Ruled Britannia

IV

"Shakespeare will write a play on the life of his most Catholic Majesty?" Lope de Vega dug a finger in his ear, as if to make sure he'd heard correctly. "Shakespeare?"

Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n nodded. "Yes, that is correct. You seem surprised, Senior Lieutenant."

"No, your Excellency. I seem astonished. With the Archbishop of Canterbury and, it appears to me, everyone else in the world suspecting him of treason, why give him such a plum? He is, without a doubt, a fine writer-"

"And you are, without a doubt, naive." GuzmA?n smiled. Lope made himself smile back, in lieu of picking up his stool and braining his arrogant little superior with it. That supercilious smile still on his face, Captain GuzmA?n continued, "If Shakespeare is well paid, he may be less inclined to treason. This has been known to happen before. If he writes a play praising King Philip, he may be too busy to get into mischief." He ticked off points on his fingers as he made them.

"But what sort of play will he write?" Lope asked. "If he is a traitor-I don't believe it, mind you, but if he is-won't he slander the King instead of praising him?"

"Not with the Master of the Revels looking over his shoulder every moment," Guzman replied. "If the Master finds even a speck of slander in the play, it will not go on the stage-and Senor Shakespeare will answer a great many pointed questions from the English Inquisition, from Queen Isabella and King Albert's intelligencers, and from Don Diego Flores de Valdas. Shakespeare may be a poet, but I do not think him a fool. He will know this, and give us what we require."

Lope didn't care for the way Captain Guzman eyed him. You are a poet, and I do think you a fool, the nobleman might have said. But what he had said made more than a little sense. "It could be," de Vega admitted reluctantly.

"Generous of you to agree. I am sure Don Diego will be relieved," Guzman said. Lope stiffened. He was more used to giving out sarcasm than to taking it. GuzmA?n pointed at him. "And one more thing will help keep us safe against any danger from SeA±or Shakespeare."

"What's that, your Excellency?"

"You, Senior Lieutenant."

"Your Excellency?"

"You," Baltasar GuzmA?n repeated. "Shakespeare is writing about King Philip of Spain. You are a Spaniard. You are also mad for the English theatre. What could be more natural than that you tell the Englishman what he needs to know of his Most Catholic Majesty, and that you stay with his troupe to make sure all goes well? He will be grateful for it, don't you think?"

"What I think," Lope said, "is that you may be committing a sin under the eyes of God by making me enjoy myself so much."

Captain Guzman laughed. "I will mention it to the priest the next time I confess. I think my penance will be light."

"I hope you're right. You order me to go to the Theatre, sir?" de Vega asked. His superior nodded.

Lope wondered how much liberty he'd just received. "This will be the whole of my duty till the play goes before an audience?"

GuzmA?n nodded again. The pleasure that shot through Lope was so intense, he thought he would have to add it to his next confession. But then the nobleman said, "This is for the time being. It may change later. And if any emergency or uprising should occur-"

"God forbid it!"

"God forbid it, indeed. But if it should, you will help meet it as I think best."

"Of course, your Excellency. This goes without saying. I am, first of all, a servant of his Most Catholic Majesty, as is every Spanish man in this dark, miserable land."

" Muy bien. I did want to make sure we had everything clear." Something flickered in Baltasar GuzmA?n's eyes. Amusement? Malice? Perhaps a bit of both: "And with you, Senior Lieutenant, I was not sure anything went without saying. Buenos dias."

" Buenos dias, " Lope echoed. He rose, bowed himself almost double, and left the captain's chamber without showing he'd felt, or even noticed, the gibe. It was either that or draw his rapier and have at GuzmA?n. He didn't want to fight. For one thing, the man was his superior, and entitled to such jests. For another, although de Vega did not despise his own skill with a sword, Captain GuzmA?n was something of a prodigy with a blade in his hand. Set against the requirements of honor, that shouldn't have mattered.

The world being as it was, it did.

When Lope got back to his own chamber, he found Diego snoring away. He'd expected nothing less. He didn't bother shaking his servant. He booted him instead, taking out some of the anger he couldn't spend on Captain Guzman.

Shaking Diego was often a waste of time anyway. Kicking him worked better. " A Madre de Dios! " he exclaimed, and sat bolt upright. He blinked at Lope, his eyes tracked with red veins.

"Get up, you dormouse, before I seethe you in honey," de Vega snarled. "You can't sleep away the whole day."

Diego groaned. "Not more playacting," he said. In face, under Lope's merciless direction, he had performed well as Turan, the servant in La dama boba. And why not? He was a servant. All he had to do was play himself, remember his lines-and stay awake.

But Lope shook his head. "No, not more playacting for you." Ignoring Diego's sigh of relief, de Vega went on, "But I may be doing more of it-and in English, no less."

"Why has this got anything to do with me?" Diego asked around a yawn.

"I can read your mind, you rascal." Lope glared at him. "You're thinking, My master will be off acting. I can lie here and sleep till the day of Resurrection. You had better think again, wretch, or you'll sleep the sleep of a dead man. I'm going to need you more than ever."

"For what?"

"Perhaps for more acting," Lope said, and his lackey groaned again. He took no notice of that. "Perhaps to carry messages for me. And perhaps for who knows what? You are my servant, Diego. You can work for me and do as I say, or you can find out how you like things on the Scottish border."

" Madre de Dios," Diego said once more, sadly this time. "Being a servant is a hard life. Who would say otherwise? I have to obey another man's orders, my time is not my own-"

"Oh, what a pity," de Vega broke in. "You cannot sleep every blessed hour of every blessed day. Every so often, you have to stand up and earn your bread instead of having it handed to you already dipped in olive oil."

"And where have you seen olive oil in England, senor, save in what we bring here from Spain for ourselves?" Diego said. "The English, they hate it. If that doesn't prove they're savages, what does it prove?"

"It proves you're trying to change the subject," Lope answered. "That won't work, though. That won't work, and you, by God, will."

"Life is hard for a servant with a cruel master." Diego sighed. "Life is hard for any servant, but especially for one so unlucky."

"If I were a cruel master, you would already be up on the Scottish border, or sent to Ireland, or else tied to the whipping post on account of your laziness," Lope said. "Maybe that would wake you up. Nothing else seems to."

"I do what I have to do, senor," Diego said with dignity.

"You do half of what you have to do, and none of what a good servant ought to do," de Vega retorted.

"Maybe you should fall in love. You'd stay awake for your lady, and you just might stay awake for me, too."

"Fall in love with an Englishwoman? Not me, senor." Diego shook his head so vigorously, his jowls wobbled back and forth. He didn't seem to have slept through any meals. With a sly smile, he added,

"Look what Englishwomen have given you-nothing but trouble. And I don't need a woman to give me trouble, not when I've got a master."

For a moment, Lope sympathized with his servant. His own superior, Captain GuzmA?n, had given him a good deal of trouble, too. But GuzmA?n had also just given him the freedom of the English theatre. That made up for all the trouble he'd ever had from the cocky little nobleman, and then some. And, no matter what fat, lumpish Diego said, women had their uses, too.

Richard Burbage stared at Shakespeare. "Tell it me again," the big, burly player said. "The dons are fain to have you make a play on the life of Philip?"

