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Will Shakespeare and the Pirate’s Fire
Robert J. Harris
For Jill, who told me many years ago I was going to write this book.
Table of Contents
“I’d give a lot for a good horse right now,” panted Will Shakespeare, leaning heavily against the trunk of a looming oak tree. He wiped some sweat from his brow with the cuff of his jerkin and sucked in the sharp February air.
They had been running so hard his friend Hamnet could hardly summon the breath to speak. “I’d settle for a hole in the ground,” he gasped, “and some branches to cover ourselves with.”
“Look how they’re beating the bushes,” Will pointed out. “It’ll take more than a few twigs to save us.”
Hamnet poked his head out for a peek. Will caught the back of his jerkin and yanked him down. “Stay down, you clodpole! They’ll see you!”
“You wouldn’t think they’d be so stirred up over a few rabbits,” sighed Hamnet. “Maybe we should have just picked some berries and gone home.”
Hamnet Sadler was only a few months younger than Will and they had been friends for the entire fourteen years they had been growing up in Stratford. They had taken more than a few chances together, but if they were convicted of poaching a public whipping was the lightest sentence they could expect.
They both hugged the tree’s shadow as they spied on Sir Thomas Lucy’s men. There were a dozen of them, poking in the bushes with hunting spears, determined to flush out the young poachers. They were a tough, hard crew, the sort who could be depended on to carry out any order,
