on her—gathering the materials he needed to become part of the Queen's army and then, after being ignominiously sacked, nursing his feelings in France before returning home. He seemed to want nothing to do with Henry, for which she was grateful, but he would come to her and demand his conjugal rights if he were still conscious after a full day at the tavern. He claimed that he was doing business, trying to foster connections to new nobles who might sponsor him for knighthood. He also was looking for information on lodging since he could not maintain the rent on Mark Lane anymore.

had heard once from Southampton and sent word that it was not safe for her to see him.

She had not received any further message from Shakespeare. She feared that if she did not find a way to make money soon, she and her son would be put out on the street.

She found herself, these days, thinking about Christine de Pizan, the scholar whose work the Countess had made her study when she was young. had memorized the start of The Book of the City of Ladies, but it wasn't until now that she truly understood it. "I could scarcely find a moral work by any author which didn't devote some chapter or paragraph to attacking the female sex," Pizan had written. "I had to accept their unfavorable opinion of women since it was unlikely that so many learned men, who seemed to be endowed with such great intelligence and insight into all things, could possibly have lied on so many different occasions…. Thus I preferred to give more weight to what others said than to trust my own judgment and experience."

wanted to even the balance a bit, to create a female character whose mind—as Pizan claimed—was as capable of legal thought as a man's. had already written a tragic heroine—Juliet. She'd written a faerie queen duped by her own husband. Now she wanted to create a woman who saved the day.

She began on a sunny Wednesday. On the banks of the river with other laundresses, Bess had been soaking the household linens and undergarments in urine and had poured lye and potash over them. While Henry sat at their feet, drawing in the mud with a stick, helped beat out the stains and rinse and scrub. After, the women stretched the linens out on the grassy slopes of the bleaching grounds to let them dry.

It took time, and you could not leave your belongings without risk of them being stolen, so while Bess took Henry home for a nap, stayed behind. She set her writing box on her lap and cut a fresh quill, glancing down at her hand.

Her skin was red and raw from the lye. As always when she scrubbed laundry, she had taken off her wedding ring. This time, though, she left her finger bare instead of restoring the ring to its place. It felt like the smallest act of resistance.

She dipped the pen in the ink: another act of resistance.

used, as a starting point, a story she'd read in the original Italian: Il Pecorone. She wrote of her own liabilities—female, intelligent, Jewish—and distributed them among the characters who were most likely to be judged for those traits. She gave her maiden name to the character Bassanio, who wanted to marry Portia, an heiress, but didn't have the funds to do so. Bassanio asked his friend Antonio for money, but Antonio's funds were tied up in a shipping venture. Hoping still to help Bassanio, Antonio approached another moneylender—the Jew, Shylock—for a loan. But Shylock held a grudge against Antonio. He agreed to lend the money but demanded a literal pound of Antonio's flesh in exchange if the loan wasn't repaid.

As wrote her, Portia was a fierce, smart, independent woman frustrated because her father's will prohibited her from picking her own husband. Instead, Portia's suitors would choose from three caskets—gold, silver, and lead—one of which held her portrait. Whoever claimed the casket that concealed her portrait would have her hand. Two princes picked the caskets made of precious metal and were dismissed. But Bassanio picked the lead casket, which contained the portrait and which—like Portia herself—was more than met the eye. When a letter arrived from Antonio saying that his ships were lost at sea and he would have to face Shylock in Venetian court, Bassanio left immediately. Portia's money would be his after marriage, and he hoped Shylock would take that for repayment, rather than Antonio's flesh.

began to write furiously, in Portia's voice.

But now I was the lord

Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,

Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,

This house, these servants, and this same myself

Are yours, my lord's. I give them with this ring,

Which, when you part from, lose, or give away,

Let it presage the ruin of your love,

And be my vantage to exclaim on you.

drew her wedding ring from her pocket.

That little band was imbued with so much power.

Without thinking twice, she pitched it into the Thames, and did not even bother to watch it sink.

Suddenly she knew how she wanted her play to end. As a woman, Portia was powerless to help save Antonio. As a man, however, Portia had a voice.

Disguised as a male lawyer named Balthazar, Portia told Shylock he was well within his rights to demand the payment of a pound of flesh…he just could not extract a single drop of blood while doing so. When Shylock backpedaled, asking for the money instead, Portia insisted it was his own reliance on the face value of the law that had led him to this moment. Shylock's wealth was stripped from him, because he'd threatened a Venetian, and he was forced to convert to Christianity.

Since that, of course, was what the audience would see as a happy ending.

She wrote Shylock as if she were still having a conversation with Kit about his Jew of Malta. She made her Jewish character vengeful—holding a grudge against Antonio—and she made him reviled for his faith, like Dr. Lopez had been before his execution by the Queen. But she also made him human.

I am a Jew, she wrote, and even putting those words on paper sent a shiver down 's spine.

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

It was exhausting—for Shylock, for Portia, for herself—constantly trying to be more than society believed you to be. If you were condescending, if you acted above your station, if you lashed out—it was only because you'd received that treatment from others.

The villainy you teach me I will execute, wrote in Shylock's voice.

By the time the sun was setting, the linens were dry enough to be folded. brought the corners to her chest, aligning the pleats and setting the bedsheets in the empty basket. As she worked, she mentally sketched out the last scene in her play. As payment for legal services, Balthazar/Portia would demand that Bassanio give her the very wedding ring he vowed he'd never remove. When he returned home without it, Portia scolded him for giving his ring away and claimed he had therefore given up his right to her bed and her body. In fact, she was now entitled to share a bed and her body with the very person to whom he'd given that ring. Eventually she'd reveal that she and Balthazar were one and the same…but not without making Bassanio sweat. Because what was the point of a wedding ring—a symbol—if the vow behind it was specious?

When she entered her home, Bess was serving dinner. Henry sat like a perfect little gentleman, his face lighting up to see hers. At the head of the table was Alphonso. "Apologies," she said, blustering inside. "It took longer than I expected for the linens to dry."

Alphonso cut a bit of mutton with his knife. "We did not think to wait for you."

"I would not have wished you to," said. "How was your day, Husband?"

"Fruitful," he replied.

She moved past him to set the linens in the bedchamber, but Alphonso grabbed her wrist, pulling her off balance. The basket fell to the floor, and she toppled onto his lap. "Have you no welcome kiss for me, then?"

Dutifully, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his cheek.

His hand tightened painfully on her wrist. "Where is your ring?"

She glanced down at her hand as if its absence was unexpected. "I know not," she answered.

"You stupid cow," Alphonso spat, dumping her off him. "We could have sold that for a month's lodging."

"You are right, Alphonso," she said, her eyes cast down. "What punishment shall I have by your hand? Let me choose it, for my own brainlessness. By heaven, I shall never come in your bed until I once again see that ring."

"Indeed," Alphonso agreed, and then his features pinched with confusion. "But—"

"Husband, it is no more or less than I deserve." She picked up the basket of linens and, with humble chagrin, trudged up the stairs to the bedchamber. There, she closed the door behind herself.

She knew her reprieve would be fleeting, that he could demand access to her body whenever he wished it.

But still.

smiled.

Good Mistress,

I pray this letter finds you in good health and calm spirits as I wish not to offend you by denying your wishes.

If you cannot deliver your response in person I beg for your thoughts and words to know that your days remain as empty as mine; a void that could only be filled with one the shape of you.

I am lost without you; what other explanation could there be for why you have not found me?

I remain,

Yours.

S.

