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light of the lantern suspended from the side of the carriage by iron brackets.
    Kit took a step back, shying from the carriage like a nervous horse will shy from battle.
    “Do you not have friends?” Henry Mauder asked. “Do you not have friends who speak such vile lies, as Christ not being divine?”
    Kit could not imagine of whom they spoke. He had very few friends. He took care not to form friendships he might be forced to betray.
    Mauder huffed, exasperated at Kit’s silence. “Climb on, climb on, Master Marlowe,” he said and gestured cordially to the dark maw of the carriage.
    With Mauder on one side, Mauder’s silent companion on the other, Kit could no more avoid the route thus indicated than he could hide from spiteful fate. These men were not just two but a multitude. Behind them stood, arrayed, law and might. They were the crushing arm, the overreaching might of the Queen’s council.
    He climbed into the carriage on trembling legs, trying to hold his head high and pretend a light step.
    The two men sat together on the bench that faced his, thus both staring at him like unavoidable judges.
    Mauder arched his eyebrows. “Come, come, Master Marlowe. Do you not remember? Did someone not read you an atheist lecture, that you have since then repeated to others? Was there not something called a School of the Night that mocked the teachings of the Church?”
    The words fell like a strong light upon Kit’s thoughts. It seemed to him that the sounds around him receded and his head grew faint. He took a deep shuddering breath.
    A School of the Night. That was what they’d been aiming for.
    By the mass, they were talking about Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh, who’d befriended Kit years ago, when Kit was only a penniless student, Sir Walter Raleigh, who had enlarged Kit’s perspective of the world a hundredfold. Sir Walter Raleigh, generous enough to speak to Kit as to an equal when Kit was but a poor cobbler’s son, attending Cambridge on a scholarship.
    These two men wanted Kit to denounce Sir Walter Raleigh for an atheist and thus doom him to death.
    The coachman closed the carriage door, and presently, the vehicle moved. Marlowe heard the clopping of hooves on the ground, but through the dark curtains that covered the windows, he could not see where they were headed. His heart told him his destination lay in some prison’s oblivion. Cold sweat broke upon Kit’s brown.
    Once before, while at Cambridge, Kit had been arrested. He’d made friends with Catholic students. At the time innocent, an ardent Protestant, in his missionary zeal he’d thought to talk them out of their grievous errors.
    The council had seized him and asked him what incriminatory things he’d heard of them. Kit had refused to answer, all high-minded indignation and strong-worded pride.
    But Kit’s bravery had earned him naught.
    Alone, friendless, with no powerful connections, Kit had thought all lost and the pit of the grave had yawned at his feet.
    Where his actions had not, his fear made him a traitor. He had given the names of those students who, in the heat of theological argument, had admitted their beliefs to him. He’d betrayed their dreams, their hopes, their not-quite plots.
    He’d watched his friends die on the gallows, and he felt happy enough to have escaped. Since then had the secret service men known his limits and had tapped them again and again, sending him to parties where he would listen for the traitorous joke, the incautious remark, watch for the impolitic friendships.
    Thus had Kit been seduced to working for the Crown and that first misstep, caused by fear and rewarded with gold, had gained him other secret offices till Kit’s conscience, blunted like an ill-used knife, troubled him no more, or only a little sometimes, late at night, when the ghosts of betrayed friends seemed to gather round his solitary bed.
    And yet, Kit must have felt put upon. Something in him, some secret stirring, must have