Ruled Britannia

II

"Well, Enrique, what does Captain Guzman want to see me about today?" Lope de Vega asked.

"Ithink it has something to do with your report on If You Like It," Guzman's servant answered. "Just what, though, I cannot tell you. Lo siento mucho." He spread his hands in apology, adding, "Myself, I thought the report very interesting. This Shakespeare is a remarkable man, is he not?"

"No." Lope spoke with a writer's precision. "As a man, he is anything but remarkable. He drinks beer, he makes foolish jokes, he looks at pretty girls-he has a wife out in the provinces somewhere, and children, but I do not think it troubles him much here in London. Ordinary, as I say. But put a pen in his hand, and all at once it is as though God and half the saints were whispering in his ear. As a playwright, remarkable' is too small a word for him."

Guzman's door was open. Enrique went in first, to let him know de Vega had arrived. Lope waited in the hallway till Enrique called, "His Excellency will see you now, Lieutenant."

Lope strode into his superior's office. He and Baltasar Guzman exchanged bows and pleasantries. His report on his latest trip to the Theatre lay on his superior's desk. He saw that Guzman, in the style of King Philip, had written comments in the margins. He gave a small, silent sigh; he enjoyed being edited no more than most writers.

Presently, the captain nodded to Enrique and said, "You may go now. Shut the door on the way out, por favor."

"As you say, your Excellency." Guzman's servant sounded reproachful, which, as usual, did him no good. Lope wondered if he would slam the door to show his annoyance, but Enrique had more subtlety than that. He shut it with exaggerated care, so it made no noise at all.

Captain Guzman noticed that, too. Chuckling, he said, "He's got his nose out of joint again. Because he's clever, he thinks he ought to be important, too."

"Better a clever servant than a dolt like my Diego, who'd forget his own name if people didn't shout it at him all the time," de Vega said.

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt, but Enrique will make too much of himself." Tapping the report with his forefinger, GuzmA?n got down to business: "Overall, this is a good piece of work, Lieutenant. Still, I need to remind you again that you visit the Theatre as his Majesty's spy, not as his drama critic."

"I'm very sorry, your Excellency," Lope lied.

Guzman laughed again. "A likely story. You're a lucky man, to be able to enjoy yourself so much at your work."

"I would enjoy myself even more if the benighted English let women take the stage," Lope said.

"Indeed. It frightens me, Lieutenant, to think how much you might enjoy yourself then." Baltasar GuzmA?n tapped the report again. His fingernails were elegantly manicured. He looked across the desk at de Vega. "I note that you met this Marlowe back in the tiring room after the presentation."

"Yes, your Excellency." Lope nodded. "He was talking shop with Shakespeare. A good bit of the time, he was telling him how he would have done things differently-and, in his opinion, better. This is, you understand, sir, something playwrights do."

"No doubt you would know better than I," Guzman said. "But Christopher Marlowe is a dangerous character. He knows too many of the wrong people. Knowing so many rogues makes him likely a rogue himself. I am given to understand the Inquisition has taken several long, hard looks at him. They do not investigate a man merely for their amusement."

"While I was there, he and Shakespeare spoke of nothing but their craft."

Guzman ticked off points on his fingers. "First, Lieutenant, you do not know this for a fact. They could have hidden any number of coded meanings in their talk, and you would have been none the wiser.

Second, who knows what they said after you left the Theatre? They do, and God does, and no one else.

You do not."

That he was right made his supercilious manner no less annoying: more so, if anything. Lope protested:

"Say what you will of Marlowe, but Shakespeare has always stayed with the stage and fought shy of politics."

But his superior shook his head. "Not necessarily. At the recent auto de fe, one of the men relaxed to the Inquisition for punishment-a notorious sorcerer and counterfeiter-saw Shakespeare in the crowd and called out for him to testify to his good character. This fellow, a certain Kelley, was also an intimate of Christopher Marlowe's. So Shakespeare is not above suspicion. No man is above suspicion," he added, sounding as certain as if he were reciting the Athanasian Creed.

Though the news shook Lope, he did his best not to show it. He said, "A drowning man will clutch at any straw."

"True," Captain Guzman agreed. "Or it may be true. But I find it interesting that this Kelley should reckon Shakespeare a straw worth clutching." Without giving de Vega a chance to answer, he rolled up the report, wrote something on the outside, and tied it with a green ribbon. Holding it out, he said, "I want you to take this to Westminster, to an Englishman there who has worked closely with us for a long time.

He already knows of the business with the sorcerer, and he is well suited to judge just how important this meeting between Shakespeare and Marlowe may be."

"Very well, your Excellency." Lope took the report. "An Englishman, you say? Am I going to have to translate my work here? I would want a secretary's help with that. I speak English well enough, but I cannot say I write it."

Captain Guzman shook his head. "No need for that. He's fluent in Spanish. As I say, he's been with us since Isabella became Queen."

"All right. Good. That makes things simpler. This is the fellow's name here?"

"That's right. Get a horse from the stables and take it over to him right away. Vaya con Dios." The farewell was also a dismissal.

A wan English sun, amazingly low in the southern sky, dodged in and out from behind rolling clouds as Lope de Vega rode through London toward Westminster. When he went past St. Paul's cathedral, he scratched his head, wondering as he always did why the otherwise magnificent edifice should be spoiled by the strange, square, flat-topped steeple. Not so much as a cross up there, he thought, and clucked reproachfully at the folly of the English.

The horse, a bay gelding, was no more energetic than it had to be. It ambled up Ludgate Hill and out through the wall at Ludgate. London proper didn't stop at the wall; de Vega rode west along Fleet Street past St. Bridget's, St. Dunstan's in the West, and the New Temple, the church of the Knights Templars before the crusading order was suppressed. They all lay in the ward of Farringdon Without the Wall.

Lope couldn't tell exactly where that ward ended and the suburbs of the city began. He had thought Madrid a grand place, and so it was, but London dwarfed it. He wouldn't have been surprised if the English capital held a quarter of a million people. If that didn't make it the biggest city in the world, it surely came close.

Westminster, which lay at a bend in the Thames, was a separate, though much smaller, city in its own right, divided into twelve wards. The apparatus of government dominated it much more than London proper. Isabella and Albert dwelt in one of the several castles there. Parliament-Lope thought of it as the equivalent of the Cortes of Castile, though it was even fussier about its privileges than the Cortes of Navarre-met there. Westminster Abbey was an ecclesiastical center, though the senior archbishop of England, for no good reason de Vega could see, presided at Canterbury, fifty miles away. And the clerks and secretaries and scribes who served the higher functionaries also performed their offices in Westminster.

By the time he finally found the man he was looking for, Lope felt as if he'd navigated the labyrinth of the Minotaur. He'd spent most of an hour and most of his temper making his way through the maze before he knocked on the right door: one in the offices of the men who served Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s, the commandant of the Spanish soldiers stationed in England.

"Come in," a voice called in English.

Lope de Vega did. The fellow behind the desk was unprepossessing: small, thin, pale, pockmarked, bespectacled. As de Vega walked in, he flipped a paper over so the newcomer wouldn't be able to read it. Lope caught a brief glimpse of pothooks and hieroglyphs-some sort of cipher. Maybe the man made up in brains what he lacked in looks. Peering down at the report, Lope said, "You are Thomas. Phelippes?" He'd never seen the name spelled that way before-but then, the vagaries of English spelling could drive any Spaniard mad.

