THE SISTER QUEENS

The intrigue swirling around Queen Elizabeth I and her long-dead cousin Mary Queen of Scots envelops William Shakespeare, who’s pressed to write a play that’s guaranteed to make a bad situation worse.

Anthony Bacon, spymaster to the Earl of Essex, snatches Will from a London street to make him an offer he can’t refuse. Either Will writes The Sister Queens, a new play that barely fictionalizes the rivalry between Elizabeth and the kinswoman she had executed, or Bacon will call out Will’s mother, Mary Arden Shakespeare, who’s never renounced her Catholicism. The plot twist Bacon insists on is that Mary never plotted treason against the Queen; she was falsely accused on the basis of trumped-up evidence. The play, which Will can hardly decline to write, will surely bring the unnerving partisanship of 1600 England to a full boil. So even as he works on The Sister Queens, he makes every effort to identify the power behind Bacon who’s making this foolhardy demand. Is it the spymaster’s brother, Queen’s Counsel Extraordinary Francis Bacon, or Essex himself, or possibly even Will’s patron, the Earl of Southampton? Will is haunted at every turn by the spirit of Father Valente, an unrepentant Jesuit friend who’s been hanged at Tyburn prison. Now if only Father Val could tell him the identity of the prime mover of this dastardly plot, or even what corner of Will’s world was likely to produce the next threat to his life and his peace of mind. Veteran Scott crams in enough historical detail for a miniseries before identifying a mastermind who’s likely to leave readers as shocked as Will is.

Highly recommended for readers disgusted with contemporary politics. Yes, things have been worse.