Over the dark Atlantic, northeast from the islands called the Azores by some fifteen hundred miles, falls England. Between its fields, brown and grey, rests its London, like a crowning jewel of jet – blackened soot and medieval streets, a slow and distant river. The roofs are thatch and shale, and if the sun is out, the steeples shine like gold. Under clouds, they seem to wait, sometimes affording a dull glimmer.
Take Holborn Street to the outskirts of the city and you come to a level, muddy field known as Lincoln Green. Over the grass there is a complex of pale gothic towers hemmed with age-old trees – this is Lincoln’s Inn. It has two doors. Take the first, and you will come to a university, a lodging-place for lawyers. Take the second, in the back, and you will come to a small dark hallway. Find the third door on the left and open it. Another hall, another door, and stairs. The steps go down into the womb of the earth.
#
“The Azores were a disaster,” I said, falling on a soft, old couch in the common room of the Order’s caverns, two hundred feet below the surface.
“Is that so,” said Itzak.
“Haven’t you heard?” I took five thick books from inside my coat and set them on the table in front of me. Caution had been needed to transport them on the streets above; three were Italian theological texts, banned in England. Another was a far-outdated atlas. The last was some Horace poetry, in Latin. An arrangement of leather-bound, yellowed volumes. No gold pages. These forlorn books, along with a handful of trinkets and a tan, were the only things I’d brought back to London from the Azores.
“Impressive,” Itzak said. The penchant for sarcasm came more naturally to him than breathing.
“We were hoping for more,” I admitted.
As he leaned over a book of Greek mythology, he was polishing a pistol. It was from a new series he’d been talking about. Before I had left in July, all I had seen were preliminary sketches. The Order was comprised of more than hunters like me – Itzak was an alchemist and a gunsmith, one of the finest in the world. Unlike mine, his appearance hadn’t changed much: blonde hair neatly cut, grey eyes that peered from behind spectacles, singed eyebrows. His voice had a soft Yiddish accent. “You found a Horace.”
He inspected the ratty book and fingered its crinkled pages.
I reached into my satchel and pulled out three packets of sugar, a china inkwell, a pearl necklace, a pair of woolen socks, and other small items of various monetary value. A silence descended as we stared at the pile.
“How is my mother?” I changed the subject before my disappointment became tangible.
“She has been fine,” Itzak said. “The money has lasted her this far.”
My mother lived somewhere in Antwerp. I sent her what pay the Order gave me, as I ought to.
“Can you read this when you get the chance?”
“If you would like,” said Itzak as I handed him a few pages.
“The Storm,” he read, perusing. “The Calm.”
I reached for the basket of fruit on the table. After months of dried figs, I was glad for an apple. I was glad to be back in the snug, well-worn common room, and to sit before the fire in a chair that had seen better days. Light from the cobwebbed chandelier glowed on the walls we covered with rugs and tapestries to keep out the cold dankness of underground. After the Islands Voyages, everything, really, felt stable, sensible, safe – as safe as life in the Order could be, anyway – though months under open sky made something of a strangeness creep in on me when I saw the cave-rocks looming all around.
“I’ll sleep like a babe tonight.”
Itzak shrugged. “Count on nothing, Jack. The hunters have no rest these months. There’s been no quelling it. In particular, the demons – the townspeople think that wolves and bandits are stealing off their goats. Just a week ago, Minh was on Fleet Street. He scared away a demon trying to nab one of the goats; but the farmer saw him, took a crossbow, and almost blew his head off.”
“And the Otherkind,” I said, “their numbers rise?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“The beast-minded?”
“More can speak as you or I.”
The Tainted things – they had their castes. Some were ancient, some newborn. Some looked and thought and lived as beasts, not even knowing if they had once been human (some had never been). Some were left with vestiges of sense. Some could comprehend, and pass for humans, like Montez. Once bitten, marked, Tainted, one could only guess at where one’s mind might be flung. But would you wish a mind after you had changed? Would you wish a conscience that could comprehend your wretchedness?
“I hope it’s over soon,” I said.
“It won’t be. They spawn faster than we can track them.”
The door of the common room swung open and marked a pause in our conversation. A broad, tall man with a mane of russet hair strode in, saw me, and laughed.
“Jack! Of all people!” His massive arms wrapped me in a hug.
For a moment I feared for my bones. “Great to see you too, Ben.”
“Have you been ever missing out!” he said. “But you’ve got to tell me all about the Island! What happened? All London says Raleigh and Essex didn’t bring in much to show for their whole miserable enterprise. But I reasoned Jack would salvage something, wouldn’t he?”
“The spoils of victory lie on yonder table,” said Itzak.
Ben Jonson’s mouth formed an O of concern, but he clapped me on the back. “You must tell me everything about the Azores,” he said cheerily. He pulled up a chair and folded himself into it.
“There isn’t much,” I said. “What of you?”
“You’ll never guess,” Ben smiled.
“Oh, dear,” muttered Itzak.
“You recall The Isle of Dogs, Jack, the play I wrote with Nashe this summer? They put it on. And – arrested! Privy Camber itself! Would you believe it? I did call them some nasty things, though. Nashe got away to Yarmouth, but the actors and I got locked in prison for about a month. The Queen’s Council shut down the theatres and was about to tear them all apart, too, but Queen Elizabeth wouldn’t have it, so they’ve started the plays again. Shakespeare has Henry IV – Part Two.”
“Have you seen it?”
Ben was peeved; he didn’t like being interrupted. “Yes. Anyhow,” he went on, “now everyone knows my name. It was what I needed, Jack! I walk down the street and people I don’t know wish me health. Though Northwell let me have it for causing an uproar and drawing attention to myself. And the Queen’s spies, too. I can’t walk out the door without being shadowed.”
“This is how you start your career as a playwright?” I said.
“Scandal or no scandal,” he beamed, “everyone knows my name. And people will forget matters like mine, Jack. In a month, everything bad will slide from their minds, and with some careful, beautiful plays – Ben Jonson! Playwright impresario, master of the masque!”
“Good luck,” said Itzak.
“Mock me thy worst, alchemist,” growled Ben. He stabbed a valiant finger in the air. “But Jack and I are going to make it big.”
I added my doubtful grumbles to Itzak’s..
“Ah, Jack. Your day will come. Just wait! They already know you in the high circles.” He took one of my poems and studied it for a while. “You spelled ‘preeminence’ wrong.”
I stuffed my sad pile of loot back into my satchel. “I wrote it sea-sick,” I said testily. “Maybe that’s why.”
“Ah. How was the trip? Go on.”
A short account began. I’d left London months ago to join the English fleet in Plymouth harbor, on a mission to raid Spanish galleons in the Azores. I’d been assigned to the ships of Raleigh (although the Earl of Essex was the official head of the expedition). A month, several leaks, storms, wrecks, and twenty or so frustrated poems on the ordeal later, Raleigh’s and Essex’s fleets arrived in the Azores – then I was dropped onto Isla Fayal. Essex was supposed to aid us there, but obviously had found other duties elsewhere. We’d spent four days groaning in the sun, delaying for him, but eventually had given up and taken the Isla. The satisfaction lasted until Essex sailed in the next day and charged Raleigh with treason for attacking without his consent. A whole day wasted quarreling.
The feud between them only grew when Raleigh’s men had tried to besiege the port of Punta Delgada, waiting for Essex to come to our aid. Essex had better things to do, namely landing at the beautiful ocean paradise of Villa Franca and spending a week with his men lounging on the white sand sipping wine. We’d not captured any Spanish galleons. We returned home to more storms, not to London or even Plymouth – to St. Ives. It took a week of hitching rides with richer comrades to make my way back to the city. And to make matters worse, folk I met kept talking about a second Spanish Armada, which couldn’t be anything good.
“Oh, it was terrible,” said Ben. “The moment Spain heard that the English fleet was gone to the Azores, King Philip sent a new fleet to attack Falmouth, then destroy Essex. But the storm that blew you to St. Ives hit the Second Armada. It’s funny if you think about it. Isn’t it funny that God always kills more Spaniards than the sword?”
“Rubbish,” said a voice. “Rubbish, Jonson. It’s not funny at all.”
Two men were at the door. Lovelace had spoken; he was slight, keen, and sharp-featured, like a hawk. His ruff was stiff and white against his black suit. I smelled a pricey cologne, a few years out of style. His friend Bode was tall, thick, gruff, brown, and burnt.
“Have you not somewhere else to be, Lovelace?” said Ben.
He swept to the bowl of fruit. “Nothing to do until Essex starts his promenade at four. Welcome back, Donne, anyhow.”
“Thanks.”
“The Second Armada would have been the disaster of the century. Jack could have been killed, Jonson. Nothing going on out there is funny.”
“Well,” said Ben. “Pardon me.”
Lovelace tossed a grape in the air and caught it in his mouth.
“Shall we see the parade?” Ben asked.
“Oh, lets,” said Itzak. “Will there be dancing midgets?”
Lovelace eyed the pistol in Itzak’s hands. “Nice gun. Isn’t it a lovely gun, Bode? Perhaps he could make me one.”
Bode grunted. (He, like Itzak, was an alchemist. He, unlike Itzak, was rather dull. He could forge a pleasing axe, but nothing like the cutting-edge chemicals and firearms that came from Itzak’s workshop.)
Lovelace tossed another grape, but it hit his nose and fell to the floor. He sighed and reached for it.
#
Like every other European city, London was as massive below as above, an iceberg common humans only saw from the surface. Eons ago, it had stuck down its subterranean roots: caves, tunnels, catacombs carved by ancient brotherhoods, by budding empires, by nameless delving creatures who had wrought a world beneath the world. The Order had created some newer routes, but most were ancient, older than the Black Death, than the Cæsers. I lived in the Order’s London headquarters, what they had claimed of the underground realm. It was a secure and agreeable home despite the smell of earth and strange noises and the perpetuating darkness and one’s sense of it all.
I knew the Order tunnels like I knew myself, from my dormitory (dug by the Celts) to the library (Roman catacombs) to the anterooms (those Normans).
The University of Lincoln’s Inn was the hunters’ gateway to underground. Lincoln’s was composed of two parts: some rooms taken the Order, and the law school that carried on, oblivious that a secret society had moved in underneath. In the record books I had resided there since 1592.
We meandered the halls and crossed the fields to Fleet Street. Outside it was overcast and crisp; the city rustled in an arid cold. A faint wind swept the hissing leaves down the gutter to swirl and hiss as they would. Autumn was sharper than I remembered. Ben and Itzak, already pale and used to the chill, watched me curiously as I stood there, tan, blowing into my hands.
The Earl of Essex was taking his time. The townsfolk who’d gathered on the edge of the road looked up the hill, disappointed.
“He’ll come eventually,” I said.
“He’d better,” said Ben, “before you catch pneumonia.”
I pulled my scarf tight around my chin and buried my hands in my pockets. It was getting dim; the temperature dropped quickly. All around us, street conversation had taken on a familiar London foulness.
Suddenly a trumpet blared and the grumbling folk burst into cheers. A herald, clad lavishly in bright green velvet, appeared at the crest of the hill. He was followed by a group of trumpeters who raised their gleaming bugles high and trilled a fanfare.
“O gracious frequenters of Fleet, a thousand apologies for the delay, and our thanks for your patience….”
“You’re welcome,” said Ben.
“As the procession is now ready to be commenced, we announce the approach of Robert Devereux, second Earl of the fair province of Essex, victor at the Battles of Zutphen and Cadiz, lord in the Court of Her Majesty Elizabeth, and scourge of the Spanish Isles, who returns triumphant from his commendable exploits in the Azores!”
The trumpets sang, the march began. They were followed by flutes, mandolins, bagpipes, tabors, striking up a lively tune, and soon the musicians were sweeping by us, all in matching ruby. Fleet Street lost its greyness. The Londoners could forgive Essex his tardiness. Ben took up a jig with the group beside us.
Soon came jugglers and dancers and fools throwing shimmering paper in the air, which was swept by the wind into glittering sheets until it lighted down on the cobblestone. The music quivered. The people drank of the parade like a goblet of auspicious wine. My foot was tapping.
Next came priests from Westminster Abbey, and broke the string of color with black robes and pressed white collars. Their eyes fell upon the dancing commoners, with a quiet disapproval. Ben shrugged, took a woman on his arm, and kept up the jig with a considerable lack of caution for someone who’d just escaped hanging.
As the grim-faced ministers went up the street, next came a formation of flag-bearers. The crests of England, Elizabeth, Essex fluttered by. Finally the Earl himself ascended the crest of the hill. At first all I could see was a tall figure on a white horse, at the head of more men, also on horseback. But as they marched toward us I saw his golden tunic spangled with red flowers, his scarlet hose, and the crisp white cape. His brown beard was trimmed into noble rectangular proportion, his blue eyes smiled. He waved grandly to us, while his other hand pulled hard on the reins, twisting to maintain control. He covered it with his cape, but still I saw his hand tugging and his brow knitting.
“Robert Devereux, second Earl of the fair province of Essex ….” The herald’s voice was far away and the end of the parade was near. Essex passed us, and next came his knights on horseback, all in rich fabric and smiling, laughing, as if they were returning from a May-fair, not a military disaster.
Another green herald followed. “The Earl thanks each for their time and patience, and seeks volunteers for a coming mission to Ireland, to stamp out the wild-clans’ bloody rebellion therein. All men interested to seek more information at Essex House in the Strand. Wishing all the best of evenings. God save the Queen!”
And it was over. How cold of them to move on so quickly, leaving us to gaze longingly at them as they shrank into the distant fog. The jog fell apart as the song died away. We walked back sullenly. A guiltiness plagued me as I thought of silk. I thought of spending a week at Villa Franca drinking wine while Raleigh toiled, then coming back able to do that.
“That was a fine diversion,” said Itzak, as we started back to Lincoln’s Inn.
“Does Essex patron poets?” I asked Ben.
“Probably.”
I pulled at my scarf, thinking.
“But the Jack Donne I know would never stoop to begging!” said Ben. “To a lord! Like a singer at the doors for meat, huh?”
I watched as he laughed.
“You can’t… I mean … You’re serious?”
“I need the money,” I said.
Itzak changed the subject. “I enjoyed the parade.”
“Me too,” I said.

At two in the morning someone knocked, waking me. I crawled out of bed and opened my door to find a note stuck on with a pin.
Goblin – the Strand – fourth alley – moderately dangerous.
“Thanks,” I said to the dim hall— empty, as it always was.
I fumbled with the candle at my bedside and coaxed out enough light to see what I was pulling from my dresser. I yanked on a dark tunic and trousers, clipped my pouched belt around my waist, quickly going over its contents: garlic cloves, throwing knives, a vial of holy water. In one holster, my dirk; in two more, a brace of Itzak’s pistols powdered and loaded with silver bullets. Rope. I pulled on boots and scrambled down the hall.
“Top of the morning,” said Minh Long as I passed him trudging to his room.
“And you. Get some sleep.”
“Till noon!” he guaranteed.
It took me a minute to scale the caverns to the surface. And then I was off into the night.
#
When I ran on the rooftops in the dark, with the shadows below and the sky overhead and the fog at my heels, it felt like flying.
Sometimes the wind would sing. The air sent shivers up my arms and set my nerves on edge, etching out the night in icy clearness. If it blew from behind, I felt as if it carried me, a silent owl, my cloak my black wings, billowing. If it blew from ahead, it would drive tears from my eyes and take my breath away.
I’d be alone. No one on the streets to shout or rattle carts across the stone: the only sound would be the wind and the river Thames and my own footsteps suspended somewhere in the song. My ears caught the waves of sound that drift from street to street, bending, flowing. I heard echoes of distant noises, the water on the shore and the breeze on the thatch.
Adrenaline surged through me. I was free, every inch of me Free! I was free in the night in this vast, beautiful city. By day, I was an aching poet bearing what my family had done before, but when the Order sent me out I was a hunter, running through the shadows on the rooftops of the world.
My boots skittered on the shingles as I slid down a roof and perched on a dormer window facing the Strand. Below, the uptown street was still and vacant. Pausing, I breathed deeply of the chilly air.
The scent was subtle, but it was there.
Even if someone in the house across the street had been awake and gazing out his window far past midnight, it would have been hard for him to spy me as I climbed down, my body moving with the shadows, slinking down three stories of brick wall to land gracefully on the cobblestone.
Before I went on, I did a double-take of the road behind, assuring myself that no one was about the dim streets but me.
I took a shiny halfpenny from my pocket and tossed it into the dark. Since goblins have an instinctive obsession with metallic bits– like moths to flame – luring them out was the easiest way to get close. Hiding behind a crate, I had only to wait for several minutes. Then I heard the click of clawed feet on wooden boxes and the soft sound of goblin breath.
#
After a short episode of violence that lasted about three minutes, I had the goblin pinned beneath me, tied with rope. Its clawed hands beat furiously on my back. The hissing, snarling creature – about the size of a large dog – thumped me on the shoulder with its heavy tufted tail.
“Ack! Hunter! Sss!” it squealed in a voice like gravel. Small, powerful fists hit my arm, and I got another whack from its long tail while I wound the rope around its arms and hauled it up.
As the goblin’s rag-clad body squirmed fiercely, its huge blue eyes met mine and the pupils slitted in fury. Its skin was hard, olive-grey, and almost scaly. “Ack!” With distaste, it wrinkled its nose, which was really more like two nostril-like holes where a nose ought to have been.
I hefted it onto my shoulder, checked the alley for any others, and seeing nothing more, slunk into the shadows of the Strand. The goblin, still in outrage, hit me with its tail.
“Will you stop?”
“Ack! The shiny! The shiny!”
If any of the Queen’s night patrols were out, I was as well as caught thanks to my defiant charge. I took the halfpenny and pressed it into the goblin’s spidery hand. To my relief, its throat rumbled, and it purred.
“Shiny, innit, gov’nur?” it croaked happily.
I pulled back behind an alcove as one of the Queen’s soldier marched past, armed with a pike. His eyes scanned the street, but I was out of sight. When he passed, I sprinted across the road to make my way back to Lincoln’s. The goblin thumped up and down on my shoulder. “Ack! What for?” it moaned.
“Ssh!”
The fur-tipped tail hit me, but I began to pity it – as the walls of Lincoln’s loomed over us. Its eyes grew wide and it began to whimper. Its hand clung to my cape, and the other was wrapped around my halfpenny.
“Keep the shiny?”
I sighed. “Keep the shiny.”
A brief moment passed while I waited for the watchmen to see me and let me inside. The goblin on my shoulder shivered. The doors creaked open and I took the creature from my shoulder. One of the watchmen would take it from me.
“Hullo, Donne,” he said. “Caught a big one, see.”
“Ack,” said the goblin condescendingly.
“Looks like he’s got your coin still.”
“Let him keep it,” I said.
“Shiny mine,” said the goblin.
“You made its day,” grumbled the porter.
I made my way back down to my room, where as usual I could not sleep.
The dilapidated old Horace book beckoned. I put away my weapons, washed with some new soap (another of my claims from the Azores), and read. Sometimes I tried to nod off, but it was as fruitless as ever. Itzak had always recommended medicine for it, but I had no wish to.
When morning came I set the pages down and rummaged in my trunk for something I seldom got to wear: a dark green suit with gold lace trim and a stylish ruff. It itched more than I recalled, and to make matters worse the cuff was splotched with barely noticeable stains, blood from a vampire occurrence two years ago in which I’d disguised myself as a lute player and … Well, it wasn’t worth remembering, except the part when I’d used the lute to beat him into submission.
My footsteps echoed down the still-dark halls of surface Lincoln’s Inn. The onset of sunrise had a remarkable effect on the castle and its grounds; the armed hunters running to and fro went back underground, the shadows retreated. I emerged into the morning air and the gold glow of a young sun. Behind me, Lincoln’s receded as a sprawl of gothic stonework and high turrets. Before me were the houses, cascading down the hills to the river Thames, which lay like a black, winding ribbon between the city. The crows cried and the pigeons fluttered to their daytime roosts. Shopkeepers propped doors open. With nets of fresh, gleaming salmon in hand, fish-mongers came to their stalls. The streets were more crowded as I came to the Strand, where I had captured that goblin three hours ago.
Essex House had been called Leicester House once, but different Earls came and went. It was a regal presence in the Strand, where a row of mansions of powerful people squatted, trying to outdo one another. Strand architecture strained towards the huge and ornate, and Essex House held its own. It loomed over the road like a wave of stone and glass that seemed about to fall on me. Eighty rooms at least, a chapel branching off the side. A little crowd was already forming at the gate-house.
#
“No, I don’t have an appointment, but I’m certain he remembers me from Cadiz and all that service I did in¬ —”
“I am sorry. He’s booked for a lot of today, Donne.”
“With the Ireland hopefuls outside? Ten minutes is all I ask of you, Wotton.”
For an old friend, Henry Wotton was trying remarkably hard to act like he didn’t know me. I supposed since he was secretary to an Earl, he was social highbrow now. From behind his glasses, he looked at me coolly. He was a round man – round at his balding crown, round in his belly. The little wood pen he held flicked as he said, “It would be very hard today, Donne. But I can try, since you are my friend.”
“God bless you.”
He raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly. “How was sailing with Raleigh?”
“It was all right,” I said.
“And the Fayal skirmish, how was that?”
I’d forgotten how Essex might receive me for taking part in the island assault he’d called treasonous, but it was too late now. “A good fight,” I replied with a shrug.
“I’m sure it was,” murmured Wotton, as he scanned the Earl’s schedule. “There’s an opening of about half an hour at nine-thirty, if you can wait. Before the Earl of Pembroke’s appointment. Shall I write you in?”
“I’d be so grateful. Oh, I need the work. I will return the favor. I can’t thank you enough.”
I couldn’t brownnose him enough.
Acting pleasantly surprised, Wotton scrawled on the paper. “Well, I’m sure you’ll repay me somehow. You may wait in here, unless you’ve something to do. There are a few scones on the table.”
“I wouldn’t want to burden —”
“It’s no hassle. I’ll never eat them all.”
There were rows of matching books on fine shelves and oil paintings on the walls, and Wotton was sitting on the other side of a large desk. Dust was nonexistent, and the place was almost obsessively spick-and-span. “It looks like you did a good job,” I said, “making sure the place ran well while the Earl was away.”
Wotton ran a hand through his beard. “God, it was awful. The cooks were the worst of it, when they left the place a mess after dinner three or four weeks ago. The servants who attended the house forgot where the library was, so it went to dust. When Essex and I returned, there was paperwork, you wouldn’t believe – stacked this high.” He indicated with his hand exactly how high the papers had gone: about two feet, if he was to be believed.
I leaned over and took a scone from the platter.
“Essex’s wines are dragging this season. We’re starting to run a deficit, but I’m hoping some of the Azores plunder might relieve us. And all the while, Court couldn’t be worse. Robert Cecil and his ilk have it in for Essex, they’ve been spreading foul lies about him. Only our Lord Keeper Egerton and the Earl of Southampton have stood up for him. It’s a deadly game in the high circles, Donne. Cut-throat.”
As I nibbled the pastry, nodding, feigning interest, a few crumbs trickled down to the Persian rug beneath my feet, but Wotton paid no heed. Instead he gazed meditatively at the bookshelves behind me.
“So cut-throat,” he went on. “It’s a dangerous life up here if you make it this far. You step on the wrong toes and —” His hand drew a quick line across his throat.
As the morning inched by and my old friend gave me dark tales of tax and litigation, my eyes always found their way to the expensive clock behind the desk. Its face was painted with angels, and the hands moved maddeningly slowly. After a while, Wotton started to discuss his attending of Essex during the Islands Voyage. I chewed a blueberry scone. He said, “So then everything had to be counted, and there were conflicting opinions on how much the dye was really worth. I assume that it was much simpler out there with Raleigh.”
“Mmph,” I said, with a mouthful of scone.
“You didn’t kill anyone?” he asked.
I swallowed. “A few. Maybe.”
Wotton set down his pen and raised his brows at me. “Really?”
Nodding, I licked some crumbs from my fingers. “Yes.”
He winced in sympathy, then looked at the clock. “Oh,” he said. “Nine-fifteen. You’d best be waiting outside when he finishes with the man before you. Can you find your way back to the anteroom from here? Good. There will be a servant who can take you to Essex’s study. The best of luck. I hope he likes your writings, Donne, I do.”
I was ushered out of my chair and shown to the door. Quickly, I bid him goodbye and wished him the best on his paperwork.

For the most part, the morning was going well. Those with appointments were agreeable, which was more than Essex could say for most days. Largely the matters were minor and could be settled with ease; all he had but do was send a notice to Wotton, and the secretary would take care of it. With a cheerful smile, Essex welcomed visitors, discussed whatever it was they wanted, and sent them on their way. Might as well not sweat over trifling matters.
As he let his guests talk, he found his mind drifting to more important issues, those that weighed upon the edges of his mind. But it was foolish to fret about the debts from the Islands Voyage; his accountants were already on the matter, dutifully scribbling away to balance coffers. If that was all to be concerned about, Essex could have cared less. But the vineyards whose wine he licensed were struggling as well. He’d thought it such a smart enterprise when he’d first begun….and it had served him well: the debts were small and there had been a profit from the Azores. Next year, with the right weather, the grapes would have a better scene.
But who knew what men were saying? Who knew what they were saying to the Queen?
It made his blood boil!
No secret it was that Robert Cecil, Secretary of State, loathed the Earl – for despite his few shortcomings here and there, Essex was the Queen’s favored. Other men, too, shared Cecil’s jealousy. And they’d had four months to poison ears with whatever rumors they pleased, and had gotten a few positions for their trouble, offices that ought to have been the Earl’s. They were proper leeches, drawing up his power while he’d been away.
That parade had eased his nerves. It had confirmed that the people still loved him, and ensured that they would for a little longer. Every bit was worth it. Essex had already sent Wotton the bill.
He was talking now to some gentleman from one of the Inns of Court, the schools of lawyers. Something about a donation. Essex gave him what he asked. But his mind was drifting back to Isla Fayal and his quarrel with Raleigh. He had never known for certain if Raleigh was a friend or foe. A man with a strong will and a mind to serve his own ends – but Essex had never been made to believe Sir Walter was anything more or less.
They said their farewells and Essex showed Doctor Such-and-Such to the door.
“My lord. Your hospitality has been most charitable.”
“Only the best for honored friends. If you see the Earl of Pembroke on your way out, send him here. Good health. ”
“And you, gracious Earl,” said the lawyer with a bow, and exited, turning to avoid a man in a green suit who waited outside.
The newcomer stepped before Essex and bowed. His feet took a few subtle tries to find the correct position, he seemed to think for a second about which of his own hands to kiss.
Essex smiled a broad, amicable smile. “The Earl of Pembroke, I presume?”
“Um, what?”
“Are you or are you not the Earl of Pembroke?”
“No, my lord.” He stood, and Essex saw he was more a boy than man, with a long, youthful face shadowed with a bit of stubble. Dark hair, big nose. Perhaps eighteen or nineteen. In an even, articulate voice with a slight Oxford shade, he said, “Lord Earl, I am your former recruit John Donne, from the mission at Cadiz, here to obtain an audience with you, if, of course, you can spare the time, and —”
“Did you make this appointment with my secretary?”
“Yes, sir. Henry Wotton and I are old friends, since I worked for you for a while.”
So had a lot of people; Essex racked his memory. John Donne. The name rang bells, and the face was familiar. A waiter, perhaps?
“I wrote thank-yous for you to various personages when you were pressed for time, sir. Last year. After Christmas.” He looked at Essex hopefully.
Essex bit his lip.
“At Faro, sir, I arrived at the library before you, sir, and I was looking at the books, which your lordship claimed ….”
Ah! At last it clicked! Essex laughed and thrust out his hand. “Jack! Jack Donne, of all people. Why, now I feel ever so guilty. Forgive me if I did not recognize you at first. It’s been a long morning, and I fear I grow scatterbrained.”
The young man shook his hand, giving a small shake to Essex’s hearty one. The Earl led him into his office, and Donne’s eyes swept around the massive room, lingering on the countless fine volumes on the shelves.
All in all, Essex could remember the boy…somewhat. Donne’s face might have been fair, though he was tan from sailing with Raleigh these past months. He hadn’t aged a day since he’d fought under Essex at Cadiz: the keen eyes, thoughtful mouth, largish nose. Bookish, cautious, but nevertheless brave – and Catholic. That, Essex thought, was the gist of the boy.
“My lord?” said Donne.
Essex sat at his desk. “Sit down, please, Jack. What brings you here today? How fare you?”
“I am well, sir,” Donne answered, shuffling forward and sitting down carefully on the guest chair. “I hope not to be a bother.”
“Not at all.”
A silence settled down, which Donne broke by saying, “I have come to inquire about your lordship’s stand on the patronage of poets.”
Essex caught sight of the papers in the boy’s hand, and the hopeful demeanor of Donne’s person. Perhaps he’d heard one of his arts-conscious friends mention John Donne as a poet. He wasn’t surprised. Nor was he pleased. The boy had quite a reputation for amatory capriciousness. This would be a long few minutes.
“I patron the good ones from time to time,” said Essex.
Donne’s hopefulness began to deflate. “Oh, I see.”
Essex laughed kindly. “Give them here, then.”
Startled, Donne handed the papers to the Earl. Quite some time had been taken in scribing these versions, put down in a hand almost as elegant as Wotton’s. Essex looked for the briefest one, which was not an easy task. Donne’s verse was quite long-winded. Which was certainly no fault. But Essex would have preferred a short sonnet. He took a page, and read:

THE CALM
Our storme is past, and that storm’s tyrannous rage,
A stupid calme, but nothing it, doth swage.
The fable is inverted, and farre more
A blocke afflicts, now, than a storke before.
Stormes chafe, and soone weare out themselves, or us;
In calmes, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady’as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress’ glasse, or what shines there,
The sea is now. And, as the Isles which we
Seeke, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in stormes, now pitch runs out:
As lead, when a fir’d Church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trimme, decayes,
Like courts removing, or like ended playes.

Here Essex paused and looked at Donne, who was focused on the floor, twiddling his thumbs.
“Written during the venture at sea?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You were part of Raleigh’s fleet, were you not?”
Donne flinched. “Yes, sir.”
Essex passed over a large middle portion of Donne’s poem and more descriptions of fire and brimstone, skipping to the end.

What are we then? How little more alas
Is man now, than before he was? He was
Nothing– for us, we are nothing fit;
Chance, or our selves, still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lye –
I should not then thus feel this misery.

Essex tucked it back into the pile. “It was very good, Jack.”
“I – I thank you, your lordship. The Calm is very dark, but I have written other things, love poems….” He started to point to some pages.
“Sonnets?”
“Sometimes. But often I cannot express my point in merely fourteen lines.”
Evidently. Essex picked an amour, and his eyes drifted from side to side as he tried to determine what to do.
He would hate to disappoint the boy, surely. But he was in debt. Essex couldn’t just throw bags of coins to whatever poetic hopeful came his way. It would reflect on the Earl; soon more would come if he patronized Donne. Then how would he pay off the wine debts?
And the boy’s family.
Essex didn’t mind papists, as long as they were obedient citizens and complied with the laws of England. Many, like Donne, were useful, and loyal to the crown. But in that regard Donne was a sunlit leaf on a family tree otherwise in shadow. The roots were Thomas More, the treasonous statesman; the branches were Donne’s uncles, grandparents, all seditious Jesuits. His brother had died for some treacherous business with a Catholic priest a few years ago. What would that damned Cecil say to the Court if Essex took John Donne under his wing?
When he looked up again, Donne again was twiddling his thumbs like a schoolboy having a theme graded. Essex said, “One cannot help but notice that you have a gift, Jack.”
“You are gracious, my lord.”
“You are looking for work?”
“Yes.”
“You – need work?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“Have you considered my friend, the Earl of Southampton?”
“I sought his patronage a few years past, sir.”
Essex knitted his brow. “Did he recommend any course of action?”
“To get my papist hide out of his office, actually.”
Off-put by the quiet vehemence in Donne’s tone, Essex said, “You know our times, son. While it is regrettable than some are zealous in their prejudice, it cannot be taken against those who are not.”
“I don’t, lord Essex, I don’t. I love my country.”
“As I do, Jack, and so I serve her as best I can. But there are asps in the Court who have minds to crush those of your spiritual persuasion. If connected to me, you open yourself to their daggers. I want to protect you, Jack, from their lethal reply to your ancestors’ deeds.”
The boy considered this, acceptance on his face.
#
If only I had swallowed his excuse. I might have chosen to believe he wanted to protect me. He was that fond of me, keeping me sheltered from the asps (it had taken him a whole minute to remember who I was —)
Essex’s face was handsome, kind, and trimmed with a perfect square brown beard; and I read it as easily as he had read my poems. We both knew he was lying. We both knew he thought he’d be periled if he patronized me. But oddly, I was not angry at him, no, but myself. How easy it had been for him! How easy to dazzle me with his vivacious parade. I was as stupid as the volunteer soldiers at the gate; I was as stupid as Ben had told me I was.
Essex made a point to express his apologies and tell me I was welcome back in his mansion anytime. I assured him he was well-justified in his decision and I didn’t mind at all and I certainly didn’t want to keep the Earl of Pembroke waiting. I left Essex House and emerged into the sunlight and open air. The streets were packed with the bustle of people, animals, and their carts and wares. The noise of London rumbled over the rooftops into a clear sky overhead. Sighing to myself, hand clenching my poems, I shuffled down the steps to the gate, gazing back at the House with my envy and anger already dissolving into a dull disappointment. This feeling was one I’d known before and would again, probably soon in the —
“Oof!”
I tumbled down the steps and landed on my feet, but the impact woke soreness in my leg I thought I’d left at Isla Fayal.
Fine gold table utensils spilled out of a box and clattered over the cobblestone, shining healthily.
The man I’d run into was before me in an instant. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re not hurt? Oh, well, good. What Essex would’ve said if I’d killed someone on my way here! Ha-ha!” He stuck out his hand. “Tom Egerton. Sir Tom Egerton. I have to remember the ‘Sir’ now; it’s a real pain…. Have we met before? You look familiar, don’t you? Aha! You were the chap I met in Plymouth harbor, Raleigh’s man, the poet!”
Several years older than me, brown-haired, and dressed in scarlet finery with silver trim. A roughly-shaven nobleman who stood with his feet planted casually apart, he had a sauntering posture, he leaned back as if there ought have been a wall there.
I shook his hand. “Jack Donne, sir. I’m sorry – it was my fault, I was just paying so little attention….”
“Think nothing!” he said jovially.
I bent down and began picking up his spoons and knives.
“Oh, that’s all right. Don’t worry —” Taking the box, he bent down himself, throwing in utensils.
He began to talk as if we’d known each other our whole lives. “My dad and Essex are good friends, and Father’s lending these to Essex for a dinner party –and now I’m here…. I don’t mind, but he could have sent a lackey, you know! He’s Sir Thomas Egerton Senior, and I’m Sir Thomas Egerton the Younger, but I go by Tom. Didn’t I tell you all this in Plymouth?”
I had vague memories of sitting on a dock talking with a wealthy man who’d spent all his money, but that wasn’t what made my mind race.
Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton?
“Essex knighted me,” he went on, “because I was a good chap that day, I suppose. Probably did it for my father. I’m not complaining….”
“Of course not….”
“Well, that’s the last of the spoons…” he said as I handed it to him. “Thank you so much, Donne.”
“It’s nothing. I’m sorry, Sir Thomas.”
He grinned broadly shook my hand. Even though he’d been to sea like me, he was pale as porcelain, and his hand was warm, though he wore no gloves. I looked up at his eyes, and I thought: Shit.
That was how one could tell something was not quite human – it was their eyes. Tom’s Otherlight was as dark and grey as Montez’s had been bright and blue, not quite a glow, but a fierce depth, a sheen. My stomach wound itself taut with unrest. Perhaps he noticed. “Are you quite all right, Jack Donne?”
“Yes. Fine.”
“So what are you up to at Essex House?”
“Vying for patronage. At least, I was.”
“Oh? Did it work out? I remember when I read that one poem of yours before the Islands Voyage, and it was —”
“Nay, sir – it didn’t work out,” I said, trying to edge away.
He shrugged. “A pity! Essex has so much on his mind; he’s such a harried man. Mustn’t take it against him. Keep your chin up, compadre! You know, my father is planning hire in his legal hall, if you needed a pound or two.”
“Thank you, sir.” I stole away. As Essex House receded behind me, I was swallowed by the throng, casting furtive glances over my shoulder.
Pale skin, though, was explainable; maybe if Essex had liked him maybe he’d been spared from the Azores sun. And perhaps his hands were still warm if he’d just come outside. After all, the nobles’ houses clustered in the same part of town. I had talked to him in Plymouth and hadn’t suspected anything. Looking back, I saw him laughing with one of Essex’s guards and showing the man a spoon.
Bloody hell, Jack, are you wound tight! Perhaps I had imagined seeing Otherlight.
But my gut twinged. The son of Thomas Egerton. I was sure he hadn’t told me that in Plymouth.
Thomas Egerton.
God! Was that the root of my suspicion?
Henry?
No. No. I made myself think of something else, anything: Essex, the poem, what the Earl had said. With relief I let those thoughts distract me. With relief I shut all else from my mind. Essex, then. No commission. There could be worse, I supposed. Thankfully, the Donne-speaks-Spanish rumor hadn’t taken hold …yet. It might still, and I would have to keep my ears alert. My silvery breath rose in a cloud as I huffed. Speaking Spanish – criminal, of course. I wondered if someone had told Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex. His words danced back and forth in my frustrated brain, distracting me nonetheless.

As far as I was concerned, the only things I had inherited from Sir Thomas More, Chancellor to Henry VIII, were a big nose and a guarantee that I would be politically, socially, and economically ruined for the rest of my life.
From the day she deemed me precocious enough to understand, my mother had lifted me onto her lap and stroked my hair, murmuring of the shining hero from whom I claimed descent. At first it had been simple: Once upon a time there was an evil King and he committed heresy; and your brave great-great uncle was the only one to stand up to him. But through years of scorn, other knowledge had fleshed out the fairy-tales. Sometimes people on the street would sneer and call his name as I walked by. The English histories in grammar school said dark things about Thomas More, an anarchist, a pawn of Rome. Mother and her brothers told me not to listen. The Crown’s servants lied, they said. More was a martyr.
Could one admire something in the man? He had been brave. And Utopia was pretty, I supposed. But he stood for more than that. I saw his struggle as my own. In so many ways, our choices were the same. We wrote. We could write for safety. Or we could write what we believed and hang.
I had my Romish faith. But I wasn’t stupid.
Like my brother.
As I walked, the bustle of London enveloped me. The Strand was vibrant with color. Jesters in motley attracted little galaxies of spectators, a woman with baskets full of holly called for customers, and people went about their business. Citizens on horseback trotted by if I looked up.
Where was I to amble now? I felt odd in my suit, out-of-place. There were many men about dressed as fine or finer than I was, but they had on their frippery with purpose, going somewhere. I’d done my business with Essex. My outing was over.
My eyes drifted. I was walking with my hands in my pockets and my head turned up toward the house-roofs. If I caught anyone’s eye, they would have seen a young man deep in thought. Considering the weather, maybe. Or daydreaming, or thinking. Trying so hard to think of More, or Essex. Anything but Egerton and my brother Henry.
“Jack Donne!”
I started.
“Yes, you, you silly goose!”
It took a few moments to pin the voice on someone in the crowd.
“Oh, Mr. Shakespeare,” I said.
He was walking happily up to me with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a lead in the other. Held by the lead and trotting beside him was a goat with shining tawny fur, sporting a fashionable ladies’ hat.
“The goat and I went shopping,” he announced. “I think light blue is her color. It matches her eyes, doesn’t it? Oh, hat upon my fair goat’s brow!”
“How are you, sir?”
“Just dandy. You stand before the writer of Henry IV, the most lucrative play of the year.” He bowed, swaying.
“I must see it, sir. Jonson told me you outdid yourself. My friends enjoyed it.”
“I’m so glad. Are those poems? Are those your poems? Give them here.”
“Sir—”
He plucked the sheets from my hand and sat on a step. “Let’s see. Did you write these at war? War poetry! All the best poesy comes from trying times. Like when the goat was sick a year ago. We were so worried, weren’t we, goat. Your milk was funny. And —” He took my hands and exclaimed, “Jack! The goat’s had BABIES!”
“Babies?”
“Baaaabies!”
“Babies?”
“Astrophel and Stella. They’re darlings. Stella banged her little hoof but she’s all right. And the lady goats looove Astrophel. He’s quite the bachelor.” He held up my papers and squinted in the sunlight. I stroked the goat’s nose and it nibbled my cuff affectionately. The throng parted around Shakespeare, the animal, and me. I was glad for intermission from the dismal things I’d been thinking.
“Now, Jack, did you do any iamb exercises, as I recommended? You told me you wished to improve your meter.”
“I tried once.”
He raised an eyebrow and stroked his goatee, pausing a moment to hiccup. “A-a-and?”
“It wasn’t fun,” I admitted.
“It isn’t supposed to be fun, Jack, you ninny. It’s supposed to beat the iambs into your brain. What is fun is being so good you can talk in iambic pentameter without thinking. Hast thou an inkling of my lecture’s claim? For iambs poor, there’s none but thee to blame. Please, hold your applause….” He examined my work intently. “You’re still mad for simile, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“As water did in stormes, now pitch runs out: As lead, when a fir’d Church becomes one spout,” read Shakespeare. “Brilliant metaphor. Terrible meter, but brilliant metaphor. Didn’t you think so, goat?”
The goat, which had given up on my sleeve and now strained its lips towards one of the ribbons on the hat, glanced briefly in his direction.
“Best master the meter soon,” said Shakespeare, “before you get too old. Hmm. Are you growing a beard? It adds a bit of age, but you really don’t look a day past eighteen. How old are you now, twenty-three?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Well, you must be doing something right. Oh, hello, fine ladies. Autographs? Trouble? Why, it’s no trouble at all….” He whipped out a pen and beamed at some little girls who flocked around him with papers held out. In a loopy, wobbly hand he signed:
Bill S.Speare, master playwright,
Poet of the age,
The Beast from Stratford

And I swear the goat rolled its eyes.
#
High noon, and Itzak found me in the library of Lincoln’s Inn, devouring a turkey pie and scribbling intently on a form. Exhausted from my late-night reading, shadows under my eyes, I wolfed it down before it could get cold.
Place of sighting, read the form, and a blank space for my answer.
I wrote, Just outside of Essexs House, located in the Strand, London at two houres before noon.
“Oh, dear,” Itzak groaned. “Another demi-demon? We’ve had seven this month.”
Possible nature of suspect, said the form.
Somewhat human, a small parte demon (of the higher, human-like kinde), or so I thinke.
Name of suspect, if known.
Sir Thomas (Tom) Egerton the younger, sonne of the Lord Keeper Egerton.
“Jack!” cried Itzak, starting as he read what I had written. “You are sure? You looked him over carefully? According to procedure?”
“Of course.”
Itzak narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
I picked at a sad lump of crust from the bowl and studied it. “Perhaps it was a bit of a hunch.”
He sighed. “You cannot just whip out a form and assume monsters of every person you might hold a grudge against! If it is only Egerton’s son, he had nothing to do with it. It will not bring Henry back. It took me so long to get you off that path. Do not start down it again.”
“You don’t need to be concerned. I saw what I saw.”
He shrugged.
Grounds of assumption, said the form.
Observation, I wrote. Pale skinne. Otherlight. Abnormally warm hands.
“You shook hands with him?” said Itzak.
“I’ve met him before, in Plymouth. Since he was in the Azores, he ought to be tan like me. But we was white. Almost vampire-white. He felt wrong.”
“Well,” Itzak said resignedly, “if it is justified…. Just hope he didn’t suspect anything about you….”
There was one more question to be answered. I read it twice over. If investigated by the Order, the estimated seriousness of the subject’s activities and dealings.
I left it blank.
After a while, Itzak remarked, “See – it has begun to snow, yet the sun’s out still.” I glanced out the window. To the south, the sky was a clear blue, but clouds were rolling in from the north and turning London into the grey city I knew well. But the dancing flakes that swirled before the window were caught in the rays of the still-prevailing sun. Down they fell, like little diamonds. They stuck to the grass and the shingles, promising an inch or two by nightfall.
#
Over the course of late autumn, the slight, occasional dustings grew into regular flurries. Lincoln’s Inn was transformed with each immaculate new coat. Snow piled gently on the roofs and alcoves, and icicles sprouted from the windowsills. The winds blew calmly through November, if they, indeed, blew at all, as if England was quietly bracing herself for the lashing depths of winter. When asked about the weather, a Londoner needed only to look at the darkling sky and the snow amounting in the gutters to answer that things would only get worse.
The tan from the sea voyage faded and the stubble Shakespeare had pointed out I kept, since it added to the illusion I was aging. My hair grew long and for a while I took to wearing it tied back. I think it might have been this distinctive appearance that attracted a girl named Julia to me. She was the daughter of a merchant, and I met her at the showing of Henry IV Part Two I finally attended. Julia loved the arts and wrote poems of her own. We met several times after the play and by December I was seeing her.
With the onset of Advent, everyone in London was in cheery spirits. In his haunt in the Mermaid Tavern, Shakespeare traded his whiskey for seasonal eggnog. I stopped to see him sometimes when I was out buying clothes for myself or trinkets for Julia. During the day, he languished before the fireplace of the Mermaid, waiting for inspiration to strike him. Which wasn’t infrequently, considering his muse was booze. His wife back in Stratford could care less about perpetual drinking and adoration of the goat, as long as he sent her the profits from the theatre.
The hunters at Lincoln’s kept ourselves sane during the dark winter by arranging gay holiday festivities that the Order subtly slid into the law school’s doings. There were parties and plays. A few years ago, I’d been asked to help coordinate such a season (but had paid a lot to get out of it). Itzak kept a menorah in the common room. Then, as December ended and the coldest leg of winter began, a dull exhaustion took hold.
Running on the rooftops was harder; once I almost fell slipping on some black ice chasing a gargoyle. I fought monsters with a runny nose. And of all the poems I ushered into the literary circles, only two or so were well-received. Julia was there to console me.
But that, too, came to an end. Sometime in the beginning of January, I was walking home from the Theatre and caught sight of her expressing her love of the arts with an actor from the Pembroke’s Men by the backstage door of the playhouse – probably helping him rehearse a kissing scene, which both of them seemed to be enjoying. Saying nothing, I traipsed home and was upset for perhaps two hours. The next time we met, I told poor Julia she would never see me again, as I was following at last the desire of my heart and joining a traveling circus in Malta.
I trudged through January drearily, thinking of the Azores.
Demons were thriving in the long nights of winter, taking goats and sheep to warm their freezing veins with fresh blood, often flying back into the sky before we could stop them. Some nights were slower, though. One evening in the middle of January particularly. Minh Long was taking care of a suspected incubus. Isabel D’Angelo was onto a werewolf in Bread Street. Lovelace, after a drink with Ben, was going to investigate a possible goblin infestation. It was official, then: I had nothing to do.
As I climbed into bed and the candle burned down, the warm dark of my room wrapped me in its folds. I yawned. I said my prayers. Then, cradled in the underground comfort, I drifted off. At first I hardly realized I slept, for I dreamed of the dark.
I was in a dim place lit by fireflies. It resembled the main room of the Mermaid Tavern – the fireplace, furniture, and bar were all there, but grass poked through the floorboards and a bubbling stream, lit with moonlight, wound through the tables. The walls were gone and instead there was a quiet forest, shadowy, filled with glowing flowers and white rabbits. The place was empty but for me. Even Shakespeare was gone from his roost, although I did see his goat grazing on some grass by the fireplace. Then I caught sight of that Julia woman dressed as a nymph, reciting lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the riverside.
I walked over to the goat and sat down next to it, staring up at the dark trees as faeries flitted around me, wondering how I’d managed to dream all this up without drinking anything before bed.
Not that I was complaining. Julia took a lyre and called out Titania’s lines. I gave a well-if-I-must sigh and said Oberon’s. The actor from the Pembroke’s Men was staggering around with a giant donkey’s head, trying to pull it off, but it was quite real and attached firmly to his shoulders.
Knock!
I fell out of bed as I tried to get up and took half my sheets, entangled, with me. For a second I sat on the floor, stunned and tired, but then I clambered up and seized the note from my door.
John Donne – Presence requested – office of Northwell – of importance
I pulled on some clothes and combed my hair, cursing.
When I was summoned to Northwell’s office, I had reason to be nervous. Although I didn’t think he was one the eminences of the Order– they made a point never to be seen by us hunters – I assumed he was their representative, their only means of communication with people like me. The Order, as a rule, hardly trusted even itself. There was no telling what its primal secrets were – how it had begun and who it answered to – but something in me didn’t even want to find out.
His office dwelt several floors deeper into the bowels of the earth than my dormitory, and it was a silent, chilly walk through halls of dim and dateless sandstone to Northwell’s door. The room was barren. Dark bookshelves with nothing on them lined the chalk-stone walls. Plain white candles provided lighting. There was a small desk, but the only things on it were papers, arranged exactly. Behind this desk sat Northwell.
“You may sit,” he told me.
I sat, with my fingers curled around the edge of the chair while Northwell took the papers and reviewed them, taking his time. My eyes wandered but I found nothing to draw them. Maybe, I thought, this was the intent of it all.
“I see that you have received my message,” he said. “You are well, I trust?”
His voice was as cold and featureless as a frozen lump of graphite. So were his eyes, grey like soot. His hair was grey, he wore a tabard of grey, and even his skin possessed a greyish tinge to it.
“I have been well.”
He reviewed another page. Eventually he said (his voice had an accent even I could not place – Roman, or maybe older), “On November the eighth, you filed a report of a suspected part-demon, whom you identified as Sir Thomas Egerton the younger.”
He paused. I rubbed my neck.
“Are there any motives I should be aware of, Donne?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I had reason to report him, as he aroused my suspicions.”
“I see,” he mused, in a way that suggested that he didn’t see, or care at all. Skimming over another paper before replacing it, he turned his granite stare on me.
“According to protocol, we investigated Sir Thomas. Hunters staked out his residency, York House in the Strand – and investigated his activities for irregularities. We were also able to intercept a few letters. Agents extracted what they could from his friends, their efforts yielding nothing of interest. The House was extravagant, but not abnormal. Sir Thomas, if you did not know, has a lovely wife and three little daughters.”
I had been wrong before – all of us were sometimes. Did he think I’d acted because of Henry?
Northwell continued: “Sir Thomas’ father, Lord Keeper Egerton, is, if anything, more spotless than his son. He is in the high favor of the Queen, and has two other children, but they are abroad, unable to be shadowed – but there was nothing unusual from what we could find on them.”
I began to perspire. “I – I am sorry, sir. About being wrong. It was….”
He blinked coolly. “No, Donne. You are in no trouble. What we have not learned from observing them has only piqued our suspicion.”
“I do not understand.”
“The Order, as you are well aware, is very meticulous. Humans, as a rule, all have pores in their records, flaws, which we sort through to find what bears significance in light of our purpose.”
“I… see.”
“Do you? You seem perplexed, Donne.” His eyebrow shifted a fraction of an inch, but still I couldn’t tell if he was amused or bored or furious. “Allow me to explain,” he said. “The Egertons’ records are perfect, but with patches missing, as if they were afraid. The hare has a coat of purest white to evade the fox.”
“I…love metaphors….”
Mechanically, he slid the papers across the desk to me.
“What are these?”
“We are more interested in the father. As Lord Keeper, he is one of the most powerful men in the country. If his son is Otherkind, there is a chance Egerton is something more.”
“Like….”
“Namely a demon of a potentially high degree.”
“How high?”
“An archfiend.”
My stomach wound itself into a knot.
Northwell went on. “Thomas Egerton the elder may be a demon, and if indeed he is taking care that he exists undetected. From the outside, pinning any evidence on him remains virtually impossible. If his is a façade, it is astounding in its soundness. To confirm our suspicions would require someone within. Egerton is hiring currently. We considered Lovelace, but he was raised on a farm and therefore not a likely choice for the Lord Keeper. Egerton wants a secretary.
“There are several things that qualify you for such a task. Since you —”
“Me?”
“Since you are well-read, fluent in many languages, a writer, and have studied the country’s laws, you are the material Lord Egerton would consider hiring. And somewhere in your files, my superiors pointed out that you played the part of the Apothecary in a 1595 production of Romeo and Juliet. Acting experience is most neecessary.”
“The back-up Apothecary, actually, sir. You see, the player with the part had fever, so for a week they needed a replacement, and Mr. Shakespeare knew me, so I played for, uh, three shows.”
He considered me coldly. “Yes, well done. So you have the prerequisites.”
“You want me to be a spy?”
“If you are disinclined, I shall find another.”
“No.” The word flew sharply from my lips. I took the papers.
Northwell said, “My superiors called to attention your personal motives. Your own emotions could help you greatly in your task, but they could just as well cloud your observations and expose you.”
I shuffled the papers and narrowed my eyes. “How long would I be there?”
“It could be six months; it could be ten years; it remains as long as it will take to gather sufficient evidence, and by this I mean Lord Keeper Egerton’s true nature, and what he does so stealthily. The duration should seem a short time to you, especially after what became of you that first night years ago.”
I flinched. Northwell’s face was as stony as ever, but I could have sworn I heard the faintest sneer in his voice.
“It is no doubt a very dangerous task,” I said.
“You would have a high chance of perishing if found out, yes.”
Not that I was any stranger to high chances of perishing, but his answer stoked the unease in my gut.
“The Order pays twenty pounds monthly to those who risk their lives in such manners. You will be allowed to keep what Egerton pays you as a secretary’s wage. His current secretary turns a profit of twenty-five pounds a month.”
I nodded. “I am not yet decided.”
“Understandable.” But again I doubted if he sympathized at all. “Take the papers. They are drawings of the house, profiles of the Egertons, and texts you will study before applying, as well as information concerning the House, its servants, and Egerton’s allies in Court. You shall read the papers and decide with haste.”
“I shall, sir.”
A silence descended and again my eyes wandered the bleak furniture as I tensed ender Northwell’s cold gaze. He studied me and my expression carefully, like he was sizing up an insect beneath a magnifying glass. A minute passed before he told me, “You are dismissed.”
I left quickly, scooping up the papers and ducked out, closing the door to the disconcerting presence of Northwell. It was midnight when I came to my room. Darkness folded over me like a black wing. Warm beneath my sheets, I turned on my side and sighed into my pillow.
Perhaps it was a sigh of exhaustion, or perhaps of satisfaction.
I didn’t know.
My mind went to my brother Henry, and to the nights after he’d been killed. I’d lain awake – just like this – kept up by some dire clawing in my heart. As the years had passed, nights like that grew rarer, but now that old hatred was rising in me – I felt it swelling up like a wave of heat upon my blood. Say I accepted Northwell’s proposition. Say that I met this man Egerton. Say I became his secretary. And once I ascertained he was a demon, say I put a knife between his ribs.
I shut my eyes, trying to forget. The cautious half of my brain was arguing against my passion in a quiet, fearful voice. Three shows as an understudy at the Theatre didn’t make me an actor. Espionage had not been in my training.
I relaxed my muscles. Calm; calm. I would ask Itzak come morning and he would shed his logical, scientific light on the choice I had to make. Itzak could see a problem and think for a moment and give an answer that made sense.
Hours ticked by, given only by the distant echoes of London’s church-bells trembling down the caverns to my ears. I shifted and lay staring at the ceiling. How that night was like so many after Henry! War within me, until for a blessed time I think I drifted off into a half-sleep. And for those priceless moments I almost forgot. I almost dreamed. But something tethered me down in my burdened mind or my restless body.
The memory of Henry.
And what a holy sin revenge would be.
The noises from the halls outside grew less and less, and somewhere on the other side of Earth the sun inched slowly towards England. The dark in my rooms was complete, but there was something in the air that told me morning was approaching, that soon light would come and with it maybe the clarity I needed.
Thoroughly sick of lying there, still I didn’t move. I heard the first birds from the surface. With a languid sigh, I turned on my stomach and pressed my head into the pillow, reluctant to leave the warmth.
It was selfish to blame Northwell; I stopped before I started. If anything, he was the messenger, the mouth of the Order’s silent hierarchy. Maybe they had done something to make him the automaton that he was. Or perhaps he’d been devoid forever. I couldn’t say.
I made one last effort to fall asleep, though by then it was morning. The surreal peace of the forest dream before called longingly. I summoned up the trees and the goat and the faeries, and willed myself to close my eyes and dream of them. Nothing came.
Me. Henry. Northwell. Egerton.
The choice was mine. I made it.
#
When I returned to the Mermaid Tavern, the main room was filled with the murmur of conversation and the crackling of the hearth. Unlike the dream, there were no trees or faeries, only well-worn stools and tables and creaking floorboards. Warm candles lit the walls with fuzzy golden light.
Ben Jonson, there with me, was wolfing down rolls of French bread. Over the sound of him eating, I was reciting what I had prepared.
“I am a professional in law, my lord,” I said. “I work industriously, and am well-learned in literature and mathematic, and am fluent in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, Arabic, Hebrew, Romanian, and Anglo-Saxon.”
“No, Jack. Not all of them. Arabic-through-Anglo-Saxon is a bit showy, and a little suspect. I doubt they teach Anglo-Saxon wherever secretaries go to school.”
“I know your lordship to be an admirable man of intelligence and impeccable character,” I went on, “and in serving such a figure as you I shall be silent, obedient, proactive, unquestioning.”
“Wrong. Don’t lean back and look me in the eyes. Sit up proper. Shoulders in a bit, to suggest submission. Duck your head. Be a little girl at a May-fair who’s lost her parents.”
“Honestly!”
“Act like you fear me.”
“I shan’t snivel!”
“You, Jack, are missing the whole point!” He motioned to the barmaid as she passed by. “Canary wine. Thank you.”
A few minutes later I was staring absentmindedly at one of the stuffed elks on the walls with a glass of wine in my hand. Ben was giving me more advice. “Practice looking down, a little out to the side, up occasionally. Nod a lot, it’ll communicate that you’re listening closely to everything he says.”
I tried it. “Is this better?”
He tore a bite from his roll. “Loads better.”
I raised my glass. “To the Lord Keeper’s new secretary!”
“Marry! Don’t get cheeky.” He toasted.
“You really believe that the other bumbling courtiers he’ll receive could contend?”
“You’re dreadfully more confident with this espionage business than you were a week ago.”
“Yes, I mean….” I swished my wine round, trying to word my thoughts. “How can it be more dangerous than our occupation already? I must see it through.”
“Why?” he said.
“You remember my brother, Ben,” I said. “You remember how they racked him, then they shut him up to die. The plague! Richard Topcliffe. Thomas Egerton. They did it.”
“Revenge,” he snorted.
“Justice. When else will I get a chance like this. I’m tired of living for nothing. I don’t care if it’s dangerous.”
He downed a quaff. “Graviora manent. You need not be dodging bullets to be in danger. And I’m not even speaking of the horrible death that awaits you if you’re found out. You know what people say about the Court. It’s Medusa – a pretty virgin once, but now it’s foul and withered by its own corruption. I am an expert, since I researched heavily for The Isle of Dogs. There are lethal men in Egerton’s circles. If you piss them off, they could make your life miserable.”
“Yes, Ben, but surely I can avoid offending anybody.”
“Of course you can,” he said doubtfully, “but that’s the least of your worries, mind you. They say Court is a tobacco. It is foul and it’s loathsome, but once tasted of the gold lace and gossip and you are lost – like that! Cultured men from Buckingham come in discussing art and leave brawling! Friars come to fast and ponder and leave betting on the bear-baiting! Little old ladies come in seeking husbands for their daughters and leave drinking scotch whiskey from the bottle!”
“Well,” I said.
“That’s Court, Jack.”
“I doubt it’s as bad as you so vividly suggest,” I said. “Sooner should I be repelled than drawn.”
But then I recalled with displeasure my gaping admiration at Essex House. The memory of the ornate clock smarted like a prickling cut.
Ben continued grimly. “And the ladies, with their tulle fluttering as they pass, their faces caked with powder, their hair piled high with the – the pearls. They sneer at you. Is it so hard to find a graceful, simple face in this town? I miss Anne.”
At once his theatrical vigor boiled away into something simpler and solemner.
“I am sure she’s fine,” I said. “And little Benjamin.”
“I said it was foolish of her to move away. If a fiend obtains my name, it could hurt them, and they would be too far away for me to protect.”
“Tell her you’re sorry, then.”
“As if I hadn’t tried.”
I should have been accustomed to his inconstant humors, but whenever he began to think of his wife and gloom, something stung me unpleasantly.
“She only just started returning my letters.”
“You see? Soon everything will be forgiven, and she’ll come back with little Benjamin —”
“What do you know, Jack?” he said abruptly. “You’ve never had a maid endure you for more than a month.”
I swished my wine.
“Sorry,” he said.
I went to the front and got us something for dinner.
Ben recovered his good spirits once he started eating, and did it with an almost uncanny quickness that made me shift my brow, perturbed. “I wonder if she misses me,” he said as the barmaid set the food before us; after a few minutes of silently wolfing down more he said, “We ought to get back to practicing. You said you almost had it?”
“I know thy lordship to be an admirable man of intelligence and impeccable character, and in serving such a figure as thee I shall be silent, proactive, unquestioning. I am no stranger to working until the late hours and would gladly do so if I needs must; nor does my hand tire with lengthy writing. I am quite adept at law, having studied at Oxford, Cambridge, Thavies Inn and Lincoln’s Inn.”
“What is your current occupation?”
“I am a clerk for an accounting firm.”
“You’re such a woeful liar,” Ben cried. “Do you have a straight face?”
“I can lie when I need to,” I said. “But it’s laughable. Everyone well knows I’m a poet.”
“Have you not discovered how that particular fact impacts an interview? Henceforth, in poetry you are now but dilettante. Say it again.”
“I am a clerk for an accounting firm.”
“Rubbish! O, throw it to the dogs!” he said. “Don’t blink quite so much. People blink while they lie, and this Egerton bloke probably knows. Don’t shift at all. Keep your eyes fixed down at your feet like you’ve been doing.”
I said again, “I am a clerk for an accounting firm.”
#
Two kinds of people, the living and the dead.
That night I killed a vampire. I’d been perched on a roof, waiting. From the street, all you would have seen was a dark sculpture, crouched, unmoving. I slid down from the roof.
It didn’t wait for my order to come out. Instead it flung itself at me, black claws flashing, swatting the vial of holy water from my hands to roll across the street. It clambered up and threw itself at me again, but my pistol was faster and the silver bullet struck its calf. White face terrible, maddened by the scent of its own blood, the vampire spun around into shadow, out of shadow. It was a dance under the moon. Soon it was over.
The Order would take care of the dark shape sprawled on the cobblestone. I was away before the blood could make me sick, to St. Paul’s, climbing the Cathedral, looking out at the city and the Thames, suspended for a moment as I soaked in what peace I could.

