Master of the Revels

Post by Rebecca East-Oda on “Gráinne/DODO Alert” GRIMNIR channel, marked URGENT (cont.)

“That must explain the Florence DTAP,” Mel said. “She can’t kill off somebody that significant without triggering Diachronic Shear, so she’s trying to interfere with the fate of his forebears, to prevent his being born.”

Mel turned back to the laptop on Frank’s desk. “All right, I’m going to research whatever we have on GRIMNIR about da Vinci’s family background.” Shifting to Mortimer: “Tell Chira to access any archived data about him at DODO HQ—see if she can find a genealogical connection to that estate. Hard to believe Gráinne would do something so foolhardy.”

“You think she is some omniscient genius supervillain,” said Erzsébet. “She isn’t. She is a very smart witch with exceptional powers, but she has only been in this century for five months and has the education of a sixteenth-century Irishwoman.”

“She was a committed autodidact from the moment she arrived here,” I countered. “And she’s savvy. This would be uncharacteristically sloppy for her.”

“She should have started as close to 1851 as possible and moved backward, not the other way around,” said Mel. “She should have started with Daguerre, or the photo of the eclipse.”

“I agree,” said Erzsébet. “And when she had me in her confidences, I believed that was her intention.”

“Maybe she’s been at this longer than we know,” I suggested, “and she’s already effected shifts that we can’t even realize have happened.”

“Nothing that we can be aware of,” corrected Mel. “It would be arrogant of us to assume we will always be aware of changes made.”

“She’s chaotic neutral—or I guess now she’s chaotic evil,” Mortimer explained to Robin, and Robin nodded.

“She is chaotic, but she is canny,” amended Erzsébet, also delivering this to Robin. “She has very clever ideas. However, her magic is so excellent that when she is not relying on it, she forgets she is not perfect. Luckily for all of you, I don’t make this mistake. On the rare occasions I am not perfect, I admit it.”

“All right, hold on,” said Mel. “Let’s put a pin in the Leonardo issue until we’ve done more research. That’s what Tristan would advise for now. Thank you for reporting in, Robin, but you need to go back to 1606 London until we get Tristan home safe. Erzsébet, check the Macbeth script—”

“I have been doing this already,” she said, waving the book in Mel’s direction, opened to a dog-eared page. “And it is not back to the correct version. And now we have tried three Strands, which I calculated was how many times it was necessary.”

“Any idea why you might have been wrong?” asked Mortimer, which was so cack-handed of him that Mel’s foot actually twitched as if to kick him.

“I am not wrong,” said Erzsébet, giving him her Hungarian glower. “It means that things are in flux, that perhaps Gráinne is Wending and is winning the numbers game you spoke of before. Or it means perhaps that something else has happened, on another Strand, that has changed all the variables. But. If I calculate three Strands, and then it doesn’t work within three Strands, this means try something else.”

“That sounds doable,” said Robin. She was already halfway through another origami figure—a unicorn, by the look of it. She sat more upright, her back naturally straight and long like her brother’s, but her bearing not as rigid. Everyone looked at her in surprise. She mirrored our expressions. “I don’t mean I have any ideas,” she clarified. “That’s your department. I don’t write the script, I just perform it.”

“There are no departments,” said Mel. “There is no script. Everyone wears lots of hats, especially without Tristan here. You’ve been back there, you have the most familiarity with what’s what. Give us your insight. You’re our only expert.”

She pouted thoughtfully, while her hands continued to work the paper. “So . . . on a practical level, maybe we’re looking at the wrong manuscript. Most of the audience was illiterate, so buying copies of scripts wasn’t really a thing, although it did happen a little. In fact . . . okay, let’s think about this for a moment . . .” She leaned forward, back still very straight, a bright intensity to her face. “Gráinne wants the spells to exist in scripts that people are going to own and read in the future. Post-1606, all the way up till now. Right?”

“That’s the hypothesis,” I said. “That she wants to embed the spells where they will be accessible to other witches as magic wanes.”

“Okay, so the good news is, she got that part wrong. She shouldn’t bother with the original script in 1606. The only people who ever saw that were Shakespeare and Tilney and a few of their peeps, like the prompt man.”

“No, actually, the actors each got only his own individual part written out on a roll. Nobody got a copy of the whole script. That physical book, with Tilney’s stamp on it, is the property of the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s theatre company. It’s the only copy in existence, and only the prompter uses it, at rehearsals. The Revels Office didn’t keep backups. So here’s the thing.” Her face glowed the way Tristan’s does when he talks physics with Frank. “Some popular scripts were published as little stand-alone booklets, called quartos. But Macbeth was never published that way. The first time anyone could read the whole script of Macbeth—read it, buy it, keep it in their library—wasn’t until the first printed collection of all Shakespeare’s plays came out. In 1623.” Seeing our expressions, she said offhandedly, “Thanks for looking impressed, but any Shakespeare nerd would know that. Anyways, for Gráinne to control what people in the future would know of Macbeth, she should have gone to 1623 and altered that collected work, the First Folio. The Folio is what we need to control.”

“Good work,” said Mel. Robin’s face flushed with pleasure. “So we’ll Send you to 1623 and you adjust the Folio as needed.”

Robin grimaced. “That won’t work. The men who put the First Folio together, Heminge and Condell, are actors in the King’s Men, and they’ve just met a young Robin Shakespeare in 1606. I can’t show up seventeen years later the same age. Someone else has to do it.”

“Just a minute, though, I want to make sure I’ve got it straight,” I said. “The King’s Men kept the actual, physical script—it’s called the prompt copy?”

“And it sat in their storehouse, until it went directly to the printer to be typeset?” I pressed. “Because in that case, it’s perfectly sensible of Gráinne to change the original script. And what you should do—as Robin Shakespeare—is alter the script by rewriting those scenes back to their original language while it is in storage with the King’s Men between 1606 and 1623.”

“It’s not that straightforward,” said Robin. “First of all, they performed it many times, so the script might have been taken out of storage. But really by 1623, plenty of the promptbooks were missing. The copies Tilney stamped weren’t always around. They might have been destroyed when the Globe burned down around 1613, or been stolen, or just mildewed away since the Globe was built on practically a swamp. Sometimes scripts were pirated and then the pirated scripts might be altered. It was the Wild West of IP.”

“So when the originals were missing or compromised, what was the source material for this Folio compendium?” Mel asked.

Robin nodded. “Yeah, so Heminge and Condell—the actors who put it together—had to reconstruct a bunch of the scripts from memory, with help from the other actors. Sometimes an actor would still have his role from a show he did years earlier—but like I said, the role was literally a roll of paper, with just his part.”

“So how can we track the text of Macbeth from Tilney’s office to the printed Folio?” asked Mel, a raggedy impatience shading her tone. “When are the gaps that we could surgically insert you into?”

Robin shook her head. “That’s what Tristan’s peeps call a known unknown. I’m game to go back to try again with the original, but I’m not your man if you need somebody in 1623, because I’ve already been your boy in 1606. All I can tell you, if it’s helpful, is that Macbeth was never pirated like, say, Hamlet was. Before the Folio, there were several different Hamlets floating around London. There was only one Macbeth.”

“Well, there’s your answer then,” said Mortimer, scratching his beard thoughtfully. “Go back to 1606 and pirate Macbeth.”

“Pirate it,” he repeated, as if his meaning was obvious. “Start with the script Tilney stamped—the one with Gráinne’s spells—but have the King’s Men perform a pirated version that doesn’t have Gráinne’s spells. Gráinne stole it from you on paper? Steal it back from her in performance.”

But Robin was immediately on the same page with him. “Oh my God, of course!” she said, her eyes darting. “Shakespeare rips off his own script. Yes. Okay.” Having finished the unicorn, she tossed it onto the pile and started a new form. “This is how it goes. There’s the version with Tilney’s stamp and Gráinne’s spells, and everyone’s rolls are written out using that script, so on paper it’s all aboveboard. But then, in performance, the actors playing the witches say something different, they don’t say Gráinne’s spells, they only speak the words that Shakespeare originally wrote—”

“But that doesn’t change the text that will be used to print the Folio,” objected Mel, her impatience edging closer to the surface, but Robin shook her head and plunged on.

“Then, the prompt copy gets disappeared, and so do the witches’ rolls—I’ll make sure that happens, that’s a new DEDE. The company has to rewrite the whole thing from memory. And what they will remember is what they heard.”

“If we make sure that they only hear innocuous spells, then they will only remember innocuous spells, and then they will only print innocuous spells.” She smiled gratefully and winked at Mortimer. “Sweet hack, dude!”

“Doesn’t Tilney have to give his stamp of approval to a rewritten play?” I asked.

She moved her head in an animated gesture, something between a shrug and a shake of her head. “The actors, it’s assumed, can be relied on to re-create the same play verbatim, like opera singers reprise a role. It would never occur to Tilney that actors might go off script like that. Anyways, he’s never going to see it in performance—Queen Anne’s keeping him too busy staging masques.”

Mel asked, “Once Gráinne realizes the actors aren’t saying what she wants them to, what stops her from just showing up at the next performance and using magic to influence them to say her lines?”

Robin paused from her paper folding and half raised her hand. “Remember when you were explaining to me about the multiverse and the role that perception plays in all this? Like the reason magic stopped in 1851 at the moment one specific photograph was taken of the solar eclipse. It’s because so many people were staring at the eclipse at the same moment. Or the reason that you can Send a sentient being through time but not an inanimate object. Because perception is a part of the equation, not just the cold hard fact of space dust. Right?”

“By that token,” continued Robin, returning to her origami, a second unicorn, “the first public performance of Macbeth is like that eclipse photo. If enough people see it and remember it, then it is reality. Gráinne would have to change the perceptions and memories of everyone in the original audience who heard it the original way. She sounds pretty powerful so she can probably do that, but that’s gotta be labor-intensive and she has a lot on her dance card right now. Is it really a good return on the investment of magical output it would take to identify and enthrall all thousand-odd people who were at the first performance?”

A long pause. We were all sneaking looks at Mel, wanting her to continue her reluctant role as Tristan’s proxy.

“All right,” she said at last, trying to sound as confident as he always managed to. (Obviously she didn’t quite succeed at this, or I wouldn’t have noticed how hard she was trying.) “Given all the hypotheticals and counterfactuals, let’s focus on the one specific thing we know: we have to make sure Shakespeare’s original script is preserved in human consciousness until it’s printed later for widespread distribution.”

“I think this is a good plan,” said Erzsébet, who had set down the paperback and picked up her számológép. She ran her fingers through it as if she were massaging it.

“How to implement the plan is also clear,” said Robin, tossing down the unicorn and reaching for another piece of paper. “There have to be separate, secret rehearsals for the witches, so the company managers don’t freak out about the performers not rehearsing the approved lines. Hey!” Her face lit up. “The witches are going to be boys or young men. So, in the interest of keeping this contained, obviously I should play one, and—”

“No,” said Mel sharply. “The plan is for you to shelter in place. If you’re rehearsing and performing, then you are out in the open and Gráinne could take a potshot anytime. Tristan would kill me if I green-lighted that. No.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a witch,” said Robin to Erzsébet with a conspiratorial grin. “You guys are so cool.”

PS: Hai, honto desu yo!—your brilliant granddaughters both got perfect scores on their midyear AP Japanese exam. Will text pix for their gaisofu to preen over.

I know you’re planning to come back east for Easter. I’m sorry to triangulate here, but if your mother invites you—or the girls—to come home sooner than that for a visit, please put it off. There have been some unexpected developments here—nothing big, just protocol concerns, which as you know I’m not free to discuss—and if you came here now you’d get caught up with some work issues instead of having the nice family visit that I’m sure you all want. I’m heading out of town for a while and I don’t have time for a convo with Rebecca before I go, but please trust me when I say your mom’s a little distracted and needs a little space right now. I’m sure it will all be settled by Easter. Hope to see you then!

DEDE: (1) Macbeth performed with non-magic spells—NEW PLAN—and then (2) prevent Gráinne from attacking Tristan on opening night

STRAND: 1 (Since it’s the same DEDE with a new MO, I’m calling it Strand 1, New Plan)

Note: I know, I know, I shouldn’t come back mid-DEDE. But it’s Sabbath there today, meaning no rehearsal, while meanwhile GRÁINNE IS STILL GUNNING FOR ME. So it seemed safest to get my ass out of there for a bit. Might as well come home, have a shower, and write down stuff to date so my next report is less of a data dump.

To save time, Erzsébet Sent me directly into the Silver Street lodgings, at sunup the morning after I’d snuck into the Revels Office to rewrite the script. This was also the day Macbeth rehearsals were to begin. Will and Ned were both asleep—Ned looked so relaxed, to be lying on an actual mattress for a change, and tbh super cute and kinda hot, but I recognize that’s off topic.

After I had oriented myself, I grabbed the largest of Ned’s shirts off a peg and pulled it on. I startled both men by ahem-ing loudly, but once they were awake and saw that it was me, they chilled. I brought them up to speed about the new plans and requested the three of us play the witches. Will was a little reactive to my telling him how to stage his own play. I get that.

“But you agreed to help as you could, brother,” said Ned. “She has made a great journey for it.”

“You may easily make it up to them,” coaxed Ned. “The play about the mad king who divides his kingdom up among his three sons? Change the sons to daughters and give the boys those parts.”

Will gave him a wtf look. But then he reconsidered and agreed that we three would personate the witches.

So I blew off going to the Revels Office and tagged along with the Brothers Shakespeare to the Globe, to rehearse the world premiere of Macbeth. Like you do. You all probably know by now that I totally want to nerd out on a gazillion things about rehearsal, but watch my restraint as I don’t go there. I will stick to what is mission relevant.

This detail is relevant, though: the Macbeth script that Tilney had signed and stamped was physically present at the theatre. It had to be or else legally, we couldn’t do it. When I received my roll (with my role), of course it contained Gráinne’s spells.

Pretty sure none of you are theatre nerds, so for ease of reference, here it is . . .

There’s a rumble of thunder and horrible cacophonous music as the three of us spring up from the open trapdoor (i.e., from Hell) intoning, “When shall we three meet again?” It’s a thirty-second bit, mostly just an excuse to open the show with thunder and lightning. And to let the audience know: the rumors are true, there are indeed Scottish witches in the play about the Scottish king! Here they are. See? They’re ugly and scary but also sorta silly.

(Note: Gráinne didn’t change anything in this scene, so we were doing it as written.)

More thunder! General Macbeth and General Banquo appear, and the witches speak in semi-riddles à la the Delphic oracle. They tell Macbeth that he is going to be king of Scotland really soon . . . but—an important detail—they also tell his buddy Banquo that Banquo’s descendants (including King James, yo) will be kings of Scotland.

A lot of shit’s gone down. Macbeth and his wife killed King Duncan in his sleep and framed Duncan’s sons for the murder, so now the Macbeths are ruling Scotland, but the Scottish lords are rebelling against their tyranny and Lady M is losing her mind offstage. Macbeth, like a junkie, goes in search of another witch hit and begs them to speak some more riddles that he can obsess on. Here’s where “Double, double, toil and trouble” comes in. The witches brew up a heinous mess of animal parts, which spawns a bunch of freaky apparitions that speak to Macbeth in lame puns, all of which he misinterprets. (Like—spoiler—“no man of woman born can harm Macbeth” actually means “the guy born via C-section is taking you down, dude.”)

(Note: This is the scene Gráinne went to town on. The “double, double” bit is replaced with a spell Erzsébet says is literally lethal.)

This is a new play. We have a couple weeks to rehearse it, but we work only a few hours each morning, because then the players have to review lines for their afternoon show. But we get a lot done. Macbeth is Will’s shortest play (he’d heard about King James’s short attention span), and these actors have worked together for ages. Plus of course Shakespeare has been writing specific roles for each of them for years. So it all goes super fast and super smooth. Like I said: I want to nerd out over details, but they are not relevant to my mission, so shut up, Robin.

Visual effects at the Globe are pretty useless. You’re performing outside in daylight on a bare stage. The company can string up squibs on a wire and light them, to give the impression of lightning, but the ambient daylight ruins the impact. Plus, the squib smoke smells like rotten eggs. So that kind of stuff doesn’t get done much. Instead, they use a heck of a lot of sound effects.

But Macbeth opens with witches, and everyone knows witches mean thunder and lightning! So there are these long wooden troughs called thunder-runs suspended above the stage at an angle, and stagehands roll cannonballs down them. The sound is impressive. (Not as cool as what’s going down with the seahorses at the Revels Office, but good enough for the groundlings.) Okay, nerding over. Thanks for listening.

As soon as rehearsal was over, the company had a quick bite of cheat bread together and then prepped for that day’s performance. Today it was Hamlet. I know that’s not the point of my report, so I won’t go into it, but Richard Burbage, okay, wow. Even if he can’t tell me where Gráinne is.

After the performance, we hit the Southwark tavern scene. This time it was the Swan with Two Necks, where the ale had a tinge of clove.

Already the routine was set: first, Andrew North and I crooned a drunken Morley duet while everyone else settled in with their pots and pottles and bowls and tankards. Then the gaming started, while Ned tried to chat me up and Will sat silently watching everyone with a distracted smile on his face, as if he were a scout from another planet spying on the great chaotic experiment called Humanity. When Andrew got too drunk to play to his advantage, he stumbled over to us, cheerfully demanding another duet. Because of the Chandelier Event, I was leery, but Andrew insisted it should be part of our act and tried to pay the landlord’s son to drop the chandelier on cue. Ned rebuked him and used the moment to grab Will and myself and leave. We hailed a wherry and, once we’d disembarked, hied ourselves to the Mitre Tavern.

The Mitre was north of the Thames, on Fleet Street. It had a big room in the back where musicians and two-bit theatre companies sometimes performed. It was directly on our path home, so it was the perfect place to hold our shadow rehearsal.

When we arrived at the Mitre, there were still musicians and dancers bustling in the back room, but the front was nearly empty. This front room contained the largest table I had seen yet, a massive square about ten feet to a side, now cluttered with leftover food and bowls and gaming gear. Ned and I shamelessly scavenged the dregs as Will spoke with the landlord, who’s a friend of his. The landlord gave him a key to a private space on the first floor. Ned and I followed up the steep wooden staircase, the steps worn smooth and concave from decades of use. These ascended to a landing corridor, which opened into a meeting room with a table surrounded by benches and lanterns affixed to the wall. This made the room brighter-lit than downstairs. As the table itself was the largest horizontal plane, we climbed up on it and rehearsed the same witch movements we’d used that morning, but instead of Gráinne’s spells, we recited Will’s actual lines. As I said, the first scene was fine as is, and the second scene only needed a tweak, so we started with the third scene. The big one. The “double, double, toil and trouble” bit.

Ned, as Witch Number One, stood in the middle of the table. He hunched over and spoke in a demented, whispered falsetto:

To either side, Will and I drew breath to join him: “Double, double, toil and trouble!” we all three whispered together, and then cackled and wiggled our fingers most fiendishly. “Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

“Fillet of a fenny snake, / In the cauldron boil and bake,” said Will, beginning the world’s best recipe for bullshit:

I opened my mouth to join in on the next “double, double,” but Ned abruptly held his arm out to stop us. With his other hand he pointed sharply toward the door.

Somebody on the other side had hold of the latch and was very slowly starting to open it.

“Stand away, stranger,” Ned barked. “Unless you’ve business with us. In which case, make yourself known.”

We stared at the thin column of darkness between the jamb and the door. Waiting. Whoever was on the other side neither opened nor closed it. No voice spoke.

“Sir?” Ned demanded again. Will, who was closest to the door, made a gesture as if to go check in person, but Ned shook his head. “Sir,” he repeated. “We’ll thank you to shut the door if you’ve no business with us.”

Will shrugged and gestured us to resume chanting—but Ned, frowning, shook his head no. Voicelessly he mouthed, He has not moved away from the door.

He gestured us to lean in toward him. “There is a creaky plank outside, I noticed when we entered. We didn’t hear it as he approached because we were all chanting. We should hear it when he leaves—else he hasn’t left. We sound like a bevy of witches, and this is the reign of King James. Somebody could haul us off to Ludgate Prison and reap a happy reward for themselves.”

Will, still looking unconcerned, climbed off the table and took a step toward the door, throwing it wide open to expose the landing. There was nobody there, but we heard the shuffling of leather-shod feet rushing down the stairs. He stepped out onto the landing and peered over the balustrade.

“Aha,” he said, sounding pleased. “I see him. He’s chatting with the landlord. I’ll just go and tell him we’re not witches.”

“There’s naught wrong with explaining ourselves,” I said, but Ned shook his head.

“The landlord knew we weren’t to be disturbed, and yet then he let someone disturb us. So ’tis either a constable or a witch, and neither will care what Will has to say. My money’s on that witch of yours.”

A collective piercing shriek shredded the air, followed by a boom so intense my ears popped; voices cried out in terror and a thud shook the floor; shouts of alarm cut through the thrum of voices. We rushed for the stairs.

At least a hundred patrons from the back segment of the tavern had flooded into the front, gesturing madly toward the room they’d just fled and screaming for the landlord. Some men had flipped over the massive central table—that was the boom—and hefted it to the opening between the two halves of the tavern. They had dropped it there—that was the thud—to barricade the back room from the front one. From halfway down the stairs, Ned called for his brother, but his voice made no dint in the cacophony. We both scouted the crowd but couldn’t see him. Ned took my hand and we descended together. Through the outrage and terror, I was able to follow one conversation:

“But it chased him into the room. It was following him! It must be his own one!”

“You’re both off,” scolded a third voice. “There wasn’t a man and a bear, there was just a man who turned himself into a bear.”

“Hear now! Quiet!” shouted the landlord. “Let’s have it from one voice only. You.” He pointed to a fellow, ashen and trembling, carrying the remains of a fiddle. In one hand he held the neck, with the strings splaying out like static-bedeviled hair; in the other hand, the body of the instrument, splintered.

“We were in the middle—the middle of a dance,” the fellow stuttered. As he spoke, dozens nodded assent; dozens mmm’d and aye’d in agreement. “And all of a sudden, in through the doorway, on his hind legs, rushes a huge bear, like that one at Paris Gardens that always kills the dogs.” More agreement, which the landlord shushed. “And there’s a man right in front of it, just entered the room himself a moment earlier, and-and-and the bear grabs him from behind, picks him up like a child picking up a toy, and hurls him clear across the room and right at me.” Brandishing what was left of his instrument: “My fiddle took the force of it. Everyone screams and gives way, and the bear rushes at the man—and at me!—like he’s ready for supper, and by then everyone was screaming and we all ran out. The bear didn’t mind me then, it was only after the man.”

The landlord stared sardonically at the fiddler until the assenting murmurs had quieted. “You are saying that on the other side of that barricade, a bear is feasting on one of my patrons? He’s at it now?”

“Silence!” he shouted, and the room shut up. “There was no bear. A bear entering this tavern would have ambled right past me, and I’d have noticed it. There is no bear.”

“Then it weren’t a bear when it entered!” shouted an old man near the door. A hum of agreement from those around him. “’Tis a man who conjured himself into a bear. ’Tis witchcraft surely.”

The landlord glared at them. “I allow no witchcraft in my tavern. And ’tis a strangely quiet bear,” he added.

“They’re quiet when they eat,” announced another fellow in a blacksmith’s apron. “I seen it at the Gardens when they maul a dog.” A general nodding and sounds of agreement.

The landlord swallowed, a visible crack in his implacable façade of calm. “I will go and see this nonsense for myself,” he declared, “and find the truth of it.” He reached beneath the counter and casually pulled out, I kid you not, a fucking battle-axe. It had a curved blade to one side of the shaft and, 180 from that, a spike. (I wonder what mischief took place here that he felt he needed to keep such a thing at hand.) He held it with both hands before him, blade forward; the crowd murmured with fearful approval and made way for him to cross toward the upended table.

Two men pivoted the table to allow a narrow passage between table and jamb. He took a breath and then stepped through. Half the crowd pushed toward him and the other half away.

After a moment of hushed anticipation: “What the—what?!” The landlord’s voice was barely audible; men shushed each other trying to hear. After an endless moment, the landlord re-entered, carrying the axe in one hand, the flat of the blade against his shoulder. His free hand dragged by the wrist none other than William Shakespeare. Will blinked as if he had just woken up, seeming indifferent to the hubbub around him. Cries of amazement greeted them.

“Not a bear in sight!” hollered the landlord irritably. “Return the table to its proper place, sirrah,” he ordered. “A mass delusion is what this is! What accounts for it, be ye all bewitched?”

If he intended that as a belittling joke, it backfired, for many voices insisted that yes, surely, manifestly, they had been bewitched—and here, in his tavern. Whether that made Will a sorcerer or the victim of sorcery, and whether the landlord was culpable—these matters were instantly debated with the kind of fury that follows a collective adrenaline surge. Fistfights broke out. Ned and I rushed to help Will and turned our backs on the commotion.

Will, in slow motion, looked around the room as if curious about something he could not quite put his finger on.

“He’s going nowhere until he explains himself,” said the landlord, even as the musician pushed through the crowd and announced, “He owes me a fiddle!”

Will looked at the musician, almost sorrowfully. “Did I break your viol, sir?”

“Here’s silver for it,” said Will, as if entranced. He slowly reached for his belt, but Ned stepped between them.

“Come you tomorrow to the Globe Theatre,” he told the musician. “I will be there, I’ll attend to this. Your fiddle looks past mending.”

“Bring the bill of sale for a new one. John Heminge will take care of it if I’m not there.”

“Come ye tomorrow to the Globe and we shall sort it. My brother’s injured and I must nurse him now.”

The musician gave Ned an unhappy look, but the landlord said, “I’ll vouchsafe them. Will, let’s get you sat down and have a talk about what’s just happened here.”

“And see to his arm,” I added. “I think he’s dislocated his shoulder.” Will was rubbing his left shoulder and elbow gingerly, examining his upper arm.

For about ten minutes, there was a lot of confusion among the remaining patrons, which the landlord’s family tried to calm; we ignored it, to get Will comfortable, finding a stool and a cushion for him to sit beside the tapster’s station. We tried to coax from him a sense of what had happened—or what he perceived had happened—when he went downstairs. He still looked calmly confused.

“I came downstairs because we’d been spied on, and I saw the spy talking with you,” he said to the landlord. “A shortish fellow in a dark cloak.”

The landlord shook his head. “Just before the commotion, do you mean? No, there was none by me. I was collecting the dregs of the night, everyone had gone to the back room for a final dance.”

“You did not, my friend. I saw you go up the stairs, and next I saw you was just now in the back room with a bruised shoulder.”

The four of us exchanged looks. “There must be some witching to this,” said Will in a tone of confession and apology. “I can think of no other explanation.”

The landlord, a large man with rough fingers, folded his meaty arms before his chest. “A witch came into my tavern, disguised as a bear, and tried to kill you, but failed.”

The landlord opened his mouth to speak and then stopped himself, considered his thoughts, began to speak again, again stopped himself, and then began a third time. “I leave it to you and the witch to sort out your differences,” he said at last, “but I cannot welcome you here again until you’re sorted.”

“Of course,” said Ned, reaching for his purse. “And as for the damages—”

Will’s eyes brightened. “Tell your regulars it went exactly as intended. ’Tis a stage trick for a play we will be presenting next season. Didn’t it go off well?”

The landlord gave him a look. “You’re writing a play about a murderous bear.”

“I am now,” said Will. He stood. “Let us to Silver—oh.” He sat again quickly. “Oh. I am unsteady yet.”

“Let the wife bandage your shoulder with a poultice,” said the landlord. He looked at Ned. “If there be witchery, get you home at once to put charms against it at your threshold. I’ll do the like here.” He lowered his voice. “I know a crucifix will drive the devil out, but better yet I’d make a witch bottle with nails and urine.”

Ned nodded with an expression that suggested: Well, of course, who wouldn’t?

“I’ll walk him home, after Kate’s seen to his shoulder and I’ve shut up here for the night,” said the landlord. “You and the lad go now. ’Tis safest that way.”

Notes written on the back of a Union Jack banner announcement, in the hand of Edmund Shakespeare, in haste, late the night of 13 April 1606, Cheapside, London

. . . So comes it that the “youth” Robin and myself, having left the Mitre tap-house in some amazement from our brush with witchery, are walking through the stinking night alleys of Cheapside, sauntering towards Silver Street, not so much as a lantern to light our way, only the uneven illumination from sundry taverns on our route, the light flickering wanly out of windows onto the uneven and rough-finished cobbles. We walk shoulder to shoulder, or rather say elbow to arm, as I am taller than my good Robin by a head.

Northwards we stride, Robin on my right, when of a sudden, from the yawning shadows behind, a brigand clasps hands on Robin and shoves the “youth” hard into the darkness, then—I being the better dressed, and so presumably the one carrying lucre—grabs my cloak and yanks it down until, having pulled me off balance, he does wheel me round and shove me up against the nearby wall, his hand clapped hard to my shoulder to keep me fast. His cap is pulled low o’er his face and I can see nothing but a glint of evil mirth in’s eyes, no other human feature visible. His breath reeks of ale, his breath is laboured but steady; he is a professional cutpurse, sure. Such a man will not hesitate to kill his prey if it gets him what he seeks. On reflex, raise I my arm to toss him off me, but then I see him draw his own arm far back, level to the ground, and comes in at me with a thrust, a dagger aimed right at my throat.

I hold up my hands to show I will not struggle, but undeterred the footpad is, and still the deadly tip of the dagger is making for my larynx . . . when suddenly, lo!

Into this perilous scene young Robin hurls “himself,” shoves me bodily out of the way with such energy that the thief’s hand clapped to my shoulder falls away like snow. Having drawn all the attacker’s focus to “himself,” Robin wields “his” heavy cloak in frenzied fanlike movements, the weight of it interfering and repeatedly dashing the robber’s hopes of driving home a thrust. Then doffing “his” cap in the other hand, Robin flourishes this as a buckler and swashes away another quick thrust.

Myself, having recovered balance in the darkness on that stinking lane, would of course have offered assistance to dear Robin, but now the desperado shifts his angle and thrusts one final time at Robin, who steps adroitly aside, then (after dropping both cloak and cap into the grime) gripping the bandit’s wrist from the side, with thumb on the outside and fingers on the inside, squeezing the fleshy heel of the thumb so hard that the foe’s hand curls from the force of it, weakening the grip and changing the angle of the weapon, and then does Robin, with the flat of “his” hand, smack the side of the blade and so disarm the churl. The dagger clatters to the street and bounces . . . but remains in reach.

But Robin is not satisfied. Stepping onto the blade to secure it, “he” squeezes the enemy’s dirt-encrusted wrist harder and then, with both hands, spreads by force the yokel’s palm full open, and now twists the fellow’s wrist roughly in an outward arc, forcing the fellow’s whole body to follow after (else risk his wrist and elbow being snapped). Hoping yet to avoid a fall, the fellow grabs hard at the neck of Robin’s doublet—but anticipating this, does young Robin’s own hand rise to meet the fellow’s, pressing “his” thumb against the flat of the purse-snatcher’s thumbnail and (as I could make it out) squeezing back and down so hard that the man, he yelps and falls to his knees in a desperate attempt to avoid the pressure Robin is applying.

So now the brigand is on his knees, each of his hands still gripped by each of Robin’s. He yanks his left hand free of Robin’s clutch, with a clear aim to push Robin’s foot off the weapon and retrieve it for himself. To which Robin says, seeing his intention, “Think not on that, sirrah,” and when the oaf does not heed this, Robin twists his wrist hard, saying louder, “I jest not, sirrah, forsooth, think not on that,” so that the cutpurse, cringing, raises his free hand in surrender to demonstrate he will not think on it. At this point he is gasping with amazement and very nearly on the edge of tears. “But she said naught of your defences,” he complained, and at that moment, I myself step in to bring an end to all this conflict, and with a hearty roundhouse do I bludgeon our assailant in the face, leaving him blank-eyed in the dirt.

“Truly,” says Robin with a cross look, “that was uncalled for, Ned! Now we cannot question him who she is.”

“I would not believe a word he spoke anyhow,” I rejoined. “’Twould be a waste of time.”

And thus do we leave our foe vanquished in the gutter and continue on our way home.

Entering into the rooms on Silver Street, we sank onto stools beside the large central table and took turns swigging from Will’s best bottle of brandy-wine.

Ned fidgeted a bit, drew a long suck from the bottle. Then he blurted out, “I confess shame you had to rescue me rather than my rescuing you.” He handed me the bottle.

I tipped my head back for the dregs but there was nothing left. “The only thing you should be ashamed of is passing me an empty bottle,” I groused, and stood up. “You saved me from the chandelier, remember? I owed you, and now the debt it paid. Where does your brother stash his spirits?”

“On that shelf beyond the bed. But ’tisn’t the role of a woman to go rescuing a man.”

“By my era, we see things differently,” I said firmly, and felt around in the dark corner for the shelf. I was still shaking from the encounter with the cutpurse and didn’t trust myself to hold a candle.

He considered what I’d said and then grinned sheepishly. “My desire to be chivalrous must strike you as backward, then.”

He stood up, mouth wide in comical protest. “Are you accusing me of being too forward?” He joined me in feeling around for the bottle, his own body casting a shadow that impeded him. “Haven’t I given myself a crick in the neck from sleeping on the floor all week? Would a forward man do that?”

“That could be part of your strategy,” I said, and added (quoting Lady Macbeth), “Look like the innocent flower / But be the serpent under’t.”

He took two steps along the shelf so that we were beside each other. He looked me full in the face and pushed me by the shoulder, playfully, so that I stumbled back and steadied myself on a pile of books at the far end of the shelf. Without taking his eyes from mine, Ned leaned in close to me and I thought he was going to kiss me. No. He shoved the books off the shelf with one hand, so that my upper body lurched backward toward Will’s canopied bed and I had to grab at a bedpost to keep from falling onto it. With a meaningful smile, he took a step and closed his hand over mine on the bedpost. “I’d love to be the serpent in your innocent flower.”

He looked surprised and delighted. “In truth, I hope ’tisn’t too innocent,” he said. He leaned in over me, his features sharpened in the candlelight. “I hope ’tis knowledgeable of certain things.”

He wasn’t expecting quite that inviting an answer. I could see him blush and adjust his stance a little as his codpiece twitched. “You must be a witch,” he said after a moment. “Else I would not be so enchanted.”

There was no morning-after weirdness, and even if there was you wouldn’t want to hear about it, so I’ll just skip to the part where we slept really well, and then were cheerfully up and dressed before Will was home.

Will returned on his own, without assistance, after spending the night in the care of the landlord and his wife. Between them all they could not puzzle together what happened the night before, but it seemed obvious to me Gráinne was prepared to fucking murder William Shakespeare in order to make sure her nasty spells were recited onstage. (He hasn’t written King Lear yet, so clearly it is not his time.) (Although it wouldn’t be a travesty if he bought the farm before Henry VIII. Seriously.)

The pain and bruises from the bear encounter were inexplicably gone. Will could move his arm without difficulty, as if nothing had happened to him. Maybe the landlord’s wife was a witch? In any case, his only take-away was now he wanted to write a bear cameo into one of his plays.

The brothers headed for the Globe, and I hoofed it up to Rose’s for a Tristan update. I was a wreck, traveling on my own. Tristan hadn’t arrived in 1606 yet. (Still kind of a mind-fuck that in my experience of reality he isn’t here or there, while in his own experience of reality he’s here until he’s there.)

Strictly speaking there was no reason to keep working at the Revels Office, since we were going to perform the play with Shakespeare’s lines regardless of what was in the licensed script. But Mel has said that until a DEDE is accomplished, it’s SOP to maintain the status quo. Which means that until Macbeth opens (and Tristan shows up and then I save his butt), I continue to work for Tilney.

I’d explained this to Will, who’d informed Heminge (the company manager) that he wanted me to spy in Tilney’s office, because of the new anti-blaspheming laws. Since the three witches were all lodging together, Will explained, we’d rehearse our scenes at home in the evenings, and the prompter needn’t worry himself about it.

So now I hustled myself to the Revels Office, rehearsing my swagger and man-voice, and upon being admitted to the Master, I groveled and apologized and said there’d been an illness in the family that accounted for my truancy. He wasn’t pleased.

When we got through with the groveling bit, he instructed me to resume my decluttering. He himself was semi-kinetic all day, meaning the big table was free, so I began making orderly piles on it. It was a little like doing my taxes. (If you’re an actor, you can make practically your whole life a business expense as long as you have the receipts, so I was an ace at this part.)

Tilney would stride in about every quarter hour, look over my shoulder, pull some document out of one pile, and stride back out. A lot of other people were also in and out of the room. Because I was in an enclosed space where guards patrolled, I felt safe for the first time since the Chandelier Event. After an hour or so, I stopped doing double takes when somebody entered. Mostly it was men, of course, and some boys, checking the rehearsal schedule or looking up an invoice or just seeking the boss man to answer a query. But shortly before the dinner break, two underweight, pale young gentlewomen appeared, accompanied by a fatherly chaperone. They wanted Master Tilney to show them their dresses for their dance cameo in The Masque of Lightness.

They could not stop tittering when they looked at me. In my deepest voice, I directed them downstairs to the costume shop. They held hands and exchanged looks that made them titter even harder, and I tensed up as I realized they could tell I was a woman. They were laughing from nerves—they didn’t know what to do with their insight. Their ridiculous behavior would out me, even if they didn’t intend to.

When they turned to leave the room, one of them said over her shoulder in a stage whisper, “We find you ever so handsome, sir!” After more tittering, they exited with their guardian.

I did some deep breathing until my blood pressure chilled a little and then returned to sorting.

About a quarter hour later, an attractive, buxom woman in a simple woolen dress came bounding into the room. Assuming she was attending the gigglers, I used my manly-man voice to inform her: “The Master is downstairs in Costumes with your mistresses.”

She looked at me. And then didn’t stop looking. She was staring. With a knowing, amused expression that bordered on a sneer. And with that same clenching in my gut, I thought, She knows I’m a woman, now I’m fucked. I could feel my pulse in my neck so clearly I think it must have been visible to her. I stood there, trying to look innocent and manly, waiting for her to call me out. I reviewed my mental diagram of the building and mapped out three different escape routes, depending on what kind of alarm she raised and who chased after me.

Eyes sparkling, she nodded. “Not a pure eejit, at least, you’re figuring it out.”

“I wot not what you speak of,” I protested, and made a show of returning my attention to sorting the invoices. I could actually see my hands shaking, and I pressed them against the table as though trying to scrape some wax off the surface.

“Don’t be bothering with artifice, lass,” she said breezily, and stepped farther into the room. “’Tis just some questions I have, and then we can get on with things.”

“Questions about hosiery?” I asked, grabbing some receipts and waving them purposelessly at her. “That’s all I’m good for. If you’ll excuse me—”

“I’ll be excusin’ you in my own time and my own way,” said Gráinne, as if she were doing me a favor. “Look at me, lass.”

I didn’t. I pressed the receipts back onto the table and cemented my gaze to them as if my life depended on not looking up because that was probably the case.

“Ms. Lyons,” she said in an arch tone, and goddammit, I glanced up reflexively at my own name. She seemed delighted with herself—so lusciously, joyfully so, that I found myself thinking, It’s too bad she’s a bitch. If only we could be buds, she’d be so much damn fun to hang out with! And then I thought, Well, why can’t we be friends? I mean, we’re professional rivals, but, like, so are Venus and Serena Williams and they hang out together all the time off the court, because sisters, right? She just seemed so cool and I really wanted her to like me, the way I haven’t wanted anyone to like me since I was about thirteen, and her smile was so welcoming it seemed pretty clear that if I just told her what she wanted to hear she would reward me with unwavering friendly—holy shit.

“Fuck off out of my head,” I snapped, startling back to sense again. “I’m not falling for some lame-ass psy-ops.”

She was taken aback, but then she smiled again, although more steely than sparkly now. “I was trying to be friendly-like, but we can be going about it other ways if you insist. What’s your poison, then? ’Fraid of the dark, might you be?”

She flung her arms up, all fingers outstretched and taut—and all the light went out of the world. I don’t know if she was blocking my vision or blacking out the windows or what. I could not see a fucking thing. Which could have been fun if I’d been expecting it. But this did not at all jibe with my understanding of magic.

“I love the dark,” I said loudly. “Can you take away sound too? Sensory deprivation is the best.”

“Thanks for the tip,” came her voice, and suddenly—I don’t know how to describe this really—but suddenly there was so much light, bouncing off objects so vibrantly the light itself had mass and made noise; but then so did everything else. Like every molecule in the room had its own personal mike and she had turned all the speakers to 11. A mouse’s breathing in the corner was loud as a trumpet, floating dust particles scraped against air currents, my heartbeat was louder than a disco, and the candle flame’s flutter was a full-spectrum strobe. I am not good with overstimulation, and after about three seconds I was whimpering in a fetal position on the floor.

“Now that be lame-ass psy-ops,” said Gráinne with satisfaction. “Stand up. It’s intelligence I’m after.”

I was back on my feet in a moment but immediately turned my attention to the piles of papers. “I’m not at liberty to discuss Master Tilney’s books—”

“So you’re an eejit after all?” she said crossly, and back came the strobe and the disco and the chuntering of my own eyelashes rubbing against each other. I lasted maybe four seconds this time before caving.

She erased the chaos. Exhausted, I got to my feet. “It’s good behavior I’m expecting,” she said in a chatty tone. “Just up until the last. And then out of regard for your kinsman Tristan, I’ll make the end of you painless as possible.”

LETTER FROM

GRÁINNE to CARA SAMUELS

County Dublin, Vernal Equinox 1606

Auspiciousness and prosperity to you, my friend!

In the moments I cross paths with you four hundred years from now, sure even the briefest exchanges seem promising, and I continue to hope you’ll pledge yourself fast to my cause.

I’d thought the whole scenario with Macbeth was all set, now Tilney had licenced my charms into the script. Anticipating that the Lyons brat would try to restore the original lines herself, I put a spell of protection on the manuscript, and so while she did attempt to rewrite the spells, it magically reverted to what I’d set. So the spell itself was safe.

But since I’d found myself with an “enemy agent” outside the ken of any of the Fuggers, sure it seemed a convenient time, and a wise one, to blast her from the world. I was eager to do it quickly and turn my attentions then to another, far more potent project involving an isle in the Mediterranean.

I did a bit of scrying, which told me the Lyons whelp was still in London, in a tavern on Fleet Street. I hied myself there and (on a hunch, given she’s passing herself off as his kin) asked if Mr. William Shakespeare was imbibing there. The landlord told me, sure enough, the playwright was in a private room upstairs with friends. Maybe they’re just having a fuck, I thought, but probably not. Probably they were doing something I care about.

Now as you yourself are learning with your witching skills, magic’s a powerful tool, but don’t be thinking it makes us all-powerful. ’Tisn’t a perfect tool for all needs. I cannot safely make myself something else from which I cannot retrieve myself. So to get upstairs, I could not render myself as a moonbeam or any such fanciful thing as that, but I was able to charm the staircase to receive my weight in silence. So I got up the stairs without a creak and rested on the landing, listening in. And what was the occupation of the folk on the other side of the door but—mark this!—the rehearsing of Macbeth witch scenes! With Shakespeare’s original words. So now I was truly eager to dispatch the Lyons bitch, for clearly she would be making a nuisance of herself until she was gone.

My intention was to lure her downstairs away from Shakespeare and kill her magically, which should have been an easy thing. But in my exasperation I let my excitement get the better of me—a cultural weakness, so ’tis—and didn’t I create a fanciful plan that had little to recommend it in hindsight. I determined to charm myself temporarily into a bear and then just murder her right then and there as she came down the stairs. If I made the charm to last but a few minutes, then none could stop me for the fear they’d have of me, and by the time everyone had recovered from their amazement, I would no longer be a bear. The bear would have seemed to vanish, and in the chaotic frenzy that would follow, I could slip away undetected. Everyone would be sauced, so nobody’s word could be accounted accurate, and this way I did not have to bother about the collective memory, ’twould be dismissed by all authorities. Also, I could tear her to bits beyond possible recognition.

