Emilia

1588–1592

is 19–23

As grew older, she understood what it was like to no longer fit inside your own body. Her legs lengthened; her breasts ripened; she grew into her enormous gray eyes and plush mouth. Those changes were noted—by Hunsdon, by courtiers who lost the thread of whatever conversation they were having when she passed, by noblewomen who glanced at her with jealousy. But nobody seemed to realize that 's mind was also growing. She would stand on the balcony of her bedroom staring up at Tycho Brahe's inconstant stars and wonder how much of the world had to change before you felt the shift in the universe. She could be brought to tears by the flawless blue of a summer sky; she knew that a bed with two people in it could feel emptier than sleeping alone. She felt feral sometimes, wild with conversations she didn't have and dreams she couldn't share.

She was a lord's mistress, a lover, a girl who'd managed to rise above her station and would be lucky to remain there—if she watched her mouth.

Men believed that women were meant to exist on the fringes of their lives, instead of being the main characters in their own stories. But why would God have given her a voice if it wasn't meant to be used?

In public, played the part of a decorative object. In private, when she felt too full at the seams of her own life, she spilled all that emotion and intelligence and hope onto pages and pages of poetry, fables, and snippets of dialogue. wrote from the point of view of the bird of prey, delighting in those few moments of freedom before the jesses were pulled. She wrote fairy tales about princesses who climbed down brick towers, rescuing themselves. She wrote female characters who were adored for both their minds and their beauty. She wrote witty banter with men who were not afraid of a woman who could think for herself. She wrote of what sex must be like when your soul was as invested as your skin. She wrote love poems, where sometimes love was fire, sometimes it was rote, and sometimes it was agony.

She hid hundreds of pages under her mattress.

She did not write happy endings. As any real poet knows, the best tales are the ones that contain a kernel of truth.

—

Wilton House, the residence of the Earl and Countess of Pembroke, was a massive Tudor estate built on the grounds of a former abbey in Salisbury. Hunsdon had taken to the country occasionally during their six-year relationship—everywhere except to Hunsdon House in Hertfordshire, where his wife, Anne, spent most of her time, a gesture of respect for the woman who had his name but not his love. Marriage was a business contract; you signed on the dotted line, you produced an heir, and then you got your satisfaction elsewhere.

's life, too, was a transaction. She was fond of Henry, even if she wasn't particularly attracted to him. She gave him her body, and he gave her security. But he also gave her the freedom to speak her mind, at least within the confines of his home. He solicited her opinions on the plays she read that were submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for review. He did not just applaud at the poetry she shared with him now and then—his whole face lit up with pride, as if he had some hand in her clever rhymes and meter. He was, by default, her best friend.

And knew that worried him.

Hunsdon was in his sixties; he would not be here forever. Although prayed he'd settle a sum upon her in the event of his death, he also wanted to make sure there would still be people in his circle who would look upon her with kindness.

That was why they were at Wilton House. Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, was not much older than . She was a great patron of the arts. "I think you have much in common," Hunsdon had told . "She, too, is a poet."

Mary Sidney ran a literary salon of sorts, and the other guests for the weekend included Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and a young buck named Ben Jonson. Tonight they all sat in a drawing room, a fire blazing in the hearth and casting shadows on the paintings that covered nearly every inch of wall space—portraits of the Earls of Pembroke and their families. A painting of Mary Sidney with her four children hung over the mantel. sat beside Hunsdon, who was nursing a goblet of claret. The poets had taken turns reading from their works, and it was Spenser now who stood, reciting from an epic poem in progress. He seemed to pluck words out of the air and braid them together, conjuring the Redcrosse Knight, who had been stolen by the fae and raised by them; and his love, Una, betrayed by a wizard who tricked the knight into thinking her unchaste.

There was such magic in language. It could bring you to tears, pull you to the edge of your seat, make you sigh with relief. It could draw you out of the world when you needed to escape, and at other times hold up a looking glass to the world as it was. was so lost in Spenser's story, in fact, that it took her a moment to realize that Mary Sidney had addressed her. "Mistress Bassano?" she repeated.

's cheeks burned. "Apologies, my lady. I found myself wandering in the maze of beauty created by Mr. Spenser, much like the Redcrosse Knight himself."

"As were we all," Mary Sidney said. "Perhaps you might take us on a journey as well?"

She felt Hunsdon's hand steal over hers and squeeze. Realizing that he must have told Mary Sidney that she, too, wrote poetry, felt all her breath dry in her throat. "I could not presume to share my humble words with men who are giants of the craft."

Mary Sidney raised a brow. "Then share it instead with a woman."

Ben Jonson suddenly straightened. He had spent most of the night drinking heavily because Spenser's poem was getting more applause than his own. "Come, Mistress Bassano. We are a friendly lot. We do not bite." Then he grinned like a wolf. "Unless a lady asks."

clenched her jaw. It was something he'd only have dared say to a courtesan, and it provided the jolt of anger she needed to push herself to her feet. "My verse is not worthy of comparison," she said. "I do not wish to offend with my unpolished lines."

"Every poet must start with a scratch on a blank page," Spenser said kindly.

"Yes," Jonson agreed. "And we will happily offer advice if you wish."

"And even if you don't," Drayton added. Laughter rippled through the chamber.

"Very well," said. "I have no copy to read to you, only what my mind can recall." She began to recite:

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain

But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;

Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain

Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;

Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

When she finished, the men were all staring. She wondered what they had expected of her—something pastoral about a maid with a lamb in a field, no doubt.

Jonson arched a brow. "Nicely done, mistress. This is to be an ode to love, then?"

"Not at all, sir," said. "It is a eulogy. For it describes something that does not exist."

"It is rare to find one so young and so jaded," he replied.

"Jaded," she countered, "or honest? What age must I reach to accept the way the world works?"

"Indeed, a woman is more likely to see the disparity between what one hopes for and what one can achieve," Mary Sidney added.

"A woman…or an impoverished poet," Jonson amended.

"Imagine being both," said. She blushed, afraid she had overstepped. She had become too accustomed to speaking freely in Hunsdon's study.

But Jonson laughed. When he looked at her again, any trace of inebriation was gone. "Mistress," he said, "I think there is more to you than meets the eye."

She did not know if it was a compliment or an accusation, so she simply nodded and took her seat beside Hunsdon. "Well done, darling," he said. "Spenser went on for so long about his Faerie Queen, it's now time for me to retire." immediately gathered her skirts to rise and leave with him.

"Oh, my lord, you must stay!" Mary Sidney said. "We have only just begun."

"I cannot, but I shall leave the better part of me." Hunsdon reached for 's hand and kissed her knuckles. "Stay," he said softly. "These are your people."

's fingers tightened on his. He was tired. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, had disrupted the relationship with the Scottish king, and Queen Elizabeth had Hunsdon running back and forth collecting information about King James's moves and intentions. Hunsdon had been away from Somerset House for a fortnight, yet upon arriving home had immediately departed to Wilton House…for 's sake.

nodded, grateful. Once Hunsdon had left the salon and more claret had been poured, Spenser turned toward Mary Sidney. "What of our patroness? Might we persuade you to share some of your verse?"

Mary's brother had been a well-known courtier and poet who died on a military campaign. An accomplished translator and poet in her own right, she was finishing the psalter Philip Sidney had been working on at the time of his death.

To 's surprise, however, she did not read that poetry. She crossed to a writing desk and pulled out a small stack of papers. "Since the Lord Chamberlain has retired," she said, "perhaps we may count on the discretion of Mistress Bassano." Mary dropped a small folio, bound with ribbon, into 's hand.

realized that the others were being given different folios—like the parts players received when a fair copy was distributed to a troupe of actors.

"I have assigned roles based on sex and arrogance," Mary Sidney said, grinning. "I of course shall play Cleopatra. Mistress Bassano, you shall be both Eras and Charmion, my attendants. Spenser, since you held us captive the longest this night, you shall be my Antony."

"A play?" said. "You wrote this?"

In all the years she had been with Hunsdon, she had never seen a woman's name on a foul copy. She felt her heart thump hard, once, in her chest, as if it were learning a new rhythm.

"Robert Garnier wrote the original: Antoine, " Mary Sidney explained. "I translated it."

It was not legitimate for a woman to translate work for presentation on a public stage, which was why Mary chose to present this play as a closet drama in her own home. wondered if Hunsdon would object, if he knew.