"I am," Phelippes said in English, and then switched to good Spanish: "You have the advantage of me, senor. Would you sooner use your own tongue or mine?"

"Either will do," Lope replied, speaking English himself. After giving his name, he went on, "My superior, Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n, ordered me to bring you my report on possible suspicious business at the Theatre the other day, and so I give it you." He held it out as if it were a baton.

Phelippes took it. "I thank you. I am acquainted with Captain GuzmA?n. A good man, sly as a serpent."

Lope wouldn't have used that as praise, but the Englishman plainly intended it so. He also spoke of the Spanish nobleman as an equal or an inferior. How important are you? Lope knew he couldn't ask.

Phelippes went on, "Is there anything he desires me to look for in especial?"

"Yes-he desires your opinion of the trustiness of the two poets, Marlowe and Shakespeare," de Vega said.

"I had liefer put my hand in the wolf his jaws than put my trust in Christopher Marlowe," Phelippes said at once. "He companies with all manner of cozeners and knaves, and revels in the doing of't. I fear me he'll come to a bad end, and never know why. Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs die in earnest."

Lope smiled. "You are a man of learning, I see, to bring Plutarch forth at need. Now, what of Shakespeare?"

Feature for feature, Thomas Phelippes' face was in no way remarkable. Somehow, though, he managed a sneer any aristocrat might have envied. "Shakespeare? He knows no more than a puling babe of great affairs, and cares no more, either. All that matters to him is his company of players, and the plays he writes for 'em."

"This was also my thought." Lope did his best not to show his relief. "And I'd not have mentioned his name, save only that Captain GuzmA?n noted a certain Edward Kelley had called out to him on his way to the Inquisition's cleansing fire."

"Ah, Kelley. There was rubbish that wanted burning, in sooth," Phelippes said with another fine sneer.

"But he was no intimate of Shakespeare's: that I know for a fact. Only a wretch seeking succor with none to be had." The Englishman proved to own a nasty chuckle, too. "I misdoubt he affrighted Master Will like to stop his heart."

"I should say so!" De Vega wouldn't have wanted an inquisitor noting his connection to a man about to die. He inclined his head to Phelippes. "You do set my mind at ease, for which I thank you. I'll take your word back to Captain GuzmA?n."

"Your servant, sir." Phelippes tapped the report with a fingernail, much as GuzmA?n had done. "And I'll put this in brief for Don Diego. You know the tale, I'm sure: the greater the man, the less time hath he wherein to read."

"Not always," Lope said. "There is the King."

"What? Albert? I would not disagree with a new acquaintance, senor, but-"

"No, not Albert," de Vega said impatiently. "Philip. The King, God preserve him." He crossed himself.

So did Phelippes. The way he did it told Lope he hadn't been doing it all his life. "Amen," he said. "But what hear you of his health? The last news I had was not good."

"Nor mine," Lope admitted. "He hath now his threescore and ten. He is in God's hands." He made the sign of the cross again.

"He always was, and so are we all." Phelippes signed himself again, too, no more smoothly than he had before.

Lope nodded approval. He hadn't thought the Englishman so pious. "I'm for London, then," he said. "I hope to see you again, sir, and my thanks once more for setting my mind at rest."

"My pleasure, sir." Even before Lope was out the door, Phelippes returned to the ciphered message on which he'd been working.

When rehearsals went well, they were a joy. Shakespeare took more pleasure in few things than in watching what had been only pictures and words in his mind take shape on the stage before his eyes. When things went not so well, as they did this morning. He clapped a hand to his forehead. "

'Sdeath!" he shouted. "Mechanical salt-butter rogues! Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops! You are not worth another word, else I'd call you knaves."

Richard Burbage looked down his long nose at Shakespeare. He was the only player in Lord Westmorland's Men tall enough to do it. "Now see here, Will, you've poor cause to blame us when you were the worst of the lot," he boomed, turning his big, sonorous voice on Shakespeare alone instead of an audience.

He was right, too, as Shakespeare knew only too well. The poet gave the best defense he could: "My part's but a small one-"

"Ha!" Will Kemp broke in. "I never thought to hear a man admit as much."

"Devils take you!" Shakespeare scowled at the clown. "Not recalling your own lines, you aim to step on mine." He gathered himself. "If we play as we rehearsed, they'll pelt us with cabbages and turnips enough to make soup for a year."

"We'll be better, come the afternoon. We always are." Burbage had a wealthy man's confidence; the Theatre and the ground on which it stood belonged to his family. Though several years younger than Shakespeare, he had a prosperous man's double chin-partly concealed by his pointed beard-and the beginnings of an imposing belly.

"Not always," Shakespeare said, remembering calamities he wished he could forget.

"Often enough," Burbage said placidly. "There's no better company than ours, and all London knows it."

He eyes, deep-set under thick eyebrows, flashed. "But you, Will. You're the steadiest trouper we have, and you always know your lines." He chuckled. "And so you ought, you having writ so many of 'em. But today? Never have I seen you so unapt, as if the very words were strange. Out on it! What hobgoblins prey on your mind?"

Shakespeare looked around the Theatre. Along with the company, the tireman and his assistants, the prompter, and the stagehands, a couple of dozen friends and wives and lovers milled about where the groundlings would throng in a few hours. Musicians peered down from their place a story above the tiring room. He had to talk to Burbage, but not before so many people. All he could do now was sigh and say,

"When troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."

Burbage tossed his head like a horse troubled by flies. "Pretty. It tells naught, of course, but pretty nonetheless."

"Give over, if you please," Shakespeare said wearily. "I'm not bound to unburden myself before any but God, and you are not He."

Kemp's eyes widened in well-mimed astonishment. "He's not? Don't tell him that, for I warrant he did not know't."

A flush mounted to Burbage's cheeks and broad, high forehead. "Blaspheming toad."

"Your servant, sir." Kemp gave him a courtier's bow. Burbage snorted.

So did Shakespeare. The clown would mock anyone, and refused to let any insults stick to him.

Shakespeare said, "Shall we try once more the scene that vexed us in especial, that in which Romeo comes between Mercutio and Tybalt fighting? We've given this tragedy often enough ere now, these past several years. We should do't better than we showed."

"Too many lines from too many plays, all spinning round in our heads," Kemp said. " 'Tis a wonder we can speak a word some scribbling wretch did not pen for us."

Shakespeare had rarely felt more wretched. As Mercutio, he crossed swords with Burbage's Tybalt. The other player had fought against the invading Spaniards, and actually used a blade; Shakespeare's swordplay belonged only to the stage. And Burbage fenced now as if out for blood; when the time came for him to run Mercutio through under Romeo's arm, he almost really did it.

"By God," Shakespeare said, arising after he'd crumpled, "my death scene there came near to being my death scene in sooth."

Burbage grinned a predatory grin. "Nothing less than you deserve, for havering at us before. Satisfies you now this scene?"

"It will serve," Shakespeare said. "Still, I have somewhat to say to you on the subject of your swordplay." And on other things as well, he thought. Those, though, would have to wait.

The other player chose to misunderstand him. Setting a hand on the hilt of his rapier, he said, "I am at your service."

