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order. There was a kind of padded jockstrap of thick rough cotton; then long dark tights, like those I’d worn onstage sometimes but much worse fitting; then a bulgy, padded pair of shorts, a thin floppy undershirt, and a fitted jacket to match the shorts. A doublet, he called it. Around my waist went a leather belt, with a knife like a dagger in a leather sheath attached to it.
    â€œAnd I cleaned thy shoes,” Harry said, and held them out; they were leather, rather like loafers, with a buckle on top. “Tha couldst never have done it, the way tha wast last night.”
    â€œThank you,” I said.
    I have to write down the way he spoke, the way they all spoke, not as they really sounded but as I understood them. I’ll use things like “thou” and “tha” for “you,” sometimes, just to remind you that they didn’t sound like us, but I can’t make you hear the real speech. It was like a thick, thick dialect, with strange vowels, strange words, strange elaborate phrases. But it was more like the speech of my home than the English of today’s London or New York, so perhaps that’s how I understood them and they understood me.
    Or then again it could just be part of the wholeimpossible change that took me there. I was living, but not in real life at all.
    A round-faced woman came in, kind looking, with a long dress, a white pleated ruff around her neck and a sort of floppy cap on her head. Harry said at once, happily, “See, Mistress Burbage—he’s well again.”
    She took my chin in one hand and felt my forehead with the other. I had the best-felt forehead in London by now, it seemed to me. “The Lord be praised,” she said, and then she looked at me critically, reached to the bureau, and took a damp cloth and scrubbed my face with it. I laughed, feebly, and she gave me an amiable pat. She reminded me of my Aunt Jen, a little; she was a link with the real world, in this mad dream that I was living.
    Down a wooden staircase we went, clattering, Harry leading; it wasn’t much more than a slanted ladder, with a rail to hold on to. In the room below, a man was sitting at a heavy wooden table with plates and mugs in front of him, and a sheaf of papers; he was chewing, and muttering to himself through the mouthfuls.
    â€œGood day, Master Burbage,” Harry said, so I said it too, and Burbage blinked at me. He was a chunky, good-looking man, younger than Arby, older than Gil. He had a neat beard, and a rather big nose. His doublet was a wonderful glowing blue, with a broad collar.
    â€œBetter, art t’a? Good!” he said, and went back to his munching and muttering.
    Mistress Burbage filled two mugs for us, from a jug with a curly handle; all these were made from a grey metal that I found out later was pewter. There was a big round loaf on the table, and a hunk of white cheese, both onsquare wooden plates. Harry cut us slabs from both of them, with his knife. Suddenly hungry, I took a big bite, chewed, and washed it down with a swig from my mug. The drink was cool, sour tasting but not unpleasant; I realized, with a shock, that it was a kind of beer. Ale, they called it, and it was the main thing I drank in all my time there; a weak homemade ale was the main thing everybody drank, from morning till night. You could say the whole population of Elizabethan England was slightly buzzed all day long.
    Burbage said to himself, through his bread and cheese, “If I were fair, Thisbe, I were only thine. . . .”
    So he was learning Bottom’s part. I knew that bit. Bottom the Weaver comes back onstage saying his lines for the little play they’re rehearsing, and his buddies rush away screaming because Puck has given him an ass’s head.
    I said, very fast and agitated, “O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted! Pray masters, fly masters! Help!”
    Burbage chewed more slowly, looking at me. I could see a muscle twitching in