"We open on the final day of Cleopatra's life. Antony has been bested by Caesar and knows the honorable thing to do is to end his own life. Cleopatra faces losing both her kingdom and the man she loves." Mary Sidney glanced around. "Shall we begin?"

If the poetry wasn't up to Spenser's level of metaphor, did not notice. What bled through the pages was the feeling of loss, of entrapment. By the time Cleopatra was begging the tutor of her children to take care of them after she killed herself, it was well past midnight.

Mary Sidney threw out one hand dramatically. "Ah, my heart breaks! By shady banks of hell, by fields whereon the lonely ghosts do tread…By my soul and the soul of Antony, I you beseech, Euphron, of them have care."

Mary was staring directly at —even though Drayton was reading the part of Euphron the tutor. "Let your wisdom let that they not fall into this tyrant's hands," she said, unblinking.

It felt like a secret handshake. It felt as if Mary Sidney had designed this entire evening to culminate this way, and it felt like she was no longer talking about Cleopatra's children.

It felt as though was being entrusted with something equally precious: a dream Mary Sidney herself would never see come to fruition, a dream perhaps could.

—

It was nearly four in the morning when tiptoed upstairs to the chamber she shared with Hunsdon. A maid was sitting outside the door, dozing. She jerked upright when approached and followed her into the room. Heavy velvet curtains hid the bed from view, but she could hear Hunsdon's slight snore. The maid unlaced her dress so that she could step out of it. "That will be all," murmured, and the maid bobbed her head and left.

She pulled open the curtain and tried to slip beneath the counterpane without disturbing Hunsdon. She was thinking of the final scene in Mary Sidney Herbert's play, where Cleopatra dramatically kills herself and falls on the body of the man she could not live without. It was not reality as knew it. In her life, when faced with yet more adversity, a woman straightened her shoulders and said, All right, I'll take on another burden. Strength was endurance, not escape. It was looking at a piece of granite and noticing flecks of fool's gold.

She looked at Hunsdon, at the tangle of his hair and the body giving in to gravity. She tried to imagine the kind of love that led to suicide when your lover was no longer in the world.

Hunsdon stirred and curled around her, his arm resting over her waist. His words tickled the shell of her ear. "Did you learn much, my dear?"

"Yes," she whispered. Jonson's words floated back to her. More to you than meets the eye.

That night she dreamed of Hunsdon's falcon, hollow-boned and light. gave the order and watched the bird soar from the gauntlet, trailing her jesses. But the leather unraveled from the falcon's anklet, and stared at the sky, watching the bird fly away, growing smaller and smaller until it scraped the face of the sun.

—

The next morning after breaking her fast, wandered through the warren of Wilton House until she heard a shout. Picking up her skirts, she hurried down the hall and threw open a door to find Mary Sidney behind a long wooden table. The surface was littered with all sorts of glass containers and iron clamps, as well as jars of powders and liquids.

"Ah," she said, looking up. "You may be the first witness to my discovery."

Early morning light streamed through the windows, illuminating a phial suspended over a candle by an ingenious metal arm, contents bubbling.

"The earl allows this?" asked.

"My husband does not allow it, but he ignores it," Mary Sidney said. "That way he does not have to be upset with me, and I do not have to be upset with him."

knew that, like Hunsdon, the countess's husband was far older than she was. She wanted to ask Mary if she loved the man, if she believed that affection could transform into passion if the right ingredients were added.

Mary Sidney sharpened a quill and opened a very tiny jar of what assumed to be ink. She dipped the quill into the jar and scrawled her signature across a sheet of foolscap: Mary Sidney Herbert.

"Watch," Mary said.

Before 's eyes, the signature vanished.

She gasped. "It is magic?"

"It is alchemy, " the Countess corrected. She blew out the candle beneath the bubbling phial. "I call this…disappearing ink." She handed the quill, so that she could test it herself.

dipped the pen into the special ink and scrawled her own name beneath Mary's. Moments later, the page was as blank as if it had never been written upon.

"What will you do with it?" asked.

"I am sure someone at court will find a use for it," Mary Sidney said. "And if not, I shall bask in the brilliance of creating something that has not existed before." Her smile faded at the edges as she ran her hand over the blank sheet of paper. "This is how men would prefer it, is it not? That anything written by a woman vanish forever."

met her gaze. "I did not think you someone who would make it even easier to erase women's words," she said delicately. "You are a great patron of the arts. You are a countess, and therefore above reproach. Could you not give your play to a troupe?"

"It is because I am a countess that I could not. It would be a scandal. It is one thing to patronize theater. But were I to author a play for performance, my husband would be shamed for it. And that he would not ignore." She shrugged. "Too many people already know that I dabble as a writer, that I host these salons. It is notoriety that prevents me from being anonymous." She took the quill from 's hand. "For a woman to ever do such a thing, she would have to be invisible."

"What does that mean?" asked. "A woman who makes herself invisible, by definition, gives up her voice. You speak in riddles."

Mary Sidney scrawled the word invisible on the paper. They watched it evaporate. "Perhaps one day, ," she said, "you will solve it for us all."

—

had, of course, crossed paths with her cousin Jeronimo since he'd bartered her to Lord Hunsdon. She couldn't avoid him at court performing music for the Queen. But she had never again returned to Mark Lane to celebrate the Sabbath.

Instead, she had filched two candlesticks and extra candles from the Somerset House pantry. She cut apart a shift made of the finest linen and hemmed and embroidered it into a head covering. Every Friday night, she would turn her nightstand into a makeshift altar and recite the Hebrew prayer over the candles. She would snuff the flames before it was time to retire, lest Hunsdon discover her. She was not supposed to blow out the candles, but she thought God would understand.

She tried to observe other important Jewish holidays based on the time of year: Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, when the leaves began to turn; Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, ten days after; Sukkot, when the apples were ripe on the trees in the Somerset House orchard; Chanukah, just before Christmastide; Purim, when the daffodils rose from the thawed ground; Pesach, when the hyacinths bloomed.

It was in October, at the end of the Ten Days of Awe, when fasted for Yom Kippur. Arguably the most important Jewish holiday, these were the days that God wrote the name of the righteous in the Book of Life and condemned the wicked to death. Most people, however, fell somewhere between these two poles, and they used those ten days for teshuvah — making amends. did not know how God might judge her, living as a courtesan. Since she had not died that first year with Hunsdon, she believed that He found something in her worth preserving.

The High Holy Days were a somber time for Jews, and that mood fit the one at court. Nearly a month earlier the Earl of Leicester had died. Although it had been years since the height of the gossip about him and the Queen, she had taken the news poorly. Plans had been made to distract Her Majesty on October 10, the day that the late earl was to be buried by his widow.

figured it was just her luck that Yom Kippur—and her fast—fell on the same day as this massive midday feast at St. James's Palace. Because they were at court, she had been trussed into her finery by a maid, her stomach growling as her torso was cinched into her dress. She had managed to avoid Hunsdon all day because he was occupied with the Queen, who was particularly cranky. By the time he came to collect her for the feast, fought for the self-control it would take to abstain.

The food had been set up on a long table under a bower bright with crimson and yellow leaves that reminded of the chuppah used in a Jewish wedding ceremony. It was decorated with peacock feathers, on which a birdcage sat with live swallows inside, their beaks and feet gilded. There were platters of veal, stuffed pheasant, a haunch of venison, a civet of hare. There were gravy boats of sauces, rich with herbs and pomegranate seeds. A stack of pigeon pies sat beside dressed capons, a whole sturgeon, boiled eggs, and an aspic with cherries suspended inside.

This was merely the first course.

heard her stomach rumble. She couldn't sit there for five hours—which was how long it might last—and not draw attention to the fact that she was not eating. She tightened her hand on Hunsdon's arm before they reached the table. "My lord," she said, "I fear I am unwell."

He looked at her with concern. "Perhaps a few bites of food—"

groaned. "That is the very thing I wish to avoid," she said.

His eyes flew to her abdomen. "You are…ill?"

She realized that by feigning nausea, she had led Hunsdon to believe she might be pregnant. "Merely an upset stomach, my lord," she murmured.

