Revenger by Rory Clements

to the court of Queen Lettice, I see.”
    He turned to find himself gazing into the mound of flesh that was Charlie McGunn’s ill-formed face. “ Queen Lettice, Mr. McGunn?”
    “Be under no illusion, she is the sovereign here. The She-wolf reigns. We are all her subjects.”
    A tumbler bounced past, springing from hands to feet, then over again onto his hands. But Shakespeare hardly noticed. He was more astonished—dismayed, even—by McGunn’s irreverent language. If Sir John Perrot was sentenced to death for calling Elizabeth “a pissing kitchen woman,” how much worse would it be to pay homage, even in jest, to the Queen’s cousin and sworn enemy Lettice Knollys? “I should be careful of your tongue, Mr. McGunn, lest it be cut out. I fear even my lord of Essex may not be able to save you.”
    McGunn clapped him hard on the back. “You are an innocent doddypol, Shakespeare. I cannot believe Walsingham ever had such a simpleton as intelligencer.”
    Shakespeare had heard enough. He walked away into the crowd, taking a cup of wine from a bluecoat on his way. The viols stopped and a man took to the richly draped stage, which encompassed the width of one end of the hall, not ten feet from him. At the two sides of the stage heralds blew trumpets, and the crowd immediately hushed and turned to see the man.
    He was dressed as a jester, in multi-colored costume. Bells jangled on his cap and brightly patterned sleeves. “My lords, ladies and gentleman, pray silence for the She-wolf.”
    A slow drumbeat sounded and a bier was borne on stage byfour men dressed as Indians from the New World. They wore breechclouts—loincloths—of soft hide, and their hair was shaven on the sides and raised into a bristly central strip from front to back, all topped by a single pheasant’s tail-feather. On the bier, a woman reclined in state. She was adorned in fine court clothes and a wolf mask. The crowd of guests roared with laughter.
    The bearers lowered the bier to the stage floor, and the She-wolf alighted. With a delicate step, she threw back her head and let out a great howl, like a wolf baying at the moon. She removed her mask and spread wide her arms, her long, elegant fingers upturned: Essex’s mother, Lettice Knollys, granddaughter of Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary, and red-haired like her cousin Elizabeth. Yet far more beautiful. Her features were soft and fair, her eyes aslant, her mouth set in the warm smile that had enticed men all her adult life.
    Shakespeare took a long sip of his wine and watched as Lettice, almost fifty years old but as lovely as a woman half that age, welcomed her guests and invited them to enjoy “a little masque for your delight, penned by one of our most estimable poets and players …”
    Lettice left the stage to a thunder of applause and was immediately followed by a cast of tumblers and players hurling themselves onto the stage in a riot of knockabout entertainments. Then suddenly there was silence again and all the players stood as still as trees in the forest. “But hush,” said the jester, cupping his ear with a hand. “Who do we hear coming into the wood? Why, methinks it is the Queen of the Faeries.”
    As the viols started up again, quietly at first, all eyes turned to the stage entrance at the right, where three figures emerged, two of them dwarves dressed as monkeys, both with chains about their necks. The chains were attached to leashes held by the third figure, black-clad like a witch with pointed hat and boils about her haggard white face.
    “Bow down, bow down, kneel one and all,” the jester said. “It is the Queen of the Faeries! And she has her familiars, little William and Robert Puckrel.”
    Shakespeare was aghast. One of the monkey figures had a long white beard; the other a hunchback. It was plain for all to see that they were meant to be William Cecil—Lord Burghley—and his son, Robert. As for the Queen of the Faeries, ancient and haglike with red hair and a