They grabbed it by the legs and lifted it, scattering the carefully ordered scenes. They swung it hard and hit the man in the back, knocking him to the ground. His dagger clattered to the floor, almost at Will’s feet. As the man lunged forward to pick it up, Will kicked at it. It skidded across the stage and dropped off the edge into the straw.

Al felt someone pull at his sack and heard the clank of pegs and then a scream. He swung around and saw that the top had been pulled open. Doug’s head was poking out and his teeth were bared. The man’s hand was bleeding. He lunged at Al with his knife, but Al lifted his sack and the blade slashed it before hitting something hard inside.

‘What’s this?’ one of the actors shouted. ‘Intruders? Not in our theatre! Armourer?’

As the word hunters ran, Richard Burbage opened a chest at the side of the stage and started throwing wooden swords to the actors. They pounced and rolled and pulled off one mystifying stage-fighting move after another, fearlessly whacking into the men in grey robes, whose knives were suddenly nowhere near long enough.

With the attackers taking a pounding and John Johnson having quietly disappeared, the word hunters ran back to the table and the fallen script. The glowing page was face down, but the light came through. Al took the peg from his backpack. There was no time to look for their grandfather here. The men in grey robes had steadied and were taking the fight to the actors.

Lexi opened the portal, Al stuck the peg in, locked it in place and turned the key. A mist rolled across the straw and onto the stage.

In the second that the floor fell away, Al saw them – two men in grey robes diving after him. He kicked. He hit nothing. Then he was falling.