He patted her hand. "I shall make your excuses to Her Majesty."

fled to the chamber they shared in the palace, trying to distract herself by writing poetry until sundown, when she would be free to eat again. But every metaphor made her hungrier: cheeks as red as apples, words honeyed as mead. Frustrated, she grabbed a shawl and slipped out of her room, heading away from the revelry.

walked briskly through the park adjacent to the palace, humming to herself. She preferred the wildness of this park to the manicured military regiment of trees that lined the lawn bowling court. In the past when she fasted for the High Holy Days, she had been in the company of others who shared her secret faith. She had rejoiced with her relatives when, at last, they got to break bread and drink wine and celebrate the mercy of God. Being a hidden Jew in England had always been dangerous—but now it was also lonely.

's slippers kicked black walnuts that had fallen from tree branches, and she stooped to gather a few, making a basket of her kirtle. The husks were so hard that she could not crack them without tools and effort, so there was no risk she'd pop them into her mouth.

She was so intent on adding to her collection of nuts that she almost collided with a young man who was sitting beneath one of the trees, reading a book.

"I beg your pardon." gasped, dropping her skirt so that her bounty scattered on the forest floor. Her heart was pounding. He was young—barely shaving, if she were guessing correctly—but broad-shouldered and fit, with a long tousle of auburn hair and eyes so blue it seemed the sky passed through him. He was dressed like nobility and was clearly a gentleman—he'd leaped to his feet upon seeing her. But if he were nobility, he should be inside the gates of the palace with the Queen at the feast.

Then again, so should she.

Suddenly, he smiled, and felt a small tug in her belly. Those eyes. They were not like the sky, she edited. They were the very center of a flame.

"Mistress Bassano," he said, and she took a step back.

"You have me at a disadvantage, sir," said.

He clapped a hand over his heart. "You wound me. Yet I met you as a butterfly, when I was still in a chrysalis…so perhaps it is understandable."

's eyes widened, remembering the young Earl of Southampton, and how they had met. It was, she realized, the same night she was introduced to Hunsdon. She was now six years older and a hundred years wiser. She calculated quickly; the Earl was sixteen or thereabouts. "You have come a long way from hiding behind the curtains, my lord," said.

"As have you," Southampton answered.

"Have you been practicing your recorder?"

He laughed, his teeth even and white. "In a sense, but not such that I'd discuss with a lady."

"I have not seen you at court."

"I'm visiting from Cambridge. I've one more year to go in my studies there at St. John's." He crossed his arms and leaned against the bulk of a tree. He stood at least a full head taller than . "There is no masque at the palace," the Earl said. "What are you escaping this time?"

She could not tell him that she was fasting, but she also found she could not lie, not when he was looking at her as if she were the only other human in the world. "Food," she admitted.

His gaze traveled up and down her body. "You do not seem one in need of reducing. In faith, you seem to be filling out your dress quite—"

"What are you escaping?" she interrupted.

"Marriage," he said flatly. "Lord Burghley keeps pairing me with girls still in leading strings." He smiled wryly. "No one like you."

She rolled her eyes. "Like me? You have no sense of what I am like."

"Do I not?" He pushed off the tree trunk, taking a step toward her.

By now, he would know her to be Hunsdon's mistress. She had long ago accepted that role, and as time passed, she rarely bothered to be embarrassed by it. But now, her cheeks flushed deeply. "You forget yourself, my lord," she said.

"As long as you do not forget me," Southampton murmured, and before she could see what he was about, he leaned forward and kissed her.

Almost immediately he reared back. It was difficult to say which of them was more surprised. felt her insides spinning.

"I should not have done that," he said softly, still staring at her mouth.

"No," agreed.

She realized that she was the elder here—in age, and in experience. She also realized that although she had been kissed by a man who wanted her, she had never kissed a man that she wanted.

Why shouldn't she feed a hunger? She was, after all, starving.

looked at Southampton. "No, you should not have done that." She closed the distance between them. " That was a military assault. You should have done this. " Coming up on her toes, her lips brushed over his like a promise. "A kiss is no soliloquy, but a dialogue." She placed the words in his mouth. "I whisper to you…and you whisper back. We are trading a secret between us, like it's a sweet." With that, she touched his tongue with her own, kissing him deeply.

Southampton crushed her closer, using her own knowledge against her. She, who knew the entire choreography of lovemaking, let herself go feral.

Even as knew that although Southampton was a spark to her straw, carnal attraction was both the start and the endgame. He was fleeing a political marriage that would happen whether he wished it or not; she could not risk losing the protection the Lord Chamberlain had given her. Maybe that was what was irresistible: seeing herself reflected in Southampton's stunning eyes, knowing neither of them had the freedom of choice.

How long they stayed like that, learning the taste of each other, did not know. But when she shivered, she realized that the sun had slipped below the horizon. The feast would be ending; Hunsdon might come looking for her before attending the nighttime revelry.

"My lord," she said. "I must go."

He stepped back, but still held her hands. "Will you leave me so unsatisfied?"

raised her brows. "What satisfaction can you have tonight?"

"Wait." She felt him tangle his fingers with hers. They both looked down at their palms, pressed close. "Will I see you again?"

"The odds are excellent, my lord, if you return to court."

"That is not what I mean, and you know it," Southampton said.

shrugged, pretending indifference. "Who can control his fate?" She pulled free.

"Wait!" the Earl cried again. His fingers circled her wrist. She paused, and he smiled sheepishly. "I have forgotten why I called you back."

"Then I shall stand here until you remember," she said softly.

Oh, Devil take it.

She moved first, or maybe he did, and then they were knotted together again, his hands scattering the pins in her hair and hers seeking the hot skin beneath his doublet. He pressed her against the tree trunk, and she relished the bite of the bark. It was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.

When they broke apart, the Earl framed 's face in his hands. "He cannot know," Southampton said.

Maybe he meant Lord Burghley, maybe he meant Hunsdon. Maybe both.

"Your…" the Earl's voice faltered. "What do you call him?"

"Henry," she said.

"That is my name, too."

looked up at him from beneath her lashes. "Yes, my lord," she said deliberately, and she left.

—

The Queen did not improve in spirits after the Earl of Leicester's funeral—refusing at times to speak to anyone and snapping at those who attempted conversation. Her advisers hovered close by, in part to try to cheer her, and in part because they were terrified of not being at hand when she demanded their immediate attendance. Hunsdon stayed at court day and night, sending back to Somerset House. As a result, she had not seen Southampton again.

She had wondered if the Earl might send word, and then she became cross with herself. What was the point of a secret correspondence? By now, he was likely immersed in his studies at Cambridge again. berated herself for fantasizing and told herself to remember her place.

But—after Hunsdon finally returned home, and to 's bed—she found herself doing something she never had before.

Comparing.

Pretending.

Wishing.

She felt even more guilty because the Queen was well enough to have given Hunsdon marching orders once again to Scotland, to smooth King James's ruffled feathers. When seemed off, daydreaming and distracted, Hunsdon assumed that it was because she did not wish to be left alone again so soon.

It made feel worse to know he was thinking the best of her.

Determined to spend their last day together before his travels, he asked her to accompany him to the reading of a play that had been approved by his own hand and that of Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels. He knew that she enjoyed readings even more than the actual performances of the shows—being in the room where the changes were being implemented and the characters were honed.

Hunsdon had not been feeling well before they left. It worried , but he assured her it was just another episode of gout. Unlike most readings, this one was to take place not in a tavern but in a church, because the play was going to be performed for the Queen by a company of young boy actors in London—the Children of the Chapel.

The reading was already under way when and Hunsdon arrived. Having learned to be unobtrusive when Hunsdon brought her on business calls like these, she slipped into a pew several rows behind the choirmaster, who was directing the boys.

The boy actors were sweet and young, most of their voices unbroken. She had a sudden flash of Henry Wriothesley as a child, his feet sticking out from beneath a brocade curtain. That was followed by a flash of heat so strong she felt an ache between her legs.

The title of the play was Dido, Queen of Carthage. She remembered this one because it was a notch above most of the plays that came to the Lord Chamberlain for approval. Written in blank verse, it was a retelling of part of the Aeneid: a story in which the goddess Venus made Dido, a North African queen, tumble headlong into love with Aeneas, a prince who had escaped the wreckage of Troy. often was bored by the prose of would-be playwrights, but this writer—a Christopher Marlowe—was a poet. She had gasped in the middle of a page when she came across a rhymed couplet that was split between two characters, as if not just the words but the very structure of the language joined them.

It had never occurred to her to use poetry that way.

They were at the scene where Dido rejected her suitor, Iarbas, and fell in love with Aeneas instead. listened for her favorite part—that couplet—but before she could mark it Hunsdon limped from the altar back to the pew where she sat. "You are well, my lord?" she asked.