—

refused to meet Southampton, because the danger of being caught by Alphonso was too great. But when Shakespeare finally corresponded, she took the risk of an encounter, because she needed money to pay for food.

She paced in front of a brothel quite far from their usual meeting spot, wondering why on earth Shakespeare had wanted to meet her here. It was not nighttime yet, but feared being seen by one who knew of her through Alphonso, or by Alphonso himself. It was overcast, an autumn day with the teeth of winter. drew her shawl closer and clutched her satchel more tightly. Inside it was a foul copy of The Merchant of Venice.

When Shakespeare finally arrived, he was nearly a half hour late. Once again she noticed how fine his clothing and boots appeared—clearly, representing her, and others, was paying dividends. "Mistress," he said, nodding.

"This is not a good spot for a rendezvous," snapped.

His brows rose. "I offered to come to your residence—"

"And we both know why that is not possible."

"Yes. It is just that…I cannot frequent my usual haunts." Shakespeare dipped his chin. "I find myself afoul of the law."

She blinked at him. She was doing business with a criminal?

"It is nothing," he scoffed. "A writ of attachment taken out against me by William Wayte."

"Why?"

"Langley and I came to an agreement about the use of the Swan for the Lord Chamberlain's Men this summer. Wayte claims we cheated him."

narrowed her eyes, waiting for the rest.

"As a result, I cannot show my face anywhere in the domain of the sheriff of Surrey without risking arrest." He slapped a pouch of coins into her hand. "Wayte threatened getting the Puritans involved. I assumed you'd prefer receiving payment for your faerie play to having me languish in a cell."

She fumbled in her satchel for the new play. "You will soon not be able to reach me at my current lodging. We are…relocating."

"As am I." Shakespeare sighed. "I find myself on the default roll for St. Helen's parish, largely thanks to you."

"It is my fault you evaded taxes?"

"It is your fault I have the wealth to do so." He took the stack of pages from her hands. "And what is the subject this time?"

"A greedy Jew and an upstart of a woman."

Shakespeare shook his head. "You really must learn the definition of comedy, my dear."

As he started off, she called after him. "If your apartments change, how will I find you?"

He smiled, feline. "It is I that shall find you, mistress. Or do you doubt my ability to do so?"

She did not doubt it in the least. It was the danger in doing business with someone who was willing to keep secrets: he had secrets of his own.

—

Since Alphonso's return, had managed to keep Southampton at arm's length. But the threat of being evicted made her vulnerable, and when Bess slipped her a letter, hurried to the privy closet to read it.

In Southampton's bold, slanted hand was an address in Westminster.

Holywell Street.

The only other word on the paper was a date, a week hence, which gave time to figure out an excuse to leave the house. She had told Alphonso she had been hired to instruct a noblewoman's daughter on playing the lute. She would produce a coin from her own cache of funds if it meant being able to meet with Southampton. "Please them well," Alphonso had said. "Mayhap they will hire you and you will be more than just a millstone around my neck."

On the day of her meeting, dressed in one of her old brocade court dresses—tighter since her pregnancy—and picked her way through the streets of London to the address. It was a narrow building on a side street in Westminster that sat between a parish church with a small graveyard, and a butcher. The metallic smell of blood washed over as she watched the tradesman string a haunch of venison to drain in his shop.

She rapped on the door and it opened a crack. A hand snaked out, grasping her wrist, making gasp as she was tugged inside.

Southampton pushed her up against the wall, his hands framing her face as he kissed her. She melted into him. He hiked her higher, pressing her back against the plaster, as she untied his hose and dug through the foam of her skirts to bare herself. They came together like an alchemical reaction, the kind that gets mistaken for sorcery because it alters form and substance.

Afterward, they were tangled on the floor of the apartments, cool air spilling through the windows and drying the sweat on their skin. took stock of her surroundings. The rooms were small and bright and cheery. There was a scattering of furniture, covered with great white sheets billowing like the sails of ships that might carry the two of them away.

Southampton flattened one hand on 's belly and traced a pattern with the other on her shoulder. "I thought you might not come," he confessed.

"You did not give a meeting time," said.

He dropped a kiss on her collarbone. "I knew it would not be easy for you to leave. And I would have waited forever."

Forever. It was such a luxury of a word.

She listened to the sound of a customer being greeted by the butcher, and the midday bells of the parish church. "Who lives here?" asked.

"You," Southampton murmured. "If you wish it."

She turned in his arms to face him. He was asking her to be his mistress? He would keep her here, as the Baron had kept Isabella in her apartments in St. Helen's Bishopsgate. "But I am married, " she said, her voice breaking.

"You need a home, . This could be for you, and Henry." Southampton swallowed. "And for your husband."

"You would do that for me?" she whispered.

"I already have."

"And how do I explain that I have come suddenly into a residence?" She sat up, turning away.

He sat up, too. She could feel his gaze on her back. "Tell him a relative died and left it to you."

"It would immediately become his anyway," muttered.

She felt his fingers tracing the pearls of her spine. "Then do not tell him at all," he said.

glanced over her shoulder to meet his gaze.

"What choice do we have? I have met with lawyers and solicitors," Southampton added. "There is nothing for it—if the marriage has been consummated, it cannot be dissolved. The former king had to introduce a new religion to get rid of his bride, and I do not have that sort of power."

"It is his word against mine. We could say—"

"No," Southampton softly interrupted. "You cannot do something that puts young Henry on the wrong side of the blanket."

He was right. To annul her marriage would leave her son with the stigma of being a bastard, something he would never escape.

"You cannot remarry. Not until he is dead. But——you can leave him. And I can protect you." Before she could protest he touched a finger to her lips. "No one bats an eye when married couples separate," he argued. "It is the norm more than the exception."

She knew that, of course. It was why she had been procured for Hunsdon.

"If we cannot live as man and wife," Southampton said, "let us at least be a family." He raised a brow. "And before you say you fear Lanier would retaliate against me, allow me to point out that he does not have the power to do so."

"You will need an heir."

"I have one—my dim-witted cousin. What I do not have is you."

She felt his hands come around her shoulders, his cheek press against hers. "I am pregnant," whispered.

She felt the tightening of his fingers, and then the silence in which he marked the weeks that had separated them. It was not his baby, it couldn't be.

had known for over a week—she hadn't bled in two months and her breasts were so tender they ached. "I have not told Alphonso yet." She had hoped—even if she had not uttered the words aloud—that nature might resolve this problem for her.

"It does not matter to me," Southampton said. "I would raise the child as if it were mine."

This man. Oh, this man. "It would be a scandal," said.

He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, as if she were a lady he had met at the palace, not in these sordid circumstances. "Think on it," he begged. "Do not give me your answer today."

"Sometimes I believe there are people in this world for whom happiness is not intended," admitted.

Southampton shook his head. "I would not disappoint you, love."

She could feel the words on her tongue like sharp stars: You do not know me.

She wished she had the conviction to reveal her secrets to him, and to know that his offer would still stand if she did.

Instead, she kissed Southampton so deeply she had no choice but to swallow those confessions. "Prove it," said, her voice husky, as she tumbled them both backward again.

—

They had fallen asleep. By the time she left Westminster the lamps were being lit on the streets and she found herself hurrying back to Mark Lane, skirting drunkards and beggars. The key to the apartments Southampton had given her burned like a coal between her breasts.

To her surprise, when she entered her home, it was pitch-dark. There were no braces of lit candles, no dishes being cleared, no sounds at all. closed the door behind herself. "Henry?" she whispered. "Bess?"