“A-N-T-E-S,” I told my mother. “M-U-E-R-T-O. Antes muerto que mudado.”
She had smiled. I remembered how I’d loved to make her smile, because it was infrequent Mother smiled, at anyone. I paid attention, because before she’d taken me on her lap she’d told me that this was one of those important things. The things I must remember. Probably forever, because people in my family tended to hold onto recollection. Those memories, it seemed, all pooled in here, shifting in the grey room with the gold unlawful Roman candles and the thick unlawful books and a little window into winter.
“That is what you must tell people, John, when they call our family stubborn. You must tell them that our minds and our faiths go back further than theirs. Antes muerto que mudado, sooner dead than changed.”
I stirred awake with the words playing in my head. I dressed in my stiff new clothes with it breathing down my neck. I combed my hair, cut short now, with it stinging in my heart. I looked at the strange, groomed courtier in the mirror with it echoing inside me, vindictive and betrayed: Antes muerto.
Yesterday the figure in my mirror had been a loosely-buttoned troubadour, but now I wore a different image. Dark clothes, dark hair, dark cloak. My shirt was grey and austere. My jaw was clean and smooth. Seeing all of this made me shift uncomfortably.
I daubed on some scent from a vial Itzak had given me. It would make it hard for a demon nose to smell anything odd about me – some beings could smell the slight cold smell that made me different from a normal human.
Looking quite unlike myself, I departed from Lincoln’s Inn on Abernathy, my horse, wary of the darkness of the sky and the chill of the air. His dark black coat gleamed brightly with the wetness soon upon it. Rain had come during the night, and wet, snowy mud trickled into the gutters. I saw my new reflection in the puddles and sniffed distastefully.
I turned with the bend of the Thames into Westminster. The wood houses gave way to stone ones, and then the houses gave way to mansions, which grew steadily larger the farther I rode.
York House was a behemoth of a castle, dark against the lightening sky. It had a gatehouse large enough to fit two carriages astride, and on the banks it had a water-gate and pier. Above these reared six-story turrets, built of fine grey stone and punctuated by a few windows of clear and golden glass. Since wind was scarce, the banners of the Crown hung languidly like fish strung up at market. Beyond its somber silhouette, Whitehall Palace could be seen, a cloudy blur, next door.
I trotted my horse up to the sentries at the gate. “Hullo,” I said. “I’m here to see Lord Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal. By appointment.”
“The stable is across the courtyard. The clerk, he’ll admit you.”
“Thank you.” I rode through the gatehouse and lingered there blinking for a moment. I took in the courtyard: beautiful, if dismal. On a sunny day it might have been dazzling.
Almost immediately Abernathy sensed something. He clopped along easily as he always did (since he was not excitable by nature), but his ear twitched in a warning. I bent and murmured a reassurance into his mane and scanned the place. Pages and servants ran around and guards were stationed. Dreary and oppressive as it was, there was nothing out of the ordinary.
And I would only be there for an hour at most. Calm down, Donne. Maybe it was the armed guards that made me and Abernathy ill-at-ease. He swished his tail uncomfortably as the stable boy took him from me.
I hurried across the courtyard, feeling miniscule beneath the manor. At the main doors, I met a porter in a yellow jerkin referred to a list on parchment. “Hello; Milo Schroeder, porter of York House, Whitehall, at your service. Are you Donne – you are Donne, then. You’re punctual.”
“The earlier, the better.”
“Ha-ha-ha. A bundle of laughs; he’ll like you. You’ve talked to the clerk –you are on this list. Perhaps you should see him; his office is on the east wing of the fourth quadrant, first floor. Pay attention: main foyer, third door on the right, go straight, left turn, blue hall, second door on the right, legal hall, first door on the right. Then the Lord Egerton’s office: go right, take the stairs up two flights, come out in the green curtain hall, go to the end, turn left, last door. Any questions? No, well, then, a good listener, he’ll like you. Donne… Donne … Donne. Here it is. I’ve marked you off. The best of luck, take care, mind you don’t touch the Abyssinian tapestries, good-bye.”
Before I could say anything, he had already ushered me in and shut the doors.
The foyer was dark and long. A chandelier graced a high, ribbed ceiling, but its little candles struggled to emit much light. The tiles underfoot were of some pale gold-colored marble, and well-worn. The walls showcased rows of what I guessed were the Abyssinian tapestries: scenes of ibises and palm trees and black panthers. I took a deep breath. It smelled like St. Paul’s, like dust and aging fabric and tallow.
I stumbled through the House, dodging busts and vases and silver hangings. Wherever I went, a dimness pervaded, and the hoary smell, even when the halls seemed dusted, lingered always.
What was I doing….
I made my way to the clerk’s, but all the while my mind was trailing halls, assessing windows, planning an escape route. Try as I might, I couldn’t still my fear and unease.
Proceeding on my way and meeting no one, I relaxed a little. But there was an air the place had, like a cathedral’s, vast and ancient, and it made me feel small — but while a cathedral had sanctity, loftiness – this place had nothing but the dust and a cold, oppressive heft that made it hard to breathe.
Unable to recall most of the porter’s directions, I found myself wandering after I left the clerk. Drifting up a winding spiral stair and taking it up several floors, in a few minutes I could find my way. Turning left, I found a hall with windows, brighter than the rest of the place. Lord Egerton’s office was the one in the corner, Schroeder had said. The one with the simple door of pale wood, poised quietly at the end of the hall, closed.
Putting my ear to the wall, I listened through the plaster for noises. I heard nothing but the scratching of a quill on parchment inside and the far-off voices of servants vibrating upward from the first two floors. Gleaning nothing, I stood back and waited.
When seven o’clock was but a few minutes away, the door opened, and it wasn’t the Lord Keeper, but the son, Sir Tom, and he was fondling a letter above his heart. “Hullo! Ah, but I remember you!”
“John Donne,” I said, offering my hand.
“The silverware chap!” We shook. “Good to see you again. Are you interviewing?”
“Yes.”
“Bless your soul! Father’s been complaining of the meager applications that he’s heard. He’ll hire you for sure. I’d wager.”
He unfolded the paper and looked at it wistfully. “I’d best deliver this. I’ve written to my wife. She’s taken the girls to her family in Scotland. I miss them so.”
“That’s a shame. I can’t stand when people go away.”
“Especially if you love them.”
“Especially, sir.”
“Hello, Father —”
I tensed.
“Good morrow, Tom,” said Egerton. His garb was dark and sober. He was not a bad-looking man. His beard, straight and grey except for a few light brown strands, hung a few inches past his chin over a stark white collar. His nose was long and aquiline, his face thin, his eyes a light green, bright. He nodded at me. “And Tom’s friend.”
I bowed reverently. I told myself I was indeed a courtier.
The change in Tom, too, was remarkable. The laughter had fled his eyes completely. Ducking his head ever slightly, he gestured to me. “A friend, yes, Father, named John Donne, and he’s applied to you, or I think he has, and — well.”
“Yes,” said Egerton. “Thou art the first of the morn, Master Donne.”
Just the thing I’d pictured myself avoiding lighted down: an uncomfortable silence that stretched across a few painful seconds, before the soft voice of the Lord Keeper turned to me. “Dost thou speak, Master Donne?”
“Yes, my lord, only when spoken to.”
“I spoke to thee.”
“Forgive me, lord. Yes, I made an appointment. I pray I have kept it to your satisfaction.”
“Men who arise early show an eagerness and aptitude for work. It is a quality I admire and value. It signifies Efficiency, which signifies Industry, which signifies Prosperity.”
“Well-said, my Lord Keeper.”
“Well-met, John Donne. Please enter.”
Tom saluted his father then, and gave me a hopeful wave before slowly withdrawing. He went down the hallway, his letter still over his heart, and was gone. I waited for Lord Egerton to enter, and I followed him into his office.
He walked regally, but not in the self-righteous way I had observed in Essex or Southampton or other men of Court. His bearing showed how tall and strong the old man was, even if his hair was grey.
We passed through a room of bookshelves until he came to a large desk. It was easily seven feet long, and carved with figures of Greek myth. As Egerton seated himself on the other side, I glanced out the window at a wide view of the city. Then his calm, old voice bid me sit. He motioned at a smaller chair on my side. I bowed again and sat, cautiously. The room had a hearth blazing with yellow fire, but still I shivered, imagining a draft under the windows, and fingers of the frigid January air creeping slowly in.
Egerton opened the drawer and withdrew a pen, a china inkwell, and a series of papers. He studied the sheets, then wrote for a time. I didn’t try to see what, for fear of his eyes darting up to find mine on his writing. Instead I did what Ben had instructed, looking down.
Had he suspicions?
“Quite anxious thou seemest now, Master Donne,” he remarked.
“I prithee forgive me, Lord Keeper. I confess I am very nervous.”
“Fear is a useful thing at times, Donne. Such things I tell my courtiers.”
“Yes, my lord. I shall do as you say.”
He set down the pen with an ancient hand, thin, but strong. His eyes studied me, and I found my eyes went down instinctively.
“May I adapt a more candid tone to converse with you, Donne?”
“If it pleases you,” I said, looking down, but in my mind I could see his gaze, examining me harshly, closely. I imagined it penetrating me. Now, I thought to myself. Now. If he has pierced me, I must keep myself collected and within.
“You know my son Thomas, through the Azores mission with the Earl of Essex. You are, I believe, the only applicant who has seen combat outside of a courtroom. Your country thanks you for your service.”
“And I am thankful to my country. I am honored by your praise, my Lord Keeper.”
Something moved at the corner of Egerton’s mouth, the beginning of a dry smile. He said, “And all our beauty, and our trimme, decayes, like courts removing, or like ended playes.”
I fought against a flinch. It was The Calm, seventh couplet.
“It is from a poem of yours, if memory serves, that I much enjoyed. My son keeps up with your work.”
“It is… gratifying to know I have a following, my lord.” I smiled.
Egerton smiled as well, and a few more wrinkles creased his face.
“And,” he said, “it would be of great use to me to have one in my service who might apply a touch of eloquence to my legal affairs, would it not?”
“If it is in your Lordship’s interest.”
“Very good. While seldom few listen to sense, all men listen to eloquence.”
I nodded, smiling.
“My son tells me you keep an … avant-garde company. I must tell you that others here have been concerned about such things. I have said that by coming to York House you have shown your loyalties to be secured in the right places,” he said, earnestly.
I was going to look up and say, “Yes, my lord.”
But when I met his eyes (looking up, head ducked, like Ben had taught me), the words caught in my throat. My lips parted, but nothing came out.
It was the eyes, it was looking into the Otherlight, it was the shivers that trickled down my spine. They were calm and cold and staring evenly past my face and into my mind. There was something about the commanding glint in them, and the green depths that seemed intent on grappling my thoughts and drawing them forth.
“I sought a reply, Donne.”
“Forgive me,” I muttered, looking down. “You are very right in your opinions, my lord. Your trust is justified. I only hope that if appointed, I may be worthy, through industrious work and loyalty.”
“I am reassured.”
I swallowed and nodded graciously.
Like a weight, down fell another weighty silence.
“Fear not, young poet,” he assured me, with a fatherly smile. “I have learned that you bear a reputation about this town as a regular of the plays.”
“I implore your forgiveness….”
“Forgiveness?” said Egerton. “But how refreshing it is to see a man with his own pursuits to contrast with the flatterers and pleasers I have seen. I would, of course, let my secretary entertain his own thoughts. Is not a man entitled to his opinions? At times they help. I would allow him thoughts, as long as I am persuaded that they will not become sedition that would harm him.”
“Pardon – I am no frequenter of the plays. Five years ago, perhaps, but no longer.” Which was a feeble lie.
He nodded approvingly; but still I felt his eyes on my forehead. I could almost sense them going into me. I did not think he could read my mind, but I felt my thoughts at my lips, close to slipping out.
“In any case,” he said, “you show a keenness many courtiers lack. You have an intelligence about you.”
“Oh, thank you, my Lord Keeper. I try to be learned, and follow the example of philosophers. My poems I strive to render things of reason.”
“One of the many things that makes them most enjoyable.” He paused for a moment. “Wit would also be of great assistance to me, as I work frequently in the Court at Whitehall. My secretary would help me in legal affairs, some of which call for negotiation and cleverness.”
“I have studied law, sir, extensively. At Oxford, Cambridge, Thavies Inn, and Lincoln’s Inn. I was practicing to be an attorney.”
“How advantageous,” said Egerton slowly. “That is to be thankful for in a courtier. You are proficient, I trust?”
“Very proficient, if I may say so – I came to Oxford at twelve, then removed to Cambridge, then to Lincoln’s Inn, finally, and even after leaving the Universities I have studied the law for my leisure.”
Upon hearing this, the old man smiled. “Optime vero.”
“Gratias ago tu, my Lord Keeper.”
“Wonderful Latin.”
“I am well-learned in literature and mathematic, and am fluent in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, and Arabic.”
“A repertoire.”
“I am a poet, sir,” I said cheerfully. “I have a lot of time on my hands.”
This drew a smile from him, no bigger than his other ones, but one that seemed slightly lighter. “Good,” he mused. “You have skill, I presume, in the scribing of court documents?”
“Oh, yes; I have much practice. I adore it.”
He smiled again. Was I genuinely amusing him, or was he being friendly? Or did he know how unsettling it was to have his mouth curl like that, knowingly, and his eyes glister like he knew something about me that even I didn’t?
“I helped the Earl of Essex write Christmas thank-yous last year, and he also let me assist his secretarial departments with papers regarding his monopoly to license wine. I’ve been of help to various gentlemen in the Petty Courts, drafting lawsuits and such.”
“And record-keeping?”
“I shall imitate the Herodotus, my lord. Why, I shall dote here on Herodotus.”
“How amusing – you have quite a wit, Donne.”
He wasn’t laughing, but by contrast I was: a meek, awkward, strangled laughter at my pathetic contrivance, because in my fear I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Did he want ‘wit’? Or did he want the courtier, mindless? Had I angered him? Was he suspicious?
Did I let it show how terrified I was?
I looked up quickly to gain some idea of how he perceived me. He was facing the window, looking out at the bleak winter town. He squinted, as if studying something closely, then turned back to me.
Our eyes met over the desk, and I froze. I could feel ice settling on my skin, running up my spine, and my hands almost dropped my hat. A cold, soft sickness took root in my stomach, and my head felt strange, fuzzy. The green depths held me fixed; clasped, almost mesmerized, even as I tried to pull away. I tried and tried to pry my eyes from his, but I couldn’t. I felt my thoughts torn away, and the power of his stare pull them towards the surface. It felt like I was choking on the apple in my throat.
“Wouldst thou tell me, Donne, what precisely thou dost for a living?”
I was a clerk for an accounting firm, wasn’t I? I’d practiced it so long with Ben in the Mermaid. But somehow I forgot how I was supposed to lie – it was lost in those soft, glowing eyes. Somehow I couldn’t keep the truth pinned down. My lips moved, betraying me to the cold compulsion that held my mind, but when I spoke there was relief, peace. “I… I… I only write poems, sir. A poet.”
“Really? Thou wilt forgive me for pressing, but I must ask of all who seeketh employment with me. There are no other preoccupations of a manner that would concern me?”
“…What preoccupations?”
“Practices whose causes for concerning me shall only be known by those who practice them.”
The Order, said a voice in the back of my brain. The Order is a preoccupation that concerns Egerton. No sooner had I understood this than I felt the force of his gaze inside of me push it forward to the front of my thoughts, and open my throat, and pull it out. But – no. No. I swallowed, trying to dispel the urge to tell him everything. “No,” I said. “No … I don’t think so, Lord Keeper. I ... I hope not.”
And I tore my eyes from him and stared at the floor.
He observed me for a length of time before taking a seat at the desk. “I see,” he told me. “Very good. If that is the case, I see nothing more to ask you. You application has left me with a favorable opinion of you. If I may have your place of residence, I suspect that you will in high likelihood hear from my clerk soon.”
“I am honored, my lord. Um… You may have it sent to the Great Hall of Lincoln’s Inn.”
He wrote it down. “It is appreciated. We shall see, now.”
“I am most honored with your consideration. I mean, of a … humble poet.”
“You need not be surprised, Master Donne. By the learning of many years I can mark talent and intelligence, qualities I esteem more than any level of experience.”
“Your words are flattering. I hope I may be worthy.”
An odd expression crossed the old man’s face, a pause, as if he had remembered something strange. I found myself playing with my fingers, as I waited for him to say something.
“Your name strikes some chord in my memory,” he said slowly.
I hoped the desk blocked his view, for my leg shook and I moved a hand to steady it.
“I oversaw some business three years ago, or perhaps four. It concerned a young man who bore a resemblance to you. If memory serves, his name was Henry Donne, the shelterer of a Catholic priest named William Harrington. Do you bear any relation?”
A razor seemed to press itself against my throat. The eyes watched every flicker of movement on my face. I felt my last shreds of confidence buckle and collapse. This mad venture would end before it began.
I wet my lips. “He was my brother, sir.”
Egerton did not look surprised. I reasoned he had known the whole time, and had simply waited. He nodded slowly. “I see. Now you must admit, Donne,” he said, “it casts quite a pall over your motives for applying.”
“I accept whatever judgments thy lordship shall harbor against me and the family ties that, though I have severed them, have branded me.”
The words sputtered and shook, leaving me lightheaded. Something inside me felt strange, and it was not by his eyes, or the fear. It was the first time I had ever uttered something against my family.
“Henry was a criminal.”
“The condemnation comes easily from you.”
“He was.”
“That is your true opinion?”
I took a breath, not for air or calm, just to get it out of me. Just, for a brief second, to give me something else to feel. I said, “He wasn’t dangerous. Yet. But he was stupid. He knew he’d die if he was caught giving shelter to the priest. He wanted to die.”
“And your ancestors shared his inclinations.”
“Look where that got them.”
“Where?”
“I have a list, my Lord Keeper, of how many died in exile, how many died wretched, and how many were executed. It is two pages long.”
“And you?”
“It’s not worth it,” I told him. “Martyrdom is death, my lord. My family tried to fight, and by the end they didn’t even know what they were fighting for. It makes me sad. It makes me sad enough to be sick with it all.”
“So now,” he said, “you ask to serve me.”
“I must. I must be something other than this. I must get as far away from them as I can.”
Behind my somber mask I was crying out a fervent prayer. Thomas More, forgive me for what I have to say. I am faithful, as God must know! O Henry, Henry, my brother, forgive me.
“And how, John Donne, can I trust you have forsaken the treason of your lineage?”
“I have nothing, my lord, that would satisfy you. I have no great deeds to win your favor, nor mighty diction to declare myself. Only what virtue I have stands witness for me now, and I pray you see it, and I pray each night that God has seen it, and it is all I have unto my name.”
He spoke soothingly. “I have learned all I wish to learn,” he said. “Fear not the path before you. I suspect you will hear in due time from my clerk, and I thank you for your time.”
He stood, and gestured that I do the same. But I knelt, clutching my hat before my heart. “My Lord Keeper, you are truly benevolent. You have shown me far more mercy than I could ever merit.”
“Do not slight yourself. For who can say what you will soon accomplish in the service of our blessed country.”
With a cool cordiality that disconcerted me, he showed me to the door. I followed him, my legs wobbly, and he dismissed me with a nod of his head. I bowed again. The door shut.
By the time I took back my horse, the sprinkle had become a downpour. Rain poured from the dark sky, drumming out music from the rooftops, a low, steady noise that draped over the city. Rivers of water streaming down the gutters were broken by Abernathy’s hoofs as we traipsed on home.

Itzak was glad he hadn’t been above the caves today – rain was trickling down the underground drains and shining on the rock it passed. He was in the common room reading the Iliad when Jack returned, soaking wet. “So,” Itzak said, prompting an answer.
Sullenly, Jack squeezed some water from his hair. “So,” he said.
Silence fell.
Itzak sighed. “Don’t worry. I don’t care how your interview with the archfiend went. I will just sit here, happy to be in the dark.”
“Look, Itzak—”
“Ssh. I am reading.”
“Must you always be so scathing?” growled Jack. “I think he’ll hire me. He said I’m capable. He liked my wit, and my thoroughness.”
“Awfully depressing when you succeed, isn’t it?”
“It is awfully depressing,” Jack shot back, “when you have to say vile things about dead people you loved. And now since it’s only eight o’clock, I have the rest of the day to think about it.”
Itzak apologized for being apathetical. Jack was always bitter, and it was dreadfully hard for Itzak to tell whether something was really bothering him. Now Donne sat with his hands clasped in his lap, like he usually did, but his eyes looked stark and tired and sad.
“I know it is hard, what you have to do,” Itzak began. Then he stopped and gathered his thoughts. When he wasn’t paying attention to it, his Yiddish accent became thick, which annoyed him. I know eet iz hard, vhat you haff to do. He started again. “I know it’s hard, what you have to do. I can understand, Jack, I can really try. But it’s best for you to get used to it.”
Jack’s mouth snapped open to protest, but he shut it and stood gruffly.
“Is he a demon?” said Itzak.
“Yeah,” said Jack.
“Did that scent I made you work. He couldn’t tell you’re a —”
“I’m going to the Mermaid Tavern. I’ll be back soon. Thanks.”
Itzak watched him go and resumed reading. Or, rather, his eyes moved from word to word lazily, while his mind drifted. It was dreadfully lonely on Saturday mornings, sitting around. People like Jack were out and about, and people like Jonson wouldn’t be up until nearly noon. Itzak’s laboratory would always call, but it was his duty to honor Shabbat. He usually split the day between boredom and fretting over lost time in his lab. The vials and scales and guns-in-progress sat in the dark, gathering dust. Something could go wrong. It pained him like it pained a mother to leave her baby.
If only he could be as fond of surface London as Jack was, for he might have enjoyed himself up there if only he could get over his fear and loathing of it.
At two in the afternoon, Jack Donne strode back, flushed at the cheeks, with a few pages in his hand. He was even wetter than before.
“You had lunch there?” asked Itzak.
“Yes. I treated Shakespeare while I was at it, because I don’t think he would have remembered to lunch by himself. He began a new play yesterday. He says it’s about nothing – and much ado about it.”
Itzak had never met Jack’s sodden friend. He found it odd that instead of making the man grumpy or sleepy or wild, alcohol made Shakespeare – for lack of a better word – loopy. And Jack, who admired the playwright despite his flaws, said he wrote most of his plays within a week or so during the most intense of his drunken fervors.
“Anyhow,” said Jack a little dreamily, “I am having a much better day.”
Itzak noted the placid look in Jack’s eyes. “You have met a new woman,” he said dryly.
“Well,” said Jack, a little smugly. “Yes.”
Itzak shrugged and said no more. (It would be over before the month was out. Jack’s mayfly loves never rose to much longevity.)
“Her name is Catherine Somerset. She has brown hair. Her father is a court painter.”
(They always tended to be artistic, Itzak had noticed.)
“But she’s leaving with her father for Germany,” said Jack. “Next week.”
“Did you kiss?”
“Yes.” Jack thought. “Well…yes. Politely, I mean. But she loved me! I could see it in her eyes. If only she weren’t leaving. Now she’ll find a German and forget all about me. But it could have been something, Itzak.”
Itzak had passed his alchemy exams with flying colors, and was considered by some to be the foremost gunsmith in modern Europe. But Intimacy? Perhaps he could put an ostrich feather in his hat and take up poetry, like Jack; perhaps learning of love, like learning of Paracelsus, would be time-consuming but – he flushed – possible. But something inside Itzak always pulled him back. Besides, the only female he thought a lot of was Helen of Troy, for he reasoned that if he had lived in those days, she would have much preferred him to Paris.
#
For example, Paris couldn’t blow things up.
When Sunday came, Jack’s and Itzak’s situations were reversed, and Jack had to go to church at St. Paul’s and rest while Itzak threw hand grenades at sawdust dummies, observing with satisfaction the mannequins’ arms and legs flying violently out among gouts of purple flames. Itzak would then take his notebook and record precisely which body parts had been expelled, how long the explosion had lasted, and the variation of the purple of the fire.
The entertaining part only lasted so long, as he had a limited number of grenades. After that, he slunk back to his lab and wrote a detailed documentation on the inner workings of the explosives; and while Jack didn’t mind lengthy writing in the least, he did not have to pen the technical expositions Itzak did.

And after the delaying compound is fully exhausted (see Chemicals, part 3, section 7: page 23), the flame is transferred to the detonating powder, which explodes, thus causing a very small ka-boom, visible as a flash of light, before the larger ka-boom (see The Small Ka-Boom, part 1, section 1: page 2).

Itzak read what he had accomplished and left the remainder for another time. Head aching viciously, he ascended the flight of steps to the common room. When he got there, it was almost dinnertime, and most of the hunters and alchemists from their dormitory wing had congregated there, talking. Mostly it was small groups talking, but there was quite a crowd around a table where Ben Jonson and Bode were arm-wrestling. Itzak did not hold Jonson in that high of an esteem, but it was entertaining to see him keeping down a red-faced Bode, occasionally editing his play with his other hand.
Bode grunted as his arm was forced down another inch. The crowd hooted. Jonson said, “Keep it down, thou!”
Lovelace, like his cohort, was red in the face, but with embarrassment. Isabel D’Angelo, the knife-thrower from Italy, was on his arm and laughing. Her teeth were white and radiant when she smiled, and her black hair tossed itself to and fro. Maybe there was a female besides Helen of Troy, but being a logical man Itzak didn’t get his hopes up. There wasn’t much point solving a complex equation when one knew the solution would just be Ø.
With his hands in his pockets, Itzak drifted along the edge of the crowd for a while, trying to ignore the voice telling him to return to the lab.
Jack found him. “Ho.”
“Hello.”
“Drink?”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“You look downright pensive.”
“I was only thinking.”
Donne laughed. “About the grenades?”
Itzak felt a slight indignance, that even his best friend assumed he only thought of work. “Yes,” he said, “and they are coming along quite well. It blew a dummy’s leg thirty feet away.”
“Tremendous.”
But after Sunday, things sorted themselves back into their usual rhythm. The dull, time-consuming grenade examination distracted him from loneliness entirely.
February came crawling in. Itzak was glad the underground and Lincoln’s Inn were warm. Even when he’d been a small boy in the German Alps, he hadn’t liked winter. Far too cold, long, and dreary, and it killed everything green but the pines.
After a week or so of waiting for York House’s reply, Jack Donne became anxious. He would pace around the library looking for a book, read it, then pace again. Thrice he slept until almost noon. The Order sent him out more and more at night. Northwell probably wanted Jack to exhausted to second-guess himself.
Jonson was still scribbling away at his comedy (he called it Every Man in His Humour).
Lovelace remained a veritable spout of pessimism.
Bode produced a notable axe in his forge.
Isabel said “Permesso, pardon” when Itzak was walking out a door and she was walking in.
And one day, Jack got a letter. It was lamb-white paper, folded crisply, stamped with a seal of bright blue wax. He read out loud: “‘Mr. John Donne. From his Excellency the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Head of Internal Affairs, Master of the Rolls, Attorney General of Her Majesty.’”
“At long last,” said Itzak.
Jack opened it.

“ ‘Our dearest regards at Yorke House to the honourable Mr. Donne, and cordial thankes for his application some weekes prior. That he did honor his appointment most fashionably we commend, and make it known that the sublime Lord Keeper took most heartedly to him above all otheres who sought favor. Most praise to his intelligence, his nimble witte, his most polite manners, et cetera. Lord Egerton wisheth it be known that he requesteth Mr. Donne’s presence on the fourth day of this February at 6 houres p.m, so as to further interpret him and make fuller Mr. Donne’s knowledge of the secretarial position which, if he doth desire it, would most certainly be his. Signed his Lordship’s loyal clerk, and your Christian friend, Gregory Downhall.’”

Itzak nodded. “They don’t refer to just anyone in the third person.”
“Please don’t be sarcastic.” Jack took the letter and sniffed it. He closed his eyes. “Truthfully, part of me wished so badly never to hear from them again.”
“And why is that?” said Itzak dryly.
Jack shot him a glare. Then he rubbed the back of his neck. “The fourth is in two days, is it not? Hell, Itzak, it’s happening so fast.”
Itzak watched as Jack paced for a while more before muttering something about going to his room to read and decide what to wear two days from then. Itzak went back to his laboratory to finalize the grenade report.
#
Jack came home two days later in near hysterics. His eyes were wide and darted. It didn’t help that everyone in the common room was around him in an instant, clamoring for news. Itzak, Jonson, and Lovelace cleared them away and got Jack to his chamber.
“You’re found out!” cried Jonson. “Oh, God, I knew you’d —”
“No, no, no,” said Jack. “Shut up, Ben.”
He sat on his bed and tore off his lacy ruff and his long grey cape.
“So,” said Itzak. “What did happen?”
“I said yes.”
Itzak rolled his eyes. “Anything. Anything but that….”
“No one told me,” said Jack, “I’d have to bloody live there!”
“What!” Ben cried.
“York House isn’t just where the Keeper lives – it’s where his whole staff lives, where his secretary lives, and then I told him I already have a place, but it was required, he said, and I couldn’t say no, it was his eyes, and damn it, I’m not going to back out!”
“I don’t think— ” Lovelace began, but a knock on the door cut him off. Itzak answered, but no one was there. A note had been pinned to the door, and it read: John Donne – Presence requested – office of Northwell – immediately.
Jack glanced at it, smoothed the front of his tunic, and left hastily.
With Jack gone, Lovelace slunk away, shrugging, and Ben went to Jack’s desk and found a poem to read. Itzak scanned the room, which was sparsely decorated, but with taste. A map of London hung on the wall, a drawing of the Last Supper on another. Eclectic books were stacked everywhere, from the Bible (Jack had different versions in several languages) to Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great. Itzak couldn’t help but noticing a great number on vampires.
“You know, he thinks about what he is more than we do,” said Ben, noticing what had drawn Itzak’s eye. “The nature of the Dark.”
Itzak took a book, flipped to a dog-eared page, and found a gristly illustration of a vampire gorging itself on a writhing victim. Itzak closed the book and put it back, finding a rare pity for Jack. It wasn’t easy to forget Jack’s first night as a hunter, especially given the grand way he’d nearly gotten himself killed.
They had become acquainted as Itzak had shown him the weapons and the potions. Jack spent the day bouncing from foot to foot excitedly. “Oh, I’ve trained for months. What if they send me out tonight? My stomach’s doing circles.”
“I am sure it is nerves,” said Itzak. After supper he had gone promptly to bed, and slept soundly.
What happened that night while he’d been sleeping Itzak could only hear secondhand. Jack had recieved a summons and had bounded off into the night after a vampire on Old Queen’s Street.
It was a dark night, Jack would say. The moon itself was bright, but didn’t seem to reach anything below. The street, the trees, the houses – all of them were black. The vampire was in an alley with only one exit, where I stood. There was a fog. I remember that because it was the only thing that caught the moonbeams, all silky and soft, silvery, like breath, wrapping me, kissing me, blacking my sight. I stepped forward. I stepped forward again.
Did I tell you about that time I had growing up, when Henry saw a stray dog in a corner? He edged close to it, just like I was doing, and it hurt him. What do dogs do when you get too close? They attack, they claw and they bite.
I don’t think I comprehended what was going on. I don’t even think my pistol fired. Something inhumanly strong was holding my head back to expose my neck.
It hurt.
It hurt like hell. It hurt like my neck was freezing or burning or doing both at the same time. I fought for a while, my flesh fighting, pressing, tearing away from the fangs in my neck. My body strained, my eyes opened, I struggled. Then I stopped. I gave out, to feel the pain so suddenly close to pleasure. The fog turned red. Like harvest moons, like blood, like wine.
Itzak had woken to someone banging on his dormitory door, shouting at him to get up. He’d been led in his cap and nightgown through headquarters by some Order official, to the healing wing. Someone had warned him, “We ask you not be alarmed at what you see.”
What he had seen was the poet-hunter, his flesh whiter than a corpse’s, on a bed, struggling though unconscious, his pallid lips gasping for breath. Ben Jonson and a trembling Henry Donne were already there, staying out of the way of the doctors.
Friar Tuck was one of the Order’s most accomplished exorcists. Since what the short, black-bearded man called “yon good olde days” of running around Sherwood with the monster-hunting men in green, he had been casting out devils for four centuries. He washed the still-streaming blood from Jack’s throat and peeled off the soiled, ragged shirt. “On the first night,” he had gruffed, “eke a dark one. Marry, what a shame.” And with incense, garlic, and holy water, he had drawn the unclean Taint from the wound. John Donne was no vampire, but he had see at night and hear things that others couldn’t. He would never be as he had been.
#
Itzak picked up another of Jack’s books, Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Jack found it entertaining for its thrilling narration, and because Spenser had been experimenting with drugs at the time. When Itzak read to the part where a serpent monster’s offspring ate their dead mother and exploded, he closed this book too.
After half an hour, Jack came back, looking calmer. Ben Jonson asked what had happened.
“Nothing,” he told them with a smile, and his mouth made a small smile. “Northwell has told me I am committed.”

Jack spent the scarce time he had left before reporting to Egerton with bright trips to the Mermaid Tavern, play-going, and romancing, as Jack Donne would. The day before he left, the hunters in their wing had toasted to his health in the common room. Jonson put an arm around Jack’s shoulder. “I think I’m going to cry. Tomorrow John Donne starts an honest job.”
There was much laughter.
“I’ve found the perfect way to see you off,” Jonson said. “There’s a demon nest, word has it, on West Cheap and Cornhill Street. At ten o’clock Lovelace, Bode, Isabel, and I are off to take it out. Are you in? One last good fight to see you off.”
“I mustn’t. I need rest tonight.”
“One – little – hunt?”
“I’m sorry, Ben. I really am.”
“But who knows when you’ll get a chance like this again?”
“Perhaps.”
“I can come as well,” said Itzak.
“Marvelous,” said Jonson. “I will meet you blokes here at nine-thirty.”
#
A minute before ten o’clock, Itzak was perched on the roof of a four-story house, a long-range musket poised in his hands. His scarf was wrapped around his mouth to keep him warm, his black hood was pulled overhead to keep his stark blonde hair from betraying his presence. Instead he was a shadow, indistinguishable from the darkness around him.
The street was silent, and the nearby houses were empty – the Order’s men had told the residents some story about the plague and cleared them out pretty quickly. Itzak’s focus was a building across the alley from him, a ramshackle abandoned place with yawning windows. Jonson and Lovelace approached the door and, nodding to one another, plunged within.
Itzak’s fingers fumbled with the flintlock. The answering click eased his nerves. He raised the trigger to his ear and waited.
A thud.
Itzak wet his lips.
And then a rising chorus of screeches, gasps, and pounding. Itzak thought suddenly of the beast from the Faerie Queene, waking in the shadows to finding its cave had been breached. Look, its glowing eyes snap open, and its snake neck rises! Look, pale shapes are stirring, they stretch their coils, they wet slick jaws with bloody tongues!
An agonizing minute passed, and then Jonson was clambering out a high window and swinging onto the roof with Lovelace close behind him.
In an explosion of wood and thatch, part of the roof burst open. Itzak angled his gun.
It was as if a hole had been torn in the earth, and from it emerged something hurtling furious from hell. A creature with a body the size of a battle-horse and clawed wings like grey sails launched itself at Jonson. The big man swung his sword and sent it reeling into the night. It shrieked and with a flap of its wings darted into the low-hanging fog overhead.
Another erupted from the window. Itzak’s fingers flew on the triggers, and the bullet sailed across the distance and struck the muscled arm of the demon’s wings. Its great body buckled and shuddered and it fell writhing into the alley, hissing as it crashed against the wall and struck the ground. It staggered to its hind legs, but a dark, tall shape behind – Bode – raised his arms and lopped off its head with a battle-axe. The body folded and collapsed.
Its brothers screamed: a sound like knives run against each other, blade to blade, but muted somehow, so unreal it was eerily quiet – as if its power were in essence, not in volume. Deep within him, Itzak felt his heart trembling. His hands went to his ears, but pain shot through his skull.
Two more demons crashed through the walls, rose into the air, beat their wings. They disappeared into the fog with the first. An utter silence fell, leaving his ears ringing. Gripping his musket again, Itzak readied himself as, in the alley below, Bode retreated back into shadow. From a rooftop on the other side of the rickety building, Jack’s hand waved to show he was all right. Itzak returned the gesture. On another roof, Isabel waved. Lovelace and Jonson did the same. As one, they waited.
Jack pointed at the blanket of fog above them, hearing something the rest of them couldn’t. Itzak tore a packet of gunpowder and poured it into the gun and rammed in another ball of silver. He flipped the safety and raised his eyes to the clouds. Indistinct initially, soft, barely visible, there one second, gone the next – shadows circling above. Cold wind sprung from the still night, down from the fog, whispering in a foul, ancient language that chilled him. Fear, as his heart began to kick.
Lovelace shouted as a demon dove, spiraling like a raptor, too fast for Itzak to aim at. But a glimmer of silver sailed across the sky. The monster swerved to the side, growling, one of Isabel’s knives buried in its belly.
The other two fell upon her in an instant, dropping in a flurry of leather and claws.
“Isabel!”
Her dark shape somersaulted through a gap in their thrashing limbs, she sank a blade into a leg. A clawed foot lashed at her, missed, and she was pelting across the roof, as graceful (Itzak thought) as Atalanta outstripping moonlight in the woods of Calydonia, as swift as an arrow from the hunting-bow of Artemis. He sighed.
The demons were after her, but Itzak, springing back to focus, fired. His bullet hit the demon on its horned shoulder. Its brother hissed and came hurtling at him. He shouted and dropped as fast as he could. The thing sailed over him and collided with a chimney, sending bricks and mortar flying. Coughing at the soot expelled in a cloud above, he found a crook in the shingles, rammed in the butt of his musket, and vaulted across the alley. The breath left him as his chest hit the edge of the roof. Grunting he flung the gun onto the shingles and rolled onto the roof near Lovelace.
“You couldn’t just jump?” said Lovelace.
“Bite bricks.”
Lovelace ducked as Jonson swung his sword, impaling a demon. The thing pressed itself deep onto the blade before the big man threw it down on the roof, shuddering and shrieking, for all of them to see. Its body was naked, hairless, and of the same sickly grey skin, interrupted sometimes by dark veins. Its haunches kicked, armed with taloned feet. An arrowhead tail lashed the air. It had a body like a bat’s; its wings were leathery and tattered and tipped with hooks.
Its face was human. Or it reminded one more of a human than an animal with the placement of its features and the mane of dark hair. But its gasping dark mouth was filled with yellow fangs, and it gnashed them furiously. Its face contorted, the furrows in its neck bulged as it howled. Huge black eyes rolled back.
Lovelace drew a pistol and shot it. The body quivered and died. Slick blood spattered the thatch and ran in streams from the side of its horned head.
“Lovelace!” cried Isabel, leaping to him.
“Two more,” he said.
Itzak scrambled to his feet, and they stood back-to-back, weapons drawn. The alchemist flipped a mechanism on the musket and a bayonet sprung from the muzzle.
“Nice gun,” muttered Lovelace enviously.
The two remaining demons alighted on the roof, snarling at them, their eyes burning brightly. One was licking a wound on its wing where Jonson had slashed it, the long, red tongue caressing the torn flesh.
In an instant, Isabel had a knife in each hand. Jonson readied his blade. “Steady —”
One of the demons roared and reeled around. Slashing with his dirk, Jack had come up behind it and laid open its haunch. It threw itself at him in a blur of wings and claws. The dirk flashed. Jack leapt on its back, holding on by its hair, and struck what he could. Then the demon began to topple, swaying over the edge of the roof. All Itzak could hear was Jack shouting, “Dammit!” before the demon fell and the poet with it.
“He’ll be all right,” said Jonson.
There came a sound of air being struck as a pair of giant wings snapped open. The monster came sailing overhead with John Donne hanging by one leg from its talons. Licking its maw, the other demon took to the wing, darting around the other, snapping at Jack, who screamed. He swung back and forth as the demon soared higher and higher. He plunged his dirk into its calf. It dropped him viciously and he fell, arms flailing.
Jonson, took a few steps, and the poet crashed into his arms. He wobbled, then set Jack down. “Sacre bleu,” cried Jack.
Isabel cast a knife – it found the center of a demon’s forehead, and the monster reeled against the building and crashed into the street. Lovelace and Jack kept the second high above with pistol shots. Itzak loaded powder and a ball into the musket and retracted the bayonet. He fired and the demon fell, snarling, on another roof. The sound of Jack’s pistol echoed down the streets, and all was finally over.
“Chamelyeh!” Itzak said with satisfaction, punching the air. “Just the right shot —”
“Ho, Donne. Your alchemist almost killed himself jumping roofs,” Lovelace said.
Jack was bent, over the roof, coughing.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Lovelace walked over to the demon he’d brained with his bullet. “She’s huge. See here where Jonson gored it? It kept fighting—had to shoot it—there. Are you retching, Donne?”
“We should go home,” said Itzak.
“Aye,” said Jonson. “Home to a wine and the fireplace.”
“Away from the blood,” said Jack.
Isabel bounded off to collect her knives and Lovelace with her. Jack and Jonson cleaned their blades and Itzak helped Jonson pull the bodies into the house and tell the sleepy-eyed citizens who had come out of their homes that the racket was only some hooligans setting of fireworks. Jack recovered in the shadows as they did this. When they set off on the rooftops to Lincoln’s Inn, he tilted his head up to the fog, which was descending on London. “Isn’t it funny?” he murmured to himself. “A hunter who’s afraid of blood. I still can’t stand it. And tomorrow morning — I am still scared of it —”
They came to the gate at Lincoln’s. “Four demon corpses, West Cheap and Cornhill,” said Ben Jonson to the porter. Then he put an arm around Jack’s shoulders. “Goodness, now! You’ve just flown through the air (now how many people can claim that?) and tomorrow you’ll get a bed in one of the fanciest places in England. Smile! He’s not smiling, Itzak. Must I sing?

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine
Or leave a kiss but in a cup

And I’ll not look for wine.

“But best of all, my friends,” he laughed, “is a cup with a kiss and the wine, to put Jack to sleep dreaming of Miss Somerset. See? Now he’s finally smiled!”
#
The Lord Keeper of the Seal of England sat behind a carved desk, large and trimmed with gold. He was in an office lined with shelves of ancient volumes. Out the windows, one could see a vast expanse of city, river, and sky, all grey like gunmetal. From high up, the London of Elizabeth was the back of a porcupine, bristling with steeples and castle towers. Above these, just visible from the Lord Keeper’s House in Westminster, reared the battlements of the Tower and the pale, snug citadel at its top. There were play-houses on the Bankside, and arenas for the bear-baits, which even from a distance seemed to leach forth noise and blood-scent. There were the stone goliaths in the Strand. The London of the Elizabeth was expansive, and a myriad.
The Lord Keeper sat at his desk, listened to the rain. A cup of cold tea was in his hands.
A man stood before him, having entered and bowed. Egerton considered him and said, “I, however, am disposed to trust him, for the time being.”
“I cannot help thinking it is a mistake.” There was a ragged brogue in his voice.
“You and I will be watching Mr. Donne with vigilance. But you must understand, my spymaster, that my confidence is well-placed in him. He is intelligent, and obedient.”
“He’s a poet ― he writes poetry of women, verses of the filthy sort. He drives the Puritans mad, he does. He will not be obedient.”
Egerton said calmly, “If I find his compliance lacking, I will reinforce it. You will recall issues of the past, arising most unfortunately, but dealt with efficiently. Obedience may be wrought. The compulsion is not a difficult one to instill.”
MacGregor brushed a strand of dark hair from his face with a supple hand. He was a man harsh of feature and bleak of disposition, with a voice as cold and rugged as the Scottish crags of his homeland. Across the sharp, stern shoulders fell a cloak that hung in tatters by his boot-spurs, dripping water on the floorboards into brackish drops shining in the torchlight.
“He’s a Catholic. He’s a cavalier.”
“How old are your sources, MacGregor? He is an Anglican courtier now, in dress and appearance.”
“At times I am a beggar in dress and appearance, but it maketh me not one.”
“If Donne clothes himself in an outward conversion, he will in time grow used to the facade. If his inner mind is not yet hardened in a mold, the more power to those who would sculpt it. The benefits are too much for Donne to easily ignore. I anticipate he will be quite happy, and if he has not already cast his doubts aside, he soon will, and embrace what he has made of himself.”
“If he does not try to kill you,” said MacGregor, “over his brother.”
“I have confidence in Donne. Perhaps he is only a poor, persecuted boy weary of the treasons of his kin. Perhaps years without his family’s influence have allowed his mind mobility. There was the coldness in his eyes that comes to the man who has forsaken an insubstantial past – like that in your own, but softer somewhat. And if he did wish to harm me, MacGregor, do you believe that he could?”
“Or,” said the Scotsman, “he could be trying to get at Richard Topcliffe.”
“Master Topcliffe is undoubtedly capable of combating any threats to his person. Is Donne to penetrate the Tower itself, incapacitate the guard, and slay our Grand Inquisitor with a pen?”
“Or buy a pistol,” said MacGregor, “and shoot him. As even I wish to. Topcliffe racked and killed his brother, my lord, and I would not presume Donne’s feelings have grown mild.”
“There will be no shooting and no treachery. Donne is not a danger. You will be watching his every move – and if he emerges with intent of revenge, papist promptings, harmful practices; if he steps inside a disreputable play-house, if he makes love to an unsavory woman; if he gains any knowledge about Otherkind; if he lets slip a curse, if he misprints a word – you are to deal with him as you see fit.”
“If he displeases you.”
“I am confident that he will not displease me. I permit your sharp retaliation on his any waver, though in time I predict you will agree that he is harmless, a courtier of potential. And most importantly, spymaster, he is a symbol to them – there.” His hand motioned to the city in the windows, melted by sheets of rain into a glowing blur of grey. “Four years ago, my Inquisitor wrought the death of Henry Donne. His family knows my name, and loathes it. But John has realized the error of their ways. Now I have him as my willing servant.”
“I shall watch him closely.”
“I am reassured.”
The Scotsman bowed and returned the hat to his head. It was dark and wide of rim, like a nobleman’s, and adorned with a brooch of garnet. Taking a smooth breath of the room’s sweet air, he pulled gloves over his hands. He reached for something round his neck and affixed it to his face.
It was the mask of black fabric that covered all his face. Protruding from the nose was a long, curved beak: it was the mask of the undertakers of the plague pits.
As he left the chamber, his feet were silent. The door closed, and the Lord Keeper was left alone. Reaching for a petition and calling for his waxer and sealer, his eyes found the cup of tea. When he put his hand to the cup, a tongue of steam began to rise from it. The wind changed directions, sending rain pattering behind him. He drank the tea.
#
That night in Surrey, some miles south, a dinner party was held. The affair was not extravagant, and only two persons were in attendance. Nor was it a rare occasion. Sir George More had these dinners often, to reward his favorite daughter.
The dining hall of Loseley House had large windows, which opened to the moon from where it rose, over the hill. The trees outside were glazed with blossoms and daggers of ice, frozen after the rainstorm had passed.
“The woods are lovely, Ann,” said More. His beard was dark and his hands slight and his eyes, mercury.
“They are ever beautiful, Papa,” she agreed. “I told Sundrille to have the tailor make me a gown. White silk and silver lace, so that when I wear it, I will look like one of the trees.”
“Thou hast an imagination full of striking beauties.”
“Thank you, Papa.”
“Such a smart young woman.”
They smiled, their faces white and blue in the moonlight. Lord More gestured to a sylph in a silver jacket, child-faced and white-haired, who took their cups away in silence. Cold bisque was set before them, and candied fruits, and pale rolls of sweet bread, all in sparkling silver dishes.
“May I have the soup warm, Papa?”
Lord More smiled, and then another servant, identical to the last, came forward. His eyes flitted for a moment to the young woman’s dark red hair as he took her bowl. Her Otherlit eyes moved to his quietly, and he froze for a moment before slipping away.
“Does he love me, father?” she whispered.
“Darling, darling, darling Ann,” he said, “there is not a man on earth who would not love thee.”
She was silent for a while.
“Is that lord from Italy coming to our house? Do you want him to love me?”
“In a night hour’s time, even his cold heart would melt to the touch of thine eyes,” he told her. “But I need thee elsewhere.”
The servant set the steaming bowl before her. She took a sip, heeding her father.
“Our Lord Egerton in York House hath acquired a new secretary, called John Donne.”
“The poet?”
“Six months ago, a Spanish werewolf with nine fingers approached me, seeking information on a man named Donne, who coincidentally was the hunter who parted the digit from its manus.”
“But there are thousands of Donnes in England.”
“Yes. John Donne… a graceless, common, farmhand’s name, isn’t it? But we must not believe in coincidences, Ann. We must learn of this secretary, and through observation find out his intent. Now must thou win his wistful heart, lull his vigil, so that as thou wouldst draw out his knowledge, he wouldst breathe it willingly. If he is no danger, all the better, and nothing is lost if he withers; if he proveth a hunter in disguise, we shall know.”
Her head shifted, but she knew better than to question her father. “And shall we tell Egerton? Would he reward us?”
“We shall tell Egerton only what he needs to know. After thou hast extracted all thee can and I have used it to the advantage of our poor family.”
“To keep Egerton in the dark, father?”
“Lord Egerton hast much upon his mind, and we mustn’t trouble him with such worries when he needs attend to weightier matters. And we, my daughter, must be the ones to then expose this Donne.”
“Now I see.”
“Thou remindest me so of thy mother. Thy minds are one, like minted coins the same, her wisdom in thy lovely, lovely eyes. Thy skill will have the poet on his knees.”
“Will it take long, do you think?”
Soon plates of partridge trimmed with carrots carved like roses were set before them, and as they ate Ann gazed out their window to the scene of snow and darkness.

“Come!” said Tom Egerton, taking me by the wrist. “I’ll show you the House!”
“I really need a little more time to set things up, sir – sir —”
“It’ll only be an hour, don’t worry,” he assured me. “And you’ve got to be savvy with the place. I will show you all the best rooms, and where you’ll eat, and where your office is. You’ll thank me.”
“I – I suppose,” I said, letting him lead me away from my room and down the hall. “But I still have to unpack my clothes, and my books are —”
“You’ll have time a-plenty.”
“Yes, Sir Thomas.”
He stopped. “Please. When I hear sir ‘Sir Thomas’ I turn around and look for my father. Come, it gets awfully lonely around here, and you and I must be friends. Call me Tom.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean, starting now.”
“Yes, Tom.”
Call him Tom, I thought. For all his friendly treatment, my insides knotted with the feeling that somehow this would convince him of a power over me.
“Now,” he said, “I’m assuming you don’t go by ‘Ho there, you.’”
“People here call me Donne.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What do your friends call you?”
“Jack,” I muttered, shifting at the strangeness of being amiable with Otherkind.
Down we went, through the servants’ living quarters and towards the main bulk of York House. No matter how hard I tried, I could not ignore the smell of the dust. I couldn’t see a speck of it upon the heirlooms, but the presence of it was there, out of sight, in the dark corners or the walls behind paintings. Like the malice in the House the dust was hidden, but the chill of its being still grappled the air.
He led me through the state suite and drawing rooms, the banquet room, and the dance hall. At least they were brightly lit with torches. The state halls were snug and comfortable, regally simple, hung with a few exquisite paintings and filled with fine desks for diplomatic meetings. Each of the many drawing rooms was a different color, and aptly named: the ruby room had walls painted shimmering red and was decorated with classical sculptures of black marble; sapphire’s walls were the blue of the ocean and were adorned with Egyptian carvings; obsidian was dark with silver curtains and pale candles in gleaming tapers. A great gold-and-glass chandelier hung above the massive table in the banquet hall, and the edges of the table-cloth were patterned with gold, and the chairs were fit with silver trim and upholstery of white velvet.
The dance hall was tall and round, and the parquet of the floor was laid to suggest a Celtic knot. “It’s small,” Tom told me. “But it serves well at New Years. For the party, the servants put up silver garlands and cast about blue glitter.”
He looked at me, and too late I hid the expression of the rapture. The half-demon patted me on the back. “Soon you’ll grow used.”
“I’m – I’m fine. It’s beautiful.” Then led me to the legal wing and the clerks’ offices. It was a corridor directly below the one where Egerton’s office was. Tom opened a room in the hall, a small one, with a big desk that took up most of it. The candles weren’t lit, and there were no windows, so it was dark, but light from the hall showed me some well-fashioned cabinets. I opened them and they were empty. I inspected the drawers of the desk. All barren.
“I will have to liven it up,” I said. “Art, potpourri.”
“It is rather desolate, you know? Jacobs wasn’t a very interesting bloke. Rather stiff, you know?”
I had been practicing my false laugh for a while, and it came in handy. He laughed too. “Do you want to see the library? And zounds! You haven’t met my wife and daughters. Come on, now.”
Leaving the legal wing, we crossed the anteroom of Abyssinian tapestries, and proceeded to a wing I had not seen, finer in its ostentation than the rest. As we went, Tom made an effort to introduce me to every person we passed. I was developing a loathing for my new friend, thinking his show of kindness had some aim. Or maybe he genuinely wanted to be friendly. I had no idea.
The first significant person we met was not Tom’s wife, but Egerton’s. She had dark grey hair and was old but sturdy, attended by a servant. A red choker was tied around her throat, and on it hung the silver shape of a star. I smelled incense on her dress, and mandrake.
I found my hand reaching for the cross pendant on my own neck, but subdued it. They mustn’t know, I thought, that I know.
But unlike Tom or his father, there was nothing inhuman about her. She looked at me with hawkish eyes. “It is good to have a secretary once again,” said she. “My apologies to Mr. Donne, Tom, but I must attend to matters downstairs. Adieu.”
After the resident witch had left, Tom shrugged. “Only a year here, and she acts like she owns the place.”
“Lady Egerton is not you real mother?”
“My mother is dead. Elizabeth is my father’s second wife. She makes me call her Mother, says I’m the son she never had.”
“I’m sorry, about your mother.”
“Well…thank you. Liza, Liza!” We had entered a sitting room of sorts, with red curtains on the walls and a large fireplace and suits of armor. Reclining on a chaise in a shining crimson gown was a woman, all sheets of shining sable hair and dark eyes - Otherlight. Rather wistful, she rose gracefully nevertheless. There was something about the inhuman pallor of her cheeks – dead, corpselike whiteness – and the daggers in the corners of her smile. I may or may not have gone weak in the knees. I think I did.
“This is Jack Donne, the new secretary. Jack, this is Liza, my wife.”
I bowed to her, and as I started to rise I saw her hand held out before me, to kiss. Cautiously, I touched it with my hand. While Tom’s hand was strangely warm, her flesh was cold and smooth like porcelain. Slowly, afraid, I put my lips to it, then drew back.
She went to Tom’s arms and studied me from there.
“We hope you like it here,” said Tom, laughing.
“As much as we do,” she said to me.
“It is a beautiful hall,” I said. “So vast! I’ll need a map.”
Tom laughed. “Isn’t he funny, Liza?”
She looked down. “Soon you’ll know your way around, Mr. Donne. Then you’ll feel at home here, like a part of our own family.”
“I wish it so, my lady. Thank you.”
“He is polite,” she said to her husband. “That is a relief in such a place as this.”
“Much better than Jacobs, isn’t he?”
“I look forward to reading his poetry.”
“I’d be honored to share it,” I said, looking down as her eyes indulged themselves on my neck again.
“Jacobs never liked us, you see,” Tom continued. “A rigid Puritan fellow.”
“He was indifferent,” Liza said.
Tom patted her hair. “Where are the girls?”
“All over. Playing hide-and-seek.”
A high voice whispered from behind a suit of armor: “I’m behind here, Mommy.” I saw a flash of blonde hair.
“And I’m here,” said another voice from behind a curtain.
“Why don’t you come out,” said Tom, “and meet Mr. Donne?”
“But then Vere will find us, Daddy.”
“I halt the game of hide-and-seek,” said Tom joyfully, and reached behind the curtain and lifted a little girl in a white dress into his arms. “You’ve been growing,” he said.
“I’m almost as tall as Mary now.”
“You aren’t!” said the girl from behind the armor, who stood by her mother. Both were blonde, and as pallid as their parents, with large grey eyes.
Tom said, “Aren’t you going to say hello to Mr. Donne?”
“Hello, Mr. Donne.”
“Hello,” I said.
“This is Mary,” said Tom, pointing to the taller one, “and this is Cassie.”
Mary curtseyed, and I bowed.
“Mr. Donne is very courteous,” Liza said. “Maybe he can show you his office when he has unpacked.”
“Can we hide there?” said Mary.
“Of course. I will arrange things to leave a few hiding places,” I said. Wonderful – now I would have little demon children running around me while I worked.
“Thank you, Donne!” said Mary. She tugged on the sleeve of her mother’s gown. “Can we hide again now? Vere will come soon.”
Tom set Cassie down and the sisters scattered back to their covers. “They’re such bright little things,” Tom told me. “Vere is nearly six, Mary five, Cassie almost four. They have their mother’s lovely face, except for my eyes. But I don’t know where the blonde hair came from.”
“I’ve told you often enough it was my father,” said his wife.
“I suppose. Liza’s father lives in the glorious country of Kinderton, by Liverpool. His vineyards in Scotland make the best wine.”
“He often talks about the days when he could enjoy it all,” said Liza. “But he cannot now, and nor can I, but Tom tells me it tastes heavenly.”
“There are a few bottles in the cellar. Have I shown you the wine cellar, Jack? We’ll go there next.”
“You and Mr. Donne are leaving?” sighed Liza. “I’ve only just met him. I haven’t seen you all day. You promised the afternoon to us.”
He kissed her. “Jack still has to unpack, and I still must show him around. Tonight, though.”
“You must,” she said. “Don’t be long.”
“We won’t,” he smiled, blowing kisses to his daughters.
She turned her dark, flashing Otherlight on me warmly. Vampires’ eyes had magic in them, and a tingle of euphoria bubbled in my head, to my displeasure. “Goodbye,” I murmured, turning away and walking with Tom.
“Goodbye, Mr. Secretary.”
#
After Tom had shown me the wine cellar, the courtyard, and the gardens, we parted ways, him to satisfy his family and me to be alone in my room. Thankfully, the door had a lock, and I fumbled with the key as I entered, wondering if Egerton had a duplicate to gain entrance. Probably.
It was bigger and brighter than my underground dorm, with smooth pale-stone walls and maple floorboards. It had a little hearth, a writing-desk, as well as a nice wardrobe. The four-poster bed was big enough for two and had curtain to be drawn; the silk sheets were crisp and new and a few thicker blankets lay folded at the foot. Next to that was a nightstand with shelves for books, and beside this was a mirror. My unloaded trunk waited beside my door.
I placed my clothes in the wardrobe and brought my books to the nightstand. I had left the Roman theologicals and the Order bestiaries beneath Lincoln’s Inn, so I was left with innocent stuff like The Faerie Queene, Venus and Adonis, the tattered Horace, and my Plato and my Bibles. I carefully drew my dirk and pistols from my chest, wondering where to put them. Eventually they were tucked between the mattresses pro tempore. I hung the map of London on one of the wall’s empty nails. I armed the desk with my pens. Soap, cologne, trinkets, and a bag of coins went into the drawers. When everything else was safely in place, I took a plain wood cross and propped it above the door: all the protection I could have without seeming unusual.
I fell on my bed, getting a feel for the strange, soft mattress, my eyes on the door. As the day went by, I imagined all the evil outside my room, held at bay only by the cross. I could have crumbled holy wafer on the threshold or hung up garlic or marked the door with blessed water, but then they would find out that I knew them for what they were.
At five o’clock I went to the mess hall and brought a plate of dinner up to my room. As I ate, the lady who said she was the housekeeper knocked to tell me that she came in the morning to clean the rooms, and if I would be eating dinner in my room she could take away the dishes as well. I politely asked her if she could leave my possessions be; she said yes, good night, and enjoy the room, it has a nice view.
I opened the curtains on my windows (the room was even more posh than I’d thought; they were glass). Outside the scene was dim, but what a scene! Great buildings on the north side of the Thames, the soaring mansions of the Strand, the steeples, even the grim silhouette of the Tower. St. Paul’s Cathedral towered over the city to my right, its stained glass catching the fading sunlight in a glint of gold against the blue-grey sky. Lights from the buildings glittered on the water among the little boats. Across the river, Southwark was ablaze with the light of the party that went on every night, and the playhouses sat squat. If only I could see a play now, but the nostalgia went away as I absorbed the view the Lord Keeper had given me, high above the streets, in this lofty room!
I flung down on my huge, soft bed, slightly satisfied. The hearth was blazing, the candles were lit. I could write (on the grand desk), I supposed, but it would be an effort.
For a consolation prize, this was not bad at all, especially if I’d have to stay here for a long time. Goodness, silk is soft.
I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out something Itzak had given me. It was a gold ring set with a large red quartz, which I pressed. A glow leapt from the stone, bright as I tiny ember caught within it. “Hello?” I said.
The spark flared as Itzak’s voice came from the ring. “Jack! You are still alive. That is good. Is my voice clear?”
“Very clear. I’m in my chamber right now, and I’ve just eaten dinner.”
“Is it nice there?”
“Incredibly! If only you could see it. This place is huge; my room is three times the size of my old one. A bed big enough for two with silk sheets, a housekeeper, and the most beautiful view you could imagine.”
“A bed for two with silken sheets? Egerton knows you quite well.”
“I’m not amused, Itzak.”
“Sorry. I am irritable. I was up late last night perfecting the rings. I had to work with sorcerers, too. I’ve never met such prigs. They think they are better than us all because they can conjure sparks and turn milk into lukewarm orange juice. But I needed a linking spell, and they had to look all over for the unicorn urine we needed, and oi gevald, it —”
“Unicorn urine!”
“We did have to steep the rings in it to make their connection firm, and then use a current of conductive magic to—”
“You boiled it in magic horse piss?”
“It was thoroughly washed and treated afterwards, and for one thing any illnesses were killed in the heat, and unicorns by nature are very pure creatures….”
“No other way?”
“Not really.” He paused. “Northwell wants to know if you have learned anything today.”
“Well, I just befriended Egerton’s demon son and the son’s wife, a vampire.”
“Perhaps you could elaborate.”
“Tom’s behavior didn’t betray anything, really, and his wife’s all right. They have lovely demon children.”
“Be careful.” His voice was indistinct and soft, as if he was shouting from the back of a long cave. The light within the quartz flickered.
“Your voice is fading,” I called. “Can you hear me?”
“Barely!” he huffed. “It has barely been two minutes, and those idiot sorcerers said the connection could last ten. Urgh! I will box their ears, Jack. Just don’t….” Like a reflection broken by splashes, parts of his tirade blurred and faded away. “It should…why is…oi vey…unicorns…. Well, goodbye…it….”
“Bye,” I said.
Like a snuffed candle, the light in the ring died, leaving me alone.
There was a basin by the hearth with a brazier below to heat the water. I lit a small flame there and took my soap, washing. Especially the ring. I put on night-clothes.
With darkness and silk sheets around me when I slid into my bed, I tried to make it feel familiar. The slick fabric draped over my limbs, cold and thick like water pressing down on me. It was incredibly soft: the mattress, the pillows… They made my muscles seem tense and rigid. Sighing, I relaxed, but still some tightness in me refused to be drawn away. I rolled to my side, to my stomach, to my other side. I felt my nightstand to assure myself Itzak’s ring was still there, and reached under my shirt to draw out the cross pendant. Closing my eyes, holding it over my heart, I thought of its twin above the door, my only guardian.
My ears listened to the sound of the House’s servants, always ready for a noise from the door, some spy sent by Egerton. What if while I slept they put a spell on me? Sometimes I swore I felt it. Before I knew it, the bells for one, then two, then three in the morning rang.
I could feel my nerves decaying. I could sleep, I knew: lightly, to ensure I would awake at a disturbance. But I couldn’t bring myself to.
My lips began to pray for peace, for calm, to keep whatever was out there on the other side of that wall.
And for a while my terror too was swept and locked outside. My eyes watched shadows on the ceiling. But then the morning came and again I had to open the door.
#
When I shuffled into the secretary’s office, aching and fatigued, there was already a small pile of papers to fill out. As I was inching my way through it as thoroughly as I could, rubbing my eyes, the door opened and in walked Egerton himself, watching me with cold peregrine eyes. “Hello, Donne. You are finding your own way, I presume.”
“Yes, my Lord Keeper.”
He set a scroll on my desk. “If you would please approve the provisions of this trial for me, and correct any errors. Please forward it to the Six Clerks.”
“As you wish.”
Egerton assessed the top sheet of parchment I had completed. “Wonderful. See to the document.” He left silently.
After three more hours, I had finished the paperwork. It was nothing difficult, but soon the grueling boredom set in and my neck began to ache. The first few had concerned a case going through trial, and the next were examinations of several judges and clerks and lawyers – Chancery Court was going through an examination to weed out corruption. The philosophy of which I supposed was like purging the jackals from a pack of wolves.
The things I did for the Order.
#
By the workday’s close, I was feeling tired and lonely, as a day spent deciphering legal paperwork in a small, windowless room after a sleepless night in an archfiend’s mansion will do to anyone. I was thinking about Tom and his wife. My sensible side accepted that it was probably convenient to befriend them (for maybe I could trick them into giving information), but it would be stupid to ignore the fear in my stomach. I rapped my pen on my desk. Fear. Sense. Fear. I’d have to balance them here. Keep them checking each other. My judgment would be clear. I would be an island of sense in the malevolent place. Soon the initial uncertainty would die away. And with clear purpose I would proceed.
I blew out the candles and tucked some sheafs of parchment under my arm. The halls were scarce of people, so alone mostly I was taken again in awe of the place’s size. There were scores of closed doors – who knew what hid behind them.
After I deposited the forms on the clerk’s desk, I sidled nonchalantly into the hall, deeper into the legal wing. As a new secretary, I supposed I could get away with a lot more snooping. I am trying to get my bearings, I will say.
I lit a lantern and proceeded. I found a number of ornate doors that led to broom closets. Another door – locked. Another was slightly ajar, and I peered in only to draw away: two judges, smoking and murmuring lowly to one another. I heard footsteps and tucked my hands behind me and shuffled along innocently as a page went by. I checked the hall behind and slunk up the stairs to the second floor.
I emerged in a hallway with a low ceiling painted with jet-black peacocks with purple feathers, and the walls were covered with rich emerald curtains. I could see no doors. My body tensed, anticipating any noise.
My hand slid under the curtains, searching for the ridges of a doorframe. Whenever I felt one, I groped for a knob. I felt some, square and cold, and turned so slowly as not to make a sound. Each of my efforts was met with the hard presence of a lock. Undoubtedly there were secrets in the green curtain hall, and I would not learn them today.
I waited until the curtains ceased rustling, then I turned back to my room, wishing I had thought to bring a set of lock picks. Back at Lincoln’s, Minh Long had a collection, and if I could acquire some, my work here would go much faster.
“Hello, Mr. Secretary,” said Liza’s warm voice. She was shifting up the staircase as I came down.
“My lady.”
“You look very nice today.”
“And you look beautiful, as always. I’m sorry. I must to dinner….”
“Is something wrong?”
“Oh, no, I’m just…. I don’t know.”
She smiled. “It’s this place, isn’t it? It intimidates. Sometimes you feel as if they’re watching. I know- I feel it too. Won’t you look me in the eyes, Mr. Donne?”
I had met vampires’ eyes before, so I knew how they would hold me. Soon I would feel calm and safe and wonderfully drowsy. My blood would seem like warm champagne, bubbly, tingling me, and soon that would be all I thought or felt or cared about.
Liza looked disappointed as I cast my eyes down. “Egerton’s observing on everything you write, and the Court’s observing everything you do. There’s rumors about you.”
I tensed. “Yes, I was afraid of that.”
“Beware of people who wish you ill. Friendship is foreign in a place like this. But you can trust Tom and me. At least, I think you can trust Tom. You’ll have to forgive him if he’s a bit of an idiot sometimes.”
“I hope I shall be worthy of your friendliness,” I said carefully, “and I hope soon that I will show Egerton and everyone I may be trusted, that I belong here. I do belong here.”
“Surely you do. I hope you will enjoy the luxuries of the House and of Whitehall, before they stifle you. They stifled me.”
She smiled sadly after me as I bowed and withdrew from her presence, and as I stole down the steps I felt her eyes on my back, hanging onto me, and even back in my room I could not dismiss the feeling. I supposed I could explore more of York House, but now all I wanted to do was hide from this new world I had placed myself in.
#
“Itzak? Itzak? Are you there?”
Looking up from a fizzing bottle of potion, Itzak searched his laboratory for the source of the voice before recalling it was the ring on his finger.
“Jack?”
“Hullo.”
Itzak groaned. “Did you learn anything? Is it pressing?”
“I…no. I just like talking to someone who isn’t strange of insane.” Jack’s voice was tired and sad. “I didn’t sleep last night at all. I couldn’t open any locked doors today. But as I’m thinking now, I can’t be certain I want to see what’s inside them. Every corner of this place makes my blood run cold.”
“Are you giving up?”
“But Henry.”
Itzak folded his arms on the table and rested his head on them. “I cannot tell you any more about Henry than I already have, Jack.”
“Egerton is a demon.”
“You’re sure?”
Jack sounded angry. “Of course. I am not giving up.”
Itzak struck a match and dropped it into the potion. A bloom of light erupted, changing colors from orange to pink to purple. Tendrils of blue smoke leapt into the air. Itzak absentmindedly selected a lump of coal from a drawer, held it with tongs, and dipped it in.
“Are you still there, Itzak?” said Jack, the sound blurry.
“I will tell the sorcerers to fix the connection,” Itzak assured.
“Please.”
“Shalom, old friend.”
“Shalom, Itzak.”
The beaker belched a gout of steam. After the hissing had subsided, he drew out a nugget of silver, which he dropped into his drawer of silver pieces. Almost every piece of metal in his stock had at one point had been a different kind. He had gone through several that day; old-fashioned alchemy was what he did with nothing better to occupy himself with.
He wondered what Isabel was doing.
#
Again I did not sleep; and laying there sickened with fear and tiredness, I stared up at the ceiling from my vast bed. Whenever I felt my lids begin to droop or my mind nodding off, I crossed to the basin and splashed my faced with water. Come morning, I crawled out of bed, limbs aching as I stood.
Why am I doing this? I thought. To keep vigil against…what? With the cross at my door, I’m protected.
But what if they send someone human? What if a man in a dark cloak comes in the night to slit my throat? I mustn’t let my guard down. Not in this place.
My head was heavy as I trudged through the day. I accompanied Egerton to the soaring towers of Whitehall to record and organize trial documents, and maybe I would have been taken with more awe if my eyes hadn’t been half-shut. On my third night at York House, my strength gave out. I washed and pulled off the stiff clothes and sank into the sweet heaven of my bed. I fell asleep too fast to realize anything but a dim relief.
#
Henry was six years old and we were walking home from school under a cloudy sky (I think I was dreaming). “What did he ever do to you?”
“He insulted me, Jack! We can’t take that. Mum says. Family Honor.”
“Her Family Honor, the Heywood Family Honor, the Thomas More Family Honor. But we’re Donnes. You’ll get in trouble, and I’ll have to shovel you out of it.”
“Like you’d dig me out of trouble.”
“I would.”
He was quiet for the rest of the way home, and looked at the ground. He was a year and a half younger than me, but he was only an inch shorter. He had brown hair he always forgot to brush. His head thrust forward, his shoulders squared, he walked like a lion, unapologetically.
At home, mother would greet Henry with lemon cakes while I went upstairs to help Stepfather in his office. The forlorn man behind his desk would work as I cleaned. Sometimes he showed me his medical books and I would listen as he talked about humours and vapours and illnesses. He knew so much before my sisters took sick.
So many of us had died. I don’t think it hit me until I tried to bring Kathy breakfast and she wouldn’t wake up; she was dead and then Mary, and I would never see them again smiling ever and they’d go into rigor mortis like Stepfather told me and nothing made sense. I spent a long time in my room, wiping tears. They buried them in a field somewhere, in two tiny coffins. And how softly sang the bell.
#
When I woke drearily, the first thing I noticed was that the pain in my legs and wrists and neck was gone. Then I heard the lark and its song at my window and saw the sunlight filtering through the curtains.
“Blast!” I cried. “Blast – you bloody, bloody fool!”
I flung open the shades and in the stark winter light tore up my room. I pulled out each drawer, looked in every alcove. I pulled up my upper mattress. My weapons were where I’d left them, and my clothes still in the same order. If someone had been in my room, he had replaced every article with an undetectable accuracy. There was no uncommon scent on anything.
I collapsed on my bed with a moan. Someone could have killed me. They could have enchanted me. I could be dead. But I’d been so tired….
I was safe.
My things were untouched.
If Egerton suspected me, I’d be on the rack by now.
For the rest of the day, I asked myself what I was doing. I was too tired to vigil on unceasingly, and there was no way of prolonging this.
So sleep, I told myself that night in my bed. Rest tonight, bring your strength back. Does it not bring an emptiness? Sleep while I could, and be rid of this terror.
But I lay awake until early morning, starting at every rustle of a sheet or footstep in the House. My legs cramped and tears of exhaustion damped my eyes when I blinked. Finally I drifted into a fitful half-doze.
I slept like this for two more nights, and it showed. Tom found me sitting in the gardens, and remarked that I had the darkest shadows under my eyes. “Like bruises. Are you well? You look like you’re with fever.”
“I’m fine, Tom. I am only tired.”
“You’re dismal over something. You’re not feeling out of place, are you? This is a terrible place to be lonely in.”
“I’m not—”
“What’s the point of living in a place like this if you’re lonesome, what? One must simply learn his way around. The way of the courtier’s no hard thing to learn.”
So Tom was like his father; without friends, only game-pieces.
But I knew it would be smart to companion him – if I ever wanted to find my way into the secrets of York House, I had to start somewhere. With my wits about me, maybe I could uncover something from Tom.
What would the secretary say? I nodded slow and said, “You’d do that?”
“Of course, Jack.”
“I would appreciate it. I would appreciate it much.”
“Lovely,” he said. “I couldn’t stand to see you out-of-place here, looking so forlorn. Are you up to anything tomorrow?”
“Church,” I answered, “and after that I have an Amateur Lawyers’ Club meeting at Lincoln’s Inn. I won’t be back until evening.”
“Then I’ll see you on Monday. You had better come inside soon, before you come down with something unpleasant. Damn, it’s freezing! You’re lucky you can stand it.” He waved goodbye and hastened to the doors. I watched him go, and for a few minutes more gazed up at the steeples and roofs of the city outside. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I would be free.