He grimaced. "Not as well as I might be. My joints stiffen; I must stretch my legs." She got to her feet, but he waved her off. "You shall be my eyes," Hunsdon said, and he hobbled off.

turned her attention to the altar again. The boy playing Dido was begging Aeneas for his love. "No, no, no," the choirmaster interrupted. "You must be more convincing."

"Were he down on his knees," said a voice, as a man slid into the pew beside , "his tongue might be more credible."

The stranger was not much older than she was, and handsome in a dangerous way. He had thick black hair that brushed his chin and eyes that were so dark she could not make out the pupils. He was staring at her with a brow raised, as if he were expecting her to faint in a fit of maidenly vapors at his provocative comment.

"Indeed, perhaps young Dido needs a private lesson," the man added. "Who better than the playwright to show him how to shape his lips around…the words. "

So this was Christopher Marlowe.

"If you think to shock me, Master Marlowe," said, "you cannot." She knew that after performances in public theaters, the boys who played female roles were often visited by male patrons who paid court to them, as if they were actually ladies. She also knew through gossip that Marlowe fancied men, not women. There were rumors of him being a spy for Her Majesty, and also being an atheist. This was clearly not a man who played it safe.

"I am wounded," Marlowe said dramatically. "The lady pricks me, and I bleed."

"I think it is not my prick you seek, sir," replied.

A smile spread over his face at her wordplay. "You have quite the mouth on you, for a woman."

"Perhaps it is to my ear you should attend."

He leaned back, sprawling on the pew. "You have thoughts on my play?"

"I have thoughts about many things, sir."

"By all means, please share," Marlowe said. He continued to stare at her, but she saw in his eyes the slightest flicker of uncertainty—the same one she had felt when she was brave enough to read some of her poetry to Hunsdon. It was amazing how the slightest splinter of self-doubt could become a lance that ripped through a writer's confidence.

"This is a play about a woman who is too independent, is it not?" said. "Dido is rebuked by the gods for it. When Aeneas leaves her, she suffers so terribly that she throws herself into a fire to end her pain."

"Yes," Marlowe agreed.

"Why should Dido be punished twice? First by the gods, then by your pen. Is love not already punishment enough?"

He blinked, looking at her as if she were a species he'd never encountered before. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

"Someone better placed than you to say what Dido deserves."

A laugh startled out of Marlowe. "You mean a woman with a mind."

"Are you so surprised? Ah, wait. Of course. I've read your work, after all—"

"Your tongue is sharp," Marlowe interrupted, grinning, "but it is the tongue of a writer."

went very still, all bravado gone. Even when she had been in the company of true poets at Mary Sidney's literary salon—even when they had applauded her short stanza—they had not claimed her as one of their own. "You think me a writer?" she asked.

She watched his face soften. Maybe something in him recognized something in her. He was not a gentleman by birth and had attended Cambridge on scholarship. He knew what it was to claw your way into a society that never wanted you. "I think you someone with much to say," Marlowe replied, "when few are listening."

"My dear."

Hunsdon's voice fell over like a net. She twisted to face him, a brilliant smile on her face. "Lord Hunsdon." She got to her feet, taking his arm. She knew him well enough to see the flash of pain on his face.

"Apologies, Marlowe, but we must take our leave." Hunsdon waved a hand vaguely to the front of the church. "We look forward to seeing the performance at court."

Marlowe bowed to him and then bent over 's hand.

She could feel his eyes on her as Hunsdon leaned heavily on her to walk out of the church. She had never given Marlowe her name, but now she would not have to. He would know who was; what role she served for the Lord Chamberlain. Everyone did.

But, for a quarter of an hour, she had simply been herself.

And it had been divine.

—

It was not the first spell of gout that Hunsdon had suffered, but it was one of the worst. had him brought to his chamber and elevated his sore foot, wrapping it in wool that had been soaked with boiling water, a remedy thought to bring relief. It was expected that she would care for him, for not only was gout associated with the debauchery of a man as a youth but it was also known to be an aphrodisiac, leaving behind lust that would need to be assuaged.

What was troublesome was that Hunsdon was supposed to leave tomorrow for Scotland again at the behest of the Queen—who did not care if his toe felt like it was being stabbed with knives.

sat on the edge of the bed, reading aloud to Hunsdon. She had taken one of the potential plays from the stack on his writing table and was performing it as a one-woman show, giving voice to all the characters. When she glanced toward him, his eyes were closed and he was breathing more easily than he had since they'd arrived back at Somerset House. Gingerly, she set the foul copy down on the mattress, only to feel his hand grasp hers tightly. She squeezed back as he smiled faintly. "How do you feel, my lord?"

"Like someone is running a carriage over my eyeballs," Hunsdon said. "It is agony to shift an inch."

"Then do not move."

"Perhaps God will have mercy and take me in the night," he sighed.

A shiver ran down 's spine. "Do not say such things."

Hunsdon gripped her hand more tightly. His eyes opened. "You know, I hope, that I would care for you."

It was the first time they had actually addressed the truth: that she would likely outlive him. He had a wife and a family who would be the beneficiaries of his will. But he was telling her, now, that she would not find herself without means when he was gone. felt tears crowd her throat. "Thank you, Henry."

Their eyes locked. She had seen his filled with passion, with kindness, with frustration. With a single glance when she entered his office, she knew whether he needed a sounding board or a lover in his lap. "I am glad it was you," he said simply. Whatever unholy barter had begun between him and 's cousin, Hunsdon had not really known what he was getting. As a little girl, with her quick wit and her imagination and her luminous eyes, she had often been too much for adults. But for Hunsdon, she was just enough. His mouth twisted ruefully. "It has not been all bad, has it?"

She brought his knuckles to her lips, careful not to jostle him. "Absolutely not, my lord."

There was a knock on the door. "Enter," called, and her lady's maid, Bess, bobbed, holding a sealed letter. "Mistress," she said, "this come for ye."

took the letter and pried the wax free.

My humble duty remembered, Mistress—

I dreamt last night of you; and then recalled I did not sleep at all. You fill my waking hours, my every breath. If you think of me a fraction as often as I think of you, end my torment. In Paris Garden at dusk, at the bridge at the millstream where the primroses bloom, I shall wait. This bud of love may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

X

Southampton

"?" Hunsdon said. "All is well?"

Heat flooded her cheeks as she folded the note and slipped it into her bodies. "Yes, my lord. It is just…unexpected news." She met his gaze. "My cousin's wife is ill. He bade me visit to lift her spirits."

The lies, they flowed from her lips so effortlessly.

Hunsdon closed his eyes, trusting her at her word. "You must go."

The letter felt like an ember caught against her breast. "Yes," murmured. "I must."

—

Paris Garden was on the other side of the river in Southwark, which meant had to take a boat from the Blackfriars landing across to the Paris Garden stairs. She brought a young, flighty maid with her, one that she knew could be bribed with a coin to become distracted at a tavern for an hour or two. dressed in a plain kirtle, like the ones she used to wear when she visited her cousin's home on Mark Lane, with a voluminous cloak pulled over her head to hide her face.

It was near sunset, and the garden seemed gilded. wandered toward the bridge that Southampton had mentioned. A man chased a woman over it, laughing. Clearly, and the Earl were not the only pair looking for privacy. When she felt arms embrace her from behind, folding around her waist, she twisted to find herself looking into the celestial eyes of Southampton. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the bridge to a spot where they were concealed.

shoved down the hood of her cloak. "What would you have done were it not me?"

"A great deal of explaining," Southampton said, grinning. He stared at her as if she had been the one to fling the stars into the night. "You came."

"I came," she whispered.

His hold tightened on her wrist. She tangled her hands in his hair as he kissed her, lifting her off the ground. She was dizzy with the taste of him, like spirits fizzing through her body at the first sip.

"Why are you not back at Cambridge, my lord?" asked when they broke apart.

"It's Henry," he corrected, "and why are you complaining?"

She heard voices, and Southampton drew her deeper into the garden, away from the main path and up a small rise. He stopped in the hollow on the other side, where pine needles lay thick on the ground, matted in places where red deer must have slept. "We are not the first to bed here," he said.

arched a brow. "Is that what we are doing?"

He drew her hand to cover his heart, drumming hale and strong. She let herself think only once of Hunsdon, sallow and stricken, in his bed. "I cannot go back to my studies without knowing your favor lies with me as mine lies with you," Southampton said.