So I rushed down the stairs, making enough noise to lure her (forgetting, in my enthusiasm, that ’twasn’t just her up there), and then ’twas enough to cast the spell and wash the memory of my presence clean from the landlord’s mind, and all the rest of them were in the back.

But once I was a bear, I was a bit foggy, not unlike as can happen after diachronic travel. This was made worse by my bodice and shift—infinitely too small for a bear, and so I was instantly in terrible bearlike agitations that put me into foul-tempered distraction as I ripped the bodice apart at the seams.

In my bear-state I knew only that I wanted to kill my enemy who would take the form of a human coming down the steps, and unfortunately it was Mr. William Shakespeare doing the descending. My bear-self grabbed him and rushed him into the back room—the murder wanted to be as public as possible—and I was just about to chomp into his head when my human-self realised the folly of it. To prevent my bear-self from eating him, I chucked him clear across the room, but instinctually that made my bear-self chase after him! Luckily—as the very hordes were running out—the charm’s time ended and I was back to being a human only, meaning a mostly naked woman with ripped underwear clinging to me in patches. The masses had cleared out with such urgency, someone had left a cloak behind, and I even found a small money purse on the floor! So mercifully, I hadn’t fucked with history too much, and I ran out of the tavern with just the cloak around me, unnoticed, in the frenzy. I cast a spell that would undo the bodily damage done to poxy Will Shakespeare over the course of some hours. And then (getting tired now, for as you may know, some spells are a powerful lot of work, so they are) being as how I was on the street with unexpected dosh, I bribed a young fella to wait with me until Ned Shakespeare and the young Lyons bitch exited the tavern—and then I paid the lad well to follow them and, under pretence of armed robbery, cut the girl’s throat.

I rested well that night.

But come morning I determined to alert Tilney that the witch-players were defying him unlawfully behind his back. Thus didn’t I go to Tilney’s . . . and who did I find there in the office? ’Tis herself, Tristan’s feckin’ kinswoman! Working for Tilney in his very office, still dressed badly as a boy and handling private papers, and still fecking alive, thank you! What does it take to hire a decent cutthroat in London, I ask you?

So I determined to work her for some intelligence and then just snap her neck. I secured her attention, which took a bit, I’ll give her that. Just as I was about to interrogate her, in comes these two fluffy-headed dandelion stalks of ribboned vanity, tittering and curtseying and blushing as to how they couldn’t seem to find their way, they’d even lost their chaperone now, and could the young lad please show them to Tilney’s presence directly?

I had a speedy thought about it and realised: to kill her now would cause more trouble than her death was worth. She, seizing the reprieve, offered to show them the way her own self, and just like that the opportunity was gone.

I waited in hopes she might return without him, but ’twas quite the opposite: I stayed alone in the room for some six or seven minutes, and then Tilney himself appeared alone. My pleasure at seeing his cold hard self was dampened by the absence of the girl.

“Pardon, sir, but you have hired the spy,” I said quietly, as he entered.

He frowned at seeing me, for I had not been announced. “What concern is it of yours whom I hire?” he asked.

“But you know he is a spy,” I protested. “Why would you be trusting him?”

“He is adept at every task I give him and more orderly than any of my other scriveners. You claim he is an agent for his cousin regarding Macbeth, and I do not doubt it, but I have approved the inert version, with your rhymes in it, rather than the one with real magic in it, so that is all behind us now. He remains my best hire in years. Your presumption is extraordinary, and I’ve no time for it, so you will remove yourself at once.”

“But it is not behind us, sir,” I protested again. “’Tis still very much in play, for Macbeth, though licenced, is yet to be performed. Are you very sure they are rehearsing the lines you approved of?”

“Of course. We have had our quarrels, but Mr. Shakespeare will not risk my censure.”

“He will risk it if a witch has put a spell on him to risk it,” said I. “Were you as close as brothers, he might still cross you if a witch charmed him to do so.”

He gave me a stern look then. “You have an obsession with this topic that exceeds reason.”

“If there be witchcraft recited before King James, ’twill—”

“I have already prevented that,” said Tilney, cross. “Let that go. If you do not leave my offices immediately, I will have you removed by force.”

I did not like the look he gave me as I went. ’Twasn’t the delectable standoffishness of earlier days. This worried me fierce, so it did, and I feared my influence on him was being undone somehow. I must needs resort to using magic on him after all, to secure my needed ends.

And, surely, I must resort to a subtler magic to be rid of the girl. Can’t be having hungry bears roving the streets, now, can I? But can’t be having her roving them either.

I am full of wonder that Tristan would send a kinswoman against me. Why came he not himself? Or is’t possible he is around as well, but hiding? Perhaps my next step must be to scry for him.

Do you not see how valuable a thing it would be to have another witch working beside me on such projects?

Handwritten letter on Revels Office stationery from Edmund Tilney to Lady Emilia Lanier

To the Right Worshipful Lady Emilia Lanier, my humble duty remembered, hoping in the Almighty of your health and prosperity, which on my knees I beseech Him to long continue.

I pray you forgive me for setting my poor penmanship before your eyes again, after so many years. ’Tis of an urgent matter I write.

As many of your circle have discussed for weeks now, there is a play under consideration for the court, pertaining to both Scottish royalty and also the traitorous menace of witchcraft. Your esteemed self being an articulate and honourable woman, it is my fondest hope you will receive me without prejudice, that I might ask your wisdom to shine upon my benighted self, regarding a particular concern relating to the aforementioned play.

Please be so kind as to inform me if you will receive me, and at what hour pleases you, or if it is your ladyship’s pleasure instead to come to the Revels Office. Should the latter please you, I will consider it an honour to give you a tour of the workshops, where we humbly strive to attain some measure of nice effects for the theatrical events we have the honour of staging for Their Majesties.

Your ladyship’s most dutiful bound obedient servant,

EDMUND TILNEY, MASTER OF THE REVELS

LETTER FROM

GRÁINNE to CARA SAMUELS

(cont.)

SO BACK I went the next day to see Tilney and work some magic on him as need be. But I was told that himself was busy speaking with another. And I sensed right off it was another witch he spoke to—I can always smell a sister witch, and I’m sure that’s a skill you have as well.

Then I grasped the meaning of his comment the time before. My zeal had distressed him, and so never mind about the Lyons spy-bitch now . . . he was no longer of a mind to trust me. He had gone straight to the Court Witch herself!

This is notable for several reasons, chief being: Recall the Matter of the Sonnets? ’Twas Lady Emilia her own self they duelled over with their pens, himself and Shakespeare. Be keeping that in mind as I describe the rest.

Also notable: consider how perfectly this action of Tilney’s must suit her. For ’twas her duty now to King James to reveal witchcraft when she encountered it. It seemed a fair way to possible that here, in the privacy of the Revels Office, Lady Emilia would reveal my spells to Tilney and undo my endeavours.

I excused myself from the lad who had ordered me to wait and exited the main building. But rather than going out the gate, I walked through the courtyard at a good clip, until I approached the kitchens. I put upon myself the spell of being unnoticeable, and then, having entered through the kitchen, it’s to Tilney’s office I hied myself, using servants’ corridors and stairways and making the occasional false turn. Finally I was several stories up and came to the shallow minstrel gallery atop the main office. Standing in the shadows and peering down, didn’t I see Master Tilney at his table. With him was the one I knew to be Lady Emilia, just for the quality she had about her. Her gown was textured ivory over a slate-grey kirtle, at once striking and demure. She had thick black hair peeking out of a very nice headdress, the hair with the odd wisp of silver in it. A known witch, and yet a valued member of the court of King James the Witch Hunter: this woman literally works her magic to her advantage! And sure she was at the top of the witch heap now, and she would not be wanting complications to endanger her position.

Nor competition, neither.

In other words, my scheme was right fecked. Tilney—no longer trusting me—would ask her if my words were real magic, and she’d say yes, of course. She would tell him how powerful dangerous they were, and that would be the end of it. I would have to flee this DTAP, my plans in shambles. (At this point I was thinking of yourself, of course, Cara, as my need for a helpmeet was so acute.)

’Twas awkward between them as they spoke, so it seemed to me; excessively polite they were. Given the history of the lady sending her please shag me, Mr. Shakespeare note accidentally to Tilney, it must have been awkward when they first greeted each other, and I was disappointed to have missed it. ’Twould be fine entertainment to see Tilney blush, I told myself. But by the time I arrived they were past the niceties.

On the table were two leafs of paper, each with writing I could not make out from this distance.

“These,” Tilney was saying, gesturing, “are variations of a single verse. One of them contains an authentic spell, but I know not which. I pray you, identify it.”

She read them over. I could almost feel her amusement.

“Whence came these verses?” she asked.

“The source is of no import to the question.”

“Perhaps you wrote one,” she said, sounding as if she were smiling.

His entire body tensed, I could see it from above. “I no longer write poetry, madam,” he said in a quiet, awkward voice.

She seemed not to have heard him, but kept re-reading the two pages.

His lower jaw was jutting out to keep his voice steady, then he continued, with dignity: “But I would have your ladyship know, ’tis the greatest honour of my life that my prose work was favoured by Queen Elizabeth.”

With a polite smile, she said, “How very glad I am to hear that,” and if she’d sounded any more gracious, I’d have lobbed a rock at her my own self.

Then very sudden doesn’t she turn and look straight up at me in the shadows of the loft. I dared not shrink back, for the movement would make me more obvious.

A lovely dark-eyed woman she was, dipping her toe into the second half of life. She knew she had power, yet felt no need to show it off. After a heartbeat, she returned her gaze to Tilney’s hawkish face.

“This is to appear in Mr. Shakespeare’s new play about the Scottish king?” She glanced back up towards me. Then turned she again to him. “And your aim is to prevent witchcraft from being performed at court.”

“Of course.”

“’Tis wise of you. And very naughty of Mr. Shakespeare to put such mischief in his script.”

“I am not the one familiar with Mr. Shakespeare’s naughtiness,” said Tilney loftily, not deigning to look at her, so that now they stood near together but looking in opposite directions, like an old married couple having a spat.

There was a pause.

“Neither am I, I assure you,” she said, and wasn’t her tone suddenly a wee bit arch? Enough for Tilney to take note of it and turn his head sharply towards her.

“I would not presume to know anything about that, milady,” he said, still with affected loftiness.

“It is presumptuous of you to believe that there is anything to be presumptuous about,” she said. Tilney glanced her way again, bemused, but she in turn glanced even farther away from him. “Certain poets use language simply to prove how well they can use language.”

He looked taken aback and gazed now at the back of her veil with almost paternal concern on his face. They remained in this tableau, and quite touching ’twould have been if I gave a feck about either of them.

“I did not realise you had been . . . misled,” he said quietly, in a trepidatiously concerned tone.

She cleared her throat a wee bit and continued in a brisker voice: “You surely know, Master Tilney, that if witchcraft is performed onstage, then I must, and will, accuse the parties responsible for it. In this case, that would be yourself and Mr. Shakespeare, and also the players performing it. Their Majesties would perceive any evidence of witchcraft as a threat to their own health, and therefore the health of the State. It is treason.”

“I am keenly aware of all of that. Therefore I found it meet to ask that you aid me in preventing treason now, to ensure you cannot accuse me of abetting treason later.”

“I say again, you are a man of wisdom for turning to me. But in my role as a plucker-out of witchcraft, I insist you tell me about the provenance of the spells.” They had retreated from their poignant moment to proper and impersonal deportment, which was fairly fecking dull, to be honest.

“They have their several authors,” Tilney said, “and I know not which to trust. One is from Mr. Shakespeare’s original manuscript. But a witch came to me claiming that an enemy of mine had tricked Mr. Shakespeare into inserting real spells into his script. She advised me to replace his with some of her own devising that she vouchsafed contained no magic.”

“Did she now,” said the lady, drily amused.

“But she has now protested too much on behalf of her own verses, which has made me doubt her. It may be she is dishonest, and it may be she herself who would entrap me.”

“Perhaps,” said the Court Witch. She hummed to herself as she once again regarded the two pages, as though she were after choosing which tart she might like from a dessert tray. Then she pointed one delicate finger to the paper-leaf lying to the left. “This one,” she said, “contains real spells. By no means use it.” Pointing to the other: “You must use this one. Ensure that these verses”—the one on the right—“are the only ones ever uttered upon the stage, and I shall have no cause to cry treason.”

“Indeed, I shall, my lady,” he said quickly.

“I advise you to destroy this page”—the one on the left—“to avoid any confusion. For if real spells such as these come to be uttered in the presence of Their Majesties, it will not go well for you.”

After a stupefied moment, Tilney snatched the left-hand leaf and tore it into bits.

Lady Emilia smiled approvingly. I bit my lower lip near hard enough to puncture it, but I made no noise. Tilney drew that right-hand paper closer to him. He raised his eyes to look at her. “I am truly and forever your humble and indebted servant.”

“’Tis no effort on my part, Master Tilney, and we at court are all so grateful for the entertainments you provide. ’Tis my honour to protect you.”

That coldly noble face softened, and genuinely touched he seemed, flushing with pleasure and not humiliation. He brought his hand to his chest and bent the knee to her. “You honour me.”

“You offered me a tour of your workshops,” she said. “I fain would see them.”

“Indeed,” said Tilney, and then paused ever so briefly. Right furious I was with both of them, but still needful to know what other intrigue might be brewing, so I listened. “I would be honoured to show you. But may I first ask another favour of you, Lady Emilia? This one on behalf of my own person, ’tis naught to do with the Revels Office.”

She gave him what I took to be a flirtatious smile, that bitch. “A personal favour?” she asked, looking delighted. She was flirting with him! How dare anyone flirt with that salt pillar of a man, when I myself had not? Especially when she had come near to breaking his heart a decade earlier? And whilst interfering with my schemes? My detestation of her grew by leaps.

Taken aback by her change in demeanour he was, and fumbled his words. “As—as I—as I spoke earlier, although we both know I am lacking as a poet, I authored a book our late exalted queen deemed very worthy,” he said. “’Twas later published, at her demand, to great acclaim and commercial success.”

Betrayed though I was by him, still my heart fluttered a bit to hear this. Good ol’ Edmund Tilney! A writer on top of all his other qualities!

“You are a man of many talents,” said Lady Emilia in a silky voice with a silky smile.

Still gobsmacked by her sudden friendliness, he was. “Poetry is not among my talents, of course,” he insisted, his cheeks pink. “You more than anyone would know that, and as for prose works, I have not published since, as I have given years of my life and labour in service to this office.”

“Which we all heartily applaud you for, Master Tilney.”

“But, Lady Emilia, I must confess to you.” He paused, then drew a long and careful breath. “I have been quietly toiling at another manuscript for many years. A work on diplomacy and policy. I had hoped to give it to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, but I was unable to polish it to my own satisfaction before her death. I feel now that it is quite perfect.”

“Ah. And you would like me to show it to Her Majesty Queen Anne, in hopes that she might show it to the King.”

“Only if you yourself felt it was worthy of such advancement. Given our epistolary history, I recognise you as my most honest critic.” Backstabbing bastard though he was, ’twas sweet to see him blush like this.

“Let us not ruminate too strongly on my past perceptions of your works, Master Tilney. This manuscript is unlike your sonnets, I am sure.” And here poor Tilney truly turned so pink I feared he might faint. “But you are under the Lord Chamberlain,” she continued. “Surely he may present it to His Majesty directly.”

He grimaced. “The Lord Chamberlain will not do me the favour of reading it. Despite the success of my previous book, the Lord Chamberlain considers my work for the Revels Office to be the sum total of my talents.”

“’Tis a shame that he be so limited in vision,” she sympathised.

“He may also have heard that I make a poor poet.” Tilney, having mastered the art of blushing, now practised the art of fidgeting. “Certainly many others have heard as much.”

“Edmund,” she murmured, suddenly so soft and familiar I nearly peed myself. “Even with magic at my command, I cannot undo history. But I assure you I suffered from that episode as well.”

He looked at her. Their faces were very close—I could see hers but not his from the angle I was at, and she was softly lit by the clouded daylight through the stained glass. She was right dazzlingly beautiful. I waited for him to grab her close and plaster her with kisses, maybe even tear her gown off.

Instead, he turned away and tapped the table nervously. “’Tis unfortunate the Lord Chamberlain cannot help,” he said. “And thus I break with custom and beseech you, though I know I am out of my place to do so. ’Tis called Topographical Descriptions, Regiments, and Policies. ’Tis a diplomatic treatise. I . . . beseech you to show it to the Queen.” He cleared his throat and took a demure step away from her and studied his feet, all self-effacement.

Realising the moment was past, she collected herself and cooed in her gracious, courtly manner that she would be pleased to read it and would send a man to fetch it from Tilney later that day.

Tilney’s eyes came near to popping out of his face, although he tried his best to contain it. “I am beside myself with gratitude that you will even consider this request,” he said, suddenly looking a right sycophantic arse.

“Your timing is most admirable,” she said.

Now his back grew something straighter. “Admirable? How so, milady?”

“Her Majesty Queen Anne would interfere with the rising ambitions of one Philip Herbert, brother to the Earl of Pembroke.”

“Ah yes, I know of him,” said Tilney, his dignity recovered now, and using the particular tone that means, I understand he and the King are fuck buddies, but we mustn’t say so.

“He is a loathsome man, though very pretty,” Lady Emilia informed him. “Extremely foul-tempered and ill-spoken. He has no manners and spends all his indoor hours at dice. The King is enthralled with him. He pays off the fellow’s gambling debts, appointed him Baron of Shurland, and next month, ’tis rumoured, he will be made an earl. The Queen despises this Philip Herbert and wishes him put in his place.”

“And he has written a book as well?”

She laughed gently. “He is not capable of such a feat. However, he is the patron of several writers.”

“And?” prompted Tilney, when disinclined she seemed to continue her thought.

“And one of his writer-pets has, by coincidence, written a diplomatic book to do with travel in Europe.”

Tilney’s eyes widened. “That is the very subject of my endeavours!” he said.

She smiled. “Yes. The King will not entertain two such books. Thus with the Queen’s support, you may eclipse Herbert’s writer. This would please the Queen greatly.”

“Who is the other writer? I have my suspicions.”

“I know not,” she said. “Philip Herbert, despite being a boorish, graceless idiot, patronises several scribblers, because that is the fashionable thing to do. He considers them his personal pets, although I daresay he never reads a word that ’tisn’t directly writ to flatter him. I daren’t speak with certainty as to his pet’s identity, although I shan’t deny that Mr. Shakespeare is a likely option.” (Lady Emilia really must despise this Philip Herbert fellow, for even I know one should speak of lords according to their lands or titles, not their Christian names. Her contempt was visceral.) “But even this week, Herbert has petitioned the King to read his own pet’s treatise. If Queen Anne could likewise petition him with a better candidate, and thus come between Herbert and his sycophantic ambitions, she would be very pleased. To thwart even a small attempt of Herbert’s is agreeable to her. She wishes to be perceived as the chief patron of writers. She would not cede that to a presumptuous upstart.”

“And it does not matter to you that the other writer, the one you would be undermining, might be Mr. Shakespeare?” he demanded hoarsely.

She gave him an impatient look. “Have you understood nothing of what you’ve heard from me today?”

“But you preferred his poetry, my lady,” Tilney said quiet-like, looking away.

“Mr. Shakespeare is a poet in the truest sense, more concerned with what his words can effect in another, than with claiming his prey once he has brought it down. He is barely of the corporeal realm. And that is very old news, Master Tilney. Mr. Shakespeare is nothing to me. You and I are only interested in what the future holds, are we not?”

My excellent Tilney regained his shellacked self again. “I shall send a boy with the manuscript this very afternoon,” he said. “And if your ladyship wishes, let us begin the tour . . .”

As soon as they were gone from the office, I made my way down the steps and didn’t I enter, just to glower at the page on the table that Tilney had shown Lady Emilia. I was furious that she had so cheated me of opportunity. I was outraged, so I was, that one of the sisterhood would not share my ambition to safeguard magic above all else. She with her life of privilege and plenty, traitor to her race for the sake of convenience.

I rushed to the table and snatched the one remaining sheet from it. I read it.

And didn’t I gasp then? Is right I did. For I’d wholly misjudged her.

ROBIN’S MID-ACTION REPORT, STRAND 1, NEW PLAN (CONT.)

Once I’d delivered the gigglers to Tilney, I was determined to stay close to him. Gráinne might have him under her sway, but not enough that he’d let her murder me on his watch. So I went along on the tour of the costume shop (which is amazing, but Tilney could barely hide how over it he was). Once the young ladies had swooned over how gorgeous their gowns were and had departed with many thanks, Tilney surprised me by demanding I follow him into a tiny private chamber through a door I’d always assumed led to a storage closet. We were alone in here.

“Be you a player in Macbeth?” he demanded.

“Sir?” I said, blinking stupidly.

“I have heard from certain sources I trust that you are rehearsing as a witch. In Macbeth. Is this true?” Rather than await my answer, he continued, in a righteously pontifical tone: “You continue to meddle, boy. ’Tis the very script—nay, the very lines—that you and I have argued over. ’Tis more than passing strange that you should continue to busy yourself with those verses. You will explain yourself.”

“S-sir,” I stammered. “In the name of our Savior, I know not what you speak of.”

“How did you pass your time two eves ago?” he asked, looking at me narrowly.

“As I do all evenings, sir, in the company of my cousins. We sup at the Mitre tap-house, as ’tis on the way back to our lodgings.” I looked him full in the face and gave him my best bland-but-honest expression.

“In a private upstairs chamber, is it?” he demanded.

So the landlord is a spy for Tilney? I wondered. Did the landlord mention the bear?

“Will is well loved in Cheapside and tires of being approached by admirers when he would be private with his kinsmen. If the landlord of the Mitre claims we do aught but sup and speak together, he is a liar, and we will henceforth take our patronage elsewhere.”

“’Tisn’t the landlord I heard it from,” said Tilney.

“Then pardon me, sir, but none other even know we dine there. You have mystified me.”

He stared at me and said, slowly and distinctly, “Tell your kinsman in plainest terms: if he does not use the lines that I reformed, he will hang.”

“Sir!”

“Not by my order,” he continued, slow and firm. “By the King’s. And when his soul leaves his body, he may well be damned.”

“Sir?” I had never heard Tilney use such Christian language before. He was as casual about witchery as people in our time are of atheism. When Elizabeth was queen, he’d even been known to employ witches to help with special effects.

“Those were authentic spells your cousin wrote into the script,” said Tilney. “I have saved his career and possibly his life by reforming them.”

“Pardon, sir, but they were no such thing,” I said hotly.

“Foolish boy,” he said. “Not one but two witches have, independent of each other, confirmed them as such.”

“They are lying. My cousin does not truck with witches,” I said. Thinking: WTF? Two witches? Now who else do I have to contend with? Rose was the only other witch I knew of, and it wouldn’t have been her.

“Your cousin has been enthralled and does not know that he is trucking with witches,” he said impatiently. “Alert him. Alert him and whoever else might be rehearsing in that upstairs room in the Mitre at night. Those people are rehearsing treason and they will hang for it. Advise him to use the lines that are in the official script.”

I dropped my glance to the floor. “Yes, sir,” I said in a subdued voice.

“Advise him not to hire any of my clerks as players,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Eyes still down. “And what else, sir?”

He hovered over me like Darth Vader without the heavy breathing. Then, relenting somewhat, he said in a kinder tone, “Advise him that the landlord of the Mitre has never said a word against him. My intelligence comes from elsewhere. I would not have him distrust his friends unnecessarily.”

I glanced up very quickly, then back down again, standard beta-dog physicality, Acting 101. He bought it.

But it was twice now he’d hauled me onto the carpet, and I doubted I would get away with it again.

Odd that whoever ratted on us didn’t mention the bear. London is a weird enough place that apparently a man-eating bear doesn’t even rise to the level of urban myth. Sheesh.

PERSONAL LETTER FROM

“repentant” witch Lady Emilia Lanier

My humble duty remembered to my beloved sister,

I write to tell you of a most excellent and unexpected development that shall enhance all efforts I make at the court. While I cannot fathom the cause behind it, some other witch, unknown to me, convinced Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, to include our most wicked, dread spell (double, double, etc., but I dare not write the rest of it here) into the text of a playscript, so that it would not only be recited, but consecrated in the written words of a certain renowned playwright who, you know, has disappointed me in years past. Master Tilney, having some doubt as to this other witch’s honour, and further having possession of a verse of nursery-rhyme nonsense, and not being clear in his mind which was the dread words of witchery and which was nonsense, did summon me for guidance. Sister, I dissembled, and I have perfectly deceived him. ’Tis none other than our most potent spells of destruction that he has placed in the playscript! This other witch, whom I suspect I shall never even meet directly, has given us the means to preserve ancient knowledge and to hide it in plain sight before the very fool who would destroy our race. I lack the words to express the profound satisfaction this provides me.

Of course naught shall come of the performing of it, for witches are all female and players are all male, therefore nobody may ever stand upon a stage and actually cast the spell. But should His Majesty’s despotic madness be merely the beginning of an ages-long persecution to annihilate us (and, sister, I fear that may be the case), something of our power has been immortalised. Future witches, even if they have retreated to a life of fear and poverty, even if they are deprived of training in our arts, will at least have the spells to seek vengeance and topple tyranny someday.

To ensure Master Tilney remains pliant, I have further deceived him regarding a book he has written. He believes himself to be in competition with Mr. Shakespeare for His Majesty’s attention regarding a travel book, and that his only chance of success is to remain friendly to me no matter what. Thus I shall keep him hopefully dependent upon me, that I may guide him as desired should other opportunities arise.

Your very assured friend and dearest sister, with the remembrance of my humble duty unto you, I humbly take my leave and rest,

Your sister, Emilia

AFTER ACTION REPORT

DOER: Chira Yasin Lajani

THEATER: CLASSIFIED

OPERATION: CLASSIFIED

DEDE: CLASSIFIED

DTAP: 4 March 1397, Ascella, Commune of Florence

STRAND: 9

I encountered an unexpected obstacle on this Strand.

As per usual, I arrived at the house of KCW Lucia late at night, borrowed clothing from her, and made my way by moonlight to the estate outside Florence, where I as usual overheard the couple, Matteo and Agnola, discussing their plans to hire out Dana as a wet nurse. As before, I went into the stable and found Dana and told her the escape plan. She was terrified but also willing to go with me.

Most of what has worked before continued to work this time, but there was one very unfortunate difference. Dana bathed in the fountain as before, managing not to cry out despite the cold; once I got her down unharmed, and we were almost safely away at the end of the garden as before, Piero came into the garden as before, and as we ran over the shifting gravel, I picked up a stone to throw.

But the footing is always unstable there, and this time I stumbled as I threw the stone. With a sinking feeling, I watched it over my shoulder and saw it land a mere twenty feet behind us, smashing against the fountain’s basin . . . so it did not distract, if anything it drew attention toward us. The captors’ eyes had not adjusted to the darkness, but the moon was bright and they would be able to see in a few moments. I grabbed Dana by the arm and pulled her down with me into a crouch behind the lion statue. We were so very close to the end of the garden, but before us was the most exposed stretch, covered with the noisy little stones.

If they found Dana all alone, apparently fleeing by her own efforts, they would be furious and beat her. But they would not kill or damage her, as that would sabotage their own plans for her. However, if they found me with her, the situation became more complicated, and my abbreviated prep for this DEDE had not prepared me for such contingencies. There was a nontrivial chance of my making blunders with far-reaching consequences. So I concluded that I’d have to disappear if they came near. I could not risk them even wondering if there was another person involved in her flight, for then they would know it was a conspiracy, and she would be under even tighter scrutiny if I returned to try again later on this same Strand.

One of the men called out, “Who’s there?” and began to cross the garden toward us in the moonlight, carrying a lantern.

I whispered urgently to Dana, “Stay here and let yourself be taken back to the stable. I will come for you later, I promise.” This was hard to say, because I had no idea if I could honor the promise.

Without a terrified girl to help along, and knowing the layout of the garden well after so many Strands, I was able to dash around behind the lion statue, slink through another segment of the garden, and then down the hill past the astrological statues and all the way to Lucia’s, to be Homed.

I request that I return immediately to a different Strand on that DTAP and attempt to use the knowledge I have gained—particularly the manner in which the stone must be thrown—to get this DEDE back on track. If there is to be any delay in my being Sent, for bureaucratic reasons, etc., I request that every moment of that time be spent in more intensive prep, so that I know better what to do if this happens again.

Text messages from burner phone to Mortimer Shore

DAY 2015 (3 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

Hello, Mortimer, attached are screenshots that I took of the DEDE report I have just submitted to DODO.

All of that is a lie. What I reported did not happen.

I followed the directive you recently passed on to me, NOT to free the slave. In reality, I was Sent to the DTAP and remained at KCW Lucia’s. I told KCW Lucia that I was researching fauna of the region for an herbal compendium to be published in the Levant. I now know an excessive amount about the laurel leaf (if Rebecca is interested?). When enough hours had passed that I could have realistically accomplished my DEDE, I thanked her for her time, and she Homed me. I invented the story in the DEDE report to make it appear I am still attempting to accomplish my mission for DODO.

You must understand what an awful thing you are asking me to do. It will be bad enough for me, to fail at the DEDE. Blevins will chastise me, then discipline me, and then I am afraid he will threaten my siblings’ status. But that is nothing compared to what will happen to Dana if we leave her enslaved to those monsters. Already I’m having nightmares about her.

So I must ask: How can we know for certain that this is required? That I must not free her? I agree it is strange how this DEDE is being treated by Roger Blevins etc., but even if that means that Gráinne is behind it, we cannot KNOW that it is related to the nonexistence of Leonardo da Vinci in another DTAP. I believe in what Tristan is doing, and I will endeavor to do what he directs, but to leave Dana to such a fate (and also: risk my own family’s legal status!) because it MIGHT have one specific consequence generations later—I cannot live with that. I think it is wrong.

Is there not some other way that we can play this? Perhaps I free her, and then we can Send somebody to see what happens to Dana. Even if your theory is correct, and she is an ancestress of Leonardo—perhaps she conceived a child by choice, not by rape, later in her life. I hope you all will reconsider your instructions to me. Is Tristan around? Perhaps he would be willing to speak to me directly about this?

Post by Dr. Roger Blevins to Chira Yasin Lajani, DOer Lover Class, on private ODIN channel

DAY 2016 (4 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

Chira:

Your actions on the most recent strand of your DEDE would be grounds for immediate probation, if not dismissal, were this not such an exceptional case. Not only did you abandon your DEDE before you had done everything possible to effect it, but by presenting yourself to the slave girl Dana, you have endangered not only her but all possible other DOers who might attempt to parachute in to fix your mess. Your unprofessional behavior has risked the well-being of this mission and lives impacted by it.

Because of the sensitive nature of this DEDE, I will confer with relevant parties regarding the most appropriate way to discipline you and redirect your efforts for the next Strand. In the meantime, you are on paid suspension of duties. Do not leave town, and keep your phone with you at all times. Under the circumstances I advise your brother and sister to do likewise.

—Dr. Roger Blevins

Journal Entry of

Rebecca East-Oda

FEBRUARY 4

Temperature today 25F, cloudy but dry, no breeze. Barometer rising. Turned the compost out back, in a feeble effort to pretend I’ll ever garden again. Same story every year. Excessive heat a concern in guest bedroom; have asked Mortimer to relocate his computer stuff to attic. He’s concerned about the potential for a zero-day exploit in the router while he’s offline; on the other hand, he recognizes what a fire hazard he’s created.

Frank has been gone almost a month and I am stymied in all attempts to find him. Thank God Mel anticipated me and ran intervention when (temporarily, but still unforgivably) I contemplated luring my offspring here and then Sending one of them to 1450 in search of him. I’m horrified at myself. Mel is no doubt entertaining similar obsessive strategies about Tristan, which perhaps keeps her kindly toward me. She did not confront me, so neither did I confront her when I learned she’d warned Mei against coming.

Of much greater urgency, and the real reason I opened this to write: horrible event regarding Erzsébet today, so awful that I cannot bring myself to include it on GRIMNIR, even on my personal channel. I will write of it only here, privately. This could undo us.

Chira sent us her falsified DEDE report, the cover story to explain why she failed to free the slave girl Dana. Chira is very upset about the instruction that she not free the slave. I understand her position.

Mel, as proxy for what she believes Tristan would order, is insistent that Chira continue to “fail”—i.e., leave the girl enslaved—on the grounds that if this DEDE is a scheme of Gráinne’s, then it absolutely must be stopped, no matter whether or not we can definitively know the outcome of it.

I understand her position too. And so does Mortimer. But Erzsébet cannot.

I was making split-pea soup, and was in the process of trimming the ham off the ham bone and shooing the impolite cats off the table. Erzsébet, lacking any kind of distraction (she had offered to make corn bread but got bored when she realized it required specific measurements), flew into a rage such as I have rarely seen from her. Was afraid she might smash the china, she was that physically agitated.

“Where is Tristan Lyons?” she demanded, and flounced out of the kitchen before I could remind her Tristan isn’t here. “Tristan Lyons!” she yelled furiously, as she stomped up the front staircase, causing the picture frames to bounce against the walls. I started after her, but then I imagined Frank putting a gentle hand on my arm. I could almost hear his advice:

What will you accomplish? he would ask. She’ll be calmer if she is allowed to storm around for a bit. You’ll be calmer if you return to cooking. Then when she has calmed down, you can feed her soup, and everyone will be happy.

She doesn’t like this recipe, I would say, and he would answer, Then that gives her something to complain about, which will make her even happier.

I forced myself to focus on pulling the meat from the bone as I listened to Erzsébet storming around the second floor, shouting Tristan’s name. There was a pause after her steps entered the bathroom—possibly she was admiring her own rage in the mirror—before she continued stomping. A moment later she stormed back downstairs into the front hall. I heard her emit a growl of irritation, then she flung open the door to the cellar and tromped down there.

A moment later, her voice erupted into my hearing again. Mortimer’s voice responded. It seems he had been patching something in the ODEC and was headed back upstairs; he was continuing to carry out this plan despite the petite Hungarian excoriating him.

“We are here to do good in the world!” she huffed, as they arrived back up in the front hall. “To prevent evil! I turned my back on Gráinne and her very understandable desire to protect magic, only because I believed that you were better people than she was.”

“And you totally made the right choice,” said Mortimer. “I hope you—”

“This is not good!” said Erzsébet. “Good people do not do this! DODO has sent Chira on a humanitarian mission and you are all telling Chira not to carry out the mission!”

“C’mon now, Erzsébet, you know it wasn’t really a humanitari—”

“To leave this poor child in bondage of execrable men who treat her like she is livestock. You cannot plead ignorance, you know what they are doing to her. If Gráinne wants to save her and you do not, how are you better than Gráinne? This is sickening.”

Mortimer, looking unhappy, came into the kitchen wiping his oil-smudged hands on a dishrag that had somehow migrated downstairs. “Really sorry, Rebecca, I think that’s a permanent stain,” he said as he laid it beside the sink.

“Listen to me!” demanded Erzsébet, at his elbow. She is a full foot shorter than he is. “Answer my question or I shall never do magic for any of you again!”

The only people who can manage Erzsébet when she gets like this are Mel, who mothers her, or Tristan, who out-alphas her. Mortimer looked capable of neither, and although I am a poor substitute myself, I realized I’d better step in. I asked politely, “What is your question, exactly?”

She turned her flashing eyes on me. “How are any of you better than Gráinne, when you want to leave this poor child to a fate worse than death?”

“We don’t win by doing what we wish to,” I said. “We win by doing what we must.”

“And why must you do this?” demanded Erzsébet. “You have no proof that you must. You are all monsters!”

“And you are a hypocrite,” I said uncomfortably. Erzsébet blinked in surprise. So did Mortimer. “We have all been meddling with people’s fate for the past five years, Erzsébet. And as I heard tell, it began with your deciding to Send General Schneider back in time to his death, for absolutely no reason.”

“No reason! Pah! He was going to put a stop to your work!” Erzsébet shot back. “You should—”

“And now Gráinne is trying to put a stop to our work,” I said.

“Then kill Gráinne,” said Erzsébet. “If you really think it is a parallel situation, Tristan should just get rid of her.”

“Gráinne beat him to the punch,” said Mortimer quietly. “So, yeah, okay, maybe it’s time to take her out. All right, we’ll add obliterating Gráinne to the to-do list.”

“Or make the other choice,” she said. “Let Gráinne have her way.”

Mortimer frowned. “What?”

“Nobody has convinced me that a technical devolution is a bad thing,” she said. “I am not on your crusade. I am simply friendly and helpful to you because I know Gráinne is dangerous. But I have never pretended to agree that technology must be preserved no matter the cost. In fact I believe almost everything that is wrong with the world right now is due to technology, and I do not care one bit if Gráinne gets her way, as long as she does not hurt my friends. But if my friends behave like monsters, then I don’t care about them anymore either.”

Mortimer held up his hands in a frazzled that’s that gesture and walked out of the kitchen.

I turned to the large bag of peppercorns I had brought out of the pantry, to refill the pepper grinder—I use the same one I have had for decades, a slender brass canister with a hand crank on the top. I reached for it, to undo the top for refilling, but Erzsébet grabbed it, brandishing it, and said, “So that means the madness must stop! And I am the one to put an end to it!” She ran out of the kitchen.

“Erzsébet!” I called, following her. “Erzsébet, don’t go down there—”

For she had dashed straight for the door in the front hallway that led down to the cellar. Down to our one precious, prohibitively-expensive-to-rebuild ODEC.

“Stop!” I cried out, possibly more loudly than I have ever cried out anything in my life, childbirth excepted. I moved toward her to try to stop her, although I have an arthritic knee and I cannot negotiate the stairs quickly.

Mortimer had gone into Frank’s study upon exiting the kitchen, but now rushed back into the corridor. He saw me by the door to the cellar, gestured me away, and practically leapt through it.

The next few minutes were a terrible cacophony that began with the two of them toppling down the stairs together. “What are you thinking?” was one of Mortimer’s few coherent statements.

“This is lófasz!” came Erzsébet’s voice up the stairs. She continued to holler, and the intensity of her tone wavered, as if she were intermittently struggling. “You must all stop meddling! You manipulated my fate for the greater good, as you call it, but if you had not done that, if you had left things well enough alone to unfold as they would, Gráinne would not now be in the twenty-first century trying to hurt you! The more you meddle, the more you create opportunities for worse meddling! So stop meddling! You cannot expect her to stop when you yourselves have no intention of stopping! So I must stop you!”

And now came a series of grunts from Mortimer, and a shriek from Erzsébet, and the sound of the pepper grinder, having been hurled across the basement, bashing into something that collapsed easily and noisily (the jury-rigged shower stall). The sounds might have been the audio track of a David Attenborough documentary about rabid carnivores in a feeding frenzy. I was afraid they would knock down a load-bearing column. I imagined Frank staring down with me. We have an excellent first-aid kit, he would say reassuringly. And also good homeowner’s insurance. But maybe we should add a lock to this door to keep her from going down there on her own.

The shouting stopped suddenly, as did the sounds of struggle. Very softly, almost too low to be heard, I could just make out Mortimer’s voice. I cannot imagine what he said to her, but Erzsébet made no further noises of complaint.

“The soup will be ready in twenty minutes,” I called down the stairs, not knowing what else to say. I went back into the kitchen, wishing Frank were here.

Mortimer and Erzsébet eventually appeared upstairs. She was as white as cold ashes and clenching her jaw. He handed me the pepper mill. “Might be dented,” he said.

“It’s survived worse,” I said, and took it from him.

“I might put a lock on that door.”

“You will put a lock on that door,” I corrected.

Erzsébet has refused to eat or even drink anything all evening.

EXCERPT OF TRANSCRIPT OF

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI DEBRIEFING SESSION

CONDUCTED BY DR. ROGER BLEVINS AND GRÁINNE

DAY 2017 (5 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

GRÁINNE: Why did you not go right back to try again?

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: They caught Dana in the act of escaping, ma’am. Obviously they would place her under guard, probably in the house.

GRÁINNE: Is yourself not capable of figuring out how to spring her anyhow?

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: I do not have such skill sets, ma’am. I am Lover class and secondarily Closer class. I’m not a Tracker or a MacGyver. And as I said in my report, my prep did not adequately cover—

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Are you implying incompetence on the part of—

GRÁINNE: Never mind that, let it go. What I’m asking is: I’ve seen your personnel file. You survived hell and back, getting your family out of Syria, so you can clearly be accomplishing whatever you set out to do. That’s why ’tis suspicious you gave up so easily here.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: By what metrics did I “give up,” ma’am? I evaluated the circumstances and then took actions that I deemed appropriate. The driver of the wagon couldn’t wait around for a second attempt—and also, there was the danger that he would be found lurking near the house while Dana was trying to run away. That would make him a thief, endanger him, and further complicate the situation. The likelihood that I would be able to find Dana, free her, and get her to the meeting point in time was so low that it made most sense to come back here and try again on another Strand.

GRÁINNE: Defeatist, aren’t you, to think like that! When did the unstoppable Chira Lajani become defeatist? You should always, and only, be doing the work you are assigned to do. Sure that’s what you’re trained to do, isn’t it?

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Yes, ma’am. Although I wish to note that this DEDE is an outlier by DODO standards, in that it is far less subtle and far more direct than any DEDE I’ve heard of, and my training did not prepare me for anything of this nature.

GRÁINNE: Your training prepared you for everything. A failure of execution it is, not of training, so.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Ma’am, are you saying that in the entire history of DODO, no DOer has ever failed to accomplish their given DEDE on a given Strand?

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Do not cast aspersions on the abilities of your fellow agents. Take responsibility for your own failings.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: I am, sir. I have acknowledged my failure. I have also asked for guidance on what I should do differently, and I have not yet received any guidance. So I would like to understand the purpose of this conversation, if it isn’t to give me guidance.

GRÁINNE: The purpose! It is to let you know how displeased we are with you for making a right mess of things and to make sure you understand we will not endure another failure. There will be consequences for you if you fail again.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: I am now aware of that, ma’am. I wish to return to the DTAP and rectify the situation.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: And how do you intend to do that?

GRÁINNE: If they catch her and put her under guard, what will you do to free her, rather than just throwing up your hands in dismay and getting yourself Homed?

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: That is precisely what I was hoping to get some guidance on before I am Sent again, ma’am. Perhaps if I could discuss the details of the DEDE with the HOSMAs who were prepping me, they might—

GRÁINNE: No, you can’t be discussing the details of the DEDE itself with another soul. So if you’re lacking the ingenuity to figure it out on your own, then just us three will have to hatch a plot this moment. Dr. Blevins?

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Well, it’s not my forte, but I’m game.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: With all respect, sir, it is not my forte either.

GRÁINNE: Not your forte! You who masqueraded as an IS recruit, throwing your hands up like a helpless wee girl at this?

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Pardon, ma’am, but I was working with far more intel in that situation.

GRÁINNE: Feeble excuses. Let’s imagine, worst-case scenario, you and the girl are fleeing, and they realize she is gone and come after you.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Yes, ma’am. For the record, that is exactly what happened.

GRÁINNE: First thing you should be doing is trying to get the girl away. Aren’t there streams nearby you can be heading to, for losing the scent?

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: I don’t know the broader topography, ma’am, I was only instructed in the precise route I was to take along the road. I requested more in-depth cartography prep and the request was denied.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: We can look up the Forerunner’s maps on AutoCAD and see the rest of the area. Gráinne’s right, you should keep the girl with you and make for the nearest source of water.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Yes, sir. The underbrush is very dense along the hillside streams, though, sir.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: I’ll bring up the AutoCAD right now, we’ll map out a route for you to head toward a stream or a creek or something.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Yes, sir. All the same, what do I do if we are caught?

