_The King Was In His Counting House_ might best be described as history-as-fantasy. It is set in the Renaissance Italy of Jacobean tragedy rather than history, where every powerful nobleman is a Machiavellian fiend, plots abound, and virtue is in peril. Shimmering just beyond the horizon is the land of Branlon, the country of minor poets, a refuge from the treachery and danger of politics and power. A satirical romance in the best Cabell manner.