"My favor is not mine to give," replied.

"I will take a piece if I cannot have the whole."

She smirked. "Shall I guess which piece that might be?"

He took a curl of her hair. "This will do," he said, tugging on it. Then he lifted her hand and kissed her littlest finger. "Or this." He leaned forward, sucking at the spot where her neck met her shoulder until she gasped. "Or mayhap this." Then he pulled back, looking down at her without a trace of the playfulness of his words. "I have never felt like this," he said softly. "I have never imagined I could feel like this."

could not fault him for that, because she felt it, too. Sex had been a ladder to take her from one place to another; it had been a dance for which she'd learned all the steps; it was currency in her pocket. But it had never been a tide, rushing the shore and pulling the ground from beneath her feet. It had never been something uncontrollable and primal.

She also knew that Southampton's father had hated his mother and had taken him from her when he was a young child. He had never seen love modeled. , on the other hand, knew her parents to be a love match, albeit one that had destroyed her mother when her father died.

She sank down in a sigh of skirts, and Southampton sat beside her. He did not stop touching her—her wrist, her arm, her hair. "I cannot think when you do that," she said.

"Must you?" he asked. "Think?"

He bit her palm as if it were a plum, and she felt it between her legs.

"Henry," she whispered, "we could be discovered."

He looked up at the rise that barely shielded them. "Yes. But where else might we come together?"

"You misunderstand. We could be discovered. " She could not— would not—shame Hunsdon that way. And she could not fathom the repercussions from Burghley if he found out about Southampton's regard for her. She cupped his cheek—still soft, dear God, barely a man. "There is no happy ever after here," she said gently. "There may not even be a tomorrow."

"All I ask for," Southampton said, "is right now."

It was the only thing had to offer. She nodded, then kissed him until a fever spread between them. He pushed aside her cloak, his hands everywhere they could reach. "Too…many…clothes," Southampton gasped, bunching fistfuls of her skirts in his hand.

When she had yanked his hose down enough to take him in hand, he shuddered. She looked into his eyes. "Have you done this before?" she whispered.

Silent, he shook his head.

felt something roar inside her—not just lust, but power. Southampton was an earl and a peer and not for her, but in this moment, she was the one in control.

"We must be careful," she said. "I take…precautions, but you cannot finish in me. You understand?" When he nodded, she straddled him, her skirts pooling around his legs. She guided him inside her, drawing in her breath at the utter youth and strength of his body.

He exhaled slowly and wound his hands in her hair. "You feel made just for me," he said.

At that, she rocked against him. His hips bucked in reflex, and when they began to spasm a moment later, she lifted herself so that he spent between them.

He crushed her tight against him. "I am sorry," he gasped. "I couldn't…it was so…"

She touched his cheek. "Next time will be better," she promised.

He was already growing hard again—something she had not experienced before—which felt like being given an extra helping of sweets. Southampton slipped an arm around and gracefully flipped her onto her back. He kissed her, then worked his way down her body until his head was under her skirts. She felt his breath on her, and then a hot press of his tongue. A cry tore from , her eyes wide with surprise.

Over the crush of her skirts, those fathomless blue eyes met hers and smiled. His words hummed against her skin. "I never said I was completely chaste."

This time, when Southampton moved in her, she guided his hand between them— There. Harder. Now— until she stopped remembering to be a tutor, and instead let herself learn. This time, before he pulled out of her, she felt herself galloping toward something and finally, finally, soaring, until her ears rang and her vision pricked with black spots and a bubble of pure joy burst out of her throat in a laugh. Although she knew how to give herself pleasure, this was different. So this is what it is, she thought, to give not just your body, but your heart.

Southampton lay beside her on his back, chest heaving, his fingers still tangled in hers. "You are well?" he whispered.

"I am…" blinked up at the night sky. Even with her vast poet's vocabulary, she could not find a single word to describe how she felt. It was joy that couldn't be contained in a string of alphabet, it was fear of what was yet to come.

I am. She realized, smiling, that this was a complete sentence. An answer, in and of itself.

—

The maid was waiting for her at the river landing when returned to Westminster. Another coin paid for her discretion. When they reached Somerset House, dismissed the servant and tiptoed up the staircase. She gingerly opened the door to Hunsdon's bedroom. A candle burned beside the bed, casting his slack features into shadow. hesitated at the doorway. She could still smell Southampton on her, and it seemed doubly wrong to enter Hunsdon's bedchamber with the feel of another man still lingering like a bruise on her body.

"You've returned," Hunsdon said, his eyes still shut. "How fares your cousin's wife?"

blinked, having forgotten her ruse for a moment. "I fear…she will be plagued for some time." Her hand flexed on the edge of the wooden door. "Sleep well, my lord," she said.

She looked down on Hunsdon's still form for a moment, trying to imagine Southampton's shoulders narrowing with age, his strong legs succumbing to gout, his flushed cheeks creped with wrinkles. She would not have the privilege of seeing him change that way.

The sooner she remembered that, the better.

In her own chamber, she stripped off her kirtle and chemise and stood naked. She moved her hands from her throat to her breasts, between her thighs. She tried to trace the same route Southampton had. And yet she couldn't set herself on fire the way he had.

pulled her night rail over her body and unraveled the braid she had fashioned after rolling around the Paris Garden with Southampton. There were still pine needles caught between the strands. Then she reached for her writing desk, cut a fresh quill, and opened her bottle of ink. She stared down at a blank sheet of paper.

She thought of all the poetry she had read about a man seducing a virgin, an innocent.

She thought of her hand wrapping around Southampton and guiding him inside her.

She had never read a poem about a woman who took what she wanted from a younger man.

closed her eyes and thought of Southampton, a young Adonis, his arm flung over his eyes, the violet light of dusk turning him into a work of art.

Adonis.

He, too, had been loved…and lost. With the Countess, had read Ovid's account of the mythology: Aphrodite had fallen in love with the beautiful young man, a confident hunter certain nothing bad could ever happen to him. When Adonis was gored by a wild boar, he died in Aphrodite's arms.

dipped the quill into the ink, her thoughts coming fast and jumbled as she scrawled across the page.

Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face

Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,

Rose-cheek'd Adonis tried him to the chase;

Hunting he lov'd, but love he laugh'd to scorn;

Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him

And like a bold-fac'd suitor 'gins to woo him.

"Thrice fairer than myself," thus she began,

"The field's chief flower, sweet above compare,

Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,

More white and red than doves or roses are;

Nature that made thee, with herself at strife

Saith that the world hath ending with thy life."

She wrote, and she wrote, and she wrote. She crossed out lines and added others. She hid Southampton in Adonis's beautiful countenance, and she buried her own selfish greed for him in Venus—seducing a boy who was younger and more na?ve than herself.

She wrote until the dawn outside her window matched the first few lines of her poem.

She didn't finish.

didn't know yet what the ending would be. She just knew it would not be a happy one.

—

With Hunsdon in Scotland for several days, it was easier to exchange messages with Southampton without fear of discovery—passionate declarations of love from him, reminders of her station (or lack thereof) from . But he was wearing down her resistance. She made plans to visit him in Paris Garden again, two nights later.

She spent her time sequestered at Somerset House, wandering in the gardens, watching the falconers train birds, and for hours at a time, sitting beneath a hawthorn tree on a stone bench, adding verse to her poem about Southampton. The more she wrote, letting Venus pay tribute to Adonis, the closer she felt to the Earl. It was as if herself were creating his smooth chest, his riot of hair, his unearthly eyes.

She was so lost in her imagination that she did not hear the approach of footsteps. "I can only hope that the words that flow from my own pen can create such a blush on the cheek," a voice murmured. glanced up to find Christopher Marlowe, the playwright, standing in front of her.

"You do not belong here," she said reflexively.

"Such a warm welcome, mistress," he drawled. "Surely this is not how you treat those who come to see the Lord Chamberlain."

"Is that why you've come?"

"What other business might I have here?" He sank down on the bench beside her. "It is of course poor planning on my part, given that Lord Hunsdon is not in residence."

The way Marlowe looked at her suggested that he'd known full well Hunsdon was abroad. If he was indeed a spy for the Queen, imagined there was little about the Crown's political endeavors that he did not know. "I would not flatter myself, Master Marlowe, to think that you came here with the intent of meeting me," said.