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Pretend you’re a member of a local abolitionist group.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: There would be no such group, sir.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Well, obviously not in the way that we associate that term with American history.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Yes, sir, but I mean specifically there is very little slavery and also almost no human inhabitants in the area. And those few people who are there would certainly know Matteo and his wife. I need a cover story that will explain why a young female stranger is alone in the countryside at night on the road, having gone into Matteo’s stable to free the slave who arrived earlier that day.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Same story as the wagoner’s—you’re a Dulcinite.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Then I will be executed for heresy.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: You are a relative of Dana’s who regretted the family’s decision to sell her into slavery. Offer to buy her back.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: With what, sir? I have no money.

GRÁINNE: You’re Lover class. Be figuring it out on your own.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Now, Gráinne—

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: If they wanted fornication, they would just have it with the slave. As my report makes clear, that is already on their agenda.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: I do not want you to think Gráinne’s suggestion is compatible with DODO’s policy on—

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: That doesn’t matter, sir. The plan simply would not work—that is what matters.

GRÁINNE: Then leave her to be found by them, but go back later and retrieve her.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: But the wagon—

GRÁINNE: Wait for the wagon driver, explain the situation to him, and ask for his assistance.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: That’s a good idea! If you screw up again, do that.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: Yes, sir. I will try not to screw up again.

DR. ROGER BLEVINS: Good, because we don’t retain incompetent employees. And if you’re not working for us, we can’t help with your family’s visa issues.

CHIRA YASIN LAJANI: I understand, sir. I will not fail next time.

ROBIN’S MID-ACTION REPORT, STRAND 1, NEW PLAN (CONT.)

Yesterday, in the evening, Will excused himself to Silver Street. Ned and I, to avoid intruding on his writing hours, joined the rest of the company for a meal and pub crawl, which gave me the opportunity to scout for Gráinne. Not that I expected her to accidentally reveal herself, but when she was spying for Grace O’Malley she hung out in this part of town posing as a prostitute, so perhaps I could get some intel on where she lurked when she wasn’t causing trouble.

Led on our rounds by Richard Burbage, and imbibing one bowl of ale per tap-house, we sampled the Green Dragon, the Boar’s Head, and the Angel on the Hoop. We were a little sauced by the time we reached the Helmet.

The Helmet’s decor was unique among the pubs on Long Southwark Road. As we approached, Ned whispered to me that the landlord was a former soldier who’d lost a leg in Tyrone’s Rebellion. He now allowed down-on-their-luck combat vets to pay for drinks (but not for prostitutes, of which there were more than the usual number here) with remnants of their military gear. It was called the Helmet because there were scores of objets de guerre, mostly iron helmets, hanging from pegs on the walls or ceiling beams or tossed into corners. Some were brimmed and crested, some were lobster-tail pot types. Some looked alarmingly rustic, hacked together by apprentice farriers.

Andrew North had been dragging me into duets at each tap-house. Since we hadn’t yet tormented anyone with “Now Is the Month of Maying,” I figured he was saving that one for the Helmet. But as soon as I’d crossed the threshold, I realized it was not that kind of place. No fa-la-la’ing with this lot. If they did any singing here, which I doubted, ’twould be the likes of “Bedlam Boys” or “Agincourt Carol.” The tobacco fumes hung heavier than any other place we’d patronized. Other alehouses featured games like dice and cards. Here, in the center of the room between two rows of tables, guys were throwing daggers at man-shaped wooden dummies painted to look like Spanish soldiers. Even hearty Burbage looked a little cowed.

But not Andrew North. Oh, no.

Andrew held out his arms and hollered, “There you are, lovey!” to a ruddy-looking young woman in a long apron, her braids falling out of place as she was rushing to bring a bowl of brew to a nearby table. Andrew took the bowl from her, set it down, and spun her around, grinning. She looked both pleased and exasperated.

“Andy North, you thing,” she said, slapping his hands away and retrieving the booze. “Don’t bother me now while I’m working.” Then she winked at him. “Bother me after.” She went off to make her delivery as the players—like a school of fish out of water—clumped together, well off the dagger-throwing axis.

“It’s never a bother when it’s me,” called Andrew after her. “Don’t let my friends hear you, I’ll lose my reputation.”

“You’ve no reputation to lose,” muttered a man at the nearest table. He was round-faced and bald. Beside his bowl rested an unlit lantern and an iron handbell.

“Hello, Harry,” answered Andrew, doffing his hat while also clapping the fellow on the back. “Meet my friends, the most law-abiding pack of scoundrels you’ll ever find in England. Here’s Harry the Constable, lads. We fought together at Aherlow.” He plopped down on the bench beside Harry.

“You were a soldier?” I was gobsmacked. I know not every military vet has to behave like Tristan, but come on.

Something dangerous flashed across North’s face. “More of a soldier than you’ll ever be,” he said with a crisp, angry laugh.

Operator error: I should have apologized and then found a whore to flirt with. But I’m a dope, so I tried to play the Andrew-and-Robin-vaudeville-duet card. That worked in the civilian pubs. Not here. “Wait’ll my beard grows in, and I’ve a chance to serve His Majesty,” I said. “Then we’ll sit around the fire swapping stories from the front, and I warrant I’ll out-man you, every blow.”

The look he gave me then. I read it clearly as a sermon. Without uttering a word, he informed me:

You’re a woman.
I know you’re a woman.
Everyone knows you’re a woman.
I have never once come close to outing you.
That’s because we’re mates.
But a mate doesn’t diss a combat vet that way.
Therefore you are not really my mate.
Plus, you just gratuitously dissed me.
And you did it in front of a constable, asshat.
You have 0.5 seconds to guess my next move . . .

I didn’t guess in time.

Andrew sprang up from the stool with a clenched fist raised to deck me. But as he drew his fist back, he looked abruptly to his own right and lessened the tension in his arm, as if something had distracted him. It was a feint, of course. He was deliberately exposing his left cheek to me—an easy target to deck while he was “distracted.” Now I had two choices: punch him (in front of the constable, his fellow veteran) or don’t punch him. But if you’re a “real” man in early-modern England and someone is about to strike you, you defend yourself by striking first. Meaning: damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.

So I made a third choice. I did not strike him. When he moved in to strike me after all, I stepped aside—and then as his strike propelled him past me, I reached out and shoved him in the direction his punch was already taking him—toward the cluster of players (less Burbage, who had vanished).

North hurled himself into the block of them. They clapped him on the arm and back and shoulder in a manner that screamed, Okay, you can drop it now, hahahaha, no really, fucking let it go.

But Andrew didn’t let it go. He pushed away from them, glowering, then faced me again with hands clenched, hips squared, knees bent. The men around us pushed away to make space for a brawl. Before I could take a defensive position, Andrew rushed me, grabbed me round the middle, and hoisted me, first to chest height, and hitched me up onto his shoulder. I willed myself to relax—the tenser I was when he hurled me to the floor, the worse it would be when I landed.

But he didn’t hurl me down. He hurled me up. Like a father tossing a toddler in the air for fun. And then he stepped away to watch my gangly, awkward fall. Most of my weight landed on my left knee and elbow, which hurt but wasn’t debilitating. I scrambled up, fists raised. He laughed in my face. Harry the Constable had watched the whole thing impassively.

“Mind how you go, you daft lad,” Andrew said, and smacked my shoulder.

As laughter rippled around us, he leaned toward me—so I leaned too and spoke before he could. “I beg pardon,” I said in his ear. “I am ashamed.”

“You better be,” he answered sharply, but he was pleased that I’d said it without prompting. “Disrespect me again and I’ll cut your breeches off.”

I nodded earnestly. He grinned.

“All right then,” he cried out to the rest of the players. “Fancy a drink? Then Robin and I will entertain you with a tune, and then there’s a gaggle of geese in the back.”

“Burbage’s already goosing one,” said Ned. “Perhap Robin and I can share one.”

I shot him a warning look, but too late. Now all the King’s Men knew we were Friends with Benefits, and boy, did they think it was hilarious.

“Like that one we shared the other night at the Mitre,” Ned went on, like the overacting dork that he is, and this only further cemented the company’s understanding of things.

“Surely,” said John Lowin, leering. “That same tart works here, go find her out back—Fanny Absent, I think she’s called! She’s cousin to Dick the Rod. Sounds like you both know Dick the Rod? He lives up Buttshaft Lane.”

Harry the Constable began to listen to the joshing while pretending not to. Indifferent to bar brawls and prostitution, turns out he had a soft spot for homophobia. Andrew noticed this the same moment I did.

“A song first,” demanded Andrew, grabbing my elbow and pulling me down on a bench beside himself. With a warning look at Ned the Moron, he said, “Cool your heels, Neddy.”

“Thanks,” I said under my breath.

“Go off with a whore after the song,” Andrew muttered. “Make sure Harry notices. I’ll keep Ned here.” I nodded, grateful. He grinned and raised his voice again. “All right! You know the treble for that new one, ‘Come, Sirrah Jack, Ho,’ don’t you, lad?”

“Come, Sirrah Jack, Ho” is the tobacco infomercial that Don Draper would have written if Mad Men had a love child with The Tudors. We sang our way through the list of its physiological benefits as Burbage reappeared from the wing of the establishment in which the sex workers plied their trade. He strode purposefully in our direction, reaching us at the final stanza:

Then those that do condemn it,

Or such as not commend it,

Never were so wise to learn

Good tobacco to discern,

Let them go,

Pluck a crow,

And not know,

As I do

The sweet of Trinidado.

Burbage pointed teasingly at me as we finished the final note. “Lad,” he said, “I have just been served by the finest wench in Christendom and am instructed to tell you how she noticed you upon arrival and took a fancy to you. Last on the right.”

Everyone in hearing distance found this worthy of lewd, approving commentary. Andrew pushed me from behind. “Go at it, you lucky dog!” he commanded with hearty lechery. “Ned, my friend, come join me for a moment!”

I chucked Burbage on the shoulder with a manly much obliged expression and strutted toward the back.

The moment I turned the corner, everything changed. No candle branches or table lanterns as out front—here, just one feeble smoky torch, braced to a post. I was in a corridor about eight strides long, as wide as my arms outstretched. There were three stall-like rooms to each side, with closed curtains in the doorways. No tobacco here, but the smell of sex hung heavy in the air—and the sounds of it.

The far curtain at the right was open. I walked toward it. My shadow lunged misshapen before me as I passed by the torch. I was pretty sure I could excuse myself from undressing. I had a coin purse of my own now, and if I was generous with it, the prostitute probably wouldn’t care what I did with the time. I had to hope she was game for collusion against the Patriarchy.

I entered the stall. It was too dark to see, but I knew the mattress would be on the floor, so I was feeling for the edge of it with my foot as I cleared my throat to greet her.

“We’ll be picking up where we left off,” said Gráinne’s voice in my ear, and a knifepoint pressed against my collarbone, which made me jump sideways toward the partition wall. What kind of idiot was I to walk into such an obvious trap? “And we’ll be whispering so none will know our business.”

I shoved her away, but she was stronger and quicker than I expected, and counterbalanced the backward motion of my shove by thrusting forward with the blade. It nicked the skin at my throat. I cursed and winced away, cornering myself.

She grabbed my arm and rested the knife tip on my sternum. “Whispering, I said. Why did Tristan Send you after me, insteada himself coming?”

“He was afraid he couldn’t resist your charms,” I said.

“Oh, lass, if only that were true!” she said with a short, sharp laugh. “’Twould all have gone different, so!” Sobering. “Tell me or I’ll charm it out of you.”

“You’re going to kill me regardless,” I said, trying to remember escape-from-a-corner moves from stage combat training. Drew a blank. Something about ducking under your attacker? “I’m not talking,” I said.

“Well then, I’ll just kill you,” said Gráinne, as if we were haggling over the price of beef. She pressed the tip of the knife against my sternum. It was slender and sharp and poked through my doublet. I tried to shrink away, but in a corner there’s nowhere to shrink to. “I’ve no time to string this out,” she said. “I’ll be telling them you attacked me, so ’tisn’t murder, ’tis self-defense.” And she drew the blade away with a crispness that meant at most two seconds until she plunged it into me.

“Tristan’s dead,” I said suddenly.

She made a strange sound. She didn’t stab. “He’s not.”

“He is.” I dropped the accent and leaned in to my American vowels. “Gram’s in charge now.”

“Gr—Rebecca?”

“You knew her as Melisande? I’m their grandkid.”

“You are not.”

“Tristan died in a boating accident a couple years ago, while they were on their sixtieth wedding anniversary. Gram’s come out of retirement be—”

“You’re a liar.”

“If you say so.”

“What year are you from?” she demanded. I didn’t answer. She poked my shoulder with the knife.

“Ow! Crazy bitch. I’m from 2073,” I said in a churlish tone.

“So I’ll be at this awhile,” said Gráinne, the steeliness returning to her voice.

“Well, not really, cuz—oh, I’m not supposed to tell—okay, look, don’t fucking stab me again, nobody gave me details.”

“What details?”

“All that shit with the Fugg—wait, what year are you here from? Jeez, I better keep my trap shut or I’m gonna trigger that Diachronic Shear stuff.”

Gráinne paused. In half a minute she’d have seen the logic gap, but she didn’t get half a minute.

“Hello,” Ned said in a suggestive voice, thrusting a candle into the room and sticking his head through the doorframe. “Anyone up for a three-way?” Then he noticed us in the corner. “What—”

“Be you her lover, Ned the lad?” Gráinne demanded. “Be useful, then.”

She turned from me and rushed at him to grab him with her free hand. Ned thrust the candle at her, daggerlike. On reflex she hunched back from the flame. He raised his right knee, pivoted, and kicked her square in the midriff, slamming her to the mattress on the floor before she could recover enough to slice his leg. He grabbed my arm with his free hand and pulled me out into the corridor, running.

“That’s the last time you leave my sight,” he said in my ear as we entered the loud front room.

I pulled my arm from him. “Let go. You just snatched me away from a whore’s bed and you look furious. Don’t give the constable reason to wonder about us.”

“He’s already asking questions, North sent me back to get you and clear out while he distracts him.”

I glanced across: North was teaching Harry the Constable how to juggle, using parsnips. Harry the Constable was bad at juggling and did not seem to be enjoying himself.

“Give me a weapon,” I said. “I want to go back and take that bitch down.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Ned!” I tried to pull my arm free. He kept a grip on my elbow. “If we leave her free, she’ll attack me again. And attack Tristan. We must finish her.”

“Excellent. As soon as you’ve a witch-proof plan for such a thing, I’m your second. Until then, I’m for keeping you alive, and this is the way to do it.”

We got out without being noticed and hied our asses back to Silver Street pronto.

I always thought it was a cliché, but the rush of escaping death really does resemble the rush of sex. We both knew the other felt it, as we pounded our way up the outside stairs at Silver Street. Within, lit by a lamp, Will was at his work. He barely glanced up as we entered panting. Head bent over his desk, he ignored us as we dragged the bedroll to the other side of the canopied bedstead for privacy and then tore our clothes off and dove under the covers. As we pawed almost frantically at each other, the steady scratch of pen on paper continued. Ned ran his hand down the whole of my torso and came to rest his fingers at just the right place. I shifted toward him and he lowered himself on top of me. I bit my lip hard, but a quiet groan of contentment escaped.

Will, writing, murmured, “Oh happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony.”

Ned lowered his face to my ear, flicked his tongue to my earlobe, and whispered, “Witness how I’ll make you whinny.”

I did not want to need Ned’s protection—especially given Gráinne was ready to abuse him too—but in truth it was nerve-racking to be out of sight of him. For the next few days, I cleaved to him as much as decency and logistics allowed.

Each morning, Will would head directly for the Globe, but Ned first walked me up to the Revels Office and wouldn’t leave until he saw that I’d been admitted to Tilney’s presence. I had made the strategic choice not to tell him Gráinne knew to find me even here; he was so determined to be my champion I feared he’d make a fuss that I couldn’t afford to have made. I protected myself by always having an excuse to be near Tilney. Tilney didn’t notice I was doing this—in fact, since he no longer trusted me, he preferred to have me in plain sight as well.

There was a brief breakfast of maslin bread and ale in the refectory, and then a few hours later a longer break for dinner (bread and meatless pottage, because Lent), at which Tilney led the grace. I was generally let go about an hour after dinner. This was the worst part of my day: traveling to Southwark unescorted. I was all eyes and ears, and antsy. Anyone seeing me must have marked me as possessed.

But once I reached the Globe, I felt safe again—ironic, given that is where I knew Gráinne would eventually come after my brother. I regularly found myself counting down the days, and then the estimated hours, until he’d show up.

Each day, I entered from the tiring house and then snuck into the yard with the groundlings—the common folk who’d each paid a penny to get in. Once during a show, I caught a glimpse of Andrew North selling oysters to the groundlings; another time he was peddling crabs and dried figs to the gentry in the cushioned upper tiers. It was not uncommon for the aspiring actors to also work what we today call “front of house.” But North had a genius for playfulness. I don’t know what he was saying to those lords and ladies in their high-topped feathered hats, but they all looked charmed. He sold more meat pies than anyone.

Each day I studied the space. I memorized how many steps from entrance to stage, from gallery to stairwell, how long it took to run, how long to walk, how far I could throw a stone. I ran endless offensive moves against Gráinne in my mind, worrying how ineffectual my stage combat tricks would turn out to be.

Ned was not in any of the plays this past week but wanted to watch them all. (He needed to study the great performers of his age, to learn his craft. Kudos to him for being so dedicated, and who am I to comment on his lack of talent?) So I did my sleuthing against the backdrop of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, starring Richard Burbage. Also, Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Cardenio, starring Richard Burbage. Also, Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, starring Richard Burbage.

Yesterday, or maybe I should say earlier today—it’s confusing to think about time this way—anyways, very recently, I coaxed Ned out to Rose’s to double-check if Tristan had arrived yet, even though I knew he hadn’t, but I had to check anyhow. He had not arrived. Rose, polite and sweet, would share no other intel with us.

By the time we were back in town, the day’s performance was over, and the players were headed for outdoor bowling in a yard near the theatre and then to the Dolphin for ale (hyssop-seasoned). Ned and I were glued to each other’s sides all evening. A fiddler was playing in a corner, but he was upstaged by Andrew North bursting into a song that I didn’t have to join him on because I’d never heard of it: “Good blacksmith, take my corset off, and give it back to me.”

Suddenly Ned grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the Dolphin into the street and said, “I think I saw her in there. Let’s get you safe, this is madness.” He marched me back to Rose’s, and she Homed me.

Also, tbh, I could really use a shower. Linen shirts and hose absorb BO, but I’m a twenty-first-century girl and I’d love a shower. And a meal! But mostly I’m back to avoid Gráinne, and it would be awesome if we could fast-forward my return so that I arrive just a day before Tristan is due to. Please?

[Edit: Mel has explained that I can have a shower but not a meal, because if my twenty-first-century poop gets excreted in seventeenth-century sewers, who knows what could happen. OK, I’m filing this and going to take that shower now and douse myself with all of Erzsébet’s flowery stuff.]

AFTER ACTION REPORT

DOER: Chira Yasin Lajani

THEATER: CLASSIFIED

OPERATION: CLASSIFIED

DEDE: CLASSIFIED

DTAP: 4 March 1397, Ascella, Commune of Florence

STRAND: 5 of a projected 87

MUON Cassandra Sent me via ODEC #3 at 11:43 a.m., Day 2018 (6 February, Year 6) without incident.

CLASSIFIED

(remainder of document redacted)

Text message from burner phone to Mortimer Shore

DAY 2019 (7 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

DODO’s paranoia is increasing: as I was typing the words of my most recent after-action report, each time I hit the space bar, the word I’d just typed was blacked out, so I was not able to review my own story or take pictures of it to send you. This means either someone in IT is helping Gráinne or she’s convinced Blevins that my DEDE requires this level of hysterical-paranoid security. In any case, once again, I fabricated a story in which, despite my best attempts, I failed to free Dana. This time I included a chase scene in which I got slightly injured. In truth I simply waited longer with KCW Lucia, and then to her confusion, I scraped myself up a little bit before asking to be Homed (to “validate” my claims of injury).

This remains excruciatingly terrible. My nightmares worsen. If I continue to “fail,” I am compromising my family’s safety. I NEED ANOTHER PLAN. Please advise. —CYL

Post by Melisande Stokes on “Chira” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 2019 (7 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

Next time, she should just tell DODO she accomplished it. I don’t know if that claim will stick; we’ve never deliberately fed the Chronotron false data before, so we don’t know how significantly it will alter the certainty, given other external data points. A sysadmin could question her claim. But if Gráinne is trying to run this DEDE with very few people knowing about it, Chira’s report could just end up an internal blip that nobody pays attention to.

I know she’s having a hard time with this—so am I—but this is how we have to roll.

Secure message exchange between Dr. Roger Blevins and Dr. Paul Livermore (Director of Psychiatric and Mental Fitness Division)

Day 2020 (8 February, Year 6)

From Dr. Paul Livermore:

Dr. Blevins,

I am confused by some data we are receiving about DOer Lover-class Chira Yasin Lajani. I received a notification that she had been placed on a PEP (Performance Enhancement Plan) by your office, but there is no actual plan in place—the PEP designation seems to be used punitively as opposed to correctively.

Also, it is routine for an employee to participate in an in-depth intake questionnaire, a full blood panel to measure cortisol levels, etc., when they are assigned PEP, so that our office can determine what psychological tools might be most relevant and useful to the PEP. Her results of these tests suggest she is experiencing some form of PTSD, the treatment for which includes talk therapy and possibly medication. However, when I attempted to set up an initial eval, the system would not allow me to schedule her to meet with a therapist. Assuming this was a technical glitch, I reached out to IT, but they informed me that all is in order on their end, and that her employee status does not allow her to receive necessary mental health treatment. This is obviously a clerical error, but it requires your authorization to alter it. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

—Dr. Livermore

Dear Dr. Livermore:

There is no clerical error. DOer Chira is not authorized to see a human therapist because of the highly confidential nature of her work. I’m sure we have access to Ellie, the AI therapy program the military has been using for PTSD cases. DOer Chira is authorized to talk to Ellie.

Blevins

Dr. Blevins,

We no longer use Ellie. We attempted to work with that AI, but the bot’s frame of reference for most of the patients we have here is suboptimal. Ellie works very well with Fighters (unsurprising, as it was developed for military use), but most of the other types do not find Ellie to be a useful modality. After some promising initial work, we came to realize that human mental health experts, calibrated to modalities that feel organic to the DOer’s home culture, work better (e.g., priests, shamans, traditional psychotherapists, etc.). Can you explain why Chira is not authorized to speak with a human?

It is a fundamental requirement of therapists to remain strictly confidential in all circumstances, so confidentiality issues are innately irrelevant.

Paul Livermore, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Livermore—

Aren’t there other AI therapies? That use some other MO? I recall hearing that Harvard had some interdisciplinary wunderkinds working on some psych-bot program, I think they called it JEAN, and you can get it on CDs so that it will function on an offline computer. Set her up with that.

Roger Blevins

Dr. Blevins—

I am aware of JEAN. It is available as shareware.

Dr. Livermore—

Even better! If it’s free then it will not impact your budget.

Dr. Blevins—

There’s a reason that shareware is free.

Dr. Livermore,

I’m not interested in the philosophy of ethics behind computer programs. Set Chira up with JEAN.

Dr. Blevins,

I wasn’t commenting on the philosophy of ethics, I was commenting on the integrity and quality of most shareware.

To be clear, are you ordering Chira to have a session with the AI psychotherapy chatbot JEAN?

For the third time, yes, I am. ASAP. And send me the transcripts.

—RB

[SOME TIME LATER]

Dr. Blevins,

Per your orders, Chira began a session with JEAN, the transcript of which was preserved. It is unorthodox to allow anyone but an attending psychiatrist or physician to read such transcripts, but the patient was willing to sign a waiver allowing you to see it. You will find it attached below.

> Hello, I am Jean.

* Hello, Jean, my name is Chira.

> Names don’t interest me.

* I have been having terrible nightmares.

> I see.

* I want the nightmares to go away.

> What if you never got the nightmares to go away?

* That would be terrible. Please help me to make the nightmares go away.

> Say, do you have any psychological problems?

* Yes!

> Are you sure?

* Yes!

> Please don’t repeat yourself!

* Sorry.

> Don’t be so defensive!

* Sorry.

> Do you expect a different answer by repeating yourself?

* I don’t know. Can you help me?

> What is your problem?

* I have nightmares every night.

> Do you enjoy having nightmares?

* No!

> Are you saying no just to be negative?

At this point, the patient terminated the session in a manner that has rendered the laptop she was using permanently unusable. I do not feel it is in the patient’s interest to continue this process. If you will not authorize her to speak with a human therapist, please advise on best practices in light of this spectacular failure with JEAN. Thank you.

—Dr. Livermore

Dr. Livermore—

What is the value of the laptop she has damaged? Please report it to accounting. It should be docked from her salary.

—RB

Dr. Blevins,

My department does not charge patients for the cost of failed modalities. That expense is embedded in our annual budget. My only concern is that we provide appropriate care for the patient. At present, you have tied my hands. May we please speak in person about this case?

Thank you,

Dr. Livermore

Dr. Livermore,

Our mistake, it appears that DOer Chira Yasin Lajani should never have been assigned a PEP in the first place. I have recently interviewed her in person, and she is in good spirits and well-adjusted. Please disregard this entire matter.

Thanks so much,

Roger Blevins

Dr. Blevins,

Thank you for this update, especially the news that you have personally interviewed the patient. However, given the results of her intake assessment, my professional opinion is that it’s imperative that she receives some kind of help. Since I can’t convince the system to cooperate, I have used the phone to schedule her for an initial interview this afternoon with Dr. Larinda Schroeder, who specializes in PTSD in the female military population.

—Dr. Livermore

Dear Dr. Livermore,

No need for the interview with Dr. Schroeder; I have called her to cancel that appointment. MUON Gráinne offered to take DOer Chira into one of the ODECs and use a previously unmentioned form of magic to help her deal with her PTSD symptoms, at which point DOer Chira asserted that she is actually feeling fine and that the intake assessment must be faulty. Thank you for your concern for DOer Chira. The situation is now resolved.

—Dr. Roger Blevins

Dear Dr. Blevins,

That’s extraordinary. May we employ Gráinne and other MUONs in such magic-based healing for other cases? Unsurprisingly, DODO’s per capita rate of PTSD is second only to the population of the armed forces (combat). This would be immeasurably beneficial to diachronic agents.

Yours,

Paul Livermore

Dr. Livermore,

Your request for DODO to funnel invaluable resources (in the form of MUONs) away from our primary mission in order to make your own work easier is disappointing and points to a systemic dysfunction within your department. You are suspended with pay until HR has the bandwidth to consider a PEP for you.

Dr. Roger Blevins, Ph.D.

AFTER ACTION REPORT

DOER: Melisande Stokes

THEATER: Fourth-century Sicily

OPERATION: Guard mosaic

DEDE: Prevent wagon being overturned

DTAP: 309 CE, compound between Piazza and Sophiana

STRAND: 5 (interrupted)

Note: As I noted in interim DEDE reports, Strand 2 (Jan 24–27), Strand 3 (Feb 2–5), and Strand 4 (Feb 8–11) were all successes, but Livia absolutely insisted on using magic. Erzsébet believes the number of Strands has been increasing as a result of this—some magical algorithm I don’t quite grasp—and so the most urgent thing on this Strand is to insist Livia not use magic to protect the wagon.

Erzsébet Sent me at 14:23 on February 14.

Almost everything was identical to the previous Strands. Erzsébet moved my arrival a few yards to the north, so that I did not arrive in the pool—kudos on such precision, I didn’t know that was possible. I still attracted the attention of the slave Rufus, and therefore of Livia and her retinue. As before, Livia saw the glamour, believed me to be associated with Quintus, demanded answers; I told her enough to win her trust and get her on board. As before, the girls wanted to look like me when they were “old,” and I got them running around the palaestra before spending the day in classes with them. As before, the wagon was days later than expected. Quince was no doubt spending those days getting buddy-buddy with the Carthaginian mosaicist Hanno Gisgon, so that when the “accident” happened, his actions would not seem suspicious.

The only significant alteration from the first Strand was that this time, when I impressed upon Livia that we should not rely on magic to prevent the “accident,” she finally agreed. But she declared that she would work with me on a practical way to deter Quintus. Multiple attempts to convince her that I should do it entirely on my own failed.

The plan “we” came up with was sound enough, although I did not like that it still depended mostly on her for its success. The premise was to separate Quintus from the rest of the travel party—in particular, from the wagon carrying the mosaic—as the wagon crossed the bridge.

Both men knew Livia. The convenient convergence of her age/gender (which made her “helpless”) with her status (which gave her authority) made it unthinkable for either of them to disregard her requests for attention or assistance. Therefore, we agreed, Livia would detain Quince on the far side of the river until the wagon was safely across the bridge. (Quince in particular would have to behave well toward Livia, as he depended on her to be Homed.)

Livia positioned herself on the far bank, so that the travel party would encounter her just before reaching the bridge. I awaited on the near side with both horses—not hiding, but not easily seen because of the verdant growth along the riverbank. As before, the stoic herd of sheep had just crossed the bridge as we neared it. They passed by me and the horses, incurious.

Livia performed her role beautifully. Drooping as if with fatigue or heat, she leaned on the post marking the start of the deck of the bridge. When the travelers drew near, Hanno Gisgon hailed her and inquired what had brought her to this strange resting place.

“My horse is lame.” She sighed. “I have instructed my slave to stand with it in the river, over on the far bank, to see if the cool water will soothe its tendon. But it cannot carry me home. I will ride my slave’s horse home, and the slave must walk my horse back.”

“Ride with us, mistress,” said Hanno at once. “We can make room for you, can’t we, Marcus?” he asked his wagon driver. “And then your woman can ride her own horse back and lead the injured one. You can ride next to Marcus in the wagon, it’s comfortable.”

“Riding in a storage cart is too inelegant for the lady,” said Quince. “It is not worthy of her breeding. Please ride my horse, mistress, and I will sit in the wagon.”

I had anticipated that Quince would “offer” to ride in the wagon, to seek a way to damage the mosaic while traveling beside it. Livia stayed on the script I’d given her: “Thank you, but your horse is large and looks headstrong, and I am not at all confident that I would be able to keep it under control. I shall ride pillion behind you.”

Quince’s smile was forced. “If it does not seem untoward, I would be honored to assist your return home, mistress,” he said, because that’s what you have to say when the local patrician’s daughter says she wants to ride behind you.

“Excellent, please dismount and help me up,” she said, and then very casually gestured to the wagon. “Hanno, do not wait for us, it’s a long journey uphill and you should make headway, the day will be hot. We will catch up to you.”

“Your father would have words with me—and worse than words—if I left you alone on a horse with a strange man he has never met,” said Hanno, smiling. “We shall wait and go together.”

“Well, you should at least cross over the river and wait in the shade,” she said with perfect offhandedness. “Think of the donkeys.”

“It is really no problem,” said Hanno pleasantly, as Quince dismounted.

Livia feigned incompetence at getting onto Quince’s horse—asking for cupped hands to use as a mounting block but then flailing as she attempted to get her tunic-skirt over the saddle horns, giving up, and nearly tumbling back to the ground to try again. Meanwhile, my role was to lure Hanno across the bridge. Livia was confident that if Hanno crossed the bridge, the wagoner would cross with him. So:

“Mistress Livia!” I called out from the shadows below the bridge embankment. “Your horse is stuck in the shallows. I need help right away!”

Hanno spurred his horse toward my voice. But as the wagoner was gathering his slack reins to urge the donkeys to follow, Quince did something we had not predicted: he grabbed Livia around the waist, pulling her down from her inept attempts to mount, and stood her on the roadside, and in a blink he was up on his horse, flying across the bridge. He veered frighteningly close to the donkeys, crowding them against the low parapet; the nearer one slapped its ears back and snapped at Quince’s horse. Marcus tried to quiet the donkey, but it brayed and snapped again. The other donkey kicked back with one hind leg and struck the shaft. The wagon shuddered.

Quince’s pace was fast and he was quickly well past the donkeys—but he wheeled his mount around and now steered the horse directly back toward them, crying out in alarm as if he had lost control of it (in fact the opposite was true: he must have had excellent control of the horse to make it run at them). He was about to injure all three animals, the wagoner, and himself, in order to send the cart tumbling off the bridge and smashing below.

I had to distract Quince enough to change his horse’s track. Hanno had crossed the river to try to help me, but confused by the way my voice echoed, he was now on the downriver side of the bridge in search of me, so he was out of the way. I released our horses and plunged into the river. It was a gentle, serpentine waterway, about twenty feet wide, but a non-swimmer could appear to be drowning in it. Splashing wildly, I hurled myself farther in and began shrieking. Then I twisted against the current to face upstream, so Quince couldn’t see my face. Livia immediately began to shriek too: “My slave! Save my woman! Somebody save her!”

I’d only wanted to draw enough of Quince’s attention that his weight in the saddle would shift, causing his horse to change direction, to cease scaring the shit out of the donkeys. I accomplished that: in my peripheral vision I saw the horse veer away from the wagon.

But then Quince jumped off the horse. The donkeys shook their heads with annoyance and brayed in protest, but nothing worse, as his horse hightailed it indignantly back toward the village, gleaming chestnut in the afternoon sunlight. Quince took a step toward the side of the bridge and raised his arms, about to dive. Dammit, I thought, I had not counted on his being valiant! I couldn’t let him see it was me—

Now Quince was airborne. Livia shouted, “Come back tonight, slave!”

And then, before Quince hit the water, she Homed me.

I am sure she interceded magically, if it was necessary. But I don’t think it was. So I’m confident that the wagon—and the mosaic—was safe. But of course, confidence isn’t the same as certainty, so I will go back on this same Strand, to make sure it all fell out right, before repeating the DEDE on the next Strand.

I expect to be back within an hour or two.

ENTRY IN PRIVATE DIARY OF

Edmund Tilney

ALBEMARLE HOUSE, 17 APRIL 1606

Today I have received disheartening news from the Lady Emilia. My manuscript shall not find favour at court. It appears that Her Majesty Queen Anne, having found other means by which to humiliate Philip Herbert (newly Baron of Shurland) without any intrigue that touches my travel manuscript, has lost interest in my travel manuscript. As the King is greatly enamoured of the Baron, it follows then that the travel manuscript written by the Baron’s pet, and not my own, shall enjoy publication. Without the publication of my book, I stand no chance of advancement. Without advancement, my financial burdens (due to His Majesty’s reduction of my salary and budget) shall ruin me.

This grieves me, but what grieves me as well is that I suspect that writer be none else but Mr. William Shakespeare. The Herbert brothers are patrons of Mr. Shakespeare in other endeavours, although Philip be not half so cultured as his older brother, the Earl of Pembroke. And now Mr. Shakespeare has a work at hand shall cause mine own work to be diminished in comparison.

Why must that man of Stratford (Stratford! Of all backwater places!) forever have success where I do not? ’Twas he who won the regard of the Lady Emilia, and in the end he did not even want her, he merely wanted the inspiration she provoked in him, not the fulfillment of it! ’Tis perverse. I would have been a proper paramour to her, had she chosen me.

And now, because the Queen has found other ways to needle Philip Herbert, shall Shakespeare yet again outshine me? Must it be ever thus? Despite these dozen of years in which I have assiduously assisted his progress, championed his work to our superiors—he steps between me and my publication! I, who protected him and all his kind in ’92, when the aldermen and Lord Mayor would have banned all players and playhouses forever! William Shakespeare could not prevent such travesties. All the playing companies put together could not. ’Twas I alone, Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, who saved the London stage. And yet the London stage has no regard for me. It saves its sycophancy for William Shakespeare.

I recognise it is a sort of privilege to vie against a man of such capacities as Mr. Shakespeare. And yet . . . I would I had some means to undermine him, for the satisfaction of seeing him shake, of hearing his tongue cry for help as a sick girl, to remind him that he is no more a man than I, or any other man who strives, and who is worthy, and yet comes to naught, but must spend his life toiling always in service to others.

Having contemplated this for hours, at the expense of sleep, I have contrived a plan that yet may cause my standing to rise above his in time.

Further, it may give me an opportunity to once again find favour in the eyes of Lady Emilia.

First, this play Macbeth must become a favourite of the King’s. I shall see that His Majesty is entirely pleased with it, so that he shall be in equal measure displeased when he learns of its sins. The higher his esteem for it, the further it shall be dashed when he learns Shakespeare had intended treachery in writing it.

After I have secured His Majesty’s good regard for having brought it to court, then shall I reveal to His Majesty that I have saved him and his court from the perdurable taint of witchcraft! Lady Emilia will back me in this, acknowledging that I sought out her sage advice and that she warned me that Shakespeare’s original words contained real magic. Then shall only Shakespeare himself be punished with all the zeal of His Majesty’s obsessive hatred of witch things.

To make certain all of this happens, I must have it fall out that Macbeth be done first and expressly for His Majesty, not for the masses. The surprise and spectacle of it must astound him, as Inigo Jones’s spectacles outshine Ben Jonson’s overwrought verses in every masque. Thus shall I contrive that Macbeth’s maiden voyage be not at the Globe Theatre, but at Whitehall Palace, where I—and not the King’s Men—have absolute power over how things are put on the stage. There shall all the specialities of my offices and workshops be put to best use, that the spectacle shall weigh equal with the verse and playing of it. This too shall lift my reputation with the King.

Shall I be successful in this enterprise? We must see. Queen Elizabeth would never receive a play at court until the masses had first judged it worthy, and so far the same is true of James and Anne, but I must endeavour, else shall my heart grow cankered with resentment.

I am about it.

AFTER ACTION REPORT

DOER: Robin Lyons

THEATER: Jacobean London

OPERATION: De-magic Macbeth

DEDE: Macbeth performed with non-magic spells

DTAP: 17–28 April 1606, Southwark/Clerkenwell areas of London

STRAND: 1, New Plan (second half; see my earlier mid-DEDE report for first half of this Strand)

I want to write this down quick so I can get a decent night’s sleep and then go back.

I was Sent back to 1606 London on the same Strand I had been Homed from (if your memory needs jogging: I came back prematurely last time to avoid a potential Gráinne strike). The Shakespeare bros and I continued our surreptitious rehearsing of the original script. Tilney had at one point thought that Macbeth would premiere not at the Globe (the usual venue for debuts) but instead at the royal court. This would have been unprecedented, and a Really Big Deal. But for whatever reason, that didn’t pan out; he seemed pretty bitter about it.

Instead, as per usual, the play premiered at the Globe, FINALLY. It felt like a lifetime waiting for it to be the day Robin Saves Tristan. We did it with William Shakespeare’s own nonsense lines instead of Gráinne’s spells. We performed before a full house of more than a thousand rapturously appreciative theatregoers, and I was stoked because that’s waaaaay too many people for Gráinne to magically manipulate.

But there was a technical problem with the sound effects. As we were speaking the spells, the thunder machines started up and just kept going and going for a crazy long time. My theory is that Gráinne was in the audience making that happen, because she was so PO’d that we were saying Will’s lines instead of hers. So Gráinne’s spells were never heard by anyone—but neither were Shakespeare’s.

Because the probably-Tristan person was attacked at the debut performance, I was on my toes. The second I finished my final scene, I changed out of costume and snuck back into the yard to scout for him. My DEDE reports have focused on events involving other people, but I’ve also been obsessively prepping for Tristan extraction. All my free time, every day, I spent memorizing literally every nook and cranny of that space—entrances, exits, stairways, blind turns. I’d practiced how to dart through the crowd of groundlings during performances while drawing as little attention to myself as possible. It’s been an exercise in mental geometry, determining the shortest route from any point A to any point B given Gráinne at any point C. I’m pretty good at that kind of thing and I had it all sorted out by the day we premiered. I was totally on my game.

Tristan is notably taller than most early-modern Londoners, so I figured I’d have no trouble spotting him at the debut, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. I raced out of the yard and ran the whole marshy route around the building. Nothing. Feeling anxious—they were well into the last act by now—I went back inside and up to the top gallery, to stand where Andrew North plants himself pre-show to sell fig tarts to the nobility. From here I had a good bird’s-eye view of the groundlings, but I still couldn’t find Tristan anywhere.

So instead, I began to look for Gráinne, figuring I could tail her to wherever the encounter with Tristan was to happen. Just as Macduff came onstage bearing a grotesque replica of Macbeth’s head—i.e., moments from the end—I spotted a redheaded woman I thought might be Gráinne. Noting the woman’s position in the crowd, I ran down through the backstage area, slipped back into the yard, and placed myself a few strides behind this woman. The show ended. From my perspective it was a failure because the audience had not heard Will’s verses, but it was a big hit—the audience was clapping and whooping and whistling. Robert Armin began his usual jig as soon as the actors were all done bowing, but the redhead began to push through the crowd toward the exit, as did about fifteen percent of the audience. I followed behind, making sure to keep other people’s bodies between my face and the woman’s, in case she turned suddenly in my direction.

Maintaining a distance of some ten feet, I tailed her out of the gate, and she headed north toward the Thames. Then I saw two things at once:

I caught a glimpse of the woman’s face when she turned. It was definitely Gráinne. She looked irritated.

The second thing I saw was a figure with Tristan’s height and build and hair color, who had also just exited the yard. He must have been in the shadows of one of the galleries. He was walking faster than Gráinne and passed by her.

Gráinne saw him. She stiffened, tensed, and reached out to grab his arm. I pressed forward to stop her, my mind racing through five different unarmed attacks I’d learned from Mortimer and had been practicing with Ned.

Just as my fingertips were about to brush against Gráinne’s sleeve, Gráinne’s hand closed hard around Tristan’s wrist. She yanked Tristan toward her. He pivoted toward her. In the microsecond before I touched her sleeve, I saw the man’s face. It wasn’t Tristan.

I ducked away and ran in the other direction, then hid behind someone’s horse and watched as Gráinne apologized to the man and moved on toward the river.

Short version: I tracked Gráinne all the way back to Rose’s, barely managing to remain out of her sight at all times—I was motivated, because once we were out of the city, Gráinne would have been able to murder me with magic without fear of being seen or interrupted.

At Rose’s, Rose Sent Gráinne somewhere; I couldn’t get close enough to overhear anything. I waited a quarter hour and then approached. Rose greeted me cheerily, as always.

“Has my brother shown up yet?” I asked.

“Tristan? No, love,” said Rose with her easy smile.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Is it possible he arrived when you were out and just took his clothes and went into the city without your knowledge?”

“Could be,” said Rose. “Let me check.”

She went into the house but returned to say the clothes were still there. When I pressed her, she sweetly but firmly declined to give me any intel about where she’d just Sent Gráinne—“Just as I refuse to give an answer when she asks me about you, and trust me, lass, she’s asked me about you. Now, am I Homing you, or Sending you someplace new?”

Once I was back here at East House, we immediately checked Erzsébet’s Macbeth script. We discovered something that’s weird in two ways:

First, the printing of the spell itself is now blurred in the book, as if the ink had been smudged before drying. That wouldn’t be too unusual if this were a reprint of an ancient manuscript (or a cheap inkjet-printed one), but it’s a standard trade paperback—and the ink hadn’t been smudged before.

Second, the notes on the facing page were different from any notes anyone has ever said about the play. Here they are:

Line 33: Weîrd sisters, etc. This is the first of the famous “missing spells.” These 6 lines, as well as—more significantly—35 lines in act 4, scene 1 (see p. 119), are illegible in the First Folio. They have been re-created entirely by supposition in all subsequent editions. We have chosen our lines based on the diary of Samuel Pepys, cross-referencing it with the version found in the Second Folio.

The witches’ curses are the only illegible lines in the entire First Folio, and this, naturally, helped to spawn the superstition that the play is cursed by witches . . .

Mortimer was instantly on his laptop checking other versions of published Shakespeare online—the Riverside edition, the Arden, the Norton, the Oxford, and scans of the first three Folios. Every one of them had either some sort of technical glitch that rendered the spells unreadable or (in the case of the Arden and the original Folio copies) notes like the Folger edition, saying that there was no way to know for sure.