"Even so," Shakespeare said unhappily. The two stood alone on the outthrust stage of the Theatre. No apple-munching, beer-swilling, wench-pinching groundlings gaped at them from the open area around it; no richer folk peered from the galleries. It was still morning-rehearsal time. The afternoon's play would be Prince of Denmark. Burbage would play the Prince, Shakespeare his father's ghost. He'd just emerged through the trap door from the damp, chilly darkness under the stage. He'd written the lines they were practicing, but Burbage remembered them more readily than he did. On the stage, nothing fazed Burbage.

He threw back his head and laughed now, both hands on his comfortable belly. A couple of the tireman's assistants and an early-arriving vendor turned their heads his way, hoping they might share the jest. He waved to them, as if to say it was none of their affair. Had Shakespeare done that, they would have ignored him. Burbage they took seriously, and went back to whatever they'd been doing. Shakespeare sighed. Not by accident was Burbage a leading man.

Mirth still shining in his eyes, Burbage spoke for Shakespeare's ear alone: "Well, my duck, one thing it shows beyond doubt's shadow."

"What's that?" the poet asked.

"They suspect not your other commission."

"But how am I to do both?" Shakespeare demanded in an impassioned whisper. "Marry, how? 'Tis the most unkindest cut of all, Dick. Two plays at once? That will drive me mad, and madder till I see which be fated to journey from pen and paper to-this." His wave encompassed the painted glory of the Theatre.

"A pretty gesture," Burbage remarked. "Do you use it when appearing, thus." He crouched as if coming up through the trap door, then stood with a broader, more extravagant version of Shakespeare's wave. "

'Twill help to draw the auditory into the business of the play."

"I'll do't," Shakespeare said, but he refused to let the other man distract him. "I've not yet sounded the whole of the company on the other. After this, how can I? They'll take me for the Spaniards' dog, and think I purpose luring 'em to treason."

"Another, haply, but not you, Will." Burbage set a hand on his shoulder. "You're an honest man, none honester, which everybody knows."

"And for which I do thank you." Shakespeare's laugh rang wild enough to make curious eyes swing his way again. He wished he'd been able to hold it in, but felt as if he would burst if he tried. "But honest!

Were I honest to all here embroiled, I'd die the death i'the next instant."

"By no means." Burbage shook his head and looked somber. "In sooth, you'd die the death, but as slow as those who had you could in their ingeniousness make it."

"The devil damn thee black, thou moon-calf scroyle!" Shakespeare said, which only made Richard Burbage laugh. Still furious, Shakespeare went on, "Will Kemp'd use me so. From you, I hoped for better."

"Write your play on Philip," the actor told him. "Write it as well as ever you may, for who knows what God list? An we give't, we give't. An we put forth in its place some different spectacle-why, that too's God's will, and there's an end to it."

He would play the one as gladly as the other, reckoning the company would profit from either, Shakespeare realized. That made him no happier than he had been. If Burbage didn't care whether he strode the boards as Philip of Spain or in toga and crested helm as Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, did he truly care who ruled England? Did he truly care about anything but his own role and how the playgoers would see him? That was a question with any actor: with one who enjoyed-no, reveled in-such general acclaim as Richard Burbage, a question all the more pointed.

News of the play on King Philip's life raced through the company like wildfire. Who will stop the vent of hearing when loud rumor speaks? Shakespeare thought with sour amusement. He, from the orient to the drooping west, doth unfold the acts commenced on this ball of earth, stuffing the ears with false reports. He wished this report were false.

Will Kemp sidled up to him, still carrying the skull he'd use while playing the gravedigger come the afternoon performance. "You'll give me some words wherewith to make 'em laugh, is't not so?" he said, working the jawbone wired to the skull so that it seemed to do the talking.

"Be still, old bones," Shakespeare said.

Kemp tossed the skull in the air and caught it upside down. That only made its empty-eyed leer more appalling. "Philip's such a pompous, praying, prating pig, any play which hath him in't will need somewhat of leavening, lest it prove too heavy for digestion." The clown's voice became a high, wheedling whine.

"Here is the first I've heard you care a fig for the words I do give you," Shakespeare said tartly. "It were better that those who play own clowns speak no more than is set down for them."

Kemp's flexible face twisted into an expression so preposterous, even Shakespeare couldn't help smiling.

"But Master William, my dove, my pet, my chick, my poppet," the clown cooed, "the pith of't it is, as I've said aforetimes, the groundlings laugh louder for my words than for yours."

"I pith on you and the groundlings both." Shakespeare stood with his legs spraddled wide, as if easing himself. Will Kemp gaped at him. Forestalled, by God! Shakespeare thought. You were about to make your own pissy quibble, and looked not for the like from me. He added, "The Devil take your laughs when they flaw the shape of my play, as I've said before. Hear you me now?"

"I hear." Kemp looked angry, angry and ugly. He started to say something more, then spun on his heel instead-for a big, bulky man, he moved, when he chose, with astounding grace-and stalked away.

Another caring more for himself than aught else. Shakespeare sighed. It was either sigh or weep from despair. Someone will sell us to the Spaniards. Sure as Pilate's men nailed Jesu to the rood, someone will think first of thirty pieces of silver and not of all of England. Someone-but who?

He wouldn't be burned alive, not for treason, or most of him wouldn't. They would haul him to Tower Hill on a hurdle, and hang him till he was almost dead. Then they'd cut him down and draw him as if he were a sheep in a shambles. They'd throw his guts into the fire while he watched, if he was unlucky enough to keep life in him yet. That done, they would quarter him and display his head and severed limbs on London Bridge and elsewhere around the city to dissuade others from such thoughts and deeds.

He shuddered. That was English law; Elizabeth had used Catholics who plotted against her thus. For all he knew, the Spaniards had worse punishments for traitors.

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped and almost screamed. "I humbly do beseech you of your pardon, Master Shakespeare," Jack Hungerford said. "I meant not to startle you."

"My thoughts were. elsewhere," Shakespeare said shakily, and the tireman nodded. Shakespeare gathered himself. "What would you?"

"Why, I'd ready you for your turn on stage, of course," Hungerford replied, his eyes plainly asking, How far off were your wits? "The hour draws nigh, you know."

"I'll come with you." Shakespeare followed him as he'd lately followed too many men from whom he sooner would have fled.

Back in the tiring room, Hungerford was all brisk efficiency. He powdered Shakespeare's face and hands with ground chalk, then smeared black grease under his eyes for a skull-like effect. "Here, see yourself,"

he said, and pressed a glass into Shakespeare's hand.

Shakespeare studied the streaky image the mirror gave back. "Am I more haggard than I was before?"

he murmured.

Hungerford, perhaps fortunately, paid him no attention. The tireman was rummaging through the company's robes to find a smoke-gray one shot through with silver thread. "You'll have a care with this down under stage," he said severely. " 'Tis the sole habiliment we have fit for a royal spook. Smutch it, and the cleaning costs us dear."

"I'll mind me of't."

"Good. Good. You'd better." Like any tireman worth his salt, Jack Hungerford cared more for his clothes and other properties than for the players who wore them. He thrust a polished pewter crown at Shakespeare. "See how't glisters like silver? There's not a ghost in all the world can match the Prince's father for finery."

"I've no doubt you're right, Master Hungerford." Shakespeare set the crown on his head. It was too small. He'd been playing the ghost ever since he wrote the tragedy, and had yet to persuade the tireman to get a crown that fit him.

Hungerford handed him a bowl full of shredded, crumpled paper. "Do you remember to set this alight just afore the trap door opens. 'Twill make a fine smoke wherewith to amaze the groundlings."