"Call me Kit. All my friends do."

"Are we friends?"

"Aspirationally," he said. "And you should flatter yourself, as my hopes were indeed to find you on the premises."

She turned, meeting his gaze. "Why?"

He shrugged. "Because most people bore me, Mistress Bassano. And you…do not. I did not imagine the Lord Chamberlain had a courtesan whose most seductive body part was her brain. Besides, we had not finished our conversation."

"Had we not?"

"I am quite sure you have more to say about Dido's shortcomings," Marlowe offered. "Or my own."

"I am quite sure there are many more qualified than I am to offer you opinions."

"More qualified? Yes. More entertaining? No." He smiled, snaked out a hand, and snatched the poem from her writing desk.

"Stop!" cried, trying to grab the paper from him.

Marlowe leaped to his feet, reading aloud. "? ‘Fondling,' she saith, ‘since I have hemm'd thee here / Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer.'? " His eyebrows flew up. "Hunsdon's quite the devil."

"You heedless jolthead!" burst out.

Marlowe laughed, continuing. " Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: / Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, / Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. " He pretended to fan his face, grinning widely. "You little flirt-gill. It's almost enough to make me wish to partake in the pleasures of a woman's body." Then he winked. " Almost. "

"This is not about Hunsdon," she gritted out. "Do you write only of what you have lived?"

"I bloody hell hope not," Marlowe said. "Or I am far worse off than even I thought." He tilted his head. "Then what is it you write of?"

"If you must know, Venus and Adonis."

He sat beside her again, handing her the paper. "Do tell."

sighed, setting her lap desk on the ground. "It is the opposite of your Dido," she said. "When Venus cannot convince Adonis to stay with her, he is the one who is killed."

Marlowe's eyes brightened. "How…novel."

She drew back, unsure if he was making light of her.

"I do not jest," he said. "I cannot think of a work of literature where it is not the man persuading the woman."

Last year, had read a Marlowe poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." It was, classically, what one would expect: a man trying to convince a girl to lie with him. "Why shouldn't it be the other way around? Don't women have the same hopes and fears and urges as men?"

"How terrifying to imagine." He laughed. "To think you lot might be as uncontrollable as we are."

"That's the point of my poem: to invert everything. To reverse what we've seen. To suggest that a woman might lust, and a man might be the one to pay the price." She bit her lip. "As in your play, the strong, powerful woman falls in love, and the heroic male dies. But unlike Dido, Venus isn't tossing herself into any fire. She isn't ruined by love. Instead, she ruins love for anyone else." She thought for a moment. " Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy, / They that love best their love shall not enjoy. "

Marlowe stared down at the page. "Where's that bit?"

"I haven't written it down yet."

He pushed the paper into her hand. "Well, do. Before it flies from your mind."

picked up the lap desk and scrawled the line at the bottom of the page. She had barely lifted the quill when Marlowe took the poem back. His lips moved silently as he read. Then he snapped his fingers and held out his hand. "Pen?"

She passed the quill to him and watched him scratch out a line, then write a comment in the margin. "What are you about?"

"Giving notes," Marlowe said.

"Why?"

He did not even glance up, so absorbed was he. "Because," he said, "that is what writers do for each other."

—

Kit Marlowe may have been a spy and a rogue and an atheist but he was also becoming the best friend had never had. They wrote each other frequently, although addressed her notes to Mrs. Padshaw, who was Kit's landlady in Durham House. She was willing to keep secrets, such as and whatever men he smuggled into his room, in return for a weekly jug of mead. sent him snippets of her verse, which he critiqued and sent back to her. He asked her questions about plot holes in the play he was writing. They spent borrowed time hidden in the gardens of Somerset House, knowing that when Hunsdon returned, that freedom would be curtailed.

It was this ticking clock that made Marlowe suggest a trial run to spring from Somerset House without anyone knowing she was gone. He had business at Grocers' Hall and wanted her to accompany him, after which he planned to bring her to a tavern. But Grocers' Hall was on Princes Street, close enough to Somerset House that could be recognized. And so, Marlowe had brought her a disguise.

He was waiting for her on Little Drury Lane, as he had promised. When she approached he whistled, and she jabbed her elbow into his side. "I feel ridiculous," she whispered.

"You should feel worried," Marlowe said.

She looked down at her brown doublet and hose and boots, castoffs from a stableboy Kit had bribed with a coin. Her hair was braided against her head and hidden beneath a feathered cap. She looked, for all intents and purposes, like a young boy. "Why?"

"Because I am far more likely to proposition you when you are dressed like that." Marlowe laughed. "Come, Emile."

She growled as he pulled her by the elbow toward Princes Street. "How do you walk about like this every day?" asked, gesturing vaguely at her legs. "Do you not…chafe?"

He laughed as they walked past drays being pulled by mules and dodged piles of steaming horseshit. Marlowe glanced at her. "You had no trouble leaving?"

She shook her head. No one had even glanced twice at her once she skittered down the servants' stairs and out the rear door. There were boys coming in and out of Somerset House at all times, ferrying food and coal or running messages.

"How goes Adonis?" he asked.

"Still resistant," replied. She had not finished her poem, because she still did not know how it should end. Well, she knew what would happen, but not how.

Art imitating life.

"Why do you need to see a grocer?" asked.

"Because this one happens to perform for Lord Strange's Men," Marlowe replied. "John Heminges used to be with the Queen's Men. But last year, two other actors in the troupe got into it on tour, and one got killed. Heminges married his widow, and I suppose the circumstances were odd enough for him to decamp to Lord Strange's Men."

"It's more incestuous than court," murmured.

She and Kit already had formed the sort of friendship that engulfed them, fueled by that peculiar sense that each had finally found in the other a missing part of themselves. They were both clever and outspoken and observant—all tools in a writer's box—but more important, they fed off each other's appreciation for those qualities. After only a week, knew that he detested the color red and pickled herring, that he preferred ale to wine and the city to the country, that his favorite food was gingerbread husbands, and when he ate one he did it with as much sexual innuendo as possible. It had been rumored that he was to go to the Catholic college in Rheims, but he'd confessed he would rather cut out his own tongue than subscribe to any religion—including the Church of England. She knew how Kit had come to university on scholarship and why he admired Walsingham and to whom he'd lost his virginity. The one line he did not cross was telling her about the work he did for the Queen, although he did not deny doing it. In the same way, told him about her father's death and how she could read music before she could read words and about her cousin trading her to Hunsdon for job security and her lessons with Isabella. She did not tell him her two biggest secrets: her hidden faith, and her feelings for Southampton. The first could have gotten her killed. The second was more complicated. It was hers, alone, now; she feared that speaking the desire into existence would be like a drop of blood in an ocean—diluted until it was as if it had never been there at all.

But most important, she and Kit were bonded by words. After only a week they could finish each other's sentences, not to mention each other's rhymed couplets. It was still a heady feeling, and she knew that Kit valued her mind and couldn't care less about the pretty package it came in.

They had just turned the corner and were about to climb the steps to the guildhall when suddenly panicked. "What if I am recognized?"

"That will not come to pass."

"Then how will you explain my presence?"

Marlowe smirked. "Darling, it would be considered more shocking for me not to be in the company of a young man."

After years with Hunsdon, knew there was a pipeline of sorts from the livery companies to the theater companies. The young boys who played the roles of women often came from livery companies, where they were bonded in service to drapers, goldsmiths, grocers, or tailors. Many of the boy players went on to become hired adult actors.

Heminges was a portly man with a face like rising dough, and when and Kit were directed to him, he was deep in conversation with another man. This one was slighter, with a receding hairline and a weak chin badly camouflaged by a dark beard. "I shall make the introduction," Heminges said, "but I make no promises."

Marlowe stepped forward, smiling widely. "A man who promises no promises is one who cannot disappoint anyone but himself. Well met, Master Heminges."

"Marlowe," the grocer said, nodding.

"Marlowe?" The other man turned. "I saw your Tamburlaine. "

"If you have chosen to speak to me, instead of turn tail and run, I shall hope that you found it agreeable."

"This is Master Shakespeare," Heminges said.

Shakespeare. stood mute, a step behind Kit, trying to remember why she knew that name.

"Will," the man corrected, nodding at Kit. "I, too, write for the stage."

Oh, yes. remembered the plays he had submitted to Hunsdon. Badly, she thought.