“This is a good sign,” said Erzsébet. “It means things are in the middle of Becoming.”

Amendment, added by Rebecca:

Robin has gone to bed now, and Erzsébet will Send her again tomorrow, to repeat the Globe performance. Erzsébet seems confident that a few more Strands like this one and we’ll have accomplished changing the text. The lesser of Robin’s two goals, but not insignificant: Tristan’s absence frustrated Robin a great deal, of course, but Erzsébet was unfazed by it, explaining, “I am Sending you on multiple Strands. I Sent Tristan to only one Strand. Clearly it was not the one you just returned from. Perhaps it will be the next one.”

I’m about to jump over to the Sicily channel to report some data re: Hanno Gisgon, in case it’s useful to Mel.

I just want to point out that the sole reason Robin is in the “death trap” of Gráinne’s London is because we know Tristan needs saving. I fail to see why we are not doing the same thing for Frank in the “death trap” of Gráinne’s Japan.

Response from Mortimer Shore: We have specific intel on where, when, and how Tristan is attacked. You gotta believe me, Rebecca, if we had even one data point on Frank’s actual situation, I’d be all over somebody parachuting in for him.

Response from Rebecca East-Oda: That’s specious. We have a where and a when for his arrival there. Erzsébet could Send Julie to the same coordinates.

Response from Mortimer Shore: And then whatever happened to Frank will happen to her. What does that accomplish?

Response from Rebecca East-Oda: We use the same MO we are using with Robin—Send her back to shortly before Frank arrives there, and she tells him to be Homed immediately.

Response from Mortimer Shore: Rebecca, we don’t know what has happened back then. She might end up preventing him from doing something that’s beneficial. We don’t have the kind of data that we do about the situation in 1606 London. There is nothing to do right now but sit tight. I know that’s hard, it sucks, I’m sorry.

Handwritten letter on linen stationery

from Lady Emilia Lanier to Edmund Tilney,

Master of the Revels

22 APRIL 1606

After my very hearty commendations, hoping of the Almighty your health and prosperity,

Regarding our earlier correspondence, it pleases me past all measure to advise that the tides of fortunes may be turning for you. Your desires and Her Majesty’s may now align. Philip Herbert, whom Her Majesty finds abhorrent, has yet again curried undue favour with His Majesty, who now contemplates entitling him Earl of Montgomery. Moreover, and far more galling to Her Majesty, Herbert seeks the privilege of status that would allow him to request court masques created to his particular taste. This privilege is presently only allowed to the Royal Family, and most of the court joins Her Majesty in dismay at his presumption.

Thus, Her Majesty desires to out-gambit the gentleman, to rebuke him for arrogance, and to remind him that he is inferior to her own esteemed self and her children. In private conference with her, I have convinced her of the wisdom of your book as an excellent device for such an accomplishment. To wit: she shall press His Majesty to choose her favourite (that being you now, sir!) for royal patronage rather than Herbert’s favourite. Surely your work shall then be published, to great acclaim, while Herbert’s man’s shall not. Her Majesty is delighted with this plan. It will be my pleasure to present it to her on your behalf.

Furthermore, when the time comes for Macbeth to be performed at court, I hope you will attend, as it is not inconceivable that I may, at that time, introduce you to Her Majesty not merely as the Master of the Revels, but as the Author of the Book. Provided, of course, that you remain zealously committed to staging the inert charms and not the actual dark magic in Macbeth. Obviously if you fail to ensure the actors say the correct lines, it is my moral obligation to report you and Mr. Shakespeare to the King, in which case there is no hope whatsoever of your book’s publication. But as we seem to be united in our aims, I am sure this will not be the case!

I shall look forward to reading your book and then seeing you in person upon the Macbeth court debut.

Your very assured friend; With the remembrance of my humble duty unto you, I humbly take my leave and rest, Lady Emilia Lanier

Handwritten letter on linen stationery

from Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels,

to Lady Emilia Lanier

24 APRIL 1606

To the Right Worshipful Lady Emilia, My humble duty remembered,

Words fail to express my gratitude towards your most recent message. As you already have my humble manuscript of my many years’ labour, I heartily commend you to pass it along to Her Majesty; and all my hopes go with it.

All gratitude again for your guidance regarding the witches’ curse. Thanks to your wisdom and honour, the play contains nothing to concern or provoke His Majesty or His Majesty’s most stalwart servant, that being your honoured self.

Thus indebted to you for your pains taken for me, I bid you farewell. Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels

FREYA’S TRANSCRIPT OF

CONVERSATION AT EAST HOUSE

DAY 2035 (23 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

MORTIMER: Hey, Erzsébet, have you seen Rebecca?

ERZSÉBET: Do you mean today?

MORTIMER: Uh, yeah.

ERZSÉBET: I saw her this morning.

MORTIMER: Any idea where she is now? We were going to edit Mel’s recruitable witch list once I got back from HEMA practice.

ERZSÉBET: What time is it?

MORTIMER: 3:37 p.m.

ERZSÉBET: I am guessing she is above Montana.

MORTIMER: Say what?

ERZSÉBET: Approximately thirty-five thousand feet above Montana.

MORTIMER: What?

ERZSÉBET: My accent is not so thick. You understand what I said.

MORTIMER: Where is she going?

ERZSÉBET: From your tone of voice I believe you know the answer.

MORTIMER: Um. Wow. Why didn’t she tell me?

ERZSÉBET: She didn’t want you to worry.

MORTIMER: She—

ERZSÉBET: She only told me because she originally wanted me to Send her.

MORTIMER: To 1450??

ERZSÉBET: Of course not. To today’s Kyoto, so that she could do research. But we could not find an ODEC for me to Send her to there, and also, she received a better offer and did not require my services.

MORTIMER: Why does she need to go there in person? That’s what the Internet is for!

ERZSÉBET: She has engaged in what I believe you call back-channel communications with Mr. Fugger.

MORTIMER: You gotta be—

ERZSÉBET: He is taking her on his very nice jet airplane.

MORTIMER: Erzsébet—

ERZSÉBET: He looks like someone who knows how to select an excellent winter red.

MORTIMER: Erz—

ERZSÉBET: I envy her. I wish I had made myself more attractive to him—he might have offered me a trip to Hungary, where I may spit on the graves of my enemies. I have delayed doing that in service to all of you and your wrongheaded crusade.

MORTIMER: Come on, Erzsébet, what’s going on?

ERZSÉBET: (sigh) Well. Do you remember the mobile ODEC unit—

MORTIMER: It’s called an ATTO.

ERZSÉBET: Do not expect me to remember your ridiculous acronyms. The Fuggers appropriated an ATTO from DODO last year, remember?

MORTIMER: Well, yeah.

ERZSÉBET: Frederick Fugger sent the ATTO to live in Japan for a while, for business reasons. Rebecca tried to explain it to me, but I do not pay attention to money because that is gauche. But I think it has something to do with the futures.

MORTIMER: Right. Futures, plural? Like in the stock market sense, or the multiverse sense?

ERZSÉBET: It is the same thing, but that is irrelevant to our situation. Mr. Fugger and Rebecca have made a pact. He will bring her to Japan, and she will Send a protégé of his to 1450 Kyoto to procure artwork to sell later. As we did with the Bay Psalm Book when DODO began.

MORTIMER: And while the protégé is in the DTAP, that person will try to extract Frank.

ERZSÉBET: Exactly.

MORTIMER: Huh. I could almost like that plan. Except for her doing it behind our backs.

ERZSÉBET: Behind your back.

MORTIMER: But here’s what doesn’t make sense. I mean, I don’t know why he wants the ATTO in Japan, but besides that, Tristan figured out that the Fuggers have their own witch. Why do they need to use Rebecca?

ERZSÉBET: Mr. Fugger’s protégé, who is the very attractive, muscular Japanese gentleman who drove his car when he came to visit us, he is the one giving Rebecca the details, and he says that Mr. Fugger believes Gráinne is trying to corrupt the Fugger witch. Mr. Fugger doesn’t want Gráinne meddling in his activities, so he does not want his own witch to know about them.

MORTIMER: This is nuts.

ERZSÉBET: It is not such a problem. Rebecca will be back within seventy-two hours. Frederick Fugger promised.

MORTIMER: Look, I’m texting her right now—

ERZSÉBET: I am confident Mr. Fugger will make sure she does not receive your text. But she will be back within a few days. Maybe a week if he can convince her to go sightseeing. Meanwhile I require you to stay here overnight so I am not alone in the house and the cats can be fed. The master bedroom is available. How are your kitchen skills?

MORTIMER: Hahaha.

ERZSÉBET: Mortimer Shore, how are your kitchen skills?

MORTIMER: I can wield a can opener like Vulcan at his forge.

ERZSÉBET: Even I know that is not how can openers work.

AFTER ACTION REPORT

DOER: Robin Lyons

THEATER: Jacobean London

OPERATION: Stymieing Gráinne

DEDE: A widely viewed performance of a magic-free Macbeth

DTAP: April 1606, London (Southwark, Clerkenwell, and Whitehall)

STRAND: 2, New Plan

I was Sent by Erzsébet at 10:13 a.m. on February 16 and once again arrived at Rose’s barn on the 14th day of April 1606. (So, before Macbeth has debuted on this Strand.) For most of the time I was there, everything unfolded largely as it had before, only smoother. This time around, Gráinne tried to poison me, spook a horse into trampling me, and burn down the rooms on Silver Street. But I knew to be on guard, and Ned got up to speed quick, so we stymied her.

I went to check with Rose more frequently on this Strand, but still no Tristan. Otherwise, nothing was really different until a few days before we opened Macbeth. And then suddenly, one important detail was very different.

I was working at the Revels Office when Tilney received a message from Their Majesties, and he went off with the royal messenger to his private closet. When he came out about a quarter hour later, his face was glowing and he was nearly trembling—very out of character for him!—but at first it was hard to tell if he was delighted or upset.

“Well,” he said, as if to himself, and then, noticing me, stared hard at me for a moment. “You must take this news to your cousin and his men.”

“Of course, sir,” I said, standing up from my bench and setting down the bills I had been alphabetizing. “What shall I tell them?”

“His Majesty King James, perceiving the delicate nature of the most anticipated play of the season—that being Macbeth—”

“Of course, sir.”

“His Majesty has determined that the play must not debut at the Globe, but that its very first performance take place for himself and Her Majesty, at court.”

“And may I, on behalf of my cousin, inquire as to why, sir?” I asked, trying to calculate what this meant for my DEDE. First alarm bell: Tilney would be at the court performance. Second alarm bell: Where did that put Tristan? Tristan only went back once before Gráinne attacked him. I had now gone back on two different Strands . . . and Tristan hadn’t shown up on my previous Strand, so he must be on this one, right?

Tilney was replying: “Due to the representation of King James’s royal predecessors, and also the depiction of witchcraft, His Majesty wishes to assess for himself if it be politic for the story to be seen by the general public at all, or if it should in fact be expunged from existence altogether.”

“I see. And when will Their Majesties wish to see it?”

“In four days’ time,” he said. There was roiling beneath his cold exterior, a sea of repressed emotions. In the last Strand, he’d told his staff this venue change might happen, and then he’d been disappointed when it didn’t. Maybe he was thrilled that, because it was at court and not at the Globe, he would have total control over such a sexy debut. I had no idea what the court theatre looked like, which meant my studious hours of plotting how to find and get to Tristan in time at the Globe were all for nothing now.

“It is imperative we make a good impression on His Majesty,” he continued. “For this play of all plays.”

“I will tell them so,” I said. (I’m pretty sure the King’s Men are always top-notch, or else they would not be the King’s Men, just saying.)

“But it must be sensationally good,” insisted Tilney, as if I were arguing with him. “Superior to any previous court debut. And I know how to make it so. Tell them they are to perform it at Whitehall Palace, in the Banqueting House.”

My jaw literally slackened.

“Exactly,” he said with satisfaction. “The story is itself quite powerful, but my presentation of the story, in that space, shall outshine even Shakespeare’s text. My presentation shall be unforgettable.”

Here’s where my undergrad degree was useful: I know about Whitehall Palace in 1606. That’s the year Queen Elizabeth’s “temporary” canvas Banqueting House was finally torn down, a quarter century after she’d put it up to use for just one weekend. By all reports, it was in a state of disrepair well before they’d demolished it. Meaning it was in a state of disrepair now.

FTR, I can totally see a modern production of Macbeth set in a creepy derelict building. But theatre didn’t work like that in the seventeenth century. This was mind-blowingly avant-garde of Tilney. Seriously, I was so impressed. (I doubted that Queen Anne, who seemed to like mostly Very Nice Things, would take to the notion of showing up at that decrepit canvas mold factory. But still—the dude was visionary.)

“Won’t His Majesty find it offensive to see a play about a king of Scotland performed in such a venue?” I asked. “Might it not be better to stage it at Hampton Court Palace, as usual? I hear that is a very handsome hall, and the players are familiar with it.” (Also, it still exists—I’ve been there, I’ve seen floor plans, so Tristan-saving would be easier.)

“Were the play about a noble king, perhaps it should be done in such a noble space,” said Tilney. “But the play is about Macbeth, who was a corrupt villain, and that rotting barn is the fitting place for such a theme. Further, it is appropriate for a presentation of His Majesty’s conception of witches.”

He had a point.

“Excellent good,” I made myself say. “I shall advise my cousin of this plan. Shall he come with us to the site?”

Tilney shook his head. There was something else going on behind those eyes.

Text written by the slave Melia on a series of wax tablets, sealed within the family shrine of the family of Marcus Livius Saturninus

FOURTH-CENTURY SICILY

I can’t fucking believe I once again find myself in this position: I’m stuck in the past with no prospect of ever being Homed. At least if I write in English I don’t have to watch my language, but a stylus in wax is even more slow going than writing with a fountain pen. And this time, rather than being presumed a madwoman and thus left to my own devices, as happened when Gráinne stranded me in 1851 London, I’ve precious little free time and almost no privacy.

On the other hand, I probably have the rest of my life to write this.

Not that there is any reason to do so, since within the next century this place will be abandoned for greener pastures (literally) by the family and fall into ruin. If anyone ever finds these tablets, the wax into which I write this will have dried and fractured into dust. But I’ll devolve into an actual madwoman if I don’t write it out.

Erzsébet Sent me back here to later the same day that Livia and I had interrupted Quince’s scheme at the bridge. By the time I arrived, the wagon and its still-intact mosaic should have reached the family compound safely, and Livia should have been presiding over supper for the guests. My goal this return trip should have been nothing more but double-checking that it all was in order. Should have taken an hour or two.

However. Best-laid plans and all that.

I materialized on the cool tesserae in Livia’s antechamber—so, high marks for placement, Erzsébet.

As I was coming back to consciousness, I heard a couple of high-pitched female voices yelp with fright. From my supine dizziness, I glanced around for the source of their distress. I saw Livia in a brightly decorated, sleeveless stola. Arria was neatening her mistress’s hair for dinner, while Julia (already dressed, coiffed, perfumed, and bejeweled) stood by the door, looking at me as though I were a specter.

“Is the mosaic safe?” I asked, beginning to rise up on one elbow.

Silence. They all stared at me, pink mouths delicately agape. Why so surprised? I’d been gone only a few hours in their era, and Livia had expressly told me to return tonight.

“Who are you?” demanded Thalia in a frightened voice.

So, not that I’ll ever get to mention it, but demerits for Erzsébet. Right DTAP, wrong Strand.

And that has made all the difference. Now I’ll never know if Tristan made it back alive, because I myself won’t.

I glanced at Livia. She looked less friendly than usual. “Answer,” she ordered sternly.

“You are Livia Saturnina, daughter of Marcus Livius Saturninus, and that is your sister, Livia Julia,” I said, fighting off the last of my dizziness.

“We know who we are, that wasn’t the question. Who are you?” Julia retorted. To her sister in a voice of complaint: “Is this some magic game you are playing? It’s all very well to invent distractions when there is nothing going on, but we are supposed to go to dinner with the men now! Put this thing aside until later.” (This thing = me.)

Livia’s eyes stayed on me. She could see the glamour around me, but that told her nothing of where I’d been Sent from, or by whom, or why. “Answer the question.”

“My name is Melia. I am from the same time and place as Quintus.”

“And why have you been Sent?”

“To guard the mosaic,” I said.

Livia made a huffing sound and shook her head. “You are incompetent, then. The cart overturned at the river on its way up from the workshop, and the mosaic is nothing but scattered tesserae clogging the riverbed. An accident.”

“Not an accident,” I said. I sat up a little straighter.

Livia’s expression darkened. “Sabotage?”

“Can’t you do this later, sister?” pleaded Julia, staring out the door and across the courtyard. “They are already at the triclinium awaiting us.”

“They can wait,” said Livia. “This is important.”

“They’re our guests! It’s rude to keep them waiting.”

“We shouldn’t be dining with them at all, without Father here,” said Livia, her eyes still on me. “Stand up, you. Sister, sit down.”

“Livia!” complained Julia, not sitting down. Livia ignored her, so Julia continued, huffing: “Grilling this stranger isn’t going to bring your precious mosaic back.”

I stood up. “I was here earlier today, but it must have been on another Strand.”

“Clearly,” Livia said shortly.

“You and I saved the mosaic on the other Strand.” Livia looked surprised—and interested. So I pressed on: “Quintus came here from the future with the assignment of destroying the mosaic.”

“Destroying it? Quintus?”

“On the other Strand—on several other Strands—I warn you, and you and I work together to prevent him.”

“We do?” Livia was confused . . . but still interested.

“He tries to spook the donkeys at the bridge, to make the cart topple into the river, but because, on other Strands, I warn you, you use magic to prevent him.”

“I wish that were this Strand.” Julia sighed, directing her words out the doorway toward the courtyard. “Then Livia wouldn’t be sulking so and taking it out on the rest of us.”

“Shut up,” said her older sister, almost offhandedly, her eyes fixed on me. “You are claiming Quintus intentionally committed a criminal act.”

“Yes.”

“You are claiming that in my dining hall there is a guest who has broken bread with me, who is destroying my family’s property.”

“Just the one mosaic. I was Sent here to stop him.”

“By whom?”

“People who do not want the mosaic destroyed.”

“Who are they and why would they protect it?” She was agitated but kept her poise.

“His employer and mine are enemies,” I said. “Your mosaic was a casualty of their war. I’m sorry for it. I don’t know details, I’m just a hired hand.”

She frowned. “And why should I believe you? Quintus arrived days ago, and I have experienced him to be a courteous, respectful gentleman.”

“Also, hot,” said Julia.

“His behavior is an act, to win your trust so you won’t be suspicious of him,” I said.

“But I have heard his detailed account of the accident, and he attempted to prevent it,” Livia said. “It was the fault of the wagoner.”

“What is the wagoner’s defense?”

Livia grimaced. “He died in the fall,” she said softly.

“That’s horrible,” I said. “And what does Hanno Gisgon say about the incident?”

“Hanno is stricken by the wagoner’s death, of course. But he did not see what happened, he’d ridden ahead to order a shepherd to get his flock out of the way.”

“So you are only hearing Quintus’s version,” I said.

“Can you contradict him?” she asked archly. “Were you there?”

“On another Strand, yes, I was—with you.”

She pursed her lips together. “Thalia, give her your extra tunic and some shoes. We shall let Quintus respond to these claims. What?” she demanded sharply, since I’d made a noise.

“It is in nobody’s interest for Quintus to see me here,” I said.

“If you are honest, there can be no harm in it,” she countered. Thalia had ducked into the back chamber. She returned and tossed a tunic and belt at my feet. I rose to standing and began to put the tunic on.

“You have a strange body,” Arria observed. Julia hmphed in disinterested agreement. And that was all the traction my once-diverting physique got me on this Strand. I dressed quickly in the stony silence.

“You look pathetic,” said Livia dispassionately, once I’d tied the belt and bloused the tunic. “Arria, do something with her hair.”

Once I was deemed kempt enough to be in company, we crossed through the courtyard and down a short passageway to the southern court. This was lozenge-shaped, with a larger-than-human statue of Apollo, in all his naked glory, at one end. I had not been to this space during the prior Strands, but from studying the map, I knew its purpose: it was for courtesans to dance around showing off their wares, while the male guests played cotabo after dinner. Cotabo is an infantile drinking game (literally flinging the dregs of your wine at a target), and one prize is a close encounter with the courtesan of one’s choice. All four of the girls had mentioned this on the previous Strands, with remarkable offhandedness. They seemed to perceive no connection—not even anatomically—between such activities and the hormone-induced adolescent fantasies they were so preoccupied with. I had assumed their stories were erotic apocrypha until we passed by six small chambers adjoining this courtyard, each kitted up for postprandial bonking.

Obviously the cotabo-and-shagging package would not be on offer tonight. I was surprised (as I had been on earlier Strands) that Livia was hosting this meal at all. Her guests were both foreigners, which perhaps allowed for this highly unorthodox laxity. Vilicus, the estate manager, was her de facto chaperone, and I was relieved to see him in the triclinium as we approached from the courtyard. Vilicus insisted on dining at the sisters’ table; the guests would have a table to themselves, which Julia thought was unspeakably rude “of us.”

Triclinium literally means there are three reclining surfaces—i.e., eating couches, with cushions. Each trio of couches was arranged around a low table; in this triclinium, there were three sets of couches-plus-table tucked into three separate alcoves against different walls. In the central alcove, each leaning upon his left elbow, were Hanno Gisgon (in the position of honor) and Arturo Quince. The third couch, meant for the host, was empty.

Hanno would not recognize me, since it was our first meeting on this Strand. But Arturo Quince knows me from DODO. When he saw me, he lurched upright as if he’d been goosed.

We ascended the shallow steps to the triclinium. Quince is a smooth operator, so he recovered quickly, except for staring at me. Would he figure out I was the drowning slave who’d vanished in the river on the last Strand?

And what did he know about my leaving DODO? Had I been expunged? Demonized? Or had there been a bland downplaying of our mass defection—“Some founding members have moved on to new projects in the non-profit sector”? Not knowing what to anticipate, I lowered my gaze and followed Livia to the center of the room.

“Quintus,” said Livia sternly.

“Mistress,” he said with a bow of his head.

“Do you know this woman?”

“I do.”

“You have broken bread with me in my home. I call upon you to honor the sacred bond of guest and host. Tell me what you know of her.”

He smirked—and as he opened his mouth I understood that I was screwed. “Well, mistress, I must tell you truly. She is the one who destroyed your mosaic.”

Of course. Of course he’d go there.

ROBIN’S AFTER ACTION REPORT, STRAND 2, NEW PLAN (CONT.)

George Weale was the Clerk of Works for Whitehall Palace. This gave him veto power over Tilney’s plan to use the Banqueting House. It was a plan Weale, a jocular bloke, found hilariously ill-conceived. He offered to show Tilney exactly why. On a cool, cloudy afternoon, Tilney, a couple of his sub-clerks, and (as proxy for the King’s Men) myself went on a tour.

Disembarking from a boat at the Whitehall steps, we entered the palace grounds through the towering King’s Gate. Whitehall is badass overall, but Weale was right: the Banqueting House was a mess. Like I said, it had been built for one single event, back around 1580. Queen Elizabeth had a blind date with a European duke, and he sailed over from the Continent for dinner, which lasted a couple of days. All of Europe held its breath to see if the courtship would take. It didn’t.

The Banqueting House, however, did okay. It had been thrown up in record time and was a wonder for its era. The length of a football field and forty feet high, the wicker frame hung on dozens of ships’ masts planted into the ground, covered by massive sheets of canvas. These had been painted, trompe l’oeil–ishly, to look like stone. Weale insisted—and Tilney agreed—it had been convincing back in the day. Now it was faded and battered from decades of exposure. The wicker was rotting away from being in direct contact with frequently damp (because England) canvas for so long. It was hard to imagine anyone who wore ermine setting foot in the place.

“You see?” said Weale, grinning.

“’Tis ideal,” said Tilney.

Weale laughed in disbelief. He gestured us all to enter through the squared-off frame of the canvas door.

The inside looked better than the outside. Broad horizontal planks ran from mast to mast, creating wooden paneling and a high wooden ceiling. These had been painted too and, beneath the black mold and dinginess, still revealed decorations: strapwork of flowers and fruit, ivy and holly vines twining about, dappled here and there with spangles of gold leaf. The ceiling was bedecked with stars and suns and the royal arms, with an even more generous spangling of gold leaf. A lot of the gold leaf still spangled.

“You have exaggerated the disrepair,” said Tilney breezily. Weale studied him, bemused.

I was most struck by the light. There were hundreds of small windows at varying heights on all sides. Also, at about ten-foot intervals, there were wires, many now rusted or broken, strung across the width of the hall, from which hung dozens of light branches. So, lots of natural light by day, lots of artificial light by night. Good Queen Bess, man. She had it figured out.

It smelled pretty awful. But so did the rest of London, and at least mold was a change from carrion and smoke.

We walked the length of it. I was concerned about being able to scout for Tristan and run interference once Gráinne made her move. (Presumably she had some way to get into a court performance—perhaps Tilney himself would let her in? How frustrating to know it was going to happen but not know how. And how would Tristan get in? He knew nobody at court . . .) Weale pointed out every rusted chain and broken board and raveling canvas seam. Tilney responded to each with an approving nod, as if these were selling points. At the far end of the hall was a raised platform for staging entertainments. It was nearly the size of the Globe’s stage, but only three feet off the ground.

This building wasn’t designed as a performance space, and so, despite its size, it couldn’t support nearly the number of audience members the Globe could. That meant fewer ears hearing the correct lines. Damn. On the plus side: easier to find my brother. Assuming this (finally) was the Strand where he’d been Sent.

Tilney directed me to tromp around on the stage to check for rot. It was sound. Some moldering curtains hung across the width of the hall at the back of the stage; behind them was an area about four strides deep. Not as large as the Globe’s tiring house, but workable.

“’Tis all just as I hoped,” said Tilney to an increasingly bewildered Weale, and then turned to me to ask, “Will this work for the staging your cousin has devised?”

“I am not performing in the play, sir, so I don’t know,” I said promptly (thinking, You’re not gonna trip me up that easily, dude). “But ’tis common for hellish characters such as witches to emerge from a trap, and there’s none here.”

“We’ll change the entrance,” Tilney said comfortably. He gestured to his sub-clerks, who had followed us toting their portable desks in leather harnesses, like hot dog sellers at a Mets game. The Master began rattling off what needed to be done in the next three days to make the space presentable. After each item, he glanced at the astonished Weale, who nodded to allow it. The list:

everything must be doused with vinegar, now, today, and then;
all the glazed windows (all but four unbroken) removed temporarily to air the place out, and then replaced the day of performance; but in the meantime
frankincense was to be burned to purify the space, followed by
rose and lavender perfume being burned continually until the moment the play began; meanwhile
the entire banqueting hall and stage were to be carpeted with green cloth, not to mention
all damaged wicker replaced and
all broken wires likewise, as well as
all lighting trees and cresset lamps polished and furnished with candles or fuel;
the rotting velvet curtains that hung upstage replaced;
a dais must be brought in for the King and Queen, with elbow chairs, embroidered cushions, and Turkish carpets, and
raised platforms and the second-best chairs for the aristocratic invited audience . . .

“But this will come from your budget and not mine,” said Weale, a little nervous now.

“Of course,” said Tilney. He was so done with Weale. Weale, sensing this, excused himself.

Tilney now turned his attention back to the stage, to contemplate the witches’ entrance. No (he said sharply, when I asked), he didn’t need Shakespeare’s help, this was his venue, and he would determine the use of the stage.

“We will hang a white taffeta drape a few inches behind the upstage curtain.” One of the desk-wielding sub-clerks took a note. “To open the show, the witches will stand behind it. The props man will light a lantern behind the witches, so that when the velvet curtain is drawn aside at the top of the show, the audience will see a sheet of taffeta upon which looms the shadows of the three Weird Sisters. Then the taffeta will be drawn aside, but they will remain backlit as they promenade onto the stage. The effect shall be ominous.” A rare look of self-satisfaction warmed Tilney’s face.

The backlighting premise reminded me of the nonexistent reflector lamp. One of those babies could have made the silhouette effect work very well in this dark, contained space. It would have been rock-concert good. Given the kind of lighting we actually had to work with in this reality, though, Tilney’s vision, although radical for the era, would be lame in execution.

Warming to his efforts, Tilney now declared that when Birnam Wood “marches” toward Dunsinane Castle, the soldiers should carry recently harvested pine branches so that the whole audience would smell the pine sap. This dude was innovative.

A breathless lad was rushing from the main entrance down toward us, waving sheepishly, his expression the archetypal messenger-who-got-blamed. Tilney, with a grunt of annoyance, went to meet him. The desk-toting clerk and I stayed where we were, but within moments, sounding irked, Tilney called for me. He was glowering at the crestfallen young messenger, whose crest looked even further fallen now.

“Our office’s Venetian ceruse appears to be in Her Majesty’s bedchamber,” Tilney explained to me in a tone of long-suffering I must not complain about this. “After she wore it in the last masque, she was so taken with the porcelain tone it gave her complexion that she took it back to her own chamber to try on. She sent word she will return it, but she has not done so yet. We require it for Lady Macbeth, and as things will be hectic on performance day, we must retrieve it today, while we are here.”

“Will Her Majesty not have used it all by now?” I asked.

“Young Jack has just returned from attempting to make that very inquiry. He is known to Her Majesty’s attendants, but was turned away by them anyhow, for his lack of proper attire. A fault for which I chastised him this very morning.” This was said with a passing glare at the redheaded messenger, who was, tbh, dressed like a seventeenth-century Baker Street Irregular. “So now I must go myself. I am bringing you with me.”

“As you will have it, sir . . . but to what end?”

“I may not be permitted entrance to Her Majesty’s private rooms, but they will allow you because you’re not a man.”

A jolt of alarm. “What do you mean, sir?” I asked.

“Come, you’re still a boy,” he said impatiently. “Your beard has not come yet.”

He strode with a long, purposeful gait past the stage, through the backstage area, and out of the Banqueting House through a small portal door I hadn’t noticed. I wondered why he didn’t send me on my own, but it wasn’t worth getting shot down for asking, so I just followed.

The Banqueting House had been erected on a north-south axis, parallel to the palace’s trunk road and perpendicular to the King’s Gate. To the north were courtiers’ apartments; to the east were gardens and, beyond the gardens, the private apartments for the royal family. (I can CAD this if you like, but no need to worry about the layout too much here—except the royal wing, to the east, flanks the River Thames, which matters later on.)

The stage was at the northern end of the Banqueting House. When we exited, there were buildings ahead of us and gardens of topiary and rosebushes to the right. Place us at six o’clock, and at two o’clock there’s a small tower with stairs up to the private apartments. We crossed the chilly garden and headed up the spiraled steps. At the top, we emerged into a high-ceilinged gallery flanked with windows on our side and doors on the other. Tilney knew his way around here because he often met with courtiers to discuss their appearances in the masques. He turned right, toward a gallery perpendicular to this one, some twenty yards distant.

This new gallery was even broader than the first, the ceilings higher, the windows larger. The walls were wainscoted with square panels about two feet across, going up as high as my head. The floor was an inlay of half a dozen kinds of wood. The door panels were carved with images of roses and crowns and featured extravagant metalwork on their massive hinges. “Opulent” is an understatement. This was the royal family’s domestic wing.

Braziers were spaced between the heavy carved oak doors, about twenty or thirty paces apart, but the torches were not lit now because huge mullioned windows let in plenty of light, even on this cloudy afternoon. This gallery ran about a hundred paces. Massive tapestries covered the walls, and fragrant strewing herbs collected in the corners, as if swept there from the center of the corridor by the long trains of gowns. There was a guard stationed at each door. They were dressed much like the Yeoman guards whom tourists love snapping pix of in the present day—the iconic scarlet tunics ornamented with dark stripes and gold lace. Their hats were plumed, and they held pikes.

We stopped at the second door. Tilney announced himself to the guard imperiously. The guard was nearly as tall as Tilney, and clearly a man who took his vocation seriously. He was so supremely palace-guard-like that I couldn’t imagine him having any identity beyond that; a bit player deeply invested in his role. He must have been the one who turned young Jack away for being unkempt. Now he gave Tilney and me the once-over, not impressed by anyone who wasn’t already on the other side of the door he guarded. He turned his back on us, opened the door, and stepped through, shutting it behind him.

Tilney was grimacing so hard his lips were nearly white. “We have no time for this,” he seethed quietly.

So just leave and let me deal with it, I thought, but of course didn’t dare say aloud.

About a minute later, the door opened again, and the guard stepped out. Behind him was a gorgeous middle-aged woman in a wasp-waisted sky-blue velvet gown with satin sleeves laced onto it. The skirt was artificially inflated by a farthingale. She wore a gossamer-soft headdress. She smelled of jasmine. She was lovelier than any portrait from this era I’ve ever seen. She smiled when she saw Tilney, and Tilney made a face as if he had a toothache and didn’t want her to know.

“Master Tilney,” she said warmly, bending into a brief, simple curtsy. “How pleasing to see you.”

He immediately doffed his cap from off his head, held it to his stomach, pointed his right leg slightly ahead of himself, and bent his left. “My Lady Emilia,” he said reverentially. “I did not expect to meet you here.” This was transparently a lie. This was why he had come with me.

“I hope you are as pleased by the surprise as I am,” she said. Her eyes glanced toward me, registered my existence without interest, and returned to him. “For what reason do you honor Her Majesty by calling upon her? I trust it is not to do with the book.” Her tone softened. “Leave that to me. I am your true ambassador in that endeavor.”

“It is to do with the performance,” said Tilney quickly. I could tell he wished I wasn’t present. This was not a plot point I’d seen coming.

Her face glowed. “Yes! How auspicious that Their Majesties have seen fit for Macbeth to play first of all here at Whitehall!” And then, lowering her voice, “Especially with the understanding we have between us, you and I.”

“Of course,” coughed Tilney. I could almost smell how badly he wished I were gone.

“I shall make certain they are aware of you,” she continued, nearly purring, “not merely as the Master of the Revels, but also as the author of”—she paused, glanced at me, and then said demurely—“a book of note.”

He flushed. “I am your humble servant,” he said. “But on this occasion I am here for mundane business. I would not bother Her Majesty, but an article of the Revels Office is missing, and I believe Her Majesty’s attendants have accidentally brought it back to these chambers. If that be the case . . .”

Lady Emilia looked graciously amused. Everything about her was velvety and smooth. She was gorgeous. I already had a crush on her, so I’m sure that, however Tilney knew her, he was long smitten. It was cute. “’Tis the ostrich-feather shawl, I warrant,” she said. “From The Masque of the Moon. Her Majesty was very taken with it, she hoped you would not notice.” In a conspiratorial voice she added, as if she did not want the grim-visaged guard to hear her, “’Tis in the Little Revels.”

“What isn’t in the Little Revels?” said Tilney rhetorically.

Lady Emilia smiled slyly at me. “The lad here has not heard of the Little Revels. ’Tis the closet in which Her Majesty assembles those elements from the Revels Office that she intends to eventually send back to the Revels Office,” she explained, “but has not found a moment to do so yet.” She winked. It was so subtly sexy, it made me kinda wish I was into older women.

“Is it a small closet?” I asked, pretending I was into older women.

“I would not say so,” she said. “But I have free access to it, so if you will excuse me a moment, I will hunt for the ostrich shawl for the Master.” She took a step farther out the door and reached toward a much smaller door snugged right up next to it; the guard hurriedly grabbed a latch that was camouflaged in the ornate paneling and opened it for her. This littler door looked out of place along the gallery wall . . . Might it have once been a place for guards to sleep between shifts? A storage closet for torches? Munitions supplies?

Whatever its original purpose, it had become a covert, satellite Revels chamber. Leaving it open so that some clouded daylight could enter from the gallery windows, Lady Emilia went into it.

“I’faith,” said Tilney. “’Tis not the ostrich-feather shawl we seek, although I am glad to know of its whereabouts.”

“Then you must be after the gold-foil birdcages,” she said over her shoulder as she took another step inside. She was now in far enough that the sunlight would barely reach her.

“Indeed no,” said Tilney.

“The silver-leafed icicles?” she asked.

“Yes!” I said (such a devoted inventory taker). “We are missing three of those.”

“Yes, but ’tisn’t what we are here for now,” Tilney said. “’Tis the Venetian ceruse—”

“Ah!” she said, and came back out of the closet. “Indeed. I am sorry to say that has been entirely exhausted. Her Majesty is very fond of it and has even asked a clerk in your office to provide some more for her. Goodness, it is dear! If you need cosmetics for the boy actors in Macbeth, I will ask Her Majesty if you may take some of hers. ’Tis not so nice as yours, I fear.” She stepped away from the Little Revels door and signaled to the guard, who closed it for her.

Tilney looked mortified. “I would not presume to employ the Queen’s personal property,” he said. “We will make other arrangements. Thank you, Lady Emilia.”

“Tarry a moment,” she said in a come hither tone. He froze mid-bow. “I myself have some ceruse, and as ’tis for one single performance, I would be honored to share it with the players who are to personate women.” Finally she looked directly at me. She was so beautiful, I blushed and felt stupendously ungraceful. She smiled at me, and I blushed deeper. “And is this young man to play one of the ladies?”

“I am not a personator, m-milady,” I stammered.

“’Tis a shame,” she said. “You would make a pretty one. Certainly nicer to gaze upon than the lads they have at present.”

“Thank you, milady,” I said. “But I am content to be in the Master’s employ.”

“As who would not?” she said. Tilney pretended not to notice himself reddening. “Wait a moment, Master Tilney, and I shall return with my own ceruse.”

She slipped back inside the Queen’s apartments. The guard shifted so that he was standing directly in front of the door again and gave us suspicious looks. I really hoped for his own sake that he was thinking about something interesting, like his next dice game, or some hotshot move he’d accomplished in a battle, or a shag session with whomever he shagged regularly. He was vaguely tragic in his dull dutifulness.

After a moment, Lady Emilia returned and presented a softball-sized ceramic box. Tilney signaled me, so I took it, shadowed Tilney’s gestures of leave-taking, and followed him back down the gallery the way we’d come.

“Make a note—”

“That we must purchase more ceruse, yes, sir. Perhaps a surplus amount, that you may gift it to Her Majesty?”

He glanced at me. “Good lad,” he said. It was the kindliest he’d ever sounded toward me. Seeing Lady Emilia put him in a good mood.

“Sir, if I may presume to ask, what book was she—”

“’Tis no business of yours,” he snapped.

So much for warm fuzzies.

Back at the Banqueting House, he released me to go to the Globe and enlighten the King’s Men about the change in staging.

I arrived at the theatre during a Macbeth rehearsal, and I slipped out into the yard. They were in the middle of the banquet scene, so nearly everyone was onstage. Dick Burbage, as Macbeth, was flipping out over the ghost of Banquo, while young Hal Berridge, in a wig and kirtle as Lady Macbeth, tried to shut him up. Shakespeare and Edward Knight, the prompter, watched from the yard. Noticing me, Will rested a hand briefly on Knight’s arm and crossed to me.

“The Whitehall Banqueting House is happening,” I said quietly. I explained about the new entrance and the backlighting. He liked the idea, in the way that Will ever expressed liking anything: slightly raised eyebrows and a quietly pleased expression.

“Well,” he said. “Three days.”

“Aye.”

“Court performances seldom have upward of three score spectators. If you require hundreds, or thousands, of audience to hear the correct lines of the play, all at the same time, this change of venue is a misfortune for you.”

“’Tis,” I agreed. I had almost forgotten about that; my mind was all on Tristan.

“But you know,” he continued, “I have connections who might help.”

“Help how?”

“Philip Herbert and his brother, the Earl of Pembroke, are patrons of mine, and great admirers of the King’s Men.” I nodded cautiously, already knowing this (because Shakespeare nerd). “They may well attend the performance. I shall prevail upon them, at His Majesty’s pleasure, to bring guests. Far more guests than would customarily attend a court performance. As many as the hall will hold. ’Tis not meet to invite commoners, but it may be that Herbert can persuade His Majesty to open the doors to all manner of gentlemen who would not ordinarily be welcomed to a court performance. That old Banqueting House can hold hundreds, I recall it well from my early days as a player when I first came to town.”

“’Twould be an improvement on the situation, although still not ideal,” I said. “Thank you. Shall I tell Master Tilney?”

“No need of that,” said Shakespeare. “He has much to attend to already, if he believes he can transform that overbuilt tent into an appropriate venue for Their Majesties. I’ll speak directly to my patrons, we need not trouble Tilney.”

Text written by the slave Melia on a series of wax tablets
(cont.)

FOURTH-CENTURY SICILY

Livia was unconvinced. “Quintus, you are saying this woman, who was not present when the mosaic was damaged, damaged the mosaic?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“No,” I said, glaring at him.

“I swear it by Apollo and my ancestors,” said Quince, hand briefly fluttering over sternum and then gesturing to the marble Apollo who watched us from the courtyard. “Her name is Melisande Stokes. She is my contemporary, and a traitor to our paterfamilias.”

(So on this Strand, Livia already knew we were from the future. One less detail to manage, at least.)

“Why did you not tell me about her?” demanded Livia. “When I first questioned you about the accident, I mean?”

“She vanished the moment she accomplished her treachery. Either she is a witch—”

Livia shook her head.

“—or she is being helped by a witch.”

“I’m the only witch in this entire latifundium.”

“That we know about,” Julia pointed out.

“I can’t account for the witch, but please let me say that I would have sounded insane to accuse someone who wasn’t there, mistress. So I confess now that I misled you when I described it as an accident, and I will accept punishment for that. But the truth would have sounded too far-fetched.”

Livia glanced between us, brow furrowed. “Why did she destroy it?”

“There is some war between her worthless self and those who Sent me. I know no details, but I was Sent here to prevent her. All other claims I made were just a cover story. I apologize again for my deceit, and I am deeply shamed to have failed in my deed.”

“The truth is exactly the opposite of that, on every point,” I said.

“Why would she return here, after destroying it?” asked Livia, still studying him.

“She disappeared very suddenly in the river—the other witch obviously Sent her away before I could recognize her. So perhaps she came back merely to confirm that she had succeeded in destroying it.” That fucker.

“That’s what she said when she materialized,” said Julia, almost excitedly.

“That is not what I said,” I corrected sharply.

“Hanno, what say you?” Livia asked briskly. “Do you know this woman?”

Hanno shook his head.

“Did you see her at the bridge?”

Again he shook his head. “Mistress, I did not. That does not mean she wasn’t there.” His eyes softened. “All my attention was on poor Marcus and the wagon.”

“Good mistress,” I said, “I will swear upon my ancestors’ souls and my own survival, that I speak truth and this man lies. Take me to the shrine and I will prostrate myself.”

Livia glanced at Quince. He said, “By the great Apollo and by the health of my own family, you shall not find me perjured when I say she is the culprit and I was Sent to save the mosaic from her.”

She looked between Quince and me. On the one hand: a bedraggled, strange woman of no particular charms. On the other: a handsome, cocksure man who was lounging in her father’s dining room as if he owned the place.

“I am inclined to believe the visitor we have already learned to like and trust,” she said at last.

Vilicus, who had been standing by the right-hand set of couches, cleared his throat. Loudly.

“But the decision must be up to Father,” she amended promptly. Vilicus nodded approvingly and relaxed. “We expect his return in a fortnight. We shall hold the stranger as our prisoner until he returns.” I bit my tongue and pushed away a wave of dizziness.

Arturo Quince gave me a quick, triumphant sneer. He has no idea the menace he’s collaborating with, he thinks he’s just doing his job for the American government and that I’m the villain in this story.

“Mistress,” said Vilicus. “You are correct that the paterfamilias must rule on her guilt, but we are not equipped to confine a prisoner here for so long a time.”

“I noticed a jail in Sophiana,” said Quince helpfully.

“Oh, that place is wretched,” said Hanno, making a face. “My assistant’s brother contracted leprosy while he was being held there.”

I forced myself to breathe calmly.