Essex loved Egerton’s eyes.
When he talked with the Lord Keeper, something about the eyes always drew the Earl’s gaze. It was odd, how they glowed. The glow was soothing, too – Essex felt shivers at first, but then the fear and surprise melted into a bliss like a wine-stupor. How strange it was that when he looked into Egerton’s eyes, words would run from out his mouth, even things he’d thought at first were secrets. The green eyes seized things from the back of Essex’s mind, made them thoughts, and pulled the thoughts to his lips. But Essex didn’t mind. Egerton was someone to confide in.
“What do you think of the appointment, Robert?” said the Lord Keeper one Sunday in the sunlit office in York House. “Who do you wish to lead the men in Ireland?”
Essex hoped the Queen would send someone else like Raleigh or Carew or Mountjoy to put down the savage rebellion in Ireland. It wouldn’t be more than a year before the campaign was underway.
“I think that you would serve my purpose there,” said Egerton.
Essex was glad that Egerton was glad. What a grand friend the Lord Keeper was: candid, loyal to the crown, and one of Essex’s few allies in that horrid Court.
“You’re not concerned about Walter Raleigh? His opinion is worth much to the Queen. He rivals with you for her favor, and would urge her to send you to Ireland, to dispose of you.”
Raleigh was his rival?
“And it is only a matter of time before his words become deeds, my lord.”
Essex thought for a moment as he tried to understand where Egerton was coming from. Essex wasn’t fond of Raleigh, but Raleigh had been good to him. When Essex’s ship had sprung leaks before leaving for the Azores, Raleigh had given up his own chambers for Essex to sleep in.
“He wants the Queen’s affections for his own. He is jealous of thee, Robert, and before long he will suck away thy power. It pains me, my dear friend, but I am certain that, like Secretary of State Cecil, Walter Raleigh spreads rumors to sabotage you.”
So Essex’s fears were confirmed. Though the Earl was glad that the Lord Keeper had told him, he felt a sadness within him rise like a tide of heavy air. He looked into Egerton’s eyes, but instead of a bloom of contentment he felt his melancholy growing, and anger too, into a bitterness that ate at his chest, a corporeal nausea. Confused, he asked, “Egerton?”
The green eyes heeded him – a tremble of the sick, sad feeling.
“I feel strange,” said Essex weakly.
Almost imperceptibly, the corner of Egerton’s mouth smiled.
“It’s the most peculiar thing….”
“I think you shall know it well in these months next. A guiding feeling, is it not? A wispy, empty, guiding feeling?”
“It is guiding…I…I cannot think. So strange, old friend.”
“What does it urge you to do?”
“I do not know. But it is lonely, like I am lost in a fog. I am very cold. I will have Wotton bring some posset cordial. Would…would you like a posset cordial, my lord?”
“I appreciate you kindness, Robert,” answered Egerton fondly. “But I think that you must be going, must you not? You have told me all you need to.”
He –such a loyal friend – showed Essex to the door of the office, and then Devereux noticed he was descending the steps of York Gate with his servants and Wotton attending him. Had he missed something? Overcome with a sudden dizziness, he stopped and put a hand on his head. Feeling like someone coming out of a swoon, he felt something drop over his memory, something important flee from his mind.
“Wotton,” he asked, “have I not just seen the Lord Keeper?”
The secretary nodded.
Strange. So strange. Essex could swear that by faith, the last thing he distinctly recalled was being shown into Egerton’s office. Something told him he’d had a wonderful talk with his friend. For some reason – he imagined green. Wotton’s voice interrupted. “Forgive the cordial’s delay, sir, but the Mermaid Tavern was filled; Raleigh was there.”
“The bastard,” said Essex.
“Sir?” cried Wotton. “Has he done something?”
Essex thought for a moment, surprised at what had come from his mouth. “I… no, Wotton. I don’t know why I said that. Today I feel I am not myself.”
But a dark voice in the Earl’s head whispered: I said it because I distrust Raleigh. He speaks lies of me, I know it. He wants Elizabeth’s fondness for his own. I can’t trust him. I can hardly trust anyone.
He stepped into his coach and fell dejectedly onto the soft velvet seat. Still he had the strangest feeling in his breast, a sick, empty, guiding feeling. He felt his chest, and as he pressed the sensation washed over him, and for a moment he would feel helplessly sad. He would have a posset cordial at his house, and send for his physician while he thought of what to do about Raleigh.
#
I had left York House feeling dirty and oppressed, like a linnet with wings coated in the foul and heavy dust, but in the ancient depths of St. Paul’s, gradually the feeling began to lift. What could only be a happy relief rose in me. The mass went by in a content sleepiness. Within the Cathedral it was warm, and shriven light glowed through the rosy glass. The place was huge –impossibly high, and so old. The Cathedral had a soul, a vast, quiet consciousness that watched men come and go through the centuries. I closed my eyes, listened to the hymns echoing on the rafters, and began to drift off, like a child in the arms of God.
The Cathedral knew me, I think. As long as I had lived in London, I had come every Sunday within. And some nights, I would climb the side of the church, scale the roof, and sit for hours on the roof of the bell-tower. The calm, timeless presence of the Cathedral would soothe me. I would feel small and weak but protected, and at peace.
“Jack….” Someone poked me. I smelled Shakespeare’s whiskey breath and remembered he was beside me. “Are you asleep? Oh, come, the sermon isn’t that boring. But the Dean really is dragging it out. I’m getting awful cramps.”
“Ssh!” ordered someone behind us.
“I wish they’d let me bring the goat in, or at least Astrophel and Stella. They’re both properly baptized, so I don’t see what the fuss is over.”
“Ssh!”
“Oh, hold thy peace, thou! Thy humors give thee spots!”
An exasperated, “Well, I never!”
“I’ll bet you haven’t.”
“Mr. Shakespeare!” I said.
He took the hint, folded his arms, and spent the rest of the mass shooting wide-eyed glares at the parishioner behind him.
After church, I practically ran to Lincoln’s Inn after properly making sure no one was shadowing me, and pelted down the tunnels to the common room. “Jack!” Ben exclaimed, hugging me. “Thank God!”
Lovelace was on a couch, staring into space, running a hand through his hair. As I told Ben about York House, he didn’t seem to hear at all. “What saddens him?” I muttered.
“He and Isabel split,” said Ben, but before he could elaborate, Minh Long came through the door. “Jack,” he said, “I have a message. They say you are to go to Northwell – now.”
So I went.
There were no papers for me this time. I walked straight into the room and Northwell’s stare, and it never once faltered. “Sit,” he said.
I sat.
“These meetings are to become routine,” he said. “Upon returning each Sunday, you will before anything else report to me new information.”
“As you wish.”
“Begin.”
I told him what I had deduced about the Egertons, and the locked doors, the House. I’d seen no suspicious papers. No suspicious behaviors. But Egerton was a demon. I was sure of it.
“You have done nothing else?”
“I wait for your permission.”
“What action would require my permission?”
“To kill him.”
His eyes blinked once, slowly, like a sunning reptile’s. “Such a course is not permitted at this stage.”
“Why? What does that mean?”
He answered, “Egerton must be allowed to continue in his guise until the Order had gained full intimation of his plans. By doing this, thus may we effectively counter his actions, and discover those dark beings that act on his behalf.”
“But wouldn’t a knife stop his plans even faster? I mean.”
“It is fruitless, Donne. The Order must know how far this fiend has infiltrated the English government. And we will never know if he is dead.”
“A fiend who is Lord Keeper can’t be suffered to live.”
“Donne,” he said, cutting me off. “So passionate you are, that one must question the nature of your intentions.”
“The nature of my intentions.”
“Revenge,” said Northwell.
“If it were?”
“I would with my authority remove you from your position and detain you here, while transferring the matter to my superiors, who would decide your fate. It is their wish that Egerton be observed for the time being.”
“They can tell me that themselves.”
He stared coldly back at me. His index finger moved a fraction of an inch, probably a sign he was furious. After a long, silent time he said, “It will not bring your brother back.”
“All I want is to keep the country safe. I think we both know it would be safer if Egerton was dead.”
Northwell never wavered. “England would be free of Egerton, truly, but not of the effects of his plans. What is he doing there? Who is he? What has he already achieved? All the answers would be lost to us. The Order must know the aims of the Dark to wage war against it.”
I sat back and sighed. “Maybe I have spoken rashly, sir.”
“You will continue, Donne.”
“Yes,” I said.
“There is a second order of business to discuss. Have you, in this first week, found a way to remove yourself undetected from York House at night?”
“I did, last night. A ledge runs under my window to the corner, where I reach a column and climb to the roof. I’m going to find a place up there to store my weapons.”
“That is fortunate.” He looked me firmly in the eyes. “The Order would like you to continue your night work.”
I heard him clearly, but somehow the words waited a moment before sinking in. I wiped my sweaty palms on my trousers. “Monsters?”
“Their numbers are growing quicker than predicted, and consequently we must apply every hunter we have towards combating them. It should not be hard to manage.”
My voice trembled. “It isn’t enough that I live with an archfiend in that cold, ancient, grandiose corner of hell? I must hunt by night again? I can’t!”
He gave me a glare that said I could, and I would. I tried to find some way to argue with his silence as I would argue against words, but it was too commanding.
Whatever else I wanted to believe, I answered to this man. I had no obligation he did not permit, and his permission was the only way. I’d heard of impudent hunters who found themselves running blind for decades in the deepest catacombs.
“I will be compensated?”
“Five pounds monthly.”
“Five pounds?” I said. “For risking my life both night and day!”
“It is regrettable.”
“It is egregious! They… they can’t do that.”
“That will be all, Donne. You are free to go, and are wished the best.”
I stood, dumbfounded, staring back at his impassive face.
He told me, “The Order knows your abilities well, Donne, perhaps better than yourself. We would not present you with a task more suitable to another. You have performed admirably in challenge. This mission is a vital one, and we trust you will serve to the best of your talents.”
“Of course,” I muttered to the floor. “I will. But the world asks a whole damned lot, doesn’t it? What about sleep? How will I do it? For months? For years?”
“Donne, the —”
“What if it collapses? What if the maid finds the gun and dirk and holy water under my bed? You’ll throw me under and you know it.”
“You are dismissed. I suggest you think with greater care.”
“Thank you, Northwell. I am sorry.”
#
On the rainy road from Surrey to London paraded a line of coaches, an indistinct shadow of a procession blurred by the thick rain, marked only by a few white lanterns. The rainfall thrummed on the roofs and drenched the coats of the fine dappled horses, but within the cars the scented air was warm and dry. In one of the carriages sat the daughters of Sir George More. The curtains were drawn before the windows, obliterating all but the noise of the storm. Bluish light came through the cracks.
Voices low and soft.
“I hear barrow-ghosts singing.”
Eyes moved to who had spoken. She sat as calm and pale, her dark red hair shifting as she raised her head from the letter she held. “They’re hateful and they’re empty.”
“They have always been,” sighed her sister, with gold hair pinned elaborately.
“I’ve been this way before,” the first went on. “They never rest. It’s pitiful.”
The others nodded, probably thinking to themselves that Ann More never pitied anything, something she had learned from their father. She could feel dislike glowing from them, faint and controlled – as they were gentlewomen – but there nonetheless, and nothing Ann wasn’t used to.
“You haven’t set that letter down today,” said her blonde-haired sister. “If you must woo this Donne, how much can be learned from Egerton’s one sentence of him? You haven’t touched the poems, and Nick had such a hard time getting them from Walter Raleigh.”
A thin hand curled around a sheaf of papers behind Ann’s feet, drawing it up again. “You’re missing out.”
“There’s a reason he doesn’t publish them,” said Ann.
Her sisters giggled their pleasant, rehearsed giggle. The blonde read:

Civilitie we see refin’d: the kiss
Which at the face began, transplanted is,
Since to the hand, since to the Imperial knee,
Now at the Papal foot delights to be:
If Kings think that the nearer way, and do
Rise from the foot, Lovers may do so too;
For as free Spheres move faster far than can
Birds, whom the air resists, so may that man
Which goes this empty and Ætherial way,
Than if at beauties elements he stay.

“I think I’m growing stupid just by listening,” Ann said grimly, motioning. “He is a rake. He goes from bed to bed. The gossips could tell anybody as much.”
“They say he doesn’t do it anymore, but he used to sweep them off their feet and take them the same night.”
“Then he’s an Order hunter and horrible person and a worse poet.”
“I do enjoy his metaphors, and especially the pathetic fallacy.”
“That’s nice.”
“How many times shall you have to make love with him to get the Order’s secret’s out, I wonder?”
Ann’s face paled to an even whiter shade. “I am sleeping with no one. Donne will yield me his identity without so much trouble.”
“Will he? He charms people. He’s charmed Egerton with his intelligence. He’s charmed the critics with this poetry. How will he charm you?”
“He won’t,” Ann said.
“Beneath that cold mind is a heart.”
“Would your husband Nick want you saying such things, Mary?”
Ann always finished a conversation.
But in the silence that followed she calmly let her anger slip away, reading over Egerton’s letter. The rain and the ghosts helped her concentration.

“Do you know the intent of my summoning you, loyal Donne?”
“I do not, lord.”
But there was little fear this time, for after five weeks in his service — talking with him, quietly dissolving into life at York House — I had learned to ignore my fright. Ignore it, and it was easier to be rational. Ignore it, and the sick, sharp warning in my gut dimmed. It wasn’t hard, and routines settled. I was sleeping better now.
If I looked behind him I could see the ships on the Thames drifting through the sunlight. I was seated opposite him, and the fabulous desk between us. “Would you tell me why, Lord Keeper?”
He smiled – he had been smiling more at me lately – and said, “I feel that with the Chancery examinations, I have been extremely busy. The new tasks are neverending.”
“I have noticed how hectic it is. If there is anything I can do to relieve —”
“It seems unjust that in your first month as my secretary you have been tried with such heavy papers. If at any time you feel too far expended, you know you may tell me.” There was something fatherly in his voice, a concern that I almost thought was genuine.
“Thank you, Lord Egerton. You honor me. I try my hardest, and no work is too hard that is service to my country.”
“An admirable reply, as always,” he complimented. A servant entered, bringing on two steaming teacups and setting them before us. The scent was floral, and I asked what kind it was.
“Celestial Rose,” he replied, taking his cup, “was brought from Siam by the sea.”
I lifted the cup slowly to my lips, wondering if it was wise to sip. But if he wanted to poison me, he could have done so already. And what was the point of killing the spy in his house without first letting me despair in the knowledge that I’d been ratted out? I supposed perhaps he sought to lull me with a thruth-drug, but surely that Otherlight of his surpassed any serum.
I took a minute sip. It tasted wondrous.
“A delight, is it not?”
“A remarkable creation, my lord.”
“Next month I receive new teas from Constantinople, and they shall more than surpass this. Now I must tell you why I have called you. With so many constant pressing matters, I feel that I have not thanked you nearly enough for the commendable job you’ve done.”
“Oh, thank you, my lord. I – I thank you. I am so glad to please.” I took another sip of tea.
“I ought to know my secretary better,” he went on. “For unfamiliarity quite a burden. How are your hours outside of York House spent? Fencing, dancing, music?”
“Reading,” I said. “And courting ladies.”
He laughed at this like it was the cleverest joke he’d ever heard.
“I write, my lord, poems. Metaphor poems are my specialty.”
“My son Thomas is an excellent fencer. Have you ever tried swordplay, Donne?”
“I haven’t,” I lied, shrugging. “I went hawking once, you see, but I did not continue, because I am very squeamish, I must say. Blood terribly upsets me. I wasn’t much use on the Islands Voyage.”
“A shame,” he said. He looked down at my cup. I’d hardly drank two mouthfuls, but he said nothing.
What talk that followed was trite and conversational. To my relief, he asked nothing about my family until a strange question at the end.
“My father, Lord Egerton?”
He nodded.
“I have none, sir. He passed when I was four. My memories are … blurs. I do not have memory of his face.”
“I hope you will accept my sympathies. For your father and yourself. It must be difficult without his guidance.”
“I’ve managed well.”
“Indeed you have.” And after some more small talk, Egerton gave me leave. I left, feeling like the conversation had exerted me.
Turning back to my office, I passed a man who moved wolflike through the shadows of the hall. He wore a cloak of black that melted with the dimness. Sharp eyes inspected me from behind a dark beaked plague-mask, and I shied away, fearing he might carry some trapping, some residue of disease, but something told me he didn’t, that it was him to fear, not the plague. In a blink he was gone.
#
When I was back in my chamber, poring over a sonnet I’d been writing, my mind drifted back to the tête-à-tête with Egerton. Did he think friendliness would make me more devoted still? Or was he actually concerned for me?
And the man in the mask.
The clocks struck ten. Soon the ring began to glow, and I heard Itzak. “Will you answer?”
“What?”
“I have been trying to reach you for minutes. I shall wring the necks of those magicians. It is intolerable.” But he started laughing. Since Lovelace and Isabel had broken up, he had been … cheery.
“What is it this time?”
“A vampire, they’ve just detected.”
I pushed in my chair and reached into my trunk for the hunting garb I’d smuggled into York House. As I pulled off my night-shirt, I said, “Where?”
“The Black Lavender Inn.”
Jerkin, cloak, belt. A few daubs of scent-changing perfume. “Where’s that?”
“The Bankside.”
“The Bankside? Southwark? Is Northwell going mad? Why not send somebody closer?” I jerked on my hat and leapt to the windowsill, listening to Itzak as I scaled the roof. I’d found an alcove by a chimney that was sheltered from the rain and hid my weapons – pistols, dirk, holy water – in a secure box there, and disguised it with some loose shingles. I dug them out and slipped them into my belt.
“All in all, I am not certain. If it stays in an inn, it must be confident enough not to move, and will probably be there for you. They have given me the report. Let me find it….”
While he shuffled papers, I was flying between the soaring battlements of the mansions of the Strand and the glow of the avenue, the half-moon lighting my way. A pleasant breeze carried the scent of melting snow and a thawing river. Stars twinkled from windows, and while for the most part they were quiet signs of candles and sentries, but Southwark brimmed with them: vibrant, lively. Drifting over the Thames were the sounds of laughter and brawling. The party was just beginning.
“His name is Balthazar Barrington, esquire,” said Itzak’s voice. “And that sounds plenty vampirish to me.”
“Hold on a moment,” I whispered as I slid down the side of a building. “I’ve got to catch a ferry. Sir! Sir! I’ve got my shillings here.”
The ferryman looked up and said, “This’s the last trip I make across, boy.”
“That’s all right. Two, is it?” I gave him the money.
“You right in the head?” He grunted and bit my coins as I took a seat at the prow. For a few minutes we waited, but no one else came. Then he shoved us off and the boat slid through the sighing waters of the Thames. I reached over the side and watched the streams of glowing reflection as they waved across the surface. If I closed my eyes, it could have been the warmth of Fayal again.
“We’re there,” said my cheery ferryman.
I muttered a thank-you and left the boat, dodging a crowd of Londoners frantic to be back on the safe side of the river. Pulling my hat low over my face, I stalked off the pier and onto the Bankside.
Around me was a sickly borough that seemed torn between two selfs: Was it a starving place of plague? Was it a town of revels? The snow did a bit to cover the stench of garbage clotting the gutters in a sludge, a thousand types of decay that tormented my nose. The breeze from the river took up some of the odor of human bodies sweating, bleeding, rotting, drinking, dancing. As I made my way towards the Inn, I slunk between crowds of dancers and packs of dogs so thin I could count each frail rib. The place had all the macabre sheen of a Brueghel painting, of the deadly vices dancing, rattling among the villagers, momento mori.
“Itzak?” I murmured to my ring.
“Are you across?”
“Yes. Tell Northwell he owes me.”
“Tell him yourself, thank you very much. What is that noise in the background?”
“Nothing but mankind damning itself.”
Thin specters lay on pallets, croaking out to me, dark and stiff with plague. A memory of my brother’s face flashed through me and I hurried on.
A song drifted up through the whirling red light, and voices rising and falling. A jester with a flute, a dulcimer, an African who beat the drums into a frenzied and ecstatic rhythm. Around a fire in the street were women dancing, movements wild. Their clothes were black and sheer, and their arms flung upwards to the murky sky. As they turned and twisted, tight and shaking, I saw the stark white masks they wore, the craven shapes of skulls. I heard their cries rising above the air:
“The living are the dead ―”
The drums throbbed up my bones and I hurried on, lowering my head too late to keep their eyes from falling on me.
Southwark spun on and on, shadows and light flickering.
The Black Lavender Inn was an building out-of-place with the slime around it, rising into the dark sky on graceful stonework and glass windows and violet curtains. I wasn’t sure what I hated more: the noxious world of Southwark, or this Inn, for placing itself so smugly in this place of destitution.
“He has been there for two days,” said Itzak. “Second floor, room five.”
“I’ll contact you after this is settled.”
“Be careful.”
Slipping into the Inn’s main room, I found a subdued scene of wealthier men chatting lowly over drinks. A peddling fiddler with sunken cheeks was playing hopefully by the hearth. In the front of the room was a desk attended by a serving-woman. I walked up to it, and she asked, “In need of a room, sir?”
“Um, no, actually. Do you know where I may find Master Barrington?”
“Second floor, fifth room. Are you the ruff specialist? He’s been moaning for days about having them pressed and starched and what have you.”
“I’m a friend of his. Old Balthazar, always complaining.” I made my way up a rickety flight of stairs to a shaded hall, and located the esquire’s chambers, knocking politely.
“Begging your pardon, sir. Ruffs for my lord Barrington.”
An oily voice purred, “Enter.”
I rattled the door. “It’s locked, sir.”
“Alas.”
I folded my arms – so he had been expecting the Order. I stepped back, took a deep breath, and kicked.
As the door tore form its hinges in a cloud of dust and splinters, a wave of pungent odor slapped me in the face. Blood, so much of it! With my pistols held out, I advanced into a dark room. He was seated in an armchair before an open window, and moonlight threw his shadow on the carpets. His serpentine voice said: “May I hear the terms?”
“If you come quietly they’ll try to exorcise you if they can. It seems to be rather late for that, though.”
“Too late is what the Order says so oft, for they loathe nothing more, cringe at nothing more, than helping us, though they pretend otherwise.”
“I want to help you.”
“Oh, lair,” he said. White fangs flashed.
“I will admit, you are rather pissing me off. For one, your room smells terribly. Two, I’d rather be sleeping. And three, now I’ve ruined a perfectly nice door.”
A pause.
“I mean, it was a nice door. It looks Venetian. Well-crafted, and now it’s no good.”
“The door was adequate,” he said.
Another pause.
“Nice door,” I said again.
He ground his boot into the carpet. “Come forward, so I may see the face of he who mocks me so shamelessly. Come forward if you dare.”
I did dare, and stepped closer to the dark shape in the moonlight. He waved a hand and torches on the wall flared to life beside me, illuminating my features. The vampire started. “Henry Donne!”
There was a bang and the Barrington shrieked, clutching his hand. I must have pulled the trigger by mistake. Or my patience had run thin. Or hearing Henry’s name had startled me so. In any case, smoke was streaming from the lip of my gun.
“How do you know him?” I demanded. “How do you know my brother!”
Flames spurting from his hands, he threw himself at me, tearing at my face. I spun away from him and kicked over an ornamental table to give myself space. Tea, scones, and napkins scattered and were trampled underfoot as we fought. He was a dark blur against the shadows, dodging my shots, moving fast. A vase shattered. Frantic footsteps —
He flew into me, knocking me to the floor. Clawed hands swept the pistols from my grip and sent them skidding across the floor. A sudden heat erupted near my face: my cloak was on fire. I slammed my fist into his nose, then buried my foot in his stomach, rolling to put out the fires. “How do you know Henry!”
Fangs flashed toward my chest, but my hand drew out my crucifix, and I held it before me, swinging slowly back and forth as I leapt to my feet. Beholding it, the vampire shied away, cringing in the unbearable presence, with its eyes wide and furious, even the white parts as black as jet on fire.
“In nomine dei!” I roared.
Balthazar Barrington, esquire was a shaking figure, bent behind an upturned chair. Desperately, he bared his teeth and hissed at me. The torches he’d incited minutes ago were swept out by a cold wind.
“Nothing,” he snarled. “Don’t know him. Just a tussle up in Norfolk, I got away. I didn’t hurt him. Who are you! Who are you!”
I took my pistol from the ground and poised it again. “I am his brother John, my lord.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s been dead for years.”
The vampire cradled his mangled hand and began to laugh, a chortling, ravaged laugh that made me edge back. “Oh, my lord Egerton, if you knew! John Donne! A hunter. But what is that? Look at him! He sees in darkness, he’s part vampire, is what he is, poor boy – he’s covering the smell – a freak – isn’t it so good to be one or the other – but both! Neither! All the pain of the curse and none of the reward – I could, you know. You’d thank —”
I shot him.
His head buckled back, snapping away with the shock and force of it. His hands closed around the air, and he crumpled, as if under a huge weight. I broke the leg from the ornamental table, bashed it against the wall, and after sharpening it with my dirk drove it into his heart.
Two kinds of people in the world.
I listened for a commotion downstairs, but none came. I heard a pack of revelers in the main room, who hardly seemed disturbed. I guessed gunshots were a common sound in Southwark. I retrieved my other pistol and propped the door into the frame convincingly. Then I fell with a sigh on one of his couches and pressed my ring, my heart beginning already to slow its pace, my forehead slick. I closed my eyes. I put away my weapons, waiting for Itzak’s voice.
Eventually, it came. “Is it done, then?”
“Barrington is dead. Can the Order spare anyone to clean up? The fight left a mess.” I opened my eyes and swept my gaze around me. “A vase is broken, and a little table, I kicked the door off its hinges, and the carpet is stained, there’s blood everywhere because I shot him and all the blood came out and it was streaming out of his head, and then I made a stake, and the blood came up and it’s all over, Itzak. The carpet’s dark and shining.”
“Jack. Calm down.” His voice was slow and even, soothing me.
The room swayed and for a moment I was spinning, heaving as the floor dropped away and my insides churned. A pale fog rippled across my eyes. The smell of the blood, old and freshly spilt, reeking for days or gleaming newly, pressed itself on my throat and I gagged. Next came the retching and the climbing out the window to the roof and letting the wind and sound and cold air tremble down my body, making me steady enough to manage myself.
“You are always, always compromised,” cried Itzak’s voice.
I ran from roof to roof on London bridge. “I’ve always….”
“They’re on their way,” Itzak said.
“Shalom,” I said, and pressed the ring. Silence enfolded me as I reached a fountain to wash the burning taste from my mouth, then slipped, column by column, roof by roof, to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral, my fingers scrabbling at the slippery stone, my face pressed close against the ancient masonry. All around me the dark, narrow belfries of London were crying out that a new day was come, and the stars listened silently. Clouds drifted above the faraway vales. The wind was a song and the river, its counterpoint.
I tried to forget the Inn on the Bankside. I tried thinking about Egerton, York House, and the man with the mask. Feeling the slick rock beneath me, I thought, St. Paul, you were Saul once, and you were blind like me. I need to see. I need to make something of this. God, please, I need a way to the answers. Amen.
It came soon enough, a new way. That night, though I had the vaguest impression of something fast approaching like a storm, I didn’t foresee it.
I should have.

It was sometime in March, and the secretary was thriving quite nicely in the eyes of his Lord Egerton. I was in the process of making preparation for the New Years festivities at York House (hiring musicians, organizing the cooks for banqueting, ordering dinnerware for three hundred people, hiring more musicians for when the first group got drunk and passed out, procuring decorations, hiring jesters, commissioning a masque, arranging rooms). I was thinking longingly of Ben’s newly-finished play, Every Man in His Humour, put on by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. As I scribbled away in my office, I was planning deviously of stealing away one night to the Curtain theatre.
On the twelfth Egerton called me to his office to dictate a pamphlet, which dutifully I scribed down. The Chafewax heated bright red wax and the Sealer took Egerton’s seal and pressed it to the document, lifting to reveal a cooling image of Her Majesty on a great horse, armored and bearing her scepter.
The old man smiled, but I saw sadness on his face. “The weight upon me is immense, Donne. Elizabeth is aging ill, and the Cecils and I must do much now for our England.”
There were two things the English hated: Spaniards was one. The other, that the Queen Elizabeth was mortal, and dying.
She was the reason for the theatres and the plays. She had ruled so long that scarce a man had known a day without her. I didn’t think about it much, but when I did it was bewildering – Elizabeth had built my world. She had built a world that had ruined my family – yet like everyone I loved her. The way you love the sun, because it’s always there. Young girls had come to me and broken my heart, rotating like the seasons, but the distant constellation of Elizabeth had always been there, suspended in the clouds above my head.
“I cannot imagine life without her,” I said.
“But we must be careful,” he mused. “What we say borders treason.”
It was death to talk about Her Majesty’s death.
Then he said, “You remember that the Mores of Loseley arrive today?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I have seen that their rooms have fresh rushes,and the servants are ready. Bright flowers for the daughters’ chambers, and lamb enough to feed your lordship and your guests for the next few nights, and —”
“Very good, Donne. My brother-in-law is prone to fuss when not treated like a king.”
“Then I shall, my lord. King More.”
He chuckled. “I have faith in you. And if you flatter him, I am sure More will take to you, as he is a connoisseur of poetry.”
Perhaps Egerton enjoyed the nervousness that must have crossed my face. And as George More was the father of several teenage girls, I didn’t think he would take too kindly to the subject matter of my poems. And even worse, he was probably a demon too.
“And you have made arrangements for his daughter Ann, who shall be staying here in York House after her family leaves?”
“She is? I … yes , I will see to it.”
“Very good, my loyal Donne.”
My loyal Donne. That was good, wasn’t it? I wanted him to trust me. And praise was praise. Northwell could learn a thing or two. But still I was uneasy. No, it mustn’t feel good, I am a façade. He thinks I am my pretense. But I’m not. The guise can love it all: the praise, the power, the palace. But not me. Antes muerto que mudado.
#
The man in the plague mask entered and bowed.
“Your day went well, spymaster?”
“That it did, my lord. I’ve reclaimed Barrington’s papers. I got there just before the Order did. He’s dead. Shot a few times. Staked. And you look unperturbed.”
“You’ve just missed my secretary. I have found his flaw, you see.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s ambition, I think. He has potential, perhaps beyond mundane matters.”
“Does he?”
“You sound doubtful. You do not think alterations by my art would improve him, as they improved Lord More, and yourself, to name two?”
“He’s a poet.”
“And you are a villain. Worry not. I do not rush things. It would be years, my friend, years before I would consider it. Barrington’s papers. Thank you.”
#
At noon, Milo Schroeder stammered: “Many greetings, good Lord More. We have so been anticipating your arrival. Servants will take your baggage from the carriages and see it to your family’s rooms. Please come inside. It is awfully misty out.”
I was stationed outside my office, standing attentively in a courtly posture Tom had taught me: chin high, back straight, hands clasped behind me. I was garbed in my best hose, a gold-trimmed ruff, and black-and-green pantaloons that in the best regard made my ass look like a pumpkin. I bowed to More and introduced myself.
He seemed very interested suddenly, his dark brows rising. He wore a trim black beard and a dark red, velvet suit. The lump in my throat quivered as I closely saw his eyes. They were grey at first glance, but when I looked harder they were molten like quicksilver, of one gleaming, opaque hue, and his pupil rimmed subtly with red, like metal glowing burnt. If I let any alarm show on my face, he looked delighted.
“Mr. Donne,” he said, shaking my hand. “It is always a delight to meet a minor celebrity.”
“You do me honor, sir.”
“Of course, boy. It is the duty of a nobleman to keep up with the literature.”
Damn it. “I – um – well, yes. Shall I show you to a drawing-room? Is the rest of your lordship’s family…?”
“They are in town, shopping. Thou must forgive us, we are country people, and cannot resist. The Strand is just as dazzling as I remember. And York House is just as…grand.” His shoulders sagged as he looked about the vast antechamber. Then he turned to me and asked, “May I see thine office?”
Very strange. I opened the door for him and with a twirl of his black cape he stepped inside, nodding to himself as he inspected the place. He did not touch a thing, but I could see in his eyes that he wanted to. “’Tis certainly uncluttered,” he observed.
As he conducted his examination, I stood there, fidgeting. “I’ve been meaning to liven it up,” I offered. “Art. Potpourri.”
Smiling to himself, he nodded. “Very nice. Wouldst thou show me the drawing-room?”
We were joined by a few of his servants as I let him to the Obsidian room. I asked a page for tea and lemon cakes, which delighted Lord More. While we waited, he walked about the room, examining the fine candlesticks. He was a very small man, quite unlike the tall, regal, Egerton, but he had a powerful way of carrying himself and a fierceness about him that was daunting. I stood smiling as he went about the room, and when he thought I couldn’t tell I saw him glancing at me smugly, like I was a piglet not yet ready to be slaughtered.
“We have silver candlesticks in my houses, too,” he said, as if I couldn’t assume as much. “We are important down in Surrey.”
“Of course, my lord.” I didn’t think he was a lord. I didn’t even think he was a knight. But somehow he unnerved me very much, more than Tom or Liza or Egerton. Otherkind they were, but they were safe enough, for they were satisfied. But George More had the stamp of a malcontent in his gazes, and in his mien, and on his face.
“The cakes are here, lord.”
“Delightful.”
None of us ate.
More took a seat in a silver armchair and watched his tea steaming into the dark scented air.
“I hope it is all to your satisfaction, my lord,” I said. “If you ever were to require anything, please know I am your humble servant.”
“My good Egerton hath taught thee manners, I see,” he remarked.
“Or at least he has given me a place to use them. I am much in his debt, and am deeply honored that he saw potential in a lowly poet such as I.”
“Thou slightest thyself, boy. A lowly poet? Many consider thee a genius.”
Nodding, I said, “Thank you. But I never really meant things to be published, you see. My friends get copies and distribute them before I can stop them, and….”
“I hope I do not rob thee of attending to more important papers, Mr. Donne. Above all, I must not inconvenience any by my presence here. I dismiss thee to attend to thy duties. Thou hast been great help.”
Murmuring something about being glad to be of assistance, I quickly stole away to my office. I thought long and hard about the man. He was dangerous. Not in the way Egerton was, quiet and manipulative; More looked almost hostile. He would have no trouble hurting Egerton’s secretary, and those swaging, mercury eyes told me that I’d have to tread carefully near him.
#
Sunday next, when I stole underground and trekked through the catacombs to Northwell’s office, there was some contentment underground. I was safe.
He was there, as always, looking like he had been expecting me that very moment. I sighed and sat down and summarized the week’s events, ending with the arrival of More and his family. Northwell nodded as I told him about More’s eyes. “My superiors have suspected the Loseley Mores for some time. They will be pleased to know you have confirmed their hunch.”
I nodded. “And – no relation to Thomas More, perchance?”
He didn’t even need to consult his files. “No. The Mores are an ancient Surrey line. If connected, the relation is a distant one, by marriage.”
I felt a grumble rise from my throat, but quelled it. “He is lethal, sir. Should I kill him?”
“No. How long are they to dwell at York House, Donne?”
“For a few weeks. Then More, if I’m correct, will stay three or so days in lodgings near Charing Cross before starting for Nottinghamshire. Except for one of his daughters, who’s to remain at York House for an unapparent reason.”
“Ann More.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
I should have known from the silence that followed that something was wrong.
Northwell folded his grey hands.
My neck tingling and cold, I found my voice enough to laugh nervously. “What about her?”
“We want you to win her.”
I coughed. “…What?”
“You must feign affections, become dear to her, and gain her trust enough that she will tell you information about her father, and her uncle, Egerton.”
“Oh,” I said. “Like seduction?”
“Courtship.”
“Oh. Yes.” Another laugh. “What the HELL!”
Northwell, as always, was unfazed. “I was inclined to believe that was one of your primary talents.”
“I – I’ve loved people, but I’ve loved them…I don’t play games with people. I don’t play games with demons! It’s disgusting!”
“You are behaving erratically.”
I stood up, put my hands on my hips, thought. “How much more will I be paid?”
“We do not think it would require more than a few well-written verses, tender words, and tame kisses.” All with the same cold, unwavering face, never changing, never shifting an inch towards the smallest sliver of emotion.
“I start kissing Otherkind, I start getting what the Order owes me.”
“You owe the Order, Mr. Donne.”
I closed my eyes, leaned back, and sighed. As soon as Northwell dismissed me, I was going to the Mermaid Tavern and drinking myself silly.
I trudged through a warm, thawing London. Icicles hanging from eaves dazzled in the sunlight and dripped steadily, and the snow in the street had become a sheen of water. Inside the Mermaid, though, the air was thick and stifling. Bill Shakespeare was snoring by the fireplace. Sighing, I chose the fresh air and departed to York House, very sober and very upset, but the crisp air helped.
I supposed current circumstance could be worse. It wasn’t as bad as the horde of ravenous gargoyles I’d chased off Westminster Abbey. It wasn’t as bad as the smell inside Balthazar Barrington’s rooms. It definitely wasn’t as bad as having my blood sucked by a vampire.
I could think my way through. That eased my nerves.
Around me, it seemed as though London was melting, and the city folk waking up after a long hibernation. For the first time since Yule, people were genuinely friendly (I tried my best). The jesters on the corner had washed their motley and stood bright and colorful against the snow. With my task in mind, I stopped briefly at a trinketry and looked over necklaces and fans. When the shopkeeper asked me if I had found someone new, I said, “Kind of,” and left without buying anything.
When I slipped back into York House’s courtyard, the front of the castle was glowing in the sun. giving it an almost pleasant visage. Milo Schroeder was clutching a warm mug of cider at his roost by the door. A carriage was thundering in from the gatehouse. And Tom’s three little girls, all bundled up, were snowball-fighting while their parents sat in one another’s arms. Liza’s face, whiter than the snow against the black fur of her hood, smiled at me as she held Tom’s hand.
Mary apprehended me. “Mr. Donne! Vere and Cassie are on the same team, and they’re winning.”
I dodged a snowball. “That’s not very fair, is it?”
The things I do for little demon children.
Once Mary and I had amassed enough snowballs, we engaged her siblings. Cassie and Vere had also used the time and were prepared. Reluctantly I let a few hit me. Eventually I sat down and Mary used me as a human shield.
“You should go play, Tom,” I heard Liza say.
I heard angry squabbling from the fountain – apparently Cassie had rebelled. “Why do you always get to choose what kind of fort we make! Mommy! Vere’s being mean and —” Suddenly she was shrieking, wailing.
I bolted up, ready for danger, but Vere had slipped snow down Cassie’s hood. She screamed, and Tom started to scold Vere, and Schroeder covered his ears. And the horse being untied from its carriage reared against its reins and went mad.
Frightened by the screeching, the horse was throwing back its head, jostling away the stable boy, and galloping down the courtyard, stomping, its eyes wide and terrified. The driver of the carriage cracked the whip and started after it, but it couldn’t be stopped. (Oh, to be a frightened horse. It was in a bad way—it was wearing blinders, could probably smell demons everywhere, and the sound of the whip didn’t help.) Cassie, equally terrified out of her wits, was unfortunately standing in its path and petrified.
Tom swore and started from the bench, but he was far away. I was already moving.
The horse was moving a good deal faster than me. I was almost to Cassie but it was bearing down on her, its hoofs licking sparks from the cobblestone. Jumping with all my might, I was quick enough to push her out of danger. Then my breath was gone; a horseshoe had connected with my back. My bones rattling, I had just enough time to see a blur of legs and bells before I was caught in its hoofs, rolling and tumbling, crashing against the ground, until finally I hit a curb and was flung into a snow-bank.
For a while, all I could comprehend was that the sky was doing odd things: spinning, drawing away, falling closer. Flickering like fireflies, lights danced across my vision. It hurt terribly.
Gentle hands shook me. Around me were the worried faces of Tom, Liza, the girls, Schroeder, and the carriage-driver. Cassie was sobbing and hugging her mother.
“My stars, sir. Are you all right? Oh, God’s teeth. I – I tried to stop it —”
Reaching out, my hand found some snow and pressed it to my head.
“What happened? Was he hit?” More faces hovered above me: a blonde woman and a young man, all clamoring and very concerned. The carriage was stopped a bit away, and the door was open. I presumed they were the passengers.
I pulled myself into a sitting position, despite a cry of pain from my back.
Tom steadied me and eased me back down. “Lay back, Jack. You frightened us all to death. Are you hurt? Oh, Cassie!”
“She was scared,” I said. Again I tried to sit up, but he kept me lying.
“Won’t you stop! You’ve just been run over by a horse—”
“Sorry,” squeaked the driver.
“—And you ought to rest until we know how serious it is. And I’m so grateful. And I’m so grateful.” He hugged Cassie to him, and I let myself lie down for a little while longer.
Tom and the young man from the carriage insisted on checking me for broken bones. I could feel a hard throbbing on my back and, white-faced, they said it was “not horrible….”
“We must get him in,” said Liza. “Lady Egerton will want to attend to him.”
“Your legs feel usable?” Tom asked.
“My legs are the least of it —” With his help, I stood, and he and the other man supported me as I was led up to the gate.
“I feel simply wretched,” stammered the driver. “I’ll have some money for your trouble.”
“That thing is a menace,” said Tom.
I looked back at the horse, which had been subdued at this point. It nibbled at the ground sheepishly. The nobles from the carriage were coming inside with us (the lady, Tom said, was one of More’s daughters, and the man her husband Nick). But in the carriage window I saw another face watching us.
She looked out from between dark curtains, her eyes arresting mine. Even from the distance, I could tell that they were purple. And they caught the sun like amethysts, gleaming grimly. Pausing there, pain throbbing down me, I couldn’t help the unease creeping up on my chest.
#
They led me inside. Chattering fearfully, Tom, Liza, and the nobles from the carriage led me to Lady Egerton’s rooms in the big wing that was home to the Lord Keeper’s family. The pain in my back was worsening quickly, and when they steered me through a dark doorway, I was grimacing and trying not to shout as I wondered why the blazes they were taking me to her and not a physician.
Inside was a circular, stone chamber furnished with lush Celtic rugs. Shelves bore dusty vials and unmarked boxes, chests and drawers pressed in around us. The air was sharp with herbal scent, and my eyes watered at the sting. The old woman was there, the star on her neck tinkling softly as she came to us. “Has Donne been hurt? Lay him on the couch.”
I had only seen her seldom; since I had first met her I tried to avoid her as much as I did Tom and Liza. Now she was having me remove my coat and tunic to inspect my hurts, especially my back. Tom told her what happened in the courtyard. Instead of making myself cringe thinking of the gnarled hands pressing my back, I thought of the girl in the stagecoach. She had been looking at me with those stark violet eyes. Otherlight she did not disguise. It was very strange. It had felt like the slim moment after one’s hand grasps at something hot, then pulls away, before it even feels the pain.
“Your back is incredibly swollen,” said Lady Egerton. “And a bit of blood has been drawn.”
“It’s very swollen,” cried the young man. “Are you sure his ribs aren’t —”
“Please be quiet, Master Throckmorton.”
I thought back on the papers I had studied before coming here. Nicholas Throckmorton, son of an ambassador, husband of Mary More, married this January.
“You can see the shape of the horseshoe,” said Tom.
Liza caught sight of the blood upon my shoulder, and I saw her white-nailed hands shaking on Cassie’s shoulders. Noticing this, the old woman said, “If the sight of his blood makes you uncomfortable, Liza, perhaps you should take the girls and get warm cider for our secretary.”
Tom pressed snow to my shoulder as Lady Egerton searched another room for who knew what. Smelling the mandrake and spices in the air, I tried not to think. With all their eyes on me, I could only sit there and stammer, “Actually, it doesn’t hurt that much anymore. I’m sure I’ll be fine.” But my back throbbed and I winced.
“It’s nasty, Jack,” said Tom. “Stay put. Mother knows what she’s doing. She can heal better than most doctors.”
Lady Egerton returned with a jar of white fluid and lit sweet-smelling candles around. Gripped by panic, I held my tunic with white hands, trying to calm myself. What if she put a spell on me? What if she rubbed poison?
So began the agonizing process of having salve applied on my wound. At first the pain was stabbing, excruciating, but soon my back became warm. It was soothing enough. But I did not know what it was. Or what it was doing to my shoulder. First the pain began to seep away, and I swallowed the urge to press my back against the couch and wipe it off. Lady Egerton continued to massage it in, bringing about a numbness that grew and grew. Tom remarked that I was red in the face, but it evaded me if it was because the salve was putting some unholy promptness in my blood, or because I was so deeply terrified.
She sprinkled something cold on the wound next. Despite myself, I shuddered and winced.
“Ssh,” she said calmly. “The sensation is leaving, no?”
Indeed it was. What had her hag’s medicine done to me?
“Don’t fear, Master Donne. I have seen far worse. But it is coming along very nicely. And the pain is fading away.”
What did you put on my back!
“Goodness, how your heart is kicking. Perhaps we should put some brandy in the cider for you. It’s a small gouging, nothing to lose sense over.”
I didn’t believe her, but the pain was gone now, and I sensed that the swelling had abated. Liza returned with a piping mug, considerably more composed. I took it and sipped, glad that my hands had something to do besides shake. Eventually, I asked, “How…how looks it?”
“Much better,” Lady Egerton assured me. She took a roll of bandages and wrapped it a few times around my chest. “Come back tomorrow and I shall look at it.”
“Or a physician?” I asked hopefully.
“It is a minor hurt, and doctors have so much on their hands.”
Tom gave me a glance of reassurance, then suddenly everyone in the chamber was bowing, and the Lord Keeper was at the door with a trembling Schroeder behind him. I tried to bend, but Lady Egerton steadied me, and I just lowered my head.
Egerton took his wife’s hand. “What is this? My porter says Donne was hit by a horse, and my granddaughter was nearly killed?”
“Jack saved her,” said Tom. “Got her out of the way just in time.”
Egerton asked his wife about the seriousness of the wound, and she described it as nothing but swelling and some cuts, all dealt with. “I thank you for being minister to him,” he said, and kissed her softly on the brow.
Affection from Egerton startled me somewhat, but I blinked my surprise away. “I – I didn’t mean to push her, my lord, but you see, the horse was coming fast, and it was so close to kicking her and —”
“Seem I angry with you, Donne? I know well what transpired. And I thank you.” He nodded, and I let my pent-up breath escape me.
He turned to Tom. “And where were you when a horse bore down on your daughter?”
“Ah—”
Egerton slapped him.
Lingering in the air a moment after the action, the sound froze everyone in the room. Tom’s face moved with the blow, and he felt his cheek tenderly. Liza covered her mouth, eyes wide and startled.
“He tried,” I gasped, “he tried, my lord. Tom was farther away, and he ran, he ran, but I was just closer. The horse charged without warning. Your son, my lord, he could not have reacted faster.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at Tom, who shrunk beneath his glare. Then straightening, he turned to me. “I am sure none of us can thank you enough for your quick-thinking and the wounds you sustained protecting Elizabeth Cassandra. Wounds that…look like nothing you are not used to.”
With horror I realized I was still bare above the waist. My arms and chest, considerably lean and muscular for a secretary’s, were plain to see, as were so many scars, old and freshly-healed, long and deep or small and narrow. And a Roman-style cross tattooed on my left arm.
“Fayal?” he asked.
“Yes. And Cadiz. And Faro, too.” Stammering, I yanked on my tunic.
“Gently, now,” said Lady Egerton.
Her husband nodded to me. “I will have fifty shillings paid to you by next week.”
“Please, my lord, you need not feel indebted. I did what anyone would have done.”
“Thirty, please, Donne. I insist.”
“I – I don’t know. Please – keep the money. I don’t know what I would do with it, sir.”
I half-expected him to strike me like he had Tom, but it to my relief he said he would honor my wishes. “Then you will accept our humblest courtesy, and join my family for dinner.”
I feared risking his anger, so I gratefully accepted, to their happiness. After Egerton departed I asked leave to rest in my own room. Lady Egerton recommended a nap whenever I could spare the time. As I made my way to my chamber, feeling seeped back into my shoulder, a dull, persistent ache. When I fell on my bed it was around two in the afternoon, and my room was so soothingly dim. I inspected my shoulder to find it bruised and sore, but with no evidence of anything to have caused an agony before. Whatever magic Lady Egerton had used to mend the gouge and cracked ribs had worked. Sighing, I poured some wine and drank it down. The bed was soft and the sheets were warm; and my eyes shut quickly, my mind just a little after that.

From her seat beside her sister’s husband Ann could see the secretary as he sidled in bashfully, the servants indicating his place at the lavish table. He was farthest from the head, across the table from Ann, two places removed to the right.
His face was thin and long, clean-shaven, and framed with jettish hair. Emotion played across his features: nervousness, then relief, then nervousness again. Darting over the silver bowls and ornate utensils, his eyes were expressive, overwhelmed. Green or blue, his eyes. As he looked across the dim room, his lips parted. They were full lips, and thoughtful. At least she wouldn’t have to feign love for a hatchetface.
At the head of the table, Lord Egerton greeted him. “Warm welcome to my secretary, this evening’s guest of distinction.”
George More raised his goblet and the rest of the family followed. John Donne ducked his head and said a warmhearted thanks to the Lord Keeper for having him to dinner, for taking a humble poet as a secretary, for being the model of English virtue, for running the country with such magnanimity, and so on. Egerton thanked him. Everyone loved a flatterer.
“Perhaps, George, you would introduce your family to Mr. Donne?”
“Of course, my lord. My sister Elizabeth is Lord Egerton’s beautiful wife, who healed thy wounds this day. And here, my daughter Mary, and my son-in-law, Nicholas Throckmorton.”
Ann’s blonde sister beamed at Donne. “We were married this January.”
Donne smiled politely back at her and commented that he had served under Nicholas’ brother-in-law, Sir Walter Raleigh. He and the man talked for a while about various military matters as servants brought in steaming bisque. Ann noted Donne’s expression as he wafted it –overwhelmed.
“If half the taste is in the smell,” he said, “you surely have a mathematician at your mercy, lord.”
Egerton smiled. “’Tis even better eaten, Mr. Donne.”
Ann sipped her bowl, darting glances at him when his eyes turned somewhere else, which wasn’t frequently. He was looking at her, a lot. Good, she thought, does he fancy me?
Eventually Donne saw that no one at the table would be saying grace, and folded his hands for a moment before starting on his own bowl. More resumed the introductions, motioning to Ann. “My third daughter, my Ann.”
Donne met her eyes, gladly. “Honored, madame.”
She had practiced a confident, charming smile before her mirror that day. How she had hated it – but now at least it had a purpose. And she marked how his eyes sparkled when she smiled at him, like so many noblemen’s had, until Papa had no longer required their interest.
His lips parted again, and she waited for a gracious compliment.
He turned to the head of the table and said, “My Lord Keeper, I would happily sell my soul for this soup!”
Perhaps she had let her displeasure show, for Donne looked at her smugly and raised an eyebrow.
He definitely fancies me.
Bread was served, and that distracted everyone for a while. Ann found a slice and picked at it. By contrast, Donne was politely wolfing it down as he gazed in wonder at the gold chandelier overhead, at the ivory candelabras, at the flowers carved into his plate. He listened attentively as More and Egerton discussed matters of state.
“The news from China arrived just before you did, George. The Koreans and their Chinese allies nearly had the Japanese beat at Ulsan, but fled before the reinforcements. Do you know where Ulsan is, Donne?”
“A Japanese fortress in Korea,” said Donne, with a mouthful of lark.
“Very good. You see, George? And why is this good for England, Donne?”
Donne swallowed. “Well, I suspect with all the chaos the Spanish Jesuits can’t get to Beijing.”
“Yes, Lord Thomas, you did well selecting him,” said More.
Donne became a discreet object in the background once more.
“On the Continent,” said Egerton, “there are rumors that the French and Spanish may soon end their war. King Henri is close to reclaiming Amiens.”
“I was convinced France’s good fortunes would not last,” said George More.
“Dear George, you are fledgling in such matters. Henri advances towards his defense at Angers, and deploys his nobles to settle mattes with Spain.”
“Ruddy Spaniards!” said Tom, thrusting his bread into a puddle of olive oil. “We gave them what for in the Islands.”
“Although the tempest that decimated the Armada upset them far more,” said his father.
“Maybe,” gruffed Tom. Liza gave her husband an encouraging pat on the arm.
Donne sat quietly and nodded, obviously not wanting to offend. Curious, Ann couldn’t help but liken it to what Tom’s little girls were doing: nodding and listening, all rather cluelessly. But she could see that behind the poet’s eyes the wheels were turning, and despite his silence he was heeding, analyzing.
He saw her eyes on him, and again his eyebrow rose. He would be thinking that she ogled him. Ann glared back at him. The smile left his lips, his eyes cast themselves at the rug, and now he seemed less a Don Juan and more a reproached schoolboy.
Ann found she liked him better that way.
Out came the third course at Egerton’s bell, and fragrant plates of hare and veal doused in sherry sauce and adorned with water chestnuts were set before them.
“If it is to your liking, Donne?” said Egerton smoothly.
“Of course!” he exclaimed. “My gastric muse –she sings.”
There was a general chuckle. Liza smiled at Donne and said, “Quite funny, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I’ve sampled his poems,” said More.
Throckmorton and Tom sniggered. Ann’s blonde sister smiled slyly. Egerton turned cold and stern, and the three girls looked around, wondering what was so funny. Donne’s cheeks flushed as he made a quiet remark about the weather.
“Yes,” said Tom. “It’s hot.” And he and Throckmorton laughed. “Particularly in —”
“Greece,” said Donne. “I’ve always wanted to visit —”
“Now, Jack, it’s rude to change subjects so abruptly. In the sonnet—”
“Do you know who writes the best sonnets? Sir Philip Sidney.”
“We were talking about Sidney, were we?”
“…Indeed. I remember once he came to Lincoln’s ….”
Donne shared a few anecdotes until he had distanced them safely from his poetry. He was skilled at covering himself. The Lord Keeper must have noticed this, for he nodded approvingly at Donne, who nodded timidly back.
With the uncomfortable topic gone, the family dug into their meals. Ann sampled some, and it was too rich for her palate, like York House itself. Both were gaudy, opulent ad nauseum. The whole place was old, smelling of dust, and London was putrid and vile, smoke and fog everywhere, litter on the streets, open sewers. And she was trapped here until she won over this Donne (who was studying the lacy trim on his napkin, fascinated). It was enough to drive her mad, which was why she tried to think about it so little. If she was serving her family, so be it, but why her? Why not one of her sisters?
Because I am the smartest, said a calm, determined voice inside of her. Because I am not distracted when men look at me and wink at me and kiss my hand. And since Papa trusts me and I’m trapped here I will see it through. Then I will come back to Loseley and the country and take the horse out in the morning when the hills are gold and the air is clean and men like Donne are far away.
Contemplatively, he was cutting his lark al forno and piercing it with his knife, chewing slowly. He didn’t notice the odd looks he was getting from the family. “You do not use your fork, dear?” said Lady Egerton.
“My…fork….” He looked at how they were eating, then found a fork among his own silverware, studying it suspiciously before trying to scoop up a piece of meat.
“Like this,” said Lady Egerton, lodging a slice on the prongs of her fork.
“Genius,” muttered Donne, trying it himself.
The Lord Keeper said, “The fork is an implement from the Continent, from Italy. How sad that it has not caught on – its progress was slowed by the Inquisition, and most English folk consider it a bauble.”
“How one could not approve of such a glorious tool astounds me, lord,” said Donne. He studied his fork intently.
“Jack and I met over silverware, you know,” said Egerton’s son. “He was kind enough to help me pick it up when it spilled. Essex loves them, by the way, Father….”
The Lord Keeper nodded. A silence fell, until Donne broke it and said, “Lark is even better on a fork. It is so delightful, my lord. Please tell your cook I am his best friend.”
“And thou feelest sound, lad?” inquired the Lord More. “I have heard of thy brave actions today – truly admirable – thou’rt well?”
“Mending, sir. Lady Egerton tended to my wounds with a gifted healer’s hands. I am a bit tired, no more than I was this morning.”
“Oh, goodness, so was I,” sighed the blonde sister. “I woke with shadows beneath my eyes, and I looked horrible. It’s a good thing Nick didn’t see me before I had my makeup on.”
“You should see me without my makeup,” said Donne.
And the evening went like that. Ann learned more of Donne. Winning him would have been easy if he had been like so many a clueless noble, but he was far from simple, the way he could turn anything into a witty quip, the way he could slide uncomfortable topics away from him. She could see in his eyes he was keen and listening, no matter how much fine food he ate.
There had been smart, quick-witted princelings before, and she had bested them in their element all the same. How different would Donne be? A flutter of a lash – like this – a passing gaze – there – and he was looking at her again.
Longingly she thought of Loseley.
After dessert and wine, the family stood, bowed to one another, and dispersed. Cassie hugged Donne, who folded his napkin into a rabbit for her. Then Lord Egerton called him apart. Ann fiddled with a handkerchief and accidentally dropped it. She was still in the room, bending down, while the Lord Keeper addressed his secretary. “I cannot thank you enough for your valor in the saving of my granddaughter.”
“I am honored by your having me for dinner, my kind lord.”
Ann had to smooth and carefully fold the kerchief.
“My guests and family took warmly to thee, and thou made’st it a most enjoyable supper. Thou hast a gift of wit.”
“And you a wonderful extended family.”
The Lord Keeper muttered something lowly to Donne, who nodded. Meanwhile, Ann had to adjust her gown, taking a step in their direction.
“And, Mr. Donne, perhaps you could sup with us on the morrow day as well.”
“I – I am truly privileged, my lord! Will there be forks?”
The old man chuckled. “Of course. Thank you, Donne. That will be all, now.”
Donne bowed graciously to his master, spilling flattering thanks as he left. Ann was daintily pushing in her chair when the Lord Keeper turned to her. “You are finding yourself at home?”
“Oh, yes, my lord,” she said with a curtsey. “Your manor is grand indeed.”
“I hope you are not discomforted by so many human servants. Some things cannot be helped here in the city. Often I wish for sylphs like those at your father’s Loseley.”
“I shall grow used.”
“A bright young woman,” said Egerton with a smile. “I hope you will enjoy your time here, and my wife will certainly provide for you as best she can.” His eyes, though fatherly, were green and glowing and made her stomach knot. What was she to him but the daughter of his too-ambitious More, ostentation on the family tree? She was hardly worth his attention, and, hurrying out of the room, Ann had to admit she preferred it that way.
#
When she was back in the solitude of her quarters, she relaxed. Sitting before her vanity, she removed the pins from her hair and peeled off the gold webbing that had held in down. The dim candlelight on the purple walls soothed her, and she brushed her hair to take her mind from this business. Once she uncovered Donne, and brought Egerton’s favors to her father, Ann would return home. Loseley! How she would rest. Perhaps Egerton would reward her with powers, as he sometimes rewarded Papa.
While she removed her necklace, the door cracked open. It was her sister.
“Tell me he isn’t handsome.”
“He isn’t handsome,” said Ann.
“You must grow up, Ann.”
I am grown up, thought Ann. I have done far more, learned far more, and seen far more than you. I am our father’s favorite, and you loathe it so, so you pretend you are the mentor who knows what is best.
“You must grow up, Ann,” said her sister again. “If you fail, Papa will not like it —”
“It’s bad enough that I have to stay here.” Ann peeled the lace ruff from her neck.
Ann stepped behind her boudoir and slipped on a nightgown, heard her sister leaving and the door shutting. Ann swept her hair into a cloth slip for sleeping and went to the basin to wash off the sheet of paints and powders.
Finally she was alone, and the dimness eased her haggard nerves. In the morning the servants would alight and help her dress and pull and fuss, and it would be long before they learned to be efficient. Until then, they’d fret and squabble while they laced and painted. Then in would swoop Lady Egerton, Ann’s self-appointed guardian, to lead her off to Court for a day of curtseying to duchesses and marquises. And after an hour of them – mundane people so dull and tame, their eyes so soft and void of Otherlight– she would want to scream, and years spent training her emotions to subside would keep her from being foolish.
That had been today and yesterday, and she did not expect tomorrow to be different.
But she had the night to herself and her books.
Servants had unpacked them, and she looked as she cleaned her teeth with a minor spell. Sophocles suited her mood, and she lay back on the fine, unfamiliar pillows as the lights burned down.
#
As I left the dining room, a sweet relief overcame me. I could have despaired that I had to come back tomorrow night, but relief felt so much nicer. I had pleased the Lord Keep. I had charmed that girl. I was still alive. And my stomach and palate were very, very satisfied.
I heard footsteps and Tom rounded the corner, grinning. “Hullo, Jack. You might want to stop slouching – it’s not very becoming.”
“Well, who’s assessing me?” I laughed.
He put an arm around my shoulder. “So,” he said.
“What?”
“You and Ann.”
Thanks for reminding me, I thought angrily. She scares me.
“As if it were hard to notice, you making eyes at her,” he said, always chummy. “You’re just taken. But I think you must agree, my friend, she’s out of your league: she’s a lady, and she’s… not like you.”
“What? How?”
“Never mind. But she wouldn’t look twice at you.”
I gave him a sigh, and my shoulders sagged.
“But don’t worry. I could help you. Court women aren’t like the ones you’re accustomed to. You must walk and speak and bow proper, or you’ll be just a vulgar face in the crowd,” he said. He steered me into a study I presumed was his and sat me at a desk while he searched for a book. Finally he found what he was looking for and read:
“‘The female minde, being a bewilderingly complexe entity even in the simplest of subjects, in ladies shaped by the strict systems of lofty court becomes more elaborate, refined, and fastidious stille. He that wisheth to make himself desirable therefore must be equally refined, ever elegant, and obey the most Daedalian of manners.’”
I raised my eyebrow, surprised (first, that Tom could read, and also) that any set of manners could be more complex than those I lived by at York House.
“Manners like what?” I laughed.
“The approached is gradual,” he said. “She’ll fall in love, but on a gentle slope paved with propriety.”
I loved Tom’s glorious rhetoric.
“First she must notice you,” he went on, “you must draw her eye.”
“How?”
“I’ve seen you look sharp, shouldn’t be hard. First —”
“Do I need your help, Tom?” I said.
He turned a surprisingly cold glance at me. “Do you want it…John?”
“Yes,” said I, the apologetic secretary.
“Right, right, right,” he muttered to himself, cheering. “So! The approach. How do you normally go about it?”
“‘Girl, thou’rt surely a horsemen of the apocalypse, for thou settest my world on fire. Like the Dürer engraving… baby.’”
Tom shuddered.
I explained it. “It never fails. I really do think I’m the master. Then I talk about whatever Shakespeare just put out, and recite a soliloquy.”
Apparently, Tom found a problem with this. Flipping to a new page, he found a sentence and thrust it in my face. Flustered, I read, “’Ladies of the courte will never befoule themselves in attendance to any play-house, bear-baiting, or other uncouth peasantly gatherings, which naturally only draw rustic bawdes and sausage-wallets.’ But that’s not true!”
“I’m not saying it’s true, but it’s right about the first part. What are you going to do when she’s never seen a Shakespeare play?”
“Talk about something else? Art? The weather?”
“Why?”
“To…to be friendly….”
“I agree. One must start a conversation, Jack, but in Court, the rules change. First, you praise her (‘how brightly shine thine eyes’). Praise her. Excessively. Then praise yourself. Excessively.”
“Flattery and bragging,” I sniffed. “Will that not stifle the conversation?”
“Showers of compliments would make anybody smile, even you. And that is what noblemen do, therefore if you wish to hold your own, you had best follow their lead. It’s still starting a conversation, like you said. Just a different way for a different person. There are different types of diamonds, the rough one straight from the mine, and the sparkling one faceted to shape. You’ve just got to cut it.”
What is this? I thought. He is trying to get something from me, I can see as much as that. Was it because I’d saved his daughter, and now he wanted me in his debt? Weeks ago when he’d given me coffee I’d known what I was in for. It was Tom’s nature – he would want a quid pro quo.
“Ann as I know her reads a lot,” he said. “You ought to write her poems, and read them with feeling. Not a lot of emotion, but enough.”
“I had the impression the intent was to be overdramatic and flowery.”
“Yes, but she’s Ann.”
“What do you know about her?”
He folded his arms and ran his tongue across his teeth to begin the challenging process of thinking. Don’t hurt yourself, Tom.
He began, “She’s a girl.”
“Thank you for the confirmation.”
“Don’t see her side of the family often. She can’t be older than twenty. She reads a lot, and never talks to anyone. Actually, I don’t know a lot about her. But she is pretty. I mean, if she weren’t my cousin, you know.”
“What about her father? Lord More?”
“He’s not really a Lord, just likes to be called that. He likes to feel important.”
“Really?” I was listening close and mentally recording everything.
“He always has something to say when a law is passed. He likes to feel important. He claws his way up….He has a few houses in the countryside. Father wants him away from London, whereas all More wants is London…. Did you see the way he looked at York House? Like a child who can’t have a sweet he wants. Here we know enough to keep him on a leash.”
Maybe if I gave up now I could get out of the conversation. “Then maybe Ann isn’t worth the effort…?”
“Courage, compadre. Figure if you set your mind to it, you can, you know, win anybody —” He hit me kindly on the back, and I winced. “And you’re pretty handsome. In the end, that’s all that really matters, to the girl, and her father.”
“Is it? You know, I’m really not certain. She’s a lady, isn’t she, and I’m certainly not pretending to be anything but a secretary. I don’t want to anger anyone like Lord Egerton by, erm, courting —”
At the mention of his father, Tom’s hand felt his cheek, where his father’s blow had left a dark bruise. For a moment, as they turned into shadow, something in his tense eyes shifted colors, from the amiable grey to something darker. It was brief, but I felt myself shrink a little as he turned his Otherlit eyes to the wall behind me. Tom gave a snort, dismissing his thoughts, and shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but I’m rather exhausted. You’d best get to bed, after what you’ve gone through today. We’re all so thankful, Jack Donne.”
I nodded and showed myself away. Back in my own room, I told Itzak’s ring what had happened as I peeled off the bandages and inspected my shoulder yet again. Now you could hardly tell it had been swollen. I poked it; it ached.
Itzak was upset. “You let them heal you? Don’t you know what they could have done!”
“I couldn’t risk my cover.”
“You could be Tainted. You told me the old woman was a witch. She could have put anything on that wound. Wolvesbane, mandrake, tansy! Hsian Demon Power! Vampire blood! Argh! You must come now and have Friar Tuck inspect it. Bist meshugeh! You idiot!”
“Fine,” I grunted, flopping on my bed.
“You feel hale? No dizziness, no fainting, no unnatural compulsions to drink blood or howl at the moon?”
“Well, actually….”
“What―”
“Joking―”
He screamed at me in Yiddish as I grabbed my pistols and put on my coat, jumping out the window. The way home was short. He was waiting for me at the gatehouse of Lincoln’s Inn, looking unamused.
Friar Tuck concluded there was nothing more than a faint magical aura about my shoulder, presenting no danger. I might have returned to York House, but ended up spending much of the night in the common room as hunters came and went. Itzak said little to me save: “I begin to think that York House espionage is trouble. I am getting a bad feeling, Jack. Be careful, and around the demon girl especially.”

