(London, 2 May 1592)

The roar that greeted Will as he stepped into the Curtain was not for him. It spilled from the bear-pit beyond the north wall—thirty dozen voices baying for blood, human and animal at once. He paused, manuscript satchel clutched to his ribs, and wondered how many of those throats would ever bother cheering a play.

Inside the play-yard, the atmosphere felt brittle. Rehearsals were meant to be private, but plague gossip had drawn a knot of groundlings who could not afford to wait for opening day. They leaned against the stage like sailors against a rail, hungry for any scrap of performance. Will felt their eyes rake across him—country cut of cloak, ink under fingernails, the faint smell of river fog still clinging to his boots. He straightened, trying to look as though he belonged.

Ned Alleyn stood centre-stage, one fist on his hip, the other brandishing a paper crown that drooped whenever he moved too quickly. “No, Master Shakespeare,” he called, not bothering to turn, “Tyrants do not whine. They declare.” He flung the line outward like a gauntlet:
“‘Now is the winter of our discontent…”
He stopped, grimaced, and let the crown slide off entirely. “And what manner of winter is this? A mild spring drizzle?”

Will felt heat crawl up his collar. He had laboured over that opening for weeks, trimming and tuning until each syllable sat like a bead on wire. He climbed the side stair, boots thudding against the hollow boards. “The winter is metaphor,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that only the stage heard. “A frost within the soul, not without.”

Alleyn raised one famous eyebrow. “Then give the soul a coat, sir. I freeze.”

A ripple of laughter travelled through the small crowd. Will swallowed it like vinegar. He was unbuttoning the satchel, ready to thrust pages at Alleyn, when a familiar laugh floated from the yard.

Kit Marlowe leaned against a pillar, moonlight catching the silver hoop in his ear. He looked as though he had been there for hours, drinking in every stumble. He lifted two fingers in lazy salute. “Trade you a line for a line, countryman,” he called. “‘Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,’ and left it to you to wrinkle it again.”

Will’s pulse stuttered between irritation and relief. Part of him wanted to drag the man backstage and demand why he had vanished after the Bear Garden; another part felt the sudden, shameful comfort of a friendly blade in hostile territory. He descended the stair, meeting Kit at the foot of the stage.

“Deptford tomorrow?” Will murmured.

“Tonight, if you’ve the stomach,” Kit replied. “But first we mend this speech. Trust me, Ned will mouth whatever we give him, provided it sounds expensive.”

Before Will could answer, a trumpet sounded. Not the bright flourish that called playgoers to merriment, but the flat, official note used by town criers. The yard fell silent. A bailiff in city livery stepped through the playhouse gate, scroll in hand, voice cracking like winter ice:

“By order of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, all common plays and interludes are to cease forthwith, the plague having increased these four weeks past. Houses to be shut, gatherings dispersed. God preserve the city.”

He nailed the parchment to the door and was gone, boots splashing mud across the threshold.

A collective exhale, half groan, half gasp, swept the yard. Alleyn let the paper crown fall to the boards and trod on it without noticing. Somewhere a woman began to weep; somewhere else a groundling cursed and spat. Will felt the news hit him like cold water: no performance meant no gate money, no gate money meant no rent, no rent meant the long road home to Stratford with nothing in his purse but cherry-blossom promises.

Kit’s hand found his sleeve. “Breathe, countryman. There are other stages.”

“Where?” Will’s voice came out rough.

“Private halls. Noblemen’s chambers. Even,” Kit lowered his voice, “the coast, if you can stomach a ship.” He steered Will toward the tiring-house door, away from the rising tide of panic. “First we save your play from Ned’s boots. Then we save ourselves from the plague. And then,” his smile flashed, reckless, “we make our own audience.”

Behind them, the parchment flapped against the oak like a dying bird. The Curtain had fallen silent, but in Will’s ears the roar of the bear-pit still raged. Only now, he wondered if he and Kit were the bears, and London the crowd that would soon demand blood.

Next Time: A locked playhouse, a borrowed candle, and two poets rehearsing Richard III to an audience of rats. Chapter 5: “By Candle & By Quill.”

The playhouses are shuttered, the bear-pit still roars – would you risk the plague for one more line on stage, or take the first ship out of London?

(Deptford, 30 April 1592)

The dice sounded like hailstones on a coffin-lid.

Three ivory cubes leapt across the scarred table, struck a puddle of spilled ale, and settled – four, four, one. A groan rippled through the ring of onlookers. Kit let his own sigh arrive half a heartbeat late, polished and theatrical. The man opposite, too drunk to notice, was already fumbling for the coins he no longer possessed.

Kit’s gaze slid past the table, past the guttering tallow, and snagged on a newcomer framed in the doorway.

William Shakespeare, still mud-spattered from the road, stood as though he’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in someone else’s dream. He was clutching the strap of a canvas satchel that bulged with the manuscript of Richard III, the pages curled from sweat and river fog. The satchel was heavy enough to ransom a duke, yet worth nothing until it met a stage.

A slow smile curved Kit’s lips. Here was coin he could borrow without ever reaching for his purse.