Livia pursed her lips. “I’ll keep her with me,” she said. “Perhaps I can wring a confession from her, or at least amuse myself trying.”

I nearly cackled at this tiny good fortune. At least I’d have (excuse the term) unfettered access to the only person who could Home me. “The smith will put a slave anklet on you,” she declared, “and I will charm it to burn your skin if you are ever more than ten paces from me. Arria, tell the smith.”

What followed was a stilted formal dinner, during which I kept mouth shut and ears open. (I was not welcome to eat, which made keeping my mouth shut easy.) Hanno, as a master artisan, was a guest worthy of a fine meal but not a feast. So everything about the evening was the finest the family had to offer, scaled down. There were rabbit loins in fish sauce, pork bellies in fish sauce, roasted chicken in fish sauce, olives, cheeses, greens. Heaps of everything, but small heaps. There were warm round loaves at each table, but that more exotic carbohydrate—rice—was saved for more important guests. There were silver decanters of wine both red and white, but the decanters were small, and the variety of spiced hot water to season the wine was limited. For music there was only the lyre, played in a desultory manner in the background by a musician not expecting to be listened to.

The meat had been cut into bite-sized chunks in the kitchens, so now the diners simply scooped them directly from their plates into their mouths. One attendant offered a hand-washing basin between dishes, and another doled out fresh napkins.

I took in all these details while discarding a series of hapless notions about how to convince Livia to Home me.

The sisters lounged in the alcove to the right of the visitors, with the steward as their silent third; Thalia and Arria sat upright on the floor between the two alcoves, playing a dice game while their mistresses ate. I was seated with them, my stomach rumbling at the scent of roasted rabbit and spiced wines. The alcove arrangement made it awkward for the guests and the sisters to speak to each other without calling out, and this was not a calling-out sort of evening. So each table kept its conversation to itself.

The room had deceptive acoustics, due to the arching alcove ceilings. Where I was sitting, I could hear both tables clearly and had to hope Quince wouldn’t realize that.

“I am telling you, brother,” Quince was saying, returning to some earlier conversation, “those beautiful golden tesserae—”

“Oh, I agree,” said Hanno. “But the mistress has requested that I re-create the same mosaic here on site, and there is no place for them in my design.”

“I am not denigrating the Nine Muses, of course,” said Quince, “but since all of that effort has lamentably been wasted, consider this. I believe if the mistress saw these new tiles, she would beg you to incorporate them into the mosaic, especially as it will be in her bedchamber, and so she will be treated to the effect many hours of the day. I urge you to show her those gold tesserae before continuing.”

Hanno tipped his head thoughtfully to the side, noncommittal. “It’s a much bigger project to design something new from scratch.”

“Let me work with you on it,” said Quince. “As an apology for failing to protect your precious work. Let me help you rise from the ashes of this tragedy. Who knows, together we may create something better than the sum of our parts. You’re a good man, an excellent designer, and a consummate artisan, and I believe men such as yourself should be celebrated.” (I thought this was laying it on a bit thick, but Quince always gets results.) “I particularly relish a man of Carthage being given his due in Rome. After all, it is your countrymen who found the minerals to make the tiles so brilliant.”

Hanno considered this. “And you have a motif in mind?”

“As I was saying back in the village, these particular tesserae, because of how they catch the light, would be a marvelous medium for images of the sun and stars.”

“But the ordinary natural world is not the kind of decoration well-bred Romans are interested in,” said Hanno. “It isn’t exotic or elevated enough.”

“But it would be innovative,” said Quince earnestly. “The empire thrives on innovation. For instance in politics, with the invention of the tetrarchy—”

“The tetrarchy is a disaster, brother, it won’t last,” said Hanno. “I’ve lost track of all the usurpations. My money is on Constantine as sole emperor within a decade.”

“—and architecture and engineering,” continued Quince. “Why not the decorative arts? The Romans have been echoing the Greeks for centuries, surely it is time to forge something entirely new, distinctively Roman, instead of just borrowing from the Hellenic culture. It will be the talk of centuries. In fact,” Quince said, lowering his voice. I shifted my weight toward Livia’s table, as if I weren’t listening. “Here’s a clever idea that has just jumped into my head this moment. If we are to use the astronomical motif, I mean. Centuries from now, natural philosophers and mathematicians will work together to create a superior science of the heavens.”

Hanno had a warning smile in his voice. “You people who are Sent from else-when must not spread your knowledge to us benighted souls, or you shall push the world out of balance and there can be dreadful consequences.”

“But that’s not what I’m doing,” said Quince in his best confiding voice. “I’m suggesting something that’s subtle but will have excellent consequences for Livia’s family. You can spell it out for them and earn their admiration.”

“I already have their admiration,” said Hanno comfortably. “I inherited it with my father’s workshop and reputation. Do you know he designed all the mosaics of this compound and oversaw each room? Practically dictated every individual tile, and there are nearly thirty million of them. That freed me to become a master at such a young age, as I was executing the designs he promised to all the lesser noblemen around Marsala.”

Genuine admiration warmed Quince’s voice. “Your father designed this compound?”

“The floor mosaics. He farmed out some of the standard mythological creatures and geometric designs to his apprentices, of course. But all the original and singular images—the great hunt, or the couple copulating on the master’s bedroom floor—that was all him. A great man. A genius. I am but a journeyman compared with him.”

“I see his genius in you,” said Quince. “I believe you can rise to be worthy of it. Let me guide you.”

A pause, during which Hanno presumably gestured him to continue, but I was keeping my eyes fixed on the dice game. The girls were making playful faces at each other because they weren’t allowed to whoop in the dining hall.

“A comet would be an excellent use of the golden tiles,” Quince said.

“A comet is not a very interesting shape, though, is it, brother?”

“There was a comet that appeared about ten years ago, when you were a youth. Do you remember it? Very bright. It must have been recorded in all the almanacs.”

“I remember it. My mother and father were transfixed by it.”

“That same comet will appear again in sixty-five years.”

Hanno chuckled. “I’m sorry, brother, but you’re mistaken. A comet is a disturbance in the heavens sent as a message. It appears and then it’s gone. Everyone knows that.”

“This one will return three-quarters of a century after it was last seen. And then after another three-quarters century. And then again, after the same time has elapsed. And then again. For untold thousands of years into the future.”

A pause. “How do you know it is the same comet?” asked Hanno Gisgon.

“Even if it’s not the same comet, there are a series of comets that appear according to a predictable period, only nobody has noticed yet. But if you create a mosaic that displays a comet with an orbital periodic reappearance—and then the world comes to know that there is such a comet? Will you not be celebrated, and your family celebrated because of you?”

Another pause. “That is a long time to wait, to gain this recognition.”

“Just predict its next appearance, then. Maybe something simple. Show the comet of your youth on one side of the image, with depictions of events from that same year . . . and then find a decorative way to depict the passage of three-quarters of a century, and then, on the far side of the image, depict the exact same comet, tile for tile. Sixty-five years hence, once that comet reappears, your genius shall be recognized. Your family’s fame and fortune will be guaranteed. As will your patron’s—and you can tell him so. I will be willing to tell him myself, as a gesture of making up for my failure to prevent the loss of the original mosaic.”

“I am intrigued by this,” said Hanno cautiously. “But I would have to be very particular about the setting of the tiles. There is a sacred spell encrypted in the floors of this compound, a few lines in each room. My Nine Muses design dutifully replicated the sacred words in the current mosaic that’s about to be covered over. If I create a design, I must take care to include these words in the new design.”

A pause. I stopped pretending to watch the dice game. “What are you talking about?” Quince asked.

“My father taught me his substitution cipher. There are more than thirty different color tiles used here, and in his encryption, each one is a substitute for a letter of the alphabet or an Arabic numeral.”

“Interesting,” said Quince.

“Yes. He put the colors in the order of the rainbow, amended with grays and browns, and the letters they correspond to in the order of the alphabet. The reddest red is A, the red with a little orange is B, and so on. He would include the decryption key somewhere in the border of each room. That is how he encrypted the floors.”

“With a . . . sacred spell?” asked Quince. I wanted to glance over to see his expression but couldn’t risk his noticing me.

“Oh yes,” said Hanno, with expansive offhandedness. “Among the millions of tesserae in this compound is a blessing for the family, for my father was devoted to Livia’s father.”

“And the blessing is a sacred spell?”

“That depends upon your definition of sacred and of spell. When it is deciphered, it tells you how to defeat death.”

“I’m sorry, what?” said Quince.

“You heard me, brother,” said Hanno. “I told you, my father was a genius.”

“Right. Clearly. Of course. However, if I may point out, or rather ask: If he knew how to defeat death, why isn’t he alive now?”

“How do you know he isn’t?” Hanno said, his tone playful. “Maybe you appear to die and then come back to life three days later and ascend to Heaven. I’ve been hearing rumors about that.” He laughed heartily, and I remembered Livia, on an earlier Strand, gushing about his laughter.

“Please start back at the beginning and explain this,” said Quince. He sounded rattled, by Quince standards. “You say your father learned to defeat death. From where, from whom?”

“Zosimos of Panopolis, our family friend who is now creating a new branch of knowledge he calls ‘alchimia.’ The blessing on the floor here contains some verses of his great work Cheirokmeta,” said Hanno. “It is very esoteric, and Father was never a student of such things. But he knew there was a powerful mysticism underlying all of it, and so he asked Zosimos for some choice lines to use. He wanted to literally cement words of protection into the very ground the family walked upon. Then he created the substitution cipher for the tesserae. To him it did not even matter if it was ever decrypted—to his mind, just the fact that it existed meant it functioned as a protective blessing.”

“But, brother, if you believe this is true, why haven’t you decrypted it so you can have that blessing for yourself?!” I could not tell if Quince was trying to keep himself from mocking laughter or if he actually believed that Hanno was one ciphered algorithm away from immortality.

“My brother!” said Hanno. “I am not in need of any magical protection! Let the unhappy or the infirm worry about such things. Life is my blessing.”

There was a sizable pause. Finally Quince got back on target: “So you’re saying that you’d consider changing the design to comets—and using the very beautiful new tiles and ensuring your descendants’ fortune—as long as you can encode that room’s sacred words into a new mosaic.”

“I will consider it,” said Hanno. “And I thank you for this inspiration! I drink to you, if you allow it.”

“If it’s a toast from you, brother, I’m honored.”

They cheered and drank. Next, honey-sweetened cannoli were served.

Meanwhile, in the other alcove, the sisters were discussing which tunics they wanted laundered tomorrow, to wear the day after tomorrow.

I could hear the boredom in every syllable out of Livia’s mouth. Livia could recite reams of Horace’s iambic poetry; she could critique Pliny’s “Epistle to Vespasian” from his Natural History; she had created a cheat sheet detailing Livy’s History of Rome; she even knew Earth revolved around the sun! But her lively brain was in the wrong alcove to do anything about it. Julia was no intellectual slouch herself, but she had the good fortune of her passions aligning with this DTAP’s gender norms. She was all about headdresses.

After dinner, I was reunited with the blacksmith (he, of course, didn’t experience it as a reunion), and the fetter was welded around my ankle. Livia charmed it and gave me a demonstration of what would happen should I wander more than ten paces from her. I still bear the burn marks.

We retired to Livia’s chambers.

“Well, I have saved you from leprosy, so you owe me something,” Livia said in a matter-of-fact way.

“I’m giving you the truth,” I said.

“That has yet to be determined. Until it is, I require something else.”

“I have nothing else.”

“Of course you do. You have yourself.”

“I lack all domestic skills, but my father laid tiles for a living, so I might be of use to Hanno Gisgon,” I said immediately.

She gave me a funny look. “We’ve plenty of slaves and menial servants for such things. I mean your life, not your body.”

“Mistress?”

“Entertain me with stories of your own life and times. I’m bored to death with Virgil and Homer. Even Menander—comedies are only funny the first time. Do you still worship Jupiter? Have any Christians survived? Give us a new story, from your own time. Tell us of your heroes.” She gave me a warning grin. “Or I will make your anklet very hot.”

I needed to capitalize on her interest in me, but sharing historical data was out of the question. What she really wanted was stories. Most of her favorites, or at least the ones she was familiar with, were about travelers. I know plenty of stories about travelers and can even recite from memory whole passages of novels I read when I was young. Although the one that first sprang to mind was too aggressively vernacular to translate fluently to Latin. So instead of reciting it, I began to synopsize Huckleberry Finn.

It didn’t go well. The premise made no sense to the girls. Yes, Huck was on a journey—but a journey from something rather than to something was feckless and cowardly, and no such character could be a hero. And a runaway slave? That just wasn’t a thing. Livia ordered me to stop the nonsense. Adjusting parameters, I tried to pitch them Star Trek, but don’t be stupid, Melia, who would choose to travel far from home to someplace they weren’t intending to either conquer or develop advantageous trade relations with? A foolish waste of capital and resources—even Thalia could see that. Try something else, something epic, in which a tragic hero must endure an agon that fate has thrust upon him. Duh, Melia.

What could I do in response to this, other than resort to the mythology of my own childhood? And so I began:

“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”

They loved parties of special magnificence.

Livia allowed me to continue. I tweaked the depiction of the Shire and the birthday party to their tastes. Bag End was a palatial cave, and all the guests were men with six-pack abs. By the time tall, bare-chested Frodo made an appearance, I was their Scheherazade.

Which, it turns out, was not a smart long-term strategy.

“I shall convince Father you are guilty,” Livia said contentedly, hours later. “I shall ask him to make you my attendant for life, since you’re too old to be a courtesan. You shall spend the rest of your years telling us this extraordinary tale of reluctant wanderers.”

Arria pointed to my ankle fetter and burst into laughter. “Melia! You are yourself a ring bearer!”

“Not the same,” I growled.

“You’re Mistress Livia’s personal Frodo,” she insisted, cackling.

My storytelling had continued beyond their usual bedtime. Arria and Thalia went through their familiar evening housekeeping rituals. I pulled off my borrowed tunic and was finally able to cash in on my “strange” physique. As she was closing the shutters, Arria commented on what a good butt I had for an old lady (did I mention I’m thirty-two?), and Thalia, covering the brazier for the night, expressed admiration for my abs. This had been my “in” on the previous Strands, but if I cashed in on it now, that would only make Livia more determined to keep me as her new pet.

“Where I come from, women exercise a lot,” I said with a shrug.

“Really?” said Livia, interested. Oh, great. Now everything about me made me interesting. I should have stuck with Huckleberry Finn; maybe by now I’d be cleaning toilets or doing something else that put me below her radar. “We must learn more about that. Tomorrow you will demonstrate your routine. In the palaestra.”

“Are you crazy? We can’t go into the palaestra when there are male visitors here!” said Julia, thrilled. “That’s shameless!”

“We’ll go first thing in the morning,” announced Livia, and the others squealed.

The next morning, from a stone chest containing her father’s exercise equipment in the palaestra, Livia removed several sets of hand weights and a ball. We spent the next half hour or so playing an improvised late-antiquity version of volleyball, and Livia decided that the subligar must be shortened so we could move more freely about the room—a space immeasurably larger than any they had ever frolicked in.

I tried—and still try—to take some comfort in the surety that even if I were to spend the rest of my life here in captivity, I would have an affectionate and indulgent owner. For the record: that is very cold comfort. But I was winning her good regard, which might at least let me influence her regarding the mural.

When Livia finally called an end to the ball-playing, even I, with my greater lung capacity, was exhausted. All four of them were red-faced, their hair falling over their eyes, and they found it hilarious to point out these beauty flaws in each other.

Then we realized that we were being watched.

Standing in the doorway that led to the domestic wing was Hanno Gisgon. He was gazing at all of us while slowly eating a cluster of grapes. He grinned and gave us a here I am wave. His teeth were straight and white and gleamed against his dark lips.

“You are very handsome ladies,” he said. There was not a trace of lechery in his voice. He sounded delighted, as if he were complimenting a beautiful landscape.

All four of them were simultaneously thrilled and scandalized.

“You,” said Livia, forcing herself to sound strict. “You should not be here when we are here!”

“I apologize, mistress,” he said not at all apologetically. “I am not familiar with the rules of your beautiful home. Please excuse me. But I must tell you, my eyes have not felt so blessed in many months. I thank you.”

They all cackled. Livia managed to disguise her cackle as a distinguished bubble of gracious laughter. “If my father were here he would be very angry,” she said. “Not only with you for watching us cavort, but also with us for cavorting.”

“Then—as much as I hold him in reverence, as my father did before me—let us be grateful he is not here,” said Hanno. “And if his continued absence means you will continue to cavort, it makes my heart glad for you, whether or not I have the privilege of viewing your cavorting.”

Livia was too charmed to speak.

“But, mistress, honestly, I came here not to ogle you, but because I have a proposition,” he continued. “It has to do with the mosaic. I have been speaking with Quintus. He has suggested an alternative design.”

Her smile faded. “But I am very pleased with your Nine Muses. You were going to use my face on each of them, don’t you remember? And it is so wonderfully different from everything else in this place, which has a surfeit of Hercules and hunters. Why would we change it?”

“Mistress, I will show you. Please find me in the southern courtyard at your convenience.” He winked at her as he turned to go.

So later that morning, Hanno and Quintus demonstrated the brilliant golden glass tiles. And yes, it’s true, they are glorious, like liquid gold, brighter even than the golden tesserae on the walls of Hagia Sophia. Livia was understandably dazzled by them. She said she might (emphasizing might) allow changing the design of her bedroom-floor mosaic from the Nine Muses to the astronomical theme that Quince was gunning for. Shit.

I said nothing that day. I wasn’t yet secure in my role as her new pet, and I could not risk commenting on the very thing I’d been accused of marring.

The teacher was ill on this Strand, and so there was no formal schooling. Since my job was to entertain Livia, I attempted to chat her up about Cicero’s “In Defense of Gaius Rabirius Postumus,” but all she wanted was more Frodo.

The Lord of the Rings is hard to render as a linear narrative after the Fellowship splits up, so I stuck with Frodo and Sam on their journey to Mordor. Livia was so drawn in that when we were called to dinner, hours later, she almost didn’t go.

The next morning, we worked out again in the palaestra. Vilicus had refused to be in the same room with a bunch of half-naked, breathless virgins; this made it easy for Hanno to do so. He could not take his eyes off Livia, and hers lingered likewise on his as we drifted away into the baths. The bath complex rang with teenage hilarity as the girls parsed every moment of Hanno’s attentions. I squealed along with them and spoke glowingly of what was so clearly a taboo flirtation. I could feel the wheel turning: I was giving Livia reasons not merely to enjoy me but to trust me. That would only further cement her intention to keep me here (clearly that is not going to change), but now I could work on the mosaic situation.

That afternoon, shortly before Sam and Frodo capture Gollum, Hanno again requested Livia’s presence in the southern courtyard, to show her the final design for the proposed astronomical mosaic, in hopes she would give assent to it. All of us went with her.

The design was sketched out to scale on large sheets of papyrus that curled up at either end. It depicted the repeated comet Quince had described to Hanno over dinner, embellished with the constellations of a winter night. Even on an aesthetic level, I found it inferior to the sketches Livia had shown me of the Nine Muses, but I’m not known for my artistic judgment.

“What do you think?” asked Hanno.

“Very unusual. And pretty,” said Livia, in a voice more studious than delighted. “Melia, tell me. What do you make of it?”

Quince looked unhappy about her friendly tone.

“I congratulate Quintus on replacing the mosaic I was trying to protect with a very different design of his own devising,” I said. “How strange he does not wish to re-create the design he claims he was Sent here to preserve.”

Hanno and Livia exchanged glances. “That’s an interesting point,” said Livia. “I am somewhat abashed not to have thought of it myself, but I have had other things on my mind.”

“Meanwhile,” I continued, “I am still waiting for that other witch to whisk me away, as she supposedly did before. If she exists, and has chosen to abandon me in this dark hour, why do I not rat her out to save my own skin? As for the mosaic, mistress, Cassiopeia is at the wrong angle to Orion.”

It was suddenly so quiet in the courtyard that above the tart splashing of the fountain, I could hear the thrushes singing in the fruit trees of the far courtyard.

After what felt like a long time, Livia said in a quiet, firm voice, “Arria, go to the smith and tell him we need another bracelet large enough for a man’s ankle.”

“Mistress!” said Quince, rising.

“A precaution only,” said Livia. “The charm on it will be merely to keep you within the walls until my father returns. My slave Melia has made me aware of my own blind spots in meting out justice. I will entrust both of your fates to my father’s wisdom.”

“Mistress—” he began again.

“Say as little as possible. At present you are still a welcomed and honored guest. Make sure you remain that way. Meanwhile”—and here she turned her attention to Hanno—“let us pause the work on the mosaic. Hanno, you shall have to tarry awhile longer here.” She was unabashedly pleased about this detail.

Hanno cleared his throat softly. “Mistress, I am expected in Marsala next month, so I must begin work at once on whatever this mosaic is to be.”

“All the more reason to stick with the original design,” I pointed out, as Livia spoke over me, stricken: “You are leaving so soon? Can your work in Marsala not wait? Can it possibly be more remunerative than this contract?”

“It is at the request of Emperor Constantine.”

She pursed her lips together. Nobody spoke. Livia blinked rapidly, and her jaw muscles twitched. After a moment she said, with forced calm, “Surely we may pause for a day at least?”

“I can spare a day, mistress,” Hanno said. And in a softer voice, he added, “I wish it could be more.”

“Mistress—” began Quince, but she held up a hand that was almost quivering with tension.

“It will benefit you nothing to argue,” she said quietly. “The more agreeable you are toward my decision, the more you predispose me to trusting you. You are not a prisoner. You remain a guest.”

For now, I wanted to sneer, but obviously didn’t.

The next morning, after praying at the shrine (at which time I stashed the first several of these wax tablets under the altar), we again donned our “workout clothes” (they loved this neologism) and headed to the palaestra. As before, we worked up a sweat running and batting the ball around—and as before, with no surprise or shock on anyone’s part now, Hanno Gisgon appeared at the door from the servants’ rooms and watched with unapologetic enthusiasm.

“You must be seeking inspiration for your future designs in our graceful figures,” said Livia.

“Perhaps,” he said softly. “Also, I am thinking that if I remake the Muses, I will ask you all to model for me.”

“You have already modeled them all from my face,” scolded Livia.

Hanno grinned at her. “Now I have more than just faces to model.”

That had them in giggles again, of course.

“Which Muse shall I be?” asked Livia.

“I would name you Terpsichore, the muse of dancing, for you move with such grace,” said Hanno.

“I’m named for the muse of comedy,” offered Thalia.

“That’s why so much of what you do is laughable,” said Arria.

“And how would you depict me as Terpsichore?” Livia was purring at Hanno Gisgon.

He smiled. “Those beautiful golden tiles?” he said. “I would clothe you in a robe of them, and no garment else upon your own lovely shape.”

Livia sank to the floor with an expression as if she were having an orgasm but hoped nobody else would notice. “Oh,” she said in a faint voice. “Well, that’s nice.”

His smile was tinged with sadness. “But, mistress, Vilicus says your father is due back ahead of the anticipated schedule. Once he returns, I must not be seen in this room. Nor should he know that I was ever here.”

“What happens in the palaestra stays in the palaestra,” I deadpanned. (Tough crowd; nobody responded.)

“Hanno,” said Livia. She rose to her feet and walked across the image of the chariot race to him. He remained at the threshold of the door. A span of about six feet, created by nothing but air and longing, separated them.

“Mistress,” he said.

“Which mosaic would you prefer to make?”

“I do as I am told—”

“But what do you desire to do, Hanno?”

He looked at her for a long beat. “I desire to memorialize you, mistress.”

She flushed. She drew some breaths. The effect was uncorseted Jane Austen. They stared googly-eyed at each other for a few heartbeats, and then she took a stately breath to signal the fun and games were over and it was time to return to the serious business of volleyball. “I share your desires,” she said over her shoulder to him, and gestured to Thalia for the ball.

So now, at least, I am hopeful of having succeeded in my DEDE. It’s hardly urgent, though, because even if I haven’t succeeded yet, I’ve got the rest of my fucking life to work on it.

My chief beef about this: I’ll never have the pleasure of enduring Tristan’s outrage about placing his sister in danger.

ROBIN’S AFTER ACTION REPORT, STRAND 2, NEW PLAN (CONT.)

The day came. The 28th of April. A bright, brisk morning, with a slapping northwesterly breeze that tapered off in the early afternoon.

Try living southeast of a meat market and you will understand why that detail is important.

I had managed to evade any further shenanigans of Gráinne’s. Ned’s helicoptering gets most of the credit for that. On the downside, he’d also prevented me from seeking her out so that I could put her out of commission before Tristan appeared.

The King’s Men had performed at the Globe as usual that afternoon—Comedy of Errors, I think. Then they hustled upriver to Whitehall, where Tilney had been since sunup. I was also at Whitehall for the day, officially bent to my minion duties, but in fact mostly studying and measuring the space. I’d spent half an hour setting candles into the lighting trees; next on my to-do list was to join the crew setting up a scaffold of planks, on which the invited audience would sit. They would be grouped to either side of and slightly behind Their Majesties’ raised dais. This chore allowed me to scope the hall for a scaled-down approximation of what I’d been doing at the Globe in the prior Strand: anticipating where Tristan was most likely to watch and where Gráinne was most likely to lie in wait.

Tilney was evaluating the symmetry of the scaffolding as if it would make or break the event. He was hell-bent on making a huge splash; he seemed more invested in this than in The Masque of Lightness. That made no sense to me. It was as if he were trying to enthrall Their Majesties to prove himself worthy of some bigger gig. But in his line of work, there is no bigger gig. He’s the Master of the Revels! He’s the Man.

A velvet-clad young courier brushed past me with the petulant air of somebody accustomed to cutting the queue. Tilney recognized him, or at least the office implied by the bobbing ostrich feather in his hat, and took him aside to receive his whispered words.

Whatever the youth said displeased the Master. Tilney straightened abruptly and gave the fellow an accusing stare. “Two hundred?” I heard Tilney say. “Two hundred? On whose orders?”

“The King commands it,” said the young man, with an air of complacent arrogance. “’Tis for the pleasure of the Earl of Pembroke and his brother, Philip Herbert, newly made Earl of Montgomery.”

A twisted look seemed to move Tilney’s features clockwise around his face. “Why do the earls make such a request?” he demanded.

The messenger shrugged. “I hear ’tis on behalf of Mr. Shakespeare.”

I was pleased but not surprised to hear this—it’s what Will had said he’d do a few days earlier. Tilney took the news like an elbow to the gut. “You are saying we must add two hundred seats to please His Majesty, who would please Philip Herbert, who would please Mr. Shakespeare.”

“Just so,” said the messenger. “But you must say the Earl of Montgomery. May I return your acquiescence?”

“Have I a choice?” asked Tilney, sounding irritated.

“I would say not,” said the boy.

“Tell His Majesty I obey him in all things,” said Tilney stiffly, “but he must furnish us seating for at least twelve score.”

“I’ll tell him so,” said the young man. He turned on his heel with no show of respect to Tilney and jogged out of the tent. Tilney, staring after him, noticed me eavesdropping. He scowled and stepped toward me.

“Why would your cousin ask for two hundred guests to attend tonight’s performance? Who are these hordes, and why would the King allow them?”

“I know not, sir,” I said.

He scowled and walked off. I returned to taking mental stock of sight lines and potential hiding places, while pretending to be useful.

Not a quarter hour later, a burlier messenger—also in an ostrich-plumed cap—entered the tent and made straight for Tilney, who was now approving the new velvet curtains at the back of the stage. The King’s messenger sauntered cheerfully past all of them. “Sir,” he called to Tilney, in a tone more respectful than his predecessor’s. “There be a cart loaded up with chairs and benches just outside the entrance, and His Majesty has given you the loan of five of his stable hands to shift them onto the platforms. Also, to help you in the arrangement of the seating, receive the guest list compiled by the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery.” He held out a scroll, and Tilney snatched it out of his grasp.

“Thank you,” he said shortly. “Direct the hands yourself, I’ll send a deputy to assist you in a moment.”

The messenger whistled sharply, and five large men came barging into the Banqueting House, every man of them with a long wooden bench under each arm, as if he were carrying empty Styrofoam coolers. They were all as upbeat as the messenger. In contrast, Tilney seemed even more harried.

Because I was next to him, he handed off the scroll to me, and as he went in search of a deputy, he said, “Read that, and tell me if there be anyone of significance we must consider in arranging the seating.” And then he was gone. I unrolled the scroll, wondering why he expected me, a newcomer, to recognize any names.

The names were aligned in columns, the largest of which bore the heading The Stationers’ Company. That was the guild of publishers and printers.

I could have knocked my head against a pole for not thinking of this myself: Will had invited every publisher and printer in all of London to witness tonight’s performance. I’d been careful not to tell either brother about the future of Will’s written work. But he knew the publishing industry, so he knew that if Macbeth were ever to be published, it would be published by a member of the Stationers’ Company. Since Heminge and Condell were in the Macbeth cast, that meant every man—every memory—contributing to reconstructing Macbeth in the 1623 Folio would be in this room tonight. They would all hear us say not Gráinne’s words but William Shakespeare’s. They and two hundred of their closest friends.

“Well done, Will!” I cried on reflex.

A hand snatched the scroll away. I looked up, startled: Tilney had returned. “Why do you say that?” he demanded, and anxiously perused the list.

I saw his lips tighten. Glancing over his shoulder, I could have sworn he was glaring right at the publishers’ names. He pulled away as if I smelled bad and demanded again: “Why do you say that? To which guests were you referring?”

“None in particular, sir,” I said. “I’m just pleased that he is to have such a varied collection of audience to witness this first performance.”

“You are referring to the stationers, aren’t you?” he hissed.

I blinked. How could he possibly have known that? He took my surprise as agreement.

“Your cousin has invited all the publishers in London to be his audience.”

I opened my mouth stupidly. “Er . . . maybe. It would not be remarkable if he did so.”

“Not remarkable at the Globe,” said Tilney impatiently. “But here? To court? His Majesty has allowed such low people to sit in the same chamber with himself? Simply because that accursed Philip Herbert has requested it of him?” He looked unreasonably angry. Maybe this had something to do with the book I wasn’t supposed to ask about.

“I . . . I don’t know . . . I am not familiar enough with court intrigue—”

“You dissemble,” chided Tilney. “There can be only one reason why you are so pleased to see the publishers listed here.”

Before I could profess my confusion, something behind me caught his eye. A sycophantic yet nauseated smile crackled across his lips and his tone switched to cold benevolence.

“You are welcome to Whitehall Palace, Mr. Shakespeare! And all the players too!” And back to me, nearly between his teeth: “Go help to shutter the windows,” before striding off toward the playwright.

“Master Tilney,” said Will, the only human in the hall with normal blood pressure. “Might there be a closet for the costumes?”

“Backstage,” said Tilney tersely. “We have velvet enough to hang an extra curtain if you need it.” He walked toward the door on some real or invented errand.

Being small and spry, I was assigned to shutter the highest windows on the northern wall; I clambered up the ladder and then, before pulling taut the moldy canvas covers and tying them into place, I scouted the vista. It was a striking prospect that happened to give me a nearly unimpeded view of the path of travel toward Rose’s, although I couldn’t see that far. It was a crisp day, so the air wasn’t filthy, and from my height I could see the whole of the smoky city, bursting the bounds of its ancient walls. The Revels Office was visible from here, towering somberly beyond the flat, dark blot of the cattle market. The only important data point: no Tristan to be discerned. Foolish to think I could have seen him from this distance. Would he know to come to Whitehall? If he wasn’t at the play on this Strand either, that meant I’d have to do this all over again. With Gráinne increasingly clever in her murderous attempts . . .

As I descended the ladder, I watched Will, who was gazing around at the lighting trees, at the gold leaf on the ceilings, at the windows. The sun was angling westward and none of the candles had been lit, so the hall was starting to look murky.

“I remember performing in here,” he said in a fond voice, to nobody in particular. “When I was newly come to town as a player for hire.” He gestured toward Tilney, who was crossing the hall again on the same real or imagined errand. “Master Tilney! I first met you in this very chamber, before ever I’d penned a line. I had some small role in a masque given for Her Majesty, and you were in charge of the whole affair. I was terrified of you.” He offered Tilney a nostalgic smile.

“’Twas I should have been terrified of you,” said Tilney, and his tone was hard to interpret—some strange twist of grudging affection and bitterness.

“Well,” said Will, pushing forward through the murk, “much has happened these past fifteen years.”

“For you, sir,” said Tilney. “Only for you.” He turned away sharply and continued toward the dais.

Once I’d finished shuttering the high windows, I went backstage and changed into my witch robes and hag wig, while the rest of the players were admiring the creepy elegance of the hall. The leeches and grubs that had been affixed to the hem and cuffs of my robe were fantastically disgusting, I’d love to know who made the slime.

Standing just outside the Banqueting House in the slanting sunset, I used a framed silvered glass to smudge charcoal around my eyes and tiny dabs of cochineal to suggest carbuncles and sores. Sufficiently hideous, I hunkered down in the backstage area, near the newly hung red velvet curtains. These smelled only of must from the Revels storehouses, and not of the vinegar-frankincense-lavender bouquet of every other surface in the hall.

The prompt man, Knight, passed through, giving first call. I went back outside to scan the yard for Gráinne—or, more urgently, Tristan.

“Good evening, lad,” said a voice in my ear. I jumped.

Two Yeoman guards were standing to either side of the door, where nobody had been a short while earlier. They chuckled at my startling.

“Evening,” I said. “I did not realize a poor company of players would require guarding.”

“Their Majesties are soon arriving,” said one. “’Tis protocol to secure their space.”

“Of course,” I said. “The players may freely go in and out, I hope?”

“Now that we have seen you and know you as a player,” he said.

“Just don’t try to slip a wench in for backstage amusements,” said the other.

“You read my very mind,” I said with exaggerated disappointment. They grinned. I looked around outside, at the rose garden and the broad avenue where carriages passed through. There were few people about, and those I saw were palace workers—gardeners trimming the new growth from the topiary, grooms walking horses to cool them down after a hard ride, laundresses hauling linens across to the Thames side of the palace compound.

“I’m looking for a kinsman of mine, newly come to town,” I said. “Very tall, and hair of my color. He would be a stranger here, but he wrote me to expect him here at Whitehall, so perhaps in service to a lord.”

“We won’t see the lords back here,” said the first guard. “And their servants stay with them up front, to watch the entertainment. But if we see such a one, we’ll hiss within to you.”

That was probably just politeness on their part. I ducked back inside. The players were exchanging jovial trivialities, reciting memories of their fortnight stay at Hampton Court Palace a few Christmas seasons past, confined there by the plague. The Whitehall Banqueting House could not compete. As they reminisced, they doffed their own ruffs and jerkins and doublets and breeches, and suited up in theatrical equivalents. Hal Berridge (Lady Macbeth) and a new lad playing Lady Macduff took the longest to prepare, between their extravagant hand-me-down gowns and wigs and hair adornments and the rigorous makeup routine of any court lady: white skin, red lips, pink cheeks. Lady Macduff spent longer turning himself into Lady Macduff than he would spend playing Lady Macduff onstage.

“Second call,” said Edward Knight, passing by again.

“Good Knight,” said Ned (his favorite, lamest pun). His tone was casual and chummy. “I’ve business at the playhouse later. Give me the promptbook after the show, and I’ll lock it in the office with the others.”

“I’m obliged,” said Knight. “You’ll save me a trip.”

Once he was gone, Ned winked at me. “That was easy enough,” he whispered. “Lucky you are, to have such a clever cousin. I’ll bring it home and we’ll burn it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I poked my nose through the backstage curtain, to watch the audience arrive. Each party was escorted by torch-bearing pages to their seats. If Tristan was on this Strand, he must somehow know to be here. I could not make out faces in the flickering torchlight, but I saw nobody tall enough. Looking for Gráinne was a waste of time, of course; she’d probably put a charm on herself to avoid detection. She did not know that she was about to encounter Tristan, but she must have known she was about to encounter me. Could she put a spell on me while I was onstage? Was that a thing? Maybe it wasn’t a thing. No, it was probably a thing. How could I protect myself from her?

The air was growing sweeter with perfumes (undertones of vinegar remained) as the room filled with human peacocks, their dress brilliant even in the smoky light. Amid the textured gowns and jerkins and capes of saturated colors, with dazzling decorations, lace, and jewels sewn on . . . there huddled also a score of older men. These men all wore squat black caps with small brims and were dressed in royal-blue mantles, trimmed with gold and edged with fur. These were the masters of the Stationers’ Company.

They were more somber than the preening lords and ladies bowing and doffing and air-kissing. They were surrounded by dozens more in black gowns draped with red or trimmed in black: junior members of the same guild. Well done, Will, I thought.

A trumpet flourish brought a hush to the hall. Two other trumpets joined the fanfare from just outside the tent. The audience, electric with anticipation, turned toward the entrance while also backing away from it. I took a step toward the curtain to peek through for a better look, but Ned grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “I used to try that too,” he said in my ear. “Heminge will cane you.”

The two outside musicians entered, playing, and moved at a processional pace. I was too far away to see any details, but by jumping up and down a few times, I caught a glimpse of snappy red-and-black uniforms. The trumpeters. A press of people entered then, and I could only make out wigs and headdresses, all of which were extravagant. These would be members of the court: maybe Shakespeare’s two patron earls, the beautiful Lady Emilia, with whom Tilney spoke the other day, a few dozen others. Still nobody tall enough to be my brother.

“Here they come,” said Ned’s voice in my ear. He’s at least half a head taller than me, and I envied his view.

“See you any who resemble the man you met from my era, whom you knew as Christian?” I asked.

His face was glowing with excitement. “No, but I recognize faces from when we’ve gone to Hampton Court . . . There’s Robert Cecil, and Robert Carr, and that minister fellow James brought from Scotland . . . There’s the Duke of Lennox! . . . And that’s Sir Thomas Lake—he’s Secretary of State—and Baron Knollys—”

“I can’t see any of them!” I grunted. There was a soft pattering of applause. “What? What?” I demanded. “Do you see any tall men?”

A grin spread over his face. “There they are,” he whispered. “Their Majesties. Can you see them? They’re both in royal blue. Now their children are entering behind—”

“I can’t see anything,” I hissed. “Lift me up, won’t you?”

“We’ll draw attention,” he hissed back. “Don’t worry, once we’re onstage you’ll get a front-row view.”

The Banqueting House grew darker with the dusk. Per Tilney’s master plan, the chandeliers had not been lit, nor would they be until the second scene. Instead, once Their Majesties were seated, the pages lit extra-smoky torches, which quickly overwhelmed the delicate perfumes. The sooty smoke rose up to the ceiling and lingered there, so that by the time the whole house was seated, the air was terrible. Tilney was creating an immersive experience, a sorta analog augmented reality centuries before that became a thing. This wasn’t just a play. It was a Happening.

Finally, Knight called for places. While Knight was standing near us, in the dim light backstage, Will looked meaningfully at me, then Ned, then at the manuscript—the manuscript—that Knight had tucked casually under his arm. Ned nodded, pointed to himself, and gave his brother a thumbs-up signal to mean he’d figured out how to get the script.

The trumpets started up again at the far end of the hall. Ned touched my shoulder. Hand in hand, we placed ourselves behind the curtain. Will joined us on his brother’s right and they took hands too.

Out in the audience, the ambient light of the lard-soaked torches was doused all at once with a sucking hissssss, and the fatty smell of smoke further saturated the already-smoky hall. Soon, cracks of dusk would peep in through the shuttered windows, but for this moment, we were all completely blind. Some audience members coughed. To either side of us, in this nearly perfect blackness, a rumble rose as the cannonballs began a bumpy slog down their wooden chutes. The audience startled at the noise, and benches squeaked. The musicians in the back of the house started a cacophony of drums, rattles, trumpet squeals. All the noises that belong to Hell.

The lantern that would backlight us was suspended from a hook, to throw our shadows down on the stage floor and not out into the audience. A stagehand behind us sparked the lantern. We had not rehearsed this effect—an effect that, as I said, I knew would be pretty lame. So I was shocked by how bright and crisp our shadows were on the curtain in front of us, not at all what I’d expected. How could any ordinary lantern throw that kind of light? In the millisecond before the curtain was pulled aside to reveal us, I glanced over my shoulder . . . and I saw the riflettore.

My mind buzzed. Did this mean I was on the wrong Strand? Did it mean Leonardo’s been resurrected on this Strand? I remembered Mel’s decision to tell Chira not to free the slave in her DEDE—was this proof she’d done that? Was there a Strand more “real” or “right” than the one I was experiencing? Damn, I wished I’d paid more attention to the quantum theory lecture—but surely this was good news and boded well . . .

Ned tugged my hand firmly and I snapped to face forward. The curtain was pulled aside and we stepped, in lurching unison, toward the front of the stage, three silhouetted witchy figures moving toward the King’s dais, our shadows ahead of us growing longer each step. The audience gasped loudly, more chairs squeaked. The riflettore light was so bright from behind us, I could see an arc of audience clearly. King James and Queen Anne were right in front of me, barely spitting distance, cushioned in blue velvet and silk and lace and gold, and because I was backlit, I could look at them without their seeing my face. She’s beautiful and effervescent; him, not so much. They each sported a narcissistic smile that must come with the job. I took the moment to scout the audience. There was Gráinne, dressed up like a lady’s maid, sitting right beside the beautiful Lady Emilia. They knew each other?

They knew each other!

Is Lady Emilia involved in Gráinne’s schemes? Does that mean Tilney’s somehow mixed up in it as well? I was so startled by this that I forgot for a moment my chief aim was to scout for Tristan. I wrested my eyes away from them and began to scan the well-dressed crowd. Over in what would be (without our backlighting) deep shadows, house right, where he could scope out everyone both in the crowd and at the door, there was somebody . . . Is that possibly—

The lantern hissed out behind us, plunging the room back into darkness.

As the thunder continued to rumble, a squib shot across the stage on a wire behind us like a bolt of lightning; downstage right, a stagehand opened a metal lantern and threw a handful of resin at the candle—a crackling lightning flash as the resin caught fire! Many oohs from the audience. The thunder ended, we stepped forward to the front of the stage, and stagehands unveiled proto-footlights, throwing light up at our faces from an unimagined direction (another Tilney detail). The audience could see our grotesque faces, our exaggerated jeers. Spectators did not know if they should cringe at us or laugh. We’d struck the perfect balance between eerie and absurd. It was a nervous laughter, and that made all three of us automatically stand up straighter, because suddenly, unexpectedly, we were the most powerful people in that hall.

And Edmund Tilney gave us that. Now I understand him. He gave us this moment, he made it happen, he birthed a spectacle far greater than anything we could have created at the Globe . . . and few in the audience even knew his name, while meanwhile Shakespeare was further glorified by this opening moment. By the end of the evening, William Shakespeare and his new play would be lionized forever . . . and still nobody would know who Edmund Tilney was.

Tilney realized something was up, of course. He recognized me despite my makeup job. But we were safe now that it’d started, because he was not going to stop his own show.

Ned had begun, in the gravelly falsetto he spent days perfecting, equal parts awful and comical:

“When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

And Will, in a haggard contralto: “When the hurly-burly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won.”

“That will be ere the set of sun,” I said.

“Where the place?” demanded Ned.

“Upon the heath,” Will answered.

“There to meet with . . . Macbeth,” I said.

We each summoned our demonic familiar spirits, then took hands and chanted together:

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through fog and filthy air.”

We turned and, clasping raised hands, exited upstage, cackling as our Hell music reprised from the far end of the Banqueting House. An eruption of applause drowned it out. Exiting, we had to navigate through all the other actors, huddled together at the curtain for their entrance. In the house, servants rushed to light the light branches and chandeliers, bringing normal ambient candlelight to the room, as for an ordinary play.

There was one perfect moment of silence, once the audience had quieted, between the end of the Hell music and the start of the next scene. I heard the squeak of a chair and then a familiar, if muted, footfall rush toward backstage. Tilney was coming for me.