"May I introduce my…friend. Emile Hammersmith," Kit said, his hand pushing between 's shoulder blades. She blushed a furious crimson but didn't dare open her mouth. If she spoke, the ruse would be up. "Emile is…mute," Kit said, smiling. "Which means if I disappoint him, I never have to hear complaint of it."

smiled sweetly and kicked Kit surreptitiously in the shin.

"Master Shakespeare's father is a glover in Stratford," Heminges said, "and has of late been in the wool trade as well. He would like to contract some of his apprentices to Lord Strange's theater company."

Marlowe smiled politely. "What a happy coincidence," he said. "Heminges, I thought perhaps you could mention to Henslowe at the Rose that I have a new play circling in my thoughts, should he care to be the one to commission it."

"I, too, would like to offer my plays," Shakespeare interjected.

Kit slid a glance toward . "Huzzah," he said.

"May I ask the title, Master Marlowe?" asked Heminges.

" The Jew of Malta, " Kit answered, and startled.

He continued chatting, but could only hear the blood pounding in her ears. When Kit finally ushered her out of the hall, it took a few moments before she could focus on his rambling words. "…not surprising he wants into the theater business. Shakespeare's pater got into trouble as a wool brogger, and he wound up in court for selling without a license. I'm quite sure young Will wants to carve a path as far away from his father as possible. Why not theater," Kit mused. "Everyone else and their brother seem to feel they have a skill for it."

"He doesn't," said, the world rushing back into place. "I read one of his plays."

Kit laughed. "Good. Less competition for me."

They were on the street again, the bright sunlight making her wince. "Your new play," she said carefully. "It's about a Jew?"

"Yes, Barabas. He's the villain—a rich Jew whose wealth is at risk, because the governor of Malta wants to extort money from his kind to pay the Turks."

"He's the villain," repeated.

Kit glanced down, bemused. "Yes, yes, keep up," he said impatiently. "Barabas, of course, refuses, and the Christians take his money anyway and turn his house into a nunnery. So he decides to get vengeance on them all—including his daughter's Christian lover, and his daughter, whom he poisons." He whirled, walking backward on the street so that he could look at as he continued. "Finally, he sets a trap and winds up falling into it himself, dying in a boiling cauldron that was meant for the Christians. Brilliant, is it not?" He paused. "You hate it," he guessed.

"No, I…" bit her lip. "I am a fan of tragedy. But is it not already tragic that Jews are treated as they are?"

Kit scoffed. "You speak as if you know so many of them."

What could say to that? "What I mean to say is that mayhap villains are made, not born. Mayhap it is the treatment of Barabas as a Jew that teaches him to treat others so unkindly."

Marlowe jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat, mulling. "All religion is a fiction," he said. "All of it is evil. That's the whole point." He slung an arm around her narrow shoulders. "Come. Instead of drowning in fictional despair, let us drown ourselves in ale." He peered in the general direction of St. Paul's. "Mermaid Tavern, that way."

"I do not like ale," muttered.

"No? How can you even call yourself a writer?" Kit joked.

She stopped walking. "I can't, Kit."

For a long moment Marlowe just stared at her. He understood what it was to keep secrets one couldn't reveal, to wish for lives one would never have, to play multiple roles—hired hack, libertine, hidden agent of the Crown. He chucked her under the chin. "Go to, Mouse," he said, trying to cheer her. "You are still a writer, even if the words you put to paper have never been read by another. I look forward to the day when you pen your play about this aggrieved Jew."

She looked at him. "Mayhap, one day, I will."

—

In the middle of the night, heard something strike the window of her chamber.

She leaped from her bed, lit a candle, and approached the window. In the garden behind the house a cloaked figure bent in the pouring rain, scooping pebbles from the walkway. Even before he threw back the hood of his cloak to reveal his bright hair, she knew it was Southampton.

She struggled with the window latch, opened it, and leaned over the threshold. "What are you doing here?" she hissed.

He threw his arms wide. "Letting my eyes drink in the—"

"Sshh!" interrupted. "Are you mad?"

"Yes! Mad for you…"

God save her from inebriated men. closed the window, jammed her arms into a robe, and flew down the stairs to the doors leading out to the gardens. Southampton stumbled toward her, and she dragged him into the shadows.

He buried his face in her unbound hair and breathed deeply. His arms were wet and cold around her. "I've missed you."

shoved him away. "You cannot be here."

"Love, you cannot break a heart that's already been broken. Why have you not answered my letters?"

"Because it was unsafe to do so," said. Even as she held him at arm's length, even as she panicked about whether any staff had seen him or had witnessed her flight to the garden, her body bowed toward his. "Hunsdon will be home any moment."

"Then let me have the moments he has not claimed," Southampton said. "I cannot return to Cambridge without one last kiss."

pushed back her sodden hair and stamped her lips against his. "There. Now, go." But even as she spoke, he caught her close.

She melted into him, and everywhere his hands roamed she felt fire lick her skin. She nearly expected the rain striking them both to turn to steam. Her fingers twined in his hair and his mouth fell against her throat, and just like before, there was a devil whispering to her: Why can't you have this one small thing?

"What you do to me," Southampton breathed against her, his hand finding the split of her robe and sliding inside. "Tell me you feel it, too."

"It does not matter if I feel it," she sighed.

He cupped her face. "It matters. It is all that matters."

The rain ran down his cheeks and spiked his eyelashes. "Not here." grabbed his hand and pulled him along the dark walk between the hedges, until the peaked frame of the orangery came into view. She opened the door and hurried in, sealing the storm outside.

In the dark, the shapes of the plants seemed monstrous. Through the glass, moonlight pooled. Southampton peeled off her robe and then pulled her drenched night rail over her head. She stood before him, silvered.

He untied his cloak as her hands worked buttons through the swollen fabric of his doublet. When he was naked, too, she wrapped her legs around his waist, allowing him to hold her up while he pivoted and set her on the edge of a potting table. As he thrust into her, she tilted her face up to the glass roof, where the rain pelted as if the world wept for them.

Afterward, they lay on a canvas beneath a small grove of potted orange trees, Southampton's body curled around 's. "This is our Eden," he murmured into her shoulder. "I am Adam, and you are my Eve."

She turned to face him. "And there is no escaping the tree of knowledge."

"I will find a way," Southampton vowed.

had never felt so old, nor had Southampton ever seemed so very young. What must it be like to be rich and privileged and to believe with utter conviction that obstacles would clear themselves from your path?

"My lord," she said softly, "some stories are meant to be tragic."

"Not ours," he insisted. "I will write you, every day."

"You will not. It is too dangerous."

Just then, she heard her name being called. jerked upright, yanking her night rail over her head. She tossed Southampton's clothes at him. "Dress," she whispered fiercely. "There is a rear door that way." She pointed, hoping that he would spy the latch in the wall of glass panels.

"?"

"My lord?" she called, hearing the door at the front of the orangery scrape open.

Hunsdon struck flint and lit a candle, which must have been doused by the storm. It illuminated a circle where he stood, with the orangery door still open and the rain hammering outside. As stepped toward him, his face creased into a smile. "Is this an apparition or an angel?"

She realized that in her voluminous nightwear, with the glow of the flame in front of her, she must indeed look otherworldly. "Which would you prefer tonight, my lord?" she asked, dimpling.

She imagined Southampton, mere yards away, listening to this exchange. She felt her cheeks burn in shame, and hoped Hunsdon would see it as passion. He reached out a hand, and she placed hers into it. "I did not expect you so late," said.

"Our carriage broke a wheel," Hunsdon replied. "I came to find you in your chamber, but you were missing." He glanced over his shoulder. "I have the staff turning the whole house out in search of you. What brings you to the orangery past midnight?"

She turned the words over in her head, inspecting them for accusation but finding only concern. "It is the strangest thing," said. "I must have walked in my sleep because I found myself in the gardens without knowing how I'd arrived there. And then, when it began to rain, I took refuge here."

Hunsdon rubbed his hand over the night rail. "We must get you dry," he said, just as there was a clatter in the rear of the glasshouse. "What's that?" He took a step toward the noise.

"Likely some small creature seeking shelter, as I was," answered quickly, putting her hand on his cloak. "You are soaked, too," she said, lowering her lashes. She wound her arms around Hunsdon's neck, kissing him as she maneuvered so that his back was facing the spot where Southampton must have knocked over a pot. "So wet," she murmured as she pushed him up against his worktable, dropped to her knees, and tugged down his hose. "I have missed you, my lord," said, and she closed her mouth over him.