"I shall remember," Shakespeare promised gravely. "Do you recall in turn, I have played the role before.

Do you further recall, I am he who devised it."

The tireman only sniffed, as a mother might when her son insisted he was a grown man. However much he insisted, she would never believe it, not in her heart. Hungerford never believed players knew anything. The more they said they did, the less he believed it, too.

A rising buzz came from out front: the day's audience, hurrying into the Theatre. When Shakespeare stood to go to his place under the stage and await his cue to rise through the trap door, Jack Hungerford grabbed the bowl full of paper scraps and set it in his hand before he could reach for it. "See you? You would have forgotten it," Hungerford said, triumph in his voice.

What point to quarreling with him? Shakespeare had bigger worries, swarms of them. "If you'd have it so, so it is for you," he said wearily. The tireman stirred, about to speak again. Shakespeare spoke first:

"By my halidom, Master Jack, I'll not forget me the candle to light it with."

Hungerford nodded. By his expression, he couldn't decide whether Shakespeare had merely called him by his Christian name or had called him a Jack, a saucy, paltry, silly fellow. Since Shakespeare had intended that he wonder, the poet was well enough pleased.

He did make a point of remembering the candle. Hungerford would never have let him live it down had he forgotten after their skirmish. He also made a point of carrying it carefully, so he didn't have to come back and start it burning again. Not out, brief candle, he thought. Light this fool the way through dusty gloom.

He had to walk doubled over; had the stage been high enough to let him straighten up, it would have been too high to let the standing groundlings see the action on it. He peered out at the crowd through chinks and knotholes. He couldn't see much-the men and women in front blocked his view of those farther back. His ears told him more than his eyes could. It sounded like a full house, or something close, and it sounded like an enthusiastic one.

"It'll like thee well, Lucy," said a man standing close enough to Shakespeare for his voice to be distinct among the multitude. "The Prince of Denmark, he feigns he's mad, so-"

"Go to, Hal!" Lucy broke in. "I've not seen it afore, and I shan't thank thee for spoiling the devisings."

God bless you, Lucy. You're a woman of sense, Shakespeare thought. He knew too many playwrights who were too fond of boasting of their machinations. He thought them fond in the other sense of the word, for their plays seemed insipid to him when he knew ahead of time everything that happened.

Footsteps on the boards above his head. Words heard dimly through thick wooden planks: the sentinels Bernardo and Francisco, talking of the night. Shakespeare hurried over to the little platform under the trap door. He lit the papers. They caught at once, and began filling the space under the stage with smoke.

It tickled his nose and his throat. He fought against a cough.

Horatio and Marcellus came on. Francisco left, his boots thumping. Shakespeare cocked his head to one side, listening for his cue. His chalky fingers closed on the trap-door latch. Bernardo raised his voice to make sure the waiting ghost heard: ". Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one-"

Shakespeare loosed the latch. Down swung the trap door. He'd made sure the hinges were well oiled, so they didn't squeal. Up he popped through the door, with a fine cloud of smoke around him. A woman shrieked, which made two more cry out in sympathy. If one screamed, others always followed. And he was good enough to make that first one scream.

He had no lines here, or in his next couple of appearances. He had but to stand, looking ominous and menacing, till his cue to stalk off, and then go below once more. One of the tireman's helpers crawled out to bring him another bowl full of bits of paper and a fresh candle. "You nigh gasted them out of their hose, Master Shakespeare," he whispered.

"Good," Shakespeare whispered back. "Get thee gone." The tireman's helper went back the way he'd come. Shakespeare crouched in the smoke under the stage, fuming a little himself. I'd best know how to frighten them with the ghost, he thought. If not I, then who? He had failed once or twice: he'd been bad, or the audience had been bad, or who could say what had gone wrong? He didn't dwell on the failures. Every player had them, in every role. But he'd made the most of the part far more often. And so I shall again today.

He hadn't long to brood. The ghost appeared again in the first scene, and again vanished without a word.

Then he appeared once more in the fourth scene of the first act. He was once more silent, but he beckoned to Burbage as the astonished Prince of Denmark.

The fifth scene was his. He had to vanish once more at the end of the fourth, then come back up on stage through a trap door closer to the tiring room. And he had his lines, urging the Prince to action against his murderous uncle. Shakespeare spoke them in a rumbling, echoing voice that might indeed have come from beyond the grave. Gasps and a couple of muffled squeals told him his words and looks were striking home. He remembered to use the gesture Burbage had liked during the rehearsal. The other player beamed. Shakespeare wasn't sure it really added anything, but it pleased Burbage and it didn't hurt.

"Adieu, adieu, adieu!" Shakespeare said. "Remember me." He stretched the words out into something close to a wail, then sank through the trap door. By that time, the space under the stage was so full of smoke, it wasn't far from the sulphurous and tormenting flames to which the ghost said he must render himself up. He had a few lines from below later in the scene, and then an appearance in the third act, where the Prince could see him but his mother could not. After that, eyes stinging, he retreated to the tiring room. "Have a care with the robe, Master Will, do," Jack Hungerford said. "Here, sit you down. I'll get it off you." Once the robe was safe, he added, "Well played. I've rarely seen you better in the part."

"For which I thank you." Shakespeare rubbed his streaming eyes. " 'Swounds, give me a bowl of water, that I may wash away the smoke." He coughed. Now he could, without marring the play.

"You'll take off the chalk with water, but not the black," the tireman warned. "I have a cake of soap for that."

"Give it me, but plain water first."

Shakespeare was drying his face on a grimy towel when Burbage took advantage of a scene where he wasn't on stage to go back and clasp his hand. Pointing to Shakespeare, he started to laugh. "With your paint half off and all besmeared, your aspect is more fearful now than ever before the groundlings."

"I believe't." Shakespeare turned to the tireman. "Where's that soap, Master Hungerford?"

He washed again, then dried himself once more. "Better," Burbage said. "And the specter was as fine as you've ever given him." He imitated the gesture he'd urged Shakespeare to use. "Saw you how the audience clung to your every word thereafter, you having drawn them into the action thus?"

Shakespeare had seen no such thing, but he didn't feel like arguing. Things had gone well, no matter why.

That would do. "They did seem pleased," he said.

"As they had reason to be. And now I needs must dash-I'm before 'em again in a moment." Burbage clapped Shakespeare on the shoulder, then hurried back toward the stage.

In his shirt and hose, Shakespeare watched the rest of The Prince of Denmark from the wings. In his present mood, a scene just past pleased him most: the one where the Prince admonished the players to speak trippingly and warned the clowns against making up their own lines. He stood for every poet ever born.

After the play ended, Shakespeare came out in his own person to take his bows. He used the gesture he'd made while playing opposite the Prince to show the audience who he was. And Richard Burbage, always generous, waved to him and called out to the crowd, "Behold the man whose play you saw!" That got him more applause. He bowed deeply.

The groundlings streamed out of the Theatre. By their buzz, they liked what they'd seen. Shakespeare retreated to the tiring room to don shoes and doublet and hat and talk things over with the company and with the players and poets and other folk who got past the glower of the tireman's burly helpers.

In came Christopher Marlowe, a pipe of tobacco in his mouth. As soon as Shakespeare caught the first whiff of smoke, he started to cough. "Marry, Kit, put it by, I prithee," he said.

"I will not, by God," Marlowe said, and took another puff. His eye swung to the beardless youth who'd played Ophelia, and who was now getting back into the clothes proper to his sex. "All they who love not tobacco and boys are fools. Why, holy communion would have been much better being administered in a tobacco pipe."