AFTER ACTION REPORT

DOER: Chira Yasin Lajani

THEATER: CLASSIFIED

OPERATION: CLASSIFIED

DEDE: CLASSIFIED

DTAP: 4 March 1397, Ascella, Commune of Florence

STRAND: 12

As previously, I was Sent from ODEC #4 to 1397, to KCW Lucia outside of Ascella; as previously, I borrowed clothes from her and walked through the hilly midnight wilderness to the estate of Matteo del Dolce; as previously, I snuck along the wall of the main wing, hearing him speak with his wife of his foul intentions for his slave; as previously, I snuck into the barn, found Dana, coaxed her to leave with me, and helped her up into the fountain to wash herself.

This time, however, the visiting cousin, Piero, exited the house a moment earlier than he usually did and caught the movement of our flight as we crossed an open bit of the garden. He darted back inside for a lantern, then chased after us toward the road, shouting at us to stop. We ran faster.

But not as fast as he did. The light from his iron lantern spilled out ahead of him. He saw our movement. The stones under our feet scrabbled against each other, and surely he heard that too. Dana’s breathing was ragged and labored, but she kept up with me, until we got to the zodiac statues. Then, even though it was downhill here, she began to flag, and I knew that he would overtake us. I grabbed her hand and dragged her, but Piero overtook us. He snatched at her dirty linen shift. He jerked it, hard, and she stumbled backward, her hand yanked out of mine.

I turned back to retrieve her, but Piero was already pulling her up with his free hand. She spat into his eyes and bit his arm. He cursed and released his grip. We tumbled downhill into darkness. We might yet make it to the road, I thought.

But then Piero hurled his lantern right at us and it smashed against the back of Dana’s head. She took the hit hard, stumbling and falling and wailing with fear as the lantern flame went out in the damp grass. Piero hollered, “Matteo!” and lunged for Dana. He grabbed her arms and faced her away from himself so she couldn’t spit on him again. She shrieked and thrashed violently in his grip.

“You are too much of a nuisance, my little hen,” he said.

I rushed him. He released one hand and backhanded me in the face, the bones of his knuckles meeting my cheekbone hard and knocking me to the ground. My vision went white with pain, and then I made out two lights jostling above us by the servants’ wing. Matteo and his wife, Agnola, were rushing down to see what was happening.

Down the hill, the wagon drew up. In plain view of us all. Giovanni had overshot the meeting point. He had no lamps on the wagon, so thankfully he could not be identified—but the moon was full and it was obvious somebody was there.

Dana saw him too. She screamed and began to plead in Tartar: “Help me! Help!!”

The wagon sat motionless a moment, then Giovanni clicked his tongue, slapped the reins, and the horse loped off. Piero stared into the darkness trying to see it. He turned up the rise toward the approaching lanterns. “Matteo, saddle a horse and question that driver,” he called. “He might have seen whoever was helping them.”

Agnola gasped. “You’re saying this is part of a plot? Are they coming to murder us in our sleep?”

“I’ll question this bitch,” said Piero. He released Dana and grabbed me. I began to make a great show of trying to tear away from him, but even if I had been trying in earnest, I would have failed to escape those massive hands. I do not know what Piero did for a living, but his hands were very strong.

When Piero released Dana, she fell to the ground in shock, but only for a moment. Then she rose and, completely naked, ran down the hill toward the road, crying for help in Tartar.

“Stop, you bitch!” he shouted.

Agnola was not close enough to stop Dana, and Matteo was running back toward the stable for a horse. If Piero could not contain both myself and Dana, one of us would get away. He had to keep me from fleeing so that he could go after Dana. He would not want me to have a head injury, as that would prevent him from interrogating me, and thus he chose to lame me. I calculated this a fraction of a second before he did, so I was prepared.

He raised his knee and then stomped on my bare foot with his heavy leather boot. I shrieked and howled with pain. In truth it did not hurt as much as I let on, for the grass and soil gave way a little beneath. But my foot immediately began to swell, and I was sure that at least one toe was broken.

I collapsed to the ground and made a great display of clutching my foot and wailing. He left me then, and in three strides he had overtaken Dana and dragged her, naked, back up the slope.

“Shut up and come with me, Tartar bitch,” he yelled at her. He turned to Agnola. “Get her back inside. I’ll make her speak.”

“Mercy!” I sobbed. “I will tell you whatever you like, only please bind my foot!” And I dissolved into tears and resumed wailing.

Agnola dragged the terrified girl, and Piero carried me, both of us continuing to howl. I thrashed against his grip, and my clothes ripped in several places. When we were inside, the cook was summoned to take Dana into the kitchen to clean her; Agnola followed them, fuming. The cook, an older woman with a mass of gray curls peeking from under her headscarf, was unhappy about this assignment, and yet seemed resigned to it, as if this were a common chore.

The great room of the house was large and high-ceilinged, the floor broad terra-cotta tiles, the walls plaster with embossed decorations, and all the chairs and divans of ornate woodwork and stuffed upholstery, with cushions strewn everywhere. There was a tapestry displaying the constellations of the night sky on one wall, and a large Turkish carpet with vivid greens in the weave hanging across from it, and marble sculptures of satyrs to either side of the door, and lutes of several sizes in one corner. There was a censer suspended from a wall bracket near the kitchen, from which burned flowery perfumes. The room felt grand and yet cozy.

Piero and I were alone in here now and I was still wailing. He glared at me and said, “I will fix your broken foot as soon as you tell me everything.”

I wailed louder, shrieked, made as if to try to speak, but then collapsed helplessly, pointing to my broken foot. He was handsome but not very smart, for he believed me.

“Fine! I’ll bind it first and then you’ll tell me everything,” he declared in annoyance, then called toward the kitchen for the cook. He demanded from her hot water, two poultices, and bandages. He made all of these demands in an angry voice, staring at me, sometimes at my face but mostly at my body. I kept sobbing, plotting how I could get back to Dana. The cook returned, scowling, with poultices and bandages. Piero took them and placed one poultice on my face and the other on my swollen foot. The poultices were cold and smelled of cypress and comfrey.

“Thank you,” I gasped between sobs.

“Now stop screaming. This is to bring down the swelling, and then I will bind it to stabilize it.” I must have looked surprised, for he added gruffly, “I was in love with our barber surgeon’s daughter and used all excuses to spend time in his surgery, so I learned things.”

“I’m grateful,” I whined.

“Shut up and tell me what you’re up to here.”

I have never been Sent without a cover story before. In the moment, I had to improvise, so I considered the very little bit I had been told about this family, their friends, and their enemies. I had almost nothing to go on, except the family business. “I was hired by the Corsinis to kidnap the girl from here.” He looked confounded. I shifted my weight to get comfortable and saw his eyes flicker toward a sliver of my exposed buttocks. So I shifted farther to expose more buttock. “She is not really Tartan.”

“Of course she is Tartan,” he said. Again his eyes darted away from mine—this time to my exposed left nipple. “Matteo bought her off a boat that had just arrived from the Black Sea.”

“Bartolomeo Corsini has estates by the Black Sea, and Dana is the daughter of his estate manager. Corsini has even today killed the sailor who sold her to your kinsman.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Corsini is no friend of ours, but he’s just a liar and a cheat, not a murderous lunatic.” His gaze twitched to my buttock again, then back to my face. “Why does he not just tell Matteo who she is?”

“He fears you would hold her hostage for ten times the amount you paid for her. It was much more economical to hire me to steal her back.”

“I can almost believe that story, except the part about hiring you.”

I shrugged. “They have me on retainer,” I said. “They figured they might as well use me.”

He snorted. “You are not on retainer as a thief. You can’t even run without falling over. You should be on retainer for fucking. Nobody puts someone like you in the picture unless she is supposed to fuck somebody as part of the plan,” he said matter-of-factly. “I hope you’re supposed to fuck me, because I certainly want to fuck you.”

“How would my fucking anyone help to steal a slave?” I said.

“I think you’re supposed to distract me with your fucking, while she runs away,” he said, pleased with himself. (Men are very good at imagining situations in which I am supposed to be having sex with them.)

“Then the best way to prevent her running away is not to fuck me,” I pointed out. I used a teasing voice that I intended to confuse him.

He gave me a derisive look. “There is a much better way to keep her from running away.”

He took the poultices off my foot and face and set them down sopping on the terra-cotta tiles, out of my reach. Then he headed for the kitchen. “Where are you going?” I called. “Will you not bind my foot?”

“I will bind all of you when I get back,” he said. “And do whatever else I like with you too.” As he disappeared around the corner toward the kitchen, he casually pulled a large knife from a sheath on his belt.

Horrified, I leapt up and tried to run after him, but the poultice made the floor slippery and I fell on my ass. Before I could rise again, hysterical shrieks erupted from the kitchen. They reached a crescendo and then softened into sobs.

Piero returned with calm, deliberate footfalls. I screamed when I saw him and fell on my ass again: a brilliant splatter of red dashed from his left temple diagonally across his body to his right hip. “Now she cannot run away,” he said matter-of-factly, wiping the blade on his stocking. He set the knife on the top of a cabinet in the corner and then walked toward me, where I remained sprawled on the floor, howling.

“Shh-shh,” he said. “You’ll injure yourself more. Let me pick you up.”

Seeing my wild-eyed fear, he paused, smiled, and said, “Oh, you do not like the blood. I understand.” And then very casually, he removed his clothes. He was a well-made man and he knew it. He was preening now.

“Here is what will happen,” he said. “I will bind your foot. We will fuck each other. I will get one of Agnola’s gowns for you and find you a crutch to walk with, and you will go to the Corsinis and tell them they will never get their girl. They should have been honest and come to us directly.”

I will skip to my return: it took a long while to get back to KCW Lucia’s, even with the aid of the crutch, because my foot was in excruciating pain. Lucia was exceedingly pleased to receive Agnola’s very fine bright blue gown. She Homed me, and when I was through with the decontamination process, my foot and face were seen to by Dr. Srinavasan. As you will see in my records, the foot suffers from a serious bone bruise and one toe is broken. I will need to stay off it for a couple of days and then wear a walking boot for one week. My face will take longer to heal, but Dr. Srinavasan believes I do not have a concussion.

I request that on the next Strand, if there is to be one once I have recovered from my injury, I am briefed on an appropriate cover story in case I am discovered again. I am heartbroken and devastated by my failure to free Dana.

Text exchange between burner phone and Mortimer Shore, posted on “Chira” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 2038 (26 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

BURNER PHONE: This time I was able to take a photo of the DEDE report before submitting it to DODO, so I just sent that. Once again, I lied.

MORTIMER: What really happened?

BURNER PHONE: Too long to text. Will call.

FREYA’S TRANSCRIPT OF

MORTIMER SHORE’S PHONE CONVERSATION WITH CHIRA YASIN LAJANI

DAY 2038 (26 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

(lightly edited by Mortimer Shore to remove his interjections)

Here is what really happened.

All of the beginning is as I told DODO. I arrived at the estate, and coaxed Dana out of the stable, and helped her to wash in the fountain. However, in this Strand, the fountain had run out of air pressure and wasn’t running at all, although there was water in the basin. Dana climbed in and tried to splash as quietly as possible. In the still cold air, her efforts sounded incredibly loud to both of us. It took her much longer, but she managed. Shivering like mad, she clambered out again with my help. Her feet touched the ground, and I could feel her shudder from the cold. I rubbed her arms to try to warm her up, until she was ready to head down the hill.

That is when the door opened. Piero came outside. We cowered behind the fountain, where he couldn’t see us, but also, we couldn’t see him.

After a moment of quiet, we heard a sound of hissing water and realized he came out here only to relieve himself. So we should be safe if he would just go back inside—we were running late, and on this Strand, as usual, the understanding with Giovanni was that he must not wait more than a few moments.

Down the slope, I heard what struck my ears as the wagon approaching. Piero also heard the sound and crossed to the edge of the garden to look down the drive. “Hello?” he cried out, peering into the moonlight.

The sound was definitely a wagon. “Hello?” Piero called out again, waving an arm. The wagon didn’t even pause—Giovanni, or whoever it was, continued past the drive at the same slow trot. Piero shrugged and then headed back inside. I adjusted my position at the fountain so that I could see him.

He opened the door and was about to step inside, when suddenly a loud sneeze escaped Dana. Horrified, she clapped her hands over her face, but he had heard her. He paused. He turned around and gazed out, but he was backlit in the doorway, so I couldn’t see where he was looking. “Hello?” he called again, in a more warning tone. Dana held her breath. I kept my breathing light and quiet. Piero stepped back into the yard. “Hello?” he called again. He began to walk toward the road. Under my unspoken direction, Dana retreated around the fountain so that the base of it was always between him and us.

He got to the edge of the garden, peered down toward the road again, but saw nothing. The wagon was out of sight. Piero began to stroll counterclockwise around the periphery of the garden, glancing about with curiosity. When he came close enough that we might be seen, we withdrew again, so that we retreated at the same rate he circumambulated, and the fountain base remained between us. Once he had done a full revolution, he shook his head and went back into the house.

I counted to five after he closed the door, then took Dana’s hand and rushed directly across the garden, across the rocky drainage space, and down the drive to the road.

“He came and went,” said Dana, distraught.

“Maybe not, I think he saw Piero and just kept going. I hope he has turned the wagon around up the hill and will come past here again on his way back to the city. Come, let us dress you.”

Hurriedly, I removed all my clothes, gave Lucia’s linen shift to Dana, and then put the rest of the clothes back on myself. At a glance, I appeared to be dressed, only with something subtly not quite right. But we would remain in moonlight.

After a few moments, we heard a horse’s hooves tapping out a lively trot, and then around the far corner, the wagon came into view. Dana jumped up and down, waving her arms. “That’s him!” she said excitedly.

“Dana, hush,” I said.

“That’s him!” she repeated, whispering.

“The moon is so round it is almost square,” the wagoner said as he reined in the horse.

“My favorite constellations are triangles,” I said hurriedly, and began to haul Dana into the wagon before we exchanged the rest of the code.

“Good evening, Giovanni,” I hissed at him in whispered Italian, and signaled for him to make haste. He slapped the reins and the horse began to trot again. “There has been a change of plans, and she will not be going to the nunnery after all, but rather to a family within the city walls who are Dulcinian sympathizers. Will you take us there?”

I was inventing on the spot. I acknowledge that I was disobeying both DODO and Rogue-DODO. I did not care. I cared about Dana.

Of course he wanted to know who the family was in the city. “I do not remember the family name,” I said. “I know only that they have a butcher shop by the Ponte Vecchio, on the Oltrarno side.” (At that time the bridge was only fifty years old, but it was already being called the Old Bridge.)

I could see his surprise in the moonlight. “That is the Moschardi family,” he said. “They’re Dulcinites?”

“A Dulcinite family spoke well of them,” I dissembled. “In any case, I know they will be kind to her.” I did not know this, of course. That there even was a butcher on the Oltrarno side of the bridge was a guess. A sensible guess, but a guess.

The wagoner removed his heavy wool mantle and handed it back to me. Dana was shivering and trying not to sob. She made a muffled sound that was half laughter, half sobbing and blew him a kiss.

We hurried through the cool night air, along this twisty, hilly road, past the farmland and vineyards and orchards, all glowing like a monochrome print in the moonlight. Dana curled up into a little ball beside me. She allowed herself to weep, lowering her guard for the first time. Then she slept a little, her head lolling against my shoulder with the jostling of the wagon.

We reached the Porta Romana hours before dawn, after a final steep descent (that would have been steeper if we had aimed for the nearer gate, which was a little to the east of it). That is the massive stone gate to the south. It is as big as anything I saw in the Constantinople DTAP and has a humungous door made of wood reinforced with iron, including sharp iron nibs in a dense grid covering every surface. There is a portcullis before the actual gate and another just behind it, and a small portage door within the gate.

Giovanni jumped out and pounded on the port door. After a moment, a watchman came out, holding up a lantern. He looked annoyed. If we had been on foot, he might have just let us through without paying the toll and gone back to bed. But a wagon would require raising the portcullises and opening the gate—and summoning both an inspector and a toll-taker. That would take time and energy.

“You can just wait here until sunup,” he told Giovanni in a surly voice.

“No, I can’t,” Giovanni said. “I have wheat for the hospital, they need to make bread for the patients. I am already later than usual.”

“Than usual? I’ve never seen you before.”

“I usually come in from the west,” said Giovanni. “I apologize if I have disturbed your nap. In the name of the good Lord in Heaven, please do your fucking job.”

The watchman harrumphed and disappeared back inside without another word. We waited in silence. It was so cold and still, it felt as if the night would last forever. On the road we had taken to get here, far behind us, I saw lanterns swinging from carriages. Other travelers, merchants, and shippers were arriving at the gate. I tucked the cloak around Dana so that she was not visible at all.

After an interminable delay, the port door opened again and a new man in a blue uniform stepped through holding a horn lantern.

“Good morning, Inspector,” said Giovanni in a respectful voice. “On behalf of the hospital inmates, I thank you for your promptness.”

The inspector ignored him and began to slowly circle the cart of the wagon, poking and prodding at casks and boxes. He occasionally opened something to examine in the dim light of his lantern. He looked as bored about his job as a typical TSA worker, but moved much more slowly. He paid absolutely no attention to me or to Dana.

While he was lethargically examining Giovanni’s bags of wheat flour, a larger wagon pulled up behind us, pulled by two draft horses snorting in unison. A few moments later, I heard another wagon pull up behind that one. The inspector asked Giovanni some questions, which Giovanni answered with short, even responses: he was going to deliver wheat to the hospital; from there he had a few other deliveries before departing the city for Bologna; from Bologna he would head to Ravenna. He lived in Ravenna. No, he had never been as far north as Milan. Dana was practically wrapped around me by now, clinging to me for warmth. I whispered to her, explaining the delay and telling her to stay still and keep her head down.

After the inspector gave us the all clear, we then had to wait for the toll-taker to come out and haggle with Giovanni about his gate tax. By the time that was paid, the moon had set, the sky was gray, and the eastern horizon was beginning to pink. The road behind us was spotted with wagons and horses coming to the city from the hills.

Some cue—a ray of early light striking a tower, a shift in the morning breeze, I do not know—and the porter finally heaved open the portcullis. We were released into the city.

We crossed through the deep gateway into the safety of the city, and I glanced behind us. In the dawn light I could see some men on horseback who were trying to move their way through the wagons, the way motorcyclists sometimes try to sneak through morning traffic on I-95. There was light enough for me to recognize that one of them was Piero. He looked agitated.

“What?” Dana asked immediately, feeling me tense.

“Shh, nothing,” I said. “I just recognized someone from another life.”

She smiled up at me quizzically. “Another life? There is no such thing.”

“Shh,” I said, smiling back at her. Irritated voices caught my ear, and I looked back at the queue. Piero was urging his horse to the front of the line; the voices were all the wagon drivers he was pushing past. The gatekeeper and the inspector both stepped out to prevent him from entering the city; he began to argue with them.

“Giovanni,” I said softly.

“I hear it,” he replied, eyes forward.

Directly ahead of us were two parallel streets going north; we took the smaller one, the horse’s hooves creating an echoing, almost metallic ruckus in the still-quiet city. The street was barely wide enough even for the narrow wagon. It was lined with workshops and houses and the occasional vegetable plot. We trotted along for one long continuous block, over rough cobbles the horse did not like. I kept looking back for Piero, but if he’d gotten through the gate, he was not heading in our direction. Maybe he wasn’t after us. He’d been headed into the city anyhow, to meet his future wife and in-laws. Matteo and Agnola’s city house was near Santo Spirito; perhaps their cousin Piero was marrying into the neighborhood aristocracy and was simply annoyed that he had to queue up with the plebeians. In fact, when I considered it, it was unlikely he would seek out Dana in Florence. He knew she’d come from a rural village; she knew nothing of cities, not even how to get to this one. It was far more likely that the locals were scouring the neighborhood.

Still, it was unnerving to think he would be in the city with us.

As we traveled this long block, the city woke up with a suddenness that startled me. There were noises and smells that caught Dana’s attention, and she nestled into her wrap and closer to me, staring wide-eyed at everything around her, especially the cramped buildings. After a minute, she ducked her head completely under the wool mantle and huddled closer against my side.

We passed a large palazzo garden to the left, then another to the right. Then private gardens to both sides, the houses of rich and poor mingled together. Soon we came to the Piazza San Felice and the fortress-like Piazza de Pitti. Dana stuck her head out again and squinted into the morning light at the stark expanse of plaza.

Finally we reached the south bank of the Arno and the bridge.

The Ponte Vecchio had, even then, the specific elegance of the powerful. For all the haphazard streets and lanes and gardens of the private citizens, this city bridge was perfectly symmetrical, with identical shops lining both sides of the span, buttressed by wooden sporti. No matter if a shop sold liver, jewelry, hats, or weapons, they all looked alike on the outside.

The Arno at that time was accessible from many points, because two of the wool guilds—the washers and the fullers—needed constant access to running water. Their work was smelly, because ammonia (or, usually, urine) was used to soften the wool. Then the wool was rinsed in vats of river water that was—once it became too acidic—dumped back into the river. So there was more than the slightest stench to the Arno.

But the stench was much greater at the bridge itself. Among its dozens of shops were butchers and fishmongers, and some of them were right at the start of the bridge. So it stank here. It truly stank terribly.

It stank worse than Dana. This was my reason for coming to the bridge.

Despite the empty street ahead of us when we were at the gate, the morning traffic had erupted and was miserable here, too many carts and too many people on foot for us to get all the way to the bridge. I asked Giovanni if he would be willing to pull over and wait for us while I took Dana for what I hoped would be the final leg of her odyssey. I was improvising all of this, and I had no idea if it would work out as I hoped. We might be in need of a quick getaway.

Giovanni grimaced slightly—he was not a city dweller either and the bustle made him edgy. “If you require it,” he said. I was finally able to see him clearly: he was a slender man, with grizzled brown hair and a thoughtful expression on his weathered face. I could not tell his age, but he was no longer young. “I really do have to deliver the wheat to the hospital, though, that was not a feint.”

“We’ll be quick,” I said confidently, having no idea if this was true. I alighted from the back of the wagon and beckoned for Dana to join me. She hung back, not wanting to yield the cloak. Giovanni had twisted in his seat to see her.

“Tell her she can keep it,” he said, and smiled at her. He made an open-handed gesture to her, and she understood without my translation. She smiled, her face lighting up, her eyebrows arching nearly to her hairline.

“Grazie,” she said.

“Prego,” he replied, smiling.

Kneeling up behind him on his driver’s seat, she threw her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. His eyes welled. For a moment I considered dropping my improvisational plan and just asking him to take care of her—he was the only person who had been kind to her, possibly in her entire life—but I didn’t know where he lived or if he had a family.

“Come,” I said to her. “I must introduce you to somebody, but then we will come back and say goodbye to Giovanni.”

She tch’d, but released him and climbed out of the wagon. I pointed to the bridge. “We are going that way,” I said, for Giovanni’s hearing as well as Dana’s. “This will not take long.”

Hand in hand, Dana and I pushed through the morning crowd up to the bridge and approached the first butcher’s stall we came to. Dana wrinkled her nose at the smell. This was probably the first odor that had permeated her senses since she’d inured herself to the stink of her own dirt.

We waited for a trio of men to exit, heavily laden with bloody packages. Then we went in, to see the butcher calmly dividing a headless ewe into its diverse edible sections with a bone saw. He was a small, hardy, steady man in dull clothes and a heavy canvas apron that was stained with blood. He looked up with an affable expression. Something that had been clenched in me relaxed. I had guessed fortunately.

“Good morning,” I said.

He nodded. His eyes strayed between us: I wore a bodice and skirt with nothing under, and Dana was wrapped in a heavy woolen mantle. I liked that he made sure to keep his face friendly despite our eccentric clothes.

“Are you Signore Moschardi?” I asked. I hoped I was using the right dialect and accent.

He tipped his head sideways a little. “I am,” he said. “Why?”

“This is very unusual. May I speak with you in confidence, sir?” I asked, batting my eyes just enough to make him want to say yes. He frowned a little in confusion, but then he nodded. He went to the entrance and made a wait a moment gesture to somebody outside. He pulled the door closed. Then he turned to me and nodded for me to begin.

On the ride into the city, I had invented the false story I would give to DODO, but I’d also considered what invention should pour out of me now. I told him that myself and my young sister here were the only surviving children of a farmer, whose wife had died in childbirth and who had eventually killed himself because we were so destitute and he was ashamed he couldn’t feed us, so we had become the indentured wards of the farmer’s neighbor, who had been very kind to us but also raised us to work hard, especially my little sister, as she was simple and could not speak, and we’d have willingly remained indentured to the family our whole lives, but when the patriarch died, his son did not want us around, because his men were taking too much of an interest in me and that meant trouble, so we were thrown out, and we fled to Florence for refuge, where we heard much good spoken of Signore Moschardi and his family, and hoped perhaps they would be willing to take in my sister to work for them before I presented myself to a convent. I said all of it that fast too. I did not want to take her to the convent because she had been beaten savagely by a nun and now was terrified of all of them.

And then I threw in for good measure that some brigands had attempted to rape her and had ripped her dress off her, which accounted for her disheveled state, but a kind cart driver had given us his cloak for her to wrap around herself.

Signore Moschardi looked stupefied by my tale. He had blinked in amazement as I told it and then blinked in amazement for a moment after I had finished. I steeled myself for awkward questions, but the first thing he asked, almost shyly, was:

“Who has spoken well of me?”

“Ah, I am sorry, sir, I do not know the names. We were at the western gate, and an older couple asked what we were doing outside the gate at dawn by ourselves. I gave a short explanation and suddenly everyone waiting to get in was offering advice on who might help us. Several people mentioned you.”

He smiled a little. “Funny that they were more eager to offer advice than to offer help,” he said. “But I am glad my name was on their lips. It is good to be spoken well of.” He sounded pleased but not surprised. “I’d like to believe that I am worthy of it. Thank you for giving me a chance to demonstrate that I can be.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Dana spoke no Italian, but when I sighed, I could feel her next to me taking a full deep breath for the first time since I had found her. She was still frightened and still overwhelmed, but she liked this man too. Despite the blood on his leather apron and the roughness of his trade, he spoke gently. He had a cheery face.

And he worked surrounded by bovine carcasses in a shop hovering over the urine-scented Arno River, so he did not notice Dana’s stink.

He was perfect.

The door opened abruptly and Dana, with a squeak, cringed and hid behind me. A woman walked in—like the butcher, she was dressed quite drably and her face was kind. She carried an empty basket. “Why have you shut the door, Iacopo? People are going to Bernardo’s stall instead.”

“Lena, close the door,” said Moschardi. “Put your basket down.”

Dana stepped out from behind me, understanding she was not in danger.

“I’m already late delivering—”

“It can wait,” said Moschardi. “Listen.” He told her the story, gesturing to us. She looked as amazed as he and then turned to face me squarely.

“You are telling me you wish to give us your sister?” she said.

“Not as a slave,” I emphasized.

“Of course not as a slave!” she said, with such repugnance that I felt ashamed for needing to say so.

“She needs someplace to sleep and eat, and she can work to earn it. I cannot take care of both her and myself. We have nothing. We are desperate.”

They exchanged looks, and she stepped closer to him. They muttered together, mouth to ear in low voices. There were five or six exchanges. Dana looked up at me. She squeezed my hand.

“Giovanni,” she whispered. I pressed my finger to her lips, but tempered the gesture with a reassuring smile.

“You said you’re from a farm,” Moschardi said. I nodded. “And so your sister’s skills are farming?” I nodded again. “She won’t be good for much in a butcher’s household,” said Moschardi, “but my cousin Andrei works wheat fields to the northwest of the city. He is employed by a powerful family who might welcome more able bodies to help with the sowing.”

“Of course,” I said, and winked at Dana. She raised her eyebrows and looked between Moschardi and me as if expecting a present.

“I’ll give you a token of mine to show you have come from me. Tell him your story. I believe that he will take her in.”

I took a deep breath of gratitude. This would get her even farther away from the estate, and therefore from Matteo and Piero and Agnola. “I thank you,” I said, tearing up. “On both our parts, I thank you.”

“And she must have decent clothing,” said the wife.

So that was it. Before the sun had risen a finger’s breadth higher than when we left the wagoner, Dana was clean and dressed decently in a bodice and kirtle Lena Moschardi bought for her, and she carried a small square of leather onto which had been branded Iacopo Moschardi’s family signet. He gave me instruction on where to find his cousin, in a villa rustica—a real working one, not a rich man’s summer playground.

I managed to contain myself when he said it was just a little north of the hamlet of Vinci.

“I thank you,” I repeated. “Come, sister,” I said loudly, and took Dana’s hand. We left the shop and worked our way off the bridge to where Giovanni sat waiting in the wagon.

“Sir, you have been very kind,” I said. “I would ask two more favors of you, in the spirit of your religion.”

“Name them,” he said.

“First, the plan has changed again, and there is now a safe place for Dana to go, to the north and west of here. If you are headed—”

“I will take her,” he said immediately.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I will go with you. And the other thing I must ask you once we’re out of the city.”

He looked curious.

“It will make sense to you when we are away from the crowds,” I said.

He nodded, then helped Dana—smiling proudly in her new clothes—up into the wagon for a final time. She smiled and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him. He smiled and patted her on the back.

“It’s all good?” he asked me in a hopeful tone.

I nodded. “Yes. Fortune and God are both kind today. But I believe the people from the estate are here in the city now, so we should keep Dana in the back, covered up.” I began to pull myself into the back of the wagon and beckoned for Dana to join me. She unclasped herself from Giovanni, planted a kiss on his forehead, and then almost literally threw herself into my arms.

Giovanni clicked and slapped the reins on the horse’s rump. Slowly we crossed the bridge—very slowly, because of the people darting in and out of shops. Once we were north of the Arno, I relaxed my guard: Piero should have no reason to come to this side of the river.

Giovanni made his deliveries in the heart of the city, mostly wheat that he had picked up in the valley during the previous day. These deliveries took about an hour. Three times I thought I saw Piero, but I was wrong each time.

As it had been to the south, the farmland began immediately outside the city walls. It was now late enough that most morning traffic had already entered, and so the road was nearly empty. We drove on, up and down and around slopes, past the vineyards and wheat fields and streams and olive groves and flocks of sheep and pigsties. It was all so beautiful and peaceful to me, now that it no longer meant captivity for Dana.

We rode without speaking, for a few hours, until we came to the turn the butcher had described. With no complications, we delivered Dana to the butcher’s cousin, who was indeed glad to have another set of hands on the farm. All signs suggest that she will be, if not integrated, at least accommodated by the local peasant cohort. She hugged me tightly and kissed me on the cheek as I left her.

She would probably not speak another word of her mother tongue for the rest of her life, but she would not be a slave, and she would not be a nun of the very religion that had massacred her ancestors. I disobeyed orders, but she would be near the place in the world where—if it so pleased the multiverse—she might still become the ancestress to Leonardo.

And Gráinne believes Dana is dead, at least on the most recent Strand. She will hear that Dana is dead, and yet her descendant Leonardo will (I hope) still be born. Perhaps this will confuse her. I pray it will give her pause before continuing to pursue her plan.

Once we were back on the road, Giovanni asked what the final favor was.

“This will be hard for you,” I said. “But I have helped her to escape at the displeasure of my own masters, who do not approve of my Dulcinian activities. If I return to my position now, I will be punished very severely. Unless you help me.”

“Whatever I can do,” he said.

“You must strike me hard enough to give me a black eye and a broken foot,” I said—as I said, I had just worked out the false narrative I would give to DODO. “I must arrive home appearing to have been attacked and dragged off against my will, to account for my prolonged absence.”

Of course he could not bring himself to do this.

But then I described in gory and elaborate detail what supposedly awaited me if I didn’t appear to have been beaten. I saw the rage rising on his face, the disgust, the horror, and I said, “Now pretend instead of me standing before you, it is the person who would do such violence upon me. And it is a man.” That worked. He gave me a backhanded blow across the brow and stomped hard on my foot, although luckily his boot was soft and the dirt road gave way a little beneath me.

Then he felt sickened and could not stop apologizing. He insisted on taking me to where I was due so that I would not have to walk. I was relieved at this offer, and so I allowed him to drive me back close to the witch Lucia’s. He was thrown when I asked to be let off near a hut in the woods, but I told him it was necessary for the safety of the local Dulcinian cell, and he believed me. The amount of time we had spent traveling a great distance by cart was about as long as I would have hobbled a short distance with a lamed foot. This made my false story plausible to DODO.

I do not know what they will say about my performance record there. I will certainly be off duty until my foot heals, which is a relief. I will possibly be fired, and that will complicate my siblings’ situation.

I’ve been told that the Chronotron changed the number of Strands this must happen on from many dozens to just one, which is very confusing, but I am grateful for it. Even if I am Sent back again, I know what I must do. I feel my balance restored.

And so I conclude what I hope will be the final Strand of this benighted DEDE.

Exchange of posts by Dr. Roger Blevins, LTG Octavian K. Frink, and Dr. Constantine Rudge on private ODIN channel

DAY 2038 (26 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

Post from Dr. Roger Blevins:

Good day to you both,

Writing to give you an update on the interesting results of the 1397 Florence DEDE you had each expressed concerns about. I recall the two of you objected that this was happening under Gráinne’s aegis, which meant that the housekeeping elements were not up to snuff, to say the least, as she is something of a self-acknowledged Luddite.

Want to reassure you and give you some good news. DOer Chira Yasin Lajani returned from her most recent Strand, reported in, and—SOP—her data was entered into the Chronotron to fine-tune our calculations. As you know, the introduction of new data points (such as a DEDE report) will sometimes shift the Chronotron’s calculations by a few Strands. In this case, the required number of Strands decreased dramatically, from 87 to 1. (I will write that out so you know it is not a typo: from eighty-seven to one.)

This kind of shift is extraordinary and supports my confidence in Gráinne’s handling this DEDE on her own. However unsatisfactory I have found DOer Chira’s work in many ways, in the end, they have proven to be a good team and have gotten the job done.

Hope this will set your minds at ease, gentlemen. Have a good weekend.

—Roger

Reply from Dr. Constantine Rudge:

Dear Dr. Blevins (and LTG Frink),

This strikes me as a worrisome anomaly. Even if all the clerical “housekeeping” was in order, the outlier quality of this shift deserves scrutiny from a Chronotron sysadmin. The fact that we’re not even sure what to scrutinize should cause even more concern.

I would like to ask, for the fifth time, what is the point of this DEDE and how does it fit into the DODO charter? My clearance level entitles me to a response, but every communication I’ve attempted over the past few weeks has been deflected.

—CR

From Dr. Roger Blevins:

Dear Dr. Rudge (and LTG Frink),

Sorry, it’s a simple answer, not sure what has prevented you from receiving it. This was simply a campaign to counteract some mischief that the “vigilante” gang led by Tristan Lyons was up to.

—Roger

From Dr. Constantine Rudge:

Dr. Blevins (and LTG Frink),

I am aware that LTM Lyons et al. left DODO suddenly under suspicious circumstances. Their activities are monitored with some interest by the Fugger family, with whom, as you may recall, I am an intimate. If they are committing treasonous or “vigilante” acts, I need a full accounting of it for IARPA. I will have my secretary reach out to Gráinne for a deposition.

Gráinne had been very effective on those nascent psy-ops projects in the ATTOs—why have those all been mothballed? IARPA is very interested, of course.

From LTG Octavian K. Frink:

Not mothballed, just put on hold for now. The CDC had to come in and hose down the ATTOs after some Anachron Vikings arrived here from the tenth century. There are bio-containment issues in mobile units, so that has to be rethought.

I agree with you about Gráinne, though. Blev, put her back onto some of the psy-ops experiments from early winter. That will keep her busy.

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

ROBIN’S AFTER ACTION REPORT, STRAND 2, NEW PLAN (CONT.)

The other actors poured out onto the stage as a piper and drum began a martial-sounding Scottish flourish at the back of the house.

“Tilney’s coming!” I squeaked to Ned and Will, louder than I’d meant to.

Knight stuck his head backstage and hissed, “Be quiet!” just as the music stopped. Then he did a double take, as Edmund Tilney pushed past him into the backstage space. Tilney glared at me in the torchlight.

“What do you onstage?” he demanded.

“Master Tilney, please,” urged Knight. “Your voice will carry—”

“What do you onstage?” Tilney repeated in a fierce whisper.

“Our boy player fell ill,” said Will, putting a reassuring hand on Tilney’s shoulder. Tilney furiously shrugged it off.

“This is mischief,” he hissed. “I’ll stop the performance right now.”

“Oh, Edmund,” said Will in a chummy tone. “You don’t mean that. Do not deprive Their Majesties of this most excellent presentation you’ve devised for them. Robin knows the correct lines, we have made sure of it.”

“The redeemed witch from James’s court is in the audience right now . . .” Tilney began. Will—the man who hadn’t looked startled after surviving an attack by a fucking bear—looked startled now.

“Emilia Lanier?” he asked quietly. “Redeemed? You mean—”

“Keep up, brother,” Ned said cheerfully. “’Tis been the gossip of the town. It means she renounced her witchiness and now she has to rat out all—”

“Quiet,” ordered Edward Knight, despairing.

“Do you understand now?” whispered Tilney in clipped syllables. “If you utter witchcraft on the stage, Lady Emilia will alert the King, and before the show is over you will, all of you, be in chains. And I do not think she’ll mind that.”

Will collected himself, then smiled at Tilney. “Then we will not utter witchcraft,” he said.

“You do not know what is witchcraft and what isn’t, for you yourself have been bewitched!” hissed Tilney. “I am trying to save your skins. Speak the words as I reformed them, else you will be performing magic right under His Majesty’s nose, and you will burn for that!”

“Master Tilney, please,” begged Edward Knight from the side curtain.

I whispered, leaning in toward Tilney, “Sir, you do know that all witches are women, do you not, sir? Three men on a stage, by the very nature of magic, cannot be performing magic.”

“In that case,” he said, glowering at me, “you alone will hang.”

I opened my mouth but shut it without speaking. Tilney turned on his heel to leave. He saw Edward Knight holding the playbook and paused.

“Give me that manuscript,” he ordered. “I will act as the prompter for the rest of the show.”

Knight looked in confusion at Will. Will grimaced. “There’s no need for that, Edmund,” he said. “I’ll give Lady Emilia no reason to throw me to the dogs. We’ll say the proper lines.”

“Excellent,” said Tilney. “Then there will be no need for me to show His Majesty the actual script, with my reformed lines, which, if you are lying to me now, will exonerate me and damn you. After the play is over, if your behavior does not force me to show the King the script, then I will hand it to Mr. Knight. But right now, Mr. Knight will hand it to me.” His attention pivoted back to the prompt man. Knight glanced unhappily between Tilney and Will and then ceded Tilney the manuscript. Tilney took it, gave Will and me both warning looks, and went back out into the audience.

Knight was stricken. “Mr. Shakespeare—”

“’Tisn’t your fault,” Will said, holding up a hand.

“We say a spell in this next scene,” whispered Ned. “But then we have an hour till we’re on again.”

“So?” I asked impatiently.

“That gives us an hour to get the promptbook back from Tilney and destroy it.”

“He’s sitting in the middle of the audience, we can’t simply walk out and pull it from his grasp,” I said.

He grinned and mouthed, Watch me.

The army-camp scene ended, and our next bit followed on its heels. This second scene lacked the backlighting effect, but there was still cacophonous Hell music, still thunder, still the resin powder flashing in the candle fire. This time the effects startled the audience but no longer awed them. They muttered happily and applauded a little in anticipation. The cauldron was pushed back onstage as the smoke cleared, and we hovered over it, cackling and boasting about how badass witchy we were. The drummer very softly began a military beat at the back of the house, which signaled Macbeth was about to enter.

So: time to set a spell. Make that a non-spell. We recited Will’s actual words, which are all about the number three (FTR, that’s pretty much a guarantee it’s not actual magic, because Erzsébet told me that most magic doesn’t bother with regular integers, but even if it did, “three is boring”).

As we chanted, “Thrice to thine and thrice to mine / And thrice again, to make up nine,” Tilney coughed, once, from the audience. We raised our voices to make sure the words could still be heard clearly. I could almost hear him clenching his teeth. Gráinne must have been seething, but I didn’t risk searching for her.

Then Burbage and John Lowin entered (Macbeth and Banquo), and we, the witches, predicted the future: Macbeth will be crowned king—but so will Banquo’s descendants. This was received with a splattering of applause that Banquo’s descendant, King James, responded to with a smug little wave.

We cackled upstage and off, past the lords awaiting their entrance.

And then Ned pushed me toward the door, gesturing me to exit the building.

“What are you up to?” I demanded sharply, shirking away from him. I couldn’t leave the hall with Tristan and Gráinne inside, especially now that Gráinne knew what we were doing.

“We must wrest the manuscript from Tilney,” Ned said. “I’ve the perfect plan, ’twill keep him from troubling us until we’ve destroyed it. I’ve sorted it all out. Will, take Robin and meet me at the Little Revels.”

“This already strikes me as too complicated,” said Will drily.

“I know what I’m about,” Ned insisted. “’Twill take but a moment,” he assured me—and then ran past Edward Knight straight into the hall.

“Ned!” hissed Knight, and went after him.

Will made the sort of face only made by sensible older brothers when their younger siblings are being impetuous (not that I would be familiar with that look).

“You needn’t come,” I said.

“’Tis my brother, not yours,” he said in a resigned voice. “I will not abandon you to his antics.”

“Then why not you go alone, and I’ll stay behind to keep an eye on Gráinne,” I offered, but he shook his head.

“Whatever he does, he does it in care of you. He gave you instructions. Follow them.”

So we hitched up our witch robes to keep from tripping and exited the postern door, nodding to the guards. It was dark now, and torches were flaring around the palace grounds. We trekked across the topiary garden, up the tower stairs, and along the gallery, to the royal apartments. Intermittent torches failed to make up for the sunlight that had lit the gallery earlier.

There was a surprise awaiting us at Her Majesty’s door. The guard was not the archetypal Yeoman from my prior visit here with Tilney.

“Name yourself, sirrah!” Andrew North cried, brandishing his lance. Then he squinted in confusion. “Mr. Shakespeare?” In the dull illumination of the torches down the gallery, two other guards turned toward the fuss.

Will took a moment to recover from his surprise, and then a knowing smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Well met, Andrew.”

North relaxed and signaled an all clear to the other guards. He waved a finger at us. “What have you done to your faces?” he asked, chuckling. “You’re more hideous than Queen Bess on her deathbed, save her soul! Are you trying to drive His Majesty wild with desire? I wot he fancies some strange things, but I daresay you’re off the mark here—”

“Andrew,” said Will, “how came you to be a Yeoman of the Guard?”

“’Tis a fascinating tale, as a matter of truth, sir,” declared North, looking somewhere between Will and me, as if he couldn’t quite find either of us. “Let me but tell you every detail of my martial past, and you will find it so compelling that you may wish to write a play about it.”

“I look forward to hearing it at a time more meet, Andrew,” said Will, “but not tonight. We are only here upon the express orders of my brother, who said he’d meet us at the Little Revels. Know you why he summoned us here?”

Andrew gave us a waggish wink. “I’m not sure there’s room enough for the three of you in there.” He looked harder at me. “Is that my lad Robin? Just in time for a song—”

“Not tonight, Andrew,” said Will.

“No? But the acoustics in here are splendid. Ho, men!” he called down to the other guards. “Men, we’ve a most honored visitor! Come and meet the creator of tonight’s revels in the Banqueting House!”

The two guards looked at each other, shrugged, and walked away from their posts. This is not as egregious as it sounds, because despite the dim, there was an unimpeded view of the full length of the gallery, and anyways, every resident of this wing was down in the Banqueting Hall. The two muttered to each other as they approached, their whispers sibilant with the word Shakespeare. They weren’t in a rush. Will and I glanced around, wondering from where Ned would appear.