Over the summer I became a permanent fixture at Egerton’s dinner table, as constant as the napkins and the gravy boat. At first he called me to dine with him to entertain More, who enjoyed my witticisms (though he still looked at me like I was a mouse in his talons). Soon I was being summoned whenever some dignitary needed entertaining. In time I ate with the family every night, since they grew fond of me: Egerton at the head, his Lady beside him, Tom talking with his mouth full, and Liza smiling at me as she sipped something too thick and red to be wine. Ann More never did anything but disregard me completely.
I hardly saw her. During the day she was with Lady Egerton at Court with the Queen. (Good.)
The days blurred into a surreal haze of ink and lawsuits. As my standing at York House grew, my work for the Order crawled. The doors in the green-curtain hall resisted any picks I tried. If I put my ear to Egerton’s door, I was lucky to hear anything but a pen scratching.
All I could do was spend my time assigning capital vices to the various people in York House:
i.
Cold hatred in Egerton, for anyone unfortunate enough to cross him. Tom did a few times.
ii.
Pride in Tom. Make that sloth, too.
iii.
Envy in George More.
iv.
And lust in Liza, by the way she looked at me.
I would sit at their table and think longingly of Lincoln’s Inn, of a time when I’d be done with all of this and take again the carefree hunter’s life that had been mine. Though things were going poorly for the Order – there were more and more demons on the streets now, the high kind that could pass for human, and the bestial kind that swooped out of the sky and nabbed various unfortunate goats. Now after a day of paperwork, I would set out after the Dark creatures that spoke to me ever more. Then I’d sleep, meagerly.
A few things stood out from the monotony.
Meeting a bleary-eyed Earl of Essex walking down from Egerton’s office with Henry Wotton following. Wotton saying, “Donne. What brings you to York House?” Me replying, “I am our Lord Keeper’s personal secretary.” Feeling an inner satisfaction as it dawned on him I was his equal now.
Tom teaching me fencing on the green at Whitehall. He was very, very good. I was pretending to be clueless, but even if I hadn’t it would have been hard to contend. Balestra, riposte, in quartata. I don’t think I beat him once.
Ann More sitting in a drawing room, reading. Saying, “Hello.” Her saying, “Hello.” Bowing flowingly, smiling. Her eyes never left the book. “You read Horace?” “I do read Horace.” “Is it to your tastes?” “I have not decided.” “I’ve read Horace.” “I am sure you have, Mr. Donne.” “It is lovely in the garden.” “I am sure it is.” “Thy hair glowest, like the crimson amber of the coast.” “That is good to know.” “How brightly shine thine eyes.” “I’m sure they do.” “I would be honored if you would read with me in the garden.” “I would be blessed if you let me alone.”
Touché, bitch.
That was my first conversation with her. There was room for improvement. Soon I saw her more about the palaces, for the Lord Keeper suddenly decided I was to follow him to the Privy Council at Westminster, which he attended most days.
#
Naturally, I stammered for a while, gushing “you do me truly disproportionate honor” and “thank you, my lord” while I tried to quell my terror. Egerton and his entourage were well-received when we arrived there. As we approached the looming gothic walls and the turrets of St. Margaret’s Church, I was beside him. He smiled and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “You shall do well.”
“I pray I should, sir.”
Inside, parties of noblemen murmured as they waited for their appointments at Court, and heavy sunlight speared through the high windows. The air grew quiet with the entrance of Egerton and his guards and his servants, and courtiers bowed low as we made our way down the hall. A few looked at me strangely while I scurried beside Egerton, who stalked to the Star Chamber with the regality and grace of a wolf.
From without, Star Chamber was a high maple door painted with a peeling medieval scene. Within it was a circular room with many windows, all opened to let in fresher air. Above me the bowl ceiling glimmered deep blue, decked with gilded stars. Egerton, first to arrive, seated himself in one of the twelve chairs. As other potentates entered, he assigned me their names, many of which I had only heard of in gossip. And now here were the men: William Cecil, the Fox of Elizabeth, Cecil’s hunchbacked son Robert, Francis Bacon, Keepers of This, Earls of That, and Raleigh and Essex too. And then Elizabeth herself.
She wore a dress of violet that trailed behind as she ascended the steps to her raised throne. All within bowed as she walked; I noticed how slowly she moved, how feebly, but still she set her jaw, as if in anger at her body for not keeping pace with her. The Queen’s skin clasped her bones, white with talcum, and her wig was adorned with the stuffed body of a linnet.
Servants went to each lord present, offering tea and cakes, but it was a hot day and most declined, save Egerton, who was unruffled by the heat. I stood behind his chair trying to learn to turn invisible, or ooze into the floor, or in some way remain unnoticed.
Probably reading my thoughts, Her Majesty remarked, “Your assistant is not here, Thomas?”
“I have dismissed him, your Highness. My secretary Donne shall accompany me henceforth.”
I bowed.
Elizabeth nodded and commended my Storm and Calm. Thanking her, I wondered if she knew about me – truly. As Queen, she was one of few in the mundane world who knew of the Order’s existence. Would my presence here make her suspicious of her Lord Keeper? Northwell had told me it was important for the leaders of the realm to progress normally.
She smiled at Egerton as she inquired after the state of the courts within the kingdom. He answered, gesturing when he needed me to hand him a paper.
In the heat of the stagnant chamber, I wondered. What was Egerton doing here? As Lord Keeper, the demon certainly had authority, but he used it as any man in his position would. If he manipulated happenings, he did it subtly – why did he need such power? I left discerning things to Northwell and the bosses.
What stealthy purpose lay behind those green eyes was easy to imagine, if impossible to guess. Scores of possibilities leapt to mind, all possible, none confirmable. I almost then and there leapt to the conclusion that he was already doing the Devil’s work, by hunting dissenters and sending them to the Tower. But another man of this our time could do as much.
“Donne.”
“Forgive me, sir. The indictments from last week’s trials…. Here they are.”
“Greetings, Jack,” said Raleigh. “It is good to see a familiar face.”
“It is a joy to see you as well, sir,” I replied with a bow.
I anticipated that maybe Essex would say something, but he was staring languidly out the window, mind far away, and spoke hardly, even when the discussion turned toward the Irish rebellions.
All the Privy Council showed the gravest concern for the Irish war. The forces of the rebel Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, were attacking from the north, growing in numbers, holding their own in the thick mires. Word was that Spain supported O’Neill’s campaign. Yet the Privy Councilors couldn’t really understand why the Irish were rebelling. They’d only been invaded, robbed, declared heretics, and forced into serfdom.
Egerton stressed how important controlling Ireland was, saying that with Spain’s war with France drawing to a close, soon they would be free to engage England. If we lost Ireland, Spain would use it as a base to attack us by sea. The Spanish Armada of ten years ago, he said, would be child’s play beside what was brewing. England must crush Ireland to cement our control.
William Cecil was an old man, with a beard like silver hoarfrost. In the city they called him the Fox. Elizabeth might have been the face of England’s golden age, but he was the brains, no one doubted. He was older than old, but his eyes still glinted. He had the opposite in mind: he suggested that perhaps making peace with Spain would benefit us more than warring on into oblivion.
The discussion happened every day, I learned as I accompanied Egerton that week. I listened quite intensely, threading the paths of brewing war together in my head, trying to see how Egerton would want things. And why? What was he doing here?
What was he doing here?
#
For three days more the profuse heat persisted, and I was trapped in Star Chamber. When finally it broke for lunch, I sighed relief as I ordered my papers.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched Egerton saying something sharp and low to William Cecil.
What are you planning, Lord? What do you want with Ireland?
Egerton gestured, and I followed him to Essex, who hadn’t moved all session. “My Lord Keeper,” he said, feeling his chest and flinching.
“You feel sound, Lord Essex?” I said.
“Yes, yes, Donne, thank you. Your friend Wotton will be here shortly. He is fetching me posset cordial.”
“I wish to talk, Robert,” said Egerton smoothly, offering his hand. He pulled the Earl to his feet and out of the Star Chamber, onto a vacant balcony. “This shall do. Please wait outside, Donne, and have Wotton do the same,” he ordered, and shut the balcony doors.
I leaned on the wall, sighed, and wiped the sweat from my hatband. The hall was empty and silent save the occasional page and the distant sound of exhausted chamber music. After a while, I put my ear to the door, but the wood was old, thick, and warped, which garbled the sound. I caught a few words, “Ireland,” “Sir,” “hate,” but for all I knew they were talking about anything. Then I heard Wotton’s footsteps and pulled my head away before he appeared. He leaned beside me, pink and panting, looking down at the forlorn cordial in his hands. “Why aren’t we to enter?”
“Beats me, friend Henry.”
“It’s so hot,” he moaned. “And the air so thick.”
I thought longingly of Order headquarters, of the cool, cool caves and soothing dark.
“Egerton’s secretary, now?”
I nodded proudly. “When I saw how well-off you had it at Essex House, I decided enough was enough. I wasn’t going anywhere with poems and my faith in Rome,” I lied.
Henry Wotton nodded understandingly.
#
The eyes again — emerald eyes that sifted through Essex’s mind and left a vague dreaminess. Then the feeling in his chest – the sick, sad pulling doubling on itself, making him shiver in the heat.
“Raleigh wants Ireland,” said Egerton as a dragonfly landed on a vase of marigolds. “That hardly seems fair, does it? He is unworthy.”
Essex started to wonder why, but it was so tedious to wonder why.
“If they delay establishing a commander for the Irish War, you must do something. I assure you things will come of it.” He looked over the Earl quite like a physician would. “You feel something? A guiding feeling?”
Essex nodded sadly. “So strange…. It makes me feel so lonely. And stupid.”
“Robert, you are not stupid. Not you, so smart, valorous, and chivalrous. They are jealous of you, Walter Raleigh, and Robert Cecil. They hate you.”
“Please, my lord….”
Gently, the Lord Keeper steadied him with a hand to his shoulder, smiling. The green eyes, wrapping round him, taking his confusion away. Something squeezed at his heart, and he was certain now, certain they hated him, and so overwhelmed he wanted to weep.
#
As Wotton and I stood there, melting, I felt a cool wind on my cheek, brushing gently. Looking up I saw a lady in a flowing blue dress, face powdered expertly, dark red hair swept up into a bun. She walked lightly, almost gliding, as if the cruel heat had no effect on her. As her purple eyes found me, still I had that feeling I got whenever I saw her, fear (but not of her) and doubt (but not of myself).
She said, “Hello, Donne.” And her voice, so cold, felt almost good in the swelter.
Bowing, I replied, “Hello, madame.”
“Hello,” sniffed Wotton, his face going pinker.
“It’s like a furnace,” I remarked.
“I suppose it is. Lady Egerton is talking with the Duchess of Yorkshire, and I desired to see more of Westminster.”
“Hello,” said Wotton.
“Henry Wotton, Devereux’s secretary,” I said, saving him the trouble of introducing himself. “Thou hast stunned him, Madame, with thine eyes. Now I know why Venus shines so dim of late – I have seen thy gaze, and beside it each distant fire is like a fleeting cinder.”
She was impassive. “How droll.”
“Shall I show you the Star Chamber, my lady? And point out every star your gaze eclipses? For now I come with Egerton when he attends Privy Council. Daily I hear the talk of great men. Why, these days I am but a few degrees away from Francis Bacon. No, no wait —”
“I think I shall return to Lady Egerton,” she sniffed, turning back the way she’d come. A cold wind stroked my cheek mockingly as she left.
“Who was that?” said Wotton.
“Egerton’s niece,” I said, “and my lover.”
“She loves you?” he grumbled.
“Oh, yes. Though she’s not one for public shows of affection… she’s madly in love with me. She’s very smart, and, er, a girl — Hello, my lord. That was quick. Shall we return to the Star Chamber?”
Egerton stepped into the hall and looked out hawkishly. With a straightening of his collar, he proceeded to the room. Keeping up with him, I looked back on Essex as he came, swaying, behind us, his hands wrapped tensely round his cordial. On his face was an expression of complete and profound misery.
The atmosphere of Council shifted after the intermission. When we returned, a charged silence hung in the air, tingling like static. Robert Cecil sat grimly by his father, his eyes roving from Councilor to Councilor. Raleigh, arms folded, reclined like a panther waiting. Elizabeth’s entrance released some of the tension, but still the men were wary and intent.
She knew them well, and guided the discussion with an expert hand. While the men raised their voices and then fell back from the heat, she spoke calmly.
There was not a general consensus about Ireland.
The older Councilors were preoccupied with assessing England’s coffer and the politics at work in Ireland, but to men of action like Sir Raleigh and Essex, these were trivialities. To them Ireland was a frontier that needs be broken. Raleigh presented dramatically, poetically, hands waving, and Egerton slipped in when he could to offer reason to balance the Captain’s position. Even Essex broke his silence to agree. The old men hunched in their chairs, unconvinced, but among the servants and attendants, the bravado was infectious. Eyes gleaming, heads bobbing. Perhaps I wanted to agree with them, but after all the fighting I’d been in, I wasn’t eager for more to start.
The Queen said that appointing a leader to England’s armies across the Celtic Sea demanded further deliberation. “We’ll wait for the next report from the front and let more time decide. If the state in Ireland worsens, we will determine best way to proceed.”
“Truly,” said Essex suddenly, “I see no reason to prevaricate any longer! The state in Ireland is violent, terrible. Perhaps the matter… need not… be discarded so easily.”
“It has been left on the table, not discarded. After much meditation.”
Essex felt his chest, above his heart.
Raleigh raised an eyebrow. Egerton brushed a strand of hair from his face, his eyes waiting, calmly. For what? Had this something to do with the words on the balcony?
“But the soldiers must have a commander. Otherwise, all shall be disunity, all shall be chaos!”
“Please, Robert,” said the Queen.
He rose to his feet, suddenly alive. “I entreat you, fair Empress, assign a command! This brutality must be quelled by a hand that is hard, courageous—”
“Thine own?” said Elizabeth.
The room was silent.
“Sit thee down, Essex,” she said, “and hold thy peace.”
“What have I done?” he pleaded, climbing the steps before her and kneeling at her feet. “I know you love me, and listen then for my poor sake, but above all you love your Realm and your People, and your kingdom’s Honor. In the name of all, I entreat you see what we need. We need a leader, Highness, a brave man of many conquests, beloved of your Subjects —”
“Either you wish to claim it yourself or you wish to get rid of your rivals. Your behavior is rash, Essex. Remove yourself from this dais. In a fouler mood, I would have you drawn hence, but I will be content if you return to your chair.”
“A word more….”
“The Queen has spoken,” growled Raleigh.
Essex glared at him. The enmity was as visible as it had been when they’d quarreled after Isla Fayal.
Essex looked at the Queen. “Don’t send me hence.”
“I’m not. I’m sending you twelve feet over to your chair.”
For a moment, he looked beaten, not just defeated, but beaten, a dog kicked, ready to slip away, aching. But desperately he took the trail of her gown and kissed it, pleading forgiveness. “I’m sorry —”
“Devereux.”
He was kissing the floor between her feet.
“Devereux!”
He was on all fours, his forehead shining. “My lady?”
She hit him.
The servants gasped, but louder still was the sound of the slap still ringing in my ears. Elizabeth’s guard fingered their spears.
He shook and pulled himself up, hands quivering. He turned his back on her and stalked to the door. I heard his breath, thick and furious as he put a hand to his chest, and then to his sword. “You will know who your friends are, Your Majesty. And it will not be them.”
“Begone,” she said, “and be hanged.”
There was something in the Queen’s eyes nearly impossible to describe. It was anger, yes, but there was pain too, as if when he walked out the door she would not see him the same again.
He stopped, but still did not turn. “The words come from a woman’s lips,” he said. “But I would not bear such usage were it from Henry your father.” He strode to the door, lips parted, still shaking. His servants huddled behind his chair, petrified. Essex beckoned, barked, “Come, Wotton,” and was gone.
Wotton glanced helplessly at me, terror in his eyes, and heeled his master, the rest of Essex’s crowd behind him. The doors shut with a groan. Egerton sighed.
Elizabeth didn’t wait for a silence to follow. A frail old lady once again, she sat and said blandly, “Well, he’ll burn in hell now, I’m afraid. I’m terribly sorry, Donne. It is not normally like this.”
Of course not, I thought. Otherwise England’s bloody doomed.
In my mind I replayed what I had overhead on the balcony, what I had seen here. Egerton had something to do with it. The old man sat, quiet, eyes twinkling. When Privy Council was ended, he rose and talked with the others.
He introduced me to William Cecil. The ancient Councilor nodded approvingly, but seemed preoccupied. “We shall have to look after Devereux and see him reconciled. He holds much sway with the citizens. Strange he should be so boldly tempestuous.”
“You would watch out for him?” said Egerton.
Cecil nodded, a sigh ruffling his frosty beard. “He was my adopted son, Egerton. I shall. The last thing we need, especially now, is discord in the Star Chamber.”
“Perhaps it is best to leave the matter rest for a time,” said my lord.
Cecil was Elizabeth’s chief advisor – the most powerful man in the realm. His policies were famed. Egerton regarded him with visible respect, although at dinner I’d heard him remark that the once-fierce statesman was going soft.
“We must contain the matter before it comes out of control, Thomas. I will talk to the Queen.” With his servants and his son Robert following, Cecil was gone into the halls of Westminster.
A few weeks later, he was dead.
#
Before the Court could react to his spat in the Star Chamber, the Earl of Essex removed himself and staff to the countryside. George More, taking the first opportunity to see his daughter, was moving the other way, towards London, and he returned to streets alive with gossip. Ann had heard it all from the serving-girls who tittered as they pinned her hair. Some said Essex had clasped his sword, some said he had drawn it, sliced up a chair, and run out screaming. Some said he had kissed her feet, others that he’d snogged her full on the wrinkly lips. Ann knew what had really happened, for Donne had told her in one of his ever-more-frequent conversations with her.
When she heard from Lady Egerton that her father was in town, she wanted to see him. He would be at York House tomorrow, but Ann doubted she would get a private word to discuss what she had learned of Donne.
Which was this:
i.
When she stopped outside his room between the hours of midnight and two, several times she had not heard his breathing from within.
ii.
He was edgy and tense around Liza, Tom, and Egerton – and all Otherkind.
iii.
The serving-girls said that when Lady Egerton had examined his shoulder, some of them had seen him, very thin and very muscular.
Papa would want to know as soon as possible. Ann removed to her room that evening, tired of waiting, tired of this dusty, cold manor.
She dismantled the stiff gown she wore, stepping out of the farthingale hoop of her skirt, slipping off the kirtle and cape. She chose a plain black dress and unremarkable bodice, tied it tight. She slipped her dagger in at her waist. Over herself she pulled a dark cloak from her travels in the country. In the mirror, she reviewed herself. There would be hundreds of people in the streets outside, and with her head down, she’d blend in well. It wasn’t far to where her father was staying.
Waiting for the sounds of servants to recede, she crept from her room, locking it, and tucked the key in her bag. She closed her eyes, pressed her fingers to the door, and said, “I am resting now, my lady. I will see you in the morning.”
She ducked behind a pillar as a lawyer shuffled down the hall. Ann had seen far too many lawyers in this place, running about like rodents. Just one of many things she was sick of.
She went out the only way she knew, the front doors. The anteroom was dark and poorly lit, so Schroeder didn’t see her until she was right before him. “Oh! My beautiful lady. Do you wish something?”
“I am going out now, to catch some air, if you please, sir.”
“With no servants? Where is Lady Egerton?”
“They’re so busy, and I grew so lonely, and I would be ever grateful if you would let me out. I’ll only be in the garden.”
“Of course,” he said, opening the doors.
“Thank you.”
He smiled kindly, and she turned for the gardens. The trees sighed above her, leaves white in the July moonlight, casting subtle shadows on the ground. A sound startled her: it was Tom, hiding behind a hedge like her, but with one of the servant girls, giggling. Ann set the moment in her memory for future reference. Perhaps at some point Papa would find it useful. Then she slipped down a shady path to the garden wall, and stole through the servants’ door into an alley.
Smoothing her dress, she assessed where she was. The alley opened onto the Strand. From there, it couldn’t be over half a mile to her father at Charing Cross. She pulled the hood low across her face and edged out of the alley. She stepped between rotten food-scraps scattered on the ground – this must be where they brought York House’s rubbish to be taken away. Rats, eyes glinting, flashed across her path. Ann cast a glance back at the door, as if making sure the clear, beautiful world she had come from was still there. Then she snapped at herself. London was only a city – a squalid and crowded one, but it could not hurt her. She cast a spell against plague and another to make Schroeder disinclined to look for her.
The Strand was a bright vista of torches blazing and folk in motion. As the noise of horses, wagons, and conversation washed over her, Ann waited in the shadows of the side-street. A stream of noblemen sauntered past, then a pair of peasants, then more people. When there was a pause in the bustle, Ann stole into the road and began to walk. For the most part she moved with the crowd, happily invisible, but eyes darting about her for any sign of danger. She could not be too careful.
The place smelled of garbage and detritus, backdrop to the perfumes and scents of the humans. Apple. Ale. Sweat. Ann blew the odors from her nose and scowled. Oh, Loseley, clean, quiet Loseley, that I could be with thee.
A jester with a bear cub on a chain passed by. The animal sensed her nature and shied away, dropping to all fours until it passed her. Finally someone who respected her. She straightened and reassured herself. She was the daughter of George More, and had no doubt in her own strength. Walking down a road in the respectable part of town. The people were nothing to be scared of. Papa and MacGregor had taught her to defend herself.
She looked up at the huge mansions and the wooden houses, wondering how close she was to Charing Cross. The great stone cross that marked it was nowhere to be seen, and if it was near, the throng blocked it from view.
Then she realized she had raised her head, and lowered her gaze too late.
He had caught sight of her and rose from his perch on the porch of a shop, ducking through the crowd toward her. “You lost?”
“Excuse me?” she said, string to shove past him.
He flicked his straggly hair from his face and sighed. “What’s a nice lady walking alone for?” A few of his friends were getting up to join him.
Ann kept walking. Maybe if she lost him he’d give up and she wouldn’t have to deal with such things. But still he followed her hungrily as she turned onto a side-street, then another. The distance between them grew, but then the crowd grew thinner until in the third street, there was no one at all. Echoes bounced on the wet stone, a few torches made for dim light. A horse tied to a porch nibbled on a bush. A chimney smoked.
“Look, miss,” he called, starting to run.
She stopped, turned, and glared at him. His friends sauntered up behind him.
“Are you lost?” he said again, holding out his hand.
She looked at it, then glared again.
“Pretty, innit?” said one.
“I carry no items of value,” said Ann, thinking that this was playing out like an episode from a very bad Spenserian ballad. “And my father is just a few houses away. He is one of the country’s most potent statesmen. If I decide to scream, sir, I guarantee you will find yourself in the Tower. In the Tower, sir, they have machines that will make you wish for death, the only certain release from the agony of the rack. If you are convicted you will be hung until barely alive, then disemboweled, then drawn and quartered. Whole crowds will see your blood and innards spattered on the scaffold.”
“Whoa,” said one.
“I don’t think you’ll be screaming at all,” said the leader. “I got a way, miss.”
“If you come at me, I’ll kill you.”
“What’s your business, running alone at night in a city like this?”
“The Strand is safe.”
“You should’ve stayed there, then.” He took a step forward, and her hand closed on her dagger. A few of his friends circled behind her. The man peeled off his grimy ruff and drew a knife, threatening blood if she made a sound. He needn’t have worried – she could probably kill him silently, if it unfortunately came to that.
#
Lady Egerton heard from the servants that Ann had retired to her chambers. Out of concern she went to the girl’s door, rapping gently. “Ann, dear?”
From within came Ann’s voice. “I am resting now, my lady. I will see you in the morning.”
“I see. Sleep well, dear. Good night.” Lady Egerton turned back to her room. The girl had had a long day.
#
From the roof of the chapel of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Lovelace and I kept our eyes peeled for trouble. Minh had seen a pair of trolls near here a few nights before. But so far, the only noise came from the nighttime pomp of the Strand. Until.
“I hear running,” I said, yawning.
“Probably nothing,” he muttered, picking with his knife at a shingle. Since Isabel had broken with him, he had been quiet.
I caught the echoes of raised voices, from a block away. I stood, yawned again. “I’ll go see.”
“Just go prancing off.”
“I’ll only been a moment. Don’t get too scared. Do you require something to suck on?”
“Shut up,” he snapped as I left him.

Things on the dark, barren street quickly progressed from terrible to worse. The men had circled Ann and showed no signs of discovering their consciences anytime soon. Some were behind her. Suddenly, the simple action of stabbing the shaggy-haired man had become a complex fight, made more difficult still by her dress.
About to draw her knife, she heard a soft patter, of leather boots, and a voice chastised her assailants. “I really recommend stepping away from her.”
The man turned to the newcomer. A cloaked figure in a plumed hat stood, feet spread truculently, dark against the rising fog that glowed in the moonlight.
The man turned his knife to the stranger. “Now, I don’t think this is none of your business.”
“So it is my business.”
“What?”
“Well, grammatically—”
“You ain’t got no reason to linger,” snapped the man. “We’re all having fun here. So move along. What I do with a she-tramp I sees in the street is my own affair.”
“Excuse me?” snarled Ann.
“You’re excused,” said the stranger, doffing his hat.
The shaggy-haired man stepped up to him, staring him in the eye. “Why don’t you run along…sir.”
“I shall not leave, nor allow this madame to come to harm.”
“Who said I’m harming her?” he leered.
“Well, the knife certainly gives the impression. Now go your merry way. If you persist, you will regret it. Be intelligent, hard as that sounds.”
“I think you’re all talk.”
“And I think you’re all stench.”
The varlet swept at the stranger, who ducked under the knife and stepped adroitly to the side. “Have you ever been set on by a troll? They prey on offensive-smelling things with miasmas similar to yours. But if half the taste is in the smell, you’d taste like a rotting bowl of whiskey-slathered lard left on the table to mold for a week. You would not be very tasty.”
Ann tensed, suddenly placing the even voice and the refined Oxford accent. “Donne?”
“Ann?” he exclaimed. “I – um – this is a surprise.” He rubbed his neck, grimacing. The shaggy-haired man glanced between her and the poet.
She looked Donne over. “What are you wearing?”
He glanced down at his garb: the form-fitting leather jerkin painted with silver patterns, the fingerless gloves, the riding boots. “Well – it’s – it’s fashion.”
“Yeah, what’s with those clothes?” said a ruffian. “Rather strange.”
“Nothing,” he snapped. “Now step away from her!”
“What are those silver things on your jerkin and your gloves?”
“Flames, of course.”
“Look like vines,” said another.
“What do you mean, fashion?” demanded Ann. “I have seen the height of fashion at Whitehall and it looks nothing like the ranger costume you have on.”
“For God’s sake! They surround you in a side-street, Confucius here has a knife, you’re about to be raped, and we’re talking about my clothes!”
“I can handle them myself.” She showed him her dagger.
“The blazes you can.”
“As if you could.”
Donne’s eyes flicked to the shaggy man’s hand, and he dodged a thrust, caught the man’s wrist, and swung his boot into the cretin’s face. The resulting thud was hard and professional. As the knife clattered on the cobblestone, the man fell back and lay groaning on the street before drifting off, unconscious.
Angrily, one of his men lunged at Donne, grabbing at the legs – Donne leapt over his shoulders to land on his back, driving him down. Quick as a dancing shadow, he bashed the man’s head on the stone, leaped off, and dodged a swipe by another thug. In a blur, Donne was dancing with the remaining two, ducking, spinning, landing punches at his leisure. “It – is – NOT – a – costume!”
“Come get a thrashing, pretty boy!”
“I am not pretty!” he roared, and another thug crumpled, unconscious or dead. Donne fought quite unlike an Englishmen, he spun and chopped. Ann, folding her arms and watching, noticed traces of foreign styles: a blow there was kalari payat, from India, a kick from Korean subak, and an Egyptian punch to the face. Only Order hunters were so well-versed.
The last criminal took the shaggy-haired man’s knife and held it before him, menacing Donne, who held up his fists. “Is that a wise endeavor, sir?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Yet you’re still at it.”
“Yeah.”
“Very smart.”
“Really?”
One well-placed strike later, the man was spread-eagled, out cold. Ann surveyed the injured/unconscious/comatose men as Donne felt their wrists. “Well, none dead. That is good.”
“Is it?” she said. “Now they may attack someone else tomorrow night.”
“Well, um – you’re safe, I suppose.” He studied his thumbs as he twiddled them.
This is wrong, Ann thought, this is all wrong. How did he find me here? Surely he was not following me? He cannot know anything of me, I have not betrayed anything. Every notion in that dreamy head can only be assumptions, opinions. And now he must think I am daft for going out alone and down this dark street, being the male that he is, he will now assume the shining knight persona.
She clenched her fists, beside herself. The aim had been poise, grace, gently draw him in. That was why she had played the game so aloof. A distance. Now there were four stirring criminals lying on the street. Clumsy, stupid.
She stood there, clenching and unclenching.
Donne shrunk under her glare. “You’re – safe.”
“I had the situation contained,” she said, “until you leapt in, swinging fists.”
“Contained?” he said, miffed.
“Is there doubt in your tone, secretary?” she demanded.
“No, my lady,” he said quietly. “I am sure they were about to back away. I should have stood by and watched.”
From below them, the shaggy-haired man groaned. With a glance at him, Donne said, “Well. Let us go, then. I shall take you to your father’s lodgings.”
“Who told you I was going to my father?”
“My intelligence.”
“I can manage on my own.”
“You require an escort.”
“I know the way there and it is fairly near.” She turned to leave, but he stepped before her.
“Despite your ignorance,” he said, “or loathness to acknowledge reality, this is in fact London, a dirty, gritty metropolis crawling with criminals (see those on the ground). But even on the well-to-do Strand, you need me because in case you’ve not noticed, a woman walking alone, especially at night, is a violation of many social codes.”
She moved. He blocked her. “My lady, I will not abandon you to the dangers of further aloneness. I can see you safely to your destination.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Allow it for my ease of conscience at least,” he pleaded.
“Would I?”
“Madame….” he said quietly, evenly.
Ann paused before extending her hand, at which a look of great relief washed over his face. Smiling a little, he offered his arm and Ann, cautiously, put hers on his. She could see that Donne, beneath his smile, was nervous. He did not try to take her hand as they walked back to the Strand, but if he had, his would have been tense and clammy. His eyes were quick, preoccupied. He was thinking of how she had watched him fight. After a long silence, he made a remark, prompting a conversation that he hoped would help him explain. “That certainly was dangerous.”
“Indeed,” she said smartly, watching the disappointment in his eyes when he thought the conversation would cease there. Then she obliged his plan. “You must be skilled in combat, secretary.”
A flood of relief from Donne. “One picks up a few things under Raleigh,” he answered nonchalantly, his arm relaxing.
No, Mr. Donne, she thought, of course I don’t suspect you’re from the Order.
Once more they were in the Strand, lights and color gyrating eagerly around them, and this time no one looked at her strangely except a dark, beak-masked plague undertaker who crossed their path with a glance. In their eyes, she was just another maiden with a friend, beau, or husband. And a few women glared at her enviously after looking over the smiling, streetwise Donne. He’d changed – his tense, stealthy gait relaxed into something easygoing, casual. Not a swagger, but she could easily imagine him doing that, too.
“Here we are,” she said, “in your dirty, gritty metropolis.”
A flash of white as the ostrich feather in his hat turned. “Hmm?”
“You look quite content. At ease, here.”
“It is home,” he said. “Dirty, gritty, porous, ancient, squalid, splendid, blazing, blooming, alive.”
She nodded, watching him flush with happiness.
“A grand place to be a poet,” he said. “I grew up here. A shame you don’t like it, there is so much here, so many people, all living and buildings so old you’d swear they’re alive too. Do you have buildings like that in Surrey, my lady?”
“It is farm country, and my father’s house is rather new.”
“Is the land green?”
“It is very green, especially in the morning. On one side of Loseley Manor are woods, and on the other barley fields.”
“Are there goats?”
“Goats? Of course. Why do you ask of goats?”
“I have a friend, my lady, who loves his very dearly. Not as he loves his wife, but very dearly. Where he goes, often goes the goat. What he eats, often eats the goat. Why shouldn’t he love the goat? Why can we not all love goats?”
Ann did not understand. She said, “I thought you were beyond ridiculous sentiment.”
He laughed.
“Do you mock me?”
“No, no, please,” he said. “Never at you. I am just being wry.”
She looked away, intending to make him suffer with her coldness.
Though he did not seem upset, even smiled. His teeth were bright and white. He repeated. “I must appreciate things in their poetic ways. Your Loseley – is it like a pastoral?”
“I have not read many. Like Marlowe, you mean?”
“The Passionate Shepard to his Love?” he said.
“If that is what it is called.”
He closed his eyes and smiled like a man breathing in a much-loved fragrance, and, his free arm waving expressively, recited,

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields —

“Thank you kindly, Donne, but that will suffice,” she broke in, fearing a recitation.
“You wish to hear no more?”
“Of that, or anything else.”
He seemed content with this and did not look at her until they arrived at the inn at Charing Cross.
Was this a bad sign?

Perhaps Donne had yet to yield because it was dark. Or he’d just been in a fight. Finally he spoke before her father’s door. “You’re Ann More,” he said, knocking. “You walk by yourself at night and do not like Marlowe.”
“Donne – do not judge me by this.”
“If you wish,” he said graciously. “But how shall I judge you, then? Give me something.”
“I suppose you want me to discard my assumptions of you as well, and what I know about your poems?”
“I’m not asking for anything,” he said.
A servant opened the door. “Hello, Sundrille,” sighed Ann. “I’m here to see my father.”
At her word, the pallid sylph disappeared to return a few moments later with his master. More was dressed in dark red robes, the edges of his black beard freshly shaved. “My Ann,” he said warmly. “Cordially escorted by….” He made a great show of struggling with the poet’s name, his eyes glinting as the lump in Donne’s throat bobbed nervously.
“John Donne, so please you, my lord.”
“Of course. I thank thee. Please come within, for I have just set on the tea, and would much enjoy conversation.”
“I certainly would, good sir, but hath – have to attend to certain things. Surely you understand.”
“Naturally,” smiled More. “Truly thou hast my thanks.”
Donne bowed and left them alone. Over tea, Ann pondered why he had not accepted. Was he that afraid of Papa? She could understand that. Many people were. But if he was a spy, it seemed illogical of him to decline a chance to look at the dwelling of Egerton’s brother-in-law. Perhaps at the moment he had been out on the cursed Order’s bidding, thus the dark, leather garments, thus his presence on the forbidding backstreets, thus his haste in departing. She told each suspicion to Papa as they came to her. Lord More was pleased.
#
George More frightened me. Slinking among the chimneys, the livening air ruffling my hair while I looked down at the golden glow of the Strand, I was glad to be away. Egerton might not have drugged my tea, but Ann’s father I trusted not so far. Compared with him, Lovelace was cheery company.
“You’re back,” he grunted.
“Any sign of trolls?”
He held up something pumpkin-sized: a malformed, grimacing head with a pointed nose and leering mouth, swollen eyes shut. It hung from long grey hair he clutched in his gloved hand. At the sight of the bloody thing, the roof became unsteady, the distant light blurred and spiraled. My stomach lurched. “Would you put it down.”
He did. “Had something better to do?”
“Saving Egerton’s niece from a pack of scoundrels.”
“Shirk from the trolls, then save a demon. Excellent.” He gathered his things and the two shadowy heads, rattling them before me. “Bode needs these for a potion. I’ll be off.”
He was off. I sat atop St. Martin-in-the-Fields for a time, then went back to York House. When I climbed back through my window, I felt a strange relief, as if it was finally starting to feel like home. Warmth spread through my chamber as I lit the hearth and put on my night-clothes. Stretching, I glanced at my desk. The clocks rang ten – not late at all. I walked over and slid my pen into the ink and ripples of light fluttered from the tip against the silky jet pool.
She hated Marlowe.
At least I had a starting point for a poem. I tried to think of Marlowe’s opposite. Something, quiet, obscure, realistic. Well, Francis Bacon. But he wasn’t a poet. Oh, well. At the top of the paper, I wrote, A Ballade in the Style of Bacon. The smell of hickory smoke and breakfast filled my mind. I crossed it out, frustrated.
Come live with me, and be my Love. It would drive her mad.
I could see her face, her eyes narrowing as she recognized the opening. Then she would read furiously, then thoughtfully, then avidly, she couldn’t put it down, I was throwing in metaphors as clear as a glassy creek, I was writing with colors as lush as Loseley in the morning. I was drawing it shut with a ringing, ringing end.
At my fingers was a finished poem.
#
The next day, Ann sat in a circle of ladies with Madame Egerton, embroidering a handkerchief with an animal that after a time of stitching she noticed was a goat. A servant entered and handed her a letter, shut with wax but bearing no seal, wrapped with a pink satin ribbon. She tucked it beneath her fan, and opened it in her rooms before dinner.
The page was crisp and thick, lawyers’ parchment. At the top was a dedication, in elegant script.
To my beloved Ann More, for whom the Marlowe is not sufficient, from Egerton’s humble secretary in hopes that she will, if for a moment, grace him with her thoughts.
He was thinking of her, and inviting her to the same. She did – briefly. Then she put the poem in her drawer and did not read it until several weeks later.

THE BAITE
Come live with mee, and bee my love,
And wee will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and christall brookes,
With silken lines, and silver hookes.

There will the river whispering runne
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the Sunne.
And there the ’enamor’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swimme in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swimme,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seene, be’est loath,
By Sunne, or Moone (thou darkenest both),
And if my self have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legges, with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poore fish beset,
With strangling snares, or windowie net:

Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest,
Or curious traitors, sleavesilke flies
Bewitch poore fishes’ wandring eyes.

For thee, thou needst no such deceit,
For thou thy selfe art thine owne bait;
That fish that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas, is wiser farre than I.


DONNE.

“The Fox is dead,” the townsmen said, and nodded slowly, and trudged on. William Cecil passed on August fourth; a lordly train bore him down the Strand to Westminster Abbey, and then to Lincolnshire, and from my window I saw the city looking after him (the heads of the people turned solemnly for a moment as the hearse disappeared into the Meadow, but I could swear that London itself breathed a valediction. Looking up from my bedroom desk, I wasn’t sure what to feel as the dark blur receded into the red sunset. One couldn’t be certain the old man hadn’t been behind the persecution of people like my family.
Cecil, taken suddenly, violently sick at nearly eighty, which should hardly seem unusual. Though I remembered his face from Star Chamber and his words of reconciling Essex – some hunch told me it was important. The first reaction was to suspect Egerton of having him poisoned, but I tried to be rational. Bad feelings were nothing strange in this place, I mustn’t think of Cecil.
The next day in Council, the Queen had her page carry out the vacant chair, her face granite. That evening Ben Jonson had pinned an epitaph in the Mermaid Tavern.

Cecil the grave, the wise, the great, the good:
What is there more that can enable blood?
The orphan’s pillar, the true subject’s shield,
The poor’s full storehouse, the just servant’s field.
The only faithful watchman of the realm,
That in all tempests never quit the helm.

Despite my dark brief unease, I seemed the only one not grieved.
“A shame he is dead,” said Egerton. “He was dear to me.”
“He’s dead, Jack,” said Shakespeare in the pub. “This counselor is now most still…and most grave. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. Come, miss, another ale.”
The grey aftermath was muddled again by the death of Philip of Spain, England’s greatest foe for most of living memory. For a few days, the faces in Star Chamber (still without Devereux) smiled and flushed with mirthless joy. Their drained eyes shone blearily as they told one another they had control, while the world they had always known slipped behind them.
Henry Wotton wrote me sometimes from the fair province of Essex, and I said he wasn’t missing much, just people dying. Rulers, yes, and our soldiers in Ireland, massacred in the spectral, shrouded bogs. Like stags in a hunting-park, some passed now, some later, like my brother, like Thomas More, like Cecil, like Philip. Wotton wrote and said I should not pursue such dark thoughts. “Methinks thou shouldst benefit from committing thyselfe once more to thy poetrie. The Baite was delightful.”
How lovely, Wotton. Was he my friend now that I had a little sphere of influence at York House?
(Not that said sphere had any influence over Ann More.)
Two days after I’d saved her on the streets, I saw her in the library, bent studiously over a book. I said, “My lady, you’re well? Your constitution was not upset by the attempt on you?”
Her eyes did not stray from the page. “Why would it be?”
She was getting on my nerves. But I smiled. “That’s good. Did you recieve my poem?”
“It was nice,” she replied.
Was she honest? It was nice? Not noteworthy in any fashion? Nice – trite – adequate? It was anger and frustration that made me stab straight at her heart.
“You are reading?” I knelt beside her and reached for the book, putting my hand on hers with a touch as gentle as the lashes of a dove (i.e. very angelically gentle).
Her eyes moved a fraction and I felt her cold hand shift slightly.
“My lady,” I said, examining the cover.
She waited; our faces were close at this point, closer than they had ever been before. I was wearing the cologne, but I hoped that such closeness wouldn’t let her smell the faint strangeness of my vampire-scent underneath it. I looked at her book and murmured, “Mmm. Machiavelli. The Prince. You like it?”
“It is not to my tastes.”
Of course not, I thought. He’s far more compassionate than you.
“What is to your tastes?” I asked. “We know it’s not Marlowe.”
“I thought we’d agreed to forget two nights ago.”
“How could I?” I said, eyes deep and searching, a few strands of my hair casting their shade over my starry gaze.
She removed her hands and book from mine and replaced her eyes to the page. “It’s not that hard, believe me. Stand up, you look foolish.”
“I thought we were friends now, you and I.” Dejected, I sat cross-legged on the carpet, as she began to read again. She didn’t send me away. From the windows, late afternoon light washed over the rugs and bookcases and gleamed on her dark red hair. A deep, cold uncertainty, like peering from a precipice into a pool without an end.
#
September: the light on London was gold, the leaves fluttered down in red and orange like paper from an Earl’s parade. There was a scent on the air of hay and spice, warm on the chilly breeze, fragrant and invigorating. Sitting in the York House gardens, I would wonder at how fast summer had gone by.
Given that small vampire part of me, my sense of time was skewed. It wasn’t noticeable in the short term – people around me didn’t rush by swiftly, I couldn’t sit and watch a flower bloom and die with endless patience – no, everything was normal until I looked back on anything before two weeks ago. Twenty days, six months, three years, it made no difference. Since I had been bitten, all the past had been distorted – it all seemed like only yesterday, a year was starting to seem shorter and shorter. I was twenty-six. I still felt eighteen.
#
I missed the good company of Itzak and Ben and my horse Abernathy, too.
On one of the balconies, Tom and I were talking as we looked out across the Thames. Suddenly I felt an arresting pressure on the back of my skull, of my thoughts pulled from my brain, of my tongue loosening obediently.
“Father,” said Tom quietly, looking away as Egerton approached.
“The morning cases have been completed, then, Donne?” said the demon, and placed a friendly hand on my shoulder to lead me into the hall. The touch rose fear and strange reverence in me.
“You wish something, lord?” I murmured.
“Yes. Our interrogators at Court have been busied so of late, and have sent a few prisoners to me. However, I am fatigued, and would ask you, secretary, to conduct the last interview.”
We descended below ground into a hall of stone, lit by struggling torches casting a glow through the stale, close air. I could see no fine tapestry, smell no perfumes here.
“There will be guards outside, have no fear. I shall be just without, should you need me.” Nodding, I stepped forward. The guards opened the doors. With a straightening of my hat and a lift of my chin, I swept in.
On one side of the battered desk sat a bear of a man, brown hair falling unkempt about his shoulders, his body crammed angrily into the chair. His eyes widened in incredulous relief as he saw me.
No. No. Oh, damn, no.
Mechanically, I stalked to the desk, looking down. Behind me I glanced at the door – it had a barred slit, Egerton from his place outside would hear all that was uttered. Ben glanced up at me happily but I was too frozen to notice. Was this Egerton’s doing? Somehow he knew I was friends with Ben Jonson. Somehow he’d known.
How.
I snatched the pages from the desk, scanning them.
Benjamin Jonson, charged with manslaughter.
I could feel the green eyes on my back. Wiping my slick palms on my trousers, I seated myself, took a quill, and began on one of the forms, staring as hard as I could at the paper.
“Well?” said Ben.
“Excuse me?” I said blandly.
“Come on.”
I swallowed and reviewed the form. “Mr. Jonson, yeoman, charged with the murder of Gabriel Spencer, fellow actor, yesterday, September 22nd. You have been brought here on behest of the Chamberlain of Cheshire, Former Attorney General, Privy Councilor, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Master of the Rolls Sir Thomas Egerton —”
“Would that be a lot of capital letters?”
“Your cooperation is important. I shall ask you a number of questions regarding the crime, and you’ll answer to the best of your ability. Maintaining a truthful conscience will go great lengths to aid your case. Have you a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
I looked over the paper, where the details of his lawyer, finances, and dealings were listed and defined. Taking the quill, I filled out what I could, asking about the rest.
“Jack,” he said.
“Who?” I drawled.
“You, Jack Donne,” he exclaimed.
A cruel, complacent smile touched the corner of my mouth. “It is John Donne, secretary now, I am afraid.”
“My friend.”
“I do not think so anymore, bricklayer.”
“I do not lay bricks,” he growled, the chain that held him to the wall rattling.
“Then perhaps I meant a different Jonson,” purred my veneer. “I have changed, Ben. I am here on this side of the desk, while you are on the other. Anyway. I see here that a few months ago you wrote a scandalous play titled Island of Dogs —”
“Isle of Dogs,” he snapped.
I corrected the paper. “I was not in England – I was in the military service of our country, while you slandered Parliament.”
Ben Jonson’s eyes flashed with frustration and, I thought, a genuine hatred.
Well, Egerton was listening to me. What was I supposed to say?
“And this from the boy who used to rub shoulders with me in the Theatre and honor his brother’s memory.”
“I have left the worlds of persecution well behind me. I have been rewarded by lord Egerton, and perhaps it will interest you that I prefer living like this, sound and well-off and secure.”
Now I turned my words to the matter at hand. “You’re being held, Jonson, for the murder of a certain Mr. Spencer, an actor of the Pembroke’s Men, in Shoreditch yesterday.”
“I deny it!”
I wrote this down. “Then please detail what actually occurred.”
“He challenged me.”
“It was a duel, then?”
“Yes – with the sword. And his had ten inches on my rapier. Gabriel Spencer was the attacker.”
“What would trigger such a bloody quarrel?”
His eyes were full of meaning he tried to gesture to me – something about the Order.
I glanced at the door. “Describe Mr. Spencer, if you would.”
“A varlet!” he boomed. “A villain, a —”
A vampire. I gave him a nod to tell him I understood.
“I suggest you clam yourself. Since Spencer is dead, I doubt he will be affected by your vehemence. The Lord Keeper himself stands outside this cell, listening to us. For your own sake, I’d caution you to keep your tongue in check, lest you say something that should displease my lord.”
“Perhaps I should.”
At that moment I felt the presence in my chest and brain, the green eyes on me through the walls of the cell. With the guiding urge growing, the compulsion rising, my head felt weak, my stomach sick. I coughed, and a spot of ink spattered on the paper.
Ben was silent. I could see him picking up on my fear. Flashing me an encouraging smile, he gestured for me to go on.
I swallowed. (If I spoke well, then I had nothing to fear from Egerton, then the feeling in my mind and my chest would release me. Part of me didn’t care what happened with Ben, as long as the green eyes left. Only a part, a passing thought, but it was frozen with terror.)
“You were my friend,” he said, probably enjoying the chance to be an actor.
“Even Jack Donne would not have stood by a rogue and a murderer.”
“I killed him in self-defense!” he cried, rattling his shackle. “…Look. I’m sorry. I’m famished. And I’m angry. And you’re not helping. I have a wife and a little son by Cripplegate. Please.”
“If you wish to see them again, you had best cooperate.”
“Yes,” he sighed.
After that, his show of anger deflated, and his dissolved from snarling theatrics into a subdued compliance with an actor’s mastery. Gradually, his flashes of temper erupted less and less, and his tone was quiet and grey. The demon listening outside would have commended his secretary, whose glacial tone never wavered as he questioned Jonson on every detail of the duel.
I noticed a strange bulge on his right arm, which I tried not to look at. Once, he rolled up his sleeve and checked a bandaged wound wrapped in dirty cloth. He shook his head. “He nicked me, it’s nothing.”
“It looks serious. How old are the wrappings? I think new ones may be needed.”
“You care now?”
“It is in our best interests that you survive until a trial. The Crown would not want a wound to carry you off before your own sentence. I’ll have new ones brought.”
“Sentence? Death?” he cried, eyes wide and filled this time with genuine fright. He took my hand in his, nearly snapping my wrist.
I got him to release his grip. “So much depends on the trial —”
“But it was in self-defense!”
“The jury will determine that,” I said, sounding afraid.
“What about my wife, and my son? He’s learning to talk. He babbles mostly. She told me he just said ‘circumnavigate.’ Circumnavigate. He’s only two. Where did he learn in – what kind of toddler goes around saying – circum – circum —”
My frame shook and I glanced behind me, my heart quivering for my friend and the boy I had never seen. What had I done to deserve this? Trapped here with Egerton at my back, and if he heard my sympathy, I feared … I feared terribly – my pen danced in my hand – but I could see that it was nothing to the desperate panic Ben felt.
“I recommend that you maintain your decorum, Jonson.”
“Decorum,” he snarled. “They will order me to death?” he said. “No. I will do anything. What must I do?”
“I will contact your lawyer. Meanwhile it will be helpful if you obey every order, and find within yourself a desire to be contrite, repentant. Look hard. It is there. I found it.”
He nodded.
“Or perhaps,” I said softly, “you could plead as clergy.”
A brightness came into his eyes.
“I think that will be all, Jonson. Your account has been recorded for future reference. Now you will be escorted to a more permanent cell to await your trial, which I shall arrange.”
“So efficient,” he said.
“I am, Mr. Jonson. I am.”
#
After I left Ben, stalking from the room like a lion from a kill, I showed the Lord Keeper what notes I had amassed from the interview. His eyes scanned the papers, roving to and fro beneath his dark brows. He commented on my note-taking. It was the first time any displeasure in his voice had been toward me. Of course he had known of my friendship with Ben. He’d known all the while.
“You are well?” he asked with fatherly concern.
I pulled together an explanation. “He shifted his bandages, sir, and it was deep and raw and there was all this blood, and I just felt so ever lightheaded. I’m sorry, my lord. I’m just … I am squeamish.”
I wasn’t wholly lying. I could feel my legs shaking beneath me distantly – I saw a slight fog, everything felt watery – as for a moment the ground wobbled beneath me, everything churned as the terror subsided but guilt overwhelmed me. Surely they wouldn’t hurt Ben before his trial. Surely his wife and son would see him soon.
Egerton had a hand on my shoulder and was leading me to his study. Soon I was sitting before his fireplace with a cup of tea steaming in my hands. Wafting its sweet heavy smell cleared my head a little.
“It is an assam,” he said, standing behind me. “It will help.”
I put it to my lips.
“Perhaps it was more than the wound.”
“No, no, my lord,” I objected, a little too quickly.
Even with the hot tea warming me, I shivered. Egerton came beside me. “You conducted yourself admirably. At times you wavered – trust me to notice that you wavered – but I am certain that next time you will correct yourself. You will in my service question a few criminals. They will try to move you to pity, their pathos will scream to you. We must not listen. We must not let ourselves lose focus. You knew him, Donne. I understand why you told him to plead clergy.”
His hand rested on my shoulder. I shifted on the upholstery of the chair, wishing that the soft, purple velvet would swallow me.
“You will not be so easily moved next time. Drink.”
I drank. I didn’t care if it was drugged, as long as it could ease this fright and guilt and sickness. Warm china was slick against my hands. The fire crackled and danced before me, distracting me, luring the edge from my fear. I heard my heart kicking and tried to still it, tried to think only of the flames. Blood rushed to my face. Why fear? – there was nothing to fear. I relaxed each muscle, one by one; I pressed Ben’s desperation from my head.
“I feel better, my lord.”
“I knew you would, my secretary. Not guilty about Jonson?”
I, the secretary, smiled wryly, leaning back, closing his eyes. “But the guilt is for being moved to lenience, my lord. I should have done more to – silence him. Now he’s probably laughing at me. He must be laughing.”
“It was your first time. You must not hold standards so high that you suffer from them.”
I paused, sighed, nodded.
“We must be patient. The best progress is slow.”
“I….”
“Worry not. With me you shall go far: farther than your family or Jonson could ever imagine.”
“I seek nothing for myself.”
“All very admirable, or course. And yet you cannot disguise the gleam in your eye in Whitehall. You think of Thomas More, don’t you, John. How far your family has fallen, and how much you want to go back to the honorable power that was left behind.”
Then I heard the sound of his door opening and sliding over the rug, and soft boots on the floor. Someone else in the room. A hard, audible breathing, hissing vigorously. Who was it?
Lord Egerton gestured, and the feet walked towards the right. The old man said, “We shall talk further, Donne. Consider what I’ve said.”
“Yes, lord.”
I had thought there was nothing worse than being alone with Egerton, but now I was finding myself even worse at ease now that another had joined us, one I did not know. I set down my tea.
“Your illness has passed?”
“Yes. I cannot thank you enough.” I knelt.
He put his palm on my head.
From within me I felt sick again, and cold, but the sensation stilled me. I felt calmer. Almost. Was I growing used to it? Was he doing something to me?
Then it was gone, so subtly I hardly felt his palm withdraw.
He told me to rise, and I did. There was a grey-haired man standing beside Egerton’s desk. I looked him over: high boots stained with something dark, luxurious crimson dress, a face whose age it was impossible to define, seeming young and ancient at the same time. Anxious, gleaming eyes met mine. He smiled at me. And I knew who he was.

I was walking, and above me the sky was dark, and the townspeople towering above had their heads downcast. My father held my hand. That was all I could remember of my father, walking through London with him: no gifts, no holidays, not even a face. We would walk, and pass the looming bulk of St. Paul’s and the crowds gathered around the spectacle taking place.
The soldiers would recognize us, even though my father taught us how to walk with our heads down. Fingering their pikes, they would suggest that we stayed to watch.
“Watch what, dad?” I would ask.
“Nothing; remember to keep your head down.”
I would duck my head, but not before catching a glimpse of the man stepping onto a platform, the grey-haired man with the ageless face and the bright, voracious gleam in his eye. His, I think, was the first Otherlight I ever saw. Almost every time we were stopped before St. Paul’s, that man was there. The memory of my father was tied to that face, and the perversity of it sickened me more than anything, even blood.
And then from the platform would come the distant sound of screaming.
“Why do they shout, Dad?”
“It’s a contest, you see. Every day, they have a new man who tries to shout longer and louder than the champion.”
“Henry would be good at that,” I said. “Henry screams lots.”
“You take that back!” growled Henry.
“Henry,” said my father. “Eyes down.”
One time, as we walked back to my father’s iron smithy, I asked, “Who’s the man with the grey hair?”
“He organizes the contests. If you ever see him, never look him in the eyes. He’ll have people follow you around, and search your things for anything they don’t like. Sometimes they take you away.”
I couldn’t remember when Father died – I was four, and the gaps in my memory were like the first chapter torn out of a book. If I had known his face would fade away, I would have studied it, every detail. Sometimes I imagined him with a black hair like mine, others in lordly clothes, others with muscles shining as he moved the bellows. But I knew nothing, recalled nothing but the fact that I’d probably loved him. And a bell tolling. I remember the bell.
#
Henry and I would walk past St. Paul’s as the crowds gathered. I couldn’t lift my eyes, some childish habit kept them down. But Henry would look. His eyes glued to the grey-haired man and what was happening on the platform.
“Jack!” he cried.
“Don’t look at it, Henry,” I muttered, my voice drowned by the gasping screams.
His hands clutched my arm. “Oh, my God, Jack!” His words shook and my arm throbbed as I pulled his shaking frame on. The eyes of the crowd didn’t notice the two lanky boys slipping past: all heed was to the exhibition on the scaffold.
“Jack —”
“I don’t care what they’re doing to him,” I snapped, “and you oughtn’t either.” I led him back to Stepfather’s house and went to the bedroom, hearing his sobbing and my mother’s soothing words from below. I don’t know what she said to him, but, still sniffling, he came in, lay on the bed, and stared at the ceiling.
“You should have seen it,” he spat.
“Well, you shouldn’t have.”
“I hate them.”
“Who them?”
“Elizabeth. Cecil. Walsingham. Topcliffe. I wish we could go to Spain.”
“Elizabeth hasn’t done anything,” I said. “And she let Uncle Jasper go.” Jasper Heywood was our mother’s brother and a Jesuit who’d been pardoned a death sentence. Mother took us to the Tower sometimes to visit him.
“What about Thomas More? What about Grandfather? What about the Queen of Scots? Elizabeth, Cecil, they all hate us, Jack. Antes muerto que mudado. ”
And he never forgot it.
#
The Order only took Henry and I because we’d already learned how to be zealots; how to fight and lay down our lives.
He got in a fight in Bread Street. When she saw us roughed and bloody, Mother sent him to Stepfather to have his scrapes taken care of. I stayed.
“I started it,” I lied. “Henry tried to stop me, but I didn’t listen.”
Of course Henry had started it. Henry had finished it. Henry and his fights.
“You ought to be as strong as you brother. Perhaps then he will not have to risk himself in a bout you could not win. Hast thou no honor, John? What would Thomas More say if he could see thee?”
The name of my great-great uncle always made me quiet, always halted me. What Thomas More would think. The stern, hawkish face of the statesman looked down at me, displeased. He said, “And you have let your brother come to harm! It could have been more than scratches, he could be hurt, he could be dead. I can only hope Our Savior can forgive you, John Donne.” And then I realized that was my mother speaking softly, evenly. I prepared myself for what I knew was coming.
#
Henry came back to the bedroom; I lay on the bed in the dimness. “You’re not hurt?”
“Nay that,” he grinned, but his smile fell. “Your arm looks bad. I didn’t know he hit you there.”
I pulled down my sleeve to cover the bruising. “Well, he did.”
He sat beside me, and after a long time I could hear him sniffling. With a vacuum inside me, empty and cold, I fell asleep and dreamed of the iron smithy I thought I’d forgotten, of the ringing, glowing metal. I woke up the next day, the echoes of it still clanging in my head, but realized that it was a bell from the city, tolling mournfully. Staring at the ceiling, I listened to it, wondering who it tolled for.
#
It was tolling as I walked down the street to the Clink, the prison, after many years. I had changed. I was of the Order. My feet were silent and the sounds I heard were heightened, vampire-bright. I heard them reverberating down the streets, bending in the wind, making bell-noise that much richer – and my eyes scanned the shadows for threat. My mind was blank and dull and numb with a fear that crawled all through me.
He was in his normal cell, but there was a deadness in the air – a tension – a still of bated breath. Leaning on the cell door was a grey-haired man, arms propped against the wood and his head rested on them, humming. His smile grew broader as I stepped forward.
His eyes were lit with something unwholesome, something exulting in its own unwholsomeness, something bright and giddy. Assessing me from head to foot, he said, “Hullo…. Five hours on the ropes, 170 drams of Waking Dream, I think, would do.”
“Excuse me? I am here to see my brother.”
He looked in the cell and smiled. “Ah! I see it now – brothers – of course.” Then he was opening the door for me.
Warily, I stepped in. Hay crunched beneath my boots as I sat down beside Henry, who stared ahead blankly, unconsciously. Something was wrong, there was something on his face that made him strange till he seemed someone else entirely. His wrists were raw and scabbed, his shirt gone, his elbows black and sickly blue.
“Henry,” I said, and there was no answer. Shaking him like he had shaken me that night with the vampire, I made him to turn half-dead, listless eyes on me. “I’m here, Henry.”
His voice was the softest of hollow groans. “…Hurts.”
“What happened?”
No answer.
“You’re all right?”
He shook his head desperately, and began to shake, putting his sleeve in his mouth and suckling it. I hugged him until he stopped, trying to make him warm, hoping that he was joking, or trying to fool the grey-haired man outside. But try as I did, no gleam was dawning in his eyes. I saw what was on his flesh, but – slowly, I came to. I recognized the marks of the rack on his skin and I saw the decay in his eyes.
Henry.
Henry. Henry. Henry….
“He said if I told him they would stop. So I did. Told them about Harrington.”
I closed my eyes, blinking away a burning moisture.
“It hurts.”
He was gone.
For the first time in my life, I wanted to get away from him. Run away. Leave him. His broken frame shuddering with every spasm of his mind, it frightened me. “Henry….”
“It hurts. I had to tell. Like you’d dig me out of trouble.”
I clambered up. The action was hard; my whole body was leaden, heavy, refusing to move. I don’t think Henry noticed me leave. He had his arms round himself and swayed like a tree in a gentle wind. It made me sick – he made me sick – I was revolted.
Where is my brother? I thought dimly. Where is Henry that’s not him it can’t be it can’t be it can’t be.
The grey-haired man smiled at me. I did not look him in the eyes. “You heard,” I said quietly. “You have seen him. Is there no place else? A room, or a warmer cell. He wouldn’t try anything – not like this.”
I was looking down, but I saw a warm smile. “Of course,” he said, “Of course.”
#
Newgate: Newgate is where they moved him. Take him from the Clink, I said. And they did. The grey-haired man sent the order up Chancery to Lord Egerton, who stamped it with his seal, too fast for my family to protest.
Newgate: Newgate is where they moved him. How I pleaded Northwell to have the Order intervene, but they couldn’t, they said. They said Henry had been taken up in human events, and the Order would not interfere.
In the shock and numbness of his mind, Henry would have sat, arms around his knees, the unwashed bodies of his fellows pressing in on him. The air would smell like filth and dirt. Then the men around him would weaken as they took sick, and Henry would have sat there, rack-wounds still raw, as the dark sores appeared on his arms, as he swelled, as he sweat – maybe he hadn’t noticed anything but the pain, and shuddered, thinking of the dark, cold shadow of the rack. But my insides crawled, burning, like living flaming whips within me, as I thought of his mind coming awake, seeing the plague on himself and in himself, knowing he was dead and knowing it was my words that had killed him.
I went into a bad way.
On barren streets, their frequenters inside, barricaded against the plague outbreak, I walked nowhere, watching the sun cast my shadow on the wall behind me. Or I’d lay on my bed in the headquarters with volume upon volume, reading every sentence that told me I was damned. Then I would feel myself for the sores and swellings, close to wishing that the plague would take me too. Then maybe Henry’s soul, from behind St. Peter’s gates, would finally be happy when he saw me in hell.
Henry had no funeral. His body had been buried under limedust in a mass grave outside Newgate. From somewhere outside my memory a bell began to ring – tolling from a distant steeple, and the song was cutting through the dreary London air, ringing down the stone and up the walls and through the windows, into the Keeper’s office. My body was bowed stiffly to the grey-haired man, and I was rising and looking him in the eyes.
#
He beamed warmly, shaking my hand with a firm, amiable grip. “Mr. Donne – Egerton has told me much, my son.”
Something foul and sour crawled across my tongue.
“Five hours on the ropes, 170 drams, not that we’d need it, would we?”
Egerton’s eyes looked forbiddingly at him, and Topcliffe shrunk meekly. But his eyes still shone, like an actor’s in a hilarious play that only he fathomed.
“We’ve met before!” he beamed, gesturing. “A cousin… no, a brother… Harry, was it?”
Did Lord Egerton see how livid I must be, how dearly I wanted to beat and choke and torture the life out of this man who had killed Henry? Would his loyal secretary care? Wary of my lord’s scrutiny, I looked at the rug, muttering, “Henry.”
“So I need not introduce the Tower’s Inquisitor, Richard Topcliffe,” said the Lord Keeper, putting a reassuring hand on my shoulder. My muscles relaxed. I would rather feel the cold, hollow sickness than the anger and the grief.
“John and I were drawing our talk to a close,” Egerton told the grey-haired man. “He did a commendable job of interviewing the prisoner you came to see.”
Richard Topcliffe smiled as if recalling a fine meal. “Jonson and I met in the aftermath of Isle of Dogs. He complied…. They did not need my service. So vulgar! It was planned. A day in the Scavenger’s Daughter. Ah.”
I forced my lips to move. “I certainly do not want to keep you, my lord….”
Egerton looked cross with Topcliffe as he said, “I will have the rest of your paperwork sent to the clerks, Donne. You may rest for the remainder of the day. You have been strained enough.”
“Oh,” I said. “I … thank you. My lord. Master Topcliffe.”
Topcliffe smiled at me.
I left, plunged inside a sick dream; I could imagine myself awake in the deeps of the night, Henry’s face still cast there like a shadow on the ceiling of my mind.
Scurrying down the hall, a servant saw my fell expression and turned the nearest corner. Good: one less person to see me gradually soften my footsteps before turning back silently and pressing my ear to the door.
Through the wood came voices muffled but whole.
As he always did, Egerton spoke low and calm. “No, I doubt they shall, Topcliffe. Mr. Donne’s documentation was nothing incriminating. There is still softness in the boy which needeth honing.”
But the grey-haired man’s voice was louder, higher, and vivacious. “Oh, I wouldn’t trust the lad at all, my lord. Bloody business several years ago with the brother and the papist priest. Henry on the rack, and he belonged in Bedlam after that. Plague took him first, though.”
Against the wall, my knuckles were burning, and I relaxed my hand.
“And such an end as the brother’s would make anybody mad for revenge,” Topcliffe continued, “let alone a Donne.”
“You read pain, Inquisitor, but not people. He is no threat. You are here for Jonson, not my secretary.”
“Milord. I apologize. It is hard, when now the chambers are so quiet, the machines groan with rust, so thirsty.”
The floor began to gyrate as I listened, but I focused.
“In a short while you may find yourself busy again, Topcliffe. When there are fit subjects, you shall have them, I pledge you.”
I heard Topcliffe sniffle and laugh at the same time. “Thank you.”
“Yes, we are moving forward. Raleigh agrees with me, and soon he will try to convince Robert Cecil that O’Neill of Tyrone in Ireland should for all causes be assassinated. Perhaps that will end this rebellion.”
He wanted to end the Irish war? Why? But surely the demon wanted war – or could use it to send off people like Essex to die so that he could vie for more power in Court. For months, I had been harboring the theory that Egerton wanted to take the throne. How would it help to put down O’Neill, or end the war?
“Or,” said Topcliffe huskily, “or, you could kidnap Tyrone, and give him to me….”
“To indulge a sweet tooth such as yours, Inquisitor, is something I cannot allow. The Romans of old fed the lions little to ensure their hunger never faded. So, you see, it is for your own good.”
Topcliffe muttered something about not caring what the Romans did.
“Is that so? I think you would have enjoyed them,” said the Lord Keeper. “You and Nero would have gotten along.”
“ The one who fiddled while Rome burned?” There was distaste in Topcliffe’s voice.
“It was a lyre. I should know,” said Egerton. “Describe what you wish concerning Ben Jonson.”
Silence. For me, it seemed hours as I bent there, harkening, hoping none of them could hear my pulse hammering against my throat.
“I – I – you have probably guessed, my lord.”
“So I have.”
“I suspect he is a traitor….”
Giving a chilly laugh, sweet and ringing, Egerton replied, “I doubt he is. A fool, maybe, but only so.”
“I could find out…” said Topcliffe. “I could —”
“I will have MacGregor deploy spies to observe Mr. Jonson in the gaol. And if anything unearthed persuades us he is a threat to society, we will proceed from there. You see, by handing him over to you, I risk upsetting the delicate psyche of my secretary.”
Who is MacGregor? I thought.
“Donne knows Jonson?”
“And well, I am inclined to believe.”
I cursed myself. You simpleton, Jack. You shouldn’t have offered the bandages, or softened.
“Trouble?” said Topcliffe.
“I will re-examine Donne after closing up affairs in India. He is of little consequence, and it irks me that MacGregor and yourself are so concerned with him when he merits the suspicion of no one else. Even More thinks nothing of him. Is it jealousy, Topcliffe, or merely the compulsion to use your machines?”
“Just a chance with Jonson. Who knows what secrets —”
“—We will pull from a bricklayer.”
Mindful, imagining the disaster of them finishing the conversation and coming outside to find me there, I tiptoed down the hall, catching a few more muffled words – indistinguishable. Then I made down the stairs, easing my foot tryingly across each step before slowly applying my full weight. After each, I glanced back at Egerton’s door, ready to bolt if I saw it creaking open. Soon I was almost all the way down, and still the conversation was not over. Resisting the urge to steal back to the door, I resigned myself to descending the rest of the stair with the same meticulous pain. Better off safe.
I wanted to check on Ben, but I overrode the instinct. I couldn’t risk it, it’d be expected. I would be putting us both in danger. Henry’s face flew into my head, and then it became Ben’s, and I thought of myself going mad if I let someone else die at the hands of the grey-haired man. My heart kicked in my chest as I followed Egerton’s bidding and went to my chamber. The whole time I walked I could sense the walls of the dark manor edging in closer, waiting like the jaws of a massive beast to gulp me down. Dust motes drifted into the murky sunlight, and I was imagining them sticking to my tongue, plastering themselves to the sides of my throat.
I saw Liza come from the green curtain hall. “Hello, Mr. Secretary.”
“Hello.”
“I thought you were with my husband.”
“Lord Egerton needed me, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to talk.” I started off.
“Secretary —”
“I am sorry!” Hastening from the hall, wanting nothing more than to be rid of all their faces, I went to my room – the evil barred out by the crucifix above my door – I fell on my bed – the huge bed that smothered me – and pressed my ring. “Itzak,” I said, “it’s Topcliffe.”
#
It was tradition for the Lord Keeper to host lavish masquerades during the winter, particularly for New Year’s Eve in March. Ann knew that in Europe the calendars changed in January, but in England it just wasn’t so. So, March. Several months away.
However, for ladies of the Court it was never too early to prepare. One dreadful September afternoon when Lady Egerton (and by extension Ann, who was chained most days at her guardian’s side) was entertaining some Countesses, one of them had the perfect idea. Soon they were in a carriage, on the way to the dress shop. Ann had been hoping Lady Egerton would turn them into toads, but the old witch was in a better mood than usual.
Amidst the rows of silk and satin, all shining in soft, pleasant candlelight, Ann watched the older women try on gown after gown after gown, assisted by the store’s owner, who could not ignore such socially prominent Somebodies. Out of kindness (or something like it), Tom’s wife Liza invited Ann to join them.
“I would not want to burden anyone,” said Ann.
“It’s no trouble. Just try on anything you fancy. All Hallows Eve is coming soon.” Liza wore a sharp black dress embroidered with green, and called to her servants. “Take it off, it’s dross.”
Ann drifted through the shop, fingering the occasional gown and wondering which one Donne would take to. They were all baroque, and with a touch of self-dissatisfaction Ann knew that they would look fine on a grown woman, not a girl. She could picture her sister in any one of them.
Liza sensed she was having trouble. “Anything you’d like. Something dark, perhaps, for All Hallows Eve? What do you think?”
“I do not know.”
“How about something dark.” Liza located a deep green gown, and held it out before Ann. “Dazzling.”
Surprised to find her mood lifting, Ann stepped behind the curtains and some servants helped unlace her outer dress. She supposed she should be used to it by now, but having humans see her in her petticoats and bare feet was unsettling. Quickly, she slid on the green dress and stepped out to show Liza.
The vampire smiled. “It looks nearly perfect.”
“I am not sure Papa would want me wearing something he had not approved.”
Liza waved a hand. “I’ve more than enough money for the both of us, and who could not approve of that?”
“All right.”
“You are so pretty, Ann. You have hair a better red than the Queen’s was once. He’ll be powerless.”
Ann tensed. “Who?”
“Isn’t there somebody?” said Liza. “What else could make you change your mind so quickly? You’ll draw his eye in that, I promise.”
“There isn’t any man,” said Ann. Papa had told her it was vital: no one was to know of her doings with John Donne.
Liza winked. “I see. Shall we find something for Christmas? Oh, look at this one….”
Ann sat and waited Liza returned, dazzling in a new dress. She said, “You look beautiful, my lady.”
“You think so?” said Liza, inspecting herself. She was not beautiful, she was flawless. For a moment, Ann wondered if John Donne’s eyes had ever glided furtively across the vampire. Of course, she thought. Of course, because he is John Donne of the poems and what man wouldn’t want something like her? And those dark eyes with their magic could make him tell her anything while I try with my wits to no avail.
Upset with herself – how dare she envy Tom’s whore – she toyed with some jewelry until Liza said, “Your mind is somewhere else. It’s not about him, is it? My dear cousin. Tell me about him! – but don’t worry, you needn’t give his name.”
Ann said, “There is nobody.”
Liza nodded. “A silver dress, I know, for dancing late into the night with him….”
If only I could be at Loseley, thought Ann, doing one of the several thousand things I’d rather be doing.
#
A clatter of metal. A flickering torch. Two dark figures in a small underground room, facing each other over a table. A small but valuable quantity of coins had been emptied from a purse and shone gold in the dim light.
“And what d’you want me to do again, good sir?”
“A message, to Ben Jonson, a prisoner in your cells.”
“You a friend?”
“Yeah. Here it is, I’ve written it down on this —”
“Oh, no, sir. You’re to say it straight to me. Don’t want to take more risks than I need to.”
A flustered sigh. “Fine. Let me think. This is hard…. It’s my first bribe ever. Nervous.”
The other man inspected a coin. “Take your time.”
“You seem like a seasoned expert. What kind of message works best?”
“Short and to the point.”
“Tell Ben Jonson that Egerton has spies in the prison and tell him to not say anything incriminating.”
“And if he asks me whose message this be?”
“He’ll know. And you’ll keep quiet, I trust?”
“For this much gold,” said the gaoler, “I’m as silent as the grave.”