If they fought with swords in earnest, Shakespeare knew he was a dead man. What had Marlowe said about fanning quarrels? Surely not Burbage, Shakespeare thought, not when we've worked together so long. That such a thing could even occur to him was the measure of how many new worries he carried. I'll be like Kit soon, seeing danger in every face.

"Let it go, Dick," Kemp said. "An you spit him like a chine of beef, what are you then? Why, naught but a ghost-a pretty ghost, I'll not deny, but nonetheless a ghost-left suddenly dumb for having slain the one who gave you words to speak."

"There are other scribblers," Burbage rumbled ominously. But then he must have decided he'd gone too far, for he added, "We, being the best of companies, do deserve that which we have: to wit, the best of poets." He turned toward Shakespeare and clapped his big, scarred hands.

When the afternoon came, the play went well. Thinking about it afterwards, Shakespeare shook his head.

The performance had gone well, but there was more to it than that. A couple of the gentlemen sitting at the side of the stage smoked their pipes so furiously, the thick tobacco fumes spoiled the view for the groundlings behind them. The rowdies, having paid their pennies, were convinced they were men as good as any others, and pelted the offenders with nuts and pebbles-one of them, flying high, incidentally hitting the boy playing Juliet just as he was about to wonder where Romeo was. They didn't quite have a riot, but Shakespeare had trouble figuring out why not.

"Ofttimes strange, but never dull," he said in the tiring room. "Pass me that basin, Dick, if you'd be so kind."

"I'll do't," Burbage said. Shakespeare splashed water on his face and scrubbed hard with a towel to get rid of powder and rouge and paint. He looked in a mirror, then scrubbed some more. After the second try, he nodded. "There. Better. I have my own seeming once again."

"I shouldn't be so proud of it, were I you," Kemp said slyly.

"Were you I, you'd have a better seeming than you do," Shakespeare retorted. People laughed louder than the joke deserved. The biter bit was always funny; Shakespeare had used the device to good effect in more than one play. Will Kemp bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. He found the joke hard to see.

"Magnificent, Master Will!" There stood Lieutenant Lope de Vega, a broad smile on his face. "Truly magnificent!. Is something wrong?"

He'd seen Shakespeare start, then. "No, nothing really," Shakespeare answered, glad his actor's training gave his voice a property of easiness: for his was, without a doubt, a guilty start. "You did surprise me, coming up so sudden."

"I am sorry for it," the Spaniard said. "But this play-this play, sir, is splendid. This play is also closer to what someone-a man of genius, of course-might write in Spain than was If You Like It. though that too was most excellent, I haste to add."

"You praise me past my deserts," Shakespeare said modestly, though the compliments warmed him.

He'd never known a writer who disliked having others tell him how good he was. Some had trouble going on without hearing kind words at frequent intervals. Marlowe, for instance, bloomed like honeysuckles ripened by the sun at praise, but the icy fang of winter seemed to pierce his heart when his work met a sour reception-or, worse still, when it was ignored. He fed on plaudits, even more than most players. Shakespeare knew he had the same disease himself, but a milder case.

And Lope shook his head. "Not at all, sir. You deserve more praises for this work than I have English to give you." He gave Shakespeare several sentences of impassioned Spanish. Hearing that language in the tiring room made several people turn and mutter-the last thing Shakespeare wanted.

"I say again, sir, you are too generous," he murmured. Lieutenant de Vega shook his head once more. He did, at least, return to English, though he kept talking about plays he'd seen in Madrid before the Armada sailed. This work of mine likes him well, for its nearness to that which he knew before-time, Shakespeare realized. That took some of the pleasure from the praise: what woman would want a man to say she was beautiful because she reminded him of his mother?

After some considerable time, de Vega said, "But I do go on, is't not so?"

"By no means," Shakespeare lied. He couldn't quite leave that alone, though. "Did you write with celerity to match your speech, Master Lope, you'd astound the world with the plays that poured from your pen: you'd make yourself a very prodigy of words."

"Were my duties less, my time to write were more," the Spaniard answered, and Shakespeare thought he'd got away with it. But then de Vega reminded him that he was in fact Senior Lieutenant de Vega: "In aid of my duties, sir, a question-what acquaintance had you with Edward Kelley, that he should call to you when on his way to the fire?"

I never saw him before in my life. That was what Shakespeare wanted to say. But a lie that at once declared itself a lie was worse than useless. Marlowe was right, damn him. De Vega is a Spaniard first, a groundling and player and poet only second. Picking his words with great care, the Englishman said, "I shared tavern talk with him a handful of times over a handful of years, no more." Though the tiring room was chilly, sweat trickled down his sides from under his arms.

But Lope de Vega only nodded. "So I would have guessed. Whom would Kelley have known better, think you?"

Marlowe, Shakespeare thought, and damned his fellow poet again. Aloud, though, he said only, "Not having known him well myself, I fear I cannot tell you." He spread his hands in carefully simulated regret.

"Yes, I see." Lope remained as polite as ever. Even so, he asked another question: "Well, in whose company were you with this rogue, then?"

"I pray your pardon, but I can't recall." Shakespeare used his player's training to hold his voice steady. "I had not seen him for more than a year, perhaps for two, before we chanced to spy each the other in Tower Street."

The Spaniard let it drop there. He went off to pay his respects to a pretty girl Shakespeare hadn't seen before, one who'd likely got past the tireman's assistants because she was so pretty. Whoever she was, de Vega's attentions made her giggle and simper and blush. Shakespeare could tell which actor she'd come to see-one of the hired men who played small parts, not a sharer-by the fellow's ever more unhappy expression. But the hired man had no weapon on his belt, while Lieutenant de Vega not only wore a rapier but, by the set of his body, knew what to do with it.

Not my concern, Shakespeare thought. He felt a moment's shame-surely the Levite who'd passed by on the other side of the road must have had some similar notion go through his mind-but strangled it in its cradle. Catching Burbage's eye, he asked, "Shall we away?"

"Let's," the other big man answered. With a theatrical swirl, Burbage wrapped his cloak around him: it had looked like rain all through the play, and, with day drawing to a close, the heavens were bound to start weeping soon.

A drunken groundling snored against the inner wall of the Theatre. "They'll need to drag him without ere closing for the night," Shakespeare said as the two players walked past him.

Richard Burbage shrugged. "He's past reeling ripe-belike he's pickled enough to sleep there till the morrow, and save himself his penny for the new day's play." But the idea of the man's getting off without paying that penny was enough to make him tell one of the gatekeepers outside the Theatre about the drunk. The man nodded and went off to deal with him.

Shakespeare skirted a puddle. Burbage, in stout boots, splashed through. It did begin to rain then, a hard, cold, nasty rain that made Shakespeare shiver. "This is the sort of weather that turns to sleet," he said.

"Early in the year," Burbage said, but then he shrugged again. "I shouldn't wonder if you have reason."

They walked on. As the rain came down harder, more puddles formed in the mud of Shoreditch High Street. A woman lost her footing and, flailing her arms, fell on her backside. She screeched curses as she struggled to her feet, dripping and filthy. "Would that Kemp had seen her there," Shakespeare said. "He'd filch her fall for his own turns."

"Clowns." Burbage packed a world of scorn into the word. "The lackwits who watch 'em do laugh, wherefore they reckon themselves grander than the play they're in."