She heard the scrape of flint and then a flame spilled from a candle, illuminating Alphonso. "Where is your lute?" he asked.

"I'm…sorry?"

"Your lute, " he repeated. "You were tutoring music, were you not?"

Her eyes flicked to the surface of the table, littered with letters with broken seals. She had been a fool, but she couldn't bear to throw Southampton's letters into a fire. She had hidden them, along with the published copies of her poems, in the folds of old chemises at the bottom of her trunk of clothing.

"I am lost without you," Alphonso read. "Yours, S." He picked up another with Shakespeare's name at the bottom. "A… glover ? You think me stupid enough to believe that? The only thing being gloved here is his prick, by a whore like you." He threw the letter at her, and then the printed copy of Venus and Adonis with Shakespeare's name upon it.

realized two things at once: Alphonso had conflated Shakespeare with the author of the letters he'd found. He did not realize S stood for Southampton; he assumed that she was carrying on an affair with someone named William Shakespeare, which was also clearly why she was in possession of his poems.

She also realized if Alphonso had found the hiding place for her letters, he had also discovered her secret stash of money.

"Alphonso," she said, breathless. "Wait—"

He toppled the chair in his haste to reach her, grabbing her by the throat and slamming her into the wall. His hands tightened. She drooled and coughed, her eyes rolling wildly. "I will fuck him out of you," her husband said, punching her head against the wall with each word. He threw her to the ground as she sucked at the sudden air, only to lose it when his booted foot caught her gut over and over.

She tried to crawl away, thinking of the child Alphonso did not know about…and then about the one he did. "Henry," she managed, blood running down her chin.

Alphonso jerked her still by her hair. "Cannot hear you scream," he replied, and then he punched her full in the face.

—

She swam to consciousness twice.

Once, when he was still beating her body.

Again, when he was done, and she felt the bloody runnel between her legs, just as she'd secretly, terribly wished.

When the sun rose the next morning, she could barely open her eyes; they were swollen into slits. Her jaw was broken, as was her arm. A patch of hair had been torn from her scalp. Her skirts were stiff with dried blood.

When she saw Alphonso staring at her, she whimpered and did her best to inch away from him.

"I cannot stop you from seeing him again," Alphonso said. "But I can stop him from seeing you. "

She tried to wet her lips. "You would…kill me…"

"I do not think even the threat of that would give you pause," he said. "No, if ever I find that you are making a cuckold of me again, I will kill the boy."

Alphonso stood, opening the door of their home so that light bisected her like a sword. He walked outside, flexing his fist.

Not long after, Bess returned with Henry. Seeing , she tucked him behind her skirts and told him to shut his eyes tight. Then she rushed to , gingerly touching her broken body. "Mistress, oh, how you've been beat," Bess crooned.

Yes, thought dully. I have.

—

It took a week before she could sit up in bed. Another week before her hand was strong enough to hold a quill. As the weather turned colder and 's body healed, she worked her mind for what she might say to Southampton.

In the end she wrote him a poem.

The world was upside down: honor misplaced, joy forsworn, maidens compromised, the innocent slandered. The good had been vanquished; and hope—which had taken the form of a key and a home that might have belonged to them both—had literally been lost in the fray.

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry, she began.

Art made tongue-tied by authority…

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

She put down her quill to wipe her eyes.

Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

This was her penance for loving him: because she had known joy, she would also be able to recognize its absence.

A sad tale's best for winter, she wrote. I cannot choose between two halves of my heart. He threatens what I have borne, and that I cannot bear.

He would read between the lines and understand that she was talking of Henry.

If your love be true, if you want what is best for me, then you will heed this request: Do not beg, do not rail, do not burn the world down for me. I shall not survive the loss of you twice.

"Bess," she called. Her throat was still raw, her voice an approximation.

The maid appeared, and folded the note, sealed it, and pushed it into her hand. "You must take this to Southampton House."

"I cannot leave you alone, mistress—"

" Go. "

Bess skittered from the room, leaving the chamber door ajar. set aside her writing desk and collapsed backward on the bed. She closed her eyes, imagining Southampton. His smile, when he saw her handwriting.

His face, when he actually read it.

Her eyes burned, even while closed. Perhaps would hear of Southampton, mention of him threaded through the future conversations of others, and knowing that he was in the world would make it a palatable place to end out her days. Perhaps she would pray to never hear his name again, because she had never felt agony like this before. What was the point of fighting so hard to be here, when her life would only be more of the same—now without any glimmer of him.

To be, or not to be, that was the question.

It would be so much easier if she hadn't woken up after Alphonso's beating.

looked down at the knife she used to trim her quills. Holding it steadily in her unbandaged hand, she pressed down on the pale skin of her wrist. She pushed down with the blade, almost fascinated by the thin line of welling blood.

A scream tore from the other room, jerking her from her dark thoughts.

She sat up, her body protesting, and dragged herself off the bed. She staggered from bedpost to wall to the doorway, holding herself upright with her good arm and cradling the broken one against her body like a wing.

Henry lay on a pallet in front of the hearth, tangled in the claws of a nightmare.

She sank to the stones beside him, brushing the damp hair from his forehead. His eyes, stormy and silver as hers, blinked open. "Mama," he said.

Her face was swollen and split and blackened. Blood smeared her wrist, an injury of her own making. She did not know herself anymore. But Henry did.

If she could not bear to lose someone she loved, how could she ever wish that fate on her son?

She stroked his back until he curled like a silkworm, breathing steadily again in sleep. Then, because she could not manage to stand on her own, she simply lay down beside him.

As it turned out, you could take the pound of flesh without the blood.

You could remove your heart, and still feel its broken pieces rattling inside.

—

By 1597 , had lost all her angles and edges. She had sanded down whatever splinters remained, what parts of her stood out. It left her numb, which was the only way she could get through her days. If you didn't dream, if you didn't feel…you could not be disappointed.

She marked time by its uniformity: the baking of bread in the morning, the cleaning of the floors in the afternoon, the walks she took with Henry, the pawing of Alphonso as he pulled up her night rail. She did not write. She barely spoke.

She thought it so interesting that people lived in fear of sorcery, but no one seemed to even notice that she was a ghost that already walked among them.

She tried to soothe the ache inside her, but she could not find joy in music or poetry or any other pursuit that had once been transportive. Henry was the only bright spot in her world. He would hand her a crushed flower as a treasure, and she would feel the rusty bend of a smile; he would curl into her lap, and it was enough to make her feel substantial, instead of like a wraith. She thought perhaps the pit of loss inside her would abate if she had another child. Although she did not wish Alphonso to be the baby's father, she no longer had an option. God knew, it was bound to happen, as Alphonso used her body frequently for his own pleasure. Indeed, twice she got pregnant, and twice she miscarried, which was how she knew God would never forgive her sins—but worse, He would never forget her long enough for the punishment to ease.

She knew that Bess was worried. The maid had swelled to fill up the space left behind as diminished. She cooked and went to market. She breeched Henry and suggested they spend afternoons at Alma's so that he could begin to learn his letters. In truth, thought that Bess simply wanted someone else to bear witness to her mistress slipping away.

Sometimes, Henry would get close to her face and put his hands over her cheeks and stare into her eyes, like he was searching for his mother inside those smooth features.

Those were the times she started to cry.

Alphonso had secured them lodgings in Westminster, on Canon Row in Longditch. It was not far from Holywell Street, where had last met with Southampton. When she had to leave the house, she did so with her eyes downcast, just in case she might be tempted to look for a cap of copper hair, a piercing blue gaze, the love of her life.

