And so to bed. It had been a long day. He had asked for money from Finn who as his master received wages for his work, and Finn had denied him. Jake was tugging at the points of his hose when Will entered their chamber.

Will was looking uncommonly cheerful. "Young Johnson has loaned me a copy of Arcadia."

It had just been published and was causing a sensation. Will was wild to read it. Johnson? O, yes, Harry Johnson the student at the Inner Temple. Clement's Inn. He recognised the young lawyer's family arms stamped on the binding now that he looked closely. Many of the law students were country heirs sent up to achieve urbanity. The inner barristers attended lessons in dance between law lectures. The company performed there regularly.

Stockings at half mast, Jake grabbed the book. All of London was talking about dead, heroic Sidney's magnum opus. It was said to be dizzying and glorious. He opened a page halfway through a sentence. ".. with settled and humble countenance, as a man that should have spoken of a thing that did not concern himself, bearing even in his eyes sufficient shows that it was nothing but Philoclea's danger which did anything burden his heart, far stronger than fortune, having with vehement embracing of her got yet some fruit of his delayed end, he thus answered the.. The sentence flowed on relentlessly from there, as if the printer eschewed full stops. Jake supposed that with rigorous breath control, this could be read aloud without choking. "There is much in this," he said politely.

"It is a box of jewels," Will said raptly. "It is a poem. It is a New Form of writing."

Jake resumed shimmying out of his garments.

"And," Will said, "it is unfinished."

So Jake had heard. By the month's end, he calculated, St Paul's Churchyard stalls would be glutted with continuations. "Do you intend to conclude it?" If Will worked fast he might find readers.

Will kicked his boots off pettishly. "It would be a fine task. Imagine the praise, the glory, if I did it aright." He frowned at Jake, or his thoughts, and trimmed the candle wick. "I went to the Temple to check the rights of law for a city comedy about gulling fools; I want to write that, too. And Finn has more work for me every time I see him, tinkering at old plays to make them new."

"Finn wants another masque," Jake announced. "There is to be a wedding between Lady Grace Banks and Lord Kyle Stretton. Some dainty allusions to their lineage, the master of the revels suggested."

"Too much, a lifetime of dramas to write to earn my bread, another of dramas I wish to write, I run and run and never enough time. Time is not on my side. I strive to tie it all together and render up an account of my life, but I am terminally... did you say, Lady Grace?"

"Come now; is not your city comedy half done? It is not a court piece, but the Temple may take it, and if not, the groundlings will bring us their pence. You will need to put in fresh jokes and scandal, the jests are stale."

"Lady Grace? Is she the...?"

"The very same." Jake thumped his pillow.

"How am I to make "delicate allusions" to her past?"

"Extensive use of metaphor?" Jake suggested.

Will dragged the pillow from Jake's side of the bed and thumped him with it. Jake only smirked. Kyle Stretton, notoriously ill tempered with poor men, had insulted Jake several times. Jake wished him joy of the notorious lady. He would dance at this wedding with a good heart.

That eagerness to dance was good, for a masque meant dancing. It meant also, for the company, a sustained battle between Will, the wordsmith, and Ryder, the dancemaster, over which of them was to control the shape of their performance. Ryder wanted Will to garland random pretty verses onto a structure based on movement. Meanwhile Will claimed that the story was the skeleton on which all the performance was built. This inspired moonlit monologues to Jake, who was very tired, with digressions about Will's Art and his Muse.

Nervously, then, Jake read Will's newest script.
"Helena is here at hand,"
"And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee."
"This sounds good, but, Will, what did you say inspired you?"

"Read on." Will shifted eagerly. He must be pleased with the upcoming passage.

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" - Will, this is Shakespeare's!"

Will looked sulky. "And what does he do, but pilfer from Holinshed?"

Jake rolled his eyes. "If we stage this, the entire of Burbage's Company will assail us with brawlings, blows, and -"

"How will they know?"

"How will they not?" Jake stared, incredulous. "Do you not plan to perform this play in public? Will, you dolt -"

Will, huffy: "Master Shakespeare might have stolen this piece from me for aught you know."

"I'll swear on an oath that he has not."

"I have no choice," Will protested. He was under more pressure than Jake knew, to supply fresh tales in three acts, with space for music and dance. Jake could never understand. All that was expected of him was a little light mincing, and that he not drop his fan.