Shakespeare nodded. Kemp in particular had a habit of extemporizing on stage. Sometimes his brand of wit drew more mirth than Shakespeare's. That was galling enough. But whether he got his laughs or not, his stepping away from the written part never failed to pull the play out of shape. Shakespeare said,

"Whether he know it or no, he's not the Earth, with other players sun and moon and planets spinning round his weighty self."

"Or the Earth and all round the sun, as Copernicus doth assert," Burbage said.

"He, being dead, may assert what pleases him." Shakespeare looked around nervously to make sure no one had overheard. "His Holiness the Pope holding opinion contrary, we enjoy not the like privilege."

Burbage frowned. "If a thing be true, it is true with the Pope's assent or in his despite."

"Here is a true thing, Dick," Shakespeare said: "An you speak such words where the wrong ears hear, you'll explicate 'em to the Inquisition."

"This for the Inquisition." Burbage hawked and spat.

Easy for him to be brave, Shakespeare thought. He lies under no suspicion. yet. As Edward Kelley's frantic plea had, the questions from Lieutenant de Vega reminded him of the sovereign power of fear. The Spaniard still seemed friendly enough and to spare, but Shakespeare knew he would never think of him as silly and harmless again. By the time this ends, I'll see foes and spies everywhere, as Marlowe does. He'd had that thought before.

But Burbage's scorn let Shakespeare ask the question he knew he would have to ask sooner or later:

"Would you, then, we lived still under Elizabeth?" A field lay by the left side of the street. When he turned his head that way, he could see the looming bulk of the Tower in the distance. What was Elizabeth doing there? What was she thinking? A pretty problem for a playwright.

Burbage walked on for several strides without answering, taking the chance to ponder it. At last, though, the player said, "A man will do what he needs must do, that he may live and prosper if prospering's in him. So we know. Did we not, these past nine years had schooled us. But when you ask, what would I? — I'm an Englishman, Will. If you be otherwise, run tell your lithping friend." He mocked de Vega's Castilian accent.

He's no friend of mine. Shakespeare started to say it, but it wasn't true, or hadn't been true till de Vega asked questions about Kelley. The Spaniard was clever, amusing company; he knew everything there was to know about his own country's theatre, and had learned a great deal about England's. If he ever settled down to write instead of talking endlessly, he might make a name for himself.

"You were an idiot to speak your mind to me, did you reckon I'd turn traitor," Shakespeare replied after some small silence of his own.

" Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason,' "

Burbage quoted, and then cocked his head to one side. "I misremember-is that yours?"

Shakespeare shook his head. "Nay: some other man's. I thank you; I am answered."

"And had I cried hurrah! for Queen Isabella?"

"Many who cry so prosper," Shakespeare said.

"The dons are here, and here to stay, by all the signs," Burbage said. "A man must live, as I said just now, and, to live, live with 'em. So far will I go, so far and no further. A fellow who sniffs and tongues the Spaniards' bums, like some scabby whining cur-dog with a pack of mastiffs. This for him!" He spat again.

They separated not far inside the wall. Shakespeare went off to his lodgings. Burbage had a home of his own in a more prosperous part of town farther west. I could go back to Stratford, Shakespeare thought. I have a home there, and my wife, and my children. He cursed softly under his breath. His son Hamnet had died the year before of some childhood fever, and had gone into the ground before Shakespeare could make his way back to Warwickshire.

A terrier proudly trotted by, a dead rat clamped in its jaws. Shakespeare sighed and clicked his tongue between his teeth. When he'd gone back to Stratford, Anne had wanted him to stay there. Had he stayed, he wouldn't have had to worry about swaggering Spaniards. Hardly a one had ever been seen in the West Midlands.

But how could I stay? He asked himself now the same question he'd asked his wife then. He was making a far better living in London than he could have in Stratford: enough to send money off to Anne and their daughters, Susanna and Judith. And Anne wasn't always easy to get along with. He was happier and freer admiring her virtues from a distance than having them ever before his eyes.

When he walked into the house where he lodged, Jane Kendall greeted him with, "A man was asking after you today, Master Will."

"A man?" Shakespeare said in surprise and no small alarm. His landlady nodded. Fighting for calm, he found another question: "What sort of man? One of the dons?"

The tallowchandler's widow shook his head. Shakespeare hoped he didn't show how relieved he was.

"He was about your own age," the widow said, "not a big man, not small. Ill-favored, I'll say he was, but with a look to him. Did he ask me to play at dice with him, I'd not throw any he brought forth."

Shakespeare frowned and scratched his head. "Meseems that is no man I ken," he said slowly. "Gave he a name to stand beside this his ill-favored visage?"

Before his landlady could answer, Peter Foster laughed raucously. "Was't the name of his wife or his sweetheart or his daughter?"

"Go to!" Shakespeare said, his ears heating. He didn't live a monk's life in London, but he hadn't, or didn't think he had, given anyone cause to come after him for that kind of reason. Lieutenant de Vega boasted about the horns he put on husbands. Shakespeare, by contrast, reckoned discretion the better part of pleasure.

Again, Widow Kendall shook her head. "He said naught of any such thing. And he did leave a name, could I but recall it. I'm more forgetful with each passing year, I am. It quite scares me." But then she suddenly grinned and snapped her fingers. "Skeres!" she exclaimed in delight.

"Your pardon?" Shakespeare said, thinking she'd repeated herself and wondering why.

"Skeres," she said once more. "Nick Skeres, he called himself."

"Oh." The poet smiled at having his confusion cleared away. Even so. "He may know me, or know of me, but I ken him not. Said he when he might again come hither?"

"Not a word of't," the widow replied. "I told him, seek Master Will at the Theatre of days, I said. He's surely a ninny, and a fond ninny at that, to know where you lodge but not where you earn your bread."

"My thanks for speaking so." Shakespeare wasn't at all sure he should thank her. He would have wondered at any time why a stranger was sniffing around him. Now. He exhaled through his nose, a silent sigh. No help for it.

Peter Foster sounded sly and clever and most experienced, saying, "Have a care, Master Will, do. This rogue could be a catchpole, come for to carry you off to the Clink or some other gaol."

"I've done naught contrarious to law,"Shakespeare said. Yet.

Foster's smile pitied a man capable of such naivete. "If so be he's paid, he'll care not a fig for that. A few shillings weigh more than a man's good name." Again, his tone was that of one who knew whereof he spoke. His eyes flicked to Shakespeare's belt. "You haven't even a sword."

" 'Twould do me but little good," Shakespeare said sadly. "Even for a player, a man of make-believe, I'm a cream-faced loon with blade in hand, and I give proof thereof whenever we practice our parts for a show with swordplay."

"You know that, and now I know that, but will this Nick What's-his-name know't? Give me leave to doubt." Foster winked. "An he see you with rapier on hip, what will he think? Belike, Here's a hulking brute, could run me through, or summat o' the sort. The porpentine need not cast his quills to make the other beasts afeard; he need only have 'em."

Again, the tinker-if that was what he was-made good sense. Shakespeare bowed. "Gramercy, Master Foster. I'll take your advice, methinks."

He got his writing tools from his trunk and went off to the ordinary to eat and work. The threepenny supper, the serving woman said, was, "A fine mess of eels, all stewed with leeks. Master Humphrey went down to Fish Wharf and fetched back a whole great tun of 'em."