She felt his hands on her head like a benediction. As Hunsdon moaned, she saw Southampton, dressed now, step into the aisle. She met his eye over Hunsdon's hip.

This is who I am, she silently willed. You need to know.

As Southampton whirled, silently padding out the rear door of the glasshouse, closed her eyes. She wasn't an angel, and she wasn't an apparition.

She was a wraith, and every chamber of her heart was haunted.

—

did not leave her room the next day or the day after, pleading a headache. While Hunsdon was at court, reporting to Her Majesty, wrote.

She tore apart her love poem and put it back together.

She found the words to kill off Adonis, and to let Venus grieve for him. Because no matter how she had delayed, that was the way it was always going to end.

She dedicated the poem to Southampton.

Then she copied it clean and sent it to Marlowe's landlady folded inside a simple missive:

Help me, it read.

—

That was how revealed one of her secrets to Kit Marlowe, who answered her summons for aid in all the ways she had hoped he would—as an editor for her poetry, and as a shoulder to cry on. She met him weekly at the Falcon Inn in Southwark, a different day each time, so that Hunsdon would never become suspicious. She had given the young maid so much coin for her continued silence that at this rate, the woman would probably be able to afford a house on the Strand.

Months passed without word from Southampton, which had expected after the manner in which they'd parted. She told Kit how she had finally managed to drive Southampton away, to which the poet had no reply, but he opened his arms and held her while she sobbed.

A year went by, and although she still thought of Southampton, buried her memories. The handful of times she heard that the Earl was to be at court, she made sure to feign illness. She decided to consider herself lucky to have had one grand love in her life, and over a decade of comfort with a kind man who had become a friend. She distracted herself by reading plays for Hunsdon—including Kit's Jew of Malta. She started another poem, this one based on a tale from Ovid's Fasti about a woman who was raped by her soldier husband's best friend after her husband boasted about her. It was dark and devastating and tragic, which was always her mood these days.

The Falcon Inn wasn't very crowded, but then it was just early afternoon. A barmaid carried tankards to patrons, and in the corner of the room, a man played a lute and sang. It was unclear to if he had been hired to do so or was merely drunk.

"You know," Kit said. "You used to be fun."

had pillowed her head on her folded arms. "Pray continue," she said. "I will try to pretend I am interested."

Just as had spent months grieving the loss of Southampton, Kit had spent months stirring up trouble. He'd moved house, and after he and the poet Thomas Watson had gotten into a deadly fight with his neighbors in Norton Folgate, he'd spent a fortnight in Newgate Prison. Only a month ago Kit had been in the Netherlands, caught up in a counterfeiting scheme tied to Catholics who were still vying for the throne. He'd been sent to Lord Burghley, the Queen's treasurer, but hadn't been charged or jailed. When had asked him directly if he was an agent of the Crown, he laughed and said, "I am simply an agent of chaos." It seemed to that they both had deep, endless caverns inside them that they tried unsuccessfully to fill—'s days spent writing poetry dedicated to the object of her affections and nights spent servicing Hunsdon; Kit's days spent drowning in ale and his nights rife with brawls and secret missions that could get him killed at any moment. They were, thought, a sorry pair—always reaching for the fruit on a branch too high, instead of finding satisfaction in the things within their grasp that could sustain them.

The lute player finished his song and, spying Kit, launched into a ballad based on one of his poems. Kit groaned and waved to the barmaid for another drink.

He was reading a pamphlet that Robert Greene had just published, Groatsworth of Wit, in which Kit (and other writers) had been referenced through allusions. "What rot. He's contending George Peele's work is on a par with mine. I have far more talent than Peele."

"And so much more humility." smirked.

Kit ignored her. "Ah, this bit's more interesting. He says actors are only as good as the words we writers give them—so they owe us. And he warns of one untrustworthy actor, an upstart crow who's pretending he's a writer and passing other people's material off as his own."

"Who?"

Kit shrugged. "He calls him Shake-scene. "

"Shake-scene," repeated. "Didn't we meet him once?"

"That was Will Shake speare, " Kit corrected. "He does act now, for the Queen's Men. But he's a nobody. This is likely a reference to Ned Alleyn, chewing up the scenery in my Tamburlaine. "

picked up the Groatsworth pamphlet, leafing through it. "Well, whoever it is, it seems that if actors are trying to write for themselves, they need more playwrights."

A long finger hooked over the page and tugged it down. Kit's dark eyes were on hers, dancing.

"No," she said.

"You don't even know what I am going to ask."

"I don't need to. I can tell by the look in your eyes."

"Why not you, Mouse?" he asked.

winced. Her head hurt from the ale they'd been drinking, her heart hurt from Southampton, and she didn't really give a fig about this stupid pamphlet that had Kit's hose tied in knots. "Why not me what ?"

"Why don't you write a play?"

"If you do not know the answer to that, you are more cotton-headed than I believed." She looked down at her boy's clothes. "Or perhaps you have forgotten what's beneath this doublet."

But when Kit caught tail of an idea, he could not let it go. " Everyone collaborates," he said. "Indeed, it would be unnatural for a playwright to not have a friend's quill in his inkwell."

"Is that a sexual pun?"

"Maybe. But it's also true. Why, a week ago, Fletcher and Beaumont were at a tavern discussing a play they were writing together about killing a king. They were discussing the murder scene and who should take which part, and they got arrested for treason, because someone assumed they were plotting regicide."

narrowed her eyes at him. "Do not jest."

"I am not. I'm telling you that it's perfectly normal for more than one writer to have a hand in a play. Kyd and I share rooms, and he's helped with my plays when I reach a spot that makes me wish to tear out my hair. If Lord Strange's Men wind up with a new apprentice playing a maiden's part, they might come to me and ask me to add a soliloquy for a play of Nashe's. Sometimes a clown is added, sometimes one is taken away. It's all good coin. A play is a living thing, and it grows and shrinks with time. This is why the best playwrights work with each other. And by the best of us, I mean me."

"I cannot write a play, Kit."

"You cannot put your name on a play. That is not the same thing."

Despite herself, found that she was leaning forward. Kit was the first person to ever take her writing seriously, as more than a hobby. He spent precious time working on her verse with her, and he solicited 's opinions on his own. He treated her the way he would treat any male writer. "I…I don't know how to write a play."

"Mouse," Kit said gravely. "You are an accomplished writer. Words are words. A play is merely a different shape."

Even considering this felt like stepping to the edge of a cliff. could feel the roar of the wind and the spray of the sea and knew that, with one step, she might fall. But, then again, maybe she could fly. "You would aid me?"

"There is little I would not do for you," Kit said, smiling. "Now. We need a plot." He rapped his fingers on the table, thinking.

The lute player began another broadside ballad, this one sung to the tune of "Fortune or Foe." " Ay me, vile wretch, that ever I was born…Making myself unto the world a scorn: And to my friends and kindred all a shame, Blotting their blood by my unhappy name. "

Kit smacked the table. "That's it! Do you know this tune?"

nodded. "Is it not about a murder of a husband?"

"Yes. Thomas Arden, killed by his wife, Alice, because she wanted to be with her lover instead. Happened in Kent forty years ago. She hired two accomplices to commit the murder, but it took five tries before they succeeded. Eventually Alice was burned at the stake for her crimes." Kit grinned. "It's perfect. Who doesn't love bloodshed and murder onstage? And since you are forever telling me I cannot write tragic women well, this is your opportunity to educate me."

"What if she was not tragic?" asked.

"Go on."

"Marriage is a business and has little to do with love. For a woman to have status, she must be married. Yet a married woman loses everything—her name, her body, her property, her money. It all belongs to her husband. A widow, on the other hand, is given back all that rightfully belongs to her." shrugged. "It is a wonder there aren't more husbands murdered."

Kit shuddered. "You terrify me sometimes."

"Because I speak truth?" said. "Who knows why Alice Arden wanted to kill her husband, or what happened behind their closed doors? Was she foolish to try to break free…or impossibly brave?" She turned to the lute player, no longer singing in poor Alice's voice but in that of a narrative chorus warning others not to behave as she did.

"Love is a god," said. "Marriage is but words."

Kit clinked his tankard of ale against hers. "That's my girl." He flipped the Groatsworth pamphlet to its blank back and signaled for the barmaid again, this time to ask for a quill and ink. "Now," he said. "Where will you start?"