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By Root 607 0

and my own race wouldn't cooperate. They gave me their blessing, of course, and they helped me find the Doctor - not that they did any more than they had to on that front of course, like telling me that they were going to wipe his memory just after I handed him the invitation. Oh yes, and they declared this area of space and time closed for the duration of the convention, but apart from that, I was on my own. It was obvious that if I asked any of the galactic powers for help, the rest of them would accuse me of favouritism, so I chose a minor race with no power base, no weapons to speak of and no strategic position in the galaxy. Apart from a tendency towards paranoia and stupidity, the Jamarians are a perfect workforce. Great organizers. They'll make someone a lovely civil service one day." He smiled. "Come on, let's get some food."

William Shakespeare reached out a trembling hand and touched Christopher Marlowe"s shoulder. "I can't believe it," he said for the fifth time that night. "You were stabbed by Ingram Frizer in the house of Eleanor Bull: Walsingham himself told me that Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley were there and saw the whole thing. It was an argument over a bill of reckoning for the fare that you all had consumed. For sixteen years I've believed you dead."

"Marlowe?" The man with Marlowe looked puzzled. "I thought your name was Chigi?"

Christopher Marlowe swigged back a draught of wine and wiped his hand across his mouth. "It is," he said. "A man can have many names during his life, as he has many natures. Once, long ago, I was known as Kit Marlowe to my friends, and as a fiend in human form to my enemies, of which there were many." He glanced at Shakespeare. "Will, this is Steven Taylor, a beautiful lad who has as able a facility at making enemies as I do. Steven, this is William Shakespeare, a playwright of some small repute in London."

"Pleased to meet you," Steven said, shaking hands with Shakespeare.

"We were at Eleanor's house, true, 'tis true," Marlowe said to Shakespeare, "but it was a meeting, not a meal. You know that Skeres and Poley were in the pay of Walsingham?"

Shakespeare nodded. They had all been working for Walsingham: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Skeres, Poley, Frizer and others. Sometimes he had felt that it was difficult to move in London without tripping over an agent of the Government on the lookout for seditious activity or evidence of blasphemy.

"You remember when Thomas Kyd was arrested in April of the same year," Marlowe continued, "he was brought before the Privy Council and accused of writing atheistic and seditious literature?"

"I remember." Indeed he did. Once one playwright was arrested for sedition, the rest immediately reread everything they had ever written, wondering if they would be next to hear the knock on the door.

"Kyd told them that I had written those papers, not he. The Privy Council sought other witnesses: aye, and found them."

"You made enemies, Kit," Shakespeare said. "You had that way about you. After all, you committed -"

"Fornication? Aye, but that was in another country, and besides, the lad is dead." Marlowe smiled. "Not that it mattered. The Queen herself was sent a document part entitled The Most Horrible Blasphemies Uttered By Christopher Marlowe, in which people were prepared to swear that I had called Christ a bastard, Mary Magdalene dishonest and all Protestants hypocritical asses. They also imputed to me the words 'if there be a God or any religion it is the papists.' Now you know me, Will." He spread his hands imploringly. "I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance. Would I, who believed in no God at all, claim that the Pope was God's only messenger?" As Shakespeare shook his head, Marlowe continued: "They were to call me before them to answer for my sins. I would have been tortured and killed.

Walsingham was my... my friend, as well as a generous employer.

He knew what fate lay ahead of me."

"A fate he might have shared," Shakespeare said, "if he also fell under suspicion."