Fire in the Blood
by
Janet Morris & Chris Morris

“Do not give dalliance too much rein;
the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood.”
– William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Sir Frances Walsingham steadied himself at the entrance of Martin Tower. As long as he had worked for a moment like this, he was nearly unmanned by its arrival. How long it would last he did not know. He must make the most of its every tick.

What made this moment so precious was the absence of Satan, temporarily sidelined by Samael’s betrayal. How long it would take the Devil to right his house was impossible to guess.

Until then, Walsingham must move rapidly.

Entering the Martin’s banquet hall, Sir Frances inventoried the collection of souls he might recruit for his purpose. For here they were, history’s cavalcade of thinkers, poets, shamans, rebels, martyrs . . . and fools.

Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland giddily pranced among these gathered, ushering the select to sign his guest register and the most notable to autograph miraculously preserved copies of their seminal texts — Henry’s famous library.

And the food. Tray upon tray of forbidden victuals of every kind and color lay open to all, many of whom were already lying besotted ’neath boards overburdened with fare. Paradise here was not yet lost.

Frances’ coterie of conspirators had just grown by one Nietzsche, one Jung, and one Joseph Campbell when he himself was accosted by the host of this affair. The 9th Earl was plainly in the throes of delight. Eyes gleaming, Percy’s first remark was a belch as he proffered a glass of port to his courtly adversary in life.

“Henry, this is all a bit too much; you’ll sink them before I can get them on board. Where’s Marlowe? Shakespeare?”

Henry could only manage a grin and wave his own goblet to take in the crowd. “O Walsy, give it a rest. They’ll be along in good time.”

Shakespeare was now the undisputed center of Walsingham’s emergent design — the reordering of the underverse’s power structure. Previously bounded — above by Erra, Babylonian god of plague and mayhem and his seven Sibitti, and below by Satan, Prince of Lies — Sir Frances’ cosmology had expanded today to include nonaligned influences possibly above those Above. There stood the bible writer, J, with the three weird sisters still recognized by many in hell as the Fates, before whom even gods were said to quaver.

Savoring the glass Henry had served him, Walsingham quietly recalled the previous day’s gathering at Pandemonium: Shakespeare stepping onto the Devil’s dais was a moment of real change. Humanity’s bard had triumphantly regained his identity as teller of stories past, present, and yet-to-be told.

Astounding.

Lest Will doubt his instincts of that moment and shrink back into subservience as publicist to perfidy, Frances must now emphasize and reinforce Will’s new station: author of eternal significance.

But where was Shakespeare?