Shakespeare, as promised, had found her with a letter at her new residence. His name had turned up once again in default of taxes in St. Helen's Bishopsgate. He was, of course, in need of funds, which meant he was in need of a new play from her. She fed the paper to the fire, not bothering to write him back at his new address in Bankside.

When the Earl of Essex was looking for gentlemen volunteers for his voyage to the Azores, Alphonso signed on. And yet, when he finally shipped out that spring, the atmosphere in the house did not feel any lighter. found herself surprisingly blank of emotion, which only reinforced the suspicion that Alphonso was right. The problem had been her, all along.

She found herself in Jeronimo's household one afternoon, cutting turnips for a stew with Alma while Bess mended clothing. Young Henry sat at their feet, badly playing a lute. The boy's notes were sour and jarring, but Jeronimo grinned as if he'd composed his own symphony. "We will make a player of you yet, son," he said. "Will we not, ?"

had seen her cousin dozens of times since her husband had nearly beaten her to death. The first time, her face was a mincemeat, and Jeronimo had tried to meet what remained of her undamaged eye and asked after her welfare.

As if the answer had not been patently visible.

"You should introduce him to the Queen," Alma told her husband, winking at . "It is never too early for another Bassano to become a court musician."

"Her Majesty barely wants the ones she already has," Jeronimo said, adjusting Henry's tiny hand on the bridge of the lute. "She is too melancholy for music. All her favorites are off on galleons fighting Spain with Essex. Suffolk, Raleigh, Southampton."

Southampton.

Was fighting on the same military voyage that Alphonso was on.

felt the knife she was holding slip, slicing deep into the meat of her thumb. She blinked down as her blood spilled, surrounding the turnips. It was sharp and dark, like a nightmare. She wanted to drown in it.

" Che cavalo! " Alma cried. She lurched toward , prying the paring knife from her hand and wrapping the bleeding thumb in her own apron.

stared down at her hand, caught between them. She could feel her pulse in the wound. It interested her as nothing else had for some time now. Proof that she was still among the living.

There was a bustle of communication in Italian and Jeronimo hustled little Henry outside. " Tesora, " Alma said softly, curving her hand around 's jaw. "I knew your body was broken. I did not realize your soul was, too."

felt as if she were at the bottom of the ocean, looking up at the sun, and wondering how she could ever muster the energy to reach it again. And then, like a miracle, Alma's words reached out and wrapped around her as surely as her arms. "What do you wish for, ?"

Oh, how to answer that question.

She had wished for wings and flown too close to the sun. She would not make that mistake again. "A baby," she heard herself say.

If Henry was all the joy she had left and he was already growing up, she would need somewhere else to settle the estate of her love.

Alma's eyes caught hers, held them. "Then you shall have one," she vowed.

—

Doctor Simon Forman was an astrologer Alma's cousin's wife had visited when she found herself infertile. 's hope was the doctor could fix whatever fault lay with her, so that by the time her husband came home from battle, she would be able to successfully carry a child to term. The baby, she hoped, would tether her back to the world from which she kept fading.

Forman was small, with strands of baby-fine hair drawn forward on his scalp to detract from the shine of his pate. His drawing room was dark, the shades pulled even though it was midday and sunny. rubbed her palms on her lap. He was a doctor, which meant that he should see her only as a patient. And yet when he had brought her into the room, his hand had been on the small of her back and slipped lower. He had been staring at the rise of her breasts over her gown for the past ten minutes.

bit her lip. "I beg your pardon, sir. I do not know how this begins."

"It is a conversation, nothing more and nothing less. Of course, if you choose anything but honesty, I cannot be expected to help you."

"I understand."

"How old are you, Mistress Lanier?" he asked.

"Seven and twenty," she replied.

"You are married?"

She nodded.

"You wish to conceive a child?"

"Yes. I have had many…false conceptions."

"Your husband wishes you to be here?"

"My husband…has dealt harshly with me," admitted. "He has spent and consumed my goods. He does not know I am here, as he is in service with the Earl of Essex in hope of gaining preferment as a knight." She seemed to consider this. "You would know, would you not, if that will come to pass?"

Forman raised a brow. "Do you ask because you wish to become a lady?"

"I wish because it is my husband's wish," said.

"If he wishes you to become a lady, " the doctor mused, imbuing the word with a double meaning, "that suggests you are not one at present."

A hot flush rose to 's face. "I am a faithful wife, sir."

"Are you." He took his quill and touched the tip of it to a small mark at the base of her throat. "Then why wear you the mark of the Devil?"

She clapped a hand over her neck. "I have had that mark since I was born, sir."

The doctor scrawled some notes. struggled to read them upside down. "Mistress Lanier, I should inform you of my methods. If I believe a client is keeping secrets from me…particularly secrets of the flesh…I will not hesitate to call her out as a whore." He fixed his watery eyes on her. "Your parents' names?"

She watched him sketch out two astrological figures and write down the words she spoke. Baptista Bassano, Margaret Johnson.

He wrote Alphonso Lanier in the margin.

"I was raised by the Countess of Kent," said. "After my father died and my mother went away. I was taught by the Countess herself, until she married again."

"And then?"

"When I was thirteen," said, "I became the paramour of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain. He kept me long, and made available to me jewels and money, and gave me forty pounds a year—"

"Yes, yes," Forman interrupted. "When did you first have sexual intercourse?"

Honesty.

"Two months after I arrived at Somerset House," replied.

"As I suspected," the doctor said. "And you took pride in this whoring."

"I took no pride in being made to be his mistress, sir."

"Were you not compensated with financial rewards for sharing a bed?"

did not understand astrology, yet she assumed that this man believed confessing her sin would unblock her womb.

"It was sex that brought you to that relationship, and I warrant it was sex that put you out of it," he said. "You were with child…in fornication… et sodomita. " The doctor glanced up. "Your current husband was aware of this."

"Yes," she said. "The Lord Chamberlain arranged for me to be married off to him for appearances. But rest assured my husband was compensated with financial rewards for sharing a bed."

"Were you never taught to hold your tongue?" Forman murmured, staring at her lips. "Or mayhap you were taught to use it another way entirely."

cleared her throat. "Sir, I fail to understand how your accusations about my past will help me conceive in the present."

"It is not for you to understand…only to accept the baseness of your lust. An unweeded garden grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it." Forman leaned forward, his breath sour on her face, his hand falling to her knee and squeezing. "How fortunate for you that I know all about plowing."

—

's second visit with Simon Forman took place in her home a month later, privately, at his request. She served the doctor ale and bread and splurged on an expensive cheese Alma had suggested; to do so herself had given up her own supper. "Have you seen my future in my charts, sir?" she asked. Forman patted the stool beside him. After a hesitation, she sat down. She watched him rip off a bit of bread and wrap it around cheese before stuffing it into his mouth. "These things take time," he said.

"These things take money I do not have," she admitted.

"You worry about funds?"

"I worry about feeding my child," corrected.

"Yet you told me how noblemen and Her Majesty favored you."

"Indeed, they did," said. "And Alphonso has spent all my money."

Forman belched. "The stars have told me that he will return home with preferment, but that before this, he will be in peril for his life."

"Will he be knighted, then?"

The doctor shrugged. "That is a question for a different day."

"I will not be able to meet with you again on a different day," said. "I haven't the payment."

"I think you do, mistress. It is a currency with which you are familiar." He blotted his mouth with his sleeve. "I will not force a client as such to halek, but were it offered freely, in barter…" His voice trailed off.