"Eels?" Spit flooded into Shakespeare's mouth. "Bring 'em on, Kate, and a cup of sack to go with 'em."

"Beer comes with the threepenny supper-the wine's a ha'penny extra," Kate warned. Shakespeare nodded; he wanted it anyhow.

When the eels arrived, he dug in with gusto, savoring the rich, fatty flesh and pausing every now and then to spit fish bones onto the rush-strewn rammed-earth floor. Then he got out his paper and pens and ink and settled down to write. He made slow going of it: every time someone came into the ordinary, he looked up to see if it were the fellow who'd asked Widow Kendall about him. But there were no ill-favored strangers, only people who, like him, supped here often. Some of them exchanged a word or two with him; most, seeing him at work, left him to it. He sometimes got testy-a couple of times, he'd got furious-when interrupted.

Tonight, though, his own misgivings were what kept interrupting him. It was not a night when he had to worry about forgetting curfew. That he got anything at all done on Love's Labour's Won struck him as a minor miracle.

The two actors-actually, the two Spanish soldiers-playing Liseo and his servant, TurA-n, appeared at what was supposed to be an inn in the Spanish town of Illescas, which lay about twenty miles south of Madrid. The one playing Liseo hesitated, bit his lip, and looked blank. Lope de Vega hissed his line at him: " "Qu lindas posadas! "

"What lovely inns," the soldier-his real name was Pablo-repeated obediently. He might have been a slightly-a very slightly-animated wooden statue, painted to look lifelike but wooden nonetheless.

" Frescas! " agreed the fellow playing his servant (his real name was Francisco). He knew he was supposed to say, "Fresh air," to suggest a hole in the imaginary roof, but sounded even deader doing it than Pablo did.

Before they could go on to complain about the likelihood of bedbugs and lice, Lope threw his hands in the air. "Stop!" he shouted. "God and all the saints, stop!"

"What's the matter, SeA±or Lieutenant?" the soldier playing Tura-n asked. "I remembered my line, and Pablo here, he looked like he was going to remember his next one, too."

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" Lope's volume rose with each repetition. "I'll tell you what's the matter. What's the name of this play of mine?"

" La dama boba," Francisco answered. "That's what's the matter, sir?"

"God give me strength," de Vega muttered. He turned back to the soldiers. "That's right. The lady Finea is supposed to be a boob. You two aren't supposed to be boobs. So why are you acting like boobs? "

He started roaring again.

"We weren't," Pablo said in injured tones. "We were just giving our lines."

"If you give them like that, who'd want to take them?" Lope demanded. "You couldn't be any stiffer if you were embalmed. This is supposed to be a comedy, not a show of mourning for-" He started to say for King Philip, but broke off. The King of Spain wasn't dead yet. "For Julius Caesar," he finished.

"We're doing the best we can, sir," Francisco said.

That might have been true. It probably was true. But it wasn't excuse enough, especially not in Lope's present excited condition. "But you can't act!" he howled. "You ought to go to a play here and see how these Englishmen do it. They're actors, by God, not-not-so many tailor's dummies!"

"Devil take these Englishmen," Pablo said. "We came up to this miserable country to make sure the buggers behave themselves, not to make fools of ourselves in stage plays. If you don't like how we do it, we quit!"

"That's right," Francisco said.

"You can't do that!" Lope exclaimed. "You're supposed to start performing in a week."

"So what? I've had a bellyful, I have," Pablo said. "This isn't part of my duty. If you think the damned Englishmen make such good actors, SeA±or Lieutenant, get them to put on your play for you. Hasta la vista." He stomped away. The soldier playing his servant followed, slamming the door behind them.

Lope swore. He sprang to his feet and kicked the bench on which he'd been sitting, which toppled the bench and almost ruined one of his toes. As he hopped around, still cursing, he wondered how in God's name he was going to put on La dama boba without two of his leading characters. If he could have got men from Shakespeare's acting company to recite Spanish verse, he would have done it. Except when they swore, Englishmen didn't want to learn Spanish.

Cautiously, he put weight on the foot he'd hurt. It wasn't too bad; he didn't think he'd broken anything.

"I'd like to break their thick, stupid heads," he muttered. He was an officer. They were only soldiers. He could order them to perform. But he couldn't order them to be good, not and make it stick. For one thing, they weren't very good to begin with. For another, they were only too likely to be bad out of spite.

Had he been a common soldier ordered to do something he didn't really want to do, he would have tried his best to pour grit in the gears. Oh, he understood the impulse, all right.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers in delight. He hurried off to Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n's office.

Guzman was sanding something he'd just written to soak up the extra ink. " Buenos dias, Lieutenant de Vega," he said in some surprise. "I didn't expect to see you this morning; I thought you'd be busy with your theatricals. Does this mean a brand new devotion to duty?"

"Your Excellency, I am always devoted to duty," Lope said. It wasn't strictly true, but it sounded good.

He added, "And the powers that be have been kind enough to encourage my plays. They say they keep the men happy by giving them a taste of what they might have at home."

"Yes, so they say." Captain Guzman seemed unconvinced. But he went on, "Since they say so, I can hardly disagree. What do you require, then?"

"Your servant, Enrique," Lope answered. Guzman blinked. Lope explained how he'd just lost two actors, finishing, "God must have put the idea into my head, your Excellency. Enrique loves the theatre; he's bright; he would perform well-and, since he's a servant and not a soldier, he wouldn't get huffy, the way Pablo and Francisco did. If you can spare him long enough to let him learn Liseo's part, I'm sure he'd do you credit when he performs."

One of Captain Guzman's expressive eyebrows rose. "Did he bribe you to suggest this to me?"

"No, sir. He did not. I only wish I would have thought of using him sooner."

"Very well, Senior Lieutenant. You may have him, and I will pray I ever get him back again," GuzmA?n said. "Now, whom did you have in mind for the other vacant part-Liseo's servant, is it not?"

"I was going to use my own man, Diego."

Guzman's eyebrow rose again, this time to convey an altogether different expression. "Are you sure?

Can you make him bestir himself?"

"If he doesn't do as I need, I can make his life a hell on earth, and I will," Lope said. "As a matter of fact, I rather look forward to getting some real work out of him. However much he tries to sleep through everything, he is my servant, after all. I may not own him so absolutely as I would a black from Guinea, but I'm entitled to more than he's ever given me."

"You're certainly entitled to it. Whether you can get it may prove a different question. Still, that's your worry and none of mine." GuzmA?n's chuckle sounded more as if he were laughing at Lope than with him. "I wish you good fortune. I also tell you I think you will need more than I can wish you."

"We'll see," de Vega said, though he feared his superior was right. "He's supposed to be blacking my boots right now. He hates that. Maybe he'd rather act than do something he hates." He sighed. "Of course, what he wants to do most of all is nothing."

When he strode into his chamber in the Spanish barracks, Diego wasn't blacking his boots. That wasn't because he'd already finished the job, either; the boots stood by the side of the bed, scuffed and dirty.

And Diego lay in the bed, blissfully unconscious and snoring.

Lope shook him. His eyes flew open. "Mother of God!" he exclaimed around a yawn. "What's going on?" Then intelligence-or as much as he had-returned to his face. "Oh. Buenos dias, seaor. I thought you were gone for the day."

