Hell and Earth

Nay, not in a week or more …” Jonson shrugged. “He’s not the common tavern sort. No matter how stirring the company.”

“Methinks I’ll pay his house a visit when my wine is done,” Chapman said.

“He may be with his patron, the Earl of Essex. Perhaps a letter?” Burbage leaned forward and pinched his nose between his fingers to stifle a sneeze. “Although they say Essex is back in Gloriana’s good graces, and Spenser never left them. They could easily be with the after‑Christmas progress.”

Burbage’s eyes were level on Will’s, and there was a warning there. Burbage, like Will, was a Oueen’s Man–an intelligencer in service of Elizabeth. And more: both of them were members of the Prometheus Club, using story and sorcery to sustain England against her many enemies. And the Prometheus Club was divided. Essex was not their ally, and Elizabeth had never hesitated to play one faction against another if she thought it would lend strength to her own position.

Will had, as he had said, been away. If Essex–with hisPromethean links–was in the Oueen’s graces, did that mean the Lord Chamberlain’s men were out of them? Or was there equilibrium again?

Will raised his eyebrows in silent question, but Richard had no chance to suggest an answer in such a crowd.

“Nay,” Catesby said. “I’m well known to the Earl, and came from his household but yestermorn. Spenser is not among Essex’s servants at this time.”

Mary patted Burbage on the back. “He might be ill,” she said slowly. “It took my brother Tom so quickly, I had not time even to visit before he died.”

Her quiet statement left the table silent. Tom Watson, the poet –and a Promethean as well–had died of plague with a young wife and a baby left behind. Plague was one of the weapons that Will’s faction spurned.

Essex’s group was not so fastidious.

Will glanced up at Chapman, who pursed his lips. “We’ll go when we finish our wine,” Chapman said. Ben nodded and inverted his tankard over his mouth. Will gulped what he could of his own wine through a narrowed throat, casting the herb‑tainted dregs among the rushes with a would‑be casual gesture and upending the cup on the table to drain the last droplets, lest he poison some unsuspecting friend on the wolfsbane Morgan had prescribed for his ague.

“I’m ready,” Will said as Ben stood. “Keep the bench warm for me, Robin.” He stepped over the boy with a smile.

Mary half stood, her hands wrapped white around the base of her cup. Catesby and Richard too would have quit their places, but Ben shook his head. “You’re cold: stay and get warm. Will and I will walk out – ”

“And George will walk out with you, ” Chapman said, raising his hand to summon the landlord from his place near the taps.

Despite snow, the streets bustled; after the idleness and revelry of the Twelve Days of Christmas, London had business. Will, halt with his illness, minced carefully on the icy stones, Chapman holding his elbow. “How much farther, Ben?”

Ahead, Ben checked his sweeping stride to allow Will and Chapman to catch him. He turned back over his shoulder. “Just down the street–”

Edmund Spenser’s lodgings in King’s Street were on the ground level, a narrow door opening on a narrower alley, leaning buildings close enough that Ben’s shoulders brushed one wall and then the other, by turns. Only a thin curtain of snow fell here, for the roofs all but kissed overhead.

The big man drew up by that doorway, waiting for Will and Chapman to come up behind him before he raised his fist to knock. His breath streamed out in the shadows under the storm clouds, reminding Will uncomfortably of other things. Will looked at the black outline of his boots against the sugared cobblestones.

Ben’s fist made a flat, hollow sound like a hammer. Will held his breath: no answer. Something about the door and the dark light in the narrow alley and the chillbreathing through the planks and the old, white‑washed stucco of the wall made it harder to release that breath again.

“He’s not here,” Chapman said, twisting his cloak between his hands.

Ben grunted, raised that maul of a fist, and hammered on the door again. I hope his glover charges him extra for the cheveril.

“Edmund! Spenser!Open the door.” Nothing. He rattled it on its hinges. Latched. “Shall I fetch his landlord, then?”

Will edged into the narrow crack between Ben and the house; he peeled off his glove, put his hand out, and laid the palm against the wood. That dank chill that was more than the January and the falling snow swept through his veins and gnawed at his heart, like a ferret through a rabbithole. Will gasped and cradled the hand to his chest, tugging it under his cloak to dispel the frost. He stepped away, leaned against the far wall of the alley. Not far enough.

“Ben,” he said, rubbing cold fingers to warm them enough so they’d uncurl and he could wedge them back inside his glove. “Break the door down.”

Ben hesitated only a moment, and glanced only at Will: never at Chapman. Will looked down at his hand and finished settling his glove.

“The door.”

“On your head be it, ” Ben said. He swept off his cap, handed it to Will, and hurled himself at the warped pine panels.

They never stood a chance. Will thought the door would burst its latch; instead, the panels splintered before Ben’s hunched shoulder with a sound like split firewood. The big man went through, kept his balance, and staggered three steps further, one hand on the broken wood to keep the door from bouncing closed. He covered his mouth with his free hand, doubling as if kicked in the bollocks. Will stepped forward after Ben as the cold within the room flowed forth. It clung to Will like icy water, saturating his body and dragging him down.

The cold.

And the smell.

Ben, to his credit, held his ground–gagging, but unflinching. Will paused with his hand on the splintered door frame, wishing blindly for a moment that Kit were there –for his witchlight, for his blade, for his witty rejoinders–and then kicked himself into movement. ‘Tis better than Sir Francis Walsingham’s deathbed,he thought, and then wondered if that were only because the room was so very, very cold. Colder than the cold outdoors, but well appointed, with two chairs, a stool, and a bench beside a table near the shuttered window on the front wall, for whatever light might edge through the gap between houses.

Will’s fingers wrapped something in his pocket: a sharp iron thorn. A bootnail, the one that Kit had asked back of Will before his departure from Faerie. Which Kit had passed through flame and fed strange words to, and dropped a droplet of his own blood upon. A talisman from a lover to a loved, and black witchcraft, and the sort of thing that damned one to Hell. And Will, clutching it so tight his signet cut his flesh, would have spat in the face of the man who said so.

The floor creaked under his feet, creaked again as Chapman stepped over the threshold and hesitated, his blocky body damping what little light entered. “George, step in or step out,” Ben said. Chapman lurched left, leaning against the wall inside the door, a kerchief clapped over his mouth and nose.

Contagion,” Chapman said, voice shaking.  “You know what we’ll find.”

Despite Will’s earlier thought, he realized now that the smell was precisely the reek of Sir Francis’ sickroom. Will came within, noticing the door to a second room slightly ajar. What had killed Sir Francis– aye, and probably what carried off Lord Strange as well, and poor Tom Watson–was neither plague nor poison, but blackest sorcery. He knew because he felt its prickle on his neck, identical to the sensation of Kit waving his hand, bringing every candle in a room to light. Identical to the sensation he felt when an audience was rapt in his power–that prickle, of observance, as if something roused itself and watched. There were parchments on the table, beside a stub of candle. Will drew out flint and his dagger and kindled a light; the ashes in the grate had long gone cold. Ben lifted the pages toward the door. “The Faerie Queene,”he said. “Just one stanza. Over and over and over–