If, Itzak thought to himself, this is how he reacts to me and my healing, I would hate to see him squirming at a doctor’s on the surface.
Itzak had cloths of cool water and was trying to daub at Jonson’s thumb, but the big man jerked his hand away, cradling it gently. “Look now, mate, I’d rather wait until it stops throbbing, perhaps in an hour, when it doesn’t hurt quite as much….”
Itzak snatched the hand back. “Of course, if you want gangrene, or infection, or —”
“Fine,” cried Jonson. “Will you just turn it towards you, so I don’t have to look at the thing….”
Minh, watching from another desk in Itzak’s laboratory, commented, “It isn’t that bloody.”
Itzak was free to clean the thumb as Jonson growled, “When I get my hands on that Topcliffe, I’ll tear him apart – arghh!”
The thumb was raw and dark, welted and blistered, the skin stretched grotesquely over the wound: the huge bulge of a branded T. Jonson said it stood for Tyburn, the field where the judge had commanded he be hung upon his next criminal offense. Jonson had spent three weeks in Newgate prison until his trial. Itzak found it hard to imagine the Jonson pleading guilty, but he had. Then he’d claimed the legal benefit of being a clergyman (an even more outrageous idea), and thereby had transferred to the bishop’s court, where he’d read a Latin verse from the Bible and been let go. Like that. Not before being branded and having his surface-world belongings confiscated, but besides that unmolested and unscathed, exclaiming, “Thank God for Jack! And pleading clergy!” Itzak was glad, but couldn’t help thinking of all the bona fide murderers and thieves escaping justice because they were learned in Latin.
Englishmen were mad.
He had Minh pass him a fizzing pink vial of burn potion. For a while, he rubbed the fluid in. Jonson, who whimpered uncomfortably, was finding it hard to keep still, especially when Itzak told Minh to hand him a vial of intravenous physicking liquid.
“Intravenous —”
“And if you would, Minh, there are injectors in the drawer. The small one should do.”
As Minh searched, Jonson fidgeted. “I don’t take to needles…!”
“Do you want to use that thumb again?”
“I could do without, come to think….”
Minh handed it to him, and he slipped it into the liquid and drew out the appropriate amount.
“And that is….”
“A curative fluid. The alchemist Léon brought it back from Florida. Do you see that alchemy chart on the wall behind me?”
“The one with the blue symbols on the silver parchment?”
“Next to it, with the red-ink illustrations.”
“Hey, it’s in Greek – OW.”
Itzak set the injector aside. “That was not bad, was it?”
“Define bad,” grumbled Ben Jonson. “And remind me why I’m here and not in the hospital wing.”
Minh, absentmindedly walking on his hands across the back of Itzak’s couch, interjected, “You did come in weeping and wailing and saying, ‘Itzak, Itzak, you’ve got to look at my thumb, it’s horrible, you’ve got to heal it….’”
“I did not!”
“‘So terrible!’”
“Will you shut up!” Then he cringed again as Itzak applied aloe to his thumb. “Ow, ow, now it’s…now it’s….” He lifted his hand and gasped at a healthy, pink thumb, a little bruised but alive and smooth. The swelling had vanished. Itzak gave a satisfied huff, content now that the ordeal was over. He had an obnoxious headache.
It went away by suppertime, when Itzak trudged above to get a tasteless meal of turkey and potatoes. As he normally did, he headed over to a table to eat and think alone, but Jonson insisted on accompanying. Since where Jonson went, others followed, soon Itzak was in the middle of a group of laughing people: Minh, Lovelace, Bode, Patel, Swancott – and Isabel.
Itzak choked on his turkey.
“You’re all right?” said Jonson.
“Fine —”
The playwright slapped him on the back, winding him but all the same dislodging the meat. Turning an uncomfortable shade of red, Itzak thanked him and stared at his plate.
Itzak found his thoughts going like this:
Oh, drek, why does Jonson have to talk about my laboratory – is Isabel looking at me? – Oh dear – she is now – just stare at the potatoes. Yes, the potatoes. All white and fluffy. Be the potatoes.
And then came a moody snort from Lovelace. At first Itzak expected retaliation for looking at Isabel, but Lovelace’s mind was far away. The conversation turned to monsters, and he said, “There was a demon last night, the scaly pale kind that lives in the Thames. Its one hand was all black and scarred. It had a lair in the sewers, under London Bridge.”
“Their eyes—” said Minh.
“Deep blue,” said Lovelace. “Deep as hell! So big and round. That’s what I saw first, you know, the eyes just gleaming in the dark. There was a bell ringing somewhere. Scared the thing deeper into the cave.”
Itzak felt the jocund mood of the table seeping away.
“It was tired. I was tired. I didn’t want to be there. Who does?” He sighed. “The cave was man-made, some sort of water-gate from before the Black Death, you know, half-underwater, and the moonlight doing that thing where it bounces on the river and into the cave and onto the ceiling in little ribbons. You know. And as I’ve got my knife out, wading through the sea-grass, those little ribbons are on the surface of the water, ripples. So it sees me and scarpers. There’s a ledge of dark stone, so it gets on it – it’s slippery – and I run after.
“There was cat fur and scraps of snails and nothing else. Water sloshing everywhere. And we fight and we fight and I corner the thing and it tells me to go away. Sobbing and crying, just go away.”
“Well, then,” said Jonson. “What did you do after that?”
Lovelace impaled a carrot on his knife and studied it silently.
Jonson clapped. “Well, that’s a lovely story, Lovelace, thank you!”
A few people shifted.
Minh said, “Tomorrow, you know, it is supposed to be warm out-of-season, and the sky ought to be clear and blue. Bowling on Lincoln’s green? Or maybe we could….”
But the silence, and the closeness it engendered in the air, smothered his words for him, as if it had not been his choice to stop talking.
Slowly, they finished their supper and dispersed. Itzak found himself pondering what Lovelace had said. Was the man trying to make a point? Or was it something that had genuinely startled him?
Itzak remembered things his mother had said when he had been young, on nights when fell winds howled around their cottage in the Alps. Itzak would be snuggled against her in a blanket from the sheep’s wool as the fire died down, listening to her tales of dybbuk and her superstitious warnings: always leave the windows open a crack lest you offend the demons, spit thrice on your fingers when you fear the Evil Eye, and be wary always because spirits cannot be predicted.
That had been then. But now? Demon-speak and what was Taint and black and white deciding to turn grey. Itzak had thought that working alchemy for the Order would have ensured some sense and constance, but things were quickly spiraling into anything but.
His train of thought was broken by Jonson. He held out his thumb, twiddling it for the alchemist to see. “I can’t thank you enough. Are you free of engagements tonight?”
“I…yes,” said Itzak with dread.
“How about a few drinks? It is the least I could do. Have you ever been to the Mermaid Tavern?”
“I have not,” Itzak answered, resigning himself to an outing. Leaving the grounds of the Lincoln’s University, they set off down the road. Thankfully, the city’s crowds had thinned, and they passed few people, and encountered fewer. When they did stop to chat, Jonson would greet someone, who would shy away, glancing down the street for fear of soldiers.
At the Mermaid, the front porch and the rest of Bread Street was silent and barren, though within was bright. Jonson peered and said, “Looks like it’s packed. I hope they’re stocked still. Brilliant, Itzak. What’s your fancy? A full, pure cup of Canary wine, German beers, the sweetest fruits, pastries, cheese, if you’re still hungry —” He opened the door and his jaw dropped. “What the DEVIL!”
Itzak ducked his head past Jonson’s shoulder and looked inside. The conversation was loud and bright, wine was flowing, a small band was singing, and a goat stood on a table looking down at a dancing circle. From a table, John Donne waved. Ben, Itzak following, shoved through the crowd and cried, “Whose bloody party is this? And two bowls of wine, miss. Ho, Jack! What’s going on?”
Jack clutched his arm. “Thank Heaven you’re safe!”
“Don’t thank just Heaven, it’s you who saved my skin,” laughed Jonson, taking a seat as Itzak did the same. He went on, “Right under Egerton’s nose, you helped me stay off the gallows. Capital acting, Jack! You nearly had me convinced, were you ever the contemptible little bastard!”
There was a blonde-headed man across from Jack, who glanced warily at Jonson before introducing himself. “Christopher Brooke of York town. I was in London and ran into Jack. We were roommates at Lincoln’s Inn.”
Jack coughed. “The law school…half of Lincoln’s.”
Brooke looked confused, and Jack waved his hand dismissively.
“I,” Jonson said, standing and bowing, “am Benjamin Jonson, playwright.”
“Pleasure,” said Brooke. “And you are….”
Itzak laughed to disguise his nervousness, and affected what he hoped sounded like an East London cockney. “I’m …Jim.”
“An interesting accent, my good man! Is it…Danish?”
“…German.”
“Well,” said Brooke, shaking Itzak’s hand, “any enemy of the Spanish is a friend of mine!”
Jack changed topics. “But you don’t know what’s going on, Ben? Shakespeare invited us all here on another urgent matter, but didn’t tell us yet – I suspect he’s waiting for us to get a little tipsy. But it sounds important. Look, he’s invited the Earl of Southampton, and Walter Raleigh, and Tom Walsingham.”
Itzak followed Jack’s hand as he pointed to a series of fancy Englishmen.
Soon the man himself popped up. “Greetings, fine gentlemen,” said a more-intoxicated-than-normal Shakespeare. “And Ben Jonson! You’re out of prison! I wished I could have read your Isle of Dogs before Topcliffe torched the scripts. But these are dark times, my dear friends, for the play-houses.”
He swept theatrically to the goat’s table, took a mug of ale, and pounded as hard as he could. “O, hark, ye denizens of yon fair Mermaid!”
The chatter quieted, men turned to face him, and the music of the lute died away. Itzak was beginning to regret letting Jonson drag him here, and wondered for a moment’s horror if his laboratory was safe.
“First of all, thank you kindly for coming here this evening. Thou all art dear to me, and I trust thee to understand, my appreciation is inexpressible… unless, of course, I were commissioned to write a sonnet, in which case all cheques should be made out to Bill Shakespeare, Poet of the Age, the Beast from Stratford and delivered through the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.” He beamed hopefully.
The campy man Jack had identified as the Earl of Southampton fingered his long lock of hair before telling a servant to write it down.
“O, generous youth, so heaven-blessed in face, refinéd true in manners, mind, and grace,” said Shakespeare with a bow to Southampton, who smiled self-lovingly. A few more people took out their pens and began writing cheques. Itzak wondered if he would ever get that wine.
“But there are more important things,” cried Shakespeare. “Let me explain. For twenty-one years the Chamberlain’s Men and the Burbage family have paid the lease on the grounds of the Theatre, and O what a twenty-one years it has been. With the sweat of our strife and the quiet tears of our souls’ labor we have transformed London. Mr. Burbage, was it not your father who built the Theatre, your father raised the timbers and the stage. Was it not you, Southampton, who has been our patron – nay, our patron saint! Was it not you, my friends, actors and poets and men of spirit all, who have wrought this dream!”
The applause was deafening. Itzak clapped, not really understanding, but Jonson and Jack were shouting in agreement. Gradually, it died down.
Shakespeare, smiling, said, “Well, we’ve been kicked out.”
“Why?” called someone.
“Financial complications.”
“What?”
“Giles Allen, landlord of the Theatre, has declined to continue our lease, and now we cannot pay his hefty sums.”
“He can rot!” called another, and the Tavern erupted in cries of “Aye!”
Shakespeare carefully lifted his goat from the table and set it on the floor for it, like the men of the Mermaid, to stare up at him in wonder as he ascended. The drunken happiness had left his eyes, leaving a gleam that was harder, saner. Staring into the distance, gaze intent, he raised his hand before him.
“In a few months they will tear it down.”
A few more shouts rose but at a wave of his hand the room went as silent as an airless tomb.
“My friends, countrymen, band of brothers, lend me your ears. Harken! As we stand on the threshold of history, I ask thee … what shall we —”
“Pay the rent?” said one of the tavern doxies.
Shakespeare turned and the room went silent. A few people fiddled their thumbs.
“I mean, if funds’re the problem, you could always sell some costumes, er get some indentured prentices to work for lower wages. Or maybe you could put on more shows and offer deals on group admission to ‘ncourage spending and expand revenue. Or invite shareholders to….”
Shakespeare glared.
“Or I could just be quiet.”
Richard Burbage wiped beer froth from his beard and snuggled against the Earl of Southampton. “If only there was someone influential and obscenely wealthy who would help us.”
“Get off me!”
Shakespeare stamped on the table. “Gentlemen, silence! Who the hell do you people think you are, answering my rhetorical question? Our dear friend Jack Donne has examined the conditions of the lease and has found an advantageous hole: we are paying Allen for his land. But who built the Theatre?”
“My father!” growled Burbage, toasting. “God rest his soul!”
“That’s my wine!” cried the Earl of Southampton.
“Apologies, milady.”
Shakespeare stomped. “Peace, noble sirs. The point is this: Allen owns the land, but the Theatre is ours! If we do not take it back, he will tear it down and sell its wood and pocket all he can. He thinks we have no play-house, but, my friends, we do. The land is expendable! The Theatre – well, it’s a creaky old thing, Burbage, I’m sorry, but it is. A building, that decrepit shell that holds the gleaming pearl. We take it down. We move it.”
Itzak watched the men’s faces go from shocked to puzzled to incredulous.
“You’re drunk,” said someone.
“That I am!” roared Shakespeare. “And I say we move it! Take the wood from right under Allen’s nose!”
“How?”
Itzak raised his hand. “Um, pardon me. Prithee. I’m – I’m – I’m sorry, but you could do it. I suppose. I could check with math, if you wanted.”
Three dozen eyes found him and looked on, unconvinced. Raising their eyebrows and chewing on their pipes, they were nevertheless willing to listen.
“Well,” said Itzak, “you build a play-house from the ground up, so you’d dismantle it from the top down. With a few carts, maybe you could wheel away the upper balcony-boxes intact. With the right hatchets and thirty men, you could have the whole Theatre a pile of wood in a night. I mean, I don’t know much about play-houses, but if I had the plans I could probably…”
“Are you a carpenter, lad?” said Shakespeare.
Itzak shrugged. “…Yes.”
The playwright eyed him curiously, and Itzak prepared for a question about his accent. Shakespeare petted his goat and said, “Where’s your drink?”
Itzak bit his lip. “I do not have one, sir.”
“Well, someone get him one!” Within a few seconds, the barmaid had handed Itzak an ale. Jonson clapped him on the back, and Jack toasted. Shakespeare was talking again:
“A new play-house, wrought from the venerable timbers of the Theatre. A new play-house, home to the Chamberlain’s Men forever after. The play-house of an age. Hark, gentlemen. On the banks of the south shore sits an empty rise of grass that waits for its glorious stage.”
“What’d you call it, then?” said Burbage.
“Aye!” said the Tavern. “A name! A name!”
Shakespeare paced. “A name, a name, a name. Aye, so much to the name. How, my friends, how to name this dream! How to name this play-house that will surely live in legend hereafter, that will for the rest of time entrap all that could ever be, or never be, upon this Globe!”
He clicked his tongue. “Ho, that’s catchy.”
“The Globe,” said Ben.
“The Globe,” gruffed Burbage.
“The Globe,” sniffed Southampton, sticking out his tongue.
Jack raised his mug and cried: “Ad Londonium et ad Globum! To the City! To the Globe!”
Itzak (rather to his own surprise) laughed.
Englishmen were mad.
#
“He didn’t invite me,” Ben said as the three of them walked back to Lincoln’s. But he brightened. “I suppose I was in Newgate. Speaking of which, you ought to have let me buy you a drink, Jack, since you’re the one who saved my skin. And Itzak. Look! Topcliffe branded my thumb, but see it now?”
At the mention of Topcliffe, Jack’s expression turned mournful and angry, his eyes flashing like a hawk’s. Itzak knew well what he had on his mind. Henry, Henry, Henry was what Jack was thinking, with a single, methodic devotion to his fallen brother’s honor.
Jack nodded, but his voice was dull. “It’s brilliant, Itzak.”
Then he turned on Ben. “I almost killed myself for you back there at York House.”
“I know.”
“If I get found out, Ben…I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it,” said Jack sharply.
Jonson kicked a pebble, murmuring, “If that’s what you think, maybe you should watch yourself. After all, you’re here, not scribbling away in your castle, eating lark and getting snug with Ann More.”
Eyes cold, Donne exhaled. “I am out,” he said, “encouraging street conversation about my Lord Egerton’s virtuousness and praising him among the boisterous cultural faction of London. So I have an excuse. I need to look at files Northwell might get me. About a man. MacGregor.”
“Never heard of him,” said Ben.
#
Nor had Northwell. I heard his monotone yet: “The name does not stir recognition. I will search, but I doubt such effort will yield much.”
I rubbed my eyes and glared at him and the barren room and for a moment, I couldn’t help but think of Egerton and his tea and how at least he seemed to care.
It was foolish and ignoble of me.
#
A usual winter night went thus: I woke, worked, breakfasted, worked, went to Star Chamber with Egerton, lunch, work, dinner, prayers and writing, sleep. Day blended into the next. Eventually I began to wonder if the monotony was affecting my person. I felt different. I couldn’t place it, so I assumed that it was something dastardly subtle; and when I finally perceived it I would be thrown with shock and horror. So each day I inspected myself in my looking-glass.
Perhaps one day I would notice that from all by bending over papers I then hunched like Robert Cecil. Or maybe all the fine food at Egerton’s table would soften my jaw or bring to my face the dull, happy languor of a sleepily content servant. Or perhaps York House was slowly Tainting me, and Otherlight would seep into my eyes.
Nothing like that had happened yet, but the fear of it was beginning to gnaw at me intently. On Sundays at headquarters, I asked Itzak if I had changed at all. He always said no, but I would go to my room and compare myself to a portrait from two years back.
“If anything, Jack, you are thinner than two weeks ago. And you are awfully wan. Have some extra roe and wine tonight, if anything.”
I sighed. “How’s Ben?”
“Actually, he’s in gaol again. For debt, this time.”
“WHAT?”
“He’ll be out soon, don’t worry.”
“Good God.” I rubbed my temples. “Well, anyway, I was wondering if you and Lovelace and the others are doing anything on New Year’s Eve. I think I know a way I can get into Egerton’s office.”
#
Late on a December night, Ben thrust a bag of tools into Itzak’s hands and dragged him to the Mermaid Tavern.
“What —”
“Come on! Bring those plans you made!”
They hurried through the snowbound streets, Itzak groggy and confused. When they arrived at the Tavern, Ben introduced him to a series of men: actors from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, carpenters. There was something mildly disturbing about seeing non-hunters holding hatchets, eyes gleaming, and Itzak was even more worried when he imagined how many drinks they’d had.
Ben was carrying a variety of bricklayer’s tools. Looking in the bag he held, Itzak went over spades, pliers, and rope, and said, “Why must they tear down the Theatre tonight?”
“The landlord’s in the country this week.”
“How will we get in without a key?”
“When we get done with the place, it won’t even have a door.”
“Granted.”
“Granted, what?”
“Granted we don’t get arrested. You’d be gestorben, hung!”
Jack had gone through so much to protect him, and here Jonson was endangering himself, carelessly, unashamedly. What would his wife and boy do? “How can you be so negligent?” said Itzak.
His lips tightened, and he frowned.
From the front of the Mermaid came a clatter and conversation as the final men arrived. Last-minute drinks were downed, and, a hearty song on their tongues, the party left. Itzak trudged in the back with Ben.
Shortly they came to the Theatre, and above loomed a creaky old building, wooden, ivy-covered, with a peeling sign and a huge pair of locked doors. Shakespeare, at their head (along with his goat), greeted another party of laborers who were already there, led by none less than the Earl of Southampton. By the looks of his velvet clothes and newly manicured nails, he was not planning on working. Rather, he looked at the rough, hatchet-wielding party with distaste and said, “Hello…Bill.”
“Hullo, Southampton! That hired help’s just peachy!”
“Half of the workers are mine, and half were paid for, courtesy of the Earl of Essex.”
Essex? Ben and Itzak exchanged glances.
“Very well,” said Shakespeare to the Earl, “we are at your command. Come up, Jim, show them the plans —” Itzak stumbled up and unrolled his diagram of the Theatre and detailed what would be done. Shakespeare assigned groups. Ben broke open the door and the men dispersed. By the light of the torches, hatchets gleamed as, board by board, the Theatre came down. Itzak had never seen a play-house up-close. It was a circular construction with fourteen sides. Worn-down galleries sat over a snowy lawn. Itzak imagined it in summer, in its prime: perhaps the calls of lovers’ voices, and a bugle playing, flashes of costume, and the sun.
Ben was beside him, prying away a wooden panel and tossing it down to the ground floor, where it was loaded on a cart. After a while, Jonson set down his hatchet and breathed. “So! Has Jack found a way yet into secrets of the Egertons?”
“I don’t know. He’s trying to win over that Ann girl and make her love him.”
Until the word “love,” he’d had no idea that Shakespeare’s players were listening. A few whistled.
“Hugging?” said one.
“Kissing?”
“Sleeping?”
“Uh —” said Itzak.
Ben laughed as he pried a beam from a bench. “From what I hear, she can’t stand him. Well, hell hath no fury —”
“—Like a maid in a good mood,” echoed the players.
Again an actor, Richard Burbage, turned and laughed. “Donne’s got it easy. At least she’s a genuine woman. You’re lucky you don’t have to kiss Juliet over there.” He stabbed a gruff finger at the actor behind him.
“Oi! Your lips ain’t so sweet, either, Burbage!”
“In Europe,” Ben said, “women are allowed to play the women’s roles.”
The groan from the actors said they already knew that.
Shakespeare popped up from the stairs. “I really do suggest you gentlemen get back to work instead of talking about Jack’s relationship issues. We’re behind. Fa-la-la-la-la, eh what!”
Itzak noticed that the goat was unsupervised on the stage below, happily eating away at the floor plans.
The thudding of wood and the creaking of walls coming down rang into the early hours of the morning. When the first rose-petal streaks glowed on the horizon, the once-proud Theatre had been reduced to a barren lot littered with rotting scrap-wood discarded by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Deep ruts scarred the dark, snow-dusted earth. Itzak could feel the triumph in the air, coming from the others, lightening. His sore muscles throbbed as he took a cart, but he felt all right.
Shakespeare and his goat walked beside him as they made their way down the street. “We’re eternally indebted to you for your assistance, sir. What’s your name again?”
“Jim,” said Itzak.
“Jack tells me you make fireworks and such.”
“He did?” said Itzak.
“And with a new playhouse and a whole new canon of plays coming up, perhaps you’d be interested in doing business with us.”
“Fireworks in a theatre?” said Itzak.
“And explosions.” He spun round like a dancer. “It’s going to be marvelous, Jim!”
“I’ll – think about it.”
“O, that’s a drab confirmation. As bleary as a sluggish man at dawn, as halting sure as any skeptic’s shrug. But O! If you could see what I have seen. Have I done yet what I must? I have barely begun.”
He huffed and stared ahead, setting his clear eyes forward. There was in them no cloudiness, no silliness at all this time, but a depth.
“I had a dream, two nights past. I saw shadow made form, made towers, made faces, spinning, thrashing like a tempest around me. Alien lights, like St. Elmo’s fire, and I was swallowed. Then I came upon a shore, boundless, made of glass. And before me were three women, clothed in darkness, faceless. They were weaving.”
“How interesting,” said Itzak.
He sighed. “The cloth was made of fluid shadow and of words.”
“Astounding, sir.”
Itzak thought but didn’t understand.
As the sun rose, gold and pink took London. They trudged on from the remnants of the Theatre.
#
Three days later, Giles Allen was facing a bare, disheveled lot of dirt and splinters. At first he had thought he had taken a wrong turn and missed the Theatre, but then he looked at the adjacent buildings, which without a doubt were those that, yesterday afternoon, had flanked the largest play-house in London. Then he’d thought it a trick of the sunlight, but the laughing urchins told him what he was seeing was real.
They watched as Giles Allen grew furious, then mad, then apoplectic. Spittle flew record distances. At the landlord’s bellowed command, a search of the premises yielded only one thing of interest, a note:

Dearest Giles: I write this laughing! If thou’rt looking for the Theatre, it’s gone. I had to say that, because knowing the pudding-brained choleric beggarly little pandering ninny that thou art, thou mighst not yet fathom’t. Who’s crying now? Not I. Hear me laugh! Ha! Ha! Pow! Bam! Long live the Beast from Stratford! Yours (not), Bill.

TO HENRY WOTTON.
Here’s no more news, than virtue. ’I may as well
Tell you Cales, or St. Micheal’s tale for news, as tell
That vice doth here habitually dwell.

Yet, as to’get stomachs, we walk up and down,
And toyle to sweeten rest, so, may God frowne
If, but to loathe both, I haunt Court or Towne.

For here no one is from the extremitie
Of vice, by any other reason free,
But that the next to’him, still, is worse than he.

If they stand arm’d with seely honesty,
With wishing prayers, and neat integrity –
Like Indians ‘gainst Spanish hosts they be.


Bidding thee farewell at Court – though from Court



were better Still.







DONNE.

Tom Egerton, against his father’s wishes, was going with the newly reconciled Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, to Ireland. The Queen’s anger had mollified, but his enemies wished to get rid of him, and he was to sail across the Celtic Sea and quell the revolts. Naturally it was fashionable to go with him.
Or maybe Tom just wanted the blood.
“Well,” he said, eyes blazing, “off to war!” The change in him was strange and awful.
His daughters! How they pleaded him not to go. And they seemed normal children with their eyes rimmed in tears. Egerton, too, was worried. I could see in the demon’s eyes the fear of losing a child – a child. And the girls – to lose a father. It was best not to think, because when I did the confusion was so great I wanted to scream.
Tom would come to me to be away from them, and then he was his old haughty self, and for a while I could forget what was going on. Perhaps time had made his presence bearable, like small bits every day makes one immune to poison. Or maybe I was the one changing. That would explain why one day, on an inexplicable whim, I went to Court.
Never before had I gone to Westminster without Egerton, and the buildings I’d grown used to seemed strange and forbidding again. I don’t think the palace guards recognized me without the Lord Keeper. As I slunk through the antechambers, trying to remain unnoticed, I had second thoughts. I’d have been more comfortable streaking through a coven of werewolves. And who was to say I wouldn’t find one here? Dark things were drawn to sin, so I had a good chance of seeing any number of lesser fiends. But I didn’t turn away. Tom said such good things about the Court.
I’d hardly been within five minutes before a squire approached me, chewing. “A thousand pardons, but have you seen a girl, yea high, blonde, pink dress.”
“I must disappoint you; I’ve not.”
Muttering something, he spat a dark glob into a flower-pot. I side-stepped as a servant bent to clean it up. My faith in English virtue quickly melting, I stared on in morose fascination.
From my perch beside a pillar, I watched the clusters of nobles, petty and powerful. I smelt vice and sighed.
I have come to Court.
Am I like them?
Of course you are, said a voice in my head. And a thousand squalid memories came back to sting my heart, the skeletons of old debaucheries I’d buried years ago.
Was my sin coming to Court? Was my punishment staying? I felt my body tense and my eyes fix to the wealth and the laughter even as I tried to pull them away, like it was a fever trying to purge itself from my blood.
As I thought the day could get no worse, it did.
Tom walked up, looking haggard. Like the norm of late, his clothes were dark and touched with disarray. Dim circles rimmed his eyes – blazing with Otherlight – but he looked happier than ever as he called my name.
God! I thought. Have I sinned so badly that You’ve chosen him to punish me?
He was holding hands with a young woman, blonde, in a pink dress. Both laughed merrily, and Tom said, “Hello, Jack. You’ve come at last to Court! See? Not so bad, is it?”
“Well,” I said.
“Come now. You love it.”
I said nothing. Tom was wise enough to leave well enough alone, and changed the subject with a gesture of his pipe. “You know I love your opinions, Jack. Jack Donne here knows more about literature and languages than anyone I know. So who do you think, Jack, is the best linguist?”
They giggled.
I said, “Calpine’s dictionary.”
At their laughter, a few more people drifted over to our group. Some had Otherlight, some didn’t. I resisted the urge to feel for my dirk. Tom said I was Jack Donne and they eyed me, fascinated. “He was just talking about books. But really, Jack, real linguists.”
I stammered something about the French theologian Beza, some Jesuits, and a few of my teachers from Cambridge.
“Really?” said Tom. “Your Apostles were pretty good linguists, and that old Character Panurge. And I myself am none that shabby, either. Que pensez-vous?”
“Is that French?” said the girl on his arm.
“Bien sûr, ma chérie belle,” said Tom, and the men in our circle glared at him enviously. Tom, if anything, seemed gratified by their jealousy. He turned to me. “I’ll trust you, Jack, to catch me if I slip up, especially on the verbs.”
“But surely,” I said, voice flat, “if ten thousand years ago you had interpreted for the men of Babel, the tower would still be standing.”
“Jack always says the nicest things,” said Tom.
“He certainly writes the nicest things,” said a lady.
“Low how red thou’rt!” cried Tom, laughing as he patted my back. “See, Jack? The people here appreciate your genius. You should come more often, you add so much delight to any conversation.”
“Abuent studia in mores,” I said.
Tom raised an eyebrow. “Court is then a bad habit?”
His friends’ eyes turned to me, and I was ready to say something rash. I folded my arms and said, “The worst.”
One of the ladies looked at me and misread the blood at my cheeks. “We’re good people, Master Donne —”
Tom was watching with knowing satisfaction. “And you must admit, it is only the bad habits that are enjoyable.”
“Any man would defend a principle that puts him in the right.”
“Do you read philosophy?” said the woman. She took my hand, and it took some protest and a kiss to get her to let go. Then I muttered a farewell and sped away from them.
“Jack,” said Tom. “Jack, wait. Excuse me, sweet lady. I must talk with him. I’ll only be a moment.” He caught up with me near the exit.
I tried to brush past. I’d had enough of him. I’d had enough of his kind and their Otherlight and this place.
He stopped me. “Can you not defend your lofty platonic ways to such minds?”
“Please pardon me.”
He looked back at his friends, then steered me towards the sill of a great window, padded with cushions, and reclined, gesturing for me to do the same. I sat there rigid, watching the rosy afternoon light on the silks of the talking groups inside. Tom chuckled. “If you knew how sweet Court life is, you’d leave loneness.”
“The ancient Spartans valued loneness.”
“You’ve got to stop with these classical citations, Jack. Not everyone’s as smart as you.”
“I’m too smart?” I sneered.
If I expected Tom to be surprised, he wasn’t. “You are the wrong kind of smart. You are wrong, solitary, miserable kind of smart. You wish to learn? You can learn here, you know, in Court – about Kings.”
“In books and Westminster Abbey are all I need to know about Kings.”
He laughed. “Poor Jack! Your wit is course.”
I tried to drive him away with silence. But like a sore, the more I tried to rid myself of him, the longer he remained. He sat, with idle magic bending the coils of his pipe-smoke into sinuous forms that glowed in the dusty light.
Finally, he asked, “What news?”
I told him of new plays.
He listened, grin widening, eyes closed, perhaps sensing what I was sensing: that with every word I found my voice growing more and more uncertain. In such a place as Court, talk of verse seemed faltering. I listened to myself, and in some sudden startling light I sounded trifling. Shakespeare recitation, but here in Court so pallid and unmoving.
“What?” said Tom.
“Nothing.” I think the smoke from his pipe was lulling me, the perfumes of the hall making me doubt what I ought not to doubt. “I sound so foolish.”
“Plays are grand, Jack, but you can’t possibly be satisfied if you think about them. Soon you think too much, and people who think too much are seldom happy.”
“I happen to think a good deal.”
“Do you?”
“Are people here really content?”
“In Court is everything a courtier like you needs – lawsuits and women. All the readers you’d want your poems to have, too.”
“There was never supposed to be an audience.”
“They love Donne.”
“Well, I don’t.”
He laughed. “Of course. You’re holier-than-thou today, but you used to be as vile as us, didn’t you? Come, Madam, roving hands. Who wrote that, I wonder?”
“Me,” I muttered. “As I was. Once. Not anymore.”
He sighed. “You have made a terrible first impression, and everyone in the hall probably knows by now, but reputations here change faster than the weather. Luckily, you know me, and I know everything.”
He took my hand and pointed to a lady entertaining a group of nodding women. “That’s Amelia Lanier, there, in the blue dress. From a musician family. She married her cousin, a flute-player who’s going to Ireland with Essex.”
“Her cousin?”
“That’s what they say. And they say she writes poems. Can you imagine?”
“I’m sure she —”
“Fancy her?”
“No, Tom, I don’t. You’re despicable.”
He shrugged. “There’s Philip Henslowe, Groom of the Chamber. He’s been trying to help that Giles Allen crush Burbage and the Chamberlain’s Men for moving the Theatre. Poor fool. And look at that party by the hearth. In the gold, there – Arabella Stuart, Lady Lennox. She’s somewhere in line for the crown if Elizabeth bites it.”
Tom talked until the sun began to set. No scandal evaded him, no news: the ones upon whom the Queen smiled – or frowned, who supported which bill, each pair of secret lovers glancing at each other across the room, all affaires d’amor, the girls who were as beautiful without their paint and wigs.
I tried vain attempts to make him leave. Carefully at first, then loudly and dramatically, I coughed and sniffled, but Tom, absorbed in his own talebearing, didn’t notice.
What did the stories say of me, I wondered. Of my past and my family. If I was one of them, how would I see John Donne?
A few people glanced at me occasionally, like I was something novel at the Tower Zoo. Tom, quiet again, must have noticed the white-clad girl, black hair shiny, whose eyes caught mine and whose face I couldn’t help but think was pretty. “You could, if you wanted to.”
“Excuse me?” I said – and found my voice was slow and tired.
“Come now. You’ve got charm. If you tried, or I could look for someone more artistic.”
“That’s horrid.”
“Oh. I’d forgotten – Ann. But I don’t think she’d ever know.”
But I didn’t love Ann. She was a facet in the Order’s plan, cold and unwelcoming. I hated her. Tom’s advice took on a certain luster, and I felt guilty for admitting it.
“How can you speak like this, Tom? How can you talk to that woman like that? What about home? What about Mary and Cassie and —”
“What have they to do with anything?”
“You should love their mother,” I said angrily.
“I do love her,” cried Tom. “And I shall forever, like my dearest breath. I will explain, Jack. Liza is a sunrise. But do you expect a man to wake up and embrace the dawn, then go back to sleep when there’s so much left to see? Variety, Jack. Else, life would stale, you know. I’d get solemn and respectable and miserable like you. I let Liza do what she will. Don’t think I haven’t seen the way she looks at you.”
“I – oh.” I thought of the vampire eyes, dark on her white face.
“But it’s awful because I know you, you’re my friend,” he chuckled. “If you sleep with her, I’ll kill you.”
“I – I don’t,” I cried. “You would think I’d —”
“Hush, Jack! I wasn’t accusing you of anything. But of course you fret that way. You’re naïve. That’s no sin, but it can be cured. Fast, or slow, immediately, or gradually. However you like.”
He struck a fresh spark in his pipe, slipped in new tobacco-leaf, and from a small vial from his coat, tapped in a few drops of liquid. A rich aroma spilled into the air. It drifted languidly into my nose, filling my head with a luxurious, cloudy sensation. Slowly, the smell grew stronger, sweet like flowers, and insistent. It was charming, and it drifted tenderly; I felt unease retreating, and I relaxed without it. The pink light from the windows fell softly, blending everything at the edges. The chatter of the Court hall descended to a foggy murmur. Blinking, I leaned back among the pillows, trying to find an excuse to leave, but putting thoughts together was hard.
“You like it?” said Tom’s voice from far away. “I thought you might. It’s opium, they take it from the poppy. Yes, you always feel it at once the first time, and your kind is so susceptible.”
I tried to wave the smoke away, and my thoughts began to sober. “My kind?”
He laughed, “You wouldn’t understand. You’re so luckily mundane. Ah – we don’t choose our fathers.”
Tom gestured and the foggy stuff was swept away. Watching me wipe tears from my eyes, he smiled with pity. “Perhaps a little less for you.” He put some new leaf and a drop of it in the pipe, wiped the mouthpiece, and offered it to me. As I shook my head, he raised an eyebrow and smoked it himself.
The soothing smell filled the air once more. Tom certainly seemed to be enjoying it. Even from here, the scent made me want to shut my eyes and fall asleep. Though the haze of smoke the strangest thoughts occurred to me. Drowsy – I could be the bear before it slept for months of winter, or a silk-worm settled into its cocoon. To think, what if I could sleep, and like the worm wake up one of the dazzling butterflies of Court, by yielding slough off my guilt, never to have it trouble me again. What if the Otherlight seeped into me?
It was the smoke, it was this place.
I tried to drive him away with anger now. “Are you slavish to it?”
He snorted. “Of course not – my kind is too strong for that. O, to crave something is fine, but once you start needing it, you know it’s run its use.” His voice dropped to a friendly murmur. “The same goes for that Ann girl. You, friend, must never depend on any pleasure. If a man commits – to anything! – he’s got to prepare for the worst.”
“What would my lord your father think?”
He crammed another leaf in, eyes flashing with fierce dark Otherlight. “I don’t care what he thinks. Especially if he believes that I’m not fit to go to war.”
“For your own safety,” I said.
“The hell it’s for my own safety. He wants an eye on me, thinking I’m disloyal.”
“Surely you aren’t!”
“I could be. He doesn’t care for me at all, you know.” He looked in his tobacco-box, empty save a few crumbly fragments, and said, “Could you spare me?”
“Willingly,” I blurted.
“No,” he mumbled. “Spare me a crown. I shall buy more leaf.”
Rubbing my temples to drive out the last of the smoke-smell, I fished in my pocket for a coin. “I must go soon,” I said. “Thank you for your company.”
“Thank you, dear Incorruptible Jack.” He chuckled. “I’ll miss you while I’m gone. You’re the only loyal person I know.”
“Everyone at York House is loyal to you.”
“I wish, Jack. Take care.”
“And you….” With my hands in my pockets, I slid out of the hall, dodging glances that followed me to the door, and even when I left I could almost feel the weight of them clinging to me. Out of the hall, out of Westminster – if only I could so easily walk out of my life now into my old one: Lincoln’s Inn, Ben and Itzak. Henry. In my room at Egerton’s House, I sat at my desk, head heavy. My eyes found the dark grey shape of the palace through my window and I thought of all the company in that building, and me, in my chambers, alone –again. I ran my quill through the inkwell, and a kind of trance advanced on me, and I wrote, angry and revolted at myself. Such things as Dante had seen in hell, I’d felt at Court, and worse, and more.
#
Ann found dinner that night quiet and uncomfortable. Tom on the morrow would leave, and he declined discussing Donne’s meeting in Court, but murmured to his wife, eyes on his barely-touched food. Ann listened but couldn’t hear much. George More had come from Surrey for the approaching celebration of New Year’s. At the foot of the table was a lanky, spectacled boy who looked quite afraid of everyone present.
Donne tried to make small talk with him. “Francis Woolley, is it?”
“Uh – yes. Francis Woolley. Son of good Lady Egerton and the late Lord Woolley.”
Lady Egerton had often referred to Tom as the son she’d never had. Ann supposed that Francis was the son she had had. Poor Francis – he looked quite aware that he displeased his mother. Besides Lady Egerton and John Donne, he was the only true human present.
“And you’re here on time off from Oxford?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He played with his bread.
“I went to Oxford myself,” said Donne. “Has it changed much?”
“I don’t know.”
“You like it there?”
“I don’t know.”
The table chuckled lowly. Francis Woolley shrank like a rabbit surrounded by wolves.
Ann saw Donne was guilty and startled at Francis’ distress. “I’m sorry. Pray, would you like some gravy on your potatoes?” As the boy took the gravy boat and dished some onto his plate, the poet said, “Have you seen the Chinese wisteria trees we had brought in for the ball?”
“They’re not trees, actually,” said Francis meekly. “They’re vines in tree shapes.”
“Who would have imagined,” said Donne cheerfully. “They’re quite pretty, especially with the silver paper ornaments and all the little candles. And certainly they must be hardy, to be flowering in winter.” He glanced at Egerton, as if hoping for a reaction.
“They can live for over a century,” said Francis.
Liza studied the boy’s neck, no doubt imagining which part of it would be sweetest. “Francis loves his plants, does he not?” she smiled.
“I – yeah. Lots.”
Lady Egerton was displeased. “The wisteria plant, Francis, all parts of it, are most unpleasantly poisonous.”
“Mother likes venomous plants,” said Francis to Donne.
Donne laughed uneasily.
“I like tobacco and poppies,” said Tom.
Ann watched Donne retreat into a silence that persisted until the end of the meal, wondering if she ought to comfort him after supper. Normally, she would have been glad to see Papa, but he would find out Ann had failed, and how her wretched sisters would laugh then. Sure enough, when the others had left, George More called Ann to the sapphire drawing room, where he looked at a papyrus hung on the deep blue wall, studying the ibises and gods. He walked to a marble bust of a woman. “Cleopatra,” he said, “won emperors effortlessly with the sheer power of her wit.”
“She did, my lord.”
He took her hands. “O, Ann. Thy voice is laden with some sorrow.”
Something at once clawed at Ann, a need to defend herself. She was worthy. Papa had to know. The suddenness of it startled her, and even more her stammering, “I have hardly seen him! That is all! I tried, Papa, please, I try and I try to draw him in and keep him pining and guessing —”
“Shall I ask Lady Egerton to spare thee for a few days?”
“No. I I’m having a dress made…. think it best to wait for the masquerade.”
He smiled. “The most artistic way.”
Ann smiled, but thought sourly of failure.
As if he could feel her train of thought, George More strolled to a large stone stele, contemplating as he squinted. Finding the light insufficient, he gestured and beside his hand appeared an orb of light like a firefly, hovering buoyantly, illuminating the runes on the sandstone slab.
“Look at this beautiful House, Ann, in this vast mortal city. England shall be the center of the world as Alexandria and Baghdad once were. And Egerton is at the very crest. Look thee upon such richness, such power. He uses none of it! The statues and the tapestries sit in the dark manor, mongers for dust, while the man himself plays his idle game at Court, telling no one of his plans, not even I, his most devoted. O, my darling daughter, thou knowest well he made me what I am, and yet rewards my sacrifice by keeping me waiting, useless, in the country.”
He offered his hand and she danced with her father in a galliard, turning and whirling to a silent song of his ambition.
“Thou must unearth Donne, to restore our poor family. If we trap him, we shall trap the Order, and we shall exact every payment for Egerton’s wrongs. Then all shall be as it was before.”
“Whom shall I wed, Papa?”
“Perform this for me, and whomsoever thou desireth,” he smiled, and hugged her. The promise made her heart swell. But then she looked past Lord More’s shoulder at the wan bust of Cleopatra, and she could have sworn the mouth had smiled mockingly – laughing at her.

On New Year’s Eve – by English reckoning, anyhow, which still insisted that the calendars turned in March – as the London snow thawed and the spring birds returned, Itzak was dressed in the height of English fashion and impersonating the third-richest man in Germany. Not that he had anything better to do than prance around in velvet tights, muttering to himself.
Ben Jonson had gotten out of prison again (now he was fully disguised with a splendiferous false beard he’d borrowed from the Curtain theatre). He’d coached Itzak in the mannerisms and character of Dr. Lenz Wilhelm Erlichmann (Jonson’s idea) until convinced Itzak was ready. The playwright would be meeting them at York House, he was going on foot while Itzak was borne on the Thames on the grandest barge the Order could stand to let them festoon and borrow (also Jonson’s idea). Then Itzak was to step off the gangplank to shore amidst fireworks from the prow (Itzak’s idea, which Jonson brightly endorsed).
Watching the city light gleam on the ripples and waves of the rich, dark water, Itzak took inventory of the rockets. The cool wind from the sea to the far east soothed him as it made his hair dance.
“I,” he practiced, “am the highly regarded Dr. Erlichmann of Munich. I come from my country to thine and find it exceeding fair. Please allow me to introduce my – my – my —”
“Wife,” said Isabel. “I’m your wife.”
“For the night.”
“Yes, for the night.”
And for the night she was wearing a gown of pale gold silk, sewn with small gold stars and comets. Her hair gleamed as dark and bright as the river under the white plumes of her mask. It seemed unfair, that such a face as Isabel’s should be covered. Would one obscure the moon? Damn Jack, thought Itzak, poetry is easy.
The manors of the Strand were fired with twinkling lights that cast themselves like a galaxy of fallen stars into the river. Itzak, fearful though he was, found the sight comforting. As the ship docked before the giant stone monstrosity of York, an excitement made him smile. Isabel smiled too and put her arm on his.
And then Itzak found himself speaking. The words had appeared, clear as crystal, in his mind: If only this were not a ruse. Baby. However, what came out sounded more like “Fronly differ nmrmoose brmguh.”
“Come again?”
“It looks like we’re here,” said Itzak. Minh Long struck a lordly tune on a lute, soon drowned out by the rumbling explosions of green and purple sparks the boat sent overhead. Itzak and Isabel arrived on the pier, followed by Lovelace and Bode. At once a man, panting slightly, greeted them with a gracious bow.
Itzak nodded succinctly at him. “Dr. Lenz Wilhelm Erlichmann is here. I much appreciate your Lord Keeper’s invitation of me. What a beautiful house, and a beautiful evening.”
“Hullo. I’m Schroeder, the porter. If you need anything, I am your humblest servant. Let me check the list. Here you are. Your invitation….”
Itzak reached into his overcoat and produced a flowery paper in Jack’s hand, sent to the favored commendable lovely Dr. Erlichmann, third-richest man in Germany. Schroeder nodded, bowed, and smiled. “Splendid! And I see your fireworks have already brought a crowd from the gardens.”
Isabel giggled. “We hoped it would, wouldn’t we?”
“My wife, Francesca of Tuscany,” said Itzak with the small tight smile he had practiced. Of course, the real Dr. Erlichmann wasn’t married, but he was tied up below deck and wouldn’t be conscious enough to protest for a few hours.
Itzak raised his chin and looked about coldly, sweeping off his cloak and holding it out for one of Egerton’s pages. Bode, with a grunt of envy and annoyance, handed him a lighter, more mobile cape. Shrugging it on, Itzak said to Schroeder, “Yes, and of course these are my loyal guards.”
From Lovelace came a cough that sounded suspiciously like “piss off.”
“Shall – shall we proceed to York House?” stammered Schroeder. Itzak was starting to enjoy himself.
“These are the Lord Keeper’s gardens, furnished with sculptures from Japan, as you can see. In the springtime, it is fragrant with the lushest flowers, but even now the, uh, intricacy of the hedges is to be admired. There is a fountain at the center of the courtyard, ahead if we took a right, then a right, then proceeded to the dragon statue, then….”
It was a warm night, and many people were outside. Clusters of nobles, dressed in splendor and wearing the most elegant of masks, murmured in their groups. Gentle guests glided like dryads, laughing, dancing. Torches made for ample light and stars hung wobbling in gurgling fountains, water tinkling from the lips of dolphins.
A dark figure stepped forward and bowed, then said to Schroeder, “Thanks, Milo. I apologize for being late. I do think you had best go back to the door. I shall escort the honorable party of Dr. Erlichmann.”
“Oh, thank you. Yes, the door. I think they wanted to see the fountain, remember, to the right, then a right….” He darted off.
Schroeder’s fellow servant was dressed in a sharp and flattering suit of black and grey, and his dark hair fell with a few smooth waves just above his chin. From behind a horned owl mask, friendly eyes laughed. “You’re welcome. Unless you did want a tour of the place. You see, Egerton wants you tired out, well-fed, and lulled before he talks with you, but I suspect, Dr. Erlichmann, you are exhausted enough after your trip.”
Itzak said, “I notice you, sir, wear a mask, while your fellow servants do not.”
“I exceed them in rank. And it befits my Lord Keeper Egerton to have a dashing, mysterious affluent mingling with the guests – particularly noblewomen. He has several business proposals he thinks they would receive better if distracted.”
From behind, Itzak heard Lovelace curse Donne softly.
“Everything you see here,” Jack went on, “is part of his design, from that man playing dulcimer by the pond to the torches on the lawn! He says that with the curving of the paths, he can direct any visitor to any place inside, without even leading him. Egerton has a thousand different plans tonight, and holds each here in the palm of his hand, though they don’t even know! Sometimes he allows me his confidence, to help him. He has plans inside plans, and it’s all so intricate —!”
Isabel touched him gently on the arm, breaking him off. “Jack.”
He paused. “Yes?”
“Jack.”
The strange admiration in the secretary’s eyes flickered to be replaced with shame. “I – I’m sorry. I am accustomed so to praising him before visitors. I – You’ll find I’m a different man at York House.”
“Who wouldn’t be, getting fat at thy master’s table,” muttered Lovelace.
“Am I?” snapped Donne.
“Peace,” said Isabel.
Jack sighed. “I’m sorry. Part of me has been upset, being in the Keeper’s confidence, knowing how he plans to win over guests and this and that – but I don’t know why. What does he want here?”
He led them through vast doors into a hall with of gold marble masonry and a painted ceiling. Heads turned, swishing feathers, as the guests shifted to get a good stare at the new arrivals. Such was their interest that Itzak thought for a moment he’d forgotten to change out of his turtleneck and apron, but a look down assured him he was fine. What the guests would have seen was a young, stern-looking man, blonde hair tied back tastefully, looking aloof about him from behind gold-rimmed spectacles as his surroundings.
York House was huge, and Jack showed them much. A few rooms had dances going on, but in most were reclining elite, sipping drink while they reminisced about the year that would soon be over. After a few wings, Itzak became conscious of a scent that bothered him. It was dust, and musty fabric, and an ancientness not unlike the deepest reaches of Order headquarters. The gay torches helped to brighten it, but the House itself was oppressive, dark.
Eventually they came to the front hall, glamorously lit and hung with tapestries. They looked down on it from a balcony, at pairs of dancers twirling in a galliard, at a great chandelier. “Here we are,” murmured Jack, still sad. “Perhaps we should stop here. I trust, Dr. Erlichmann, you have gained an idea of the important rooms and the layouts. The banquet is at eight. Please call for anything you need.” He gave a graceful bow and left them.
Itzak did his best to descend the grand stair with a lordly mien, but inside he felt the beginnings of fear.
#
Over the course of the night, he conducted himself with a cold German hauteur that would have made an actor proud: ordering servants around, keeping a straight face during the funniest of jokes, murmuring with his wife. That was how he introduced her, but rumors were already flying that she was only a moll. Englishmen were mad, and Itzak found himself furious at such remarks. But Isabel just laughed at it all, her face radiant and bright, a beauty to launch a thousand ships and burn the topless towers of Illium.
As ten o’clock crept forward, they found a couch in the front hall, watching the nobles dance, and waiting for Jonson’s signal. Oriental silks hung over couches, and Itzak was studying the pattern as Isabel pointed out a woman reading fortune-cards at a table across the room. “They say it is the Lady Egerton.”
Itzak glanced at the darkly-dressed old woman and the young couples around her. “Shall we go over?”
“When it isn’t as crowded,” she said. “Do you want to dance, meanwhile?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how.”
“Oh.” She smoothed her dress and leaned her head on her hand. Itzak remembered Jack babbling some speech from Romeo and Juliet about a hand and a cheek and a moon. If only he could remember, and have the courage to bring it up.
#
Ivan Bathóry stood attentively beside his father, who was talking to one of Egerton’s creatures, called More. The older men spoke lowly, and he looked over their shoulders at the other nobles with distaste. Some were human, and that was enough for him.
“No, my son is not wed,” said his father. “Ivan is young yet.”
Not anymore, not really. Father inhabited the past.
Ivan decided to speak up. “I am a Transylvanian, and we do not marry for politics lightly.”
“You have not met my daughter,” said More.
#
Taking a seat, Ann smiled at Lady Egerton. The old woman was glad to see her, but looked strangely weak and tired. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, or the bustle, or the exhaustion of the past week’s preparation. “My lovely niece. Are you well?”
“Well indeed, my lady. And you?”
“Of course.” Lady Egerton spread the cards on the silk-draped table. “I’ve had quite a time with poor superstitious Northumberland. He came to me thrice.”
“I am enjoying myself so much.”
“Good! But take care you do not flock to any dashing strangers. I saw your father talking with Count Bathóry… and the Count Bathóry’s son.”
Ann’s arms tingled with happiness. So Papa was being true to his word, he was seeking her a husband. And she had heard about the house of Bathóry, lords of the tall black Carpathians, from towers high above the ice that kills.
The Lady Egerton, smiling behind her peacock mask, took Ann’s hand and studied the palm. “You are loved by many, and I’m sure I needn’t tell you that.”
“Does it say who?”
“That could be found out.” Lady Egerton arranged the cards before her and muttered an incantation. The smoke of the nearby candles, like so many tame snakes, wove in lazy tendrils over the cards, washing over the table in a gentle wave, warm on Ann’s hands. Then it spilled off the edges and dissipated, gone – simple magic, but sure to have terrified any of the poor mundane nobles Lady Egerton had read for.
The first card was flipped, and Lady Egerton showed her. “The Empress. I take that to be you, dear. Noble, beautiful, and impossible to outwit. You will have many children.”
“Children?” said Ann, displeased.
Lady Egerton consulted Ann’s palm again and bobbed her head. “Many.”
Lady Egerton was normally a rational being, but that ended whenever she took to her cards; Ann wondered why. Papa said that fortune-telling was the trivia of the desperate, and you couldn’t choose the right future by guessing as much as you could find a diamond on a sandy shore.
“And look at this,” said Lady Egerton. She turned up a card painted with a single golden chalice.
“I shall not get tipsy tonight, my lady?” laughed Ann.
“Lucky girl! A cup means a beginning.”
The matriarch turned one last card, whose face was decorated with an all-too-familiar building.
“The Tower,” mused Lady Egerton. “No, dear, it’s not that Tower, but most London decks just paint it as the fortress in our city. It is only a symbol. Hmm. Change? It’s usually awakening. End of an illusion. It’s quite puzzling. I shall tell you to-morrow, after I’ve thought. Now it looks like your friends are coming.”
Trying not to groan, Ann turned to see her sister and some other women waving to her. Before tonight she had thought she’d enjoy a change from the human maids-in-waiting, but the new company was insufferable beyond even that.
Against all wishes, she was about to join them, but then there came the sound of a bugle.
Silence. For a breathless moment, no one in the hall spoke, and heads turned to the gates. Craning her neck, Ann caught a glimpse of Schroeder bent to kiss the ground. Before long, everyone was bowed. Ann followed suit.
An ancient, red-wigged lady crowned with rubies was making her way through the gaping channel the dancers had cleared in their midst, her purple cloak trailing behind her. Her page boomed, “God save her Royal highness, fair graceful Empress, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.”
“No,” said the Queen, “it’s Francis Bacon. Please, dear, spare the poor souls any more of that.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“Madame Egerton,” said the Queen, eyes finding Ann’s aunt, “close your mouth; you’ll catch something.”
Lady Egerton curtseyed and said, “Your Majesty. My husband shall be here shortly.” At once, a dozen pages bowed and darted off to fetch him.
#
I had been nervously enjoying myself that evening, in turns fretting about Itzak, recognizing with fear that all of Court had moved itself to York House in addition to an ample crowd of werewolves, vampires, and minor demons. The enjoyment came from a glass of wine and a few glances from noblewomen. Which showed my pretty low standards of enjoyment those days.
I was showing some French duke the library when Schroeder came pelting in, taking me by the arms and crying, “Jack! The Queen is here.”
“Qu’est-ce qui se passé?” said the duke.
“What the bloody devil is she doing here? Wasn’t she in Richmond? No! Dammit! Uh, no, sir, everything’s fine, uh, tout va bien.”
“What’s wrong, Jack?”
“This ruins everything!” I was having a panic attack, I was sure of it.
“Lord Egerton is on his way to the main hall….”
“Argh! I mean, Mr. Schroeder will continue your tour – Il va se poursuivre. Sorry!”
“Jack —”
“Just please, Milo!” I tore out of the room as fast as I could, pressing my ring. What time was it? The clocks had been nearing eleven. In a few minutes the duke’s tour would have been over and I would have slipped away to the legal wing. One corridor, two – and there it was, a low, fair song, chiming a sweet melody, followed by eleven even bongs. Answer, Itzak, or it’s my funeral bell.
A whispered voice cried, “Jack. Have you seen Jonson?”
“He’s not in there with you? No. Call it off! The Queen is here!”
“I know that, you blockhead.”
“If there’s a fight now, I’ll be sacked.”
“Can you see Jonson?”
“Nowhere!”
#
Lowering the ring and looking about frantically, Itzak nudged Isabel, who had turned almost white with dread. Lovelace was swearing under his breath. Itzak supposed that either Jonson had found out and aborted, or they were headed for the Tower.
The Queen was making her way through the crowd, striking up conversation with those who were rich enough, influential enough, or smart enough to make for an interesting discussion.
Slowly but regally was the way the woman moved. All the Englishmen were in awe of her, Itzak saw, like a god was walking in their midst. Perhaps you had to be English to understand it– the Virgin Queen? Itzak had his quiet doubts. Perhaps it kept the people tied to her, not to some successor – but the old lady could have a heart attack on the spot and die without an heir, and then the legions of noblemen who’d been facing off for decades would destroy each other for the throne.
Isabel prodded his arm, and his heart sank. Her Majesty was drifting even close to them.
Perhaps Jonson had heard the Queen had come and would abandon their plan. Itzak clung to the possibility. The eleven bell had rang awhile ago. But given the Order’s luck of late, it wasn’t surprising when one of the balcony doors burst open. BAM! And a great bearded man thundered in and bellowed:
“LENZ ERLICHMANN, I HAVE COME FOR YOUR HEAD!”
Itzak shrank into the cushions of the couch.
A thick silence fell upon the room. The eyes all went to Jonson, who suddenly looked quite amiss. “Oh. Hullo, Majesty.” He bowed. “Pardon me. Perhaps now wasn’t best time. Well, er, vengeance, you know.”
While the stunned dancers watched Jonson as he sidled down the stairway, Itzak held the ring to his lips. “We can give you ten minutes. Make the most of it.”
#
Make the most of it, my arse!
I flung myself behind a clock as the Lord Keeper himself swept through the corridor, probably to greet Her Majesty. Her Majesty! Why tonight? Why now? My lord would be humiliated, and me especially….
But there wasn’t any helping things now. Once the hall was clear, I slunk into the legal wing. Here there was scarcely anyone, even servants. Those I met I sent on futile errands that would keep them busy for a while (“Ho! Francis Bacon needs his pocket-brooches spit-shined. No. Really. GO.”)
In the highest corridor, I locked the door behind me, peeled off my obnoxious mask, and drew my lock picks from my boots. Ten minutes. Not nearly enough time, not nearly as many lock picks as I’d have wanted, not as safe as it had been half an hour ago. I stopped before the door to Egerton’s office. Breathing deeply helped me calm myself as I knelt before it, raising the first of the picks.
It wasn’t too late to go back, said a small voice inside me.
My hands froze under the doorknob, cold and shaking. What if there was a hex upon the door, and when I touched I would be smitten? What if I’d been followed? I pressed my ear, and all I heard was the rumble from downstairs – within the room there was no sound.
The rattling of the pick was soft. With the long, thin tool I felt the inside of the knob, each hollow, each metallic protrusion, each spring. This took no more thirty seconds, but I could swear that hours went by. Almost certain I would mar it, I wriggled the pick onto the mechanisms within. I heard the clicks and carefully extracted it, then turned the knob. It gave. I felt myself cringing as I stole across the threshold: then, then I felt his eyes —
But there was no one in the hall.
The relief was small. Still I could feel some pressure in my mind, real or imagined, every bit as unbearable as Egerton’s displeasure. I struggled to dispel the shadows I imagined. There was no enchantment on the door, Egerton was far away. Out of hubris he had left the door unguarded, suspecting none would dare intrude. So more the fool him.
#
Aside from the fact that the Queen was there, things were running quite smoothly and theatrically. Itzak stood furiously, face livid, and snapped, “What is the meaning of this?”
“You know quite well, you bastard!”
The Queen raised an eyebrow. “I do think they’re drunk.”
Jonson, a head above every other guest, bowed, then stabbed a belligerent finger at Itzak. “That man, my lady, is a villain to whom there is no comparison: as malignant a cancer as ever befouled Germany and the world.” He was talking in a ridiculous Austrian accent.
“And you, sir,” growled Itzak, stepping in front of Isabel to shield her, “are a lunatic!”
A petty lord took Jonson by the arm. “Perhaps, good master, there is an quieter way of ….”
Jonson pushed him head-first into a bowl of pudding.
“Martin!” barked Itzak. “Reuben! Arms!” At once, Lovelace and Bode drew their spears and sprung to his side. He took Isabel and put her behind the Queen’s retainers.
Elizabeth struck the ground with her golden staff. “That is quite sufficient, gentlemen. I would not have such a pleasant evening fouled by this petty spat. I am sure it can be resolved in a court.”
“Petty spat, my lady,” moaned Jonson through his grandiose false beard. He struck his breast. “If only you were there, in poor cottage in the Alps, bought by mine sister and her husband with loan from Erlichmann the usurer! How they struggled and struggled to make living, how often they went hungry to feed their twenty-seven children with the bitter mountain roots and some very very nice Schabziger cheese from their cows. With such a fruitless life, how could they have the money when his agents came? And being not content with their pain, their pleading, their prostrating, rest did he not until the land and house were his, and the wretched family cast out of home and means. In dead of winter, they struggle like beasts to survive, until husband sold the children to a Baba Yaga and then run off with tavern maid. All the cows committed suicide. So that is why, Lenz Erlichmann, I HAVE COME FOR YOUR —”
“You obstreperous toad!” cried Itzak.
“Piss-licking miser!”
“Ugly dog!”
“Sack of filth!”
“Arse!”
“Bugger!”
“Maggot!”
“By troth, have at you!” roared Jonson, swinging a fist at Itzak, who ducked. As one, the crowd gasped. A few men started to interfere and stay the quarrel, but Jonson waved his arm. “Hush! This spat is mine, and mine own! Any that would intervene does so at peril!”
“I would put seventy shillings on the German’s spearman,” said Her Majesty in a tone of utmost boredom.
#
Within now, I gazed upon the rows of books and golden-topped pillars. I shut and locked the door behind me. The vampire part of me saw the shapes in silver light, but I lit a candle. With my back to the dark shapes of the city out the window, blinking festively with lights, I pored over the desk.
Once I had picked the door, it had all become easy – like a pent-up river, once its dam had cracked, my confidence came rushing back. A neat pile of documents I’d reviewed awaited his hand, beside it a cup of cold tea. Its soft sweet smell tingled my nose as I pulled open the first drawer. I extracted a pen and inkwell (I was wearing gloves to leave no trace) and felt for hidden compartments, but there were none. Next drawer. Copies of notable documents and cases, most of which were in the hand of his former secretary. A book on the Law.
I jumped at a noise, stifling a cry, but it was only the sound of a squirrel on the roof. Or a goblin…. Damn, focus! I closed the drawer and went to the bookshelves, thinking about four minutes were left.
What if the fight had been stopped by the York House guards, or Ben’s false beard had fallen off? Egerton could be coming this way for all I knew. Egerton and the Queen. I had best be quick. Scanning the bookshelves and feeling under wall hangings for secret passageways, I found nothing of interest. Egerton was far too smart for that. But still, I pulled as many books as I could, hoping to hear distant clanking and then see a bookshelf turn to reveal a hidden room.
Nothing happened, which made me feel quite stupid. Grimly, I inspected a small blue book on one of the ornamental tables.
DEMONOLOGIE, In Forme of a Dialogue, divided into three Bookes. JAMES IV.
I remembered this book as one the Order had been suspicious of for fear of exposure. They didn’t like large populations of humans thinking there were demons and shape-shifters in their midst – it tended to send civilization on a downhill spiral. For a while they thought James somehow knew the truth, and had wanted an accident arranged for him, but actual reading of the book showed that it was only the usual “Burn the witches!” piffle.
So – what did Egerton want with it? Perhaps he was reading it for pride’s enjoyment, laughing as he read of poor farmwives being thrown into lakes for making the wrong kind of stew, while he sat secure and loved as Lord Keeper of the greatest nation of the world. Or was it about James? The Scotsman was likely to succeed Elizabeth when the Queen passed. Or did he suspect James knew – of everything?
Suddenly there came a knock, not on the door I had come in, but on a small secondary one beside a bookshelf, that joined the office to the Lord Keeper’s private library. “My lord? My Lord Keeper?”
I blew out the taper and froze. Under different circumstances, I might have placed the voice’s owner, but all I could do was stand, still, praying the door was locked. There came another knock, and I listened with all my superhuman faculty for that almost imperceptible grating of the inner mechanisms that would tell me I was safe and the door locked.
None. You could have seen the horror of my face, as I searched about for anything I could hide behind. I darted behind a bookshelf, pressed my back against it. A widening arc of warm light stretched across the Persian rugs, illuminating the detailed icons of lions and hounds, eyes staring vacantly above.
“Thou art not within, my lord?” said the voice smugly. “I thought thou soughtst my audience. As I came all the way from Surrey, I wished so to speak with thee.”
The figure stepped within, casting a rather short shadow before him. As my heart kicked in my throat, I wondered fleetingly what George More was doing here.
“O, what a large study,” he went on to himself. Or was it to himself? Could his demon nose smell my cologne? Dammit, dammit!
Presently, More was moving down the rows of shelves, inspecting at his leisure. “Such a collection,” he muttered. “Poor fool, poor fool!”
Each step he took was a contained eternity. My frame ached with tension, my throat trembled, begging for the gasps I needed and not the slow, silent breaths I was taking. From afar, the bells of London rang eleven-fifteen. The ten minutes were spent, and Egerton might have returned any minute – but More was collected and methodic. I heard him stride down each aisle of bookshelves, then turn and proceed up the next. And soon he would turn and come to me.
I began to move with all the stealth I the Order had trained into me. As More walked down the aisle to my back, strolling the far end of the room, I edged toward Egerton’s desk. Between me and it was about five yards of illuminated carpet.
As More turned, I would have a blind spot. Thank You, God. And if that didn’t work out, I supposed I could kill him. Northwell would be upset, though.
Say I just hit him on the head and knocked him out….
Focus, dammit!
More turned, and I launched myself across the carpet, rolling into the dark alcove in the Lord Keeper’s desk (necessary, and done with my signature flawlessness). I crouched there, hidden, staring at the legs of Egerton’s fancy chair as I listened to More, finally done with the books, meander over to the desk, inspecting the scrolls on top. I could see the toes of his boots in the crack between the front of the desk and the floor.
“Such a room,” he said, and left.
The steps retreated to the door.
The door shut.
I was alone in the dark.
#
When the Lord Keeper arrived in York House’s antechamber, one of Dr. Erlichmann’s guards was spread-eagled on the floor, presumably unconscious, and the second was having it out with the bearded man, sitting on his chest, pinning him down and drubbing him. “O, Thomas,” said Elizabeth. “You’ve just missed a capital exhibition.”
“What is the meaning of this?” he hissed.
“Do you forget something?”
Egerton bowed. Then he went on, “What is happening?”
She said, “Not much, I must admit.”
The Lord Keeper was enraged; his green eyes burned towards the fight. “That is enough. I believe my celebration sufficiently disgraced, if you will, men.”
Itzak, who until a few seconds ago had been screaming the foulest of German curses at his attacker, was bowed lowly to Egerton, who hadn’t seemed to notice him yet. And, truth be told, Itzak wasn’t sure he wanted to be noticed. Jack’s descriptions were insubstantial compared to the presence of the man himself. Being around the Lord Keeper made him feel small. The aged but handsome face was tight with wrath. His state robe was blood-red, and trailed on the ground. At a wave of his old but able hand, his guards pulled Lovelace off Ben Jonson and roused the seemingly unconscious Bode, who was dim enough to jump back up as if nothing had happened.
“This malignant offender shall be thrown hence immediately.”
The guards manhandled Jonson and threw him – quite literally – down the steps. The partygoers winced.
“A pox….” he moaned.
The Lord Keeper had regained his icy composure. “See that he leaves,” he ordered, and turned to Itzak. “Perhaps an explanation, dear guest whose face I do not recognize.”
Isabel flung herself on Itzak, sobbing into his surcoat as she hugged him. “Oh, it was horrible. That madman assaulted my husband, and shouted most terrible things. My husband, who has never done anything but good!”
Itzak supposed he shouldn’t just stand there being stiff and awkward, so gently he put his arms around her, surprised at how hard it was, for suddenly there was something more terrifying than the Lord Keeper. It almost froze him, yet it was warm and strange and made him almost numb. He felt her hair. He said, “I’m fine.”
Bode grunted.
Elizabeth rapped her scepter on the tile. “That is done with. How nice that no one is harmed. The monotony was broken, anyhow. That is, after all, why I left Richmond, for the fare there was simply drab. I must admit, I did not expect to be greeted by a brawl, but que sera, sera. Praytell, Thomas, where were you while this was transpiring?”
He bowed. “Trust, my fair Queen, I was coming with all speed to see you well-received.”
“Well, you’ve seen me. Now I’m certain you have more important callings; I may find my own way.”
“Please, not,” said Egerton, “until I learn the name of our guest, who has so provoked this disturbance.”
Itzak broke from Isabel slowly and bowed most nobly. “Dr. Lenz Wilhelm Erlichmann, of Augsburg, banker, my lord.”
“There,” said the Queen. “A perfect gentleman. Now, Thomas, be on your way, before you brutally slay the fun.”
The luminous Otherlight eyes swerved untrustingly over Itzak, but then the man was gone, vanished into the dispersing crowd. Itzak made a mental note to watch his back for the rest of the night.
“Master Egerton, though a brilliant lawman, is the driest of persons,” the Queen told Itzak, “though his parties are quite enjoyable. The dances are lively, the conversation is current, the wine is paramount. I recommend you have a glass, after recent occurrence.” She straightened his ruff, which had fallen awry.
Itzak swallowed, shrugged, and bowed.
“I must say, you look quite different than the pictures.”
“Well, I….” He shrugged again and bowed.
“God’s wounds, boy, do you do anything but bow?”
“… I could curtsey, if you’d like.”
The Queen gave a regal “Hmph,” which Itzak took as approval. Isabel made quite a show of giggling.
“And take care, Dr. Erlichmann, about the play-houses. I could swear I’ve heard the culprit’s voice around the Curtain.” Then, as she departed, and they were finally alone, did Itzak collapse upon the couch with a sigh. Maybe he should be worried for Jack, but for the moment, he was too glad for his own safety to try.
#
At least the fight had been entertaining, thought Ann, as she slowly died of intellectual starvation. She had spent the morning poring over Grammaticus, hoping it would last the night, but she was quickly running out of things to think about. Her sisters and her friends talked in muted voices of “Southampton and Bacon” and “Shakespeare and the goat” and “Oh, God, Lady Rich” and “should have SEEN my husband when the moon came out….” Ann watched the men that walked about. With the masks on, the petty lords and prancing squires became just what they boiled down to be: so many peacocks, monkeys, and dogs dressed in fancy clothes. All of them with glazed, stupid eyes and slow, soft movements. The only break was from the few vampires, dark gazes sharp as shadowed glass, and the seldom other glances, minor demons and the like, sparkling with Otherlight. These would dart keen glances and then be gone, while the poor mortal men would stare stupidly and trip over their dance partners.
“There is your love, Ann,” laughed her sister, and pointed. John Donne was by the door, looking tired and forlorn.
“O, poor thing, look at him,” said another.
“I like his chin, but the nose doesn’t fit.”
“But if you bit him,” said a vampiress, “imagine. Just a bit more angular, lips sharper….”
Ann felt a curious thing wrap around her heart, sympathy for John. Yes, he loved Ann, yes, and she loathed him, but here were these women talking about him like he was meat, or something painted on a canvas.
She began to walk away, and found the edges of the party comfortable. Close enough to see the lights whirl in slow motion, close enough to hear the music, and far enough just to watch, and stop yourself from thinking. Over-thinking had her into this mess.
“My lady?”
She turned, fully expecting to see John Donne, but it wasn’t him.
This stranger bowed with the grace of someone raised to do so. He was tall, and well-built, and there was something about him unlike the soft, uncertain humans that glanced at him warily. With eyes deep and gold – the gold of molten chalices – he looked into hers and smiled. Those eyes were traced with something black, like a wolf’s, as if someone had drawn them out in charcoal. The face was strong and rather young, though she knew better than to judge the age of Otherkind. His rich, dark clothes trimmed with gold – like the gold of his eyes – spoke of noble birth. He asked her to dance.
She said, “Yes.”
He smiled. “You’re Lord More’s daughter?”
“I am, my lord.”
He kissed her hand, and she rested her arm on his. For a moment she wondered how Donne must be watching them, but then the thought flew from her mind, and she was glad to be without it.
A new song was starting, the drum throbbing, the flutes trilling. He was still smiling as he made a reverence, holding out his other hand. “Ivan Bathóry is what I am called,” he said. “Those dear to me call me Vanya.”
She curtseyed, and they joined hands. “And you know me.”
“In words of others, perhaps.” They stepped, and stepped, and he took her gently by the waist and lifted her as she jumped.
“I have come far to England,” he said. “It is not like my home in Transylvania. Here it is so tame, so pretty. In Noster-land, my lady, nights are dark and ice screams and mountain winds sing like Valkyries. When the moon is out I sing too.”
So that was where his voice’s accent came from. He’d said his name quite differently – Ee-von.
“The Bathóry are most revered,” said Ann.
“As are the Egertons,” he said gracefully. “My father and yours seek an alliance.”
“My lord likes to marry off my sisters.”
“And mine my brothers.” He glanced at the minstrels. “They are starting the pavane. I do so like the pavane. Would you dance it with me?”
“I’d like that,” she said with a smile.
#
The pavane: the slowest, gloomiest, most uninteresting dance ever devised by man. If ever there was a cross between watching paint dry and a funeral dirge, it was the pavane. It was so depressing it was almost law that it was followed by a lively galliard, it having been known to cause paralysis, coma, and death in individuals unhardened against boredom. The scary thing was, it fitted my mood perfectly.
I didn’t know what was possessing me to feel the way I felt as I watched her with Lord Adonis. For a sudden, furious moment I’d wanted to strangle him.
But there were several explanations. All the effort I had turned to her was being tread on, burned away in those golden, werewolf eyes. Northwell would find out. Northwell knew everything. Oh, he’d give me bloody hell if I lost her.
I slid into the dancing circle, trying not to scowl too hard. Who would care that she was veritably smitten with Lord Adonis? Certainly not I. There were other ways into to the secrets of York House. If I did not win her back tonight, what? At least I could laugh, that the cold, aloof Ann was finally moon-eyed for someone, even if it wasn’t me.
A pair of little hands took mine. “Donne! Did you see the fight?” said Cassie, dressed like a countess in miniature.
“No. Did you?”
“No! I wanted to, though.”
“I don’t think you would. They’re the most boring things.” The men lifted their ladies, so I took her high up and twirled her around, to her delight. Then we changed partners, and I tried to drift in Ann’s direction, but the lady who took me next was Liza, in a dark red dress.
“The girls love you, you know.”
“I am glad I make them happy.”
“It was hard for us, when Tom left. You must help me, John. We must keep their minds from their father. They are sad when they recall he is away.”
“I’ll open my office for more games,” I said, trying not to seem afraid as she stared at my neck.
“Will you not look in my eyes, John?” she asked.
I didn’t need to – I knew what I would see. Vampires’ eyes, pools so black they glowed with a light that was more and less than light, it was something else that could swallow you if you dared to gaze at length.
“I’m sorry, secretary.”
For a second I thought of Tom, and his threat about Liza, but I hadn’t long. The next woman was Ann, and now I got a closer look at her gown.
At a distance, I’d thought it just another beautiful dress, like the ones she usually wore, but it wasn’t. It was pure green-blue and rippled like a river in sunlight, colors glancing across it, shimmering, then gone. The trim was pearls. Swimming across the skirt were silken fish that quivered with every step. Her hair was hid behind a blonde wig arranged simply, but adorned with fluttering silk folds that looked like fins, laced with webbing that might have resembled fish-net if it hadn’t been fine and gold like the work of some gilded spider. Little pearls swung from her ears.
#
The dancers grasped each other by the elbows, and so did he, but his touch was tense and hard. He said lowly, “What game are you playing, my lady?”
“Game?” Ann said.
“You know,” he said. “It is your gown.”
“Why?”
“My poem. The Bait. You’ve gone and made a dress out of it. Why?”
Ann was happy at how easily his emotions had been provoked, and she said, “Is this really a conversation to have while dancing, Mr. Donne?”
“Then we shall not dance,” he said, and withdrew her from the ballroom floor, still not releasing her. While most of the mundane eyes were glazed and delighted, his (green, or blue, or neither, some confusing color in-between) were pained and taut.
“You have no right,” she snapped, “to act this way. Perhaps you have had too much to drink, or your humors are unbalanced. That is your affair, and I will not be —”
“For God’s sake, hold your tongue,” he whispered.
“What do you want?” She glanced over her shoulder – straight into the eyes of Ivan Bathóry. He watched her from across the wall, and glared at the interloper. Perhaps, as much as she hated Donne, she could at least use him. Let Ivan Bathóry see her with Donne. That would make it sure ―
“I only wish to talk,” he said.
“This is not the proper place.”
He gently released her arms, afraid she would run like a frightened animal from its cage, and began to go, looking surprised when she followed him. And they were walking through the lordly halls and golden candlelight, neither of them saying a word. Ann let him lead the way. Difficult as it was to read his expression behind the mask, his eyes displayed all she needed to know. And his hands moving restlessly. Finally they came to a hall on the outside of York House, open on one side to a balcony. Looking out, Ann could see the gardens, lush hedges sweeping in curves and rows, and beyond it the Thames. The German man’s barge still bobbed regally at the pier.
The faint breeze rustled the leaves of the wisteria trees, which had been placed throughout the hall. Adorned with shiny paper, branches laden with sweet flowers hung overhead, turning the corridor into some magical forest. It was here Donne stopped. He leaned on the stone railing, arms hanging listlessly at his sides. They were alone.
“You are tired?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Does this give you pleasure?”
“What?”
“Confounding me. Hating me, then coming out in that dress, now hating me again.”
“I do not hate you.”
“What made you cold?” His bile had suddenly turned to tenderness. “Do you feel anything? Are you numb? Does it pain you? Will you ever smile?”
What was the artful thing to say? “I won’t smile to words and poesy.”
“Words.” He sighed and pulled off his mask, then fiddled with one of the paper decorations on the tree, making it twirl one way, then another. “I must have words. Words are where I go when nothing else makes sense. Words are…everything, or they were once. And without a pen in my hands, I am nothing remarkable at all.”
Ann said, “Fine. Write to me. Send your poems to Loseley House.”
“You’re going back to Surrey?”
“Tomorrow.”
The whole of him seemed to wilt, as it should have. Ann leaned against the wall and watched him rub the ground with the toe of his boot.
“What,” he said.
“Nothing.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I just thought you would say something.”
“May I?”
“If you must.”
He stepped up to her very slowly, very carefully. “I….” But his voice could not be heard, and it was low and silent nothing but a trembling of his breath. Then, as if the words he sought lay before him there, he put his lips to hers. Lightly, unsure.
Then he slowly drew away, after the shortest of moments had passed. His eyes were surprised. He had probably expected her to scream. No. Ann would give him what he wanted. Soon, father, she thought, soon we’ll know what this spy is hiding.
He took her hand carefully this time. His lips were soft and he was undeniably talented, which was consolation. Closing her eyes, she kissed him in return. It was bearable, and when she opened her eyes, the silver ornaments were brighter than before.
He leaned on the wall beside her, smiling.
“Who are you, Donne?”
Perhaps it was too soon, but her impatience was running away with her. Maybe now he would admit himself. If not, at least such a broad and metaphoric question would protect her.
“I don’t know. A few minutes ago, I could have told you, but not anymore.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m just here.”
“Surely you have a reason – a purpose.”
He looked fiercely frightened for a moment.
“You’re just here.”
“When I am at York House,” he said, “here is all I am. A shadow — no, not even a shadow. A shadow means there’s something somewhere. But I’m nothing. Look at me, and you’ll see what you want. What do you want to see?”
“Whatever makes you happy,” said Ann.
He had nothing else to say, and leaned back, and watched her. A few minutes passed, and then they went their separate ways. Ann was disappointed she would be gone to Loseley, especially now that she had him. But maybe absence would make him need her, and when she returned to London he would tell her all about the Order– she hoped dearly.
She was tired. While the bells struck twelve, Ann was in her room, spending the first few minutes of 1599 washing the John Donne from her lips.
#
After the commotion of earlier, Itzak was avoided. He did not move from the couch and was not talked to. Saddened, tired, and silent, he could tell that it was starting to affect the others. Isabel leaned her chin on her hand. Lovelace stuffed himself on pastries. Bode was sleeping. They’d been joined by a sniffly boy in a Puckish mask, who said he was Lady Egerton’s son, Francis Woolley.
Isabel sighed and looked at Itzak. “Do you want to get something more to eat?”
But his stomach felt like lead. He shook his head.
Francis Woolley said, “Did you see the garden greenhouse…?”
They groaned.
“The lavender’s come up. I’m fond of lavender. Have you heard that if you put it under your pillow, you’ll dream of the person you love?”
“Pathetic superstition,” said Itzak.
“But the vapors —”
“Are a gross medieval misconception.”
“I – all right.” He stood up. “I’m going to, uh, have pudding.”
Itzak nodded and buried his face in the pillow.
“Would you like something to drink?” said Isabel when the boy had gone.
“No,” said Itzak.
All around them the party whirled on, and the smiling faces made him feel even worse. He was alone. He wanted to dance, yes, very much, but he couldn’t. It was a complex equation, and the solution – as always – was Ø.
A dandy in a lion mask swept up to them and bowed regally to Isabel. His face could not be seen, but from the hair and the voice Itzak had heard in the Mermaid Tavern, he marked it as the actor, Richard Burbage. “Would my lady dance?”
Isabel looked apologetically at Itzak, but all the same she took the regally extended hand and was gone. From behind him, Itzak heard Lovelace groan softly. His own exhalation was soft, and startled. He watched Burbage’s elegant steps and the gilded belt and the hands on Isabel’s waist. So watching them dance, turning and spinning in the warm gold light, was Itzak. He wished to know how.
#
Jonson met them back at the barge. Finally leaving York House behind, they took the river through the night. Itzak tore off the silk and trappings and sat on the prow with his arms crossed and his head bent over the river. Jonson wasn’t tired at all. “How went it?”
“Fine,” said Itzak.
“1599!”
“Yeah.”
Jonson held out his hand. Itzak passed him the ring. Eventually, it glowed red and Jack answered. “Is everyone safe?”
“We’re brilliant,” exclaimed Jonson. “I got attacked by a werewolf on the way to the boat, but I dealt with him….”
“It’s too reckless! What if someone recognized you?”
“It’s no matter. I’m leaving for Scotland, Northwell’s orders. He wants me out of London and away from public notice. I’ll be there for a while.”
“What about your wife and Benjamin?”
“The Order will watch them, and provide for them.”
“I will make sure they are safe,” said Jack’s voice.
A pause, as Jonson surveyed the slight mist on the water. “You do that. And be wary of your own self, too.”
Jack seemed to smile. “I’ll be fine. I am well.”
“Very well?”
“Um – eh.”
Jonson laughed, “I know that voice. That’s the Jack-just-got-snogged voice.”
Of course Jack got snogged, said a voice in Itzak’s head. Jack knows how to do things like that.
Jack did his best to grumble. “It was Ann. We’ve reached a new point in our relationship.”
Jonson stroked his false beard. “And it was…?”
“It was fine,” Jack grunted. “Where’s Itzak?”
“Here,” said Itzak.
“Are you all right?”
“Perfect,” said Itzak. Soon there was nothing more to talk about, and the ring went dead from the weak connection anyway. By the time he was back underground, Itzak was too tired to fix it. Gladly he fumbled out of the stiff nobleman’s clothes. He threw the silks on the desk piled high with books, papers, and lodestones, then shut out the light and went to bed, hand wandering beneath the cool underside of his pillow to make sure the sprig of lavender was still there.