He reveled in scandal and blasphemy. Knowing as much, Shakespeare didn't react with the horror his fellow poet tried to rouse. Instead, he said, "Put it by, or I'll break it, and that gladly. Having spent the whole of the first act beneath the stage, I'm smoked and to spare, smoked as a Warwickshire sausage."

"Ah. Then you have reason for asking. I'll do't." And Marlowe did, knocking the pipe against the sole of his shoe and grinding out the coals with his foot. He gave Shakespeare a mocking bow. "Your servant, sir."

"Gramercy." Shakespeare returned the bow as if he hadn't noticed the mockery. Nothing could be better calculated to annoy Marlowe.

Or so he thought, especially when Marlowe gave him a shark's smile and said, "Damn you again, Will."

"What, for speaking you soft? An I huff and fume, will't like you better?"

"No, no, no." Marlowe made as if to push him away. "I know the difference 'twixt small and great. De minibus non curat lex. No, damn you for your Prince of Denmark."

This time, Shakespeare bowed in earnest. "Praise from the master's praise indeed."

"In this play, you are my master. And, since I fancy not being mastered, I aim t'overcome you. There are Grecian pots, 'tis said, with figures limned in contortions wild, and with the painter's brag writ above 'em: a€?As Thus-and-So, my rival, never did.' After first seeing The Prince of Denmark last year, I set to work on Yseult and Tristan, afore which I shall not write, a€?As Shakespeare never did,' but, when you watch it, you may take the thought as there."

"And then my turn will come round again, to see how I may outmatch you." Shakespeare's early tragedies owed a good deal to Marlowe, who'd led the theatre when Shakespeare came to London from his provincial home. Since then, Marlowe had chased him more often than the reverse. "We do spur each other on."

"We do," Marlowe agreed. "But you have in your flanks for now different spurs, of one sort. and another." He gave Shakespeare a sly look. "You're to make the Spaniards a King Philip?"

"I am." Shakespeare wasn't surprised Marlowe had heard about that. He didn't need to keep it secret, as he did the other piece. Of course, Marlowe knew about that, or something about that, too. Shakespeare wished he didn't. The other poet did not know how to keep his mouth shut.

Marlowe proved as much now, saying, "But will they see it? Or will the players strut the stage in other parts?"

Shakespeare had been pondering the same question. He didn't care to discuss it with anyone else, especially in the crowded tiring room, and most especially. "Have a care," he hissed. "The Spaniard comes. Would you have had him hear you prattle of boys and tobacco and communion?"

"Danger is my meat and drink," Marlowe answered blithely, and Shakespeare feared that was true.

Making a leg like a courtier, the other poet gave Lope de Vega his most charming smile. Even Shakespeare, for whom it was not intended, felt its force. "Master Lope!" Marlowe exclaimed. "Always a pleasure, and an honor."

"No, no-the pleasure is mine." De Vega returned the bow. He looked dapper and dangerous, the rapier on his hip seeming a part of him.

"I hear your comedy on the foolish woman was a great success," Marlowe said. Shakespeare had heard nothing of the sort. The less he heard of the Spaniards' doings, the happier he was. Marlowe went on, "

'Tis pity I have not Spanish enough to follow comfortably, else I had come to see how you wrought."

Lope de Vega bowed again. "You are too kind."

"By no means, sir." Yes, when Marlowe chose, he could charm the birds from the trees- as can any serpent, Shakespeare thought uneasily.

The Spaniard turned to him. "You will tell me at once, Master Shakespeare: is the Prince of Denmark mad, or doth he but feign his affliction?"

Marlowe's eyes gleamed. "I have asked myself that very question. So would any man of sense, on seeing the play. But here we have a man of better sense, for he asks not himself but the poet!"

"He is but mad north-northwest," Shakespeare answered. "When the wind is southerly he knows a hawk from a handsaw."

"Fie on you!" de Vega said, as Marlowe burst out laughing. Lope went on, "You give back the Prince's words, not your own."

"But, good my sir, if the Prince's words be not my own, whose then are they?" Shakespeare said, his voice as innocent as he could make it. "Certes, I purpose the question being asked. And I purpose each hearer to answer in himself, for himself."

"Men seek God and, seeking, find Him-so saith the Grecian poet," Marlowe observed. "Who'd have thought the like held for madness?"

He and Shakespeare could, if they chose, hash it out over pint after pint of bitter beer. If Lope de Vega reckoned himself insulted, or trifled with, that was a more serious matter. But the Spaniard seemed willing to let it pass. He changed the subject: "You are to write a play on the life of his Most Catholic Majesty, I hear."

"I have been given that privilege, yes," Shakespeare said, privilege striking him as a better word than cross.

"You are fortunate in your subject, his Majesty in his poet," de Vega said-he made no mean courtier himself. Marlowe's glance was half rueful, half scornful. Lope continued, "It will please me very much to help you in your enterprise however I may."

"Truly, sir, you are too kind." The last thing Shakespeare wanted was Lope's help. "But there's no need for-"

"No, no." Lope waved his protest aside. "I insist." He grinned disarmingly. "For, by helping you, I help myself to coming to the Theatre whenever I please. Should you desire a veritable hombre de EspaA±a to play a Spaniard, nothing would like me better."

Shakespeare wanted to shriek. He couldn't tell de Vega everything he wanted to, or even a fraction of it.

But. " Tacite, Will," Marlowe said quickly.

In Latin, that meant be quiet. In English, it would have been good advice. Even in Latin, it was good advice. But was it also something more? Was it an allusion to Tacitus and to the Annals? How much did Marlowe know? How much did he want to show that he knew? And how much did Lope know, and how much was Marlowe liable to reveal to him for no more reason than that he could not take the good advice he so casually gave?

One of Lieutenant de Vega's eyebrows rose. In slow Latin of his own, he asked, "And why should Magister Guglielmus keep silent, I pray you?"

Damn you, Kit, Shakespeare thought. But Marlowe, a university man as fluent in Latin as in English, kept right on in the ancient tongue: "Why? To keep from offering you the role of Philip himself, of course.

I doubt his company would stand for it, and I am certain Master Burbage's fury at being balked of the hero's role would know no bounds." He talked himself out of trouble almost as readily as he talked himself into it.

Richard Burbage had little Latin, but he did have the player's ability to hear his name mentioned at a remarkable distance. He came up to Marlowe and asked, "What said you of me, sir?" By the way he leaned forward and set his right hand on his belt near his sword, he would make Marlowe regret it if the answer were not to his liking.

But Marlowe spoke in English as he had in Latin: "I said you would mislike it, did Lieutenant de Vega here take the part of King Philip in the play Will is to write. He hath graciously offered to attempt some role in the drama, but that, meseems, were a part too great."

Just for a heartbeat, Burbage's eyes flashed to Shakespeare. The poet gave back a bland, blank face. He knew he couldn't trust the Spaniard, and didn't know he could trust Christopher Marlowe. If Marlowe had hoped to learn more than he already knew from the actor, he got little, for Burbage laughed, slapped him on the back, and said, "Why, Kit, no man can have a part too great-thus say the ladies, any road."

Shakespeare's laugh was relieved, Marlowe's somewhat forced-he had scant interest in or experience of what the ladies said in such matters. Lope de Vega scratched his head. " 'Tis a jest," he said. "I know't must be, but I apprehend it not." After Shakespeare explained it, de Vega laughed, too, and bowed to Burbage. "You have a wit of your own, sir, and not just with another's words in your mouth."

