Philip Standage – half-Italian, Catholic, Kit Marlowe's last lover – is one of the Admiral's Players, the company that rivals Shakespeare's. Once Nick Hanham wheedles his way in to the Rose theatre, Philip even has an apprentice to share his secure life. Secure, that is, until he is caught up in Sir Robert Cecil's plans for the future of England, and more than England.The last years of Elizabeth's reign gleam light and dark like a coin spinning beside a flame: wealth and dirt, glory and revolt, high poetry and bloody murder. In this uncertain world nothing is what it seems, least of all men, least of all love. Who can Philip rely on? And if he makes the wrong choice, who can save him?