I was delighted when New Year’s was over. For one thing I wasn’t sacked for the brawl before Queen Elizabeth, although the Lord Keeper let me have it for letting such a thing take place. He accepted my excuse that the bearded attacker had simply stolen an invitation, thus gaining entrance. I think this was because at the moment Egerton was angrier with his son. We’d just received word from the coast that Sir Thomas the Younger’s company had been kept back while the rest of Essex’s army sailed, due to “rowdiness.” I pictured Tom at a Chester inn, squandering his money on beer and girls, smoking the tobacco I’d given him as a going-away present. Likewise I would see Essex at the prow of his galleon, eyes held bravely to the west, and Henry Wotton scribbling bank-notes at his heels, Devereux’s fluttering cape occasionally hitting him in the face. And in my mind I saw Ben, giving the Chamberlain’s Men a few more finished plays before he left for Scotland.
Since Tom’s departure, Ben’s removal to the moors, and the fact that I’d pulled off a flawless con, had me in a pretty good mood, it was a shock to see Northwell’s stony face looking at me with distaste one Sunday.
“…What?”

“A kiss, and yet she told you nothing.”
“Sir, I am as mad as the next man.”
“The Order is not paying you to dawdle. Does your country mean so little to you?”
“I am doing all I can!” I said. “I’ve told you all I’ve learned from his office. More wants to double-cross Egerton. Egerton wants the throne. It’s quite simple, and for the sake of the country and its people I believe it best to kill them both, stake the vampires, send a word to the Order in Ireland to take out Sir Tom, and then rest assured that demons no longer dwell in the most influential seat of government in the world.”
I thought it was a worthy speech, but Northwell only blinked. “Nor does the Order pay you to form your own opinions. You, Donne, are an eye, and expendable. What you observe is analyzed by Order minds who are a good deal more versed in such interpretation than you.”
“The Order hardly pays me at all!”
“Is money what you want, Donne? Has Henry’s ghost decayed in potency?”
I could have taken such a blow from someone else, but in the cold, smooth tone of Northwell it was unbearable. “If I did this for the shillings, why yet do I go out each night and dodge death? As if it’s easy, especially with them all talking and speaking when you try to slay them. Everything’s changed.”
“As we know. The Order requires answers. Answers are the force behind the world.”
So as the weather grew warmer, the breezes balmy, and March became April, I redoubled my snooping efforts. By degrees, I grew bolder. From behind the Abyssinian tapestries I peered at unusual guests and when I entertained them, got them tipsy enough to let slip confidential bits about Egerton/politics/petitions/Privy Chamber/Privy Chamber’s privy chamber (categories often overlapped). Egerton didn’t care or notice, as most of the time he wanted them delivered to him intoxicated to entertain his own purposes. So and my lord was happy, leeching his victims of information he wanted, unawares that I’d already done the same. In vino veritas.
“Egerton, hmmm…. awfully strange eyes, I say….”
“I’ve seen a man ‘round here, all dressed in black, with a plague mask, don’t you know, must be reporting and I pray to God there’s been no outbreak….”
“Essex looked so troubled when he left for Ireland….”
It yielded nothing novel. I started to drift into the Egerton family’s private wing, perusing the dark, lushly painted suites for never more than a minute, never penetrating too deep. And soon even this became impossible, when Lady Egerton took sick with another strange illness. Oddly, she could not cure herself, though for days the whole House smelt of her mandrake cure-alls.
After that, I returned to my main form of observation: I listened in Star Chamber and told Northwell what I supposed he already knew. “Egerton is concerned with potential political messages in Shakespeare’s new Henry V.” “Egerton thinks that we ought to clothe our soldiers properly in Ireland.” “Egerton reports that libelers spread lies about James VI of Scotland, calling him papist.”
Meanwhile, I got letters from Wotton, but seldom. These days his post was slowing to a crawl, caught in the Hibernian bogs, contracting some Irish negligence. I told him this. He wrote back. He was mad. It was funny.
After awhile, I wrote and told him our post was probably being lost or stolen or read at leisure by some vagrant mailman. And since more than anything, letters mingle souls, I suggested we communicate less frequently. This was also an eloquent way of getting out of writing to him.
By night, things weren’t so bad. The Order sent me out after the occasional werewolf, sea serpent, succubus, revenant, and for a while I took to hunting them down, cocking my head, and telling them they were Donne for. Needless to say this witty development was short-lived.
#
My freedom didn’t last. Lord Egerton received a letter from his brother-in-law, More. More wished his daughter to return to York House, as she missed the city, and he could not spare an escort. So Egerton, who had been taking a country holiday in his wife’s fair house in Pyrford, sent me.
At the very least it was a change in scenery as I rode deeper into the countryside on Abernathy on a clement April morning. A few weeks ago, Egerton and Co. had left the grey canvas of the metropolis for the green, pastoral painting of the country; I could smell the change in the air. It shed the dusty shell that kept in city smoke and garbage fumes and sprung forth, brisk and flitting like a flying bird, and on its wings it carried distant songs: sighing fields, gurgling streams, distant plows. The Thames, no longer rancid, shone a healthy blue between the fields. You could forget the city and the Order. Abernathy was glad to be on holiday, too, and clopped eagerly along.
In late afternoon we passed through the town of Guildford. Farmers and craftsmen looked over their shoulders at me. Little kids followed me awhile, pretending I was a knight. So I became one, bellowing parts of Faerie Queene, which made them giggle. It also drew me to the attention of some highway bandits, but Abernathy and I gave them what for in the woods.
About an hour later I came through a stretch of sprouting barley and saw a friendly manor on a slight hill. It was very new, of warm grey stone, and had a great many windows. As I approached, I rode through a span of lilac and poppy gardens to a pair of huge maple doors attended by a porter. Something was odd about him, and I couldn’t place it. Then I halted before him, and he looked me in the eye without craning his neck. He was eight feet tall.
“Yes?”
“Hello. I’m from London. Lord Keeper Egerton sent me, for lady Ann.”
“God, you came late. My lord expected you yesterday.” He had a strong Turkish accent.
“I left this morning, pray forgive me.”
He shrugged. “Dismount.”
I dismounted, and faced his stomach. He smelt of a faint ogre-ness, which wasn’t a surprise. Straightening his fine dress shirt, he told me to bring my horse to the stables, then return. “Promptly,” he said.
Abernathy was unhappy, but he let himself be shown into a roomy stall. After a few minutes he could tolerate the big-eyed, white-haired stable boy, as long as the spritely thing didn’t touch him. Then I cautiously approached the doors again.
“All is satisfactory?” said the Turk. “Good. Let us within.”
Inside Loseley House it was cool. Unlike York, it was well-lit and not the slightest bit dusty. Like the air outside, the air within was light and refreshing. Sunlight leapt through the tall windows and curled up snugly on the carpets. The eight-foot Turk led me into a high, wide room whose walls were covered in fine paintings, all glowing softly in the cool sunlight. I was shown a couch before a huge, dark fireplace, and left alone.
Lord More did not come. I sat there for a while, sinking into the couch as slowly I was rid of the stiff pain in my backside. The soft cotton I was wearing were fine for riding, and even better for napping. I rose for awhile, inspecting the room and its gleaming heirlooms for signs of secret passages, then sat down again and waited. And waited.
Mid-doze, I heard the door creak, and opened my eyes. Lord More came in, looking a little weary, but cheerful. “Mr. Donne!” he exclaimed warmly. “What a pleasure to see a familiar face. Prithee forgive my keeping thee waiting, for I was hunting on the grounds, and I see thou hast no tea, or servants. I would fain compensate with supper and conversation, as thou must be weary.”
“My lord, you are most generous, but to get a room at the inn, I would need to depart soon.”
“Dear boy!” he laughed. “A jest! Inn, my word. We were never so rude as to let an honored guest inconvenience himself so greatly. Thou shalt have fine rooms here, and dine with us, and tell what has transpired in London.”
“My lord, you are so hospitable, but I don’t want to impose —”
“I insist. Ann hath not had time enough to gather all she would, or say all the farewells she ought. Perhaps, methinks, thou shouldst stay the morrow too, and leave the day after. Then I could provide the carriage I have not now, and Ann would benefit greatly from it, while thou wouldst surely taketh much delight from our lands and house.”
He pointed to the portraits on the walls, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Only the worthiest,” he explained, “artists were permitted to create such works. Such talent, no? My favorite is the Italian landscape. The perspective, the detail. Notice the colors within, and how they surface in the other paintings. All beautiful, all fit together perfectly on the wall. Planning!”
The giant serving-man appeared at the door. “Mr. Donne’s chamber is ready, lord.”
George More led me down airy, elegant hallways. “This manor, too, is paramount Art,” he said. “Every arch and lintel exactly executed, wings closing together flawlessly. And as if the building itself were not enough, look at the paintings, and the busts, like pieces in a puzzle-box. This house is a universe, created by the God of an organized mind.”
He turned to me, smiling. “Maddening, isn’t it?”
I tried again to escape. “More than anything I do not want to be a burden. Though I will stay according to your wishes, I do not know the predisposition of my lord Egerton regarding such things. He may be cross....”
“I shall send him a pigeon, do not worry. Ah, here is thy chamber. Acceptable?”
“Beautiful, sir, and far more worthy of a prince than a secretary.”
“Come. Egerton has told me often that thou art a scribe fit for a King, and thy wit rivals any. Thy manners are certainly gentle, if naught else. Supper is at seven. Please be there.” He smiled, and I went in my room for the rest of the day.
#
Sometime before seven, I slunk out of my chamber and found my way to the dining hall. Dinner was pleasant, and without Ann. For this I was grateful. The second I saw her, the charade would begin again: me making moony eyes at her even though I wanted to retch, feeling like a fool for acting so cloyingly, and her playing so aloof. And then I’d make myself another fool with the whining poems. Any holiday from that was welcome.
George More said, “Ann hath been feeling ill, and will be better tomorrow.”
“That is good,” I replied without emotion.
“Thou hast not seen her face in some time,” he pointed out. He, Ann’s sisters, and the sylph-like servants all turned to me expectantly, keenly watching my expression. I was confused and disconcerted and just kept eating my potatoes.
“Guess not,” I said between bites.
I was not even glad to return to my room. I had no paper or means to write to occupy my nervous mind, and all that was left for me to do was lay down early on the huge, magnificent bed and stare at the blue-papered walls. Putting my dagger beside the pillow, I stared at the star-bedecked ceiling and tried to connect the constellations as I listened to the rest of Loseley House.
There was no bell here, only nightingales and distant werewolves howling to tell me there was time to the darkness. I was tired and emptied by my thoughts when morning came at last, and I opened the curtains, and there was a knock at the door.
It was one of the family’s sylphs, staring up at me with huge, dark eyes that blinked in the doll whiteness of his face. His hair was the same silky white, so pale one could almost see through it, framing a childish face with a small nose, and a smaller mouth. He was slight and his timid arms held a pile of neatly folded garments.
“Yes? Does Lord More wish me now?” I asked.
He held out the clothes, gesturing to me.
“The clothes are from More?”
He nodded. Then he pointed at my own clothes, the ones I’d worn yesterday. He shook his head, and held out the clothes. Taking them, I said, “If he wishes, I will wear them. But the buttons – I – where does that —”
The sylph motioned to me, the clothes, then to himself.
It was strange, being dressed by a servant, but he put up with my inexperience. I hated it, and it made me feel strange inside, being clothed to More’s design, feeling more and more like some game-piece, and besides, ungentle. Once garbed, I thanked him, and his eyes gleamed with gratitude. He pointed to a mirror on the wall and showed me my reflection.
I looked like a younger stamp of Essex, clad in finery that fit me surprisingly well. My jerkin was of gold velvet, and I ran my hands across it – it was soft, like down. I twirled the emerald cape. Perhaps there was an upside. What would Ann think seeing me like this?
The sylph followed me as I strolled down the halls to the dining room, pleased that I was pleased. Everything seemed happier. In the end I wasn’t even surprised when we came to the dining room, clean and empty except for Ann More, the cool morning light through the trees streaming through the windows on her. She was collected. “Hello, Donne. I am afraid that I did not recognize you in such clothes.”
Well, I thought, it is hardly my fault your father wants to play sociopathic dress-up games. But I tried not to think of this; only be cheery. “I feel ever so grand, my lady! These clothes are wondrous, but it is seeing you that makes me a prince.”
She cast her gaze cautiously around, and I thought I saw her smile.
“There are none here,” I said, taking her hand.
“Yes,” she said, “Sundrille, please, say nothing.” The servant nodded and turned away.
I tried to convince myself she wasn’t Otherkind. Reverently I pulled her hand in mine to rest on my heart, then pulled it to my lips. “I missed you.”
“Do not kiss me, Donne….”
I whispered, “But why?”
She slid her hand from mine and stepped back. The sylph paused, then continued inspecting a vase. Ann said, “Not here. There are too many secrets – walls.”
“Then tell me.”
“You tell me, if you are truly mine,” she murmured. “Or do you lie to me?”
“Never to you.” Then I heard the footsteps and the murmurs of the approaching family and let her go. Soundless, she drifted to her seat at the table. My sprite friend showed me my place and hovered at my shoulder while Ann and I waited. Calmly. Silently.
“Donne!” called George More jovially, hands spread wide. “Thou hast slept well?”
“Very well, sir. And thank you for the clothes.”
“Good, good. Stand and let me see, then.”
I stood and showed him how I looked in the garments, finding the action easy, but after all I was being lifted and carried, a puppet on its threads. I wondered what Ann was thinking as she watched me. Maybe in these clothes I had something I hadn’t possessed before, a nobility that would make her like me.
Breakfast was some sweet, flakey bread and butter, peaches, and a cold ham, brought in by the sylphs on polished silver trays. They moved soundlessly, like fluid silver clockwork, drifting unassumingly to and fro. Sundrille was no longer at my shoulder. I looked for him, but realized with shock I could not tell him from the others. He was somewhere, I knew, but I couldn’t tell where. Guilty and sad, I picked at my ham.
“So, Master Donne,” said More, “what has been happening in Star Chamber?”
“Not much,” I said ambiguously.
“And my Lord Keeper Egerton, how fareth he?”
“Well.”
“How is London?”
“Dirty as ever.”
“I meant the happenings.”
I shrugged. “Lots of English refugees from Ireland coming in.”
“So Essex has begun the campaign?”
“No – he’s still safely in the English Pale, while the soldiers start to desert him.”
“What does the Queen think of this?”
“She loves Devereux and hates him. Everyone else just does one or the other.”
“And thou?”
“I support the good Earl.”
“But some do not.”
“Robert Cecil, yes, and the merchants and the lawyers and the Puritans. Essex is – chivalrous, which they do not like, and he’s far more popular. It is all a matter of perspective, I think.”
“Everything’s a matter of perspective,” said Ann. “No one out there agrees.”
“Especially,” meditated More, “religion.”
“Papa,” barked Ann.
There was a pause.
“Prithee, lord,” I said, “I do not like to talk about such things.”
“Is there ever a guarantee of Heaven, Mr. Donne?”
Such things are spoken only by the damned, I thought.
We ate in quietness for a while, the only noises our glasses clinking and the soft metallic tings of silverware. I was quite handy with a fork by now, and looking down I noticed I was clutching mine with white fingers, prodding my napkin.
“How old art thou, Donne?” said More eventually.
“Twenty,” I lied, being a little more and a little less.
“Then the years have been kind to thee. Art married?”
Ann spoke up. “Papa, can’t you see he does not want to talk?”
“I’m married to my muse,” I coughed.
“Ah. Wouldst thou like to marry, sometime?”
“I don’t know.”
“I am finished with my meal, Papa,” said Ann, face pale. “I am going.” She stood stiffly, and some sylphs scurried past to sweep up her plate and glass.
“And thou, if thou wishest,” said More smoothly, “Donne, mayest go.”
I went.
I had ruined it – everything. Now – look at how I had stammered and snapped and the way he had dismissed me – I could tell he would never let anything slip about the Egertons around me. And I had lost Sundrille, which made me feel like a selfish fop, as the clothes already did.
“Donne!” called Ann, her footsteps clattering behind me.
As if my day weren’t foul enough!
“Donne.” Her hand took my wrist, and it was only out of frustration with myself that I didn’t shake her off.
“I am sorry for my father’s nature.”
“What does he want?” I said.
There was a brief flicker of knowing and hiding that played across her features. “I do not know. He has odd ways. Please do not hate me.” She led me down the airy, cool halls, through the gleaming sunlight, and out into the gardens. Some fuzzy bees drifted pollen-drunk around the poppies that nodded knowingly at me in the warm air. Thinking of the smell of Tom’s pipe, I flinched as the breeze blew their perfume over me.
“Is that the park?” I asked, pointing to the wooded country around the barley field. She nodded, and we went to the stables. When he saw me, Abernathy hoofed the ground nervously, never taking his big black eyes from Ann. I rubbed his nose as I saddled him, but his tail still swished irritably.
Ann’s mount was a dapple grey with a white mane, and neither it nor Ann looked at me once as we rode. Instead, her gaze was on the countryside we passed. It was mostly woods, and some rare state possessed the forest: the leaves above glowed young and bright in the sun, then descended into shadowy emerald on the lower boughs. A dirt path wound through the forest floor, but besides that all was bracken, ferns, and creepers, and hoary logs with lush green beards. The moss and clover grew profusely, especially when the woods drifted into meadows and pasture.
If I listened I heard sounds of scurrying things. Loseley Park squirrels were a singular white color, little ghosts that flickered here and there and chattered in the branches. Ann would stop me and point to fox dens and pheasants I would have never seen myself. She knew every inch of the place. For the first time, I think I was seeing her actually happy.
Then we passed into the deep woods. There it was still and dark, the trees thicker, the quiet denser. The birds silent. “There are wolves here,” she said.
Something darted past the corner of my eye. I turned, but it was gone.
“They don’t attack people,” she continued.
“Well, who wouldn’t be afraid of you,” I joked.
She smiled coldly to tell me I was bothersome.
As we went, I thought I heard distant music – not the man-made kind with pipes and fiddles, and not the animal kind, either. It was faint and came from everywhere, a glass sigh that vanished as soon as I tried to listen. White forms darted in the shadows, but I wasn’t sure they were squirrels. I did not let Ann know I looked, but glancing through the trees once I saw a pool in a dark grove, and drinking was an animal that might have been a stag, with one long horn and a lion’s tufted tail, but it saw me and bounded away.
Another rustle, from behind.
“Wolves, you said?”
“Yes,” she answered.
I felt my saddlebag to assure myself my pistol was still there, and touched the dagger at my belt. As if it sensed this, the forest was still at once, and we saw nothing else until the woods died off, a leafy palisade before swells of grassy hills above a small river. It was the diamond kind, smooth and wide, that caught the light like crystal but still managed to reflect the bright blue sky. It didn’t babble, but it sighed, and the sound was continuous, a perpetual rush of water and air. Lilacs nodded their heads. The wind rustled the grass as it chased its tail and bedded down in the heather.
“We must talk,” she said.
We dismounted and she fed our horses apples and we sat down on the swelling bank in the soft grass. The sun was warm on my face and I could have gone to sleep, but reluctantly stayed awake.
She looked at the river, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms round them as she turned very solemn. “Are you so new in love with Court that you never wrote me?”
Oh. That.
“I wanted to,” I said. “I tried many times.”
“Part of me thinks you’ve met some horrid noblewoman in the palaces, with all your going there with Tom. I suspect you have new friends now, and you’re with a different mistress each week, doing as you used to do.”
I coughed up a “What?”
“You know what they say about you! There is the woman from The Dampe, and her from The Expostulation, and Julia, Variety, Loves Progress, On His Mistress, To His Mistress Going to Bed —”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“You’re making me want to hide under a rock, is what.” I noticed my hands were shaking, and I sat on them (everything was going wrong).
Ann just looked angrier. “And I suppose you could add The Bait to that list.”
It stung, more than I wanted it to. “That is all people see.”
“See what?”
“What I’ve done.”
“It’s true.”
“Two years of being stupid, yes, it’s true,” I said. “I was younger.”
“So were a lot of people.”
“I was foolish.”
“So were a lot of people.”
“My brother died,” I snapped. “And it was my fault.”
She shut up after that. I didn’t know why I kept talking, but I did.
“I was kind of in a bad way. No, not kind of. I was. Too many drinks in the Mermaid Tavern, trying to just get his face out of my head. I was nineteen, you know, and I had never really drank like that before.”
“So?”
“So that night I lost my virginity to a woman twice my age.”
She just nodded. I didn’t know whether to be mad or grateful for her apathy.
“That was how it began. It seemed the only way, I mean. Just to let myself be…used, I suppose. I told myself I wasn’t. I told myself in poems. I was the one using them, not the other way around.” I looked at her. “I understand if you don’t wish to love me anymore. After all, if anyone does find out, we’re killed, or disgraced. So.”
She took my hand, and I endured it, hoping that this was when she would tell me everything about her father and Egerton and York House. She whispered, “To enter into these bonds is to be free.”
“I wrote that,” I muttered, trying to play for sympathy again. “I wrote it for someone else, when I didn’t know what love is. You must not speak of it. You will not be part of a list. You are not mine. No man can possess the moon or the wilderness. I am yours. Your every whisper is an emperor’s employ. And every flutter of your eye is like the lash of an Egyptian.”
“Metaphors are odious,” she said. “I would not make you a slave.”
“I’d be happy.”
“That’s the problem,” she said, fingering the grass. “If every loving poem had worth, and every iamb truth and heft, then maybe I could find a way to trust your words, though they ring true. But…when you whisper soft, and talk of love, you build these walls. I cannot talk to you without your babbling about stars and flowers and loving me forever and ever and ever.”
“And ever.”
“I’m a poem you need to write, Donne. Treat me like you would a normal person.”
“… How?”
“Disagree with me sometimes.”
“No.”
“Good. And the way you stare dramatically into the distance. It’s horrid. Stop it.”
I looked sheepishly at the ground.
“Good. You’re leaning very close. Acceptable in short, infrequent incidences, but not as often as you do.”
I had been complying with a growing unease, and felt like kicking myself. Just as I’d thought: too much Romeo, and now she was weary of it. But she was trying to change this, which meant she liked me, or thought she might, or thought she could, or wanted to. After living so long alone with her own marble logic, she needed someone, and I was conveniently located. I put my head on her shoulder. “But you smell so nice. Like perfume and pancakes.”
“I smell like pancakes?” she asked uncomfortably.
“You smell like the best pancakes in the world, served in the morning in the rose garden at Richmond.”
A strange sound filled the air, a bright, uncanny chortling. I looked behind, but it was coming from beside me. Ann was laughing.
Ann was laughing. And the trees and the lilac and the sunlit river seemed to laugh too.
“Yet,” she said, after a while, “it seems cruel to part you from your poetry, though you don’t write me.”
“Simple. I will write when you wish me to write, never else.”
“And if I wish a poem now?”
“I thought you hated my poems.”
“I don’t. I like them very much.”
“What kind of poem, my lady?”
“A poem in which you tell me all your secrets, if you love me.”
She had taken an odd tone of voice. But at least now I could ask: “A secret given demands one in return. Please, or I shall think myself no more than your meanest horse, used on the plow but never to be ran. Or a messenger, ferrying the letters I’m not allowed to read.”
“First tell me what you hide,” she said testily. “Because I know you’re hiding something.”
“How can I write? We must go back to the House.”
She reached into her saddlebags, taking out a pen, some ink, and a book of paper, handing them to me.
I raised my eyebrow. “Just happened to have that? Got anything else? Lunch, perhaps?”
She produced some sweet rolls, some apples, two canteens of cold milk, and a blanket. We ate. “I wait for my poem,” she said.
“I cannot write upon command, without a spark or bloom of inspiration.”
She sighed. “Very well, then. Take my hands.” She held hers out, and I extended mine, and our fingers intertwined. We paused like that, looking down.
“Inspired?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Would it help if we were closer?” We adjusted ourselves till our shoulders touched and our faces were very near to one another. We lay back on the warm spread of the blankets. “And this?”
“Better, I guess,” I said, weighing my options. She wanted a poem. I was not inspired to write said poem. Perhaps I could throw something on the page and she wouldn’t know it was lies. But of course she would. She was Ann.
A strange idea occurred to me. If only I could will myself to fall in love, I’d have a poem, I knew it. Otherwise, I was done for. God, it was stupid. Reckless. It was a passing thought. It possessed me.
A poem and she’ll tell me everything. This is for the Order, I thought as I looked into her eyes.
Purple. That rare purple. At the edges they were pale, then grew darker and darker the deeper you looked. I saw Otherlight, and it was cold and heavy. I saw my picture reflected, staring lonely back at me. Some dimness made my thoughts hazy and uncertain. What did she feel? Something, something, surely. My gaze went father within, searching for what was her, glowing through her eyes. And the thin, lonely soul of Ann More fluttered out to meet me somewhere between us.
#
THE EXTASIE

Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A Pregnant banke swel'd up, to rest
The violets reclining head,
Sat we two, one anothers best.
Our hands were firmly cimented
By a fast balme, which thence did spring ;
Our eye-beames twisted, and did thred
Our eyes, upon one double string.
So to’engraft our hands, as yet
Was all the meanes to make us one ;
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As, 'twixt two equall Armies, Fate
Suspends uncertaine victorie,
Our souls (which to advance their state,
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.

“Acceptable,” said Ann, kissing my hand as she read it all (and there was far more than that, lots more, it was very long). A few moments ago I wouldn’t have minded, but now I was coming to my senses, and flinched at her gestures. Didn’t look at her.
Dammit, had I liked her?
“Now whisper me a secret,” I said.
“Let me think, Donne.”
Up came the blanket, down went the sun. Drearily we rode towards Loseley House beneath the starry, purple sky. Abernathy had filled up on the thick green grass and trotted easily to the twinkling windows before us. That night, I drifted to sleep, and in the morning Sundrille woke me with new clothes I was to wear back to Egerton in the stagecoach More was providing. The sylph came with us on the ride north.
Ann pulled the shades and seemed to sleep as on we rumbled towards Pyrford. I woke her for lunch and she just sighed and ate, and after awhile said, “We’re fools, yielding to akrasia. If Egerton learns of this, you are a dead man, Donne.”
“Everybody dies, my lady. I’d prefer to die like that. And besides, what bothers me isn’t death, it’s that you still call me Donne. You cannot call me Jack?”
“Is Jack what Tom and his ilk and your so-called friends name you? It’s vulgar. You’re no Jack. And you’re not the lowly Donne that Egerton thinks you are.
“I will call you John.”
She opened the curtains. Glancing out, for a moment I saw three figures on the roadside, dressed in swathes of black. I knew they were women, but when they turned to look at me I saw they had no faces, just darkness, and held a cloth of grey between them. Before I could draw a breath, we passed them on the road, like they had never been.
Ann leaned her head on me.

Spring came, and Ann tried not to grow haughty because John Donne had fallen so utterly for her. After all, he was still raising bothersome questions about her family, and never answered hers about him. Things took time, she knew. All she needed now was time.
He took her walking on one balmy Sunday, through the Strand. Lady Egerton was very sick again, and all the tea Milo Schroeder brought her wasn’t helping, though she demanded it in boatloads ― so Ann was free to go. Donne said he knew booksellers who might have new works for her. He had white sheets in his hands, so she guessed it was a business expedition for him, too. He swished these back and forth as he waltzed beside her, humming. “O, I’m happy,” he proclaimed eventually. “Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing, fa-la-la-la-la—”
“I abhor this song.”
He smirked. “Fie then! Why sit we musing, youth’s sweet delight refusing?”
“It’s too happy. And risqué. If Egerton heard, he would surely hang you.”
“Risque? No, no. It is carpe deim. ‘Seize the day.’ You never know when your clock will cease to tick.”
“You think on death a lot.”
“Do I? I never noticed.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“I suppose….”
He stopped, for she had stopped, and he followed her gaze into the window of a jeweler’s shop. She glanced over the earrings.
He frowned. “It’s a dreadful thing.”
“What?”
“That ladies pierce their ears. If God created us with ears intact, I see no reason to put holes in them. I mean, I got my ear pierced on the Cadiz voyage. It hurt.”
“You? Why?”
“Peer pressure….beer. When I returned home I let it close. I still have the tattoo, though. What? Please don’t wrinkle your nose. It doesn’t make less sense than stabbing holes in oneself.”
Ann un-wrinkled her nose. “What else have you done? Gone cockfighting? To the plays?”
He looked taken aback. “What does that mean?”
“Since you seem attracted to rebellious things —”
“I… of course. I mean, of course not. No plays here. I’m Lord Egerton’s secretary, after all, not a – a – ah — playgoer.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“…Yes.”
“You’ve gone to the playhouses under my uncle’s nose.”
“Most frequently,” he admitted. “You’re interested?”
“No.”
“You’ve heard of Jonson, Shakespeare, Burbage?”
“Scandals mostly.”
“We ought to go.”
Ann weighed her options. Obviously, being caught with John Donne in a play-house would be social suicide for her family, and she’d already had one bad experience at night in London. But if she took John’s offer, he would think it meant he could trust her, trust her to hold his heart, accept him and keep his secrets. And when he finally trusted her enough, all the Order’s plans would come to her.
She slid her hand into his. “I have a disguise somewhere.”
He pulled her from the street into the shade of the bookstore, and kissed her. Then, humming, he twirled to a shelf, took a copy of Romeo and Juliet, and kissed her again. Then he spun to another shelf, found The Passionate Pilgrim, then returned, eyes dark and wondrous, and put his lips to hers.
#
Itzak’s share of happiness had been scant growing up in the Alps, in between the sheep, the garden, the snows, and caring for his mother when she’d taken sick. But now the flasks and shelves of power were contentment. And the forge. To work it was a dream. It was what Jack felt when he wrote poetry, what Ben Jonson felt when he stood, arms outstretched, on the lofty wooden stage. When Itzak watched the soft flames flutter on the vials, and made each timber glow within the fire, he felt a rightness possessing him. Hours would seem like minutes. Minh Long called it Zen.
There was a pistol called the Saturn, and he was drawing it, smoking, from the mold, its insides alight with the ember heat of life. The tongs were a part of him, as the metal was, and Itzak felt the pulse of it up his arm. All he could do, in fact, was feel – some glad swipe had cleared his mind of anything but a calm, buoyant instinct, a oneness with the metal. For the only time, he did not think, only did and was. The grip of the tongs, the sigh of the flames, the song as he lowered the embryonic shape into cool water —
His was the sweat of Hephaestus, of Mesamune, of Tubal-Cain.
In went the mechanisms, and the organs, and the sinews of iron and steel, fleshing out the shell. He cut more screws on his Besson machine and prepared them. Itzak scarcely paused to do more than splash cold water on his shining brow and brush his scorched hair away.
His was the sweat of Abednego, plunged unharmed into the fire.
Jack watched as Itzak (who had really ceased to be Itzak the moment he’d begun) ran the length of steel along the barrel and the sides, shaping, whittling, then plunging it into the water, then passing it over the fire to temper it. Metal folded seamlessly into metal. Then he let it cool in the water for a final time, and sank into a chair, face in a damp towel.
“It’s been hours,” said Jack.
“Yes, I know,” said Itzak. “Pass the mead.”
The cool, sweet tingle on his throat was welcome. It eased the tight, almost pleasant aching in his frame. He wiped his glasses free of soot and looked at the steaming trough and the hissing weapons within. Jack stood, waved away the steam, and peered in. “How long now?” he asked.
“Next I must cut wood and emboss the designs and apply the flintlock.” He showed Jack the intricate triggers he had made, the pan, the cock, the other gleaming bits and ends. The poet took one and pulled it with his thumb, and felt its every curve.
“I trust it,” he said.
Itzak rotated the gun in the water. The steam was still flowing, but not as thick. Then, he answered: “But I hope you will not need it often.”
“As I,” sighed Jack, “but it’s your best. Sit down, you look lightheaded.”
It was a good lightheadedness. Itzak took his baby from the water and held it in his gloves as he sat, feeling its warmth seep into him. Taking a scalpel, he began to tool, making flowers, pulling stars and ribbons from the pistol’s flanks. Flowing lines traced the contours. Again time was welded; one moment melted into the next.
“If a werewolf broke in now,” laughed Jack, “you would keep working.”
Itzak took a screwdriver and secured the mechanisms. Shining serpentine promontories grew from the pistol. The alchemist pointed it at his wall, twirling it, testing its balance. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’d shoot it.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Jack with false lightness.
“I am inconsiderate?”
“Yes.”
“All the hunters have the same illness now. When someone brings up what goes on at night, they scrape together the same cheery mask you wear now. Nothing is wrong. Then the mask is gone – poof – and they are like Adam or Eve after the Fall.”
“It’s what happens.” He paused. “I’ve been dreaming about it.”
“Let it go.”
“That’s the problem. I do. When I wake up in the morning and prance off to work and I’m with Ann it’s all happy and I’m happy and it isn’t right.”
“You’re irrational, is what.”
“What is rational? I feel so strange.”
Itzak’s mouth moved before his mind. “It’s that girl.”
Jack cocked his head, smiling. “What?”
The rest of Itzak’s brain caught up. He shouldn’t have spoken, but he already had, and the train of thought did not stop itself. “It must be nice having her kiss you.”
The poet’s hand crept up to his mouth and wiped it as if to rub off something dirty. “She’s one of Them.”
“Do not trust her.”
“Yeah.”
Itzak changed the subject. “Are you eating here?”
“No. I must to Egerton. Some bishop is at dinner.” Jack paced like a man departing for a funeral.
“Henry V is still playing at the Curtain. I could meet you there Tuesday.”
“Hmm,” said Jack, with satisfaction. “I much wish to go to a play.”
“That is good.”
“I must take Ann, though.”
Itzak laughed. “What?”
“Ann.”
“Why?”
“So she’ll fall in love with me.”
“At the Curtain? Es gait nit, you blockhead!”
“What does that mean?” said Jack, laughing and shoving him.
“It won’t work.”
“There is a science to these things, Itzak,” Jack explained. He struggled to find the Yiddish words. “Di khemye. I’m following a strategy. Slowly I’m luring her from her comfortable isolation, piercing the stygian wall that traps the lonely soul that longs to take wings and —”
“You’re using her,” said Itzak. “It’s not poetry.”
“Poetry is a science too. If you just know the right theorems, women fall for you.”
Itzak covered his flinch by scowling. “Hmph.”
“What?” Jack snapped.
“You have spent too much time with Sir Tom.”
“I’m only doing my damned job, Itzak!” muttered Jack. “If I didn’t need to, I wouldn’t. It’s slowly killing me. You don’t know what it’s like, so you ought not be jealous.”
At first Itzak thought it was a joke, for Jack was still wearing that false smile and sounding cheerful.
“Jealous?” Thinking of Isabel briefly, he said, “Why?”
“You know, Itzak, for the life of me I couldn’t say what.” He paced again, as Itzak, feeling the heat leaving the gun, took it in the tongs and raised it over the flames. Well, he thought, look at my hands, clutching like that. So he squeezed even harder, driving everything he felt out of his body, into the Saturn, into the fire, until there was nothing left. Jack said, “Tuesday, then?”
#
There was something cleaner about the Irish air, Essex noted, something fresher, something richer, something wilder. Winds from the north blew the cold spiced scent of the bogs over Dublin, and the Earl found the sharp edge, so unsullied by London smoke, was good for his health. He was prone like his father to sickness and before arriving had feared the worst, but O how good the air was! It cleared his head.
That sensation in his chest had died away as he had crossed the sea. It was still there, wrenching softly, making him feel weak and lost, but in Dublin there was plenty of posset cordial. He had noticed that while the cordial didn’t help much anymore, the feeling grew less the longer he was away from Court. Here, he was freer to do as he was wont; here, there were no pressing eyes or treacherous councilors, claws reaching for his throat; here it was easier not to think of Raleigh and Robert Cecil.
He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland!
He stood on the battlements of Dublin, watching his soldiers drilling below on the grey streets and grey fields. That, he supposed, was one of Ireland’s few problems: everything was as dark and grey as in London, besides the occasional sunshine. Essex needed more blue skies if they were to proceed north to crush O’Neill and his men.
And they needed to depart soon. The uniforms were wearing towards threadbare, and the chill was disagreeable to some, who dreaded the Irish damp to take them sick. The rebels had twice their numbers. Morale hovered between impatience and reluctance. Essex pondered the numbers and the reports. He ought to do something to bring back the bravado, muster them.
One of his knights was talking: Tom Egerton, the son of Essex’s dear friend the Keeper. He missed Egerton’s counsel, but Sir Tom was good company, and had strange eyes like his father. He smoked with the Earl and would lend him that Virginia leaf. “Yes, my lord, it’s trouble, what. We need an occasion. I don’t know, get a watchman to see the Irish out in the trees. That’d do.”
“Trickery. Base.”
“They’re on edge. They’re bound to think they see something soon enough. And the longer we wait, the more hysteric they’re bound to get. The more restless I get.”
From experience, Essex knew Sir Tom was not safe when restless, not were his company, of rowdy young Englishmen like himself. They were the kind that was handy in a fight, but only then.
“No!” said Essex. “I’ll make more knights.”
“That always puts the men in good humor,” agreed his secretary, Cuffe. Cuffe was a smart one, quite astute. How fortunate that the Lord Keeper had recommended him to the Earl.
“I’m not sure, friend Cuffe,” said Henry Wotton, eyeing his counterpart. While Wotton was plain-featured, unremarkable, and rounded in the middle, Cuffe had dark hair and a keenness in his eyes, a sharpness reflected in his whole person, from the ever-shifting, agile hands to his short, thin figure to the way he always knew what would please Devereux.
“Why?” said Tom. “Why aren’t you sure, Worton?”
“Wotton,” said Wotton, looking agitated.
“Well, what’s wrong, poppet?”
Henry Wotton was a good deal older than Sir Tom and did not like being called poppet. He declared: “It is unwise because knighting now is dangerous. You’ve knighted more, lord, since Cadiz than existed in all the Realm before. Elizabeth doesn’t like it. It undermines her.”
Essex’s chest smarted, his head churned like some giant force was churning his brains like butter. Suddenly the rest of the world was spinning in a green cloud around his weak body. The malady was brought on by talks of politics, after all. Essex knew this. He was not surprised, he realized dreamily.
“If they are rewarded, they will fight,” he said. “Even if they are loyal to me, I am loyal to the Queen! I am loyal, more loyal than anyone than Walter Raleigh and Robert Cecil and Court together. I’ll knight – I’ll knight whomever I want. That’s what ought to be done, oughtn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cuffe.
“Reconsider,” urged Wotton. “Please, my lord.”
“I wish you’d stop knighting so much,” pouted Tom. “When you knighted me, I thought I was special.”
“The more you knight,” Wotton insisted, “the more the Queen may start to revoke the knighthoods. Lord Essex, you must follow the Privy Council’s wishes, or I fear the worst.”
“Lord Egerton will defend me.”
“Good old Father,” muttered Tom. He watched the wind scatter his smoke and shivered. “I hate this gust.”
“I enjoy it.”
“So please you, my lord,” said the knight. “But if it gets much worse, I shall take my boys and me on the ferry to Holyhead Isle for a few days. The wind is unbearable. You wouldn’t mind, Earl?”
“A holiday,” said Essex, for another idea had occurred to him. “Are there any holidays approaching? St. George’s Day is in a few weeks. We ought to have a parade. Like the one I led coming back to London from the Isles.”
“I,” Cuffe said, “think it a jolly good idea.”
Essex was glad at least someone was taking to his ideas. It only made sense, after all. The boys were homesick a little; now all the Earl had to do was throw a proper celebration with buglers and parti-colored silks and ale a-plenty. Then the weather would turn around proper and Essex, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, would ride forth from Dublin with his gallant forces to make short work of Hugh O’Neill and the savages.
Henry Wotton tried to put his mind in. “But, lord Essex, is St. George’s Day a holiday? Has not the Queen done away with it? Imagine what your enemies will say. If my lord went through with this, it could be seen as impudence. It could be seen as popery.”
“Popery!” scoffed Essex.
“St. George’s Day is not a holiday.”
“St. George is England’s patron. What can it be but English pride? The men need it.”
“He’s England’s patron, yes, but he’s not on its calendar!” pleaded Wotton.
“Aye,” said Sir Tom, “but we aren’t in England, are we? What can Her Majesty do?”
“But Ireland is Elizabeth’s,” cried Wotton. “She has made it so. She sees everything.”
#
The gown of England’s painted Queen was deep red-gold, a color you could see when a stately sunset of crimsons and ambers starts to fade, and between the gleaming folds of silk were eyes and ears. The eyes stared with a cold blankness in all directions, and the ears were scattered likewise like constellations. Elizabeth saw all, and heard all.
In her hand she held a rainbow, which arced tamely in her light grasp, like the leash by which she pulled on all her realms, from Hadrian’s Wall to the edges of the New World. The rainbow was a scepter, for Elizabeth Regina was Queen by the wish of God and the head of the true Church. And above all, the thin pale strand was light – the bright light that blazed in England and sounded from the play-house, a glow of life. Golden age.
As the painting was finished, an observer might have marked the difference between the young, red-haired maiden on the canvas and the wrinkled old lady who glanced at it from time to time, nodding to the painter in assent.
Elizabeth was not a morning person. For the first hour or so it was being wigged and painted and corseted, then it was reading letters and proposal, now it was Star Chamber at Windsor Palace. This had been the routine for the past forty years. It was a very deep rut.
That poor hunchback Robert Cecil was sputtering a tirade after the news from Ireland, that Essex had thrown himself a party on St. George’s Day. Elizabeth supposed she might listen (“Unbelievable. UNBELIEVABLE.”),but she was elsewhere, pondering.
Robert Devereux was a problem, because he was irrevocably convinced his version of loyalty was the right one. Or, for that matter, that it was loyalty at all. In the Earl’s mind, begrudging his rivals and knighting multitudes was what the country needed. He had his reason. He thought it was the Queen. She knew it was himself.
Elizabeth had read her history. When a noble grew tempestuous, then the people grew tempestuous. She could see the seeds of it being sewn already, though Devereux would never suspect that his cause was against her. Raleigh and Cecil only made it worse, provoking him. They did not know him as she did. Essex was a good man, like Leicester had been.
In time, a letter was drafted to be sent to Ireland, warning Devereux to begin the offensive (“Or ELSE,” said Cecil). Then they decided to hear Shakespeare next, since Shakespeare usually put everyone in a good mood, except Egerton, and, yes, Cecil (“It’s LEWD”). The wright was to present a tragedy, Julius Cæsar, because the Master of the Revels had not approved it. Elizabeth preferred his comedies. If Leicester had lived, he would have liked Shakespeare.
The Lord Keeper gestured to his servant. “Show him in, Master Donne.”
As bid, the boy went to the door, and Elizabeth’s eyes followed him. The Queen saw all and heard all and had been warned of him, especially since a few Jesuits had tried to poison her saddle last year. But she had more faith in Jack Donne than most papists, especially since he was part of the Order. For the Queen knew about the Order, and had known since that dark night after her coronation when the man Northwell had come to her and told her the secret that every monarch since Ramses had been trusted with. She did not like to think about it, but Donne was a constant reminder.
He was gone for a minute or so, and came back with a wobbly, dressed-up, upset Shakespeare, who staggered in, bowed, and said, “It is an honor to be hither, but though I came all the way from Stratford with her, I am not permitted to bring my goat!”
They didn’t really know what to say to this.
“Really,” he went on. “It’s housebroken. It was easy, like training a dog. At the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, on whose looove-ly behalf I come, we work a lot with dogs. I like to put them in our improv slapsticks! There’s a bit where it’s chasing around a clown dressed up as the Earl of Northumberland and then it jumps up and bites him in the right spot and everyone laughs, but he’s wearing his cod-piece so he’s not hurt. Not that there’s much on Cooke to hurt anyway. Well, even if he does receive injury I guess I could use him for the girl parts. ‘O, Romeo!’ And he’s say it like a girl. Or I suppose we’d hire a boy. After all, they do have those boy troupes springing up all over the place and they’re stealing our business because they do girl voices and acrobatics and musical numbers. Perhaps I should write a musical number for Cæsar! ‘Et tu, Brute, you stabbed me in the boo-tay….’”
They didn’t know what to say to this, either.
“I’ve almost finished this ale. Could you get me a beer or something, Jack? I mean, Mr. Donne.” He turned to Privy Council. “I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before.” He winked at Donne.
The Councilors were still in a state of shock, so Elizabeth decided to speak. “Perhaps more beer would prove unwise, beloved bard, for you look as if you’ve had too much already. I thought we had ordered no drink to be given you.”
Shakespeare looked upset, and pouted with his lip the way Leicester had sometimes.
Lord Egerton was unmoved and un-amused. “Tell us, Shakespeare, why the Master of the Revels did not approve this edition of your play.”
“He said it encouraged regicide.” He beamed innocently.
All eyes in the room moved to the Queen.
She raised an eyebrow. “Did he?”
Elizabeth had been around long enough to know that when you gave people lethal words, you gave them more than swords, you gave confusion. And what became of confusion but fear, and then hysteria, and then Anne Boleyn and Thomas More and Mary, Queen of Scots upon the block.
Elizabeth said, “Give us the play. All of it.”
He bowed. “Of course, my Queen.”
Under the eyes of the Councilors, the playwright stepped bravely to the center of the room, arms held out, eyes alight. “Two households! both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene….”
“Sir,” whispered John Donne.
“From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where…..”
“Sir!”
“Civil blood makes civil hands…. What!”
“That’s Romeo and Juliet, sir.”
“Confound it!”
“Perhaps, sir, if you set down the ale….”
“Perhaps I should unscrew my head and hand it to Francis Bacon.”
“Well, I say,” said Francis Bacon.
“Let me collect my thoughts, if you please. This would be vastly easier with my goat. She surely misses me, poor thing! Goat! Goatie! Where are you, goatie, I’m frightened —!” He hiccupped.
“Let the goat in,” said Elizabeth.
It pranced in, groomed to shining, wearing a gold-lace ruff and an duchess hat. A large silk bow had been fixed on its tail. The old men around the Queen were not amused. But from beside the throne, Leicester’s memory smiled with his white teeth and glittered with his bright eyes and laughed uproariously.
She had been rooted, fixed and firmly, in the present. Why was he here? Leicester was the past.
The Queen had loved that man. This of all things was needless to say, and yet she did, to herself sometimes. Dear late William Cecil had told her often it was fate’s blessing he had died, for his golden youth to be enshrined forever in her dreams. Elizabeth did not see the blessing. And she did not understand why he could call them dreams, if sometimes she saw the man when she was as awake as all Creation.
Julius Cæsar was granted approval, because Shakespeare had tread carefully, and because the Queen’s mind had been drifting, from the past to the present, from Brutus to Essex, from the bloody scene in the Capitol of Rome to the crimson ships of the Spanish Armada.
They had half an hour to kill, which Shakespeare spent reciting sonnets. He skipped out happily, was muttered after by Robert Cecil (“Good GRIEF”). As the Council broke for tea, it was discovered that the goat had left them a present. The Lord Keeper had his secretary stay behind and clean it up, and the boy stood, pondering how to do so. Elizabeth, servants in tow, stopped and said, “I shall send someone with a pan and broom. Go ahead with Egerton.”
He bowed and stammered a thanks. There were some people who never gained confidence in Court. With a family like his, the boy had been raised in absolute fear of the crown.
“Lady Egerton is sick again, so I hear.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, but she recovers. Her niece Ann, Sir George More’s daughter, takes care of the festivities at York House well, in her absence.”
Elizabeth had been around for a long time, long enough to know when a young man was in love. Perhaps, him being John Donne, the affair had already begun.
“I hope Lord Egerton does not know.”
“I – pardon, Majesty?” he stammered.
Elizabeth left him and left the room, presuming all the fearful things he must be thinking. She would not talk to him again, but in her head she was warning him.
“We didn’t have anybody to warn us,” said Leicester, looking out her window at the gold Nonsuch countryside. She was alone in her room except for him.
“Your mum and my dad both got their heads lopped off,” he explained. “No guidance. Burghley doesn’t count.”
“You’re dead,” she told him. “Decades ago.”
“Dammit, Bess. Please stop reminding me.”
“I’m going mad,” she continued.
“No,” he murmured. “I do not think so.”
The Queen watched the motes around the air, the stillness of the room. Outside a spaniel barked and a child laughed. Then the world went silent.
“You’ve never stayed this long before.”
“I think we’re coming closer, you and I,” he said.
“Then you’re mistaken. I feel quite alive,” said Elizabeth.
Leicester: fine dark beard, blue and scarlet clothes, pearl earring. His hand set calmly on the dashing sword that dangled from his hip. “Watch out for that poor boy Essex,” he said, bowed, and left her audience.
#
How badly Ann wanted to sleep, but she could not tonight. Donne was coming. Or, rather, John. She must remember to be familiar. She must remember to meet his eyes and make hers gleam. Then she ought to brush her hand against his face and make him sigh.
Sundrille helped her. She guessed the sylph knew of Papa’s plans, and he was the only one she trusted. He braided her hair like the commoners did and pulled the dark robe over her. She had taken great care making up her face, and had small gold charms in her ears. She sat on her couch, facing the door to her chamber, but there was a startling thud on the balcony.
John dusted himself off, muttering “shoddy landing” to himself.
The trip to the Curtain was smooth (they weren’t discovered, robbed, beaten, or murdered) and the streets were as lively as always. He led her by the hand, and she tried her best to laugh like it was exhilarating or something. He was beaming from ear to ear.
“This is a tryst?” said Ann. “We’re going about it correctly?”
“Well, we’ve already snuck out. Then go somewhere and avoid being spotted. Shouldn’t be hard… Lastly, steal back in. That’s the hardest part. Fa-la-la-la-la. You’ve got to make certain no one knows. I don’t think anyone knows. You haven’t told anyone besides Sundrille, have you?”
“No! Whom would I have told?” smiled Ann.
“The, uh…Queen.”
“What! No, why?”
“No reason.”
“You’ve not told anyone?”
“No.”
“You’re good at keeping secrets.”
“Um…what?”
“And you have so many. I see it in your eyes. You must tell me.”
“I prefer to remain an enigma,” he said.
“An enigma?”
“An enigmatic…enigma.”
“I do not like it that way.”
“I’m only as mysterious as you, my lady. I know so little, other than you don’t like Marlowe or Machiavelli, and you like to dance the pavane. And your face. I know every inch of your face. But what about your family? What about the rest of you?”
From somewhere in the city, a werewolf’s howl split the dark. Ann wondered if it was Ivan. John put his hand to his dirk and pulled her closer.
They walked in silence to the Curtain. The play-house was built like most, a big wooden octagon with a thatched roof extending above the balconies, but otherwise open to the air. A sign read:

To-night and to-morrow only! And perhaps Fridaye, we’ll see about the weather. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men presenting THE LIFE OF HENRY THE FIFTH, a true and gallante history of Harry and other notables. GASP at the politickal intrigue! SWOON (ladies) over Richard Burbage’s picturesque portrayal of Harry! BEHOLD the vasty fields of France and the casques that did affright the air at Agincourte! All for the piddling fare of four pennies.* Thou hadst better believe it!
*No refunds

“Jack!” chirped a man with a goatee. “And – fair lady. Where’s Jim, the scientist? He was going to meet you, wasn’t he?”
“He’s not here? Oh, well, we’ll wait for him.”
“Enjoy the play!” called Shakespeare as Jack started to pull Ann in, laughing joyfully.
“I shall, sir! I always do!”
John threw some coins in the gatherer’s pot – a good deal more than four pennies, Ann noted. Donne led her through the entrance into the bright-lit play-house, fording through the crowds of peasants who milled about the yard. The stage reared above them, sprouting pillars and a roof of its own. The façade of a castle was painted and erected, with numerous doors for actors’ entrances and an upper story with a balcony.
“Where are our seats?” she hissed. “Or are we groundlings?”
“I’m Lord Egerton’s secretary!” he cried. “Heavens, no!”
They were before the stage. He took her around, to the side of the stage, beside a pillar. With a hunter’s grace, he leapt onto the platform. “Come on! I’ve paid for it!” He held out his hands and helped her up. It was all she could do not to flinch as he did this, holding her by the waist as gently as if they were dancing. He sat on the stage of the Curtain, and leaned on the pillar. Ann supposed she could lean against him.
The play-house filled with people high and low, rich and poor, young and flushed and old and dusty. A few others who could afford it took their seats on the extremities of the stage. After looking about for his friend, Donne sighed and was silent.
#
In the end, the show started without Itzak. The horns blared once, twice, and finally – the audience went silent. All eyes turned expectantly to the stage, and out stepped Shakespeare, clad in a robe so black it shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow, like rippling water in the dark. The drunkenness had left his eyes. For a long pause he stood, hands extended to either side. His eyes were shut, as if he slept and dreamed of all he was about to set in motion.
“O, for a Muse of fire!”
From the pits in the stage flew gouts of flame.
The sound was like a sudden thunder; I felt the heat on my face and the rushing charged air flutter in my hair. A column of blazing red fire had erupted, and hung there, reaching heavenward, almost to touch the roof. Ann cried out and pressed herself against me, pulling her skirts away from it. I hugged her. I remembered Itzak, missing the spectacle his contribution had created.
Ann laughed a little, and her hand crept into mine. And then I wasn’t looking at the fire, but the hand, white in mine, as warm as the flames themselves.
Shakespeare was speaking.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

As he spoke, the flames behind him weakened, starving into narrow, wisplike dancers, warm and calm and mesmerizing.

Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?

Entranced by the glowing light and by the blazing forms, or maybe by the warmth on the sweet May air, or maybe by the pulsating, stirring words, I was not aware of myself. My hand took hers and for a moment I was flying over France and the great Sea and the New World, carried by a muse of fire.

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

And he swept away, and the flames flashed out, and not even trumpets broke the silence that now wrapped the stage, dim, empty as a sleep before you realize you’re dreaming.
#
“You have to understand, I did not like it, John,” said Ann as we snuck down dew-slick streets to York House. “It was too long. That one player didn’t even try to look like a woman. They expect people to believe that is a French accent? And what is a goat doing in the throne room? And why such long, poetic bombast? I do not understand it – any of it.”
“It’s to make every line beautiful.”
“It is not how people talk.”
“It’s how they long to speak.”
She had her arms folded, her jaw set, and her eyes flashing.
“I’ve never seen you so aggravated. I think you secretly enjoyed it. Well, if you don’t wish to think about it, we’ll talk of something else. Essex just captured Cahir Castle in Ireland….”
She said nothing all night, just a terse good-bye as I left her at her chamber-door. I guessed I wouldn’t be delving into any demonic secrets tonight. Trudging back to my room, I found myself whispering snatches of the prologue. A pity Itzak had missed it! He would have laughed to see the commoners gasp at the fireworks he’d developed (he’d been quite entranced with the plays since helping the Chamberlain’s Men demolish the Theatre. He had even offered to design an advanced pulley-and-trapdoor system for the Globe, which could be seen on the Southwark bank, still rising).
I tried to contact him, pressing my ring. For a second it fizzled, but went out.
I tried again, another time.
After a while I got in bed and observed the ceiling. Soon I realized I was cold, and pulled the blankets farther. How was I chilled now? Outside in the night it had been so warm, from the soft throbbing fire to the collective heat of everyone in the Curtain to Ann’s hand. The hand had been warmest of all.
I rolled over, pressing my face into the pillow. “O, for a Muse of fire….”
I wound my fingers into the sheets, hoping to warm them and get such silly things from my brain. I thought I was going mad when my finger grew hot, but it was only the red-quartz ring, glowing finally. “You missed it,” I said.
“I missed it,” said Itzak.
“I tried the ring, but it would not work.”
“The connection is bad.”
“What happened?”
“Jonson is dead.”
And that was all there was to say.

How quickly fire can change. One moment it is warmth and light that holds one fast; gentle, musical, and then it turns – like a wolf under the moon – into something grim. Sometimes it is as quick as a few short words, a few somber meanings.
Ben was dead. I was sad – terribly sad, but I didn’t mourn him right away. Sadness is hearing that someone’s dead, stumbling on in disbelief, and looking dumbfounded at the holes the dead chap used to fill. Mourning is a knowing (that they’re gone, and can’t come back, and they’re in heaven or hell or worse, something else beyond). I didn’t mourn Ben until I went to tell his wife she was a widow.
I saw the flames at a distance, and from down Cornhill Street, it looked like a great crowd was bearing candles down Pope’s Head Alley. Light flickered pale against the grey, damp buildings. But as I passed, the light grew, and I saw it was a bonfire. A throng circled it, muttering lowly.
They were burning books.
Slowly, in some dumb trance, I shifted through the people and looked down.
The pile was almost three feet high and being added to. The somber-faced book-seller was casting book after book into the blaze, where they contorted as they were digested, pages dancing as if caressed by wind. White, crisp parchment twisted and blackened, sheets fluttered out to glide, smoldering, to the cobblestone.
“What is happening?”
The bookseller looked up at me briefly and sighed. I knew him for John Wolfe, and I’d heard his name in Privy Council. He’d faced the law before – prison and such – because you don’t become London’s greatest printer without a few setbacks. He’d been making a fortune on a new book about Henry the Fourth, but somebody must have found the declaration to the Earl of Essex. And no association with Robert Devereux was safe anymore.
But it wasn’t just that book. I could make out other titles: satires and smart verse, things people read to their friends in the Mermaid Tavern. I saw epigrams and Marlowe and Thomas Heywood –clean new books that would never be read. As if it knew this, the fire took its time, leafing page by page, nodding at each word.
The bookseller threw on another set of books. It was Every Man in His Humour, by Ben Jonson.
#
“Hello. If you’re looking for my husband, I’m sorry, he’s in Scotland.”
I choked on my bile.
The short, dark-haired woman opened the lower half of the Dutch door. Her hair was tied in a kerchief. She looked for a moment down the alley behind me, the murky shapes of beggars and fishmongers slouching through the fog. In this part of town it smelled like soot.
“Mrs. Jonson?”
“She.”
I bowed. “It’s John. Donne.”
“Jack!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t recognize you! You look so different. I haven’t seen you in ages. Ben told me about you at York House. It’s a long walk from there to here, come in and sit down.”
I stepped in, where it was warm and bright. Stew was cooking over the hearth, and some candles in pretty bowls lit the room. The furniture was new. Quilted blankets. Mrs. Jonson surveyed it all and nodded to herself. “We’ve had to start from scratch, since Ben got in that horrible mess. You saved his life, you know.”
She turned to me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m…” There’s a moment between the thinking and the doing, and it’s terrible.
“Is it about the Order?”
I nodded.
“What is it?” she said.
“I’m….”
“What is it?” she cried.
“I’m sorry.”
The healthy color left Mrs. Jonson’s cheeks, where two blooms of red appeared. Her eyes shone.
From the next room, a toddler stumbled in, then cocked his head when he saw a stranger. He had his father’s big brown eyes, but his hair was dark. He had a drawing-compass in his hand. Coming over, he put it in the pocket of his mother’s apron, then held onto her skirts. He looked at me warily and said, “Mumma.”
She patted his head, but her eyes never left me. “How?”
“On the cliffs. The Isle of Skye. He fell.”
“Hunting something.”
“Werewolf.”
“Sit down, Jack, you’re swaying.”
Somehow I ended up on the little couch, but the room was fading into a fog, and my head was spinning. I had seen blood, red, lucid. I saw the rocks slick with it, slick with the lifeblood that had come out of Ben Jonson. I felt his arms snapping, I felt the water strangling him, I felt the flash of heat as his skull split open.
Mrs. Jonson hugged me as I pressed my temples. She poured me stew. She gave her son back the compass.
Could she not tell her husband was dead? Could she not tell Ben was dead – like Henry, like my father. Cursed, like everyone who came close to me.
“You’re leaving, Jack?”
“I ought to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m…. fine.”
She had me stay while she went to a drawer. She took out rolls of parchment, tied with cheap twine. “He wrote these. He would have wanted them given to the Chamberlain’s Men.”
“Plays.”
“Yes.” She put them in my hands.
“I’ll do that.”
“They mustn’t know he’s dead, or they will never put them on. Someone will try to claim them, or someone might harm his son and me. They must not know he’s dead.”
“I will lie to myself, then, too.”
Little Benjamin drew a circle on a paper and gave it to me. His mother took his hand and said, “Do you remember Daddy’s rhyme?”
He shook his head.

“Drink to me only with thine eyes,” she said,
And I will pledge with mine,
Or leave a kiss but in a cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.”