"So you could spend the rest of it asleep, eh?" de Vega said. "No such luck. Congratulations, Diego.

You are about to become a star of the stage."

"What? Me? An actor?" Diego shook his head. "I'd rather die." He made as if to disappear under the blankets.

The wheep! of Lope's blade sliding out of its scabbard arrested the motion before it was well begun.

"Believe me, you lazy good-for-nothing, that can be arranged," he said. "If you think I am joking, you are welcome to try me."

He didn't know that he would run his servant through. But he didn't know that he wouldn't, either. Nor did Diego seem quite sure. Eyeing Lope with sleepy resentment, he said, "What do you want. senor?" His gaze kept flicking nervously to the rapier.

"Get up. Get dressed. You will-by God, Diego, you will-learn the role of TurA-n. He's a servant and a bit of a sneak, so it ought to suit you well."

Yawning again, Diego deigned to sit up. "And if I don't?" he asked.

Lope kept the rapier's point just in front of his servant's nose, so that Diego's eyes crossed as he watched it. "If you don't. " Lope said. "If you don't, the first thing that will happen is that you will be dismissed from my service."

"I see." Diego had no great guile; de Vega could read his face. If I am dismissed, I will attach myself to some other Spaniard, and cling to him as a limpet clings to a rock. Whoever he is, he won't want me to act, either.

Sadly, Lope shook his head. "I've already discussed this with Captain GuzmA?n. You know how short of men-good, strong, bold Spanish men-we are in England. Any servant dismissed by his master goes straight into the army as a pikeman, and off to the frontier with Scotland. The north of England is a nasty place. The weather is so bad, it makes London seem like Andalusia-like Morocco-by comparison. The Scots are big and fierce and swing two-handed swords they call, I think, claymores. They take heads.

They do not eat human flesh, as the Irish are said to do, but they take heads. I think you would make a poor trophy myself, but who knows how fussy a Scotsman would be?"

He was lying, at least in part. Not about the north of England-it did have an evil reputation, and Scotland a worse one. But servants sacked by their masters didn't automatically become cannon fodder. Diego, of course, didn't know that. And Lope sounded convincing. He wasn't a Burbage or an Edward Alleyn, but he could act.

"Put that silly sword away, senor, " Diego said. "I am your man. If I have to be your actor, I will be your actor." As if to prove it, he got out of bed.

"Ah, many thanks, Diego," Lope said sweetly, and sheathed the rapier. "I knew you would see reason."

The servant, still in his nightshirt, muttered something pungent under his breath. As anyone with a servant needed to do, Lope had learned when not to hear. This seemed one of those times.

William Shakespeare came out of a poulterer's on Grass Street with a couple of fine new goose quills to shape into pens. "Come again, sir, any time," the poulterer called after him. "As often as not, the feathers go to waste, and I'm glad to make a couple of pennies for 'em. 'Tis not as it was in my great-grandsire's day, when the fletchers bought 'em for arrows by the bale."

"The pen's mightier than the sword, 'tis said," Shakespeare answered, "but I know not whether that be true for the arrow as well. Certes, the pen hath lasted longer."

Pleased with himself, he started back towards his Bishopsgate lodgings. He'd just turned a corner when a man coming his way stopped in the middle of the narrow, muddy street, pointed at him, and said, "Your pardon, sir, but are you not Master Shakespeare, the player and poet?"

He did get recognized away from the Theatre every so often. Usually, that pleased him. Today.

Today, he wished he were wearing a rapier as Peter Foster had suggested, even if it were one made for the stage, without proper edge or temper. Instead of nodding, he asked, "Who seeks him?" as if he might be someone else.

"I'm Nicholas Skeres, sir." The other man made a leg. He lived up to-or down to-Widow Kendall's unflattering description of him, but spoke politely enough. And his next words riveted Shakespeare's attention to him: "Master Phelippes hath sent me forth for to find you."

"Indeed?" Shakespeare said. Skeres nodded. Shakespeare asked, "And what would you? What would he?"

"Why, only that you come to a certain house with me, and meet a certain man," Nick Skeres replied.

"What could be easier? What could be safer?" His smile showed crooked teeth, one of them black. By the glint in his eye, he'd sold a lot of worthless horses for high prices in his day.

"Show me some token of Master Phelippes, that I may know you speak sooth," Shakespeare said.

"I'll not only show it, I'll give it you." Skeres took something from a pouch at his belt and handed it to Shakespeare. "Keep it, sir, in the hope that its like, new minted, may again be seen in the land."

It was a broad copper penny, with Elizabeth looking up from it at Shakespeare. Plenty of the old coins still circulated, so it was no sure token, but Skeres had also said the right things, and so. Abruptly, Shakespeare nodded. "Lead on, sir. I'll follow."

"I am your servant," Skeres said, which Shakespeare doubted with all his heart: he seemed a man out for himself first, last, and always. He hurried away at a brisk pace, Shakespeare a step behind.

He'd expected to go up into the tenements north of the wall, or perhaps to Southwark on the far bank of the Thames: to some mean house, surely, there to meet a cozener or a ruffian, a man who dared not show his face in polite company. And Nicholas Skeres did lead him out of London, but to the west, all the way to Westminster. At the Somerset House and the church of St.-Mary-le-Strand, Skeres turned north, up into Drury Lane.

Grandees dwelt in these great homes, half of brick, half of timber. One of them could have housed a couple of tenements' worth of poor folk. Shakespeare felt certain Skeres would go on to, and past, St.

Giles in the Field, which lay ahead. But he stopped and walked up to one of the houses. Nor did he go round to the servants' entrance, but boldly knocked at the front door.

"Lives your man here? " Shakespeare said in something close to disbelief.

Skeres shook his head. "Nay-that were too dangerous. But he dwells not far off. He-" He broke off, for the door opened. The man who stood there was plainly a servant, but better dressed than Shakespeare. Nick Skeres said, "We are expected," and murmured something too low for the poet to catch.

Whatever it was, it served its purpose. The servant bowed and said, "Come with me, then. He waits. I'll lead ye to him."

Carpets were soft under Shakespeare's feet as he went up one corridor and down another. He was more used to the crunch of rushes underfoot indoors. The house was very large. He wondered if he could find his way out again without help. Like Theseus of Athens in the Labyrinth, I should play out thread behind me.

"Here we are, good sirs," the servant said at last, opening a door. "And now I'll leave ye to't. God keep ye." Smooth and silent as a snake, he withdrew.

"Come on," Nick Skeres said. As soon as Shakespeare entered the room, Skeres shut the door behind them. Then he bowed low to the old man sitting in an upholstered chair close by the hearth in the far wall; a book rested on the arm of the chair. "God give you good day, Lord Burghley. I present Master Shakespeare, the poet, whom I was bidden to bring hither to you."

Shakespeare made haste to bow, too. "Your-Your Grace," he stammered. Had Skeres told him he would meet Queen Elizabeth's longtime lord high treasurer, he would have called the man a liar to his face and gone about his business. But there, without a doubt, sat Sir William Cecil, first Baron Burghley. After the Duke of Parma's soldiers conquered England, most of Elizabeth's Privy Councilors had either fled to Protestant principalities on the Continent or met the headsman's axe. But Burghley, at King Philip's specific order, had been spared.