Will Kemp reckons otherwise, Shakespeare thought. Burbage bowed back to the Spaniard. "You are too kind, sir," he purred, meaning nothing else but, I'm more clever than either of these two, and if I but wrote. He had a player's vanity, too, in full measure. It sometimes irked Shakespeare. Today he gladly forgave it. He would have forgiven anything that put the Spaniard off the scent.

But how, dear God, am I to write Lord Burghley's play with de Vega ever sniffing about? And even if Thou shouldst work a miracle, for that I may write it, how can we rehearse it? How can we offer it forth? He waited hopefully. As he'd feared, though, God gave no answers. Lope De Vega couldn't have screamed louder or more painfully as a betrayed lover. He knew that for a fact; he'd screamed such screams before. This, however. "But, sir, you promised me!" he cried.

"I am sorry, Lieutenant," said Captain GuzmA?n, who sounded not sorry in the least. "I warned that, in an emergency, I would shift your duty. Here we have an emergency, and so I shall shift you."

"A likely story." Lope was convinced his superior intended to drive him mad. GuzmA?n knew how to make his intentions real, too. "What kind of emergency?"

"A soothsayer, prophesying against Spain and against King Philip," GuzmA?n answered.

"Oh," Lope said in crestfallen tones. Unfortunately, that was an emergency. Soothsayers and witches and what the English called cunning men caused no end of trouble. But then he had a brighter, more hopeful thought. "Could not the holy inquisitors deal with this false prophet? Surely such a rogue breaks God's law before he breaks man's."

Baltasar GuzmA?n shook his head. "They call it treason first and blasphemy only afterwards. They have washed their hands of the fellow."

"As Pilate did with our Lord," de Vega said bitterly.

"Senior Lieutenant. " GuzmA?n drummed his fingers on the desk. "Senior Lieutenant, I bear you no ill will. You should thank God and the Virgin and the saints that I bear you no ill will. Were it otherwise, the Inquisition would hear of that remark, and then, in short order, you would hear from the Inquisition. You have your pen, and some freedom in how you use it. You would be wise to guard your tongue."

He was right. That hurt worse than anything else. "I thank you, your Excellency," Lope mumbled, hating to have to thank the man at whom he was furious. He sighed. "Well, if there's no help for it, I'd best get the business over with as fast as I can. Who is this soothsayer, and where can I find him?"

"He is called John. Walsh." Captain GuzmA?n made heavy going of the English surname. "He dwells in"-the officer checked his notes-"in the ward called Billingsgate, in Pudding Lane. He is by trade a butcher of hogs, but he is to be found more often in a tavern than anywhere else."

"May I find him in a tavern!" Lope exclaimed. "I know Pudding Lane too well, and know its stinks. They make so much offal there, it goes in dung boats down to the Thames."

"Wherever you find him, seize him and clap him in gaol. We'll try him and put him to death and be rid of him once for all," GuzmA?n said. As de Vega turned to go, his superior held up a hand. "Wait. Don't hunt this, ah, Walsh yourself. Take a squad of soldiers. Better, take two. When you catch him, the Englishmen he has fooled are liable to try a rescue. You will want swords and pikes and guns at your back."

"Very well, sir." De Vega wasn't sure whether it was very well or not. Alone, he might slip in and get away with John Walsh with no one else the wiser. With a couple of squads at his back, he had no hope of that. But Captain GuzmA?n had a point. If he went after Walsh by himself and got into trouble, he wouldn't come out of Billingsgate Ward again. How had Shakespeare put it in Alcibiades? The better part of valor is discretion-that was the line that had stuck in Lope's memory.

He had no trouble getting soldiers to come with him. When he told the men eating in the refectory what his mission was, they clamored to come along. "By St. James, sir," one of them said, crossing himself,

"the sooner we get rid of troublemakers like that, the better. They stir the Englishmen up against us, and that gives us no end of grief."

"Let's go, then," Lope said. Some of the Spaniards paused to gulp down wine or beer or stuff a last bite or two into their mouths, but for no more than that. They buckled on swords, picked up spears and arquebuses and back-and-breasts, set high-crowned morions on their heads, and followed de Vega south and east from the barracks towards noisome Pudding Lane.

London had been occupied long enough and grown peaceful enough to make a couple of dozen Spaniards tramping through the streets-obviously on some business, not merely patrolling-something less than ordinary. " 'Ware! 'Ware!" The cry rang out again and again. So much for surprise, Lope thought.

From farther away, he heard another cry: "Clubs!" That was the shout London apprentices raised when they went into a brawl. Before long, a pack of them-some armed with clubs, others carrying daggers or stones-came up the street towards the men he led.

"Give way," he shouted in English. "Give way, or you will be sorry for it!" He nodded to his own men.

They were better armed than the apprentices, and armored to boot. They also looked eager to take on the youngsters who'd come up against them. The 'prentices stopped, wavered. broke.

One of the soldiers laughed. "They haven't got the cojones to stand up to real men," he said. "We beat them when we first got ashore, and we can beat them again if we have to."

"That's right," another soldier said. But then he added, "I'd sooner not fight, so long as we can hold 'em down without it." That perfectly summed up Lope's view of things.

He had wondered if his nose could guide him to Pudding Lane. But London was a city of such multifarious stinks, he had to ask his way. He had to ask his way twice, in fact; the first Englishman who gave him directions told him a lie and got him lost. No, they don't all love us, he thought.

But he made a better choice with the second man he asked. The fellow was sleek and prosperous, with fur trim on his doublet. He made a leg at Lope, and fawned on him like a dog hoping to be patted. "Ay, good my lord, certes; 'tis no small honor to enjoy the privilege of directing you thither." He pointed south.

"Do you go to the church of St. George in Botolph Lane, and then one street the further, and you have it.

God grant you catch whatever villain you seek, too."

"God grant it indeed." Lope crossed himself, and was not surprised to see the Englishman follow his lead.

Folk who had clung to the Roman faith before the Armada came were likeliest to uphold the new Queen and King-and the Spaniards who kept them on their throne.

This man said, "We have seen too much of wars and strife. Let there be peace, of whatever kind."

"Amen," Lope replied. Privately, he thought that a craven's counsel. But it worked to keep the kingdom quiet. He would have had all the English so craven.

After more bows and a ceremonious leavetaking, Lope translated for his men what the sleek fellow had said. "Let's find the church, let's find the street, let's find the son of a whore we're after, and then, by God, let's find something to drink," one of them said. Several others nodded approval.

So did Lope. "We may find this Walsh and something to drink together," he said, "for I hear he prophesies in taverns."

The soldier who'd spoken before guffawed. "And after he's drunk enough, he's one of these piss-prophets," he said, which got a laugh from everyone else. Plenty of people made a living divining the future-or saying they did-by examining their clients' urine.

Someone emptied a chamber pot from a second-story window. No way to be sure if the stinking contents were aimed at the Spaniards. A couple of men-including the fellow who'd made the joke-got splashed, but most of the stuff just went into the mud of the street, which already held more than its fair share of ordure and piss. "Eh, Sancho, now you're a piss-prophet," one of the other troopers said.

Sancho's reply was almost as pungent as the air.