He leaned back, letting the dice rest, and studied the Stratford man the way a falcon studies a lark. Shakespeare’s eyes flicked from the bear pit to the dice table, from the knife tucked into Frizer’s belt to the silver hoop glinting in Kit’s ear. Curiosity warred with caution; Kit filed the expression away like a line he might one day gift to a character.

Ingram Frizer’s voice cut through the haze. “Three pounds by Pentecost, Kit. Or the Privy Council hears where you supped last Tuesday.”

Kit answered without looking at him. “Pentecost is still four weeks distant.” He scooped the dice, rolled again. Five, five, six. A cheer; coins scraped toward him like filings to a magnet. Luck, however, was a flirt who never stayed for breakfast. Two throws later, the pile had thinned to a single groat and the echo of his pulse.

Frizer’s hand landed on Kit’s shoulder – heavy, proprietary. “Outside. Air clears debts.”

Kit rose, but not before crooking a finger at Shakespeare. “Walk with me, countryman. I have a proposition that might keep both our purses and our necks intact.”

Will hesitated, then followed. Moonlight silvered the puddles; a distant church bell tolled one. Frizer produced a knife small enough to be polite, large enough to be final. The blade caught the moon and shattered it into shards of light.

“Papers or blood,” Frizer said softly.

Kit felt the Stratford man’s breath hitch beside him. He pitched his voice low, for Will alone. “My new play needs a second hand. Your history has soldiers who speak like men, not marionettes. Help me finish it before Pentecost and we split the profits – enough to buy this dog’s silence and your next pair of boots.”

Before Will could answer, a second figure detached from the shadows: Robert Poley, courier, sometime intelligencer, perennial messenger of bad news. He carried no blade; the parchment in his hand looked sharper than steel.

“Gentlemen,” Poley said, as though they were all about to sit down to supper, “the theatres close tomorrow. Plague orders from the Council. Master Marlowe, you are advised to make yourself scarce.”

Frizer’s eyes glittered. “Scarce men still pay debts.”

Poley smiled with half his mouth. “Scarce men also vanish.” He turned to Kit, then flicked a glance at Will. “Deptford. Tuesday. Eleanor Bull’s house. Bring coin, verse, and – if you wish – your new collaborator.”

The bell tolled twice. Somewhere a bear roared; somewhere else a poet swallowed his own heartbeat. Kit pocketed the knife – not Frizer’s, his own – and stepped back into the torchlight, Will half a pace behind him.

Behind them the dice clattered on, indifferent and bright, counting the hours until Pentecost … and the hours until two poets would decide whether to save each other or sell each other out.

—–

Next Time: A bear-baiting crowd roars. A rehearsal stalls. And Will hears the first whisper that the playhouses are about to close forever. Chapter 4: “The Curtain Falls Silent.”

If you had three shillings and a knife at your throat, would you stake it on poetry, loyalty, or the next roll of the dice? Tell us which – and tag a friend who’d make the same bet.

(Stratford-upon-Avon, 25 April 1592)

The river runs high after the rains, and the whole house trembles with the mill-wheel’s turning. I feel the shake in my bones the way other women feel church bells. It is the season when everything grows—even the spaces between us.

I sit at the little oak table that once belonged to my father, light thin as whey through the leaded glass, and count coins into piles: one for the baker, one for the butcher, one for the schoolmaster who says Hamnet is quick but too fond of birds’ nests. The fourth pile—six pennies and a clipped angel—bears no mark. I turn the angel over twice, then slip it into the purse beneath the loose board. It is the first coin to cross the threshold without another mouth already calling for it.

Upstairs Susanna recites her letters to the twins, who answer in giggles and thuds. Their voices chase each other like swallows under the eaves. I think: Will would smile at that. Then I think: he is not here to smile.

I was twenty-six when he was sixteen, and I liked the way he read verses to the river reeds as though they were an audience. I liked the way he looked startled when I laughed—startled, then determined, as if laughter were a riddle he could solve by kissing it. When the harvest failed and my father’s roof leaked, Will’s voice was the only warm thing in the county. I let him stay late; I let him stay later. When the consequence announced itself in the skipping of a month’s courses, he married me with a ring of barley straw he twisted while I wept. He wore it until the priest spoke, then tucked it into the prayer book he still carries. I have never asked if it is still there.

Some nights I count the years between us the way others count rosary beads—ten beads, ten years—and wonder whether love is a thread strong enough to stretch so far. Other nights I listen to the mill wheel and think: perhaps love is simply the sound of one person working while another is away.

He sends money when he can. He writes the children a nonsense rhyme for every shilling. He writes me one line only—“I keep the barley straw.” I do not know if that is love, but it is something I can hold in my palm like a warm egg. I do not know if it will hatch or spoil. I only know I am tired of wondering.

Tonight I will seal this letter with plain wax and no perfume. I will tell him the twins have grown two fingers taller, that the cherry tree blossomed early, that the miller’s dog still barks at the moon on his behalf. I will not ask when he is coming home. I will not ask if there is another woman, or another man, or simply another stage that keeps him later than I ever did. I will only ask that he remember the river is still running high, and that the wheel turns whether he listens or not.

—Anne Hathaway

—–

Next Time: Kit owes three pounds by Pentecost, and the dice are turning ugly.

Comment below with the one word you’d send to Anne, or share with a friend who’d guard a secret on barley straw.