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feeling: a certain lightness in the head, a shallowness of breath, a quickening of the blood. It was like falling in love.
    He ceased writing as swiftly as he had begun. He had as much of it down as he needed. The pages of the play he was writing reproached him, but he could not work on it now. Tiredness crept through his brain like fog spreading up from the river, obscuring all detail, turning everything grey and the same. Anything he wrote would lack savour and he would only have to score it out tomorrow. His mind drifted back to the problems with the present production and he began to amend the play book, trying to cut Touchstone’s part without affecting the whole play. It was tricky. Too savage and he would alter the balance of the play between the comic and the sad and sober. Besides, clowns were popular; many came just to see them. If he cut too much, that part of the audience would become restless and they were the ones most ready to express their disapproval by mewing catcalls and throwing bottles. Even so, the present fellow, Moston, was everything he hated. Their regular clown, Armin, was sick. Clowns were much in demand at the moment – they’d been lucky to get Moston – but Will couldn’t bear to watch him. He’d written the part for Armin and it made him furious to hear Moston mangle the lines in ways he considered to be comical and see him set about destroying the delicate mechanism of the play with his overacting, unscripted asides to the audience, additional matter he saw fit to put in himself, while the dog he insisted on having with him wandered about pissing all over the stage. That got a laugh, but always in the wrong place.
    Will worked hard and long to put all that right. He was so lost in the work that he did not hear the muffled knock at the door, then the faint whisper of paper on rough boards. His landlady knew better than to disturb him so late into the night. It was not until he had put his writing things away and closed the box that he saw the note with his name on it lying just inside the door. He recognised Burbage’s hurried scrawl. What could this be? And who had delivered it? The street outside was deserted. Will opened the paper, reading quickly. The night’s work had been wasted. He need not have bothered with all that rewriting. After an exchange of words, not all of them pleasant, Moston had taken himself off to the Rose.
    Something had fallen, fluttering to the ground as he opened the letter. He bent to retrieve a card of the type used in games of chance, or for telling fortunes. Will stood up, brushing the card against his beard. He could have the clown he wanted. How had this come to be? Even while he was rewriting, some part of his restless, shifting mind was deciding that he needed a new man. One to whom clowning was instinctive, but who had the depth and range that Will required. One who could switch from mirth to sadness in a breath and take the audience with him. Feste would be perfect. He spoke good English and was an excellent mimic. If the man was quick to learn, as every indication showed him to be, he would con the part quickly. He would be perfect, if only they could get rid of Moston. Then this note was slipped under the door. Will’s wish had been answered, so it seemed, at the very moment of wanting. Like a summoning.
    Will went down to his landlady to find that the note had been delivered by a lad in a green velvet cap. Young Tod. He had searched for Will in every inn from the Falcon, Bankside, to the Mermaid on Cheapside. Giving up and wanting his bed, he had dropped the note here on his way home. Will thanked her and went back to his room. That explained much, but it did not explain the card that had fallen from the letter. It showed a man dressed in motley, strolling along with a bundle over his shoulder and a dog at his heels. Il Matto. The Fool. The card that cannot be beaten, but neither can it win.

    Will spent a restless night. He did not like puzzles,