Pudding Lane was only a couple of blocks long, but made up in stench what it lacked in length. De Vega marveled that he hadn't found it by scent. Along with all the usual London miasmas, he smelled pig shit, pig piss, rotting swine's flesh, pig fear. "Any man from this street must be a false prophet," he said, "for not even God Himself could stand getting close enough to him to tell him anything."

He started asking after John Walsh. "I don't ken the man," one hog butcher said. "Never heard of him,"

said a second. "An he be who I think he is, he died o' the French pox summer afore last," a third said. "A went home to Wales, a did, whence a came," a fourth offered. "Seek him in Southwark. He dwelleth there these days, with a punk from a pick-hatch," a fifth declared.

Patiently, Lope kept asking. Sooner or later, he was bound to come on someone who either favored Isabella and Albert or simply craved peace and quiet. And he did. A lean man in a pigskin apron looked up from his work and said, "Belike you'll find him in the Blue Fox, half a block toward the Tower in East Cheap."

Again, Lope translated for his men. "A good thing we have you with us, seA±or," irrepressible Sancho said. "If we had to look for interpreters, everything would take three times as long, and like as not they'd tell us more lies than truth."

De Vega wasn't sure the lean man hadn't told a lie. But the tavern, to his relief, did prove easy to find. A signboard with the silhouette of a running fox, bright blue, hung above the door. "You men stay here in the street," Lope said. "I'll go in alone. If God is kind, I'll hear the man speaking treason from his own lips. Then I'll signal for you. "If not"-he shrugged-"again, it's God's will."

"Honor to your courage, Lieutenant," a soldier said.

"This for courage." Lope snapped his fingers. "I want to deal with this fellow as quickly as may be, for I have business of my own to attend to." Some of the men winked and sniggered and made lewd jokes he only half heard. Thanks to his reputation, they thought he meant business with a woman, or with more than one. But is not the Muse a woman, too? he thought.

He sat down at a table near the door in the Blue Fox. "Ale," he said when a barmaid came up to him: it was a word he could pronounce without revealing himself as a foreigner. He set a penny on the table.

The woman snatched it up and came back with a mug of nasty, sour stuff. He wished he'd taken a chance and asked for wine.

But he didn't have to drink much. He nursed the mug and looked around. He also wished someone had described John Walsh to him. The place was full of Englishmen, most of them-by their talk and by the smell-pig butchers. Was Walsh here? Could he ask without giving himself away? If that fellow in the pigskin apron had steered him away from the wanted man and not toward him.. I'll make him sorry if he did. I'll make him worse than sorry.

"Hear me, friends," a squat, homely, pockmarked man said, and the folk in the tavern did hear him: something close to silence fell. Lope pretended to drink ale as the pockmarked man-who also had on a pigskin apron over his jerkin and hose-clambered up onto a table and went on, "You know God hath it in His mind for us to be free o' the Spaniard, for doth He not say. When you therefore shall see the abomination of the desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand)'? And understand we not all too well who is the aforesaid abomination of the desolation? And stand not his minions on the holy soil of England?"

"That's right, John!" someone called.

"Tell us more!" someone else added.

"Right gladly will I," said the pig butcher, who had to be John Walsh. "Again, in the selfsame book of Matthew, saith not the Lord, a€?Then they shall deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations, for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another'? Saith He not that very thing? And are we not afflicted, yea, sore afflicted, and slain? And betray we not one another, and hate we not likewise one another? But hark ye to what He saith next. Hark ye, now: a€?And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.' "

He switched from Matthew to Revelations, but Lope had heard enough. Setting down his mug, he ducked out of the Blue Fox and beckoned to the soldiers. With them behind him, he stormed back into the tavern and shouted out a verse from Matthew that John Walsh had skipped: "?And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many.' " Then he switched to Spanish, shouting, "Arrest that man there on the table. Santiago and forward!"

"Santiago!" the soldiers roared. They rushed toward the preaching pig butcher.

"Limb of Satan!" an Englishman cried. He hurled his mug at Lope, who ducked. The mug shattered on the morion of the man behind him. Another flying mug hit a Spaniard in the face. He fell with a groan, his nose smashed and bloody.

A moment later, a Spanish sword bit into the pig butcher who'd thrown the mug that hurt the soldier. The Englishman shrieked. More blood spurted, improbably red. "Let it begin here, as St. John the Divine saith it shall begin at the end of days!" John Walsh bellowed. "The star called Wormwood and the smiting of the sun! Ay, let it begin here!"

"Wormwood!" the Englishmen yelled.

Lope wondered if they knew what the word meant. Not likely, he judged, but it made a fine rallying cry even so. As for him, he shouted, "We must take the false preacher now, or London goes up in riot!" It had happened before, though not for four or five years. If it happened again, the blame would land on him. Where would they send him then? The Scottish border? The Welsh mountains? Ireland, which was supposed to be worse than either? Was any place worse than Ireland? If any was, they'd send him there.

An arquebus bellowed, deafeningly loud in the close tavern. The lead ball buried itself in the wall. After that, the firearm was good for nothing but a clumsy club. In a tavern brawl, bludgeons and knives and swords counted for more than guns. De Vega wished for a firearm that shot more than one ball, or at least for one that could be reloaded quickly. Wishing didn't help.

The Spaniards' armor did. So did the extra distance at which they could do harm, thanks to their swords.

But then an Englishman, an enormous fellow, picked up a bench and swung it like a club. The weapon was clumsy but potent. The Englishman felled two soldiers in quick succession.

Another swing almost caved in Lope's skull. But he ducked, stepped close, and stabbed the big man in the stomach with his rapier. The bench fell from the man's hands as he wailed and clutched at himself.

"Come on!" Lope shouted. Only a small knot of stubborn defenders still protected John Walsh.

"Let's away out the back door!" one of them said. De Vega cursed in sonorous Spanish. He hadn't known the Blue Fox had a back door. He hurled himself at the Englishmen, doing his best to forestall their escape.

A couple of them tried to hustle Walsh toward the back of the tavern. They might have pulled him to safety, but he didn't seem to want to go. "Nay, nay!" he cried, struggling in their grasp as if they were arresting him. "Let it begin here! It must begin here!"

Sancho tackled him. When he went down, half a dozen Spaniards leaped on him, while the rest drove back or knocked down the Englishmen still on their feet. "Is he still alive?" Lope asked.

"Yes, Senior Lieutenant. He'll live to hang," one of his troopers answered.

"After this, I think hanging's too good for him," Lope said. "But tie him up and gag him. Gag him well, by God, or the filth he shouts out will bring the English down on us before we can get him to safety."

Even as things were, stones flew when they emerged from the Blue Fox. But another arquebusier brought his match to the touch-hole of his weapon. It roared and belched forth a great cloud of pungent smoke.

And the ball, as much by luck as anything else, knocked an Englishman kicking. The others drew back, naive enough to believe the Spaniards likely to hit twice in a row. Knowing better than they what arquebuses could do, Lope silently thanked them for their caution.

Back at the Spanish barracks, Captain GuzmA?n asked, "You have the prisoner?"

"Yes, your Excellency," Lope replied.

GuzmA?n ignored his draggled state and the wounds his men had taken. He'd given the right answer. "

Muy bien, Lieutenant," GuzmA?n said. "You may now return to the Theatre." Weariness fell from Lope.

Guzman had given the right answer, too.

Sam King stepped on William Shakespeare's foot. "Ow!" Shakespeare yelped; the young man still wore muddy boots. A little more calmly, the poet added, " 'Ware wheat, Master King; 'ware wheat."