" Halek? "

He took her hand and pressed it between his legs. She felt the skinny knob of him in her palm. "That is what I choose to call…intimacy," he said. He unrolled an astrological chart on the table. "I may be able to hold future sessions to answer your queries."

He waited.

It was a standoff.

watched the light from the lone lit candle dance over the astrologer's lines and arcs. She could not read his case notes, but that did not mean she did not understand.

She had been given to a man forty-three years her senior as a courtesan.

She had fallen in love with a noble she could never be with.

She had been forced into marriage with a wastrel who had taken everything from her, including her pride.

But she had never, ever felt dirty until this moment.

No.

stood so quickly the stool overturned. She gripped the edges of her gown, holding them tight at her throat.

" No. "

"Mistress—"

"Get out," growled, in a voice she had never heard come from her throat. "I am more than this. It does not matter what you see when you look at me, because you will never know me the way I know myself. And even if I am the only person in the world with that knowledge, it does not make it any less real."

As she paused to catch her breath she thought, You small, stupid man . Then she kicked the stool out from beneath Forman, leaving him cowering on the floor. She picked up the knife he'd used to carve the cheese. "By God, get out of my house," she said.

After the door slammed behind him a moment later, sat at the table, finishing the meal she had thought to give Forman. Her hand shook as she cut the wedge of cheese.

It was, as Alma had said, divine.

—

By the time Alphonso returned weeks later, full of self-importance despite the tragic failure of the naval mission, had conquered her melancholy. She took over the chores Bess had done when she was unable to see past her despair. She played with little Henry. To her surprise, Alphonso had sent word of his imminent arrival, so when he entered their apartments she was ready.

She had fresh flowers on the table. The house was scrubbed. Henry wore spotless clothes. A humble meal, the most she could afford, was waiting.

He stepped through the doorway, dusty and disheveled. stood with her hands clasped. The last time he had seen her, her face had been split and unrecognizable. "Husband," she said evenly.

He stilled. "Wife?"

"How lucky we are that God has seen you home," said. "You must be hungry."

He watched her over his meal the way one would watch a snake in the corner of the room—not necessarily deadly from that distance, but worth keeping in one's sights. He spoke of the Azores, the galleon, and the casualties they sustained. He made Henry laugh with stories of sand in his boots. When he finished eating, cleared the dishes. "Bess," she said, "I am sure my husband would like to wash the grime of travel from his person. Heat some water for the tub, please?"

Once the wooden tub had been hauled in front of the fire and filled, Bess took Henry to her own quarters so that Alphonso could bathe privately. scattered sage, marjoram, and chamomile across the surface of the murky water to make it smell sweet. She felt him staring at her, as if he could not quite figure out if his shrew of a wife had been replaced by faeries or if his last beating had knocked sense into her. "Allow me to help, sir," she said, dimpling prettily, and she unhooked his doublet, carefully setting it on a chair before kneeling to remove his boots and hose. He sank into the tub, sloshing water over the sides.

"May I scrub your back, Husband?" asked, standing behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder and nodded, splaying his arms along the edges of the tub. took a linen square and dipped it in the water.

"," Alphonso said, clearing his throat. "I have had time to think during our distance."

"As have I, sir."

He faced the fire, watching the flames, while her hands scrubbed his neck and curved around to his chest.

"I wish to start afresh," Alphonso continued. "I believe, with some work, you might be a fine helpmeet. A true spouse." He shifted as her hands tickled their way down his abdomen. "Indeed, it seems that you may have already come to this conclusion yourself."

"Conclusion," repeated, the steam rising around her face. "You could say I have come to the end, sir."

As she said the word, her hand closed around his cock, lifting it just enough for her to press the blade she'd hidden in her skirt to the edge of his testicles. Alphonso's panicked eyes locked onto hers. The linen cloth floated like an afterthought.

"You will not touch me again, not in lust and not in anger. If you do, mark my words, I will come for you. If you hurt me, I will heal from the sheer force of will. If you kill me, I shall return from the dead as a wraith. I will saw off your ballocks in your sleep, so that your quill is as good as snapped. You may live in my presence. That is all I give you leave to do."

His eyes flashed, and he moved as if to rise out of the tub. She pressed the knife into him until a ribbon of blood curled through the water. "Think you that I jest?" murmured.

Alphonso shook his head.

"You see, I, too, wish to start afresh," said.

She wrenched the blade from between his legs and slipped it back through the slit in her skirt, where she wore it now, every hour of the day, strapped to her thigh. "Good night, Alphonso," she said. "Empty the water when you're done."

—

slept in Henry's chamber, curled around him like a fiddlehead fern. She did not mind giving up her own bed to Alphonso, because doing so meant she was not in it.

Five days after Alphonso's return visited the apothecary shop where Isabella had taken her years ago. The young proprietress listened carefully when she explained what she needed. A sleeping draft, a deep one, that would render her husband unfeeling.

She did not want Alphonso to touch her, but she still wanted a child. She just planned to be the one controlling the process.

So, armed with adder's-tongue fern and dwale—a concoction of lettuce, vinegar, and briony root with hemlock and henbane mixed in— served Alphonso a tea. She had been assured it would put him to sleep but leave his parts able to function.

He could barely finish his meal without his eyelids drooping. Past midnight, when she left Henry's chamber and went to Alphonso's, she found him collapsed fully clothed onto the bed. He was snoring loud enough for to feel the juddering down her spine.

She crawled onto the edge of the bed, hesitating, but Alphonso didn't budge.

She tugged at the waist of his hose until it caught at the juncture of his legs. She stared dispassionately at his penis, then began rubbing at it the way she might shuck an ear of turkey wheat. watched Alphonso's eyes flutter beneath closed lids, but he didn't wake as he hardened in her hand.

When he was stiff enough, she bunched her skirts and sank down on him. She rocked experimentally, deriving no pleasure, intent only on getting what she needed.

She shrieked when his hands suddenly gripped her hips. found herself looking directly into Alphonso's dazed gaze. "Are you…" he said, his voice thick, "are you an angel?"

Yes, she thought. An avenging one.

She leaned forward until her breasts brushed his chest. Her hand slipped between them, cupping him. She breathed over his lips. "Come," she urged.

He did, in three short jerks of his hips.

rested on Alphonso like a saddle until she was certain he was fast asleep once again. Then she left the bedchamber and returned to Henry, who stirred as she spooned him. She pressed her legs tight together and she prayed.

Alphonso awakened the next morning with the trace of a strange dream, a mouth as dry as muslin, and the smell of on his skin.

awakened pregnant.

—

It was late August 1598 when saw the ghost.

She was on Newgate Street in Cheapside Market, where butchers sold cuts of meat from animals slaughtered in the nearby Shambles. Today she would get a mutton joint that might serve for several meals: boiled as a soup, then carved into a stew, then pressed into a mash. She had to make it last, so that her son could have enough to eat.

And her daughter.

She rested her hand on the swell of her belly. She was sure of it; this was the girl who had haunted her dreams, giving her a second chance.

In her market basket she already had some parnsips and cooking fat and salt. She would purchase eggs and flour and then return home. "Mistress," the butcher said, handing her the wrapped mutton. She paid him his coin, turned, and he was there, his hair burnished like a crown, his shoulders bearing the sun.

dropped her basket, her wares tumbling into the street.

She knew she had imagined him because men like Southampton did not shop in Cheapside Market. He was so strikingly out of place here, with the silver threading in his doublet catching the light, his leather boots buffed to a high shine, jewels ringing his fingers. The crowded pulse of the market gave way for him, funneling around his presence. People gaped, some tugging their hair and bowing, others plucking at him for a handout.