I stumbled out the door into the street.
#
Ann didn’t know how she took so suddenly ill. She tired over a few days, until one morning she slept in very late. John rapped on her door then, and when she let him in, he said, “You are sick, my lady!”
“I’m fine.”
Later that morning she went to the library to read, her head feeling like a fire, her eyes weeping against her will. Though she stayed out of the way, Egerton found her there, and remarked about how feverish she looked.
“I do not feel very sick, Uncle,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
“Go to your chamber,” he said, “Sleep.”
“But —”
“You must recover, Ann,” he said sternly.
She curtseyed, went to her chamber, and was more sick than before. She weakened in the dimness, wiping tears from her burning eyes. She did not come to supper, only curled in her bed, trying to read, though she couldn’t focus with her headache.
That evening, her aunt and John Donne came to her door. Ann answered the knock and curtseyed to them both.
“By God,” said Lady Egerton, “get back in bed.”
“I am fine,” she insisted.
“You look faint. John, go get tea. Tell them to put honey in it.”
When he returned, Ann was in bed with the covers pulled high, pained. Lady Egerton had moved a stool beside her and put a hand on her forehead, and took the tea from John and gave it, bit by bit, to Ann. It smoothed her jagged, burning throat. “Have you eaten?”
She shook her head and realized that if she tried, she would be sick.
Lady Egerton went to Ann’s basin and wet a cloth to put on her forehead.
“She has a fever?” asked Donne.
“Yes.” She put a few dashes of powder into the tea. “Drink.”
“What is it?”
“It will help. You had best do as I say, Ann.”
Helplessly, she raised the steaming cup to her lips and took slow, steady sips until there was nothing left. Then she leaned back on the pillow as her vision hazed and her skin tingled. So Lady Egerton was treating her with magic.
Lady Egerton lit some of her candles and muttered. Donne stood by nervously, but his face fell further and further from focus. Ann presumed a spell was putting her to sleep, and went grudgingly.
#
Lady Egerton sprinkled a powder on her as she slept. The old woman took the cloth, wet it again, and put it on her brow. Then she consulted her fortune-cards. I looked over her shoulder at Ann, who, if anything, was paler than before. “Have you cured her?”
“It is the kind of fever that must get worse before it goes away. Leave her door unlocked – we shall check on her tomorrow.”
We left, and I went to bed that night wondering strange things that had never occurred to me before.
What would happen if she died? Would Northwell be angry that we had lost a way into the secrets of York House? No, Northwell was not capable of anger, or emotion.
Part of me wished she would die. Ben was dead, and it was Otherkind like her that had killed him. Ann for Ben. Ann for Ben.
I found the notion made me sick.
I roused very early and went to the sick girl’s room. She was still asleep, and much worse than the night before. Her breathing made a whispering sound as it hissed from her dry lips. She was grey now, and in her sleep she had torn off the cloth to let air upon her slick forehead. An expression of great pain was on her face.
I talked to her as I went through her bedside cabinet, filled with a sudden urgency.
“You are sick? You deserved it, for not telling me.”
She slept on, still and quiet.
“You have no idea what it’s like, having to counterfeit love for you. But I have to. Maybe you know about Family Honor. If you did, you’d understand. I’ve got to do this to thwart your uncle and avenge my brother.”
She slept still, oblivious! As peaceful as a child, sleeping to escape what the fever was doing to her body.
There was nothing in the drawers but some books by Tacitus, some needlework, and some letters from that werewolf bastard Ivan Bathóry. I narrowed my eyes at her. “I wonder if you even love me at all sometimes. Cold, cold, cold, cold. I pretend to love you, and perhaps you know. Is that why you’re cold? Is it because your father made you that way? What happened to him, to sell his soul to Egerton? Is your family like mine, selfish and ambitious?”
She was very weak. Her lips moved softly, dream-speaking.
“All I want is for you to just tell me,” I said. “Is it so hard? Why won’t you tell me, Ann?” I took her sickly hand and stroked her hair.
Her eyes fluttered.
The part of me that wanted to despise her gave up. “Don’t die,” I said.
“Don’t touch me,” she mumbled. “I’m sicker than yesterday.” She paused. “Lady Egerton.”
The old woman entered, and I jumped away.
“Do not speak, Ann! Be still, rest.” She got a new cloth on Ann’s forehead. Ann, who was gasping.
“There is pain?”
“Yes,” she sobbed.
Her aunt had brought a cordial, and spooned it to her.
“Shall I open the curtains?”said Lady Egerton.
Ann shook her head.
“Light a few candles, Donne. I must see.” Once they were lit, and I was blinking in the soft light, Lady Egerton slid a pillow beneath Ann’s back so she sat up halfway. She took Ann’s arm from beneath the blankets.
Ann moaned and then began to shiver.
“This will help you, niece. But you must not struggle.
“Hold her arm, Donne.” I took her arm and put my hand in hers.
Lady Egerton took a small, short knife from her belt and pressed it to Ann’s forearm just above the wrist. The slit was smooth and shallow and blood came immediately. I felt Ann’s clammy fingers clutch mine. The old woman told her to relax as she made three more cuts, each atop the other. As she did, Ann’s breath grew heavy, then finally she released it all, and fell asleep again. As she bled, we cleaned her arm, until Lady Egerton was satisfied with the bloodletting. The cuts were bound in bandages and rosewater. A few spells were cast. Ann had become white enough to see through with the loss of blood, but now a pink color was coming back to her cheeks, healthier than before. If she woke, she was silent and looked at the wall, eyes glazed with tiredness and fever. Every time we gave her soup, she begged for something cold, but Lady Egerton refused and gave it all to her steaming. Finally, in the evening, her fever broke and she was able to eat.
#
Itzak didn’t know what to think as he went to Ben Jonson’s service. It was in one of the cave-rooms beneath Lincoln’s Inn, and the whole dormitory wing was there. A body was absent, for word had it there hadn’t been much left of him but the rags of his bloodstained clothes. On a table were a few foods: cookies, grapes, and water, what the Order provided for every funeral. Friar Tuck said a few words and offered comfort, though most of the hunters just stood like statues. They thought about their own deaths. They head their own bells in Ben Jonson’s.
“Why did they hold it on a Wednesday? They know Jack can’t come,” said Lovelace.
“They want to keep his emotions away from him.”
“I wish we were that special. That they cared for us as much.”
“Do you?” said Itzak flatly.
“You don’t have to go out on those streets at night, you know, alchemist.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You don’t hear these creatures scream and plead? Or the night bleeding?”
“You are not being sound.”
“And for what?” said Lovelace. “The Order? What is the Order? Who is the Order? Who the hell even made the Order anyway?”
Itzak left, not wanting to hear any more.
Isabel was alone in the commons, huddled in a blanket before the fire. “Shalom,” she said tiredly.
“Ciao,” said Itzak.
“Tired of grapes?” she said.
“Tired of people.”
“I am as well. Let us be tired of people together.”
Itzak sat beside her. He had guessed that maybe she wanted to talk, but whenever they tried they just fell mum again.
#
My dream had been fair – fairer than all that was happening at least. In my dream, I had been Christopher Sly from Taming of the Shrew, drinking too much and falling to sleep, then waking up in a lavish room, clothed in satin riches. Ben and Henry had been alive, pretending to be my servants and laughing as I said, “It isn’t real!”
Ann’s hand roused me, and I was peering at her room in York House, sitting in a chair beside her bed. I sighed.
“What is wrong?”
“I was having a wondrous dream, my lady.”
“Tell me of it.”
I would have never thought her interested, but her eyes were kind and gentle.
I looked down. “No.”
“What?”
“No.”
She turned away from me and studied the wall. “I don’t know much about these love affairs, but I thought we were supposed to talk about dreams. Don’t think I haven’t noticed something is bothering you.”
My arms grew cold and I rubbed them for warmth. “My friend is dead,” I said finally.
“Oh. I’m – I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” I paused. “I think I’m sick. I must have caught it.”
“No. I know you, and you are upset. It eats away at you, John, and you let it. You’re noble. But you can’t stay here.”
I looked at our hands. Hers was smooth and white in mine and it made mine warm in that strange quiet way it had in the Curtain. It startled me, and then I looked at her. Her eyes were purple, and reminded me of that feeling that day on the Loseley riverbank, the one I’d felt for The Ecstasy – that feeling I’d felt once, for a moment, for a poem.
She pulled the blankets over her arms. “There is time for grief, and you’ve grieved.”
I wanted to stay and I wanted to go.
“Are you all right?”
I didn’t know.
“Oh, John.”
“I never knew you were kind,” I said.
“You taught me.” She said nothing for a while, then murmured, “Soon I go back to Loseley.”
Relief made my heart quicken. Good. Let her leave here and leave me, then with absence this stupid, baseless feeling would work itself from me, if it even existed at all. Like the dream, it would vanish. It must vanish.
But I said, “How often you go.”
“I’ll come back.”
“You say that, you don’t lie – but I’m afraid.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder, and something hard beat against my throat. I fumbled with the sheets in my fingers. “What if my lord More weds you?”
“I don’t know. I will be lonely. I’m strange and cold.”

Itzak looked up and saw Jack come into the common room. He was a little peeved. “Have you once more discovered nothing?”
It was July now of the sweltering 1599 summer, and the poet’s brow still shone after coming underground. The More girl had left two months ago. The war in Ireland was stagnant. The carpenters were applying the final touches to the Globe theatre, which Itzak could see if he looked out the highest window of Lincoln’s Inn above.
“I can’t,” said Jack, yawning. “Egerton goes to Star Chamber without me, only the Queen’s closet councilors can attend. He doesn’t talk to anyone often. He is hiding something – more than usual, I mean.”
“Ask, then.”
“Northwell says the Spanish could be sending an Armada to start an invasion of England.”
Itzak raised an eyebrow. “Again?”
“I don’t know. People whisper on the streets.”
“I heard the Order is sending a guard to watch out for King James of Scotland.”
Jack’s look darkened. “They can protect him, but not Ben? Does James even know we exist?”
“I don’t know….”
“They just want him to succeed Elizabeth,” said Jack venomously, “because he’s so hysteric about witches and werewolves that when he becomes King they can tell him, We exist! And he’ll do anything the Order wants to put down the Dark. The Order wants a puppet on the English throne.”
“Is that so wrong?” said Itzak. “It’s getting worse. There are too many of them on the streets.”
“Don’t I know,” said Jack, sighing. “I killed a ten-foot demon last night.”
“Pish,” said Lovelace from the couch. “That’s a baby.”
Jack flashed him a rude English hand gesture, making a fist and sticking his thumb through the fingers.
“Can’t you alleviate our situation?” said Lovelace, ignoring him. “You’ve been in York House a year and a half, the least you could do is learn something. Or is this what you’ve been spending your time on?” He plucked some sheets from the table by Itzak and read:

“Twice or thrice I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be.”

“They’re for her,” said Lovelace.
“So?” spat Jack, as he seized the papers and set them on the table.
Lovelace returned his glare. “You have a reputation, Donne.”
“I see.”
“Of being too fond of women.”
“I – see.”
“I am only saying.”
“Of – course.”
“Friendly advice – do not get fond of her.”
“Which of course I am not.”
“Of course you are not.” He sidestepped from Jack, and Jack sidestepped to avoid him, and they shuffled for a few seconds trying to get around one another without breaking into shoving. Itzak reached for an apple and his alchemy book.
#
If Loseley House was beautiful in the depths of winter, it was breathtaking in July, when the sky was clear at twilight, a vibrant purple scattered with the first stars. The flowers, saturated with spells, spilled from Venetian pots like water dripping out in streams of red and pink. The sunlight faded, but the figure crouched at the base of the mulberry tree kept carving.
Ann had returned from riding, as she came from the stables she curtseyed. “What are you doing, Papa?”
“Latin verse-play, with our poor dying family’s name.”
She hugged him. “You must think on other things.”
“I try often, Ann.”
“Morus tarde moriens, Morum cito moriturum,” read Ann. It was a puzzle; half of it on one side of the tree, half on the other. Depending on which letters one emphasized it meant different things. Life on one side, death on the other. Read together, it made out, more or less: This fair tree doth live, and yet our hearts die sooner.
Ann fingered her skirt. “What does that mean?”
“It is a reminder. For myself.”
“Yourself?”
“I and thee and thy sisters shall not age, because of my bargain with the Keeper. I regret it not. I must not let my resolution fade, lest this country exile lull me to contention, to lowness.”
“A prison with gold bars, like you say,” said Ann.
“And yet, it troubles me that I am ungrateful. For Egerton made me – this. What I am.”
If a person could love and hate another at the same time, that was how George More felt when he thought of Egerton. The love was for the one who had delivered him from the despair. It had been dark after his wife had passed, so dark. Now he could see, at least through these burning, Otherlit eyes. And he was awestruck at what he had been made, and truly grateful…. But the hate was maddening. George More was a jealous man, of Egerton, but to his bleeding pride mere jealousy was nothing. How dedicated he had always been, only to be shunned, punished, footnoted, kept in ignorance of the grand design he knew was taking place. John Donne had told Ann More he felt like her sickly messenger, dutifully carrying letters he was not allowed to read. This was how Lord More felt towards Egerton. O, and worse.
“Shall we to dinner?” said Ann, smiling sympathetically.
“Yes,” he said, “I am famished.”
He put his knife in his belt. “Art thou grown used again to country smells?”
Ann smiled and said yes. Her father was talking of manure, but her mind was in the dark vales and mystic glades and how they seemed stranger too, and alien. She had been surprised how used she had become to London.
“What shall happen when Donne finally confesses himself to me?” she asked.
“When thou hast drawn the last of the Order’s secrets from his lips, we shall use all he has learned – of the Order’s plans, and of Egerton’s, and we shall dance between them both, knowing. I shall sell them, perhaps, to entities I know. I shall thwart the ends that do not favor us. And facilitate those which do.”
“What will happen to Donne?”
“Poor manipulated thing. He will be killed, most likely.”
They sat down at the table. Ann gazed out the window instead of at her father’s eyes, which blazed now as he thought about his cause –the only thing that he loved more than her.

It was ten o’clock as I left Lincoln’s Inn to return to Westminster for my Sunday best from York House. The air was already hot and morning-hazy still. Milo Schroeder stopped me as I went in. “There is a man here who wants to see you. He is waiting in the ruby drawing-room.”
“A man? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he pleaded. “Just go, please!”
I stepped in, put Northwell’s papers in my office, and went to the room with the bloodred walls and the jet-black statues. Richard Topliffe, sitting primly on an ottoman, smiled and waved.
Behind me, two soldiers dressed in the uniforms of the Tower guard shut the door and locked it. They had spears in their hands and pistols at their belts.
Holy damn, was my first thought. Holy damn, I’ve been found out.
Topcliffe gestured to me, vivid eyes curious.
I stayed where I was.
“Good morrow.”
“Good morrow,” I said.
“’Tis nice to see you, Donne.”
“What do you want?”
“I am going to ask you questions.”
“And if I must be somewhere?”
“Where?” he asked, leaning forward, smiling hawkishly.
“How is it your affair?”
“Where are you going? A meeting, perhaps? Family, perhaps?”
“What?”
“Oh, you could be out to meet anyone, couldn’t you.”
“I’m going to church,” I spat.
“Which church?”
“St. Paul’s. And I must leave if I’m to make it.”
“Please do not leave, Mr. Donne.” He said it in a tone that suggested I had no choice in the matter. Stretching his arm, he stood and inspected me with his giddy, delighted eyes. I could have sworn that the sable eyes of the sculptures turned and fixed on me too. The guards each took me by an arm. Topcliffe gestured to an armchair. “You wish to sit.”
“I’d prefer to stand,” I said. As an afterthought, I added, “Sir.”
“No, you wish to sit.”
I let them force me into the seat. What was happening? Would they try to take my prisoner? If I needed to, I could strike the one, take his pistol, and put a bullet through Topcliffe’s brain (Blast Egerton, and blast Northwell). Perhaps it would be months before I got this close to Henry’s murderer again. My muscles shifted to and from, tensing and relaxing. I d nott even need the gun, I realized. I will snap his neck if he gets too close.
“You will do your best to answer my inquiries,” purred the grey-haired man.
“Where is Lord Egerton?” I demanded.
“He is attending a vital meeting in Westminster Hall. My actions are in his best interest.”
“I will not speak until he comes!”
“Won’t you? Unfortunate things happen to those who don’t comply with me.”
“What is going on? He would not permit this.”
Topcliffe gave me a look of pity, as if I were a frightened child and he was trying to calm me. “I’m afraid that current circumstances justify it.”
“Circumstances? Is this about the rumors of the Spanish? Those secret Privy Council meetings? What in Christendom is going on?”
“How your manner changes when Egerton is gone.” He wiped his hands on his trousers as he paced. “So angry, so defensive. One might think you’re hiding something. Why don’t you calm down and answer my questions like a good lad?”
“You have yet to ask them!”
He laughed. “You’re frightened.”
“I am not.”
“You are. And that’s good,” he assured me, pulling up a chair and sitting the wrong way around, so he could fold his arms atop the back and face me with a smile. His grey eyes gleamed with Otherlight. “You’re a good citizen, John?”
John. John. Did he call my brother by his first name, lean forward with his arms and his eyes and say, Henry? What would it be like to hear that voice call you by your name as you lay, feeling the bonds on your wrists, as you saw the soldiers poised upon the levers of the rack.
“I have never done anything wrong.”
“You are saintly?”
“I have never done anything illegal.”
“Not even adultery? For I assure you, Donne, the exploits detailed in your lewd poetry have become stuff of legend.”
“No,” I snarled. “I’ve left that life behind.”
“And,” his eyes glinted. “The Jesuits? Have you left that life behind?”
“Yes.”
“No treason?”
“No.”
“And never considered such things?”
“No.”
“Your family didn’t raise you to be a martyr?”
“Why would I want to lay down my life for…for….”
He looked very pleased. His eyes were patient and content, but still as terrible as ever. He leaned his cheek on his arms like a cat in the sun. “For what?”
“What they believed.”
“What did they believe?”
I said nothing.
“We’re all friends, John.”
“Are we?”
“I certainly know your family.”
“So I’m sure I needn’t tell you what they believed.”
“Henry told me all those years ago. But I’d like to hear it from you.”
“They were inclined not to like the Tudors.”
“I would say!” He clapped his hands together and recited. “It’s your mother’s side, isn’t it? We come to Thomas More, who…well. His head was there on London Bridge. Your grandfather, John Heywood, the epigrammist – whose last market books have just been burned – he is in Italy, I believe?”
“He’s dead.”
“Hmm. And your uncles, the Jesuits —”
“They didn’t hurt anybody.”
“Sometimes a mere idea can harm, as it harmed your brother.”
“Do not speak of him, I pray —”
“Uncle Jasper is dead. Uncle Ellis is dead. And then we come to Henry Donne, found sheltering William Harrington, a papist priest whose presence here in England was unlawful —”
“I know about Henry!” I snapped.
“The priest thought himself a brave little wretch and didn’t give up a thing on the rack. What can one do? But Henry gave out. He gave out and went mad after hardly a day.”
“That’s not true!” I growled. “You fright me not!”
“Yes it is! Poor silly Henry told us everything about who Harrington was and that he was helping him. Then Henry’s brother made a mistake, and we know what happened then. The priest didn’t die till months later. We hung him, cut him down before he died, carved him out, and burned his parts before his eyes —”
“You fright me not!”
I could kill him. I could kill Topcliffe now.
In my mind’s eye I could see it —
Snapping his neck – I heard it —
Bloodless. Or even if he did bleed, I knew that just this once I wouldn’t feel a thing when I saw it.
From far away the Inquisitor’s voice was saying, “So the moral of the story is, you are the latest sprout from a very foul weed. Knowing your mother, you’ve probably been raised to do your part in harming England.”
“My mother taught us nothing of the sort. How dare you attack us! This is about the Spanish Armada, isn’t it? So accuse me of serving Spain, not of a religion that’s my bloody own business!”
“So you are a papist.”
Lying was the hardest it had ever been. Lies, lies, lies. What kind of world was this, if just the truth could get you killed?
“No,” I said. “And besides, are there not those who are Catholic and English?”
He gave me a look of pity, as if I were terribly simple. “The King of Spain doesn’t think so.”
“What does that mean?”
The grey-haired demon rose and stretched again. He was thinly built, of moderate height, and as he knitted his fingers together I noticed they were dexterous and slender, like a clavichord player’s. His face’s age was hard to place: maybe it was the wrinkled brow that made him seem old, or maybe it was the bright, dangerous eyes that seemed young.
He walked to his coat, slung over the back of a divan, and pulled a piece of parchment from the pocket. He read articulately: “Considering the obligation which His Catholic Majesty, my lord and master, hath received of God almighty for to defend and protect his holy faith and the Apostolical Roman Church, he hath procured by the best means he could for to reduce unto the ancient and true religion the kingdoms of England and Ireland as much as hath possibly been in his power.”
“This has nothing to do with me —”
“The said forces only shall be employed for to execute this holy intent of His Catholic Majesty, directed only to the common good of the true religion and Catholics of the said Kingdoms, as well as those which be already declared Catholics as others who will declare themselves for such (for all shall be well-received and admitted by me in His Royal Name, which shall separate and apart themselves from the heretics).”
He looked at me and smiled. “Now, John, I wonder what you would do, if ever such a conquest were to happen, hmm?”
“I have never heard this before!”
“We shall receive with all courtesy the Catholics of the said Kingdoms, who shall come to defend the Catholic cause with arms or without them. It’s a proclamation,” said Topcliffe, “from the Spanish commander, the Earl of Castilla. From him – to you.” (I glared.) “And if not to you, your family. And if not to them specifically, to their kind. This was brought by our spies in Spain, and why Privy Council is afraid. Spain’s planning an attack. And you’ve never heard this before?”
“Never.”
“Not even in the original Spanish? For, as my eyes and ears inform me, you do speak español.”
God. Damn. Isla. Fayal.
“We are in a time of danger, Donne. When they attack, how can we trust you?”
“Because I’m an – an Anglican, and I am loyal to the Queen. I am loyal to Lord Egerton. I’ve fought for England. I love my country.”
“Do you?” He reached into his coat again and took more papers. “Here I cite Satire II, by a Mr. John Donne. ‘Though (I thank God for it) I do hate Perfectly all this town —’”
“Where did you get that?” I cried.
“What do you mean?” he said innocently.
“It was not published in any form! It wasn’t circulated! It is private!”
“Your shelves were searched, John.”
“What?”
“Your desks, and your bookshelves, and your office. Anywhere treason might be found.”
I thought, relieved, of my Order weapons on the roof, undiscovered. Topcliffe went on: “Satyre IV:

Shall I, nones slave, of high born, or rais’d men
Feare frowns? And, my Mistresse Truth, betray thee
To th’huffing braggart, puft Nobility?
No, no – Thou which since yesterday hast been
Almost about the whole world, hast thou seene,
O Sun, in all thy journey, Vanity
Such as swells the bladder of our Court?

“And it gets much better in Satire V. ‘Officers,’ you say,

Are the devouring stomacke, and Suiters
The excrements, which they void.

I stared at the poems in his hands, in disbelief and horror.
“You must admit, it doesn’t sound exceptionally patriotic, does it?” mused Topcliffe. “Are you loathing towards our country?”
“I say there is corruption in Court, that is all.”
“How many have seen these critical verses?”
“A few friends.”
“Good. Then only a few will be upset when we burn these. O, don’t look so mournful! There are no more satires to be produced, and that is the decree of Privy Council. If you are loyal as you say, you will comply – gladly! Brighten. I don’t think you’ll miss these monstrosities long. There are so many more useful things that can come out of that little head.” He tapped me on the forehead.
“But the ban was for the press!” I seethed. “These are private words! They transgress no laws. My lord Egerton shall hear of this, mark my words!”
He held up a key and tossed it to me. “This was given me by Egerton.”
“Thou liest!”
“As if I need to.” He sat down, plucked it from my hand and went on. “You have two options. You may tell us all you know about this Spanish plot and what your family plans to do, or I shall take you to the Tower, where by God, we’ll have a time of it.”
“I know nothing, and will not be treated in this way!”
He clicked his tongue. “You make things hard for yourself.”
“What good would racking do? I am telling you the truth.”
“You would be surprised how the truth can change.”
I scraped together a retort. “Yes. Yesterday it was true that I was a respected secretary to lord Egerton and an English citizen protected by the Crown, but today I find it is not so.”
“Well-put.”
“Well-deserved.”
“You have quite a cheek.”
“I’ve two, actually,” I said, turning my head to show him both my fetching cheekbones.
“Are you not afraid of how I might punish you?”
“Are you not afraid of how Egerton might punish you?”
“You have faith in the Lord Keeper’s love for you.”
We glared at one another. Perhaps I should not kill him, the guards are ready with their spears. If I attempt, they will kill me. Then who will spy on Egerton? Then who will give Ben’s plays to the Chamberlain’s Men? Then who will Ann have?
Someone rapped on the door. “I heard an upset,” said a slow, melodious voice.
“We are quite fine,” snapped Topcliffe.
The door opened and Liza stepped in shyly. Her dress was black, and she stood as dark and knowing as the Roman statues. She said, “What is going on?”
“Mr. Donne is answering some questions.”
“I told you, I know nothing!”
“I am sure he is not lying, Inquisitor. John is a good man. He would never hurt anyone, and serves Egerton so loyally. One would think you had more pressing matters than his kind.”
The grey-haired man sneered hideously and his eyes went down her body. “Bite me, dear.”
Her white-nailed hand squeezed the back of my chair, and her eyes were furious. She fingered her long black braid like a snake-charmer would a snake. The guards shied a little, seeing her anger.
“Yes,” said Topcliffe, “Liza?”
“Get thee from our house,” she said.
“House? I thought it a government building; and as an officer of the government I have as much right to be here as you.”
“Perhaps, but not to behave like a barbarian.”
“That is the job,” he said, “the country has given me. So now we have a nice little stalemate.”
Liza put a hand on my shoulder. “Whom would Lord Egerton trust? You, his pet savage— or his family?”
I touched her hand and sneered at Topcliffe.
“You have not averted my suspicion, John,” he said coldly, and left. His men followed him and our eyes followed them, and the I folded my hands in my lap. It felt strange, being so deep into the role, but it was familiar, too. When danger came it was the only way, wasn’t it?
She said, “It is not fair, what you are put through.”
“I don’t care what they think. My lord Egerton trusts me. Only that matters.”
“These are such vicious times…for my husband, too.”
“Well, my lady, with hope our thoughts will aid him. And Essex is in Dublin, and the fighting has abated for now.”
“They say there will be fighting here,” she said.
“It’s rumors and confusion.”
She circled around me and sat on Topcliffe’s vacant chair. “They say the Spanish fleet is on its way, with fifty galleons, and thirty thousand men. The pages whisper about it in the halls. You know it’s all the noblemen talk about at dinner. It has the girls so frightened, Donne. Tom must be worried for us. Our letters get lost and —”
Wiping her eyes, she asked, “Are you lonely?”
“A little.”
“I don’t know what’s worse: not knowing what to believe of all you hear, or not knowing who to trust of everyone you know. Will you not look me in the eyes?”
“I’m sorry.”
She stood and shivered, and for a moment I dared to look. Like the statues’ eyes, hers were black, but so much deeper. Theirs were stone, but hers were pools, or little skies. I felt euphoric tingles in my brain, and my head grew dizzy. I knew it was undead light, Otherlight, but still it was all I could do not to follow her as she left.
That night at dinner I wore a high collar to cover my neck and kept my gaze immersed in my soup. I could feel her eyes on my throat and face.
Said Egerton: “What transpired today to you was inexcusable, Donne. I assure you it will never happen again, whilst I breathe.” Then the old man looked down at his plate and solemnly cut his veal into meticulous pieces. He seemed saddened, as he had of late, or burdened.
I wondered if he had given the key to Topcliffe because he really did trust me.
#
Next Sunday, Northwell gave me some news. “The Order contacts from the Continent, particularly Spain, tell us that there is no Armada: the threat is imagined, or implied by Spain to disrupt the English harvest. But you must be silent. Human events must take their course.”
“Hoorah,” I said flatly.
#
As I would walk through York House those weeks, I was avoided. After all, I was now a suspect of Richard Topcliffe.
The city was still in a thrall of panic. Some Catholics up north had already started to rebel, in the false hope that the Spanish would be coming to back them up. No such thing happened. Privy Council ordered the arrest of most recusants throughout the country. I wondered if Mother was receiving news of this down in Antwerp.
When I went to go visit the Globe, I took extra turns down crowded streets, losing the Tower guards who had been following me since York House. As an extra precaution, I bought a new hat and cape and donned them right away. Taking the roads outside the city wall, I came to the river on a roundabout way, then took a ferry to the theatres on the Bankside.
Southwark was quiet during the day. The cadaverous streets that ran with drink and overflowed with noise during the night were dreary now, oppressed by the heavy smell of garbage in the sun. Outside the Bear Garden, the game-slave was carting out the remains of last night’s sports, a wheelbarrow filled with blood, flesh, and fur.
The Globe sat amidst this world, but was not part of it.
The thatch on the roof was thick and gold and still smelled of Stratford. The play-house sat on a swell of the greenest verdant grass, and the fence around the yard was still new. Violets and roses lined a cobblestone path from the gate to the door. A painter was working on a sign in the yard, while glaziers fitted wide clear windows to the second story. At the gate, Richard Burbage was directing costume-sellers and architects and carpenters.
The whole scene froze as I walked up.
Burbage said nothing. I tapped a fencepost and took off my hat. “Hullo.”
“Good morrow,” he muttered.
“Hillo-ho-ho, Jack!” sang Shakespeare, skipping up, spattered in paint.
“I brought these, sir.”
“O my GOLLY! By Ben Jonson? This is absolutely marvelous, let’s see: Page of Plymouth, Robert II King of Scots, and Every Man Out of His Humour. This is absolutely fantastic. I wish he would write a tad more legibly. We could start right away. Is he going to act?”
I blinked away the glaze in my eyes. “No. He’s in Scotland.”
His eyes widened. “O nation miserable, with an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered, when shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?”
“Tyrant?” I said. “James VI?”
“No, Macbeth.”
“Who?”
“Banquo has been murdered! AH! Anyhow, it’s lovely in Scotland, certainly cooler. What I’d pay, Jack to ride upon the hills above Loch Lomond, or see the monster in Loch Ness!”
In fact there had been no monster resident to Loch Ness since I had killed the thing four years ago, though it is strange what people believe they see. At least thinking about this was better than thinking about Ben. And if Scotland now was fair, imagine what his highland must be, how beautiful, how boundless. Stars would wave like Pictish heather, and the moors would sing with music.
Shakespeare showed me in. “Here are the vendor stands. They sell pickles-on-a-stick. The goat loves pickles-on-a-stick. But right now the goat’s in Hell.”
“…What….”
“See the raised stage! Behind the side is a hollow space, with rising scaffolds and pulley systems designed by your friend Jim. We call the basement Hell. We kind of have a feeling it might get smelly down there.”
I saw the goat’s head sticking out of a trapdoor, nibbling some hay on the stage. From the stage sprouted plaster pillars, painted like pink and blue marble, looming above to hold an elegant roof over the stage. There was a wall behind the stage between the pillars, painted with trees, unicorns, angels, stags – like a brilliant tapestry, intricate – impossibly complex. The reds were strong and dark, and the golds were new and splendid. About fifteen feet above the main stage there was a balcony with a tooled railing, with white silk curtains swaying in the doorframe, whispering in the summer breeze. Suddenly all I could smell were the flowers outside, the fresh thatch, the new paint.
“My God!” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Waving to the trapdoors, then to the lofty vaultages above the stage, were silver constellations were painted on a field of deepest blue among some seraphs and the winds – Shakespeare took me on the stage, let me gape in wonder at the pillars and run my hands across the tapestries and painted walls. He called for summer ale, and over this I gave him Ben’s plays. But even in the Globe, my sadness came back. Maybe it was because of this place. If only Ben could have seen it – on opening night. In the height of summer with the scent of apple in the air. And the chorus comes out and the people are smiling and the chorus says—
“Jack! Oh, no, Jack, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
But the summer ale had fled his gaze. He was no longer jolly. This was a different Shakespeare, who saw through everyone, who understood those hidden places in all hearts. “You are grieved,” he pronounced. “Do you wish to talk?”
I stammered something about Topcliffe’s interrogation and what people thought of me now. His eyes did not believe me in the slightest. But he said, “I shall give you back the copies you gave me, then, keep them out of sight. If satires are the problem, you obviously ought not to do any more. And if people will think what they are encouraged to think, you ought to be the one doing the encouraging. You’ve written some nice, harmless love poems. I am putting some sonnets to a print-house. We ought to share the book. Collaboration. That will take your mind off whatever you’re thinking that you won’t tell me.”
“Collaboration?”
A nod.
“With you!”
“Don’t sound so offended,” he said.
“But – but – but —”
“You see? Something is making you upset.”
“Nothing is wrong. Not about me or you or Jonson or anybody. — My poems aren’t good enough. I mean, with you? The Poet of the Age, the – the Beast from Stratford —”
He studied his nails. “Incredible honor, I know.”
“You’ll look bad for including me, and I’ll look like an imbecile compared to you.”
“Well, better people think you a fool than a traitor.”
“I’ll ask my lord.” Yet I had a feeling that Egerton might consent. He liked to reward me. Perhaps he was even interested in my poems. I had recited a few at dinner, and he had liked them very much.
What about Ann?
This thought made my heart all frightened and giddy at once. She hated public shows of affection. Any hint of her in a poem might cause a scandal. She would not like this.
“Who are you thinking about? You’re in love, Jack! With whom?”
“Nobody!” I said. “Why-why would I – besides, how would you know?”
“You have a new wrinkle on your brow.”
I touched my forehead.
“Don’t worry. It’s a crease of love, and it makes a man handsomer.” He looked down at Ben’s plays now. “We’ll give him a sixty pounds for the lot.”
Sixty. Enough to feed Mrs. Jonson and little Benjamin for months.
“Now it is a crease of grief. I won’t press, but you are troubled. Talking helps, Jack.”
“There’s no lines. Sir. Send the money to his family. He’s in Scotland. Where it’s lovely.”
“I’m sure it is,” he muttered, “ding-dong-bell.”
As I left the Globe, clouds rolled in front of the sun, turning Southwark grey and dreary. I drifted like a sleepwalker, as the stenches beat my nose until I was numb to them. Perhaps I was in some sort of trance. My mind was doing other things than thinking. It was playing tricks on me.
“Ben?”
Had that been his face across the road? I jostled my way forward, trying to get closer to the tall figure ahead, calling out, but he didn’t turn.
“Ben!”
Perhaps there was the slightest turn of his head. I was losing him; the man was farther and farther away, my eyes could scarcely pick him out. “Benjamin! Jonson! Jonson – the playwright!” I realized I was shouting, but didn’t stop. “The – bricklayer —”
The man was gone. I felt like a fool.
#
In Loseley, the August night was hot and stifling, the air lush and oppressive. Ann’s cheeks flushed against her will. She nervously looked at the letter, then set it down. She looked at her braids in the mirror. Ivan was coming, and she knew he would be at the door any minute, and she had to make it look like she wasn’t expecting him.
A smooth voice interrupted her – a voice she had been so busy waiting for that it startled her. “Ann! Oh, you look marvelous!”
Ann saw a familiar face bowed low before her, with eyes like gold. Dropping the mirror, she said: “Lord Bathóry!”
“Ivan.”
Ann felt the blush rise. “Ivan. When did you arrive here? I presumed you were in London.”
“There is quite a commotion in London. Stupid mortals like cows in thunder, running over one another.”
“The Spanish,” said Ann, and they laughed. He flopped down on the couch beside her, giving an exhausted sigh.
“Well, thank you, my lord, for coming here.”
“Our fathers have as good as betrothed us. Please call me not this ‘my lord.’”
“My father says I’ll call my husband ‘lord.’”
“Vanya….” He put his hands on her cheeks. “O, call me Vanya.”
“Do Transylvanians so take to arranged marriages?”
“I just happen to love you.”
“You have decided this very quickly.”
“But, Ann, you are lovely. You are smart, and so beautiful. Deadly like a fire, or the wolf that hunts in the mountains. Oh, how brightly shine thine eyes.”
(Creative, thought Ann wryly for a moment.)
The Romanian kissed her then, keeping his lips shut lest the sharpness of his canines complicate things. Ann tried to feel blissful but she had the strangest sensation someone was watching her. For a moment she thought she felt Donne’s eyes and tensed, but he was far away in London.
Sundrille came from the hall, and he shrank a little in the presence of the werewolf. Ivan was all smiles. “Hello, sylph!”
Sundrille pointed to Ann, and then upstairs.
Ivan – Vanya – smiled. “If you are needed, Ann, then I shall go. I’ll be outside tonight. I stay at Loseley for a fortnight.”
“Do not frighten the unicorns in the park.”
“Why would I want to frighten them?” His voice fell. “I do not want to be like those who frighten things.”
She went upstairs, happy it had gone so well. In her bedroom window, outside she saw the shape of a running wolf on the meadow, its fur like bronze beneath the moon. On the crest of a hill, he stopped, lifted his graceful head, and howled. Ann watched, and Sundrille shuddered.

When Council declared London to be in a constant state of vigil, lights were strung down every major street and kept lit all night. This was harder for the monsters, and harder for the hunters. Shadowy alleys were scarce and hard to find. As militia from the countryside came in to defend the city, there were crowds about the taverns and many on the streets at night. The guards were everywhere, and tended to shoot at suspicious persons running on the rooftops.
I was on the south bank, near London Bridge, staying low to the shingles. The moon was full, making things especially bright. I stopped and inhaled. A demon was close, and I smelled its cold stench in the street below.
Descending on a gutter, I noticed something shining on the cobblestone, but soon that smell came to me too: blood. My head spun, but I shook it fiercely and the fogginess went away. There were tufts of white feathers strewn about. Something had obviously been eating some chickens.
The alley went on maybe forty feet before dead-ending in a wall. On the right was a nice building, and a few lights shone from the windows. Beside it were some crates marked Dutch Sugar. The building on the left, however, was sordid: it was dark and aged, wood and thatch past better days. Someone had very recently proclaimed Francis Bacon Eats Pants! in big white letters across the wall and left their paintbrush. The door into the building was closed.
I kicked it open. The termite-eaten wood broke easily beneath my boot, and dust came forth in a cloud. I coughed as I stepped within, but at least the smell overpowered the blood-scent.
It was pitch-dark within, and I let my eyes adjust. The front of my brain tingled just behind my eyes as the vampire part of me stirred to life. I could make out a few shapes now, silvery, ghostly. I fumbled for a match to help, and when the flame brought color and light back to my sight, the silver sense lingered in the shadows.
I was almost knee-deep in cobwebs, the thin, gossamer type. The room looked like it might have been a printer’s once, with the old machines abandoned in corners. Rats moved away from my feet as I kicked the webs away.
From somewhere, there came breath, and the demon smell now was close. I had no doubt it was in the room with me.
For a while, we stayed that way, listening to each other breathing.
“The Order is here,” I said, throwing the match on the ground to flutter faintly there. “If so thou understandeth, come forth, or be slain ere long.”
A hiss rattled against the throat of the unseen demon.
I drew my dirk.
At the sight of it, a streak of grey flashed among the machines and I snapped my dirk towards it. The rats darted away from the corner and disappeared through cracks in the floorboards. It rushed me, toppling a printing press and sending clouds of dust about. I barely had time to think, but I saw it was a smallish type, with black-feathered wings and a white, forked tongue.
A mouth of fangs found the wall beside me. My dirk found its bony side. I darted under a sweep of its talons and retreated towards the machines.
Its dark mouth opened wide to take in my scent, and its green eyes fixed on me. There was no feeling. Or a little. It darted for the door.
My arm snapped out, throwing the dirk. In a spatter of something dark it lodged between the shoulder blades. Grabbing a dusty flask of ancient ink, I flung outside, stopping the creature. It launched itself across the alley at me, but I dodged and let it crash into the wall. I cracked the flask on its horned head, biting it with sharp glass, and blinding it with an explosion of ink. Shrieking, it pawed its eyes and careened into the sugar crates. A wing hit me and flung me to the ground, where I rolled to avoid the shards of glass. I held my crucifix above me. “In nomine dei!”
As if the blindness of before was nothing to what it felt now, it recoiled and tried to launch into the air, but slipped on the printer’s ink shining on the ground.
I lunged at it and pinned it to the ground, my knees across its neck. My dirk came out.
And I saw its too, too human face.
I held it there, and I knew full and well that it deserved to die. It’d killed: I saw the rusty flecks of dried blood at the corners of its mouth. And I’d slay it because they’d killed Ben, and they’d killed Ben because Ben had killed….
The demon kicked me off and thrashed its way into the sky.
I sat there for a while, looking at the dark shine of the ink that doused the alleyway.
After awhile a rather lopsided figure appeared at the alley’s mouth. “Oh, hullo. I’ve just come back for my paintbrush….” Shakespeare took the brush and nodded at Francis Bacon Eats Pants!
“Hello,” I muttered.
“Well-met, Jack!”
His eyes went to the mess. “Well, what’s been going on here?”
I shook my head.
“Admiring my declaration, no doubt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aha!” When he invited me back to the Mermaid, I declined. I went home.
#
Essex needed a posset cordial. Immediately, he told Wotton. Now.
After months, they were in Ireland’s north with the Earl’s army – or what was left of it. The men were desperate, and deserting. The rebel O’Neill had been taunting them for days, skirting around the Earl’s reach, biding his time while he waited for Essex to make a mistake – drift too far, give the rebels an opening to slip by them and attack Dublin. But Essex would not. He was not stupid, was he? Was he?
No, my lord, said honest Cuffe. Not you. Never you.
He had tried to settle things. He had challenged O’Neill to single combat, but the Irishman had declined and said, perhaps a parlay. The illness in the Earl’s heart had come back like a sudden shadow. Something pulled upon it. Essex, above the bank of Bellaclinthe Ford, nervously tugged the reins of his horse. What was this thing inside him, that made his thoughts so dim and unsteady? He could not descry it, not really. Loneliness, maybe. Confusion. Desperation without cause.
This thing that gave him such misery, while it made him want to turn and run, refused to let him back away. His own judgment was disabled, he knew. That did not mean he was stupid….He was not stupid.
(O, he knew not what he was.)
Poor Wotton came forward with a mug of steaming cordial, but Essex, in front of his officers, did not drink. Instead he cradled it in his hands, tenderly willing its warmth into him.
Finally, the Irishman emerged from the tree-line on a strong grey horse, coming to the opposite shore of the river. If he was unsettled by the officers behind Essex, he did not show it. He raised his hand.
The English hissed to themselves. There is the traitor. His people dwell in swamps like wolves. They drink red blood.
Essex wanted to flee. Flee the words, flee their eyes, flee O’Neill. Not really knowing what he did, he turned his horse around, stammering, “This place is not good. I do not wish to meet him here.”
Wotton was relatively cheerful. “Well, it was a bad idea to begin with. I’ll have a messenger tell O’Neill to go home.”
“Pish!” said Devereux’s other secretary, dark-haired Cuffe. “How dare you call such plans unwise! Imagine what they’d say in Court should our lord turn a coward.”
Court – they were saying things now, weren’t they? Foul things about Essex. Often he wished for a scrying-glass to look on Star Chamber, and hear the lies that Raleigh and Robert Cecil told Her Majesty.
Below, the Irishman had sensed their hesitation and steered his horse impatiently along the bank. Perhaps, suspecting English treachery, he was determined not to afford any archers the time to take aim at him.
“He is wary,” said Wotton.
Taking a sip of cordial, Essex summoned his nerve. “Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone! Comest thou for to parlay?”
The horseman stopped, and faced them. “What?”
The wind was loud, and they were far away. “What did he say?” said Essex.
“‘What,’” said Wotton.
“I cannot hear you!” shouted Essex.
The Irishman called something back that might have been, ‘I do not understand.’
“Well, of course you’re wearing underwear,” said Essex.
“What?”
Essex, trying to be brave, rode down to the riverbank. “What?”
“I cannot hear,” said O’Neill.
“Nor I,” said Essex.
They faced one another across the rushing waters of the Larne river, trying to make out one another’s faces by squinting, peering, craning their necks. Then the Irishmen did something unexpected – kicking his steed lightly, he stepped into the river.
From the hill above a dozen English cried out in alarm, but O’Neill was unharmed. White spray his horse’s flanks as it came from the bank into the current. The Irish general was unruffled, and courteous. Stopping at the middle of the ford, he doffed his hat, made a bow, and said, “Perhaps now we may speak with greater ease, m’lord.”
“I – yes. Much gratitude,” said Essex.
O’Neill put his hat on his lap and said, “The Irish greet a man as honor wills. I salute ye, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.” The man raised his hand again. The grey light shone on the armor and the plaids he wore, on his dark brown hair, and his placid, weather-worn face. In a grainy brogue he went on:

“May yer way be soft and goodly,
May yer hearth burn warm in winter,
May the sun be always on yer days,
And the good rain always on yer fields.
And may the Good Lord bless ye always.
Sliänte.
Well-met, Earl.”

“I am as well the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,” said Essex.
“Not mine Ireland,” said O’Neill, though his friendly tone never wavered.
“Do you know why you are here, my lord?” said Essex.
“We are to discuss a cease-fire.”
“We are here because you declined my challenge of single combat.”
The pulling in Essex’s chest was strong, and it filled him with a strange contempt for O’Neill. How could the Irishman be so calm, so confident, his eyes so unperturbed? Perhaps they were the eyes of the wild dog, content in his wild world, for he had no Privy Council in the dark jungles of Ulster, and no courtiers who watched his every move. O’Neill was free. A barbarian, and free!
“Ah, for I did not wish to fight you, Earl.”
“It could have preserved many lives,” said Essex. He ought to show the heathen what chivalry was. “I would have laid down my life for my men, and you needn’t have been afraid of killing a coward. I would have faced death honorably.”
“Why kill you at all? I do not want anybody dead, m’lord. I want you and your army to return to England and never trouble our homelands again.”
“My Queen could not allow us to abandon you.”
“We are quite content with abandonment. We would forgive you for retracting your devoted care.” Was it just him, or had he heard the faintest sneer in O’Neill’s voice?
“We only want what is best for Ireland.”
“You want what is best for an English Ireland,” said the other. “I want what is best for an Irish Ireland. I wish freedom for my people.”
“You have been deluded by the Spanish. They promise you aid if you would fight us, but it is not Ireland they care about. They wish our army busied here while they seek to attack England by sea.”
“English hysteria, for they plan no such thing. We will ally with the Spaniard because he promises to aid us in resisting thou, who wouldst enslave us.”
“We would not. We would enlighten you, bring you every benefit of ―”
“Was it not Ireland that preserved the books of Rome while England was but a swamp? I will not submit, my lord, nor will my men. Why should we? The one who needs capitulate, my lord, is you.”
Essex cringed, at sudden pain, as if he had been cast into the rushing water that whipped and swirled in eddies on the rocks. “I?” he cried. “I? I am the hand that grinds you. I am the Lord Lieutenant.”
“A Lord Lieutenant whose army is outnumbered two to one, and of which more desert with every hour, if they do not take sick with damp. Do they want to fight, Essex? Do they want to fight? If you join us, we will feed you. We will treat your wounded. We will show you the lay of the land. The Irish, who have fought divided, brother against brother, will no longer go to sleep eaten by nightmares. The English will be our kin.”
“How dare you think I would consider your lies.”
“I do not lie to you!” cried O’Neill. “We do not want to fight, for if we do we shall only kill more of you! Eventually you will be forced back to your England, if you will not do so freely anon.”
“My virtuous Queen has forbidden the invasion to stop or I to return.”
“Elizabeth is a despot,” said O’Neill, “who seeks to diminish that which contests her. If you return to England, victorious or shamed, the noblemen will destroy you. You are not wanted. So turn your back, do not return there. You are a good man, my lord. There is much for you here. Do not doom yourself. Do not doom your men.”
“How can I trust you, Earl of Tyrone,” groaned Essex, “with you a traitor! And a murderer.”
“I am no murderer,” said O’Neill quietly.
Essex found himself wanting to laugh at the poor scoundrel, poor Irish dog so foolishly convinced he was a man. It was almost pitiful, in the way a Caliban was pitiful. Essex sipped his cordial and said, “No? What of the men at Blackwater, and Yellow Ford? What of the massacre one month ago at Curlew Pass?”
“Your men didn’t need to die, Essex. Your commander was inept. They had so little food. With your idiocy, Earl, you killed them.”
“What of the wolves?” cried Essex. “That strike at us? And the nameless beasts that take our soldiers’ blood? Are they not yours, Tyrone?”
“The spirits strike at us as well!”
“I am no fool,” said Essex.
“Then for God’s sake, my friend, surrender!” O’Neill’s arms spread out beseechingly. “Or join us. Your hold in Court has fallen, all can see it but you. Why would you venture back, where you shall surely die? Why would you drive them harder and harder until they join with me anyway? Here you have a chance at life, and a future.”
“I will not betray my Queen Elizabeth.”
“My Earl, I would that she would not betray you.”
How could the chieftain lie like this! Essex must have been closer to defeating him than the English had perceived, to try so desperately to win over the Earl. Was that not the way of Satan, to beguile and corrupt those he could not defeat?
“The only thing I will consider,” said Essex, happy with himself, “is a cease-fire.”
“I would agree with that as well.”
“I will consult with my officers. Perhaps we should meet again, with others. All of us could benefit from a break in the fighting, especially with winter coming on.”
“Indeed,” said O’Neill.
As Essex started to turn away, he got one last look at O’Neill: standing there, alone in the current, the wind whipping his hair. The Irishman was clean-shaven, his face worn. How little armor he wore. How incredibly childish. Essex could have had him shot. It would have been the foolish brute’s own fault.
When they met with O’Neill’s party the next day, he wondered if the old Essex would have hated the Earl of Tyrone so. After all, he did appear a foe of integrity, and honorable somewhat, wanted to save lives on both sides. But Devereux knew better. What could he do but follow the sick, sad tugging in his chest, for when it throbbed the Irishman was no better than the Cecils and the Raleighs.
His mind would drift back to Court in dear old Albion, and wonder what was being said about him: all lies, all slander. The people would believe it. The Queen would believe it. His friends would turn from him, even Southampton and dear Lord Egerton. He dearly, dearly did not want to displease Egerton. Then he would never enjoy those green eyes so enfolding.
He drank a posset cordial, but it made him sick.
An official cease-fire was drawn up by the officials and presented, but Essex was not there. He lay ill in his tent, a hand upon his chest, the whole of him overcome with one thought:
I must go back to England.
#
Somewhere outside Dublin – where, he didn’t know – Tom Egerton lay on the cot that had become his home. The pain had roused him again, and he coaxed open tender eyes. Young morning light danced on the canvas of the tent they’d pitched above him, making moving patterns of soft whites and cool purples. It was like looking through one of those tubes with mirrors and colored glass. What did one call them? They had a name, but he couldn’t place it.
Jack, he thought, you’d know, wouldn’t you? Dear Jack, a Tainted whoreson’s only friend. Perhaps he was consoling Tom’s wife. Perhaps Liza had even got Jack to come to bed with her. Jack had tried so hard to suppress his old self, but Tom knew it was only a matter of time before his resistance cracked.
But Jack was safe and sound and oblivious to Tom. Good. Tom had told Egerton with his first letter not to break the news to Jack or Liza or the girls.
A flare of pain from his side disturbed him. The ache had grown, like a stab, and it seemed as though some cad were sitting on his chest. He raised his head – more pain – and looked down. His stomach was plastered in bandages. A poultice was on his side since they’d stitched it again yesterday. Tom’s lips parted soundlessly.
He could have called for a doctor and a doctor would have come –there were advantages to being the Keeper’s son – but they drove him mad. A simple spell could have fixed him, or a potion, but mortals knew nothing, and Tom’s own strength was gone. He had tried with magic, tried so hard (and failed). Father would be disappointed.
What made dying slowly a chore wasn’t the dying part, just the slow.
It could have been quick. Tom had vague memories of Irish gunfire that had hurt him but not killed him. Then swordsmen had sprung from the brush upon Tom and his boys, and laid him open across the chest before he’d known what was happening. Mortal men. Father would be disgusted.
As well he ought, thought Tom. Look at me. Look at me.
Softly, weakly, Tom began to weep with shame. Shame that he had come to Ireland, shame that he was dying this way. O Mary! O, Cassie! Vere! Darlings! They were playing in their white dresses in the courtyard, chasing dragonflies with mirror wings. He was not selfish enough to wish them here, and see him gone like this. But he wished to be there, whole and sound again to kiss their little heads. A minute. Then maybe hell wouldn’t be so bad.
Sometime in this meditation he became aware of someone in the tent with him. Tom tried to stop the tears in his eyes, and it was hard. He felt a dreadful pulsing behind his eyelids when he shut them. He looked again. A dark blur before him solidified into the shape of a man.
“How farest thou?”
It was good to hear a familiar voice, and almost worth the effort of moving his lips. “Hullo, uncle.”
“Look at the state of thee, my lad.”
“Been better.” Tom tried to sit up, but the there was a rush of heat on his side; it felt like something had snapped. Perhaps one of the stitches had broken again. Tom said, “I can’t heal myself, More.”
“Who would have presumed?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Fate’s a whore.”
Another pause. “Did my father send you?”
“No, Tom. I came on my own, for thee. Wouldst thou not like to live?”
Tom’s sluggish brain processed this verdant piece of information. He considered the question for a while. To live – that would be nice. But with More, father said, there was always a debt. This was not a favor. It would be a bargain. That was how More worked….
It was good enough for Tom. “What’d you have in mind?”
“I have power enough to tend to thee, here. Thou wouldst return with me to Surrey. And thou wouldst do little tasks for me, until a particular enterprise of mine is attained.”
“Enterprise?” murmured Tom.
“I would not burden thee with it. Thou art in no state to understand.”
“If I work for you in Surrey…what about…Liza? The girls? Father?”
More pulled a chair beside Tom’s cot and put a hand on his shoulder. With his touch, Tom felt a spell relax his body, and the muscles tensed so long in pain let go. At his side, the pain lessened somewhat.
“My enterprise,” said More, “is a secret one. None may know. I am sorry, Sir Thomas, but thy family thou wouldst not see for some time. They will think thee dead, but when we finish, thou shalt then go back.”
“But uncle….” Tom murmured, smiling, “You wouldn’t do that.”
“I’m afraid I must. That, or I shall leave thee to die. It will happen within a week, I presume, if gangrene is averted and thou’rt not infected. They will know thy death is come and send for a priest to bestow thee the Last Rites. Then, Thomas, they shall find out your true nature.”
Tom winced. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Wilt thou accept?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Why can I not tell Liza? Or my family? Is your enterprise against them?” And Tom, ashamed of himself, began to weep again.
“Only thy father.”
“Father.” Tom felt his fingers clench. Startled that after all this pain the old feelings still survived. Father, who hated Tom. Father, who hated all disappointments. That was why Father adored Donne the secretary, and his obedience, and his many words. Who could say that while Tom had been away, the old man hadn’t found a new son?
“Father wouldn’t care,” he said.
More replied, “Thou hast told him thou diest. Hath he sent thee help, or healers?”
“No,” wept Tom, as the pain leapt up again. “Dammit….”
More took a skin of wine and held it to Tom’s lips. Tom drank like it would cure him, enamored of how it tricked down his dusty throat, so cool and kind. “I think I know what your enterprise is. You shall usurp my father?”
“We have a pact, then?”
“Damn right,” muttered Tom.
Sparing Tom from the ordeal, Sir George took his nephew’s hand and clasped it in his own. His head laid back on the pillow, Tom did not see the silver glow, but he could feel the sudden heat that rushed into his body, the pounding, beating heat that started in his head and swept through him. It did not stop. Tom closed his eyes and moaned, for with the heat soon there came pain. From the gash on his side to his lungs he was being seared from within. His thoughts quivered like his hands. Yet he started to feel whole again. The blood no longer came. He was spent, exhausted, yes, but More was healing him.
In More’s grasp Tom saw his own hand, and the wrist of that hand. Something like a mark had appeared on his flesh, shining there like scarlet ink. Words. These words:
Morus tarde Moriens, morum cito Moriturum.
Tom read this a few times. Then both men closed their eyes and slept.
#
The whole of London prepared for the Armada I knew would never come. Yes, Spain would have attacked us had they been able. But they were not. War had exhausted both our countries. Still the citizens were frightful.
The harvest was abandoned by the farmers who had taken arms and kept a vigil day and night, by the light of the lanterns ordered by Privy Council to burn through the nights. Star Chamber met daily, and with each session it grew more tired and harried and frantic. Elizabeth’s eyes showed all of this, though her face was calm – she was old, she was weak, and her country was in hysterics. I wanted to tell her, None of this is real! It is a ghost. Send them home.
At times, when the Spanish failed to appear, it looked as if the crisis had abated, and life would go on. The militia had begun to dissolve, but then word from Plymouth was that fifteen thousand Spaniards were approaching, and fifteen thousand English Catholics were ready to join them. Others said the Spanish were off the Isle of Wight in Scotland and allied with James VI. And murmurs said than in his meeting with O’Neill, Essex had been converted to the cause of our country’s enemies.
The Queen, Egerton, and I refused to believe this.
But Essex’s meeting itself worried Elizabeth, because by parlaying with the Irish he had overstepped his authority, and the six-month cease-fire they had declared in Ireland was an atrocity Privy Council could not permit.
“Essex is a loose cannon,” said Raleigh.
By September, England had realized that the Spanish were not coming. Most were relieved and some still angry, a few sighed away the moment of national bravado with reluctance. Shakespeare had been hauling in a profit throughout the whole ordeal. (“The patriotism! Everyone coming to see the history plays, all those voluntaries needing entertainment—”) The militia trudged home to their fields and villages. Autumn fell.
I went with Egerton to Nonsuch Palace when Court moved there, which was good for both of us. Throughout the Armada panic, he had grown silent and grim, unlike himself, until I guessed that something must have weighed on him. He was sick, and seldom came to dinner, and seemed to require my help reminding him of papers and occasions. There was some private grief he was a warden of, and it distracted him sometimes.
Nonsuch was my favorite of the palaces, for it lay in the country amid parks and greenery, untroubled by London fumes. The structures were new, by Henry the Eighth, and the architecture airy and uplifting, unlike York. It was Loseley – without George More.
Or Ann. I still had to figure out what I thought about Ann.
I did not think she would be cheery when I told her some of the poems I’d written for her would be included in the collaborative effort with Shakespeare. (Egerton had permitted the text after all, for he was melancholy and distracted, and having his secretary seen by the plebs as a Petrarchan loverboy was perhaps better than having him seen as a zealot subversive). Ann would have to live with it, though. Amours by J.D. with Certain Other Sonnets by W.S. was being taken by one of Shakespeare’s men to the printer at the sign of the Wind-Mill.
And if Ann is mad? I thought in my new room in Nonsuch. What if she views it as a breach of trust? Fine. I will take the money that I make from the Amours and I shall buy her a necklace. A stunning one. A dazzling one. Amethysts, she would like those.
As I wrote her, I started to draw on another page absentmindedly. I drew amethysts rocks like the kind Itzak had in his lab, and Ann on her horse, and the goat. The stupid goat, I thought, but I was smiling for the first time in a long time.
“This place is good for the spirit,” said Egerton over supper.
I agreed.
“Topcliffe’s men no longer trouble you?”
“Not as much, sire.”
“I would dismiss him if I could. But you cannot predict what a man like that would do if not overseen and kept in check. The government is the safest place for Richard Topcliffe. At the least he relishes in the sadly necessary work the rest of us would shy from.”
“He is…good at what he does.”
“Come, John. I have known you long now, and your eyes speak differently. You detest him. Which is of course acceptable.”
“My eyes?”
He nodded. “My dear boy, you can be honest with me. I want to help you.”
“My lord,” I said, “you are benevolent. And you have already helped me so much.”
“I must advise you now,” said the Lord Keeper.
I paused. “My lord?”
“Your qualities, virtues in small proportion – modesty, meekness, silence – if left to govern you will bar your way. I note your goodness, as it ought to be, but others will not. Quiet virtue attracts no advancement. In this world of ours you must be seen and heard. This I urge you.”
“I would welcome advancement, lord, but am also happy where I am.”
“Of course you are. But could you not be happier?”
“I could,” I said.
“One must not be greedy, but there is nothing shameful about taking what you deserve. You, John, must learn to see that you deserve far more than you’ve been trained to accept.” He drank his cider. Truly it made me less afraid when Egerton was in a better mood than his dark, withdrawn presence of late. I considered what he said without really understanding it. I had been trained to accept that I was undeserving? By whom? Patrons who had turned me down? Women who had used me? My mother when she doted on Henry? The Order? I bit my lip, not understanding – not at all.
He sensed my confusion, and gave me a reassuring smile. The green eyes found their way into my head like they always did. I was uncomfortable, and the Presence in the back of my brain made me confused. A quiet voice said, What if the Order is using me?
That night I lay awake thinking about it. I thought of Northwell and the wild, desperate things that clung on the edges of the darkness. I thought of my own sick when I killed them. At first I was glad when I fell asleep, because I had no thoughts for some time. Just nothingness, and what a nothingness! But then I began to dream. Mist drifted in off the sea – perhaps it was Isla Fayal, I heard the palm fronds sighing. From out of the fog came a Greek enchantress, dressed in robes of green and stepping through the brush. I watched her with detached interest until she came before me. When I tried to step away, she touched me on the chest with a wand, and at once I felt a pressure pounding behind my eyes; and the world began to spin. Heat, confusion – I saw my hands changing. I landed on all fours, and, God, felt it all, my body being pulled and shaken. Some primal rushing took me, and the pounding in my head, and a severity of every thought and the newness of a form….
I ran through the London streets, shrieking at the moon. I must tell Itzak, O, I must tell all of them. See how good it is, see —
I saw him, and he saw me, but he didn’t recognize me. I called his name and he recoiled, something flashing in his hands – the Saturn pistol, flaring with a sudden light as he aimed between my eyes.
I fell through fog again, myself once more, trembling with horror. Human again. If I had been rational maybe I’d have realized it was a dream. But fear sharpens things and everything was so incredibly clear. How could it not be real?
John!
It was Ann More in a white dress. Her eyes were sad and fearful, but so brave. Behind her were three hooded forms in robes of black, holding scissors above a strand of tapestry. How slow the scissors moved. And somehow I knew that if the blades closed, something horrible would happen, something I dreaded wholly without knowing it. I called out to Ann, but she didn’t hear me. Snip.
London again. The bell was knolling. I was sitting in the parlor of my mother’s house looking at a tray of powdered sweets laid out on porcelain plates. It was dim because the curtains were black. We were all wearing black. She was crying and told me, It was your mistake.
Uncle Jasper was there. He said, Do not abuse your son so….
Henry was my son. Henry had honor. What is John. As if he wouldn’t lie with the Crown as soon as he lies with his whores.
I was silent and numb.
I was silent and numb.
I woke up in my room in Nonsuch, tired and trembling in the chilly autumn air that had found its way inside. At first it didn’t register that I was awake, and I waited for the bell again. But it didn’t come. Though that hardly mattered. It would always be there, tolling inside of me.
I looked at the floor when I came to Lord Egerton that morning, so maybe I didn’t notice the grief on his face. So I was not prepared to find out why he had been grim all these weeks. Tom had been wounded outside Dublin a while ago, he said.
I was to bear the sword at his funeral.

Elizabeth was not a morning person. Even in her young and vital days, rousing had been a chore. And being Queen meant waking up quite early, first to be powdered and dressed and wigged. After that, there were petitions to hear, gossip to catch up on, and nobles to be entertained over breakfast. It made one almost guiltily miss the days of excitement, of Spanish Armadas and Scottish Queens.
The Lord Keeper was on her mind, with his boy dead and the Privy Council ground to a halt with Egerton at the funeral. Elizabeth had sympathy for Egerton, yes, but to her Sir Tom’s death was yet another demonstration of the floundering war. The campaign had fallen to shambles under Essex. It would reflect on the Queen. Everything would reflect on the Queen. She said nothing as her ladies painted her nails.
From the halls outside her bedchamber suite came raised voices. Elizabeth, who had not had her Turkish coffee, hardly cared, but the maids looked startled.
The Queen’s hearing wasn’t what it used to be. First the shouts were muffled and far away, and it was awhile before she could make out what was said.
“My lord! My lord, please —”
“I will not —”
“What are you doing….”
Slamming doors and heavy footsteps. Then it was quiet for some time. Then the sounds started again, and closer, and suddenly the door leaned open and the Earl of Essex stood in the Queen’s bedchamber.
Elizabeth had been around a long time, long enough to know when a man was in a bad way. If Essex had once been proud and lordly of bearing, this was not that Essex. This Robert Devereux was clad in clothes dirty and disheveled. His hair was uncombed. Something in his wide, desperate eyes looked terribly, terribly frightened at what he was doing. His bare hands (the nails were gnawed at) turned one in the other, as if he were washing them and could not stop.
The ladies-in-waiting screamed.
“Please – please – I– I only wish to —”
“Talk?” said Elizabeth, emotionlessly.
“Yes,” he pleaded.
Elizabeth was seated in one of her chairs facing Essex, her face plain and unpainted and her thin grey hair loose about her face. Essex was seeing something no man had ever seen. Not even Leicester had been allowed to view her like this. Elizabeth felt violated, deeply, sharply – but was determined not to let it show. “Well, bow for starters,” she said.
Essex bowed. “I know you wanted me to stay in Ireland,” he began.
“I ordered you to stay in Ireland.”
“I know.”
“But you have returned.” And how had he returned? Had he stormed Nonsuch with his knights? What of the guards? Had he seen Privy Council? — Elizabeth blew on her nails coolly. “With good reason?”
He edged through the frozen, white-faced ladies-in-waiting and knelt at her feet. Elizabeth could hear his breath, heavy, strained as his hand pressed over his heart. As if a wound were there.
“It is not true, I swear it. Whatever they say of me, it’s not true! You must know that they are lies invented to poison you from me. Not that any force could poison such a celestial mind as Your Majesty’s…. I would never desert you! I had to come, to hear it from your own lips that you know I would not join O’Neill, and I would never desert you!”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” she said, trying to sound compassionate. Perhaps she did pity him. A man must have been overcome with worry to attempt what he had done. With his plaintive eyes, he seemed so childlike.
“How could I betray you, when I love you dearly?”
“As a subject,” said Elizabeth quickly.
“As a willing slave,” he murmured sadly. “A son. Your only – faithful – soldier.”
Elizabeth patted his curls. “How faithful, to deliberately thwart me?”
“I don’t know!” he groaned, pressing his hands to his temples as he slumped to sit at her feet. “Sometimes I do not know what I am thinking, I am a ship on waves of thoughts so dark and strange I do not know them for my own.”
Elizabeth tried to ignore the terrified ladies-in-waiting, who were conducting themselves poorly, looking frightened and angry and disgusted. That was not the way to do things in politics. Especially when the poor man was losing his mind. So the Queen changed the subject. “Took you long to get here?”
He shook his head. “We left Dublin four days ago. We rode with all speed. Through the night.”
“We? More are with you?”
“Southampton. My secretary Wotton.” He shrugged. “Others.”
“You must be tired, Robert.”
“So tired, Your Majesty. How long have I pushed this boulder up this hill?” He sighed, and his fingers (which had been washing themselves round and around) drummed the floor. He looked down and was surprised that he was doing this, but he did not stop, only watched the nervous repetitive motions of his arms.
“I was eighteen,” he said, answering himself, “or nineteen. My father died, and I was Earl, brought to Court in these silken clothes with a stupid silken entourage. The food so rich, the dancing so grand, the Queen so kind. But I couldn’t see the eyes then. Now I do. I see them watching from every corner, waiting for my slip so they may leap on me and take me down. I should have run away! I should have ran the moment I came to Court.”
“Ssh,” said Elizabeth gently, wary of the rapier strung on the Earl’s belt. But some part of her knew that he would never use it on her. On the rivals, on the Cecils, on the ladies-in-waiting, but never on the Queen.
He sighed like Leicester had sighed, there at her feet. How strange that he would remind her so of that long-dead picture. How strange that her greatest threat was her most devoted servant. But his weeping was not strange to her. His tears made watery paths through the grime on his face, yet she was not surprised. He had been crying so long within himself. Elizabeth had known, she realized with shame – known and done nothing.
What would Leicester have done if he were here? He would have stood there by the bookshelf, his gloves in the hand on his hip, shaking his head at her and saying, “See here, Bess, now how are you being decent? Look at him, all in a fit because of you. Willn’t you be kind? Oh, show a little sympathy for him, my girl! I know you can.”
Essex kissed her skirts like he had that bitter day months ago in Star Chamber. The Queen put a hand down to bid him to stop but he kissed that too. “You believe me?”
“I will listen. Who lies to undo you?”
His eyes flashed suspiciously to the serving-ladies. “Not unless we are alone.”
A few of them gasped but Elizabeth was as bland as ever. “Lay down your rapier, Essex, and they will leave us.”
Immediately, it clattered on the floor.
Elizabeth turned to the ladies-in-waiting, who stayed rooted to the spot for a while before drawing away stiffly. One of them bent down to take the Earl’s blade and hand it to the Queen. They would wait outside the door, and get the soldiers. (There were rumors of the nature of Essex’s devotion to the Queen, and leaving the man alone with the weak, frail old lady in a bedroom would not be the best way to find out. But Elizabeth had been around a long time, long enough to know when a man felt that way. And – she did not know —)
“It’s Raleigh,” he said. “It’s Robert Cecil. Cecil wants to cross us, I know it.”
“How?” said Elizabeth.
“The way they spread lies about me – they have no reason, but to claw me down and burnish themselves the brighter in your view. Cecil would be king. And then he would make us a vessel of Spain – and have England bow to the Infanta —”
“Cecil is guileful and a manipulator, but he is an Englishman. I have known him since his birth. I cannot believe you, Essex.”
“I could find proof, Your Majesty—”
“Could you?”
“Wotton!” he laughed. “Wotton is good at that sort of thing. I shall have Wotton….”
Essex.
He had stopped weeping, and even laughed with joy – but the sadness did not really leave his eyes. A glaze of relief obscured it, but that below was fixed there fast. Perhaps she made it worse, by softening his fall. For all she tried, she could not help Essex.
No one could.
“You believe me!” he said. “I had hoped so dearly you would —”
How false the Queen felt, how guilty.
“Your Highness. I am your servant, and I know I do not deserve this, your trust. I promise – swear I shall be great for you. I will take my sword and sail against all the hosts of Spain, and Ireland, and the New World! I will be something! I will be worthy, I swear it, swear….”
Elizabeth gave him his rapier, and he took it back as if he were Moses, and she was giving him a staff to smite Egyptians. He cradled it, smiling to himself, eyes wide with reverence. He got on his knees and pressed his face to the floor. Then he left like a schoolboy from confession, certain he was forgiven, knowing he was loved again. The door shut.
“Leicester,” said the Queen slowly. “What am I to do for him now?”
The blue eyes of her long-dead lover didn’t answer.
The ladies-in-waiting returned, looking stiff. They knew better than to ask questions. They just put a wig on Elizabeth and powdered her face immediately.
She knew she would not look pleasant. She couldn’t see her own scowl – she hated mirrors, and she’d had them taken from her rooms long ago – but she could feel it on her lips. A foul taste was in her mouth, a discontentment with this bloody, bloody world.
She could not stand by Essex, she knew that.
He’d done a horrid thing, if one thought about it.
When she called him back after a few hours, he was still smiling, until she pressed for answers, and until the guard arrested him.
#
Tom’s body was too long dead to be displayed. Instead there was a picture of him in one of the chambers of Doddlestone parish – they were in Cheshire. Ann talked to bawling relatives long enough to learn John Donne had gone in to pay his respects. She did not want to see him, knowing she would hate his face as soon as she saw it. But if he grieved, it was a rare chance now to draw some secrets from him.
Ann entered the church, a gothic building with a squat bell-tower in the midst of towering pines. Hesitantly, she marked herself with holy water. It didn’t hurt her like it hurt Papa or Egerton, who were Tainted, but it made her feel guilty in a way that was almost cruel. If there was a God, of course he was displeased with her.
She found the room and saw John within, a figure in black against the rich wood walls and red rugs glowing in the candlelight. He was knelt before the drawing of Tom.
“You, Tom?” he said. “No-one thought this would happen to you, except your father. You should have listened to him, when he told you not to go. But you were so stupid.”
Ann hung in the doorway, unseen.
“That was the one thing that redeemed you, you know. You were an oaf, a prig, but you were honest. If you had been smarter, I would have hated you. It is hard to put in words. It’s like you didn’t know any better.
“Yes. That’s it.
“I was never candid with you, Tom. But I shall be truthful now and say that though I hated you sometimes and the person you thought I was almost all a lie, you were my friend. The only friend I had here.”
He twiddled his thumbs for a while and studied the floor. Ann took care not to make a sound, and listened as he started to ruminate again.
“I wish I could sever myself from you and not be sad, but I can’t. We aren’t islands. Now I think you would have gotten along all right with a friend of mine who’s dead too. My brother, too. Tom, Ben, Henry. You’d have probably raised some hell or other and had a good time of it. But all of you are dead now. It seems unfair, that all the young men full of rashness die and all that’s left are people like me, cowards who haven’t a valorous bone in our bodies.
“I shall do my best for Liza and your daughters now that you are gone, even though… even though…. Well, I knew about you, Tom. I should have hated you more than I did. But I’m sad now, I suppose. Does God want me to be? He said we should forgive our enemies. Is it right to forgive you, given you’re Egerton’s son? Part of me says you had Taint. Another part says you’re as human as me in a way. It all comes down to what God wants, I suppose. If only I knew what that was.”
He crossed himself and started to pray in silence for a time. Ann lifted the skirts of her black gown and stepped in. Donne did not move, although his eyes flitted to her. They were dark and flat and did not seem to care she was there. Turning his head away coldly, he returned to his meditation.
“John,” she said, flipping aside her dark veil. “It is me.”
“Oh. How fare you?”
“Well enough.”
Something occurred to him, and his brow knitted. “You just arrived?”
“Yes.”
“Came in?”
“I did.”
“You came in – to the church?” he demanded, taking her hand to see the light glint off her fingers where the holy water was still drying. He touched his fingers to hers and began to shake.
“Of course,” said Ann, trying to sound casual. A regular woman would find nothing remarkable in having holy water on her hand and would not look at it like it could burn her. But her voice was hoarse and halting.
He laughed nervously. So did she.
In a kind of unconscious, unspoken compromise, they did nothing but pretend it hadn’t happened, such a mutual lapse of cover.
Outside it was chill, and John put on his dark, broad-brimmed hat, shivering. There was something different about him that she could not place now. Perhaps it was the black funeral uniform. Maybe it was the knowledge of what he’d said to Tom’s picture. But he was strange somehow, and she didn’t know why.
A blonde man dressed identically to John came up, kissed her hand, and clasped arms with John. “Jack!” he said. “It is good to see you, but so sad it had to be like this. Poor Tom, poor Tom.”
“Who are you?” said Ann.
“Christopher Brooke,” said Donne. “He was my roommate once. I didn’t know you knew Sir Thomas.”
So, thought Ann, you confess all to his portrait, and we come out of the church and he is only Sir Thomas.
Christopher Brooke shrugged. “We were in the university. We got together at the plays a lot, and when I’d come down to London to sample Court. Tom was a good fellow, made things fun.”
“Yeah,” said John.
“He thought it hilarious when we took down the Theatre, though he was miffed we didn’t bring him. Just like Tom! Always loved adventure.”
“He what? He knew?” John demanded.
Brooke shrugged.
“You told him I was in the Mermaid Tavern?” John hissed. “But – but it could have done me in! O, he could have told anyone. Can you keep no secrets, Christopher?”
The man shrunk, ashamed. “I – I didn’t know I wasn’t to tell him. You’d trust Tom, wouldn’t you? He’d not tell anybody.”
John sighed. “I suppose.”
“I promise you can trust me, Jack.”
“I’m sorry, Christopher. I have spoken most inconsiderately. Let me introduce Sir More’s daughter, Miss Ann.”
Ann said, “You were a good friend of Tom’s, Master Brooke?”
The man thought for a while and answered, “I don’t think I was as dear to him as Jack was. Jack was his best friend. But Lord Keep wanted men to bear Tom’s things, and I was one of the ones that didn’t owe him money.”
“Money?” said Ann slowly.
“Poor Tom just tried to help out his blokes. He had debts himself; he understood what it was like. But they didn’t pay him back. He couldn’t pay his own way. Makes one sad, doesn’t it? He didn’t deserve it.”
Ann thought back to the night she’d left York House and later met Donne on the streets, when she’d seen Tom and the serving-maid tittering like canaries in the bushes. After Brooke had left, Ann said, “All of a sudden, Tom is robed in virtue.”
“He was all right,” said John.
“He did nothing good for anyone. He was selfish, licentious, and rude.”
“At funerals they call that ‘zest for life.’”
Then Ann saw Egerton making his way towards them. The lordly posture of her uncle had lost something of its noble grandeur. Now it was but the sad bearing of soldier at a burial.
“Donne. The priest is ready. Please find your place in the procession and carry his sword behind the body.”
“I do you will, my lord.” His hand slid out of hers and he slipped away into the cold.
“Uncle.” Ann hugged the old man, and the Lord Keeper’s stiff arms hugged her back. He winced as if each movement was painful –as if the ancient lord’s true age was at last seeping into him.
What would Papa be like, she thought, if I died?
Would he be weak like this, knowing that his child was gone? It seemed wrong that a father should have to bury his son. Even a father like Egerton. Even a son like Tom.
#
As the bells tolled, they took Tom’s coffin to his fresh-dug grave. The sword was cold in my hands, as it should have been. The last one who had held it was a dead man. Liza had her arms around Cassie and Mary, and I held Vere’s hand as they lowered the box into the earth with rich black velvet draped upon it. The girls threw rosemary and heather into the grave. “Daddy,” Vere muttered.
The priest said something about the gates of St. Peter and the Judgment of good souls. Now Liza began to weep, and Egerton’s grimness darkened, and George More flinched – as if they could feel the brand that marked them all, or see their souls Tainted as they were, or hear their own bells in the one that tolled for Tom.
We returned to York House not long after, back to the world of petty gloss and gossip. Lord Egerton began to depend on me for many things: I kept track of most of the trials and licenses. Milo Schroeder would get Lady Egerton’s tea and I would give it to her. At dinner, I would say the brightest, wittiest things so the visiting dignitaries would not catch the sadness that had come over my master.
Once I went to his office with some papers. He did not look at them. Instead he went to the huge windows and invited me to do the same. For a while, I gazed with him out at the forlorn city, where dark steeples and palace towers poked through the fog like needles through a skein of wool.
“England —” I said. “It’s as if to dim our nation’s brightness, jealous Nature throws us her shadiest raiments.”
He tried to smile. “You have always been well-spoken, Donne, and as loyal a secretary as any could pray to have. My poor son held you dear.”
“He is at rest now.”
He laughed long, but with a strange feigned happiness. “What a consolation it would be to have it so. Thou knowest not what awaits my Tom.”
But I did. Hell. I knew as well as he did Tom’s Taint was God’s damnation. And what must it be like for Egerton to know with no uncertainty that this was the fate of his child? I tried to imagine it, and it made me feel a sympathy that I had never known: Tom – laughing, careless – screaming, tormented, in some corner of the Inferno.
“I am sorry, my lord.” I put my hands in my pockets. “I know he was your son. I know you loved him dearly. I know he can never be replaced, but I promise that if any action of mine might ease the pain of his loss, I will do so. If anything could make your sorrow less….”
And then I realized that I meant what I was saying, meant it. My voice trailed off.
“You are dear to all of us, Master Donne.”
“You do me much honor, my lord….”
“You have sat at our table for many months,” he went on. “You saved my granddaughter from the charging horse that would have been her death. You are like our family.”
“And you mine.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “You had no father.”
“My lord….”
“And there is an empty place where my son was once,” he said. “Tom! Only his death showed me that under all my loathing and embarrassment was my son. No, John, do not speak. You would say that surely I am a good lord and a good man and a good father. But I am not.
“I shall not make the mistake again – I shall never let a good service pass unnoticed and without reward. I will be there for my dear family —”
“Lord —”
“—All my family.”
The eyes. Green and kindly and holding mine. Thoughts, frightened thoughts seized by the gleam and pulled to my throat, where they clung, bobbing, strangling me almost. The eyes.
“You are my son, John.”
#
And something in me had snapped when he’d said it.
If the night had been young I might have gone to the Cathedral to climb the tower and pull myself above this mess. The world. The Dark. My thoughts. Above all of it.
But back in my room I filled the basin, put my head in, felt the sharpness of the cold water.
Was I that hunter in the night?
Had there been blood?
I was recalling a dream.
I could hear Itzak wagging his finger and saying, “You worry, and fret so much about so little. A few words from Egerton and the death of a man you hated have put you in a bad way. Why don’t you stop being stupid and sleep? That is your problem. Not enough sleep.”
I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I did not want to rest.
Just let these voices scream, I thought, and soon they would be hoarse and my conscience would be still. I could sleep then.
I let the first thought enter my head, and in it came, and it was not Egerton, not the vampire, nor Ben, nor Henry. It was Ann. Ann on the riverbank at Loseley, as I let go of the wall in my heart and felt what I’d kept out.
I reached to the nightstand for The Ecstasy. It was only a poem. Only for a little I had made myself give in, just for a poem. And then I thought of the play at the Curtain, and her hand, and the warmth that sung up my arm like a muse of fire. And Ann in the church with the holy water on her fingers, not Tainted like the others, not branded as unholy.
I wanted to scream with happiness and fear.
Grinding the floor with my heels, I marched to my desk and slapped down a blank sheet of paper. When I couldn’t think of what to write, I stood up and went still.
Taint or not, I thought, she is one of Them, and even if she was a regular human being, if I loved her we’d be doomed. But she’s a demon’s daughter.
And They’d killed Henry. Egerton had let Topcliffe kill Henry. And I wasn’t one of Them and I wasn’t, I wasn’t his son.
I stalked to my desk, and faced the sheet of paper. For a while I sat there, staring at the whiteness, hoping maybe something of the blankness on the page would come between these thoughts and me. Stupid, frantic thoughts! I stabbed the quill in the ink and wrote:

I should not be in love with her.