He had to be closer to fourscore than the Bible's threescore and ten. His beard was white as milk, whiter than his ruff, and growing thin and scanty. His flesh was pale, too, and looked softer and puffier than it should have-almost dropsical. Dark, sagging pouches lay under his eyes. But those blue eyes were still alert and clever, though a cataract had begun to cloud one of them. The Order of the Garter, with St.

George slaying a dragon, hung from a massy gold chain around his shoulders.

"Well met, Master Shakespeare," he said, his voice a deep rumble without much force behind it. "I have for some while now thought well of your plays and poems."

"You are generous beyond my deserts, your Grace," Shakespeare said, still bemused. Surely he hadn't been summoned for pretty compliments alone. He shook his head, annoyed at himself for being so foolish as even to think such a thing. Thomas Phelippes' hand lay somewhere behind this. Phelippes, whatever else he was, was not one to waste time on inessentials.

"Sit. Sit." Lord Burghley waved Shakespeare and Nicholas Skeres to a pair of plain wooden stools in front of his chair. He coughed wetly a couple of times as they perched-Shakespeare nervously-then went on, "Now is the winter of our discontent." Shakespeare stirred. Burghley's smile showed several missing teeth, and another one broken. "Ay, I heard Burbage, as Richard, mouth your words. They hold here truer than they did for the Plantagenet. Know you that King Philip fails?"

"I've heard somewhat of't," Shakespeare answered cautiously, thinking Sir William Cecil himself did likewise.

No sooner had that crossed his mind than the nobleman let out a rheumy chuckle. "We race each other into the grave, he and I. But when the worms take us, mine the victory, for my son is greater than his sire, his far less. Belike you'll treat with Robert ere this business end-but, for now, with me."

"I am your servant, my lord," Shakespeare said, as Nick Skeres had before him. But Skeres had only been greasily polite. Shakespeare could not imagine disobeying Lord Burghley-and did not want to imagine what would happen to him if he did.

"My servant?" Sir William Cecil shook his head. The flesh of his cheeks wobbled like gelatin, as no healthy man's would have done. "Nay. You shall be my good right arm and the sword in the hand thereof, to strike a blow for England no other man might match."

Shakespeare thought of Christopher Marlowe, and of Kit's fury at being excluded from this plot. He also thought he would gladly have given Marlowe his role. But if it were to be done, the best man had to do it.

Shakespeare and Marlowe both knew who that was. "By your leave, sir," Shakespeare said, "I tell you the chance of all going as we would desire. " His voice trailed off. He could not make himself tell Burghley how bad he thought the odds were.

The gesture served well enough. Lord Burghley chuckled again-and then coughed again, and had trouble stopping. When at last he did, he said, "Think you not that, on hearing of Philip the tyrant's passing, our bold Englishmen will recall they are free, and brave? Think you not they will do't, if someone remind them of what they were, and of what they are, and of what they may be?"

Shakespeare bared his teeth in a grimace that was anything but a smile. "Am I Atlas, your Grace, to bear upon my shoulders the burthen of the whole world his weight?"

"I'll lighten somewhat the said burthen, an I may." Lord Burghley picked up the book. Even though he set a pair of spectacles on his nose, he still had to hold the volume at arm's length to read. He flipped through it rapidly, then more slowly, till at last he grunted in satisfaction. Then, to Shakespeare's surprise, he switched from English to Latin: "Know you the tongue of the Romans, Magister Guglielmus?"

Remembering Thomas Jenkins, the schoolmaster who'd made sure with a switch that his Latin lessons stuck in his mind, Shakespeare nodded. "Yes, sir, though it is some while since I used it aloud. You would do me a courtesy by speaking slowly."

Nicholas Skeres looked from one of them to the other. A slow flush rose in his cheeks. Sir William Cecil said, "He understands us not, having no Latin of his own."

"Are you certain?" Shakespeare asked. "He seems a man who shows less than he knows."

Burghley nodded heavily. "In that you are not deceived. Beware of him in a brawl, for he will always have a knife up a sleeve or in a boot. But you must believe me when I say Latin is not among the things he conceals."

"Very well, sir." It wasn't very well; Shakespeare trusted Nick Skeres not at all. But he'd taken his protest as far as he could. "What would you say to me that you will not say in his understanding?"

"If you were a scholar of Latin, you must surely have gone through the Annals of Tacitus?"

"So I did." Shakespeare nodded, too. "I made heavy going of it, I confess, for he is a difficult author."

"Recall you the passage beginning with the twenty-ninth chapter of the fourteenth book of the said work?"

"Your pardon, sir, but I recollect it not. Did you tell me to what it pertains, my memory might be stirred."

"I shall do better than that. Attend." Peering down at the book now on his lap, Burghley began to read the sonorous Latin text. After a couple of sentences, he glanced at Shakespeare over the tops of his spectacles. "Do you follow?"

"I take the meaning, yes, though I should not care to have to construe the text."

"Meaning suffices," Lord Burghley told him. "You are a scholar no longer, and I am not your master. I will not whip you if you mistake an ablative for a dative. Shall I continue?"

"If you please, sir."

Sir William Cecil read on to the end of the passage. To Shakespeare's relief, he went more slowly after the poet admitted having some trouble following the grammar. When he'd finished, he eyed Shakespeare once more. "See you the dramatic possibilities inhering to that section?"

"I do indeed." Shakespeare had to pause and go slowly and put his thoughts into Latin. The possibilities Burghley had mentioned boiled inside his head. He wanted to talk about them in the plain English in which he wrote. Even more than that, he wanted to flee this fancy house in Drury Lane, get paper and pen and ink, and sit down in his ordinary or some other tolerably quiet place and get to work.

Maybe Lord Burghley saw as much, for he smiled. "And see you how I would have the drama springing from this passage be shaped?"

"Yes." Shakespeare nodded. "You would have the audience construe the Romans here as. shall we say, some more recent folk speaking a tongue sprung from Latin. From this, it would follow-"

Burghley held up a hand. "You need say no more, Magister Guglielmus. I see you have nicely divined my purpose. Therefore, to my next question: can you do it?"

Shakespeare fell back into English, for he wanted to be sure he made himself clear: "My lord, I can do't; of that, there's no doubt. But may I do't? There lies the difficulty, for even the first scratch of pen on paper were treason, let alone any performance based thereon."

"You can say that in English, sure enough, for I already know it," Nick Skeres said.

William Cecil also returned to his native tongue, saying, "One performance is all I expect or hope for."

"By Jesu Christ, God His Son, I do hope so!" Shakespeare said. "For after the first, never would there be-never could there be-a second."

But Burghley shook his head. "Not so. If the first shape events as we hope, think you not that your works will endure not of an age, but for all time?"

"There's a weighty thought!" Nick Skeres' bright little eyes glittered. "I'd give a ballock to be famed forever, beshrew me if I wouldn't."

That such fame might be his had never crossed Shakespeare's mind. Any player who dreamt of such things had to be mad. By the nature of things, his turns on stage were written in the wind. The youngest boy who saw him would grow old and die, and then what was he? A ghost. Worse-a forgotten ghost.

He dared hope his plays would last longer than memories of his performances, but hope was only hope.

The one playwright he knew who expected to be famous was Marlowe, and Kit owned arrogance for an army, and to spare.

Lord Burghley had a point, though; no doubt about it. If he could bring this off, or help to bring it off.