He noticed none of it. He knelt on the cobblestones, unmindful of the filth, and put her items back into her market basket. "," he said softly. "Will you walk?"

She nodded, falling into step in his shadow. She rubbed her thumb over the spot between her breasts, where it felt like a wound had reopened.

Southampton led her to a narrow, arched passageway with a bee carved into its headstone. Down this little lane a bit farther were the honey merchants, but he stopped before they could reach the stalls. His eyes drank her in. "You are well?" he whispered, his gaze falling to her pregnancy.

She blurted, "Why are you here?"

"Because Thursday is when you go to market," he said simply. After a moment he sighed. "It was not difficult to find your lodgings," Southampton said. "Your husband was on my galleon, after all. I cannot tell you how many times I thought to pitch him over the gunwale and be done with it."

"Conscience does make cowards of us all," said.

"I paid a boy to watch your comings and goings," Southampton admitted. "I needed to speak with you privately."

Did he not understand that her son's life was at stake? "I asked you to never—"

"I am married," Southampton said, and felt her knees give. She pressed her shoulder blades into the building behind her.

"Heaven give you many merry days," she murmured.

"."

"I wish you and your wife good health and happiness—"

" . "

He touched her then, and she vibrated like the string of a lute. He could hear it; she was certain this frequency was one common only to the two of them.

"You said we…could never be."

She drew in a breath, held it. Could she blame him for respecting her wishes, for finding a path to live without her?

"The only way I could let myself believe that was to behave as if it were true," Southampton said, "and pray my heart would catch up to my actions." He let his gaze slide away from hers. "Elizabeth is one of Her Majesty's maids of honor. I was in a scuffle a few months ago with Ambrose Willoughby over a game of primero when he disparaged her…and for a while I was out of the Queen's favor. But then I learned my Elizabeth was with child—I could not let the baby be born without the protection of my name."

My Elizabeth. heard the words over and over, in canon.

"The Queen does not know we wed without her permission…so I leave for France tonight."

She wondered if he would return for the birth of his child. She wondered why she cared.

He stared at her swelling pregnancy. "Are you…happy?" Southampton asked.

regarded the beloved angles of his face, the sunlight playing with his hair as she used to. "Is anyone?" she countered.

He smiled sadly at her. "I did love you once."

"Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so."

"You should not have believed me," Southampton said. "Perhaps now you would not know such pain."

"Perhaps now you would not know such joy."

"This is not joy, ," he burst out. He reached for her hand and she let him take it, only to realize that something was being pressed into her palm. Glancing down she saw her own face, the miniature that he'd had painted of her. It was a mirror of her features, and yet it wasn't. The portrait was of a woman who held a secret love. , now, was a woman who'd lost everything.

She folded his fingers around the filigree frame. "Keep it," she said softly. "If only so that I know something of us survived."

She watched Southampton slip the miniature inside his doublet, over his heart.

"If you loved me once," ventured, taking a deep breath, "will you do one last service for me?"

"Anything," Southampton vowed.

"Close your eyes," she said.

He did, without hesitation. She stared for one beat of her heart, thinking of how easy it would be to press up on her toes and taste him. But instead, she turned on her heel and left Honey Lane. She could not bear to see him walk away from her; she had to be the one to do it. And she also knew she would never have the strength to leave if he was watching. lifted her chin, thinking of Orpheus climbing from the Underworld, listening to the music of Eurydice's footsteps behind him. She thought of how desperately he must have tried to not glance back at his love, knowing that was the surest route to Hell.

—

was not well made for confinement. There were only so many games of skittles one could play with Henry, with a tiny rag ball and smaller pins. Stuck in the house, she could not escape Alphonso, and often when Bess was putting Henry to bed, would find herself on one side of the hearth, bent over her writing desk, while Alphonso sat on the other side whittling or playing an instrument.

One night, she felt her husband's eyes on her while she was composing her thoughts. "What do you write?" he asked.

"Does it matter?"

He seemed to consider this, and then shrugged. "It is but pleasantry. Conversation."

She nearly laughed at that. He had broken her jaw; polite discourse was no longer part of the equation.

"They are not letters," he mused. "They are too long for that."

met his gaze. "I am writing a story for the baby, if you must know." This was not entirely untrue. It was a play, not a fairy tale, but she was superstitious about what to choose as its subject. She did not want whatever ill humors were coursing through her blood to affect the growth of the baby inside her.

"Indulge me," Alphonso said.

put down her pen. "It is about a woman who wishes to be treated well by the man she loves. She disguises herself as a boy, so he will heed her advice."

Alphonso laughed. "Think you that clothing makes a man? You have lain alone too many nights."

"I could suit myself in all points as a man," said.

"Yet you lack a man's heart."

You lack any heart, thought.

"Well," Alphonso said dismissively. "Your story is best served for a child, since no adult would think the premise possible."

"No? Do you not believe the differences between men and women but a whimsy, Husband? For example, in the theater it is not the fashion to give the lady the epilogue, but it is no more unhandsome to give the lord the prologue."

"It is not the fashion because it is not done. A woman does not have the last word."

"Indeed, this would be true, since a boy plays a woman on every stage, and the audience believes it. Why would the same not hold true should a woman play a man's part?"

She could see Alphonso trying to keep up with her reasoning. She made a mental note to add a clown to this play.

"No woman could wear the disguise of a man without a man seeing through it," he said finally. "The prattle alone! You are a woman. When you think, you must speak."

"Yet a woman sits on the throne of England. When she speaks, is it because she is a woman and cannot hold her tongue in her head? Or is it because she is a ruler and her words are law?"

Alphonso scowled, backed into a corner. "What is the name of this story?"

" As You Like It, " she said.

"Is it? As you like it? " he asked. "Do you wish that you were the man in this marriage?"

She scrutinized him in the dim light. His question was not disdainful. He was…curious.

"I should have been a woman by right," said. "And yet does a woman exist but as a maid, a widow, or a wife?"

He waved a hand at her writing desk. "I do not like the thought of you filling the head of my child with this foolishness."

"Then perhaps you should spend night and day with the baby when she is born. After all, I have had her to myself for nine months."

"One of us," Alphonso said, "must provide for this family."

"Of course, Husband," she said mildly. "Think you that you will still become a knight?"

He stopped whittling his block of wood. "Do you doubt it?"

shook her head. "I believe that you have never had anyone tell you that what you wish is not possible."

"But that is not true. You have. When I suggested that we start anew." Alphonso leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his knees. "I have not been a perfect husband. But I am the husband you have."

"More's the pity."

"That mouth on you," Alphonso said. He came out of his chair, looming over her, and threaded his hand through her hair. His thumb brushed her lip. "Would that it were put to better use."

Her eyes locked on his. She curled her tongue around his finger and sucked, then bit him so hard that she tasted blood. Alphonso leaped backward, nearly falling into the fire.

hoisted her heavy body to her feet. "As you requested," she said, curtsying, before locking herself inside Henry's chamber for the rest of the night.

—

On the day Odyllia Lanier was born, in December 1598, she howled louder than the ice storm that raged outside.

On the day ten months later that she died, there was an eerie silence in the still, chill air. The birds had disappeared, virtually overnight, flying south for winter. The barges on the Thames moved sluggishly, and the church bells did not ring.