I crossed it out until all the line was black. I wrote again.

I cannot be in love with her.

There. Now I made it impossible. I cannot.
It was desperate, though. Like I was trying to convince myself. I did not need convincing. Convincing of what? There was nothing to say. I crossed the line and said:

I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH HER.

It’s funny how we say things and only know the opposite.

“Come, Wotton. You can talk to the door-man later.”
Essex took his suit-cases and stepped into the anteroom of York House, glancing at the guards on either side of him. The smell of dusk and dimness washed against his nose and throat.
Schroeder ceased in his discourse with Wotton and attended the Earl once more. “Yes, my lord, welcome. Uh – we’re delighted – to have you here. Please follow me. This way. Please don’t touch the Abyssinian tapestries….”
“Of course I won’t,” said Essex, though he had been about to.
“Whilst you stay here,” the door-man went on, “we will be more than happy to attend to all your needs. What you want, send the servants to retrieve. We would like to make your time as comfortable as it can be.”
Looking about this place, Essex knew that he would not be comfortable. In the corners were servants and lawyers and clerks, all frozen as they saw the Earl. And who knew what they would whisper to their lords. Essex’s chest groaned, as under a weight, under a pull. Sadness.
Mr. Donne the secretary came to take the Earl’s bags. “My lord.”
“My servants can get those, Jack.”
“I – sure.” He set the bags down, fingering his fine lace cuffs. How different this boy was from the poet who had come begging to Essex after the Azores. He had the servant look about him, and he was pale and worn, but at least he had an honest job. Now Essex didn’t feel so bad about turning down his poems.
“I could get you food,” said Donne. “Hors d’oevres? Scones?”
“Posset cordial?” said Wotton.
“I am not thirsty.” Essex had Schroeder lead them to the Earl’s new chamber. It was a plain room, but nice, small, with a maple bed on a floor with drab rushes. At least there was a window and nice curtains and a bookshelf and a wardrobe. Essex sighed.
Donne bowed. “My lord Egerton wishes to see you.”
“Oh.”
“Shall I show you to the library? He awaits us there.”
“You haven’t aged a day since Cadiz, Jack.”
“Oh, well, I don’t know.”
“I have aged quite a bit, you see. I am an old man.”
When they arrived, the Lord Keeper opened his door and greeted Essex warmly. “My lord. What a relief you are well after your months in Ireland and the turmoil here. And thank you for being such a welcome guide, John.” He nodded at the secretary, who cringed.
Essex was being ushered into the office. He said, “I’m sorry they have forced me upon you, my lord. I don’t see how you deserve this—”
“O, Robert, I asked! I am your friend, and I could not have let them put you somewhere else. You shall be my guest.”
“I’m a prisoner,” said Essex.
“Come, we must be strong. Yes, sit, and your guards may leave. That will be all, John.”
Donne shut the door, leaving Essex alone with the Lord Keeper and his books. At one time, Egerton had been strong and lordly and in the pride of health, but now he was graying, as if the age and sorrow of York House was finding its way into him. There were shadows beneath his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Devereux. “About Tom.”
“All things die.”
“Like the Queen’s favor,” said Essex. “I thought she would be lenient, I thought she understood when I came to her at first, but then she sent me away and when I came back… Her Majesty…. begins to shout at me, and says I have acted unjustly.”
“Might I say it is because of Cecil?”
“But how would Cecil have known?”
“Cecil loves to hide and lurk places. Perhaps behind a tapestry outside the Queen’s own chambers,” said Egerton, voice heavy with implication.
“How dare he,” cried Essex. “He will thwart my reconciliation with Elizabeth.”
Egerton smiled a little. “You still wish a reconciliation?”
“Of course! How could I not?”
“Perhaps your path lies elsewhere.”
As the Lord Keeper spoke, Essex felt a haze descend and claim him with a watery languor. Strange – he could not look away. Did he wish to? It was so nice, and he had missed it in Ireland.
“All great men shed a few drops of blood, Robert. That is how destiny is made. We cannot survive without the fire.”
“But – I cannot kill. I only wish to show her I am loyal!”
“What you deserve. And I caution you, you must be ready to do what you must. If you follow your heart, you need not be afraid of failure.”
“But I am.” Essex’s hand was pressed against his breast.
“Thy chest, my lord,” laughed Egerton.
Essex snapped, “It’s nothing. It not my will, it is yours.”
A strange silence fell.
“I think,” said Essex slowly, “you have given this feeling to me. You – and your eyes.”
Egerton considered Essex with a glance of mild interest – like Essex had mastered a trick sooner than expected.
Essex, afraid he had upset his friend, pulled his cloak over his arms and shrunk. “What… do I do now?”
The smile revisited Egerton’s features. “You must follow it. You hear it? Good. Now all you need do is travel where it leads you.”
“How! I am going insane, and the whole Court hates me, and they have made Elizabeth hate me. Now I am a prisoner at York House.”
“Soon you shall be free, and mark my words, Robert,” growled Egerton, “You shall do much once you are free.”
“But I am no traitor!”
“Follow the feeling, and the people will love you.”
Essex blanched. “How do you know?”
“I have seen it, time and time again. The commoners then are the commoners now, quick to hasty war and rasher-still forgivenesses.”
“You make them seem stupid,” said Essex.
Egerton leaned forward, laughing, and took the Earl’s hands. “Most of your kind are, Devereux, Devereux. Even the Order is clueless and helpless to prevent.”
“I don’t understand, Lord Keeper.”
“Of course you don’t,” smiled Egerton. “But we have much to do, you and I. My son is gone and I have nothing.You shall soon change England. You shall cement its destiny.”
Essex shifted his hands uneasily in Egerton’s. “—What?”
“I do not share secrets, my lord. But you well deserve to know, as I well deserve to tell you. There comes a war. The lines are drawn already, twixt your England and your Spain, and it is my duty to see that they remain. That is all. It is a delicate way I have. A few are killed.” He pulled back his hands and ran them nervously down the desk, and Essex stared helplessly into his eyes.
“If you were King, Robert —”
“It’s treason —”
“You would war with Spain. Correct?”
“I – yes. I think so. But – but I don’t want —”
“Of course you don’t. Not now. But you will.”
Essex stared at the floor, hoping beyond hope that a hole would open up to swallow him. And he could fall away from here.
“Do not let it trouble you. I shall not let it. Go sleep. Forget, my lord, forget. Forget what I have said.”
And Essex did.
#
Henry Wotton found me with my ear pressed to the door, catching the faint words of Egerton’s conversation. His voice startled me.
“Ah! H-Hello, Henry.”
He had a steaming mug of cordial in his hands.
“God save you,” I added.
“And you, Donne. John. I thought you left.”
I breathed nonchalantly, but inside was frantic. How had I not heard him approaching? I hadn’t thought he could move that quietly. Had he seen me listening?
I made up something about feeling woozy and leaned against the door.
“Oh,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll leave this here for Essex, then. How about you come with me —Jack.” He took me by the arm, steering me down the hall. “That color can’t be a good sign. Perhaps we should sit down, get blood to your head, make you feel like yourself.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were seated in a drawing-room and Wotton had the servants bring scones. “Thank you, Schroeder. That’ll be all. Here you are, Jack.”
“Thanks….” I took a bite, resisting the urge to fidget like a nervous idiot.
“Quite good isn’t it?” He took a flask of sack from his belt and drank.
“Yes. It is.”
“Even better, so I’m told, when you waft the smell, and then drink, like so.”
“I never thought you one for drink, Henry.”
“We all have our secret preoccupations,” he said, wafting and drinking. My stomach knotted.
“You drink as a secret preoccupation?”
“I’m becoming a terrible hedonist, you know. What of you? Do you take to wine, Jack? Or are women still your foible?”
“Not anymore.”
“How long has it been, since you’ve…well.”
“Since before the Azores voyage, actually.”
“You? Who would have thought.” He laughed. “What about that beautiful redhead you introduced me to outside of Star Chamber? Miss Ann More.”
“I don’t know.”
Wotton raised his glass. “To love, then.”
I shrugged, wondering why he was acting so amiable suddenly.
“You’re not faint?” he asked.
“No, Henry, I am much better.”
“What a pity, you were fainting on the Lord Keeper’s door. Wouldn’t it have been embarrassing if he’d found you there? It would have looked like you were eavesdropping.”
“I’d never do that.”
“Yes, you’re the sublimest secretary a lord could ever want, I’d say.”
“Nothing to you, of course.”
“Of course,” he laughed. “Yes, but you’re remarkable in the fact that you were a poet, and….unorthodox to boot. But see you now. I think I ought to toast to Egerton.”
He drank.
“Well,” I said, “thank you, Henry. I think I’ll go. I’ve lots to do.”
“Where to?”
“My office.”
“Not Egerton’s? That’s where I found you.” Then he shook his head and looked at me. “You still look pale. Perhaps sit a while more?”
“Oh, no, thank you.”
“I’m glad you’re my friend, John. I shall need one, now that I’ll be dealing with all of Essex’s woes here.”
“Do not worry. I’m sure Egerton will be good to you and him.”
“What do you think he and my lord were talking about?”
“Why?”
“Maybe you heard something they said.”
“No.”
“Ah. I worry for my lord. He says rash things.”
“Everything will come round.” I left him, and only when I sat down at my desk, chewing on my pen, did I try to recall how much Wotton had seen in the hall. Not a lot, surely. And even if he’d seen a little, it couldn’t amount to much. Could it?
For as long as he was here, I decided, I’d have to watch myself around Henry Wotton.
#
Lady Egerton had been sick so much, but no one expected her to die. She was a witch – a sorceress – couldn’t she have saved herself, like she had saved Ann from her fever? Or mended my shoulder? The servants said it was smallpox. I hadn’t seen her. No one had seen her. She had locked herself in her rooms, admitting no one but her husband, not even Ann.
And Egerton grieved; his state after her death was the same as hers before it – like a sickened animal, he pulled himself away, set to bear the pangs of it alone.
Did he love her? I would think. But love is Heaven’s. How can demons —
And I would tear apart my mind with guilt.
It was the first time I saw Ann cry. She came to my room and I talked a smile back on her face while the London thunder beat outside.
Mary, Cassie, and Vere would come into my office during the day and crawl between the cabinets, drawing with my pens on the back of scrapped legislation. Sometime’s they’d stay for hours, just sitting, silent.
One day they were more somber than usual; Cassie had lost her doll somewhere.
“Want a story?” I offered.
“As long as nobody dies in it,” said Mary, hugging herself.
“Why?” said Vere. “Everybody dies, don’t be a baby.”
“Hush, now,” I said.
But Vere kept at it. “Where d’you think Dad went? And Grandmum?” And she began to cry into her skirts. Mary, who’d been hissed at like that, buried her head in her sleeve and shook and whimpered. Cassie followed her sisters.
I stopped my writing and sat down on the ground with them. “Ssh! Who’s put these thoughts in your head?”
“No one,” snapped Vere.
“Mommy,” sniffled Cassie. “Mommy won’t play with us anymore, she just cries and cries. And screams. About Daddy.”
And then I was smothered in the hugs of three bawling demon children.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said gently. “Deep breaths. Do you want to hear what I think? I think it’s not an end. Everybody dies, just like everybody’s born. And when you were little in your mother’s belly, didn’t you think it would be scary coming out?”
“I don’t know.”
“I bet you did. But here you are. Everybody dies.”
“Only you,” Mary mumbled. “Not us.”
“Mommy says Daddy wasn’t supposed to die. Only because he got shot, Mr. Donne. Your kind shot him.”
It seemed wrong to draw out these secrets from the children, but I ignored the ache inside me, and the tears, and the little hands entreating me. “My kind? What does that mean?”
“Mommy says —”
“You get to choose —”
“Not to go to hell!”
And then they hugged me, as if I was leaving and they’d never see me again. As if there was some part of me that might rub off on them if only they held me dearly enough.
“Ssh,” I said.
I heard her before I saw her, but soon Liza came to the doorway of my office. I could feel her jet-black eyes on my back, as if she’d bore two little holes in me. Almost afraid to look her way, I turned, detaching Cassie’s arms from my neck. Liza smiled and waved to her daughters. “Come now. Don’t bother him.”
“They’re not bothering me.”
“You have endless patience. But you have work, no?”
“It’s not trouble. Am I to let them cry?”
“Lady Egerton used to watch them, and teach them to sew, and take them for cakes. But now she’s dead! I don’t know what to do now. What would Tom say?” With that, she started to gather up her children, hugging them to her. She smiled to herself. “Would it be good to let him go? I can’t. But – but – it has been hard. And you have been so kind to us. The girls have been coming to your office for days. The least I can do is offer you conversation.”
Liza was already in a bad way. Perhaps for her sake I accepted. Or maybe to show the girls that I was there for them. Liza led me up the hall with the green curtains and the sable peacocks on the ceiling. She took my hand and made me run it down the silk hangings and under the curtain, till it came to one of the doors behind. I tried to seem surprised.
“These are special doors,” she told me, “from the Himalayas, from the high mountains. Aren’t they, Mary?”
“They only open —”
“When you hum the song —”
“Mommy asked me.”
“Can I hum it?”
“We can all hum it,” said Liza cheerily, leaning back her head and tossing her disheveled hair. A few notes, haunting and sad, wove into the air before the girls chimed in, their mood brightening. While I listened, trying to memorize the tune, I heard the small clicks of gears, barely audible to mundane ears, but in mine, placeable and clanging. Liza opened the door, and waved me in. For nervousness, my feet did not move. Something cold crawled across the back of my neck and down my spine.
She took me by the wrist. “This way.”
I could swear I saw the peacock’s eyes watching me —
Within was a room with scenic tapestries upon the walls – dark mountains of purple thread, skies of black silk, highland rivers of cloth-of-gold. As Liza lit the candles, the girls skipped off like little white-clad ghosts through the other doors, or behind the purple velvet chaises, playing hide-and-seek. The chamber was not large, but seemed so, with the mirrors on the walls amidst the tapestries. The ceiling was a mirror, probably wrought by magic – long, smooth, unbroken. I looked about, into reflection after reflection, and saw nothing of Liza – only me, alone.
“I’ve never been in here before.”
“It’s my favorite room,” said Liza, a flask of wine in her hands. “Tom loved it.”
I looked at the tables, for an excuse to turn my back. I could feel her eyes on me, and my pulse began to quicken in my throat. Nervously I ran my hands down the Oriental boxes and the silver tapers.
“Will you come sit, John? I don’t want to drink alone.”
Keeping my eyes down, I took a glass from her and sat. Opposite my chaise, she sat facing me on another, with a low table between us, on which she set the wine. “It’s from my father’s vines, in Scotland.”
“Will you drink?” I said.
She held her glass to her lips, but I couldn’t tell if she had tasted. Vampires couldn’t drink. They couldn’t eat. Nothing save….
There was a flash of disquiet in her eyes. “Please, John. It is such grand wine. I don’t offer it to many people. You wouldn’t be so cold.”
“Of course not.” As I lifted my glass, the fragrant smell of the wine swelled up into my nose. It was not a wine-scent, not really. It smelled like cinnamon, and jasmine and it was strong and sweet. I pulled away a little. Now the smell of flowers and apples. I was smiling. “It’s delightful.”
“Won’t you drink it, John?” she laughed.
I didn’t think it was poisoned. What motive would she have? I touched the wine to my lips but did not let it pass them. As Liza talked about her father’s Scottish vineyards I waited for anything: an itching, or a burning, or a tingling from something toxic. But there were no sensations that meant poison.
Liza couldn’t drink, but it certainly was kind of her to hold the chalice in her cupped hands, leaning forward a little.
“Oh, it is incredible!”
“So I’m told.”
I swished it around in my glass and took another sip.
The wine was unlike anything. It hardly tasted like wine, come to think, but like pomegranate, or cider. There was warmth in it, but as it went down my throat it was cool – light and clear as riverwater.
Suddenly the glass was half-empty. Had I drank it?
I set in on the table and looked at it instead of Liza’s eyes. She was talking about Scotland again, jolly times at Loch Lomond. As she went into it, fleetingly I wondered just how many Scotsman had been found dead, sucked of blood, over the course of her holiday. But I shook the thought away, because it set my heart so cold and frantic.
“Have you ever been to Scotland, Mr. Secretary? Have you ever seen the heather fields?”
“Oh, yes. The ones you can lay down in and watch the clouds and stay there forever.”
“Forever,” she laughed.
“Or a good part of it,” I said.
She raised her glass. “To the land of the thistle bright as dawn, and the valleys deep as thunder, and the waves that lash the wild Hebrides.”
Clink. I had picked up my glass and dared another drink. If anything, the wine was even better than before, as I thought of the land. I could see the vines curving lushly up a hill, watched by the small grey castle of Liza’s father, while the gulls from the Atlantic flew above. I imagined the smell of heather and salt air. Perhaps it was as warm as the Azores. That would be something.
Liza refilled my glass after I had downed it grandly. “You have such love for Scotland?”
“I could. Especially if James’ll be King.”
“It’s a shame Elizabeth must die,” she sighed. “A shame anyone must die.”
“I know. But it has to be.”
“Something so horrible.”
“Maybe it seems horrible,” I said, “to us, because we do not know. Maybe it’s like swinging on the rope to land into the pond. After it’s done, it’s not as frightening.”
“Into a pond, perhaps,” she said, and paused uncomfortably. “What if you landed in a pit of fire instead. Even you, John. What if some little thing you’ve done is enough to ruin you?”
Her voice went slowly through me, stirring a fear I’d never really felt before.
She took my hands. “Or what if it’s nothing? And all your thoughts and memories and little feelings just die too? That is worse than hell! Where’s Tom…. How can you not fear death?”
“The way you say it,” I said, “I have begun to.”
Her eyes were so deep and smooth and black.
I threw my gaze down and had some more wine, hoping it would bring me a little ease. The luscious taste was more than enough, and took my mind away. Gently, I felt the edges of the cup with my lips. Do not think of death. Do not think of not thinking of death. It is apples, cherries, spices, and that taste beneath. What is that taste on the edges of my mouth, dark and sweet?
“What does your father put in this wine?”
She shrugged her beautiful shoulders. “Not much.”
“It hardly tastes like wine at all.”
She handed me the flask and I looked it over. There was nothing that made it different from any other wine, but holding it up to the candles I smiled at the amber glow it took on. Then I noticed my glass was almost empty. I filled it again.
Cassie scampered in from another room. “Where’s my doll, Mommy?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Donne and I are talking.”
“I hope you find her,” I said, turning. Cassie’s eyes fell on my glass.
She turned and ran.
#
My lids were shutting, drooping limply over my eyes. I wasn’t tired, but the candlelight was seeming brighter and brighter and my half-closed eyes made things more tolerable.
Liza was talking about death again, and though the separate words sped by so quickly I felt the fear of them in me. I wanted to listen more attentively. I felt like a poor guest.
Was I drunk? I didn’t think so. My thoughts were soft and quiet, but not blurry. Look! My hands listened quite well to my commands. I was tired and sleepy, but not sluggish and not tipsy. I could only compare it to the whiff of opium I’d scented from Tom, or laying down to nap in the sun, some magnified tranquility. A warmth had blossomed at the tips of my fingers.
“Here.” She filled my cup.
Soon the lovely taste was on my tongue again, though I couldn’t recall reaching for the glass.
I set it down. Don’t pick it up. It’s not normal. It’s not natural.
I wrapped my arms around myself and shut my eyes, but the languid smile would not leave my face. Part of me wanted to stop smiling and bid Liza good-night, because I was afraid. And I still had papers to scribe, documents to send to Egerton, and…and….
Damn the bills, said another part of me, laughing.
“Is something wrong, John?” she said, putting her hand on mine.
Something pounded in my chest like a blow within had smote my ribs. Like a heartbeat outside my heart. No, not my heart: I could feel my heart, and how frail it was to this. My heart quivered so weakly and so soft, like a little dying bird that flailed its wings – this was new and strong and made me tremble. Strange! It was so strange, and I tried to want to make it go away. But did I? Something beat against my feeble heart. It hurt a little.
A rush of heat erupted on my skin, as if I had a fever, or was running. When I stood abruptly, I felt the lightheadedness advance itself upon me. There was a blurriness of sight, and I blinked and blinked and blinked —
“I want to go.”
She came to me. “You mustn’t.”
My fingers found the cross around my neck. I held it out, swaying.
Her face was blurry, but I think her red lips parted before she smiled. The smile was kind, and a voice in my head said, Put down that trinket. Liza? Threat? Think of her benevolence?
She put her hands on my shoulders as she moved behind me. Gently, they went to the clasp that held the pendant to my neck. Her soft voice began to sing to me, and she whispered the song she had hummed at the door, as if she knew how it would make my mind the calmer.

True Thomas lay on Huntly bank,
A ferlie he spied with his eye,
And there he saw a ladye bright
Come riding down by the Eildon tree.

My hands began to rise to stop her, but then I wondered if it would upset her. I did not want to risk her displeasure – I would rather have her smile, because it seemed wrong to make her sad. And it seemed like a terrible effort, to fight her hands.
The clasp clicked. The cross fell to the carpet.
Her voice was musical, like gurgling water. “You know about me?”
“Yes,” I said. In a dim part of me, I knew what was happening. But it was hard to concentrate, and if I thought about it, I would be afraid. I would have to go against Liza and the pounding in my chest.
Her hands went to my collar, unlacing it. I felt my neck. Eyes closed, I thought of where it was the softest, where the vein was.
From deep inside me came my instinct. It’d been rather slow to surface, but now it did. It said, this is wrong. Get out. Get out. Get out.
“The wine!” I murmured. “Something in the wine.”
Her hand took mine, and made me feel a little cut on her palm. “The Gypsies say that if you drink Our blood, you come with Us. As good as true, John. You’re not. Not yet. But you want to. That is what it makes you do. Want it.”
I shuddered. I had drank her – her —
“Five drops, John, that was all,” she said soothingly. “Won’t you look me in the eyes?”
“No….”
She leaned her head on my shoulder and I could picture her smiling. “Can I show you something?” I let her guide me to a mirror, moving like a sleepwalker. I stared back at myself – only myself (Liza had no reflection, after all).
How pale I was. That was the first thing I noticed. I was thin, too, like I had been fasting, and on my face a sharpness, a keenness that was as fair as it was unnatural. But it wasn’t just my skin, it was my face itself. My nose was small and perfect, and my lips were full and my hair deep black and shining. Two delicate points twinkled in my teeth as I smiled. My eyes were big and dark, like pools of ink in the shade of long, black lashes.

But ye maun go wi’ me now, Thomas,
True Thomas, ye maun go wi’ me,
For ye maun serve me many years,
Thro weel or woe, as chance may be.

She turned about her milk-white steed,
And took True Thomas up behind,
And aye whene’re her bridle rang,
The steed flew swifter than the wind.

“My Thomas is gone,” she whispered. “Is it to fire or water? Is it to air or darkness? Or is it nothing? Do the worms eat my Tom like they do his body? And now the girls have no one but us fools who belong in Bedlam…. It is one to lose a husband, but to lose a father…. They cry and cry at night. Please, John. When I saw you, and how they loved you, this Urge inside me made me mad. Lady Egerton gave me a potion to avert it. But she’s gone. Dead. Like Tom. But I’m saving you.”
“My brother died,” I said.
“You won’t. You will stay with me, and be so beautiful, and never have to.”
I think the wine and the spell of her blood had swallowed me, and I thought not like myself. As much as I tried, I couldn’t pry my eyes from the thing in the mirror. It could not be done. There was I, perfect, and I was overcome with such a miserable longing.
It was there, held out before me. I wanted to reach out, wanted to touch my reflection, stroke it until its body became mine. I felt like Adam in the Garden. O, but Adam had been in his right mind—
“Ann doesn’t love you.”
“What?” I murmured.
“Tom told me about that. John. You were too mundane for her, and she would never see you for anything more. They will all wish they had.”
I thought of the masquerade ball, of the look on Ann’s face as she danced with the Transylvanian Adonis. It was enough to make me wretched: the envy and pain and fear of death and hate of self and weakness – just – weakness.
The spell. The spell had made me want it.
My voice was mumbly and far away. “Look me in the eyes.”
“John!” she exclaimed, hugging me.
Her eyes were all I saw now, and how good it was. To think that for months I had avoided them. It seemed illogical now. They were the most beautiful things. On the surface, I could see my own rapt face reflected, like on water. Small globes of candlelight like fireflies. And beyond was such a darkness I could not describe, but something more than luminous and more that shadow. Deep, deep, deep.
I could not look away. I would not look away.
My head was effervescent, and my mind felt warm and soft, and I was weak and wasn’t whole, but I didn’t care.
“Vere!” she called. “Vere!”
The little girl came, looking afraid. “Mommy….”
“Can you bring rosewater?”
She sobbed. “If you want, Mommy —”
She left, and then Liza pulled me closer and we were kissing, laughing, and the pounding in my chest was mounting, and my thoughts as far away as America, or the moon.
I lay down on a chaise, my body feeling liquid, and so heavy. I tasted the wine again. I heard the haunting, mystic song:

For forty days and forty nights
He wade through red blude to the knee
And he saw neither sun not moone,
But heard the roaring of the sea.

“Forty days and forty nights,” I heard myself sing. “Forty, forty, forty.”
“Not so long for you,” said Liza. “A few days of sleep. A sleep.”
I reached out for her beautiful white face and the ashen cheeks without any warmth. I felt for the heartbeat I knew she would not have.
Vere’s voice returned. “Mommy – I brought you rosewater, Mommy.”
“Such a good girl.”
I heard the child weeping.
“Why are you sad? Don’t you want a father again? Mr. Donne will be like us now, and he’ll play games with you and bring flowers for me, and he’ll never go away to Ireland and never leave us.”
“But I don’t want him. I want Daddy….”
Liza put her fingers in the fragrant water and washed my neck.
“Where’s Cassie’s doll?” Vere sniffled. “We can’t find it.”
“Go look again, hmm?”
Vere’s footsteps receded into the other chambers. Liza’s lips pressed to my neck. For a moment’s fervent ecstasy I thought the moment had come at last, but she just kissed me and finished the song.

‘And see ye not yon braid braid road,
That lies across yon lilly leven?
That is the path to wickedness,
The some call it the road to heaven.

‘And see ye not that bonny road
Which winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where you and I this night maun gae.

‘But Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue,
Whate’er you may hear or see,
For like or not or word or nune,
You will ne’er go back to your own countrie.’

He has gotten a coat of the elven cloth
And a pair of shoes of velvet green,
And since he woke made one of them,
True Thomas on earth was never seen.

“Am I Thomas?” I murmured.
Before Liza could answer, there was a knock on the chamber door. “Liza? My lady? It is me. I found Cassie’s doll in my room. She was sewing with me this morning.”
Liza simply rested her cheek on my neck, making no reply.
“I heard you singing, my lady. I could leave it here.”
“Who is it?” I mumbled to Liza.
“John!” cried the voice outside the door. The knob rattled.
“Go away,” whispered Liza.
“Answer me, John!” Whoever it was, she was making a horrible fuss.
“Please leave,” said Liza after awhile.
“What are you doing?” came a shout.
“But ye maun go with me now, Thomas,” said Liza, and I felt two hard points against my neck.

Ann threw her weight against the door, and it rattled her bones and didn’t budge. Sundrille tried as well, to even less avail.
“I go, I go, I go,” sang John’s languid voice.
She tried her magic on the lock, but nothing happened. She tried it on the hinges, and nothing happened. In her head, she could see John washed in that jet-black hair, blood already coming from his pale, pale neck.
And she hated it.
It filled her with a wrath like fire and a pain like scourging. One last time she gathered her strength and lunged at the door, ramming it with her body and her magic, not caring what poor Sundrille thought as he saw her like this. Probably that she was mad.
In any case, the door blew open.
Liza was knelt by John, lain prone on a chaise, and not taking her lips from his neck, chimed, “Good morrow, Ann. What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” said Ann.
“What ought to be done.”
Ann tossed her Cassie’s doll.
“Thank you, Ann,” Liza smiled.
“Has Egerton permitted it?” Ann’s voice was high and sharp. Calm down, she thought.
“He would. He calls John his son. It would please him to have poor John make the crossing sooner, rather than later.”
“John!”
“…Ann….”
Liza flashed her fangs and put them towards his throat.
“Stop it!” said Ann, shoving Liza and putting herself between them.
The girls’ voices came from the inner chambers, fearful. “Mommy? Mary says you….you….mommy….”
“Lady Egerton is dead,” said Ann, “but she tried to help you. This is not what she wanted.”
“You need no excuses,” said Liza. “Get away from him.”
“Lord Egerton has not permitted you – I would not transgress —”
“Sweeting, I know you better. You think him yours.”
“Mommy —”
“Get away!”
Sundrille came up behind and hit the vampire with a gilded box. Liza’s head turned with the blow and she stumbled.
Ann shook John frantically, and he opened bleary eyes – too far gone to understand anything. She tried to pull him off the chaise. “Come on. Come on. We’re going.”
“Why?” he mumbled. “Why must we go?”
She dragged him and he tumbled to the floor, groaning.
“Liza….Liza? I am frightened, Liza —”
Ann got her arms under his and, gritting her teeth, pulled his upper half up, and tried to pull him. He budged, and budged only. His arms hung limply, and his head leaned weakly on her shoulder. Soon he began to shake. “Please, Liza. Please. I want to….”
“He wants to,” pleaded Liza as she hastened up. “Do you hate him so?”
“Lord Egerton has not permitted it!” cried Ann. “I will not risk his anger!”
Liza struck her across the face.
Surprised, Ann noticed she did not feel it, though her head snapped back and she stumbled. Her eyes found something shining on the floor and she reached for it. She held out John’s crucifix, and Liza froze. Ann glared, and, mustering her strength, heaved John Donne to his feet. “Come on.”
“No!” wept John. “Liza….”
Vere, Mary, and Cassie were in a doorway, huddling together. “Mommy —”
Sundrille was still holding the box, which was streaked with blood from Liza’s forehead. The vampire swayed and wept.
“Why are you sad?” cried John.
Ann pulled him toward the door.
“I don’t want to go, Ann!”
And he whispered it as she led him stumbling out of the room, shivering away from the eyes of the others, staggering into the green-curtain hall. He walked like he was wounded and asleep, torn between wrenching her off and clinging to her because he didn’t know what else to do. Leaning on her, he had his head on her right shoulder, though he would pitch forward weakly and Sundrille would support him. Poor Sundrille was shaking too, and darting glances behind them.
After a while John’s trudging stopped and he fell heavily back, shuddering. By putting her elbows under his arms Ann was able to haul him up onto a bench in the legal hall. His face was pale and beads of sweat crystalled his neck and forehead. He felt his throat and his tears fell. “Please….”
“We can’t go back, John.”
“Please!” he pleaded again. “Please! I shall be mad if I do not!”
“You’re not well.”
“I don’t want to die….”
Somehow they got him back to his room, and by then his state was miserable. He talked no longer, only sobbed and moaned in spellbound anguish, or else would sing that horrible song, his voice as entranced as a child’s.
“In his pocket, Sundrille, is the key there?”
The sylph shook his head worriedly.
“Ssh. Don’t worry. Go check his office. I will stay with him.”
He nodded, touched her arm reassuringly, and sped off. Ann brought John to another bench and sat down beside him. As she waited, sometimes a servant or a lawyer would go by and edge around him warily. “Sack,” Ann assured them. “He drank too much sack.”
Sundrille came back with the key and they dragged John inside and they dropped him on the bed and they held his straining, sobbing body down until he was spent and just lay there –sleeping. Ann pulled the covers over him and stoked the hearth and checked to see if the door was locked a few times.
She expected Liza to burst in. Or Egerton. The whole House probably knew something was afoot, given the racket Ann had caused, and John’s moaning. What had she been thinking? Had she been thinking at all? I don’t know, she told herself. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why.
But she did.
Liza. Kissing his neck.
John, skin like porcelain, eyes like jet, and the wrongness of it.
I don’t want to go, Ann.
And she had cared.
What would Papa say?
#
I dreamed for a while, and thank God I didn’t remember much. I didn’t know if I was dead or alive, or if Liza had bitten me and I was turning into something in-between. If I was – what luck. I wanted to be changed. I wanted to be someone else. I waited, and waited with such sickly longing for a sign.
But nothing came. The wraith was going, and leaving me – with myself. I was looking in that mirror from before, but instead of the beautiful shadow in the glass or the happiness or the strangeness was a too-familiar reflection. John Donne, as I was.
Who was so stupid he had let himself take vampire wine.
Who worked for the Order and couldn’t stand blood. Who’d turned to women after Henry died. Whose words killed Henry. Who was so miserable that only a demon wanted him as a son. Who was so lonely he had let himself fall in love with Ann More. Who knew that maybe God had taken Henry and Ben and Tom to make him feel guilt. If I could have written while I slept, what poems I would have wrote – what poems of knowing death and hating yourself and trying to run so your own thoughts can’t reach you.
Sometime I woke up, to the sound of a bell tolling. Maybe I ought to have been glad I was waking up at all, or fearful of what I could have become. But there was none of that inside me, just a deadness and exhaustion.
It was my own bed, I thought, I could feel the nice sheets and the familiar pillow without opening my eyes. Maybe it had all been a dream, and everything would be fine.
Then my hopefulness took over, seizing me, sending me flying. Maybe it had been a dream, maybe it was still a dream – if I pinched myself hard enough I would wake up at Lincoln’s and have imagined all this Egerton codwash and Ben would still be there and Henry too. Or maybe all my life had been a dream, and I was still curled warmly in the womb; and when I came out they’d take away original sin and I’d know what it was like to be innocent again.
Ann’s voice was speaking to me calmly. “John? Can you hear me, John?”
I opened my mouth to tell her to go away but all that came out was a sob, and I was crying, just like that. Wiping my eyes made it worse.
She touched my shoulder. “Ssh. Ssh.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I snapped. “Don’t you bloody lie to me!”
Because that was all we were.
Lies.
And she’s looking at me with those purple Otherlight eyes like I’m dying and she can’t save me, and it made me love her and hate her but mostly love her.
“Did I get drunk? I was in my office….” I said. Because it was safer if she thought I didn’t remember.
Lies.
“You were at a party with Shakespeare,” said Ann.
Lies.
“I was?”
She thought, and said, “No. Liza put something in your drink and tried to take advantage of you.”
“Where is she?”
“She left, John.”
She left, and she had taken her dark eyes that made me lose myself, taken that one chance of giving myself over and never going back. Now would I never know it again, that emptiness inside my head and that happy nothingness. I didn’t know what to feel. Glad, I supposed. I was safe. I was myself.
I was myself.
And I hated it.
“She took the girls,” Ann went on, “she took the girls and went to Scotland. She couldn’t stand what was in herself anymore.”
“She’s not the only one,” I muttered sitting up.
“John.” She was sitting on a chair beside my bed, hands folded on her lap. Sundrille was seated by my desk, not looking at us.
And I was wiping my damn eyes and feeling so dead inside I could swear my body was stiffening, too. “So you’ve saved me – I guess. And I know you’d do it again if you had to but the fact is you can’t love me, my lady, because I’m Egerton’s secretary and they’d kill us both. Or we’d live and you’d love me for a while, before your eyes get clearer and you realize you’ve fallen for a poor, helpless bastard who can’t save his friends from dying or get away from his own mistakes. I appreciate and love you, please, but I don’t want you with me.”
“John, you cannot think this way.”
“Get out. Get out of here.” I curled back on the pillows and turned so that my back faced her, and drew my knees up to my chest, wanting to be small because suddenly Liza was there stroking my hair and whispering her words and I knew it was all starting again.
Two kinds of people in this world. The living, and the dead; the dead like me.
“Go?” said Ann, not at all gently. “Leave you like this? No. I will stay.”
“Why?” I demanded, starting to shiver.
She pulled the blankets over me. “You’ve got every right to be mad at the world,” she said, “about how they treat you and your family, and about how corrupt the Court is, and about how people around you die. The city smells. We’ve got to keep our love a secret. Liza just tried to do something horrible to you. Those beautiful, beautiful things you write get ignored sometimes. Your nose is big. You never had a father. So you could be mad at everything, I think, but you aren’t. You take all the anger and your turn it on yourself.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’ve seen you when you’re not upset, and when you laugh and smile. Like at Loseley and at the Curtain, and I can tell you how you felt. All those things in your head like death and your past go away.”
“They never go away.”
“You felt innocent again.”
I shut my mouth, and buried my face in the pillow, knowing why she was persistent: because I’d so well kept the secret. And if she’d known where I went off to after nightfall, she would hate me. But I was getting wretched sick of lies and walls and veils. I could tell her, just to release all this guilt.
But Henry. If I told Ann, I would never right his death, and Egerton would win. It was my purpose, wasn’t it? I needed to do what I had come here to do.
And I needed Ann. I needed them both.
I turned around and stared at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, Ann.”
It was the first time I’d called her Ann.
If Northwell knew —
I let it pass.
“I forgive you, John,” she said.
There was a moment when everything was warm and the world, so still before, started to turn faster and faster like it was waking up or something. Maybe. My heart could think, as my mind did, and my mind could sense every throb of itself, felt all the emotions that my heart could. And on it stretched and I was lost – I let myself be found – and there I was.
#
As he entered the office, the man in the plague mask moved haltingly, as if he tread on a mine-field. Egerton did not move. He sat on his huge desk with his long, grey hands rested on his temples. “What have you MacGregor?”
“I am sorry about your wife, my lord.”
MacGregor was nothing if not direct.
The Lord Keeper considered him with vacant eyes. “Why?”
“Shall I extend no courtesy to my lord?”
“Courtesy, but no sympathy. If you show sympathy, I will have you killed.” He paused. “Her death was unnatural, and I trust you will investigate. If her swellings and her fever were such that her own arts could not mend, I come to suspect..”
“Suspect whom?”
“Everyone.”
MacGregor nodded. Trying not to look at how his master’s hands were shifting, he answered: “Of course. I’ll have my best men begin.”
“The best.”
“They’ll attend.”
“She was my wife.”
“I know, my lord.”
“My daughter-in-law has left, did you know?”
“I did. And I come bearing discomforting news I’ve heard about your protégé.”
“My whom?”
“John Donne. As things appear, he overindulged in sack and was passed out for a while in the hall. As your lordship made known to me when he was hired, I shall have to kill him for his conduct. Or lack of it.” He showed the Lord Keeper a knife that had sprung from the sleeve to his hand, a narrow, silent blade engraved with Persian characters.
“They are rumors only,” said Egerton. “My kind niece Ann devised them to disguise the real circumstances for his behavior.”
The eyes beneath the mask glintered suspiciously.
“My Liza tried to do something I would not have permitted.”
“Does he know about Otherkind, then?”
“No. Ann says he recalls nothing of the event.”
Slowly, the knife retreated into the shadows of the sleeve, but stopped abruptly when there came a knocking at the door, and a bright, quivering voice said, “My lord!”
For a long time Egerton stared ahead contemplatively, as if in very deep meditation over whether to admit the new arrival. His lips tightened, and when he flicked his hand stiffly, the door came open.
“Hel-lo,” said the grey-haired man. He strolled past the spymaster and put both hands on the desk, seemingly oblivious to the long and very sharp knife gleaming about an inch away from him. “I have just heard a particularly scrumptious bit of gossip regarding the secretary, John Donne – My condolences about your wife, my lord. – I think we should take him to the Tower now, though I’m so incredibly sorry it’s come to this. – May the Lord God rest her soul. – How might he have been drunk? He goes to the Mermaid, you know, with Shakespeare and Jonson, friends of Christopher Marlowe. I’m sure we all remember Marlowe was an Order man before dear MacGregor did him in. Best not let the past repeat itself – There are scarce women who could replace her, your poor wife.”
Without emotion, Egerton related what he had just disclosed to the man in the mask. As he heard, Topcliffe let his smile fall, and supreme unhappiness overtook his face. He commented only with the occasional: “Oh.”
Egerton passed his spymaster several keys and bid him go. MacGregor left.
He looked at Topcliffe, who followed, tail between his legs.

Whilst Essex was held under guard at York House – which Egerton hadn’t minded until his wife died – the Earl was seldom seen, except for when he would walk in the gardens in the soot-grey air, his clothes worn-down and the whole of his former glory seeping into the January sky like it was born out on his foggy breath. He got sick often, and when Wotton wasn’t bringing him cordial at midnight to the chamber-pot (Essex’s bowels were grievously troubled), he was busy with all the Earl’s affairs on paper, or talking with me.
“Are you quite all right, friend Jack?” he said one Sunday over lunch.
“Fine.”
“Normally, you are pale and melancholic, but you’ve been sanguine for days. Bright-eyed. Rosy. Only love has such effect on you.” He was quiet. “Ann More?”
I nodded.
“You know,” he said, in a tone reserved for stupid people, “any lasting relationship would be socially and economically impossible. Does she even love you? She had no problem telling everyone you had hit the sack deplorably a week ago. And oftentimes she gives you cold glances. Yes, I, too would like to kiss the fair learned hand of Ann More, but I can recognize that it is hopeless.” He thought for a moment. “She does have a chastity to protect, you know. And being seen with Jack Donne is enough to start rumors around her.”
I shut my eyes and sighed.
I had gone to many plays with her that winter. I suggested them, but she wouldn’t go to great lengths to protest. And when the actors came forth she would press against me and from that point on her eyes would be riveted to the stage and would shine with as many emotions as a fire that flickers red, then gold, then blue. And as we took the ferry home, she would say, “It was acceptable,” and then stay up with me all night, talking about what she thought the words meant.
And the winter would seem almost warm.
Once I thought I saw Ben at the play – like I thought I’d seen him on the streets – but then Ann squeezed my hand and Enter Mercutio and I drove the shadows from my mind.
I stopped asking Northwell if I could leave York House.
Alas, alas, who’s injur’d by my love?
#
Then the time came round when I was preparing once again for the New Year’s masquerade: food, entertainment, and company to rival last year’s. I tried to get Dr. Lenz Erlichmann on the list, but Egerton wouldn’t hear of it. He would not hear of anything that might provoke disruption, or offend anyone, or reflect in a way that did not suit him. My lord had taken a strange new tendency to obsess with details. He made me let no bit of anything come to pass without approval. Wines. Jesters. Fireworks.
It did not stop with the party, either. The book of my poems and Shakespeare’s Amours by J.D. with Certain Other Sonnets by W.S., had no sooner been deemed ready for the press than he demanded a copy to approve. If any Whitehall lady looked my way, Egerton made sure whatever suit her husband had was ground to pieces. I think it was because of what Liza had tried to do. I was his son now, after all.
Often I overheard conversations in the halls; people hoped that maybe the masked ball would put the Lord Keep in better spirits, and he would meet a woman to remarry with.
I saw a lot of Ann because after Lady Egerton’s death she was in charge of much of the receiving of guests. She told me she had heard the talking, too. I could tell in her eyes that she missed her aunt. And it was hard to imagine, Egerton with another wife.
“It needs a theme,” she said while we were going over invitations for the New Year’s masquerade in my office.
“How about Camelot? That’s fanciful.”
She said, “Egerton would never approve, considering the prominence of Lancelot and Guinevere and incest and violence and how that may influence conduct.”
“I suppose. How about A Country Pastoral?”
“Most of the Court don’t even know what country-folk look like.”
“Fair enough…but what of A Night of Classic Myths?”
“Jupiter and Europa and Oedipus? Togas? I don’t think so.”
“A Night of Norse Myths!”
“Norse myths are even worse than the Greek ones.”
“But imagine the Viking helmets and the mead. We could call it Jack and Ann’s Epic Norse Extravaganza! And oh my God I’ll jump out of a cake!”
“How about Camelot, then.”
#
Against all odds the Camelot theme passed Egerton’s scrutiny and was adopted by the masquerade. For the two weeks before New Year’s Eve, York House was overrun with nobles from all corners of civilization and the servants hastily preparing. John Donne had ordered two hundred pounds of halibut for roasting, but they arrived quite early and were kept cold outside in the snowy courtyard, making for a rather grotesque walk through the gardens. A miniature castle was being assembled on the grounds, and various unicorn tapestries were hauled out of storage.
Papa would be there, and her family. Ann was glad, but the only guest that meant much to her was Ivan Bathóry. She had the most beautiful dress, of black with pearls to trim it; she had decided on Morgana, and her mask was trimmed with iridescent blackbird feathers. When the night came at last, she drifted on the edges of the celebration, away from her sisters.
No doubt Vanya would want to make an entrance.
She looked for him in the anteroom, where just a year before the German had been attacked after Lady Egerton had read Ann’s fortune cards. The Queen, the Chalice, the Tower. Ann had an odd way of remembering things. And she especially missed her aunt. If Lady Egerton had been there, she would have surely claimed Morgana and forced Ann to take some other role. Ann felt a twinge of grief, but willed it away.
In the ballroom, Ann had to admire (reluctantly) John Donne, and his imagination. The torches were low and few, illuminating the dancers with a soft gold light enough to see by, but all else was in deep shadow. One couldn’t see the ceiling, only a dark expanse of blackness that seemed to stretch on indefinitely. Fireflies – raised and incubated in a storeroom especially for the occasion, drifted above, blinking.
Out of the ridiculous, costumed multitude came the familiar face, smiling at her.
“Ivan!”
“Ann! Ann!” He ran and hugged her tight until he was lifting her off the ground.
“You came. Was it a good trip?”
“I couldn’t bear it. The road was bumpy and the inns were terrible. I had soup and it burned my lips.”
“Can I kiss you, or will it hurt?”
He pulled off his mask and was very affectionate.
Since Vanya drew people to him, soon they had a large group to talk with. Ann realized how much she had missed the company of such folk – they were her own kind, weren’t they? The eyes of gleaming Otherlight and the sharp, sculpted faces. Vanya had his arm around her. Here they let her talk and didn’t think her stupid because she was a woman. Here she did not need to pretend.
A vampire with white-blonde hair turned his jet eyes to Ivan. “I am Sir Tristam today, you see. Pray, Herr Bathóry, which English gallant are you?”
“Today I am Mordred,” said Ivan.
“A daring choice,” laughed somebody.
Vanya smoothed his halberd. “There is little in life worth doing that does not make one feel daring.”
“I don’t think it is wise to take risks at all,” said Ann. “It becomes habitual.”
“I would rather be a habitual risk-taker than a routine coward,” replied Vanya, grinning his Transylvanian grin. Then he threw back his head and bellowed, “I AM A WEREWOLF!”
Ann found herself laughing out of shock and disbelief and clutched his arm, even as five, ten, thirty seconds passed and no one outside showed any sign of having heard or cared. He said gently, “We are safe. Ssh, Ann. The mortals are like sheeps, they bleat and herd and do not look for danger.”
A woman who might have been part siren brushed her bluish hair away and said, “See that one there, who has just come in? O, look at the poor simpleton.”
Slipping into the ballroom was a man who wore at first glance what looked like a horse costume, but the tail, really, resembled a goat’s. His hose were motley, and his surcoat of false leopard fur. His ruff was green and sparkled, and his mask was like a far-fetched dragon’s face. Ann recognized him and her stomach sank.
Vanya turned to him and called, “You! Yes, in the – the thing.”
The other edged over, bowed.
Ivan put out his hand. “Ivan Bathóry, nobil, vârcolac.”
He shook slowly. “I am the Lord Egerton’s secretary, John Donne.”
“Ah – and poet. I have heard much about you and your work. It is called Amours by J.D, yes? We need more men like you in Transylvania – the harsh winters have made the blood of our women most cold. Not like the kindness of you, Ann —”
As the others laughed lowly and parted to give John room, Ann tried to appear as if she didn’t know him. Ivan said:
“Come, Mr. Donne. Recite something.”
The siren-woman tugged on his tufted tail.
“Um – all right. This one is called The Primrose, Being at Montgomery Castle, Upon the Hill, on Which It Is Situate.”
They made faces, and protested. “That is no fun – we wish a real poem. Jealousy!”
“Community!”
“Prithee – Love’s Progress!”
“Yes – Love’s Progress —”
“I really don’t believe I can recall that one,” began John.
“I can remember something, don’t fret you,” said the white-haired vampire. “Makes virtue women? Must I cool my blood till I both be, and find one wise and good? May barren angels love so!”
“Ah, that one,” said someone. “Her swelling lips —”
“The Remora, her cleaving tongue —”
“The Sestos and Abydos of her —”
“Truly,” John broke in, “you know the poem so well I doubt I need to recount it.”
Ann threw him a look of pity. Vanya saw this and his demeanor softened. “Very well. I also hear Mr. Donne has turned over – the new leaf, as you English say?”
The siren sighed and relinquished John’s tail. “He blushes guiltily.”
They laughed, but John’s expression was stony. “One ought to be guilty about his sins.”
Vanya nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I know.”
A few of the others regarded John Donne with less amusement and now a ravenousness, eyeing his neck and face and fingers, no doubt the choice parts to a vampire or a wolf. Only Ann knew that John probably had a weapon hidden somewhere under his outlandish costume.
“Why have you called me, lord? Do you wish a word with Egerton? Burgundy wine?”
“We do not drink wine,” they said immediately.
“No,” said the Transylvanian. “Rather – forgive me, I am not very familiar with the English myths – I wanted to ask what element of Camelot you have chosen to portray.”
“Oh! I am the Questing Beast,” said John proudly.
“Aaah,” said Vanya. “Hunted by…knights? Yes? Yes. An odd choice for you, my reformed-pious friend.”
“I…Why is that?”
“I heard the Questuri Fiarei mentioned as an icon of violence and lust.”
The observant faces turned to John. And suddenly Ann imagined him shrinking away when Ivan bested him, and the faces laughing, and she – it startled her – did not want it to be.
John fingered his tail, and said, “Yes, it was, as portrayed in the Post-Vulgate Cycle and in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur – an excellent book, O, I love it – but then again Malory was a burglar, kidnapper, and repeated rapist as well as an author. However, in the Perlesvous and other medieval epics, the Questing Beast is a symbol for Our Savior.” He crossed himself, and a shudder ran through the group.
“Yes, the Questing Beast– head of a snake, body of a pard, legs of a stag– made a sound from its stomach like thirty hounds baying, coming from its own unborn young as they tear it apart, which symbolizes how His own people condemned Christ to death. In the Perlesvous, they say it’s a little thing like a lap-dog, even though in most accounts it’s gigantic. But imagine a little baby Questing Beast you could cuddle in the palm of your hand. So, yes, the Questing Beast. Or Glatisant. That’s it’s French name. Or —” He waved at himself. “—Yours truly.”
“Very thorough,” applauded Ivan, “but if the sound came from its yet-to-be-born pups, does that not mean it was female?”
There was much laughter.
John frowned. “Then no doubt I should be its other half.”
“You have no woman of your own?”
John’s lips parted and his brow knitted.
Don’t you dare look at me, thought Ann, heart pounding. Don’t you dare look at me.
“No, not now,” he answered. “True love is as hard to catch as – as a Questing Beast. So hard to hold on to. But if I could, O, I’d never let her go, I’d take her hands and tell her to meet me by the fountain or somewhere. If only I could see her before the New Year comes. Or, it’s the turn of the century, isn’t it? Oh, well. Excuse me, my lord. Questing ho!” He melted into the crowd, too smart to even dare a glance in Ann’s direction.
“He was adorable,” said a familiar voice. Ann’s blonde sister had joined them, and winked at her.
“They all are,” said the white-haired German vampire, “in the same way tadpoles are, no?”
“Even the Order is soft,” said someone. “They are tired and ragged.”
“We already rule the nights in Transylvania,” said Ivan.
“And Japan.”
“And Mali.”
“Egerton waits to make his move,” Ann said. “He wishes the country of England might find itself a war after the Queen passes.”
“War, Ann?” said Vanya, hugging her. “Mortals mowing each other down? Oh, yes, it would be safer. It would tire the Order even more. Imagine life again like the days of the Black Death, when one could run the streets, the hunters were so few.”
“My Lord Egerton’s goal surpasses that,” said the white-haired vampire. “He says he wants a world where we no longer have to hide. Where I could go up to the serving-boy and say, ‘I am a thing of Otherlight.’”
There was a scattered laughter of awe.
Vanya also pretended to approach one. “‘Ah, the Questing Beast, Mr. Secretary, with a hide of silk and stitches? Come, I show thee what a real monster is.’”
It was nice, listening to the low murmurs as the dancers whirled beside them, sometimes coming closer to Ivan when she was cold. And she would feel warm, and like herself again, looking past her mask with eyes she knew were keen and beautiful, and equally jeweled eyes were glinting back at her. She had missed this feeling of belonging – that was when a novel thought occurred to her. John. What would have happened, if she had let Liza bite him? Would he be here, one of them, smiling like them? His eyes, lit and cunning and lovely with Otherlight?
She didn’t want to think about it. It made her uneasy.
She wanted to forget John Donne and dance with Ivan.
But she had to meet the secretary, didn’t she? By the fountain, like he had hinted. Maybe she could finally coax it all from him tonight. All of it! Ann I’m a hunter and the Order sent me and this is what we seek with Egerton and this and this and this…. And Ann wouldn’t care what Lord More did to him, as long as she never saw his face again.
“I’m so sleepy, Vanya.”
He laid her head on his chest and kissed her brow. “Only an hour till midnight.”
“I know… I want to go to bed.”
“Take me with you?” he grinned.
She laughed. “We aren’t married yet.”
“Good-night,” he said tenderly. He let her go, though she could tell it pained him.
#
He waited in the budding hedges by the fountain, shivering, his hair shining with frost. Gone was the animal get-up; he was all in black. She wore her hair covered in a dark scarf and had left her costume gown for a plain brown dress. John pulled her down into the bushes.
“What do you want, secretary?” she hissed.
“I wanted to dance with you,” he said sheepishly.
Suddenly she realized how stupid she had been, leaving Vanya who loved her to go take risks in the dark with someone who made her feel so uncertain. John Donne was a hunter, after all. Maybe after seeing her with the werewolf and their company, he had decided he could not love a demon’s daughter, and had called her out to kill her. “Nonsense,” she stammered. “We ought to go back inside.”
He flinched. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I can’t bear it. Can’t bear them.”
“Who?”
He turned and started away.
“John!” Ann came after him, following his dark figure down the garden paths, crashing through the frosty leaves. He saw her and ran, bounding like a deer. Ann pumped her arms, thinking, He is so close to breaking. If I catch him, he will speak. This will all be over. I can!
He tore through the gates and onto the Strand. His boots were silent on the barren streets, as they were trained to be. The few haggard pedestrians they passed didn’t pay them much attention.
Ann could outrun all her sisters. MacGregor had taught her how to run on her toes and breathe. Before Papa had started training her for more important things, she used to race her brother in the woods of Loseley, footraces through the raspberries and along the stream, and was it just her or had she been happy then —
Donne stopped, and she backpedaled to avoid a crash.
He stood baffled for a while.
Ann looked at where they had halted: the street was clear and dark and lonely, distant sounds echoed through the mists. Above them loomed a vast form that breathed faintly as the wind hit it, its presence so enormous it seemed the only thing, there in the darkness. It made York House and even Whitehall look like trifles. All you could see was its ancient outline, and even with the spires and arches it could be nothing but a mountain, an Uluru, something man would look up at in primeval days with wonder.
“Why come here?”
He ascended the steps. “St. Paul’s, Ann. I don’t know.”
She hesitated, then followed him within. The air was dusty like a timeless place’s should be, and the torches brightly lit to keep the vigil to the new century. Ann took holy water from the vestibule and copied John’s motions.
Leading her through a maze of rooms and sanctums, an organism of vaulted ceilings and pillars and rose-colored stained glass, John moved slowly and reverently. He pointed through one archway into the main body of the Cathedral. The vast, high room seemed to stretch on, pew after pew, until finally – miles away it seemed – there was the altar and the pulpit. Then on either side rose the giant windows and the arches of the ceiling, drawn up to some distant point like the ribs of a great whale.
And Ann surely felt like Jonah, strange and unwanted here.
“How do men build such things?” murmured John.
“You come here every Sunday?”
He nodded. “I am glad they left it. Henry the Eighth didn’t take it down like he took down Canterbury and the abbeys when my – when the old faith went away. It could be wrong or vanity or something to adorn a church, but… men worked for it, for God. It took centuries to build all this.”
He took her hand and led her up a winding stair.
“But I understand what the others must think, too. It’s not just in the buildings, no, it’s everywhere.”
“Where are we going?”
Up they went, up, up, until they came to a cavernous room filled with giant bells hung from rafters among curtains of gossamer webs. A faint wind blew through the place, and John led her to the source, a small window with a draft.
“Is this legal?”
“I never really checked. As an almost-lawyer, I’d say…of course. Of course this is fine. Hold onto me and we can go to the top.”
“I can manage for myself,” she said.
A bit of his old smile returned. “If you want.” He slid out at lithely as a cat.
Ann followed and sat on the creaky windowsill to see what he did. There was a ledge along the outer wall reachable from the window, and from there it was a matter of fifteen feet of weather-worn panel to another ledge, a few feet under the top.
“Slow,” he said.
Ann eased herself onto the first ledge. Part of her was thinking, Soon I shall have him confess – and another part was screaming, What am I doing!
The night air, so cold, seemed to pin her to the wall, and she hugged herself to stop her body from breaking into shudders. She assessed every foothold in the panel before she moved. Don’t look down. Do it slowly. Follow his path. If it can hold him, surely it can hold me.
And then his hand was there, to pull her onto the second ledge, then to the very top of St. Paul’s Cathedral. She took it and stepped up – thinking for a second she was falling, but she was at the top. And she could let go. “That was mad….You’ve done it before?”
“Normally I just climb the outside,” he admitted.
“You’re crazed.”
“But I found it,” he said, “the place where we can dance and not be seen.”
Ann peered through the mist to see dark shapes impossibly far below, and far away some clearer vales and fields. The river was a ribbon, and the windmills tiny chess-pieces.
As the droplets in the air froze on his clothes, he explained, “If it’s clear, you see stars all across the sky there. Up where my brother is. London opens up under you, all little buildings and twinkling lights. From here, you cannot see the sewage or smell the plague. It hardly seems like day-to-day London at all, now, it is something new, so you look out and think, ‘I never thought it could be so grand.’”
He tapped the roof of the belfry with his boot. “I don’t know what God wants. Or if He cares whether I’m inside, with the candles and the empty pews, or outside, hearing Him in the sound of the river. Seeing Him in the stars. Knowing He’s there, in everybody down there, living in this beautiful city and giving it life until even when it should be silent, you can hear it breathing.”
Ann could hear it, a silence roaring in her ears so softly she could not tell if it was whispering or crying out – or was all in her own head?
“I don’t want to dance with you,” she said.
“I know,” he murmured.
“Why did you come here?” she asked.
“Why did you follow me?” he replied.
“I had nothing more exciting to do.”
“Yeah, you did.” He sat down and pulled his arms around his knees. “You had them.”
“You’re acting like a child.”
“Do you love me?”
She hugged him. That way she didn’t have to answer.
“I have to ask you, my lady, what your secret is. I have to.”
“I have none.”
“All right.” He kissed her hands. “I won’t ask you anymore.”
Ann felt something when he did this, and she didn’t know what it was. She shivered. She watched rags of shadow and light flutter past them, leaving the night clearer. John rubbed her cold arms as the wind rushed by, whipping away the last of the fog. Now out came the glowing lights and the gleaming galleons that drifted on the Thames, and from the country came the songful cries of werewolves.
Then he said something unexpected. “You have so much on your shoulders, my lady.”
She shifted uneasily.
“You’ve got to worry about so many things: class and money and beau monde, and choose your friends more carefully than I, and probably pretend sometimes —”
I do not, thought Ann with a sudden misery. They are my kind and I know myself when I am there. Not like now. Now I’ve got this question mark inside me and my heart is doing things I do not want it to.
“You must do what your father says —”
It might have been the fog, but she felt a wetness in her eyes.
There was a sensation of a peacefulness, and she fought against it, fought against it! She pictured Vanya, but it did not help. Or Loseley. But all she could think about was sitting by the river and a quiet voice reading its poems to her. Ann had read enough books to know what this meant. But she didn’t want to know, or think, or feel. It meant—
Ignore it.
It meant—
IGNORE IT.
(It meant she was in love with John.)
An odd manner of calm found her there atop St. Paul’s. The cold seemed to go away, but the warmth was nothing special. It was hard to feel. It was hard to think, with all this numbness swirling inside. It was hard to do absolutely anything at all but be: only to sit there and take in the vast with John Donne beside her, hanging out upon the edge of the century.

Once the way was clear, a man walked easily across the Churchyard of St. Paul’s. The fog around was clearing; his outline would have been blurry, if it had been seen at all. But in fact he was alone, walking without the slightest noise, and alone he stepped under the eaves of a printing-house.
The door broke open when he kicked it. Within the air was soundless, breathless, silent. The shadows of the press and crates and shelves mixed vaguely with the dimness. He stole inside before the night watch saw him.
Methodically he went about several things.
At the manager’s desk, he opened drawers until he found a pen and parchment. Brows knitted, he wrote something, and tucked it into a lead box on the table.
Turning to the crates and shelves, he quickly found the newest child of the press, a slim book with a pale green cover. Its title was nothing gloriously inventive: Amours by J.D. with Certain Other Sonnets by W.S. Heaving up the crate he dumped its contents out into a pile, and the next crate, and the next crate: a heap of adorable green books. Around this he strewed the print-house’s other books, scattered them around the pile like pilgrims around the Black Stone of Mecca. It was fitting in his mind. If ever poetry was hallowed, it was that of Donne and Shakespeare. As an afterthought, he took a copy of Amours from the pile kept it.
From his belt he drew two flasks, removed the stoppers, and emptied their contents on the books, the floor, the walls. He went upstairs to douse the thatch of the roof. As he came back down, an acrid tar-like smell began to crawl into the air.
Outside he waited as within the odor grew thicker, thicker. A distant clatter and some echoed voices made him look up, but there was no danger.
Then from the Cathedral high above came the first low note of the plaintive bells.
He gave a breath and reached into his other pocket, drew out a match-book.
The bells in the other church-towers chimed in, their voices crying through the fading fog.
All of London was noise, as the throaty cheers of far-off men joined the bells….
With a hiss, a tongue of flame burst onto the match. He touched it to the book he’d taken like a child would lift a ladybug up to a plant, hoping the creature would crawl from one onto the other.
The world was groaning in its labor pains.
Now the book burned, and now it was just paper, thinness material. In reproach, he threw it into the printer’s shop, to land on the pile of its brethren. Soon the flames were spreading.
From Whitehall and Westminster and all down the river shot whistling fireworks which trailed into the sky. They disappeared for a moment, then ignited into clouds of sparks. Red, gold, purple, one after the other, brightening the fog. Those watching the display did not at first notice one boom that was louder than the others, one conflagration that was brighter.
The figure made away, flames streaming from the door behind him. Fire leapt across the books and walls, building, breathing – and then a great explosion tore the print-house. A booming roar. And then collapse.
Anno Domini, one thousand six hundred.