Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8 "AHHHHH!" Nellie screamed. "AHHHHH!" Dan screamed from his place beside her in the front seat of the car. "What is wrong with you two?" Amy asked from the backseat. She looked up from the pile of Shakespeare books she'd settled in with as soon as they'd pulled out of the rental-car lot toward Stratford. "I forgot I'd have to drive on the wrong side of the road again!" Nellie said. "I mean, it's the right side for them—er, the left side, that's where they drive— but—" "DO YOU SEE THAT CAR?" Dan screamed. It seemed to be in their lane. "Swerve right?" Nellie muttered. "No— left. Right? Left? AHHHH!" At the last minute, she jerked the steering wheel to the left. She pulled off into the grass and

sat there, shaking, while cars whizzed by them. "I'm not sure I can do this," she said. "What?" Amy said in amazement. "Nellie—you already drove on the wrong side of the road before when we were in South Africa." "You were awesome there, zigzagging all over the place!" Dan said. "Nellie, you're the best driver." This was true only if you defined best as most dangerous. Which Dan probably did. "Yeah, usually I am," Nellie agreed. She wiped her hand across her forehead. Her fingertips came away sweaty. "But I don't know, it's weird. It's, like, this is all real now. Back in South Africa, I kind of felt like I was just driving in a video game. But now—now I know what the clue hunt is for, and how much it matters. It's like, whoa, responsibility." "If you'd crashed us into another car in South Africa— or anywhere else— you would have been responsible for killing us," Dan said. "Even when you didn't know what the clue hunt was about."

"Thanks. That makes me feel so much better," Nellie said sarcastically. She rubbed the snake nose ring she'd insisted on repairing before they left Jamaica. She made no move to pull back onto the road. Amy remembered how shaken Nellie had looked when they met up with her after sneaking out the back of the Globe. Does Nellie think this is all impossible now? Amy wondered. Is it just hitting her a day late? "We can't let Isabel win, remember?" Amy reminded her. "Not Isabel… or Eisenhower… or Cora… or Alistair…" It was no accident that Amy named people who'd been there the night her parents died. Nellie clutched the steering wheel. "You're right," she said, resolutely setting her jaw. "I have to do this. Just— don't watch, okay? It makes me nervous." "I'll be reading," Amy said quickly. "This is what long-life computer batteries are for," Dan said, opening his laptop.

Amy even stacked books next to Saladin's cat carrier so he wouldn't watch, either. At first Amy was very aware of the car's motion. But then she lost herself reading about Shakespeare. She loved the man. In his writing he could be so funny, so wise, so… human. And it was so clear that he was a Madrigal. He hadn't been born rich and famous. The experts weren't even sure his parents knew how to read and write. His father had had money problems when William was a teenager, and so experts thought William had probably dropped out of school. He definitely hadn't been able to go to university. When he'd started out writing plays in London, some of the other writers had made fun of him for being uneducated. He was like Dan and me, Amy thought. An underdog. Then there'd been Shakespeare's Lost Years, the time when he'd seemed to vanish from the historical record. Obviously he was off doing Madrigal business, Amy thought. Searching for clues, maybe

negotiating with Lucians and Ekats, secretly keeping the balance of power between the branches. She and Dan had been in the Clue hunt for so long, it was like they barely had to glance at something to see the Cahill fingerprints all over history. "Oh, man!" Dan burst out from the front seat. "How could this dude be one of us? William Shakespeare— a Madrigal? No way!" Once again, Dan's mind was running in a totally different direction from Amy's. "Are you kidding?" Amy shrieked. The car swerved, then corrected itself. Amy looked sheepishly at Nellie. "Sorry, Nellie. Didn't mean to distract you." "S'okay," Nellie said, staring fixedly at the road before them. "You can talk now that I'm on the highway. It's much easier. No cars coming straight at me." Amy turned her attention back to Dan. "Let me guess," she said. "You think Shakespeare should have been a Janus because his

writing was great art. Or— you're jealous that Madrigals don't have kung fu artists or mountain climbers or sword fighters as their famous 'dude,' like some of the other branches. Pretty much everybody says Shakespeare was the greatest writer ever. Isn't that enough for you?" "Oh, come on," Dan said. "He did all his work with a quill pen." Amy could feel her head getting ready to explode. "But," Dan went on, "I agree that Shakespeare was a great writer." Everything Amy had planned to yell at him fizzled. "You… you do?" she managed to say. "Oh, yeah," Dan said. "Didn't you see that list of Shakespeare insult stickers back at the Globe gift shop? That made me curious, so I've been checking out some things online. This dude really knew how to insult people. 'You muddy conger'? 'Thy tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile'? 'Thou art a boil, a plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle'? I'm so going to use these the next