"I pray pardon, sir," King said. "I'm yet unused to the confines of this room." He spoke with a broad Midlands accent. Shakespeare had sounded much the same when he first came to London, but, wanting to take the stage, had had to learn in a hurry to sound like a Londoner born.

"By God, you're used to the confines of my toe, and to flatten it to flatter your fancy," Shakespeare grumbled. But then he sighed. "I own there's no help for't. And had the Widow Kendall taken in another lodger male in place of this Cicely Sellis, he'd trample me in your place."

"Ay, belike," Sam King said. " 'Tis monstrous strange Mistress Cicely should hire a whole room to herself of the old hag. 'Tis monstrous dear, too." His belly rumbled. "Marry, but I'm hungry," he muttered, more to himself than to Shakespeare. Whatever he did in the city-some of this and a little of that, Shakespeare gathered-it got him little money. His face had a pinched, pale look, and his clothes hung loosely on him.

The take at the Theatre had been good. As Christmas neared, people wanted to be gay. Shakespeare had gold not only from Lord Burghley but from the Spaniards as well. He took out three pennies and handed them to Sam King. "Here. Get yourself to an ordinary and eat your fill tonight."

To his amazement, King began to blubber. "God bless you, sir. Oh, God bless you," he said. "I tread on you, and then you give me good for evil, as our Lord says a man ought to do." His scrawny fingers closed over the coins. "I'll pay you back, sir. Marry, I will."

"An't please you. An you can without pinching," Shakespeare said. "An it be otherwise. " He shrugged.

Threepence meant less to him than to Sam King. The skinny young man blew his nose on the fingers of the hand that wasn't holding the money, wiped them on his shabby doublet, and hurried out of the lodging house.

Shakespeare got out his writing tools and took them to the ordinary he favored. He was relieved not to find his fellow lodger there; King would have insisted on chattering at him when he wanted to work.

Love's Labour's Won was almost done. He needed to finish it as fast as he could, too. For one thing, the company's patience was wearing thin. For another, he didn't know how long he had till Philip of Spain died. He would need to have both his special commissions ready by then, whichever one actually saw the light of day.

Kate the serving woman came up to him. "God give you good even, Master Will," she said. "The threepenny is barley porridge with boiled beef." He nodded. She went on, "There's lambswool, if you'd liefer have it than the common brewing."

"I would, and I thank you for't," Shakespeare answered. On a chilly December evening, warm spiced beer would go down well.

Maybe the lambswool helped his thoughts flow freely. Whatever the cause, he sat and wrote till he was the last man left in the ordinary. Only when his candle flame began to leap and gutter as the candle neared extinction did he reluctantly pick up his papers and quills and ink and go back to the lodging house.

"It's long past curfew, Master Shakespeare," Jane Kendall said severely when he came in. "I was afeard for you."

"Here I am." Shakespeare didn't want to talk to her. He threw a pine log on the hearth. Before long, it flared up hot and bright. The Widow Kendall sent him a reproachful stare. He never noticed it. He sat down at the table in front of the fire to write a little more while the log gave such fine light. His landlady threw her hands in the air and stalked off to bed.

He hardly noticed her go. It was one of those magical evenings where nothing stood between his mind and the sheet of paper in front of him. He'd been writing for some time-how long by the clock, he couldn't have said, but twenty-five or thirty lines' worth, with scarcely a blotted word-before realizing he wasn't alone in the room. The new lodger, Cicely Sellis, stood in the doorway watching him work.

"Give you good den," she said when he looked up. "I misliked troubling you, your pen scratching along so fast."

"I do thank you for the courtesy," Shakespeare answered. "There are those-too many of 'em, too-will break into a writing man's thoughts for no more reason than to see him stop and scuff the ground, wondering what he meant next to say."

"Some folk, able themselves to shape naught of beauty, are fain to mar another's work, for that they may not find themselves outdone. An you'd back to't, make as though I am not here. You'll offend me not."

Cicely Sellis was five or ten years older than Shakespeare. She'd probably been a striking woman till smallpox scarred her face; beneath the flawed skin, her bones were very fine. She wore no ring.

Shakespeare didn't know whether she was spinster or widow.

"Again, my thanks," he said. When he stretched, something crunched in his back. It felt good. He twisted, hoping he could get more relief. He noticed his hand was cramped, and wondered how long he'd been writing all told. "I can pause here. I have the way now, and shall not wander from it when I resume."

"Right glad I am to hear you say so." A gray tabby wandered in after Cicely Sellis. It stropped itself against her ankles. She bent and scratched it behind the ears. It began to buzz. It wasn't a big cat, but purred very loudly. "There, Mommet, there," she murmured. When she looked up again, she asked,

"You'll soon have finished the play, Master Shakespeare?"

"God willing, yes," he answered.

"I hope to see't," she told him. "I've seen some others of yours, and they liked me well. Can I get free, I'll pay my penny again."

"No poet can hope for higher praise," he said, which won a smile from her. He went on, "Have you a hard master, then, one who keeps you at it every minute?"

She nodded and pointed to her chest. "I do, sir, the hardest: mine own self." She stroked the cat again. It purred even louder. Its eyes were green. So were hers. She studied him. "If you would have.

questions answered, haply I could help you."

"Ah." He'd wondered what she did. No wonder she'd wanted a room all to herself. "You are a cunning woman, then?" He wouldn't say witch, even if they amounted to the same thing.

And Cicely Sellis, sensibly, wouldn't answer straight out. "Marry, Master Shakespeare, in this world of men a woman needs must be cunning, mustn't she, if she's to make her way? Now I hear something, now I say something, and the world turns round." She nodded almost defiantly, as if to say, Make of that what you will.

Shakespeare didn't know what to make of it. In London as elsewhere in England, elsewhere all through Christendom, witches, or people claiming to be witches, were a fact of life. They did at least as much good for the sick as fancy physicians, as far as he could tell. Did they take their power from Satan?

People said they did. Now here before him stood one of the breed. He could ask her himself, if he had the nerve.

He didn't.

"I am. content with my lot," he said. If she were truly a witch, she would see he was lying.

He couldn't tell whether she did or not. She gave him half a curtsy. Her eyes glinted, as the cat Mommet's might have done. "No small thing have you said there, nor no common thing, neither," she replied at last.

"The richest man in the world, be he never so healthy, be he wed to a young and beautiful wife who loveth him past all reason, hath he contentment? Not likely! He will hunger for more gold, or for more strength of body, or for some other wench besides the one he hath, or for all those things together. Is't not so, Master Shakespeare?"

"Before God, Mistress Sellis, I think you speak sooth," Shakespeare answered.

She stroked Mommet again. He was an uncommonly good-natured cat; as soon as she touched him, his purr boomed out, filling the room. She said, "I have once or twice before been styled soothsayer. I do not say I am such, mind, but I have been so styled."

Shakespeare nodded. "I believe it. If it be so, belike you make a good one." He intended no flattery, but meant every word. What she'd said about a rich man's restless desire for more showed she could see a long way into the human heart. That had to be as important for a soothsayer as for a poet crafting plays.

She studied him again. He had rarely known such a measuring glance from a woman-or, indeed, from a man. Marlowe's gaze came close, but it always held an undercurrent of mockery absent from her expression. Her eyes did shine like a cat's. He wondered what trick of witchcraft made them do that. Of nights, a cat's eyes, or a dog's, gave back torchlight. A man's eyes, or a woman's, did not. But Cicely Sellis' did.

