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in.
    “Quite a lot of company he’s ’aving today,” she said. “Though none as can pay off his debts.”
    He was just about to knock on the door at the top of the stairs, when he heard a shrill voice from within.
    “Course he’s yours, you barnacle. You’d think lying there dying you’d be willing to admit it. Not like he can do you any harm now. Just want the poor bastard to be able to say he ’ad a father once.”
    Bartholomew pressed his ear to the door but could not quite hear Greene’s low reply to this outburst. Soon the woman’s voice erupted again. It could only be Emma Ball.
    “Fie on you, then, fie. You’ve only give me two things in me whole life—our son and this useless wad of paper.” He heard a thud as she apparently threw something against the wall. “Well, you can keep that, though much good as it’ll do you where you’re going. Burn up fast there it will. And I’ll choose a more decent corpse for my son’s father.”
    Bartholomew heard angry steps coming toward the door and barely had time to throw himself against the wall before the door flung open and a wild-looking woman in filthy clothes, clutching a mewling wad of rags, flew from the room and down the stairs. Waiting until he heard her pass through the outer door, Bartholomew stepped into the room.
    “Your mother, I presume,” he said to his old friend.
    “Barty!” said Greene, bursting into something between a fit of coughing and a laugh. “How good to see you.”
    Robert Greene’s usually florid face was pale and drawn. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who had produced great romances like
Mamillia
and
Pandosto
and written those marvelous pamphlets about life in the underbelly of London. This was the man who had lived with vigor all those rakish adventures he had written about; but now his signature pointed hair was nothing but a wispy tangle, his beard was matted and unkempt, and he wore only a borrowed nightshirt, having sold, he told Bartholomew, his beloved doublet of goose-turd green to offset some of his many debts.
    “Still writing I see,” said Bartholomew, noticing the pen and paper on the crude table by Greene’s bedside.
    “My deathbed confessions,” said Greene. “You shall enjoy this bit, I believe. It’s about the glove-maker’s son.” Greene reached for the papers beside his bed and read in a weak echo of his formerly robust voice.
    “There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his
Tiger’s hart wrapped in a Player’s hide,
supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.” Greene’s voice again dissolved into coughing and laughter.
    “It will be a shame to see you go,” said Bartholomew, “for no one laughs more heartily at your humor than you do yourself.”
    “True, true,” said Greene, falling back against the pillow. “I doubt Mr. Shakespeare will laugh at this.”
    “And what of your other visitor?” asked Bartholomew.
    “Marlowe?”
    “The one with the shrill voice and the bundle in her arms.”
    “Ah, be careful whom you bed, good Barty, for in bedding there is oft breeding.”
    “Well said, sir,” said Bartholomew. “And that bundle that smelled of shite and sour milk—I’m betting that was your breeding?”
    “So says his whore of a mother. Fortunatus, she calls him, though she’s no cause to. As unfortunate a wretch as was ever brought into this world, and I’ll not claim him when I’m on my way out.” Greene burst into another coughing fit, this one more prolonged than the others. For the first time, Bartholomew truly felt his friend was about to die. He again felt an unexpected surge of emotion—not for the lost debauchery but, surprisingly, for the lost soul. Surely after the life he had led, Robert Greene could expect no heavenly reward.
    “Do me a final favor, Barty,” said Greene when his coughing had subsided.
    “Anything, old