As went through the motions of preparing her infant daughter for the cemetery at St. Botolph's Bishopsgate, she thought about everything she would be burying with Odyllia. Her chance at being a mother again, for one. The birth had been difficult, like Henry's, and the midwife had told her that another might kill her. In addition to that, she had lain with Alphonso only the once, as a means to an end. She would never grant him the invitation to her body again.

She would be burying laughter, too. There had been no toy Odyllia loved more than her big brother, whose antics had led to peals of giggles that filled all the empty space in their lodgings.

And, supposed, she would be burying the false satisfaction she'd lulled herself into believing: that being a mother would satisfy all the longings in her. Sometimes, when she had itched to write, instead she would bounce Odyllia on her knee and teach her a simple song. She'd told herself that when Henry had accidentally knocked over a precious bottle of ink, the tightening of her throat was not the fear of losing her voice but rather a parent fighting the urge to scold her son.

Odyllia lay on the oak table on a clean winding-sheet. Her translucent eyelids were violet. Her chest was immobile. How many times during the past week, when had seen her daughter fight for breath, had she wished that Odyllia would stop coughing?

You would think she would have learned, by now, to be more careful with her prayers.

pulled from her pocket a small curl of paper on which she had poured out her grief. She flattened it on the table near Odyllia's foot and then took a square of muslin and dipped it into a bowl of water, one she had heated in a kettle in the hearth, even though the temperature would not make a difference.

" Shall I compare thee to a summer's day ?" whispered. " Thou art more lovely and more temperate ." She ran the muslin between the tiny toes of her daughter's right foot. "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date."

She worked the cloth over Odyllia's leg. " Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd. And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd. "

Perhaps it was better this way, that Odyllia know nothing in her life but love. That she never reach the age where she would be hemmed in by the expectations of men.

began to wrap the cloth tight around her daughter as if she were being swaddled against the bleakest of nights. " Thy eternal summer shall not fade, " she vowed, " Nor lose possession of the fair thou ow'st. " She pulled the other end of the winding cloth tight, so that only Odyllia's perfect pale face was visible. " Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, when in eternal lines to time thou grow'st ."

Finally, she rolled the poem tight and tucked it between the wrappings of the winding-sheet for safekeeping. Like someone bringing pennies for the crossing of the river Styx, her daughter would carry these words on her journey. " So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, " said, kissing her daughter's cold forehead, " so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. "

"Mama."

gasped, then turned to find Henry standing a few steps behind, watching her work.

"Where is Bess?" she asked.

"She fell asleep," Henry said, coming closer, his head just level with 's hip. He reached out one finger and poked Odyllia. Then he glanced up, his eyes swimming. "What if Bess doesn't wake up, too?"

knelt and wrapped her arms around his sturdy little form. "Henry," she said, "Odyllia isn't asleep. She's dead."

"Dead means gone forever." He parroted the words had used to explain his sister's passing.

"Yes. Once Odyllia is in the churchyard, that's where she will stay."

His lower lip trembled. "Is this because I wouldn't let her hold the lute Cousin Jeronimo gave me?"

"No, darling," soothed. "It is because Odyllia was ill and her body couldn't get better."

Fat tears striped his cheeks. "I wanted her to say Henry. I was trying to teach her."

"I know."

"Mama," Henry said, pressing his face into her shoulder. "Will you die?"

"One day."

He shook his head. "I don't want you to be gone forever."

framed his face in her hands. "Henry," she vowed, "I will not have to leave you until many, many years from now." She tugged the fine lawn of the winding-sheet over the strawberry pucker of Odyllia's lips. Then she reached for the right side of Henry's little jerkin, rending it. " Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam dayan ha'emet, " she said. "I am going to tell you a secret. This is Kriah . People like us, we rend our clothing so that everyone knows there is a matching tear inside our hearts."

He watched her reach for her own kirtle. barely had to tug before the fabric ripped. After so much loss, the seam gave easily, as if grief were already part of its weave.

—

Every moment after Odyllia's death felt like a choice: Would keep her promise to Henry, or would today be the day she did not get out of bed? Would she put one foot in front of the other, or let herself slip back into the hole she had been in after Alphonso nearly killed her? Would she remember to put food down her gullet and smile, or move through the world like a spirit untethered?

Then, after months of no contact, William Shakespeare asked her to meet at St. Mary-at-Lambeth after Evensong.

Leaving Bess with Henry, crossed the river and slipped into a pew toward the rear as the choir swung into the introit. She recalled being a child, lying on the floor in front of the hearth as her father and cousins practiced their recorder pieces for court—a minor note tugging her down, a major seventh vaulting her to the stars.

found herself paying careful attention to the words of the Magnificat, the final anthem in the service, which was a chant. In English, it celebrated Mary being told that she was going to give birth to God's son. considered that she and Christ's mother had both lost a child.

"It is beautiful, isn't it?"

She heard Shakespeare's voice before she saw him. He had slipped into the pew behind her even as other congregants were filing out of the church.

"Grief?" she qualified. "No, I think not."

"Hmm," he said. "Do not all artists start from a place of pain?"

twisted in the wooden pew so that she could glance at him. He looked thinner, older. "How did you find my new lodgings?" she asked.

"I like to keep tabs on my business acquaintances."

It sounded sinister. It was likely meant to. "Well, you're a fair-weather correspondent," said dispassionately.

"I have…been otherwise occupied," Shakespeare said. "The Queen's Council did a census of private grain holdings and determined that I exceeded my quantity of malted barley, as if there could be such a thing."

She narrowed her eyes. The lack of grain crops over the past few years had led to famine, to uprisings—and to speculation by individuals who wanted to make money off other people's hunger.

"You can no longer fleece your neighbors for profit?"

He scoffed. "It is a witch hunt. I simply misjudged taxes due to the Crown."

She laughed. "Defaulted, you mean."

"Defaulted, misjudged"—he waved a hand between them—"merely words."

"Shall I tell you what I think?" said. "I think that words are the very measure of why you asked me to meet you here. I think that you find yourself in need, once again, of coin."

He leaned an elbow on the pew back between them. "And you, mistress? Do you too find yourself in need of funds?"

What did she need? She thought of Odyllia, in a churchyard across town. Sometimes, awakened to find herself standing outside, barefoot in the coldest elbow of the night, holding a blanket and a misty thought: She must be shivering.

turned to fully meet Shakespeare's gaze. She rubbed her hand over the polished back of the pew, releasing a scent of wax and lemon. "Your son, Hamnet," she said, swallowing. "Does the loss…does it ever abate?"

He stilled. She wondered how long it had been since someone spoke that name out loud to him. "It changes," he said carefully. "At times it stops pulling, like a stitch. But then I will be doing something, perhaps crossing a field where I once tossed him onto my shoulder, and I will find myself on my knees sobbing." Shakespeare cleared his throat. "They call it a loss, but that's misconstered, is it not? They remain with us." Hesitantly, he patted her hand where it rested on the pew. "Give sorrow words, mistress," he urged.

Shakespeare was a charlatan; but here he spoke truth.

She had examined love in her writing, and anger, and lust. She had canted justice on its side and shook it to better understand mercy. She had poked at religion until it snapped back. She had used comedy to tease out the tragedy of what it meant to be a woman in a world run by men.

Why not take death and grief and jealousy and turn them like the gems in a kaleidoscope? Why not see what patterns emerged?

"I have an idea for a new play," she said.