"Will, you have naught but choice." Jake pulled up and made himself think. This must be a false plan; Will knew as well as he did that the playgoing audience would recognise and spurn recycled words, and then, riot. "What is this really for?"

"I have choice enough." Very well, then. Will, having had enough sport with his friend, flourishingly produced a bundle of untidy writing. "I have a new piece, so different, the lesser Will himself could not recognise its story."

Jake let "the lesser Will" pass, only raising his brows. He had heard Master Finn and Will pass judgement on Shakespeare before. (Will:"Interesting." Finn:"Thoughtful." Will:"But wrong.") "And then?" Jake prompted.

"I had thought the play within the play could be set in a palatial school, where the sons of wealthy citizens live sheltered, taught by the finest -"

"Like the Children of the Chapel Royal," growled Jake, distracted despite himself. The (niminy piminy chits, to his mind) players of the boy companies were serious rivals to Lord Calhoun's Men. "More refined, pah!" He spat on the floor.

"Taught by the finest," Will repeated, speaking louder over him. "But still, even the most beauteous youth -"

Incredulous, Jake cast a mental eye over the Children of the Chapel Royal, but kept his mouth shut.

"- will find trouble, trouble of the heart-"

"Yes, very fine. Angst and blank verse, some metaphysical figures of language, it sounds well."

"Blank verse and," Will paused impressively, having just had an inspiration of staging, "real rabbits. Troth, I have it. Two youths, of mean and high degree, wander hand in hand through the forest of Arden, expressing their hearts and backstories upon meeting. And lo! we will release live coneys onto the stage to sugar the exposition. It will be irresistible. Jake! Dost think we can persuade the Censor to allow the scene bare-chested?"

People do not tell others their secrets all at once. If they but would, there would not be this to-do uncovering Will's intent. "Who will hear this play?" Jake returned to his inquisition.

Will winced. Ah. Here was the meat of it.

"We need another patron."

"Do we?" Jake was all archness. "Has Master Finn told you so?"

Will glowered. "Lord Calhoun may lose favour at Court at any time."

So may we all. "Or - mayhap - we may lose favour with him, and gain naught." Jake looked searchingly at him. "Lad, this hunger for the lady Bella is ill conceived. She is as far above you as the moon and you are moonstruck, Will, if you think aught can come of this." He waited for Will to catch at the metaphor and bat it about like a kitten toying with ribbons. Strike attitudes if you must (I can endure it) but act not so indisceetly.

Will showed less sign of making speeches now that they had come to honesty. "This is more than a love game. Anyroad, a change of patron will not bring the lady within my reach, unless -" He said, "Soon we will have a new patron. I am negotiating."

Jake nodded earnestly. "You would see her more rarely," he pointed out.

"To win her, I need to be more than I am."

This was what Jake had feared - Will's ambition igniting past sense or safety.

"Calhoun has blood and connections, but for all that, he is a follower of greater men."

Jake listened unhappily.

"To become greater, we have to hazard our all, gamble -"

"Gamble," Jake said flatly. He was a worst case scenario man. He could see a dozen unhappy endings to this.

"Jake. Soon we will have a new patron. I am negotiating."

"Who?" Jake asked sharply. This was not a matter for boys: they had too little knowledge of the ebb and flow of court politics.

Will did not understand that some employers were dangerous. Walsingham had extraordinary errands to send his boys on. He dabbled in plots as Will played with stories, and Walsingham's plots never used trick swords to escape an unhappy ending.

Spies hid from everyone, naturally; but Walsingham and Cecil and Essex, they hid from in terror. To tease their prey out, the three chief spymasters used intermediaries. It was grubby work. For instance, even to hint at certain subjects was treason, and carried treason's penalty. But to lure traitors and foreign agents into divulging their plots, and infiltrate their enemies, English agents had to skirt the verges of betraying their own queen. Sometimes, at the end of it, Jake suspected English and foreign were taken up together, and only God, who received all their souls, knew who were the patriots.

And on this cue, the projector enters, thought Jake.

The projector was a spy on spies; he won the confidence of villains and heard confession from the enemies of the state. He cursed God and government where he might be best overheard by foreigners and coaxed evidence of their devilry for the benefit of our lady Queen.

"Walsingham favours actors for the work of spying." Jake said to Will. "As witnesses in the world, a trained memory, the ability to dissemble our true faces, a way of life which brings us in contact with high and low alike, all these things and more."

Will waved his concern aside. "There is nothing amiss. Trust me."