Her Last Assassin by Victoria Lamb

when they hang about the theatre door after each performance.’ Burbage laughed, seeing his expression. ‘No, never fear, I do not mean that . He wants your fame to rub off on him, that is all. He will ask to be your patron, Will, to make himself look good before his noble friends. For he will be supporting the most popular writer of the day.’
    ‘Kit is that, surely?’
    ‘You surpass Kit with your poetry. He writes a stirring scene for the groundlings, but cannot turn a line as powerfully as you.’ Burbage took Will’s cup away and drank from it, wiping his mouth on his sleeve afterwards. His hair was almost white these days, it had grown so silvered with age. Yet age had given him an authority he had lacked before, with many of the younger players now looking to Burbage for cues on how to speak and gesture, and how to own a stage just by standing on it. Even Will himself was not immune to his eloquence. ‘Depend upon it, this noble youth will wish to fête you and carry you about the court on his shoulders. And if you let him, you will be made.’
    Will considered that possibility for a moment. A wealthy and noble patron to support his writing?
    This could be the chance he had been hoping for. He loved to tread the boards, to see his work played out upon the fierce power and bustle of the stage. But to write poetry, long poems like those by Ovid and Virgil that he had studied as a boy in Stratford – that would lend his career true distinction.
    ‘I wish I had spoken with him,’ he muttered.
    ‘Where were you yesterday? I had Robert stand in for your part, though you were missed by the groundlings. These sudden absences are not like you.’ Burbage looked at him closely. ‘I trust you were ill. Too ill to send word. Or else working on this new comedy and lost in a reverie, so you did not mark the time?’
    Will did not meet his gaze. In truth, he had been with Lucy again all day, walking by the slow-rolling Thames, out beyond the city walls where the woods and fields stretched green and peaceful. He felt more at home there than in the city, reminded of Warwickshire’s damp woodlands. He knew he should not have missed the afternoon performance but it was rare for Lucy to find an opportunity to escape her duties at court, the Queen guarded her ladies so jealously these days. To be with her for a few hours had seemed worth the sacrifice of his pay.
    James Burbage seemed to guess at his thoughts. ‘With lovely Mistress Morgan, were you? You are a young fool. But a fool in love writes better than a fool alone. Only do not make a habit of it. Trust a wily old husband and take my advice on this, my young cockerel.’ He clapped Will on the shoulder. ‘You spend too much time with Lucy Morgan. Soon you will have two wives, and no mistress.’
    Will frowned. ‘Two wives?’
    Burbage hesitated before answering, for it had gone quiet on stage. The final love scene, no doubt.
    ‘You take her too seriously, Will.’
    ‘How so?’
    Instinctively, Will had also turned his head to listen to the players. He knew the scene well, had watched it often enough in rehearsal, had written and rewritten the lines himself. A man making love to a boy dressed as a girl. Out in the wide O of the Rose, a falsetto trembled above the silence of the groundlings; a man answered softly, wooing a youthful apprentice with the shadow of early hair on his chin and rags for breasts swelling out the bodice of his gown.
    ‘A man should visit his mistress with a light heart, and make her no promises,’ Burbage told him in a whisper. ‘Else he will come to dread her company as much as his wife’s.’
    ‘I have no wife,’ Will told him flatly.
    He turned, dipping his hands into the freshly filled water bowl, and hurriedly washed the sweat from his face, then dunked his head. With water dripping down the back of his neck, he straightened, running his fingers through his wet hair to smooth it down.
    ‘Anne is a woman who shares my bed a few