Mommet suddenly stopped purring. His fur puffed out till he looked twice his proper size. He hissed like a snake. A freezing draught blew under the door, making the hair on Shakespeare's arms prickle up, too, and sending a swarm of bright sparks up the chimney as the flames flared.

In a deep, slow voice not quite her own, Cicely Sellis said, "Beware the man who brings good news, and he who knows less than he seems."

"What?" Shakespeare said.

The one word might have broken the spell, if spell there was. The cat's fur smoothed down on his back.

He sprawled on his side, licked his belly and privates, and began to purr once more. The fire eased. And the cunning woman, her eyes merely human eyes again, frowned a little and asked, "Said you somewhat to me?"

"I did." Shakespeare went on to repeat, as best he could, what she'd told him.

Her frown deepened. " I said that?" she asked.

"On my oath, Mistress Sellis, you did." Shakespeare crossed himself to show he meant it.

Witches were supposed to fear the sign of the cross. Cicely Sellis showed no such fear. She only shrugged her shoulders and laughed a nervous-sounding laugh. "I will believe you, sir, for that you have no cause to lie to me thus. But as for the words. " She shook her head. "I recollect 'em not."

"No?" Shakespeare pressed it a little. Cicely Sellis shook her head again and pressed a hand to one temple, as if she knew pain there. Being a player himself, Shakespeare knew acting. As best he could judge, the cunning woman was sincere in her denial. Bemused, he tugged at his little chin beard. " 'Tis passing strange, that."

"So it is." Mistress Sellis rubbed the side of her head once more. She yawned. "Your pardon, but I'm fordone. Mommet, come." The cat followed her into the room she'd hired from Widow Kendall as obediently as if it were a dog.

Was it a cat? Or was it the cunning woman's-the witch's-familiar spirit? Shakespeare had trouble imagining a familiar spirit, a demon surely reeking of brimstone, purring with such content as it lay on the floor. But then, what know you of demons? the poet asked himself. As little as may be, and wish it were less.

He tried to write a bit more. That bothered him less than it would have the day before. He yawned, too.

He could go to bed with a clear conscience now. He knew where Love's Labour's Won was going, and knew he would finish it in a day or two. Then on to King Philip, and to. the other play.

His bedroom was dark when he went in. Jack Street's snores made the chamber hideous. Shakespeare knew he himself would have no trouble sleeping despite the racket; he'd had time to get used to it.

How-indeed, whether-Sam King could manage was a different question.

Shakespeare didn't bother with a candle when he stowed his writing tools in the chest by his bed. He'd dealt with the lock so often in darkness, he might almost have been a blind craftsman whose fingers saw as well as most men's eyes. The click of the key in the lock made Street the snoring glazier mumble and turn over, though how he heard that click through his own thunderstorm was beyond Shakespeare. The poet sighed-quietly-and yawned again.

As he slipped the bottle of ink back into the chest, his fingers brushed a new and hence unfamiliar bulk: the translation of the Annals he'd picked up in front of St. Paul's. " 'Sdeath," he whispered: a curse that was at the same time at least half a prayer. The translation itself was innocent. But if anyone thought to search for it, his death was likely whether it were found or not. That would mean Lord Burghley's plot was betrayed.

He shut the chest, locked it, and pulled off his boots. The wooden bed frame and its leather straps creaked as he lay down and burrowed under the covers. Despite yet another yawn, sleep would not come. His mind spun faster than the spinning hand of a clock. How can Burghley's plan hope to escape betrayal? There's surely far more to't than one poor poet and a play that may never been seen.

Can he do so much with so many under the Spaniards' very noses without their suspecting? 'Tis false we English breed no traitors. Would 'twere true, but these past nine years have proved otherwise.

What did Burghley purpose? Shakespeare shook his head. Ignorance, here, is bliss. What I know not, no Spaniard can rip from me. He wished he didn't know it was tied to word of Philip's death. But the English nobleman had had to tell him that. He needed some notion of how long he had to write the play and to train the actors of his company to perform it.

That thought made him shake his head. He still didn't know whether all of Lord Westmorland's Men would appear in a play that, if Lord Burghley's rising failed, could only be judged treason. If he sounded a player and the man refused, what could he do? Could he do anything? Would not the very act of doing something make a disaffected player more likely to go to the Spaniards, or to the lickspittle English who followed Isabella and Albert?

Questions, questions. When questions come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. All the questions were out in the open. Answers skulked and hid and would not show themselves, either by light of day or in these miserable, useless, pointless nighttime reflections.

Shakespeare shook his head again. His bed let out another creak. Jack Street grunted, shifted, and, for a wonder, stopped snoring. In the third bed in the room, Sam King sighed softly. Had he been awake all this while, poor devil? Shakespeare wouldn't have been surprised. Street's cacophony took getting used to.

After some more squirming, Shakespeare felt sleep at last draw near. But then he thought of his curious meeting with Cicely Sellis, and rest retreated once more. She was a cunning woman indeed. Whoever called on her would get his money's worth, however much he paid. She was probably even cunning enough to keep from falling foul of the Church, which took Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live ever more seriously these days.

What had she meant when her voice changed there for a little while? Some sort of warning, without a doubt. But did it come from her alone, from God, or from Satan? Shakespeare ground his teeth. How could he know? Come to that, did Cicely Sellis herself know?

One more yawn, and sleep finally overmastered him. He woke in darkness the next morning. With the winter solstice at hand, the sun wouldn't rise till after eight of the clock, and would set before four in the afternoon. In the kitchen, porridge bubbled above the fire. Shakespeare filled a bowl with it. It was bland and uninteresting: barley and peas boiled to mush together, with hardly even any salt to add savor. He didn't care. It filled the empty place in his belly for a while.

Most of the lodgers were already gone before Shakespeare rose. Regardless of whether it was light or dark, they had their trades to follow. Cicely Sellis, by contrast, came into the kitchen just as the poet was finishing. The cunning woman nodded but said nothing. She too had her own trade to follow, but could follow it here at the lodging house. By the way Widow Kendall beamed at her, she was paying a pretty penny for that room of hers. Enough to make the widow raise the scot for the rest of us?

Shakespeare wondered worriedly. He doubted he could stand even one more vexation on top of so many.

When he went out into the street, he found he would have no accurate notion of when the sun came up, anyhow. Cold, clammy fog clung everywhere. It likely wouldn't lift till noon, if then. Shakespeare sucked in a long, damp breath. When he exhaled, he added fog of his own to that which had drifted up to Bishopsgate from the Thames.

He should have gone straight to the Theatre. He might have found some quiet time to write before the rest of the company came in and began rehearsing for the day's play.

Instead, though, he wandered south and east, away from the suburbs beyond the wall and down towards the river. He didn't know-or rather, didn't care to admit to himself-where he was going till he got there.

By the time he neared the lowland by the Thames, the fog hung a little above the ground.

But even the thickest fog would have had a hard time concealing the Tower of London. Its formidable gray stone wall and towers shouldered their way into the air. People said Julius Caesar had first raised the Tower. Shakespeare didn't know whether that was true or not, though he'd used the conceit in a couple of plays. The Tower surely seemed strong and indomitable enough to have stood since Roman days.

However strong it seemed, it hadn't kept the Spaniards out of London. And now, somewhere in there, Queen Elizabeth sat and brooded and waited for-deliverance? Can I help to give it her? Or give I but myself to death?