His own eyes must have gleamed, as Skeres' had a moment before, for Burghley said, "You'll do't, then?

You'll bring it to the stage at the appointed time?"

"My lord"-Shakespeare spread his hands helplessly-"you will, I trust, be persuaded I bear you naught but good will. And, bearing you good will, I needs must tell you this presentation you so earnestly desire is less easy to bring to fruition in the proper season than your Grace supposes."

Sir William Cecil's frown put Shakespeare in mind of black clouds piling up before a storm. Here, plainly, was a man unused to hearing qualms or doubts. But, after a long exhalation, the nobleman's only words were, "Say on."

"Gramercy, my lord. Hear me, then." Shakespeare took a long breath of his own before continuing. "I can write the play. With what you have given me, I can shape it into the weapon you desire. I can put the groundlings to choler straight. Being once chafed, they shall not be reined again to temperance."

"Well, then?" Burghley folded his velvet-sleeved arms across his chest, covering the Order of the Garter he wore. "What more is wanted?"

Here a wise man shows himself a fool. Shakespeare reminded himself the theatre was not Burghley's trade. "Look you, my lord, you must bethink yourself: a play is more than words set down on paper. It's men and boys up on the stage, making the words and scenes seem true to those that see 'em." "And so?" Burghley remained at sea.

But Nick Skeres stirred on his stool. "I know his meaning, my lord!" he exclaimed. "We can trust him-we think we can trust him, anyway." He spoke quickly, confidently; he was at ease in the world of plots and counterplots, as Shakespeare was while treading the boards of the Theatre. "But the play engrosses the whole company. Any one man, learning what's afoot, can discover it to the Spaniards, at which-" He drew his finger across his throat.

"Ah." Now William Cecil nodded. Swinging back toward Shakespeare, he asked, "Think you your troupe of players holds such proditors, as Eden held the serpent?"

"I know not. I would not-I could not-say ay nor nay or ever I sounded them. and, in the sounding, I might myself betray."

"A point," Baron Burghley admitted. "A distinct point." He seemed anything but happy, yet did not reject Shakespeare's words because they weren't what he wanted to hear. Shakespeare admired him for that.

He asked, "What's to be done, then?"

"A moment, first, an't please you," Shakespeare said, "for I had not rehearsed all the troubles hereto pertaining." He waited for Burghley to nod again before continuing, "This secret, as Master Skeres hath said, must be held by the several men of the company. That alone were no easy matter."

"True enough." Another nod from Burghley. "What else?"

"Not only must they keep it close, sir, they must keep it close over some long stretch of time, wherein they learn their parts and learn to play 'em: all this, of course, in secret. And we shall have to contrive costumes for the Romans and the-"

"Wait." Lord Burghley held up a hand. "How much of this might you scant?"

"Why, as much as you like, my lord," Shakespeare answered. The nobleman looked pleased, till he went on, "If it suit you to have presented a clumsy, aborted botch of a show, we'll dispense with rehearsal altogether. But such a play, wherein we're hissed and pelted from the stage, meseems would serve your ends less well than you desire."

A wordless rumble came from deep within Lord Burghley's chest. "You show me a sea of troubles, Master Shakespeare. How arm we against them? Here you must be my guide: you, not I, are the votary of this mystery."

"I see no sure way," Shakespeare told him, wishing he could say something different. "What seems best is this: to sound the players one by one, in such wise that I give not the game away should a man prefer the Spaniards-or even simple quiet-to daring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

"And if one of them be a cozener or an intelligencer?" Nick Skeres asked. Sure enough, he took conspiracy and betrayal for granted. "How shall you hinder him from sending the lot of you to the block or the gallows or such delightsome toys as only a Spaniard would think to devise?"

"Such is the risk inherent in the exercise," Lord Burghley remarked.

You can say that, Shakespeare thought resentfully. You'll likely be dead ere we're well begun. And the nobleman would die in his own time, having lived a long life. But if the players were found out. Skeres had the right of it. Such delightsome toys. He shuddered. He was not a particularly brave man.

Counterfeiting courage on the stage, he'd seldom needed it in humdrum everyday life.

"Would you see England free again?" Burghley asked softly.

Ay, there's the rub, Shakespeare thought. Every hamlet in the land dreamt of England free again. He found himself nodding. He could do nothing else.

"Then we'll find ways and means, find them or make them." The baron sounded perfectly confident.

Again, Shakespeare silently fumed. But what can I do save go forward? He'd already heard enough to make him a dead man if he didn't sing to the Spaniards- and if things miscarry, he reminded himself. If all go well, they'll make of you a hero.

He had trouble believing it.

Sir William Cecil briskly rubbed his hands together. "We are in accord, then-is't not so?" Shakespeare nodded, still rather less than happily. The nobleman smiled at him. "Commence as quickly as may be. The sooner the play is done, the sooner the players have their parts by heart, the better. Only God knows how long Philip-and Elizabeth-will live. We must be ready."

Shakespeare didn't scream, but he came close. "My lord," he said carefully, "I am now engaged upon preparing a new play for the company, and-"

"This hath greater weight behind it," Burghley said.

Again, screams bubbled just below the surface. "Your Grace, if I cease work upon a play half done, who will not wonder why? Were it not best that I draw no questions to myself?"

"You quibble," Burghley said ominously.

"By God, sir, I do not," Shakespeare answered. "And here's the rest of't: Lord Westmorland's Men will pay me for Love's Labour's Won, and pay me well. Who'll pay me for this Roman tragedy? A poet lives not upon sweet breezes and moonbeams; he needs must eat and drink like any man."

"Ah." Burghley nodded. Taking from his belt a small leather sack, he tossed it to Shakespeare, who caught it out of the air. It was heavier than he'd expected. When he undid the drawstring, gold glinted within. His eyes must have widened, for William Cecil let loose another of his wet chuckles. "There's fifty pound," he said carelessly. "An you require more, Nick Skeres will have't for you."

"G-Gramercy," Shakespeare choked out. He'd never made anywhere near so much for a play; most of his income came from his share of the Theatre's takings. He also eyed Skeres. Any sum of money that came through the sharp little man would probably be abridged before reaching its intended destination.

Skeres stared back, bland as butter.

"Have we finished here?" Baron Burghley asked. Numbly, Shakespeare nodded. When he got to his feet, his legs, at first, didn't want to hold him up. Burghley said, "Get you gone, Master Shakespeare. I'll away anon. We should not be seen entering or leaving together, nor should you come to my house, though it be nigh. I am here on pretense of waiting on my nephews, Anthony and Francis Bacon."

"Do I meet them on repairing hither another time, know they of this our enterprise?" Shakespeare inquired.

Sir William Cecil looked through him as if he hadn't asked the question. Chuckling, Nick Skeres said,

"Any cokes can see you're new to the game. What you know not, e'en the bastinado can't squeeze from you."

Shakespeare made a noise down deep in his throat, nothing close to a word: "Urrr." Skeres might call it a game, but games didn't kill. Some do, Shakespeare corrected himself: baiting the bear or the bull. He could almost feel fangs tearing into him.

Still shaking his head, he left the house in Drury Lane. He was halfway home before realizing no one had said anything about how Nick Skeres would return to London. He shrugged. Skeres, he was sure, would prove as slippery and evasive as a black-beetle or a rat. He wished he could say the same for himself.