—

The first scene took place between soldiers, describing a bright star and its position in the sky. She remembered well Tycho Brahe's supernova, as he'd described it years ago over supper at the Danish court. She set the story at Helsing?r's Kronborg Castle, peppering it with her memories of Brahe's relatives Rosenkrans and Guldensteren and the play that had been performed about Amleth, the son avenging the murder of his father, and how his inability to take swift action would be his downfall. She hid her family in the text—making the Danish prince falsely describe the play-within-a-play as the story of a widowed woman named Baptista; having him explain in detail how to play a recorder.

It was a story about what happened when the world turned inside out. When, as the supernova had shown, the heavens could change. When death broke apart a marriage. When parents outlived their children. When grief could drive you mad.

She remembered telling Tycho Brahe at dinner that the Saxo play failed its women. So when rewrote it, she made Gerutha—now Queen Gertrude—a fully realized, flawed woman. She gave the young woman sent to seduce Prince Amleth an arc of her own—finding herself pregnant and alone.

The girl, as in the original play, would die. With her lover gone and her father dead, she would turn to the queen for aid. But when Gertrude would not help, she would ingest the same herbs had taken to abort her own baby. Then gifted the girl with madness, so that she might finally speak without being silenced.

Most important, she gave the girl a name: Ophelia. In her mind, she heard Odyllia.

She changed the name of the tragic prince, too, to Hamlet. In her mind, she said Hamnet.

When she gave Shakespeare the play, he looked twice at its title. He met her gaze, and nodded.

Silent, she nodded back.

—

Later, Shakespeare told her about the first performance of the play. He said when Hamlet was performed at the new Globe Theatre at the start of 1600, it attracted the attention of the Earl of Southampton, who by then had become the most ardent supporter of theater in London.

The Earl himself had sought out the playwright to congratulate him.

On February 5, Southampton offered Shakespeare forty shillings, asking for the players to perform Richard II. He wanted to lay the groundwork in the public's mind for a monarch's downfall. It was a prologue to an attempt to overthrow the Queen, which he undertook the following weekend with the Earl of Essex. The attempt failed, and he was sentenced with treason, thrown in the Tower, and condemned to death.

Court gossip was the fastest news to spread, and so knew about the plot—and Southampton's fate—almost as soon as it happened.

began going to church. Not just on Sundays but every day of the week. She would walk across the city over icy cobbles, choosing a different parish each time, sitting in a pew and offering up a prayer that Southampton's sentence would be commuted.

The world would simply not be the same without him in it.

When his sentence was changed to life in prison, stopped going to church and started walking to the Tower of London. She knew Southampton would not be able to see her, would not even know she was nearby or thinking of him, but that did not matter. As the weather became more temperate, she brought Henry, his textbooks, and a packed lunch of bread and cheese.

"Mama," Henry asked, as they scattered crumbs for birds, "why do we come where the bad men are?"

She looked up at the imposing cliffs of stone. "Even the villains are the heroes of their own stories," she said.

"I do not know what that means," Henry said, frowning.

turned to him. "It means there is nothing either good or bad," she said softly. "But thinking makes it so."

—

When the plague ripped through London in 1603, theaters closed again. This time, the illness was even deadlier.

The Queen's death in March—not from the plague but from melancholy after losing several close confidants—brought the end of an era. Elizabeth had ruled for forty-five years. thought of how imposing the monarch had been on her throne, sitting ramrod straight, looking down her long nose at those who came to pay tribute. She remembered how the Queen's tongue could cut like a blade. She thought she would feel more sorrow, but felt the way she did when she heard about the passing of someone whose name one recognized but did not know personally. It had been so many years since she had last curtsied to the Queen that that entire part of her life felt like a hazy dream.

Alphonso was one of fifty-nine musicians who played at her funeral. He had wormed his ways into the good graces of Lord Burghley, which had allowed him to become a court musician again. Burghley had also given him a patent—sixpence for every load of hay and three pence for straw weighed before entering London and Westminster—which became a steady source of income.

Henry was now ten years old. His head reached 's shoulder and he was lean, with strawberry-blond curls and unsettling silver eyes. He was quiet and serious and attended grammar school, studying Plautus and Seneca and Latin. When the schools closed because of the plague, tutored him in all these subjects, plus literature and history and French and music. He was, even at his age, a better recorder player than Alphonso.

When Henry was working on his lessons, was writing. She knew that when King James took the throne, he had released Southampton from prison, and the Earl had again taken up his celebrated place at court. She imagined him going to the theater when it was safe again; there 's language would embrace him the way she wished to.

When she wrote Measure for Measure, she was pondering the difference between love and lust. Isabella, about to enter a convent, found out her brother was to be put to death for having sex outside of marriage. She pleaded for her brother's life with Angelo, the duke's deputy, who told her he would grant her wish for clemency…if she slept with him. To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, Isabella asked , Who would believe me?

The words mirrored the ones she had said to Southampton when she told him she had married and he asked why she hadn't fought against it. She hoped he would remember.

When she wrote Othello, she let the character Iago stoke jealousy in his master with images from a fresco in the town square of Bassano del Grappa, where 's family came from. She had described it to Southampton one lazy afternoon in Paris Garden, when he'd asked her of Italy. The frieze showed musical instruments and animals—a goat and a monkey. There were two painted windows beneath them, with a woman who represented Truth in the middle.

The last time had been there she had been a child, but she remembered the fresco was situated between two apothecary shops—one called the Moor, the other run by a man named Othello.

In the play, Othello's wife, Desdemona, was killed in the wake of her husband's jealousy. Her servant—named —was the only character wise enough to warn Desdemona that marriage could be deadly.

It was, she knew, a risk. None of the dangers that had kept her anonymous for a decade had changed. But now, when she wrote, it was not for Shakespeare. It was not for coin. It was not for art.

It was so that Southampton might hear a conversation that was meant for only the two of them.

—

At first, was not sure what had awakened her.

It was more than a year after the Queen's death, a cool night but not a frigid one, and the city was still boarded up under threat of the plague. She had been sleeping in Henry's room, thinking before she drifted off that he was nearly the age she had been when she left for Somerset House. Perhaps it was time to share Bess's servant's quarters. The master bedchamber, with Alphonso in it, was not and never would be an option.

She padded downstairs barefoot, drew open the door. Outside, the street was still. A rat scrabbled past; in the distance, she could hear a hacking cough.

When she glanced up, she realized that a star had burned a hole in the night sky. Glittering like a jewel, it hung almost low enough to touch. As anyone who wished fervently on the stars would know, it had never been there before this moment.

A small laugh huffed from her throat. She would not learn for years that this supernova had been spotted by Kepler, the man who was the assistant to her old dinner partner Tycho Brahe.

Suddenly she was twelve again and sitting beside the astronomer in the banquet hall at Kronborg Castle, asking him about his new supernova. "You know," he had confided, his gold triangle nose pointing closer to whisper, "I do not think it is actually new. "

"Then where did it come from?"

"It is only a theory, young mistress," Brahe had said, "but I think it is simply a star no one bothered to notice before."

"What changed?"

"Everything around it," he had explained. "If those forces compressed it to be smaller, denser, to take up less space…well, that could only last so long before it exploded and wasn't just visible…but impossible to ignore."

stepped into the street and tilted her chin up to the sky. How much pressure did one have to be under until an explosion occurred?

began to spin. She threw her arms wide, twirling, the buildings a dizzy whirl around her. She kept her gaze fixed on the supernova. Surely anyone who saw would call for her to be sent to Bethlem, with other madwomen.

She thought of Isabella, among the stars herself now: We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

She pictured stardust shooting from the tips of her fingers, light pouring from her mouth.

She imagined burning so bright that people could not turn away.