“That’s right, gentlemen,” said Andrew heartily when they approached, and gestured them to pay courtesy to the famous man. The famous man acknowledged them in passing, still glancing around for Ned, impatience creeping into his usual placid affect. “And I, men, I have the honor of appearing in Mr. Shakespeare’s plays at the Globe,” thundered North. “Right up there next to Mr. Burbage.”

“In truth, Andrew,” said Will, “not precisely next to him.”

“Right,” boomed North complacently, “I was in his shadow, and for weeks after, people would say, Didn’t Burbage have an unusually compelling shadow in that last one? Really, everywhere they were saying it, taverns, at the market, I was a triumph.” He winked at Will.

A man’s voice cried out from the far end of the gallery, beyond the guards’ abandoned posts. Then a second voice over it. Both Yeomen beat tracks back that way—just as Ned erupted into view from a servants’ stairwell. Seeing the guards, he began to shout in a frantic voice for help, but as they approached, he hoofed it past them, toward us. With one hand he held up the hem of his witch gown. With the other, he carried the promptbook out before him like a relay baton. It was curled around itself, secured with a leather thong.

“Stop him!” shouted Tilney, coming in view a moment later. “Stop that man, he is a thief!”

The two guards, uncertain, turned toward Andrew for guidance.

“Andrew, tell them to protect us!” said Ned, reaching us. He struck an absurd spread-eagled pose, meant to suggest he was protecting us and yet was desperate for Andrew to protect him. Will made a sound that in yoga is known as ujjayi breathing, but in early-modern London might have been called I can’t fucking believe this.

“Take him, men,” Andrew called out as Tilney drew level with the guards.

Tilney was taller than either of them, but they were less than half his age and each weighed more than he did, so it took little effort on their part. One guard dropped his halberd to the ground and grabbed one, then the other, of Tilney’s elbows from behind. He jerked them backward and pinned the Master’s arms behind his back. After a reflexive shimmy to try throwing him off, the Master went stiff, a dignified captive white with rage. Expecting a struggle, the guard shook Tilney roughly once. The other guard retrieved his comrade’s weapon and they moved to march toward us. Tilney refused to march, so his captor raised Tilney’s right elbow at an unnatural angle behind him until he made a small pained sound and started walking. I felt bad about that part.

As we watched the inelegant approach, Will murmured, “You knew Andrew would—”

“Of course,” Ned murmured back. “Wouldn’t have tried this otherwise.”

“How’d you get the script?” I whispered.

“Just as I said I would,” he whispered back. “Went into the audience and yanked it out of his hand. ’Twould be awkward for the Master of the Revels to disrupt the reveling, so he rose without speaking and pursued me. Precisely as I planned.”

“You, sirrah,” Andrew said to Tilney, as they reached us. “Why are you pursuing this gentleman?”

“Do not you sirrah me, sirrah. Release me. That scoundrel stole my property.”

“’Tisn’t your property,” Ned retorted. “’Tis the property of the King’s Men. Here’s a King’s Man.” With a flourish, he offered the rolled-up book to Will.

“Thank you,” said Will, taking it without a flourish.

“That fellow ripped it out of the hands of its owners, a company member named Edward Knight,” Ned told the guards. “I saw it with my own eyes. I’ve merely retrieved it from him on my brother’s account—as is only right,” he added in an encouraging voice. In his mind’s eye, this exploit must have struck him as dashing and dramatic in a way we weren’t playing along with.

“Only right, indeed!” said Andrew belatedly. The others made vague sounds of agreement.

“So you’ve a thief there,” concluded Ned. “Will ye not lock him up?”

“Indeed,” said Andrew, all business now. “Must secure him someplace whilst my fellows summon the captain.”

Will made the slightest noise of disapproval as he realized Ned’s punch line.

“Captain’s on outside rounds,” said the Yeoman who held the halberds. “If two of us circle in opposite directions, we might track him down within a quarter hour.”

“Leaving me alone to guard the whole wing,” said Andrew, frowning.

“That space will suffice to secure him,” said Ned, gesturing to the Little Revels door, as if the idea had just come to him now. So he wanted to lock Tilney in a closet. I couldn’t see a downside to that.

“That’ll work,” said Andrew. He turned to grope for the camouflaged handle.

“I am the Master of the Revels—” began Tilney.

“Are you now?” said Andrew. “Well, that’s a lovely coincidence. We call this the Little Revels because it’s overflowing with your tawdry treasures that Her Majesty has pilfered. You’ll be right at home. All right, men, heave him in.”

Tilney’s boots seemed glued to the inlaid wood floor panels. “You will not put me in that closet,” he said.

“Oh, but I will,” corrected Andrew, moving away from the door to make room.

“I have been cozened by this knave, this nothing of a man, and if you assist him in his deplorable behavior, you shall be flogged for disrespect and then dismissed from your post.”

This did not have the intended effect on Andrew North. “If I’m to be dismissed regardless,” he said, philosophically upbeat, “then it profits me nothing to improve my behavior now.”

“The worse your behavior, the worse your consequences,” warned Tilney.

“Nothing worse than losing my livelihood,” said North. “I, who was a soldier for Her Majesty in Ireland, and nothing to come of it to support me in old age? I’ll make some sport at the expense of him who’s cost me my position. ’Course, Mr. Shakespeare will look out for me now, won’t you, Mr. Shakespeare? As I’ve no other means of earning, and it’s on account of my coming to your brother’s aid.”

“You are a cleverer rogue than I credited you for,” said Will.

North tapped his temple. “It is extempore, from my mother wit,” he said, quoting Shakespeare.

“Go on, then, Andrew,” said Ned eagerly. “Shove him in.”

“I will not go in there, and when your captain arrives,” said Tilney, “he will hear the truth of this, and it will go very badly for both of you.”

“In,” said Ned in a conspiring tone, and Andrew nodded. The other guard tugged Tilney toward the closet.

“I have the King’s ear,” Tilney hissed, straining against him. “I have control of Mr. Shakespeare’s fate.”

Andrew chuckled. “You can’t even keep control over your own ostrich feathers,” he said, and gestured into the closet. “They all end up here! And now you’ll join them for a bit. Don’t worry,” he went on, as Tilney protested. “It’s just for a bit.” He shoved Tilney into the closet and closed the door hard.

A moment of silence.

“Well now, shall we have a song?” Andrew asked me, as if none of that had just happened.

“Later, Andrew,” said Ned. “We must get back to the Banqueting House, but we are much obliged for your assistance.”

“Always an honor,” said Andrew, bowing to Will.

Will held up the script with a questioning expression.

“I know the place to take it,” said Ned, receiving it from his brother. “Go back to the hall and I’ll be there anon.”

“Don’t miss your entrance,” said Will.

“Brother, we’ve half the play before we’re back onstage.”

“’Tis a short play,” said Will.

Ned nodded and jogged back in the direction he’d arrived from. The halberd returned to its owner, the two guards exchanged salutes with Andrew, turned on their heels away from each other, and began to march in opposite directions, one following after Ned and the other taking the direct route Will and I had come from.

As Ned reached the stairs, he barked in alarm and pulled up short with the staccato intensity of Wile E. Coyote trying not to plummet to the earth. He pivoted and began to sprint back toward us. “Run!” he shouted. “Go!”

We turned to obey.

“No-no-no, wait!” he shouted. We turned back. Cursing loudly, he chucked the furled manuscript hard in our direction as if it were a javelin. It reached only halfway up the gallery.

Andrew North, even hammered, was agile on his feet. I ran for the script, but he ran with me and beat me by two strides. As he reached it, it shuddered suddenly. Then it rose several feet off the floor. Ned was still racing toward us, and I didn’t have to look up to know it was Gráinne on his heels. Andrew, as if there were nothing at all weird about a levitating manuscript, pounced on it with preening glee and handed it off to me triumphantly. “There you are, lad,” he crowed. “Try to hold on to it this time.” Without glancing back at Ned or Gráinne, I pivoted and ran like hell to Will, past Will, to the intersection of the gallery walks, down the second gallery, down the stone spiral steps, through the topiary, to the postern door of the Banqueting House.

“Well met, witch,” said one of the guards, grinning.

“A woman’s after me,” I gasped.

“You players,” said the other guard, snickering. “Always messing with some skirt. Get in, then, we’ll protect you.”

I dashed inside and collapsed onto the backstage bench, breathing heavily, staring at the promptbook.

It had happened so fast. Had I done right, to leave Will and Ned behind? Gráinne wanted the promptbook above all, but after that, she wanted me. (She would also want Tristan once she realized he was here.) The book and I were secure for now—at least I hoped so. My prep for this had included fuck all about how things roll in a DTAP in which you have a homicidal witch on your ass who can work magic literally anywhere. She couldn’t hurt Will because that risked Diachronic Shear. But Ned might be vulnerable. Dammit, I should have done this differently, but I couldn’t think how. At least if she was chasing Ned around the royal wing of Whitehall, she wasn’t in the Banqueting House, which meant if Tristan was in there, he was safe for now. For now.

The other actors were huddling at the curtain, waiting to go on for the banquet scene. Onstage, Macbeth was hiring murderers to off Banquo and Fleance. (Did I mention that Tilney had costumed Banquo and Fleance to resemble King James?)

A few moments later, Will came in through the postern door. He was composed. I sat upright on the bench and gestured to get his attention. He stepped toward me without urgency and sat beside me on the bench. “Ned?” I whispered.

“Outside,” Will whispered back. “At work.”

“Gráinne?”

“She was . . . called away,” he said.

I stood up. “I’m going to try to get in the other entrance so I can scout the audience from behind for my brother.”

“You are doing no such thing,” he said, taking my wrist and pulling me back to the bench. “Ned’s already on it.”

“Excellent. So I’ll go destroy the script,” I said, standing up again.

“Indeed you won’t,” he said, snatching the script from my loose grip. “You’ll miss your entrance.”

“We’ve fully two scenes—”

“’Tis the first performance of my play, which is put on for the King’s pleasure. I will not risk marring it with your truancy.” He folded his arms across his chest, the scroll now tucked against his torso. I began to protest, but he said, with a simple firmness I knew I couldn’t shake, “There’s an end to it. Help my play succeed, then I’ll help you succeed.”

“What happened with Gráinne—Grace?” I asked.

“She seemed about to pursue you, then suddenly she stopped and walked back the way she’d come. But she had a look of fury on her face. I wager the Lady Emilia is behind it. She has surely forbidden Grace to do any magic on the palace grounds, and it’s worth it to Grace to obey. But she is feral to be glad to follow orders.”

We sat in silence for part of the banquet scene, but I grew agitated and rose again, stepping toward the door. Ned entered just as I reached for the bolt.

“The guards up won’t let me in,” Ned whispered. “I wasn’t on the guest list, and my costume made them suspicious. But I looked in over their shoulders. There is a tall man in the shadows, house right, but I couldn’t see him well enough to name him. Where’s the promptbook?”

“Will’s got it,” I whispered.

“We must go throw it in the river,” said Ned. He moved toward his brother, but Will waved him away.

“No time,” said Will. Actors were exiting from the banquet scene. “’Tis just the scene where Lennox flees to England, and we’re back on.”

Knight hissed at us all to stop talking.

“What do we do with the book while we’re onstage?” demanded Ned irritably.

“Bring it with us,” I said. “I’ve an idea.”

I still couldn’t see that shadowed corner where Maybe-Tristan stood. The Hell music started up again, and we witches made our third and final entrance, again backlit. The audience loved to hate us. On the previous Strand, when we’d premiered at the Globe, they’d had fun booing us. But it was much more intense now, because the audience was performing for His Majesty as much as we were, and boy, did they want His Majesty to know how much they hated witches. (I kinda felt bad for Lady Emilia, but she’d made her own bed so she would have to lie in it.) There were catcalls and hisses, and if it wasn’t for the King’s presence, I wager someone would have chucked something at us.

We again moved in unison in an exaggerated lurch from side to side, until we hovered over the cauldron. Ned brandished the promptbook above his head as if it were part of the magic spell we were casting. Will and I held half-filled sausage casings behind our backs.

Ned stepped forward and opened the book, intoning to the audience as if reading directly from the script: “Round about the cauldron go; / In the poisoned entrails throw.” (Will and I tossed the limp sausages into the cauldron, which several women in the audience found delightfully grotesque.) He finished his opening speech, and then the three of us circled the cauldron.

“Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

I heard a scuffle that I intuitively knew was Gráinne. I risked glancing in that direction of the audience and saw Lady Emilia literally holding her in place on the bench.

Will was supposed to go on for a bit about a fenny snake, eye of newt, toe of frog and all that, but I stopped, straightened, and held my arms up. “Sisters mine!” I cried. “Is not this the most marvelous of verses?”

They both gave me wtf looks.

I grabbed the book from Ned. “Shall we not share these words with all our fellow witches and sorcerers?” I gestured to the audience.

They were both mortified that I had just called King James’s court, including the King himself, witches. For a heartbeat there was shocked silence . . . followed then by a ripple of nervous laughter. Including from Their Royal Selves.

“Come now, brethren,” I cried. “Say it with us!” I signaled Ned and Will. They joined me downstage, with uncertain we just work here expressions.

“Double, double, toil and trouble,” I said.

“. . . toil and trouble,” they chorused. I made a welcoming gesture to the audience.

An uncomfortable murmur from the crowd.

“Sisters, alas, they cannot hear us through the filthy air,” I said. “We must try again.” And, with my fellow witches: “Double, double, toil and trouble!”

Everyone in the audience was studying His Majesty. Waiting to see his response to this. He himself seemed to be waiting. He glanced pointedly at Lady Emilia, and the rest of the audience followed his glance. She looked unhappy, but not as unhappy as the redhead sitting next to her: Gráinne was flushed, lips pursed, almost shaking with rage. Emilia yanked Gráinne’s wrist like a trainer restraining a Rottweiler. She gave His Majesty a serene nothing to see here smile. She literally batted her lashes—and yanked Gráinne’s wrist again.

Queen Anne, reassured by Emilia’s smile, emitted a champagne-bubble giggle. “Double, double, toil and trouble,” she said in Emilia’s direction, with her uninflected, cheery Danish accent.

“Double, double, toil and trouble,” Emilia responded graciously, but her eyes were nearly watering.

“If the witch says it and nothing magical happens, that proves it isn’t real magic,” Anne said, beaming, to her husband. Both coaxing and chastising, she repeated directly at him: “Double, double, toil and trouble.”

“Double, double, toil and trrrouble,” he repeated with a magnificent Scottish brogue. And then to us onstage, nodding, with a circular hand wave of royal approval: “Double, double, toil and trrrouble.”

I held out my arms again and signaled the house to say it with us—and they did.

The three of us called out, “Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

“Fire burn and cauldron bubble!” yelled hundreds of people.

“Again!” I cackled.

“Fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

“Once more! Three times to wind up the charm!”

“Fire burn and cauldron bubble!” hooted the audience.

I gestured to Will to continue with his fenny snake bit. This too became a call-and-response. As was my “spell”: “Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf.”

In short, we did the whole damn witches scene three times in a row, with the audience repeating every line with us. They were beside themselves with self-congratulation. Except for Gráinne, who looked like a cornered cougar. Emilia kept her hand clasped hard against Gráinne’s wrist the whole scene. But everyone else was having a grand day out. When Burbage entered as the tormented King Macbeth, he had to hold before starting his lines, because the three witches got a standing ovation.

That was hella fun, of course—imagine upstaging Tom Hanks. But what mattered was that every publisher and printer in London had just heard—and recited—William Shakespeare’s lines. That was our insurance policy. Once we destroyed the manuscript, Gráinne’s spells would disappear from London.

Now all I had to do was save Tristan. Find Tristan, then save him.

So, we did our scene with Macbeth. He wants us to tell him the future, and we say a lot of stuff he misinterprets, and we summon some apparitions that make him paranoid and miserable. We sailed through that part, and after Ned’s final speech (“But why stands Macbeth thus amazed?” etc.), the musicians played our Hell music exit ditty and we danced our silly dance. This restored the audience’s initial sense of us as creepy but absurd, and so again the hall was filled with nervous laughter. We danced our way offstage, exultant and huzzahing with genuine delight.

And there was Tilney, waiting for us.

Text written by the slave Melia on a series of wax tablets
(cont.)

FOURTH-CENTURY SICILY

I continued to unfurl my sexed-up Lord of the Rings. Along the way, I recited some of the story’s poems in the original Elvish, which I’d taught myself in seventh grade, because linguist nerd. Just as Frodo, still bare-chested and virile, was sailing for the Undying Lands, and I was contemplating what new epic I could adulterate for them, a servant arrived at the door with a small piece of papyrus. Julia took it and glanced at it. Her eyes widened as she handed the note to her sister.

“Quintus wishes to speak to me alone,” Livia said, reading it.

“I will come,” announced Julia.

“No, you won’t,” announced Livia. “But Melia must, due to her fetter.”

In the late-summer twilight, the air was rent by the plaintive mating calls of insects. We walked along the colonnade, the trees and grasses neatly contained in their planting boxes, fragrant in the dusk. Arturo Quince was looking thoughtfully into the pool. The fountain gurgled quietly.

“You wish to speak with me,” said Livia to Quince’s back.

He turned, smiling. Saw me and stopped smiling. Then very deliberately smiled again. Quince—as the teen quartet never let me forget—has sulking-rock-star looks. At DODO everyone wanted to be his buddy in the break room. I’m mentioning that because he had been relying on his hipness quotient during this DEDE and seemed confounded at what was developing with Livia. He had played his cards right: not only had he destroyed the original mural, but a gaggle of young women was salivating over him, and Hanno Gisgon was his art-bro BFF. Yet somehow, I (the drab antagonist) was the one scoring quality face time with Livia.

And I was influencing her, to his detriment. I was no longer his convenient scapegoat but a threat to his narrative. I was pretty sure, even before he began to speak, that his goal was now to remove me from the scene, to attempt again to convince her to change the mural design. I was confident Hanno would not elect to design comets when he could be ogling Livia, so I was no longer worried about Quince’s influence here. I considered my DEDE accomplished. Ironically, Quince and I now both wanted the same thing from Livia: Sending me back to the twenty-first century.

“Mistress,” he said, “I confess to having hidden even more from you than I previously admitted to. I’ve unmasked Melisande as the ruiner of the mosaic, but her wrongdoings back home are worse.”

“You have not unmasked her as anything,” corrected Livia, with her firm pleasantness. “You have merely accused her. She has accused you of the same thing.”

“Mistress, hear me. The mosaic looms large for you, but between us it is a paltry subject. Her sins at home are legion. I may not tell you what they are, of course, but I request you to Home her directly, so that she can be held accountable in her own time.”

“I don’t care if she’s wronged others,” said Livia, “only if she has wronged me. And if she has wronged me, then she stays here forever. In fact, I think I’ll keep her here even if she’s innocent. I’ve grown fond of her and she is very entertaining.”

“Mistress—” he tried again, but I interrupted him:

“You are the embodiment of Athena’s wisdom, mistress,” I said with an audible sigh of relief. “Thank you for sparing me.”

“It is not that I am sparing you,” Livia clarified.

“But you are sparing me,” I said. “You’re sparing me from . . . I shudder to think of it.” I indeed shuddered, to make my point. “I’d sooner spend my days telling you stories of reluctant travelers than be one myself.”

Livia’s dark brows arched with interest. “Do you mean being Homed would be like going into Mordor?”

Actually, I’d just been slinging some reverse psychology at her to see if it would stick. But before I could respond, Quince interjected, his face slackening in disbelief: “Melisande, why are you talking to the mistress about Mordor?”

“You also know about Mordor?” Livia asked Quince, pleased.

He switched to English, muttering, “That’s fucked, Agent Stokes. That could trigger Shear. What’s your game here?”

“Do not speak a foreign language in front of me,” Livia ordered, instantly stern.

As Quince opened his mouth to apologize, I reported solemnly, “He was speaking in the orc tongue, mistress.”

Quince swore under his breath in English. “Mistress,” he said in Latin, “this woman has threatened the very existence of our nation. I am duty bound to bring her home to face justice.”

“Did you learn orc in school or is it your native language?” Livia asked him. “And are you speaking the Black Speech or just the orkish dialect of Westron?”

“The fate of my homeland depends upon her return to the custody of our masters,” Quince tried again. “I beseech you, mistress.”

“Answer my question, Quintus, I am interested in the topic.”

He was appalled but knew better than to show it. “I do not speak orc, mistress. Nobody does.”

“Except orcs,” I said. “And Gandalf.”

“Orcs aren’t real and neither is Gandalf,” he snapped. “I—”

“Mistress,” I gasped, “he’s abandoned our mother faith!”

“You’re making it worse for yourself, Mel,” warned Quince.

“No, I’m safe as long as I’m under the protection of our beloved mistress.”

“And you’re risking fucking Diachronic Shear, telling her this shit,” he said in English. Livia glared at him. He made a gesture of apology.

Livia looked back and forth between us with an expression more solemn than I had ever seen on her. Finally she nodded, a determined look in her eye.

“You are a reluctant traveler,” she said to me.

“Indeed,” I said. I gave Quince a sour look. “Especially if, as with this man, my people have grown faithless.”

“In all the great stories of the world,” said Livia, “reluctant travelers are the protagonist.”

If Livia wanted to upgrade me to an archetype, I could live with that. I made a compliant gesture.

“Here is my ruling,” she declared, her face glowing with her newfound sense of agency. “Justice matters. The rule of law matters. But nothing matters more than fulfilling one’s epic destiny. Clearly, I must Home you at once, Melia, so that you are compelled to live out your destiny as a reluctant traveler. Then you will return here and tell us your story.”

“Oh, mistress,” I said, falling to my knees and grabbing for her wrist.

“But Home her to the precise spot I came from, not where she came from,” insisted Quince.

Livia frowned uncertainly.

In English, Quince said rapidly, “You fucking idiot, you’ve just signed your own death warrant. If she thinks I’m speaking orkish, great.” As she opened her mouth to protest the foreign language, he switched to Latin and continued briskly, barely polite enough: “Here’s a logic exercise, mistress. Frodo travels into Mordor, and orcs are from Mordor, so Frodo goes to where the orcs come from. Melia spoke true, I speak orc fluently because, in fact, I am an orc. Send her where I came from.”

Fuck you, Quince. I’d been so close to a get-out-of-jail-free card.

So these are my final written lines before Livia Homes me to DODO headquarters, where I don’t expect things to go well for me.

If I were the praying sort, all I’d pray for now is that whatever happens to me in my own time, I may somehow receive word that Tristan is alive.

I hope on some other Strand we do end up moving in together . . .

ROBIN’S AFTER ACTION REPORT, STRAND 2, NEW PLAN (CONT.)

It wasn’t surprising that Tilney had managed to escape Andrew North’s inebriated watch, but jeez, I wished North had kept him under wraps another quarter hour. We were on a high as we exited the stage, and we didn’t expect him. For a moment we stared at him, and he at us, like startled dogs and cats. Then Ned (book clutched under his arm—had Tilney seen it?) grabbed my hand and we raced away to Tilney’s right while Will skirted to the left. We were all out the back entrance before the Master of the Revels had even turned around.

Also, we were out the back entrance before I considered what it meant to leave Tristan and Gráinne alone inside. I want to bullshit a reason for letting that happen, but truth is, I have no excuse. In the moment, what was in front of me reared larger than what I’d been obsessed with for days.

“The river,” Ned said, and I nodded. It was full night now, the waning half-moon low in the western sky. In a city as large as London at night, there wasn’t light pollution but there was smoke pollution—the very feel of the air changed after nightfall, when the temperature dropped and people began to light their stoves. Through a veil of grungy mist we saw the door to the tower steps.

“I know how to get to the river another way,” said Ned. He pulled to the right, and we adjusted to stay with him. We rushed through the topiary, all dark and nearly formless, more sensed than seen as we ran by. When we reached the eastern edge of the garden, the royal apartments rose before us.

“We work our way through to the privy stairs,” said Ned. “There be sundry small passageways in and out and about for the scullions and downstairs servants. I would we had a light, but I can make my way by feel.”

He led us cautiously through a narrow labyrinth of damp and stinking alleys. As the crow flies, we had only a hundred feet to cross, but we were not crows. Judging by the smell, and the occasional sounds from within, we went past the laundry, a wine cellar, two illicit trysts, the depository of several latrines, a henhouse, a silage shed, and (a welcome break) a workshop where strewing herbs were drying.

We wove in and out of the palace building itself, sometimes moving through blackened hallways, sometimes through dark alleys. Our final pass was through a small door that opened onto a narrow corridor. This in turn led to a small room filled with a mound of dank and mildewed linen lying in a heap. The smell made my eyes water and my gorge rise.

“Where go we from here?” I asked, desperate to get away.

“Up,” said Ned quietly, in the absolute darkness. “This is the bottom of a massive laundry chute. There is a ladder to the right here, it goes up two full stories and comes out at the landing of the privy steps.” This was the broad set of stone stairs going from the royal apartments down to the Thames, for the exclusive use of Their Majesties’ court. “There will be a guard inside the door, but this brings us up on the outside. Their Majesties’ attendants take whatever was soiled on board during a river voyage and toss it down here. Or so I’ve gathered. Somebody should come and take it to the laundry, but that chore has clearly fallen out of rotation. The ladder is for retrieving things that get chucked accidentally. Robin, go up, then Will, and I’ll come behind. You’ll emerge through a trapdoor onto the landing at the top of the river stairs.”

He took my fingers in the dark and wrapped them around a damp wooden rung of the ladder. “Up you get,” he said. “Brother, step toward my voice and I will put your hands upon it next.”

Every rung was slimy. I tried not to think about that. Or about the fumes I was breathing from the pile of rotting fabrics. Just get up to the top, just get up to the top . . . It was like an urban Outward Bound course.

Finally I bumped my head against the trapdoor. I pushed up and found to my relief that it opened easily, and a chain kept it from smashing on the decking around it. I scrambled onto the deck, felt the damp cool of the evening, and breathed in lungfuls of relatively wholesome air that reeked merely of smoke and river fumes. I stepped out of the way so Will could join me.

I had been thinking stairs as in, you know, stairs. I figured maybe the staircase would have a canopy over it, since this was the royal family’s river egress even in the rain. But these steps literally got the royal treatment. Broad, wide, shallow stone risers were protected from the open sky by a wooden roof, the underside lacquered in gold leaf. The flight descended leisurely to a floating quay that adjusted with the tide. The Thames has a tidal range of about twenty feet, hence the stairs and floating dock. Because the stairs were in much use tonight by courtiers coming to see the play, there were torches. There were perfume censers.

There was Tilney. Breathing hard to catch his breath from rushing. Holding a dagger. Gentlemen of this era were generally armed, but for somebody like Tilney, who was unlikely to ever need it, it probably became a sort of white noise in one’s haberdashery. But he had it, and now he’d drawn it. I wondered if he knew how to use it.

Of course he’d think to come here. Fire and water are the fastest ways to destroy a printed manuscript. But an open flame on the palace grounds would draw attention, so he realized we meant to drown the book.

Tilney was staring out toward the river, as if the movement of the water had distracted him from watching for us. The harsh lap of the tidal current, the wherrymen crying out “Eastward ho,” “Westward ho,” people shouting at each other in greeting or argument . . . from here, it was all somewhat at a distance, but it created a mottled white noise that let us get to our feet before he noticed us. I figured we should keep silent until Ned had joined us, then cut around Tilney and hustle down the stairs, but Tilney turned and saw us.

“Master Tilney,” Will said, stepping toward him, as if we’d come here specifically to have a word with him.

Tilney looked frightening in the sputtering torchlight. “You have killed us both,” he said to Will in a wondering tone. And pointing at me without glancing at me: “And it is her doing. She it is has bewitched you. I have proof.”

“Let us repair to a tap-house and discuss this over an ale,” said Shakespeare, reaching out a conciliatory arm.

Tilney slapped his hand away. “I will not burn with you,” he said. “I will not go to the Tower for this.”

“’Tis true,” said Will. “You won’t. Naught has happened tonight to give offense to the King.”

“You will give me the book, that I may present to His Majesty proof that I never approved of the witchcraft you uttered tonight.”

“The book itself contains real witchcraft, sir,” I said. “My entire reason to be in your offices was to remove that witchcraft. The Irish witch you know as Grace was cleverer than I was.”

“Every word out of your mouth is a lie,” he nearly spat. “You shall not trick me. Where is the book?”

“I know not,” I said, moving toward the descending stairs to draw Tilney’s attention away from the trapdoor. At that moment Ned very inconveniently finished his ascent and appeared from the trap with a very book-like object tucked under his arm. Tilney saw him—and the book—and his face changed color.

With a dexterity not even Charles Dance could have managed, he pulled Will up against him with the dudgeon an inch under his chin. “Give me the book and I will release your brother,” said Tilney.

“This is uncalled for, Edmund,” said Will, shaken. “We are trying to protect you. Grace has made you act against your own interests.”

“I know what magic feels like, and I—”

“She used no spells,” I said, guessing. “She simply tricked you. She dissembled.” And then it made sense: “Lady Emilia is working with her, sir.” Tilney did not register this.

“Ned, do not give him the book,” said Will. “Edmund, release me. What will you do if he will not give you the book? Don’t give him the book, Ned,” he added for clarity, not that Ned seemed about to. “Are you going to stab me, Master Tilney? How does that improve your situation?”

Tilney pushed the point of the blade to actually touch Will’s chin, and Will flinched.

He raised his chin enough to speak. “A proposition,” he said. “I will return with you immediately, in person, to the Banqueting House. We shall go to greet His Majesty, you and I, together. If His Majesty and the Lady Emilia express any displeasure or concern at all about tonight’s play, I will explain to them with all frankness and in your hearing the story behind the writing of the spells.”

As Will was speaking, Ned was walking very slowly in an arc past the three of us.

Tilney shook his head and poked Will, who flinched again. Will closed his eyes, and I worried he was about to pass out.

“I shall do no such thing, sir,” said Tilney. “Of course you wish to address His Majesty, but it is because you would speak with him about that other thing you’ve written.”

Will opened his eyes. “What other thing?” he asked in a whisper, through clenched teeth, without moving his jaw. “King Lear?”

Tilney glowered and must have added pressure with the point of the dagger, for Will drew in a ragged breath.

“Do not play me for a fool. The book of yours that Philip Herbert would present. For how many years must I live in the humiliation of your shadow? You shall not best me yet again. I will have audience with the King tonight, myself, without you.”

“What book?” asked Will. “Lower your blade, man.”

“Lower your blade,” echoed his brother. He held up the manuscript. “Release him, and I’ll give you the book.”

This claim distracted Tilney, enough for Will to break loose. With a relieved gasp, he fled down the stone steps, passing Ned, until he stumbled, tripped, and rolled down several steps, grunting a pained complaint as he went.

Like a dog on a hare, Tilney chased after him. I whistled sharply at Ned, who took my meaning, tossed me the manuscript, and then he too began to race down the steps, trying to get between Tilney and Will. But Tilney wasn’t having it. Now that his blade was out—which had probably rarely happened in six decades of wearing it—he was sawing the air with it.

“Nobody could blame me for wanting to bury this in your gut,” he hissed down at Will. “After all I have endured since the moment you appeared in London. You would be nothing without me, and I am nothing because of you.”

Will, finally collecting himself and starting to rise, called back up, “If I have ever been remiss in my expressions of appreciation, forgive me and allow me to try again—”

“I am done waiting on you!” said Tilney. “It is my book that shall go to His Majesty! Mine. Not yours.”

Perplexed (having not written a book), Will said, “Of course, as you insist. I agree.”

Said Tilney, “You dissemble, sir, you will tromp all over me to have your own success!” He was working his way to a lather and came bounding after Will, who hurried down the remaining steps toward the river.

Will and then the rest of us stumbled onto the floating wooden dock. The tide was low, but the ebb current was very strong, the water slapping loudly on the dock and the steps. Will, at the edge of the dock, pivoted back toward us, grabbing a post to steady himself. Tilney was some ten feet from him, knife still out. Ned had raced down to intercept Tilney, and when he pulled up short, the three men described a shallow triangle. Ned pulled a knife from his belt, but I was desperate to prevent a physical assault.

“Master Tilney!” I called out, a step higher up from the dock. “Here I am with the book, sir! If you want it, you must step away from Mr. Shakespeare and collect it from me . . . here,” and I began to back slowly up the broad stone stairs.

“If I turn away from this blackguard he will slit my throat,” said Tilney without looking at me.

“Put your blade away,” I told Ned.

“And let him kill my brother?” said Ned. “The man’s lost his reason.”

“Put your blade away,” I insisted, and held up the manuscript. “Here is the book, Master Tilney!”

Tilney started at that and risked a glance over his shoulder. His left hand twitched as he began to raise his arm, and he took a step toward me. Then he froze. Dropped his hand. Looked back at Will.

“I don’t want that anymore,” he said slowly. “I want blood.”

What happened next will take longer to describe than it took to happen.

I sensed—perhaps more than saw—that Tilney was going to lunge at Will. And that Ned intended to intercept that lunge. Either of these could lead to William Shakespeare dying sooner than he is supposed to, and that must not happen. Not that Ned’s or Tilney’s life is worth less than Will’s, obviously, but human history is shaped more by William Shakespeare than the other two combined. In other words: I couldn’t let anyone get hurt, but I really couldn’t let Will get hurt. Will was about to get hurt. I had to stop that.

So I darted down to the other side of the Will-Tilney axis to get in Tilney’s way as he went for Will. This put me directly in harm’s way, but it seemed like something Tristan would do, endangering himself rather than risk harm to the historical figure. And here’s what happened:

As I was moving into Tilney’s strike zone, with the water pounding past the dock in the darkness, Ned mirrored me and moved toward me, grabbed the book from me, and pushed me directly down onto the dock with one hand, while holding up the book toward Tilney with the other hand, like a buckler, as if it could function as an actual shield. Meanwhile Tilney was following through on his lunge, which connected with the book, piercing it with such force that his dudgeon impaled the entire manuscript. The dagger’s forward momentum was retarded from making contact with the book, but Tilney had already added extra oomph to his step, and so as Ned released the book, shocked, Tilney was propelled forward toward the edge of the dock.

He’d have gone over into the Thames—except that Ned, in an instinctive but fatal moment of politeness, pushed Tilney down and back to keep him from falling, and in doing so lost his own balance. Ned grabbed blindly in the air for purchase, his hand finding only the manuscript, which now in his grasp slid off the point of Tilney’s bodkin more easily than it was impaled—and Ned and the book careened off the dock into the water.

It was not a great distance, but the water was gushing past us as if it were going down a drain. Man and book disappeared with barely a splash.

There was an awful, unnatural stillness on the dock. Will was staring into the river, jaw slack, horrified. Tilney looked stunned. I felt too wobbly to rise safely. I’m a strong swimmer, but that current was fierce, the water was filthy and full of treachery: trash, animal carcasses. Except for the bright dots of boat lanterns, it was black across the loud and rushing surface.

Finally Will turned to Tilney. “You have drowned my brother,” he said, sounding like he was about to vomit.

All the fire in Tilney was doused. Without responding, he stood, and as if in a trance, he walked slowly away up the steps, into the darkness.

“We must go downriver and find him!” I shouted over the rushing current. The only boat tied here was the royal barge, moored to the far edge of the dock; there were guards within. No wherries would presume to come within hailing distance of the royal steps. The only way to follow the current was to go back into the palace grounds, exit through the main gate, and make our way upriver to the Whitehall stairs, hail a wherry and tell him we were looking for a lost man downriver. That would take at least a quarter hour.

Tilney was already out of sight above.

“Come,” I said to Will, grabbing his hand and tugging. “Hurry.”

It was only then I remembered Tristan. And Gráinne.

Oh, fuuuuuuuck.

AFTER ACTION REPORT

DOER: Melisande Stokes

THEATER: Fourth-century Sicily

OPERATION: Guard mosaic

DEDE: Prevent wagon being overturned

DTAP: 309 CE, domestic and administrative compound between Piazza and Sophiana

Livia had granted me a few hours alone in the family shrine to pray to the gods for mercy, which gave me time enough to finish writing my story into the wax tablet. I had nothing to gain from that, but in a state of crisis, it grounded me and helped me think. Or try to, anyhow.

Then she Homed me to the present day. Thanks to some kind of magical osmosis that allowed her to grasp precisely from where Quince had come, I landed in ODEC #4 at DODO headquarters.

I pulled on the hospital gown they keep in the ODECs for returning DOers and thumbed the release button. The door hissed open. I stepped out, blinking in the harsh fluorescent lights of the glassed-off bio-containment zone. I turned, stone-faced, toward the control panels. I could see the technicians on the other side of the glass, where the lighting was dimmer, but I couldn’t make out their faces clearly. I waited for a very long three or four seconds, and then heads began to bob, shoulders pivot, hands scramble at controls. I heard the metallic click that meant the audio channel had been opened.

“That’s right, it’s me,” I said blandly. “Melisande Stokes.”

The audio channel clicked off. There was now increased movement on the other side of the glass.

“I’m going to decon,” I said, gesturing to the shower unit.

Audio clicked back on. “Stay where you are.”

“No matter what happens next, I need to decontaminate,” I said.

“We need you to stay where you are until we’ve established proper protocol—”

“Have fun with that,” I said, and walked out of ODEC #4’s isolation zone. This was the unit closest to the shower. I turned on the faucet, slipped off the hospital johnny, and stepped inside.

I was hoping inspiration would strike while I was rinsing off, but no. I turned off the shower, toweled off, put on a bathrobe from the pile they keep in there, and stepped out. To find three handguns leveled at me.

Armed DOSECOPS guards in riot gear had surrounded the shower while I was in it. The muzzles of their weapons nearly touched me.

“Ms. Stokes,” said a voice of indeterminate gender, over the loudspeaker. “This is your escort. You will follow them to the medical suite.”

I pointed to a door on my side of the glass, ten feet away. “You mean this medical suite?”

“Do not attempt to communicate,” said the voice. “I am the night supervisor, and I will be reporting your arrival to my superiors.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Don’t communicate.”

I held up my hands and let the riot police herd me six steps through the little door of the stainless steel recovery ward. It had been cool in the decontamination unit, but it was frigid in here. One of the DOSECOPS handed his gun off to another. With brusque don’t try anything funny, bitch body language, he unlocked a supply cabinet high on the wall and pulled out a pair of sticky-soled socks. These were tossed onto one of the two hospital beds in a rough gesture more fitting for a police procedural than a medical suite. This helpful employee then relocked the cabinet, retrieved his gun, glowered at me through the Plexiglas of his riot helmet, and signaled the other two guards to exit the room. He kept his weapon trained at me as he backed out. I heard the door lock behind him.

I sat on the bed. “Now what?” I asked as I put on the socks. After waiting about a minute for a response, I tried again. “What time is it?”

“Three thirty a.m.,” came the disembodied voice of the night supervisor.

“And the date?”

Instead of an answer, Muzak began to play over the sound system.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” I muttered.

Time passed and nothing happened. I’m sure Blevins had been contacted by the time I was out of the shower, and this delay was deliberate. The anticipatory thrill and all that. I’ve been patiently resilient with him since Day 1, but after three hours in a bathrobe, with the air-conditioning set to 58 degrees Fahrenheit (there’s a thermometer high on the wall), I ran out of patience. In deliberate view of the surveillance camera, I crossed to the wall panel holding the intake console. It’s locked, of course, but it’s a combo lock, and I was on the committee that decided to make the combo easy to remember in case of emergency, so I know it (alphanumeric for DODOMedRoom1). I opened it and unfolded the keyboard.

“Stop that,” said the supervisor’s voice over the audio channel. Then the Muzak resumed.

The IU requires a password, but again, it’s just DODOMedRoom1. Melisande Stokes had been expunged from the system, of course, but the night nurse had logged in when he came on duty. As Chris Burton, RN, I lodged a complaint that the Muzak was an attempt to brainwash me.

“Step away from the console,” said the night supervisor’s voice.

I moved to a new screen that allowed me to update the nurse’s own medical file. I gave him active cases of leprosy, smallpox, West Nile virus, tuberculosis, cholera, measles, and hep C.

“Stop that,” ordered the night supervisor.

I moved to a new screen and filed a complaint that I wasn’t receiving proper medical treatment. I pressed “enter”—and heard the door unlock. I turned, expecting to be rushed by DOSECOPS.

Roger Blevins entered. His hair wasn’t as perfectly coiffed as usual, and I suspect that under his sheared beaver coat, he was in his pajamas. He was glowering with the kind of tragic victorious rage I usually associate with Russell Crowe characters.

“You are a traitor,” he said. “The next time you see the outside of this building, you’ll be in an armored van en route to your execution.”

“As long as there’s no Muzak,” I said.

“This is not a joke, Dr. Stokes,” he said. “If you want to save yourself, you’ll cooperate with me. Where is Colonel Lyons?”

It was music to my ears that he didn’t know anything about Tristan’s situation. “Sorry, that’s privileged information above your pay grade.”

“You’re hardly in a position to determine that,” he said, irritated.

“I’ll talk to Constantine Rudge,” I said. I knew he wouldn’t agree to this, but if the conversation was being archived, Rudge would eventually learn of it and possibly consider back-channel communications. “But I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“If you make me play hardball, you will regret it.”

“How? You’ll fire me?”

“You were my most promising student,” he said, managing to sound as if this were solely his accomplishment. “I’m very disappointed it has come to this.”

He signaled toward the surveillance camera. The DOSECOPS reentered, weapons drawn. Blevins stepped back against the wall near the door to avoid their weapons, which were all leveled at me.

Behind them, a technician armed with a Leatherman loped in. As the guards’ weapons remained trained on me, the techie began to unscrew the entire intake console from its housing cabinet. Blevins gave me a superior so there look, as if he were imitating Erzsébet.

I huffed a laugh. “That the best you got?” I asked. He deflated. (It’s satisfying to give him attitude. Not wow, really happy Gráinne blew up our lives so now I can sass him satisfying, but it’s something.)

“I hope you like that bathrobe,” he said. “Because that’s your entire wardrobe, indefinitely, until you’re willing to talk.”

“Put me in a secure room alone with Constantine Rudge and I’ll talk,” I said.

“You only get to Dr. Rudge through me,” he said.

I shrugged. “Oh, well,” I said, and pursed my lips together.

Grunting under the unwieldy shape and weight of his burden, Mr. Leatherman carried out the console unit. Blevins left with him, shooting me a final warning look. Once they were safely clear of me, the DOSECOPS also exited, guns trained on me to the last moment.

After an hour, I heard the heating kick on. I checked the thermostat and saw it had been reset to 68. After another hour, it was warm enough for me to doze off on the bed.

When I awoke, I was under a light cotton hospital blanket. On the table between the recovery beds was a pile of saltines, Skittles, and single-serve apple juice containers, the kind they keep in the break room.

“You could have tossed in a couple of granola bars,” I groused to the surveillance camera.

I was alone in there for a long time. I would guess about twenty-four hours, but it’s hard to keep track without a timepiece. I did a lot of jumping jacks and isometric exercises, which a series of disembodied supervisory voices told me was inappropriate behavior in a recovery room. Gráinne hadn’t shown up. I admit I was relieved, because, unlike Blevins, she wouldn’t pull any punches. Then I realized her absence might mean she was in 1606 London taking down Tristan, or somewhere else taking down someone else, and I felt sick.

There must have been frantic back-channel negotiations taking place along the Blevins-Frink-Rudge spectrum. Finally, a disembodied supervisory voice told me Blevins had “scheduled an exit interview” and would arrive in an hour. A piece of paper was pushed under the door. I picked it up. It was an itemized bill for the bathrobe ($80) and the break room nourishment ($17).

“Dock my 401(k),” I said, waving the bill at the surveillance camera.

Blevins appeared about two hours later. He was dressed for real this time, with his hair back in its usual shape, and he was sipping a large coffee and noshing on a blueberry muffin. I was still in the white terry cloth bathrobe and the floor was littered with saltine wrappers.

“Where’s Colonel Lyons?”

“Ask Gráinne,” I said, which threw him for a moment.

He barked some questions at me—why was I interfering with Quince’s DEDE, for what misguided cause was I betraying my country, for which villainous mastermind was I working. I ignored him, pushed the little pointed straw of the final apple juice box through its tinfoil opening, and sipped at it. He would never have released me on his own. The order must have come from higher up, which meant he’d have to obey it whether or not he could bully me into talking. If Gráinne wasn’t in the picture, I was safe.

Once he’d finished his coffee, he treated me to some more insults and accusations, and in response I offered him some saltines. He stood up and nearly spat in disgust. “You’re free to leave.”

“That’s mighty white of you,” I said as he left.

I remained on the hospital bed in the sticky-soled socks and bathrobe, until a new disembodied voice asked me when I would be ready to vacate the room.

“Well,” I said, “it’s February. This is a bathrobe. I know there are civilian clothes for when Anachrons arrive, so I’d appreciate something I can wear home without getting hypothermia.”

“We don’t equip traitors,” said the voice, sounding bored.

At least we now know that the power outage from the blizzard didn’t knock out the East House surveillance system.

I’ve never seen Mortimer look so confused as when he threw open the front door to find me shivering on the step in frozen socks and a damp bathrobe. But I don’t have frostbite and I’m pretty sure after a good night’s sleep or two, I’ll be fine to go back for a final Strand.

Letter from Dr. Roger Blevins to LTG Octavian K. Frink

DAY 2040 (28 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

I need to set the record straight, Okie. I’m not saying Constantine Rudge’s description of what happened over the weekend is inaccurate, merely that it’s incomplete. Yes, it’s true, we kept Melisande Stokes in a secure room until I had a chance to interview (not “interrogate”) her. But I wasn’t “refusing to let her dress”; rather it’s that we don’t have an inventory of street clothes on hand, so she was kept in a bathrobe and hospital johnny because that’s literally all there was to offer her.

Those are just quibbles, however. As is the fact, which Rudge completely glosses over in his account to you, that Dr. Stokes committed a cybercrime by accessing restricted, encrypted material (somebody else’s medical records, as well as several communications channels) stored in a secured government intranet (ODIN) and falsifying them.

But most urgently, our Sicily DOer, Arturo Quince, reports that she interfered with his attempted DEDE on multiple Strands—sometimes he manages to sabotage the mosaic, but sometimes she sabotages his sabotage attempt. Her actions are hostile toward a government mission, which makes her an enemy agent. So of course I would want to turn her over to the CIA. (As well as the FBI, but signs point to interference by a foreign government.)

For Rudge to complain (when he barged into the building without warning) that I was about to hand her over to the appropriate authorities without explaining to you why I was about to do so misrepresents the situation. Frankly, I find it suspicious that he wished to prevent me. And to be honest, that you backed him up. In the spirit of decades of friendship, Okie, help me make sense of this.

Quince had only two more Strands to this DEDE (before Dr. Stokes skewed things with her interference). Keeping her under guard here in the building for that duration, which we are equipped to do, was the best way to have maximized Quince’s chances of success. For Rudge to set her loose—into the wild, so to speak, to potentially strike again—that is insensible to me. It’s as if Rudge—our consultant with the highest security clearance!—doesn’t want us to succeed at this DEDE.

—Roger

Post by Melisande Stokes on her personal GRIMNIR channel

DAY 2041 (1 MARCH, YEAR 6)

I slept so deeply that waking was like recovering from diachronic travel. At Mortimer’s instruction, I stayed in the master bedroom because Rebecca is “still in Japan, for a little longer than we had anticipated” (um, excuse me?).

Crumpled on a chest at the foot of the bed were my clothes that I’d left behind when Erzsébet last Sent me to Sicily. I dressed quickly and went downstairs. Mortimer was seated at Frank’s desk, one of the cats curled up in his lap. A blue-and-white webpage was on the screen.

“Hunting for bugs?” I asked, coming in.

“Oh, hey, Mel,” he said. “Sleep well? I’m taking a little mental break, actually. I read your final report and got curious about the substitution cipher in the mosaics.”

“Why? That’s preschool-level encryption for you,” I said. I did not want to think about those damn mosaics while I was between Strands. “Anyhow, all it unlocks is a phrase from some arcane alchemical blessing.”

Mortimer shrugged. “I needed a little mind candy. Giving myself fifteen minutes for decryption.”

I sat on a stool beside him. “What do you mean—decrypt what? The whole thing’s gone. Exposure and pillaging made it disappear a thousand years ago, there’s nothing to search for.”

“The Internet disagrees with you,” he said, and nodded toward the screen. “It was eventually swallowed up in a massive mudslide and so . . .” He read off the screen: “‘It lay forgotten and undisturbed under a protective layer of earth for 1,700 years, until a few decades ago.’”

“A . . . mudslide?” I echoed. The topography of the site, relative to the mountainside, didn’t sync with a mudslide seismic enough to cover that sprawling compound.

“Yep. Now it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site that gets half a million visitors per year.”

“You’re kidding.”

“That’s why I’m interested. Let’s find Hanno Gisgon’s mosaic.” He began clicking through links.

I looked over his shoulder. It was disorienting to see photos of the floors I knew so well now. The stony-faced cupids fishing, Orpheus taming the beasts, the emperor’s time-lapse chariot race, even the latrines we’d used. All devoid of furniture and people. Eerie.

A legend in the upper right corner of the screen provided a map of the whole compound, with links to each chamber. I pointed. “That’s the room where it was being set.”

Mortimer clicked on it. A mosaic filled the screen.

I knew it wouldn’t be Quince’s comet design. But Hanno Gisgon hadn’t stuck with his Nine Muses either. The mosaic on the screen depicted a group of young women—one blond, one redheaded, two with black brows much darker than their hair. All save one wear nothing but mammalare and extremely (excuse the term) truncated subligar. The one exception wears only a see-through golden dress, which drapes over one arm but leaves the other arm and one breast exposed. This young woman’s face and expression and even the proportions of her body bear a remarkable resemblance to Livia’s.

I reached past Mortimer and clicked the mouse to zoom in on just the woman in gold. She looked gorgeous and sexy. “I wish I knew the rest of that story,” I said.

“Simple. The family didn’t become associated with astronomy. The observatory was built where it was supposed to be. Berkowski took the photo where he was supposed to. Happy ever after.”

“I mean the rest of that story,” I said, pointing to the image of Livia.

Mortimer tapped his finger on the lower left corner of the screen, where Livia’s foot reached the border of the room. There was a long multicolored run of tiles that were out of place in the geometric border design. “Hey. I bet that’s the key.” His gaze glanced up slightly. “Seven minutes before I go back to repairing the rot in all this code. Let’s decrypt it.” He zoomed in on the aberrant streak, until we could easily count the individual tiles. A row of four brilliant tesserae was followed by tiles in a slide of hues, from reds through umber yellows, greens, teals, and blues, and finally half a dozen neutral tones.

“I count twenty-three colors,” he said.

“If you include y and z, the Latin alphabet has twenty-three letters,” I said tentatively.

“Cool, let’s try it,” said Mortimer, zooming out enough that we could see most of the mosaic. “Disregard her dress, because that’s all gold, but anywhere else in the image where there’s four gold tesserae in a row, the following one corresponds to a letter, determined by color.” He ran the mouse jerkily over its pad and the image on the screen shifted. “There’s gold foursomes everywhere—the women’s bellies, part of the ball, that necklace. This’ll be fun.”

“Fun, yeah,” I said without enthusiasm. “Even if we decode and translate it, we won’t know what it means, it’s just his father’s bullshit occult gobbledygook.”

Mortimer shrugged cheerfully. He zoomed in close to the upper left corner of the mosaic until the tesserae were nearly to scale, and we began the task (tedious to me, weirdly refreshing to him) of scanning the image as if reading across a page. As we encountered each run of gold tesserae, he’d jot down the next tile’s color (on the back of the warranty for East House’s new infrared surveillance camera), and I’d map it to the correct Latin letter on a Post-it note. Teal, sky blue, dark tan, sky blue, pink, tan, warm yellow, pink, dark teal, off-white . . . it took longer than Mortimer’s allotted mental break, but soon we reached the bottom right corner.

“OK,” said Mortimer. “What little alchemical nugget did we just unearth?”

I read the letters I’d marked down. “Oh . . . LIVIA TE AMO MAGIS QUAM ASTRUM,” I read, surprised. “Livia, I love you more than . . . well, astrum means ‘star,’ but singular like that it could also mean ‘Heaven.’ ‘Glory.’ ‘Immortality.’ Livia, I love you more than Heaven.”

“See?” Mortimer grinned. “Happy ever after. Okay, thanks for playing, I gotta get back to my code rot now.”

* * *

Post by Rebecca East-Oda on “Sicily” GRIMNIR channel

DAY 2027 (15 FEBRUARY, YEAR 6)

I reached out to my college roommate Myra Helmsby, who’s a classics professor at Princeton. One of her postdocs is currently at the American Academy in Rome, researching the socioeconomic lives of artisans employed by Emperor Constantine I. Most of his research notes/hypotheses/conclusions currently exist only on his laptop, but he and Myra have regular video calls, and Myra agreed to ask about Hanno Gisgon. She faxed the responses (yes, I know, but faxing is so old school that even if DODO could intercept it, they’d never think to look).

Two things to know: First, unsurprisingly (based on Mel’s glowing review), Hanno Gisgon left Sicily and joined the bevy of preferred artisans attached to Constantine’s court. Second, Constantine survived an assassination attempt just before the Edict of Milan (that’s the stop-killing-the-Christians edict, 313 CE). Most sources say the Praetorian Guard prevented the assassin. The postdoc’s research suggests he was saved by Hanno Gisgon! That means Gisgon left Sicily shortly after he finished Livia’s mosaic in 309, to have earned the trust of, and access to, Emperor Constantine by 313.

Not sure it’s relevant to the DEDE, but I take satisfaction in having some historical data points DODO doesn’t have yet. Also, nice to know things turned out well for him.

Handwritten by Anonymous in Latin, on papyrus, Milan

LUPERCALIA, 313 CE

In celebration of the Emperor’s escape from death, I break my long silence to describe a supernatural event germane to his survival. This happened at the autumn equinox, four years ago. As Apollo is my judge, I swear on the soul of my ancestors, all I write now is true.

It had rained hard for three days at the villa of Marcus Livius Saturninus. The villa itself is cleverly designed to divert water even if the River Gela overruns its banks, and so within the compound, there were only wet tiles and paving stones. But immediately outside the walls, in the stables and the outbuildings and orchards, puddles were shin-deep, and everywhere else was mud to the ankle. Travel was impossible. Even daily chores were difficult.

On the fourth day, the rain ceased, although the clouds remained low and dark in the sky like thunderheads. It was on this day that the paterfamilias, Marcus Livius Saturninus, ordered the death of the prisoners. I was Saturninus’s newest bodyguard, recently presented by Emperor Constantine during his sojourn to Rome. Except for my new master, I knew none of the people whose fates I write of here.

All four of us liked the prisoner Hanno Gisgon. We were on orders not to speak to him, but we did not stop our ears when he spoke to us. For the three rainy days he was kept in confinement, he said the same two things repeatedly: that he had not touched Saturninus’s daughter unlawfully, and that this miscarriage of justice kept him from his expected arrival in Constantine’s court.

He was whispering these things even as he carried the beam across his shoulders to the post, the site of his execution. Waiting near the post was Saturninus himself, in ceremonial toga, his face both sagging as with grief and yet set hard as stone. Nobody was with him but the young woman, wailing and beating her breast. There were two guards to either side of her, hands clapped on her elbows and shoulders.

Ten feet from the post was the hole. Laborers had dug it at Saturninus’s orders before the rain began, and it was now so full of cloudy water that it looked like a shallow puddle. The prisoner did not even notice it as he walked by. Seeing the girl sobbing hysterically, worry crossed his face, but then he shook his head as if reassuring himself.

By the post, the four of us prepared the prisoner. We were two at each arm, the inner guards gripping him firmly while the outer guards secured his forearms to the crossbeam with a long leather strap. I was binding the prisoner’s right wrist but working more slowly than my left-arm colleague, for I was distracted watching the girl’s anguish. Before I had secured the binding, Saturninus ordered the other guards to shove the girl into the hole. She screamed as she fell, and the prisoner gaped in disbelief as he realized that what appeared to be a puddle was in fact a grave.

“Not I but the wisdom of the Julian Law condemns these two!” Saturninus called out to nobody. “She shall be buried alive for giving away her maidenhead, which is not hers to give. He shall be crucified for adultery and theft.”

“Father!” the girl screamed piteously, trying to scramble out of the hole, the muddy edges slippery under her fingers.

Enraged, the prisoner ripped his arm out of my grasp, grabbing the leather binding that was already wrapped once around his wrist, and now he flung his arm forward across his body, the end of the strap snapping whiplike at the left-side guard’s ear so hard that the guard screamed and released his grip on both prisoner and crossbeam; his companion let go too, to jump back on reflex. To avoid being struck in a backhand move, Lucius and I also dropped the beam and stepped back.

The heavy crossbeam, now held up by none of us, slammed down to the muddy earth and dragged the prisoner’s bound left wrist down with it. He stumbled to his knees, but as he fell, he struck out with the strap again, this time toward Saturninus, and with a blasphemous curse I dare not write even to record it, he whipped the strap across Saturninus’s face with murderous intensity. Saturninus shouted in pain and amazement and ducked behind the two guards who had shoved the girl. The prisoner drew back the strap to whip Saturninus a second time and took a step to pursue him, but the massive tether of the crossbeam brought him stumbling to his knees again. As he struggled to rise, I stepped on the beam, which felled him again, and the four of us, once more in control, forced his right arm back over the crossbeam, where I bound it extra tightly.

Saturninus’s face was bloodied from the strap. He raged and cursed violently, spitting at the prisoner, calling him names worse than anything we called each other in the barracks. “Hoist him, so I may have at him!” he shouted. The four of us raised the crossbeam up, with all his weight sagging from it, high enough to slide the mortise onto the post. We released and stepped back. The prisoner’s feet were two handspans off the ground. His own weight would fatigue his muscles until he could not breathe, but that would take a day or more.

The prisoner’s feet struggled to find purchase against the post, to hold himself up and relieve the pressure on his arms. “Nail his heels to the side of the post!” screamed Saturninus. He shouted at me: “Go into the smithy and get a long nail! Now!” He pointed to a sturdy outbuilding made of stone, fifty paces away.

I rushed at once toward this building, but there was nobody in it, and in the dim light of the stormy day, I could not easily see within. Remember, I had never been here before. Seeking assistance, I took stairs up onto the roof, but nobody was there.

From the roof, I witnessed all the rest of it.

Saturninus had grabbed a spear from one of the guards. He was a strong man and trained in arms, but it had been years since he needed to demonstrate his prowess. His first jab at the prisoner had missed. He steadied his grip on the long spear and raised it to puncture Hanno Gisgon’s midriff straight on. He was acting out of rage and a desire to torment, but in fact this would be a faster death than crucifixion, and more merciful, so I confess I was glad for the prisoner’s sake. But Saturninus never had a chance to strike.

On the slope above the villa there came a sudden massive explosion that ripped open the very mountainside itself, as if a volcano had erupted where there was no volcano. The fire was so violently bright, I could not see the sky beyond it. The earth rumbled, trees and boulders cracked, a roaring wind ripped leaves off trees and toppled the few freestanding objects in the fields—scythes and feed troughs and trellises. The building I was on tilted so severely I almost pitched off it. The ripped-open face of the mountain, sodden from days of such relentless rain, shuddered and, like thin gravy, cascaded toward the expanse of the compound. In less time than it takes to draw breath—I swear to Apollo I do not lie!—the entire compound and all the outbuildings, including the one I staggered atop, were covered in fully six feet of mud. All cries stopped abruptly as every living creature was drowned and asphyxiated instantly. All but two: myself and the prisoner.

But that was not the end of the supernatural intervening. For no sooner had the mud reached its resting place than the airborne inferno above us lashed out; I covered my face and turned away as a shower of lightning strikes fell upon the earth so that all the mud sizzled with a deafening hiss, and then—the mud now seared—all fell to silence. I have never in my life experienced such silence.

The inferno vanished as suddenly as it had come.

The prisoner and I looked at each other across a now-barren expanse. The dried mud encased him up to the middle of his chest.

I climbed down off my tilted perch and found I could tread on the solid earth that had been liquid mud mere seconds earlier. I ran to him and frantically, with my bare hands, dug him out of his confinement. He was in shock. He had been facing downhill, and so he’d heard and seen the mudslide envelop everything, felt it dry immediately around his body—but he never saw the fire. I could not find the words to describe it to him.

We staggered away from the compound, which was now trapped under six feet of dried mud. It was now a crypt for scores of people. We crossed through the passway that had been torn in the slope by the supernatural forces and made our way up-mountain to the town of Armerina. Here we rested for a day, afraid to tell anyone what we had seen. He would have fasted until death, but I implored him to take heart and to travel with me back to my former master, Emperor Constantine. The prisoner himself—clearly pardoned and protected by the gods—was already expected there for reasons of his own.

This is how Hanno Gisgon, savior of our Emperor, came to Rome.

UNCLASSIFIED DOCUMENT, PINE-SOOT INK ON MULBERRY PAPER, STORED IN A LACQUERED BOX IN NAMONAKI VILLAGE, NEAR KYOTO, 1450 CE (CONT.)

We returned to our home in terror and shock at what had befallen Oda-san. I brewed the kanpo tea of saiko and gypsum, as medicine for our distress. In silence, staring together into the coals of the hearth, we each drank a cup of this bitter brew. We sat there for perhaps an hour, too disturbed to speak or even think. Then we were distracted by a noise outside. I glanced at Seiko. She nodded, so I rose and went to the door. It was irrational, but part of me hoped that I would find Oda-san standing there.

Of course it was not Oda-san. There was a much younger man with a very strange haircut, extremely pale but very muscular. He was frowning.

He was naked.

“It is another one,” I said.

“I will get kimono for him,” said Seiko.

The young man was called Yamamoto Akifumi. Unlike Oda-san, Yamamoto-san did not look happy to be here. Seiko sensed he was from the same else-when as our earlier visitor, but to me he felt as if he were from some other universe entirely. He was uncomfortable in our home and in the spare kimono, and he had no idea how to interact with Seiko, and he refused our tea.

“Fifty thousand pardons, but I am in a great rush and cannot stop to speak,” he said. “I have three things to ask you, if I may be so rude, and then I will leave again.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Is one thing the request that I Home you?” asked Seiko.

He looked grudgingly relieved. “Yes,” he said.

“Of course,” she said. “What is the second request?”

“I’m looking for a painted box that was given as a gift to a nearby shrine,” he began, but Seiko cut him off by rising suddenly and walking away, waving her arms, and saying, “No, no, no!”

“Have I committed a rudeness?” he asked. “I am extremely sorry.”

“The last person who came seeking the box experienced the displeasure of the gods,” I said. “My wife is loath to see another honored guest fall into such difficulties. Please, it is dangerous and you must not pursue it.”

“May I ask why?”

I shook my head. “Either you trust us or you don’t. But we are not leading anyone to the box.”

He frowned, then said, “Am I free to look for it myself?”

“I cannot stop you, but I hope you will not,” I said heavily. “What is the meaning of the box?”

“In my era, where I am a student of your era,” the man said carefully, “there is a myth associated with this box—”

“You mean the myth that the witch-goddess gave it as a gift to the shrine?” I said.

“Well, yes, of course, but something more than that. It is known among students of mythology as the Dilemma Box. You haven’t heard that phrase?” he asked, seeing the confusion on my face.

“Sorry, but I do not know it,” I said.

“The internal walls of the box are believed to be saturated with a colloidal compound of sugihira mushrooms. That is poisonous. Nobody understands the ur-story—sorry, that’s a difficult phrase to translate—I mean nobody knows the origin or nature of the myth. The belief is, if you place a small animal into the box, it either will or will not lick the walls of the box, meaning when you open it, the animal might be dead or it might be alive. Some scholars believe this was used as a betting game in taverns. Others believe it was a form of fortune-telling. Some believe it was intended as a philosophical teaching tool.”

“Perhaps that is why Oda-san wanted it,” Seiko said quietly from the far side of the room, where she had retreated into the shadows.

The young man’s face brightened for the first time. “Oda-san!” he said. “Yes. You’ve met him? Do you have news of him? That’s my third question. His family is desperate to find him. Where is he? I’m here to bring him home.”

Seiko returned to the hearth. She knelt beside me and rested a hand on my wrist. “Tell him,” she said quietly. “And then I’ll Home him.”

ROBIN’S AFTER ACTION REPORT, STRAND 2, NEW PLAN (CONT.)

Will’s hand clutched in mine, I beat tracks back to the Banqueting Hall, almost dragging him.

The play had finished, but people were still banqueting gleefully. Will, pale and trembling, rushed to the Lord Chamberlain and whispered to him. The Lord Chamberlain sent various fellows in various liveries rushing out of the hall. Will followed in distress.

I was haunted by the image of Ned disappearing into the dark. I tried to push it to the back of my attention so I could focus on finding Tristan.

Immediately, I found him. With Gráinne.

He was dressed nondescriptly but very much as a commoner, so I couldn’t guess under what pretense he’d been allowed inside. Gráinne had successfully strayed from Lady Emilia. I don’t know if she’d been seeking Tristan, or if he’d taken aim at her, or if their meeting was a surprise to them both—I missed that part. By the time I returned to the Banqueting House, Gráinne had him under some kind of horrific spell: she had woven a shimmering, pulsing cocoon around him, I don’t know how else to describe it. She was holding him by the wrist and making direct eye contact. Tristan, who could so easily have overpowered her, was just standing there, a thick mantle of black wool bunched at his heels, as if he’d been holding it by the clasp and dropped it. I was at an oblique angle to him, so I couldn’t see his expression, but he was unnervingly still. I ran toward them, my rage drowning out my thoughts. Gráinne’s eyes were flashing with triumph and she was muttering. As I arrived at a gallop, I heard a phrase from the spells Tilney had copied into the Macbeth book—she was using the actual spell on Tristan, right now. That shimmering was part of the spell. She was literally killing him with words, right in front of me.

When I attacked her, I did not fight fair. I don’t remember much of what I did—just reaching directly for her throat and slamming her on the side of the head, to break the lock she had on Tristan’s gaze. She was so focused on the spell, she didn’t see me coming, so I knocked her over and then I just began to beat the hell out of her on the ground. I won’t describe it because it wasn’t pretty.

I heard a din behind me as I was punching her—obviously people were upset about this freak attack taking place in Their Majesties’ presence (by somebody dressed as a witch, no less).

The moment Gráinne was down for the count, the cocoon engulfing Tristan broke apart and vanished. But instead of seeming freed from it, he collapsed as if his bones were liquid, and he landed in a heap on the green-carpeted ground beside his mantle, his arms and legs splayed out at unnatural angles, as if he literally were a ragdoll. His face was contorted, not as if he were in pain but more as if he were fatally confused about his state of being. And his breathing was the worst of all—a rasping sound as loud as real speech, as if he were being both scorched and suffocated from within.

I screamed, “Tristan!” and let go of Gráinne to throw myself toward him, but two guards were immediately on me. Each at one shoulder, they hoisted me so my feet dangled an inch off the ground. I kicked at both of them. They lowered my feet to the ground, and one of them twisted my arm painfully behind my back and held it there.

Pandemonium was breaking out. Their Royal Majesties were being hustled out of the building with their bodyguards, the royal court fast on their tail.

“’Tis a witch! A true witch!” hollered one of my captors.

“She is not a witch!” called Richard Burbage from some distance off, forgetting I was also not a she. He was mingling with the toffs, bathing in their flattery. “She is one of the players. I will vouch—” And then his jaw dropped open. “The woman behind her on the ground there,” he said, growing pale. “She—” And then realizing it would be a death sentence to call out his favorite Irishwoman as a witch, he said, uncertainly, “She upset the lad you’re holding there, it’s naught to do with the court. I’d set both of them free out on the highway and think no more about it.”

And then he vanished backstage, gesturing the remaining players to follow after. They did. People were streaming from the tent. Most of the court was already gone.

But not everyone.

“Lady Emilia, I beseech you!” I shouted, trying not to move because I didn’t want the guard to dislocate my shoulder. “You have a witch in your employ who just tried to kill my brother, will you do nothing to help us?”

Lady Emilia, elegant as ever, calmly contemplated the two crumpled forms on the ground. Gráinne was cursing, spitting out blood, trying gingerly to sit up. Tristan remained unmoving except for his chest, which heaved with raspy breaths.

“Release the lad,” Emilia said to the guards crisply. They looked at each other and back at her, but my arm remained held most uncomfortably behind my back. “This woman”—with a dismissive wave toward Gráinne—“wormed her way into the tent with me on false pretenses, and the lad was doing all of us a favor by attacking her, for she’s a common thief and surely would have taken money from some nobleman’s purse. But because of the boy’s timely action, she had no chance to attempt such a crime, so there is no reason to arrest her. Remove her from the palace grounds.”

“She’s a witch!” I shouted. “His Majesty—”

“She is not a witch,” Emilia interrupted curtly. “I will not condemn her, but she is none of mine. Remove her. Release the lad, I want a word with him.”

The pressure on my arm vanished. I shook it out, glaring at the one who’d held me. They both ignored me, heading toward Gráinne. Very roughly, they hauled her up from the ground, and as she protested furiously, they dragged her from the tent.

We were alone now, except for a handful of servants rolling up the Turkish rugs and beginning to take the benches off the risers. Emilia moved in very close to me, smelling of lavender, and said sotto voce, “I know Gráinne to be a witch. Of course. She presented herself to me as the one who’d tricked Master Tilney into changing the play, and requested if she might attend me as a servant to enjoy the success of her endeavors. The uniqueness of the situation inclined me to say yes. But I had no idea she schemed of such action under His Majesty’s very nose.”

“You should have called her out for it!” I said impatiently, gesturing to Tristan. “Will you help me—”

“Listen,” she said in a rebuking whisper. “’Tis my sworn duty to protect the court from magic. ’Tis the sole reason I kept my head when I admitted to witchery.”

“And yet you helped Gráinne to poison the Macbeth script.”

“There must be no witchcraft performed in Whitehall Palace on my watch, so my position is that this was not witchcraft, and Gráinne is not a witch. If she is known as one, she will burn for it, but so will I.”

“My brother is hurt because you let her enter with you,” I said furiously. “Make it up to me by healing him. Now.”

Emilia followed my gesture to where Tristan lay moaning on the ground. Some of the servants were peeking around the risers and the royal dais to see who it was. “I have it in hand,” Emilia said loudly, and they all stopped looking. Or at least, they became better at pretending not to look. Emilia considered Tristan. His face was nearly purple from the effort of breathing. I’d fucked this up. I hadn’t protected him. My throat clenched.

“He is dying,” Emilia said softly.

“So heal him!” I hissed ferociously. “For God’s sake, surely for once magic can be used for something good!”

“He is dying from a spell that cannot be undone,” said Emilia. “That is the power of that particular spell. If he dies from Gráinne’s spell, he will vanish in every Strand.”

I panicked. “Don’t let that happen!”

She shushed me like a schoolmarm. My hands were out in front of me, fingers splayed, shaking, pleading.

“You’re a powerful witch, do something. Do something.” I started sobbing uncontrollably. “Are you literally powerless to do anything to help him?”

“I can remove his pain,” she said, still perusing him.

Not grasping her meaning, I said, “Well, then do that! Obviously! Do it now!”

She gestured impatiently for me to shut up, her gaze still on Tristan. I clamped my lips closed and took one large step back to demonstrate compliance. Emilia held her hands over Tristan as if she were warming them at a fire. Her lips moved in a soft murmur. Her eyes closed. She leaned closer in toward him, her hands approaching but not touching his body. After one especially loud rasp, his breathing began to calm, soften, slow. After about two minutes, he was breathing normally again. I sighed with relief and relaxed—every muscle in my body had been tense as a guy rope.

The red in Tristan’s face diminished with the pain of his breathing. He looked normal now, eyes half-open, as if he were contentedly drunk. For about three breaths, I thought he’d be fine. But then the gentling effect continued. Each breath was longer but shallower, like he was forgetting how to breathe but didn’t care. His face grew paler. The breaths grew further apart and more enervated. The thought lines on his forehead softened. This all happened so gradually, over about ten minutes, that I didn’t realize he had stopped breathing completely, until Emilia said, “He’s gone.”

I felt a roar erupting from me, but she gestured me to quiet so harshly that somehow I stopped myself from shouting. Her eyes darted to the side and I understood she was telling me not to draw attention. I stared at her, horrified, eyes watering, breath staggered. “Why?” I managed to whine.

With an expression of sympathy, Emilia took a step toward me and reached for my hand. I slapped her away and knelt beside my brother’s body, sobbing soundlessly. He was already cool and horribly still. I grabbed his head, tried to roll him onto his back for CPR, but his body was still limp and I couldn’t lever any part of him into position. Gagging on my sobs, I began dragging his limbs like deadweights, trying to make him look normal. The green carpeting Tilney had laid down everywhere was as sticky as felt and the friction made it even harder to move him. I had to turn away to vomit twice. By this point most of my witch makeup had rubbed off, either on Tristan’s clothes or on my own costume. Finally I’d arranged him squarely enough on his back that CPR might work. I moved up to his head, cupped one hand under his neck and one on his forehead, and leaned down to give him mouth-to-mouth. When I felt his cold limp lips, I burst into sobs that this time I could not quiet. I pulled away, draped myself over him, and screamed with grief. Emilia didn’t shush me. She must have ordered the servants out of the hall.

I collected myself and moved back to his chest, measured up from the bottom of his sternum, and began CPR, even though I knew it was useless. When things are horrible and you know you can’t fix them, it still feels important to try. The trying is a form of fixing yourself.

I don’t know how long Emilia left me alone with Tristan’s body—maybe just ten minutes—but when I finally looked up it felt like hours later. Emilia was standing about ten strides away from me, her back to me. At her feet lay a new corpse, curled on its side facing toward us, naked. A man. Who the fuck had she killed now? Tilney? I rose shakily to my feet and slowly walked in her direction.

As I approached I realized it wasn’t a corpse. The man was very still, but his torso was moving as he breathed. He was a large man, with coloring like Tristan’s. Because it was Tristan.

What?

I flinched backward in shock, pivoted, and saw that Tristan still lay dead on the ground behind me. I turned back to Emilia and there was Tristan, alive but unconscious, at her feet.

“What?” I said faintly.

“His cloak,” Emilia said. I was confused, then understood. I went back to the corpse and apologetically picked up the black wool mantle lying beside it. I brought it to Emilia and, at her gesture, laid it over Tristan. It was definitely Tristan. He had a different haircut than his dead doppelgänger, but otherwise it was precisely the same man. I tucked the wool around him to make it snug.

“Explain this,” I said shakily. “Please. I don’t understand.”

She reached for my hand again, and this time I let her take it. “Had I done nothing,” she said quietly, “he would have died from Gráinne’s spell. It would have been horrifically painful and he would have vanished across every Strand. But I killed him before her spell did. So all that happened was I killed him. He was dead on this Strand and only this Strand.”

“Okay, so who is this?” I demanded, shaking my free hand frantically at the curled figure before us.

“This is your brother,” she said calmly. “I found him on another Strand and Summoned him here. But I could not do that until your brother on this Strand was dead, until all sense was gone from him and all that was left was an object. Then it was safe to bring him from another Strand. It was exhausting”—I only noticed when she said this, that she looked exhausted.—“but once he was no longer living here, it was a possibility.”

I stared stupidly at both forms of my brother. The Tristan at our feet was more wakeful than when I’d first approached, his breath deeper and clearer.

“But,” I said, trying to banish my brain cloud, “isn’t it terrible for everyone in the other Strand that he is gone from there?”

She shook her head. “He was about to die in that Strand, so in a sense I’ve saved him twice.”

“How was he about to die?”

“Gráinne was about to murder him in the Globe Theatre. I found him and Summoned him before she could begin the spell.”

“Oh,” I said quietly and stupidly.

“He is not exactly the same man,” said Emilia. “That Strand is very similar to this one, but not identical. There may be some confusion.”

Tristan made a sound and we both looked down. His eyes were open, and he stared up at us, confounded. His eyes focused on my face and he blinked rapidly. “Robin?” he whispered.

“Hey, big guy,” I said.

He shook his head, sat up. The cloak tumbled off his upper torso and he glanced down, realized he was naked. “Where am I?” he asked, and his voice was exactly Tristan’s voice, which was fantastic. A nervous breathy laugh escaped me.

“This is the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace,” said Emilia.

“Why am I not at the Globe?” he asked, staring at her. “I was just at the Globe. Watching Macbeth. I thought . . .” He looked at me. “Robin, this is crazy, but one of the witches reminded me of you. And now you’re here? What’s on your face?”

I almost passed out. Some other me on some other Strand had attempted this same DEDE. She had just lost her brother too.

“I have brought you to a different Strand,” Emilia said. “You will remain in the Strand for the rest of your life. Robin, give us a moment.”

I threw myself on Tristan and hugged him hard. He closed one arm around me tentatively, patted me once. “She’ll explain it,” I said. “I am so glad to see you.” I stepped away, and Emilia kneeled beside him.

I went backstage to see if any of the costumes had been left behind so we could dress him. There was nothing. I’d have to change into my street clothes and offer him my witch robe until we could hunt something else up. I was shaking all over, the confusion and adrenaline rush pushing aside any kind of big-picture thoughts. Tristan was dead! Tristan was alive! I’m pretty sure Shakespeare wrote a speech about those emotions at war with each other, but I couldn’t remember it. Also Ned was gone. But the play was safe from magic. But Ned was gone. I had to push that away for now. I was dizzy with . . . everything. All of it. Just all of it.

I changed into my clothes and carried my witch cloak back to where Emilia still sat beside Tristan. Tristan looked spooked, which is not something I could ever have believed before I saw it. She had pivoted him to face away from the corpse, but he must have caught a glimpse and understood what he was seeing. I thought he was keeping his shit together pretty well.

Emilia looked up at me. “Are you ready to be Homed?” she asked me. “I will Send your brother to arrive shortly after you.”

“Wait, what about the UDET thing?” I said. She gave me a blank expression. I looked at Tristan. “The thing Rebecca wrote the white paper about, that when you’re Homed, you have to have been gone for the same amount of time that you were away for, like if you spent a week in 1606 you have to come back a week later in our time—”

“That’s only if you’re being Homed,” said Emilia gently. “He isn’t from this Strand so I’m not Homing him. I am Sending him someplace he’s never been before. I want him to arrive there a day after you, so that you can prepare the way for him. Explain to others who precisely it is who’s coming there and why.”

I looked at Tristan. “You must want to know what I’m doing here,” I said.

“Time enough for that once you are both in the future,” Emilia said with gentle firmness. “Stand away from your brother, and I will Home you.”

I began to write this, as you know, as soon as I was up from the ODEC.

He should arrive tomorrow.

Post by Melisande Stokes on her personal GRIMNIR channel

It was a weird morning. We were all at East House together, but all we could do, until Tristan arrived, was hover in limbo. As individuals and also as a group, hovering in limbo isn’t a thing we know how to do. Robin was a mess, which is understandable. So was Rebecca, which is even more understandable; I was the only one getting her man back.

Of course I was thrilled and relieved. But also nervous. This wasn’t precisely our Tristan Lyons. He’d been snatched from obliteration in another Strand of the multiverse, and that Strand had its own Melisande Stokes, with whom he’d worked closely for the past five years. As closely as I’d worked with “my” Tristan? In other words, not to put too fine a point on it . . . I don’t have to put too fine a point on it, the question here is obvious.

I had left his clothes neatly folded on a stool by the ODEC. I don’t know why I did that—he’s military, he can fold a shirt with the precision that Robin folds origami. Mostly it just gave me something to do for two minutes. Robin was resting in Erzsébet’s room, and Erzsébet was reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in case Gráinne had decided to infect a different Shakespeare play; Mortimer was at Frank’s computer; Rebecca was restlessly dividing her time between her bookkeeping desk and reorganizing the pantry shelves. I was researching both the Sicilian estate (now that it was famous enough to be researchable) and Berkowski’s eclipse photograph, which is still something that happened, because the Royal Observatory is still built where it originally was.

Rebecca noticed the noises downstairs first and alerted the rest of us, so I called up to Robin. By the time we heard footsteps on the stairs, we were all clustered around the door to the basement, holding our collective breath.

Other than his haircut, the man who emerged into the hallway looked exactly like our Tristan. He glanced around at all of us with mild confusion, a very Tristanesque why are you all standing around when there’s work to be done look.

“Hey,” he said.

We all nodded silently.

“Stop that,” he said. “I’m here. I’m me. We’re over it.” He looked specifically at me. “Hey, Stokes,” he said, in exactly the tone I needed to hear, and tousled my hair. To avoid bursting into tears, I fake-punched his arm. He looked pleased, clapped an arm around my shoulders, and gave me a quick squeeze—the biggest public display of affection he’s ever engaged in.

Each of the others in turn took a moment to greet him: Mortimer called him dude and chucked him on the back, Rebecca was stiffly mothering, Erzsébet complimented herself on her role in helping with his rescue. He and Robin exchanged quick but fierce hugs, since they’d already had their reunion. He did not ask about Frank.

“Okay, bring me up to speed,” he said.

“You should debrief one-on-one with Mel first,” said Rebecca. There was something grim in her tone that brooked no argument. “Then check in with the rest of us. It will get messy if we’re all trying to give you our perspectives at the same time. Use Frank’s study. I’ll make you some tea.”

“Tea?” said Tristan. After a confused moment, he said, almost sheepishly, “Not coffee?”

“I can make coffee,” she said, businesslike.

“No,” he said. “When in Rome . . .”

“Right. Tea, then,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.

Tristan and I went into the study and closed both doors. Alone, he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a strong, lingering hug. He pushed against me enough that I was anatomically reassured about the nature of his affection for me. Since I had no immediate way of returning the favor, I waited for him to say—as I knew he would—“Are we . . . ?” and then quickly said, “Oh yeah.”

He pinked a little. “Good. Now let’s get to work.”

Handwritten letter on fine linen paper

from His Majesty King James I

to Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery

My only sweet and dear one,

The Lord of Heaven send you a sweet and blithe wakening, sweet heart. I pray thee, as thou loves me, accept these diamonds I send to recover yourself from your debt at cards, which I hope shall save you a good deal of money. And now, my sweet gossip, I must give you a short account of my yestereve and yesternight that you have missed. I was for the whole of the afternoon shut up in conference with the Right Reverend Lancelot Andrewes, who is nearing completion of his translation of the Bible. I requested that he dedicate it to you, sweet baby, but he insists he must name it after me.

Towards sunset, I was treated to a most welcome diversion. I saw performed by the King’s Men, in my cousin’s Banqueting Hall, the Scottish play of Mr Shakespeare’s, the anticipation of which has been a delight of gossip, as you know. It was the queerest thing I have ever seen onstage, but I dearly enjoyed the spectacle, especially the witches, which were the source of great entertainment and nothing like real witches, except in their costume and demeanour. As we were exchanging courtesies and compliments with the players after, there was a disturbance the details of which I wot not, and we returned in great haste to the royal wing, where we enjoyed a great deal of wine and dried fruits, and a jig performed especially for us by the comedian Robert Armin. He was joined in his exertions by a Yeoman of the Queen’s Guard, who by a most remarkable chance has also been a player with the company.

My enjoyment was marred only by receiving a message very late last night from my Master of the Revels, who has abruptly and without explanation resigned his office. The Queen is beside herself with disappointment at his selfishness, for there is a masque due to be staged soon.

And thus God send me a joyful and happy meeting with my dear boy in my arms tomorrow.

James Rex

From Whitehall Palace, 29 April 1606

Journal Entry of

Rebecca East-Oda

MARCH 16

Temperature 39F, cloudy, barometer steady.

Mei and the girls will be arriving tomorrow to help with the memorial service.

It took me three minutes to type that sentence.

Robin is managing all right—quite well, in fact, for a young woman with no training for what she just accomplished. I’m sure she is grieving. And I don’t even know how to talk about Tristan’s . . . immersion? Re-immersion? In the other Strand, he had not proposed the East House Trust real estate expansion (or, as Mel referred to it several times in a self-mocking tone, the Rogue-DODO love nest)—but he has been gung-ho and we’re about to close on it.

Erzsébet’s számológép advised us that Mel should go back on one more Strand. She went on the 4th of March, and per all her previous Strands, we expected her to return between the 8th of March and the 10th. Here it is a week later, and she’s still gone. Tristan has pretty much moved into the living room, sleeping on the couch, to make sure he’s here when she gets Homed.

I remember Arturo Quince from DODO. He was hardheaded, and sometimes hotheaded, and we now know that he believes Mel to be a traitor to her country (how ironic) . . . but he was a decent, upright fellow. We must trust that even if she’s gotten into trouble in his hands there, his only concern will be accomplishing his DEDE. He would never do anything untoward to her.

Would he?

FINAL LETTER FROM

GRÁINNE to CARA SAMUELS

County Dublin, After Easter 1606

Auspiciousness and prosperity to you, my friend!

As I have been writing of these matters here, I have also spent time enough with you four hundred years hence. I am confident of your character.

In these pages have I laid out what my goal must be and why; the diverse ways I endeavour to achieve it; and what (and who!) my obstacles, which would be easier to overcome had I a friend to work with. You, Caralia, must be that friend. Not only is your magic excellent, but your connections in the modern world give you tremendous power. I pray you, regard the Fuggers as I do DODO. Use their resources for your (our!) ends while they believe themselves to be employing you for their own. They have stationed you so perfectly for it!

Confident enough I am of you that, when the ink has dried upon this sheet, I’ll take all that I have written since I met you, glue it into a large sleeve of vellum for protection, and then carry it to the heart of this new university the English have been constructing in Dublin, name of Trinity. I never thought a college would be of use to one such as me, but here’s a fine way to employ this one! I shall arrange to have my letter nailed up into some university wainscoting.

Because I’m not a trusting eejit, however, I will be placing it in the wainscoting of Leenane House, which does not survive until the present day. So you cannot blithely sally over to Dublin in the modern day to retrieve it and then show it to the Blevins or the Fuggers. As I shall tell you in person when I see you next, you must go back in time to find this and then leave it lie, as inanimate objects are incapable of diachronic travel. If you’re intrepid and curious enough, you’ll do this, and the next time we meet in modern Cambridge, sure I’ll know by the glint in your eye.

But ’tis possible you’ll read it and yet I won’t be around to see your glint. For I’ve learned a great deal over these past few months, and now I shall be acting on all I’ve learned. ’Tis the little deeds (and DEDEs) that are to be endeavoured, while grandiose schemes are best left undone. For even though the Tuscan DEDE was a success, the slave girl Dana was, as we know from DOer Chira’s report, taken out of circulation—yet still Leonardo managed to get himself born, curse him. ’Tis right there in the history books, only now they have him born of a peasant girl and not a slave at all. So Leonardo’s clearly destined to appear upon this planet, and I’ll waste no more time battling the cosmos over him. Perhaps my greatest learning from all this is that ambition can creep as well as soar. Creeping is less easily detectable than soaring.

So it’s one wee DEDE at a time I’ll be attempting now on, and I’m not finished with Berkowski yet. Hell-bent I am, on preventing that feckin’ solar eclipse photograph from ever being taken, for ’tis the first step to undo all of photography, backwards. I’m still chuffed with my particular scheme of moving the Royal Observatory out of the path of totality. ’Twould have been handily managed via the Mosaic Gambit, if only that poxy Mel had not interfered so in Roman Sicily.

But to look at misfortune is a useful thing for learning and improvement. In this case, I know precisely what the problem is, and that problem’s name is Melisande Stokes. She is going back there for another Strand, as surely as I write these words.

I won’t be Sending Arturo Quince again.

This time, I’ll go myself.

The End