Ruled Britannia

VIII

Along with the rest of the parishioners, Shakespeare came to the church of St. Ethelberge early on Easter morning, before the bells rang out that would have summoned them to Mass. As he walked into the church, deacons went up and down the aisles lighting candles and torches till the building blazed with light.

A small stone sepulcher stood against the north wall of the church. More candles burned before it; it was covered by a cloth embroidered with scenes of the Passion and the Resurrection. On Good Friday, a priest had laid the Host and a crucifix within it. Since then, men prominent in the parish had taken turns watching over the sepulcher, receiving bread and ale and some small payment for their service.

Now the clergymen formed a procession that went up to the sepulcher. A priest swung a censer over it.

The sweet smoke tickled Shakespeare's nostrils. Another priest ceremoniously lifted the sepulcher cloth, while a third took the pyx that held the Host and returned it to its usual position above the altar.

Then, solemnly, yet another priest raised the crucifix from the sepulcher and carried it in triumph all around the church. The bells in the steeple clamored out joy. The choir sang Christus Resurgens:

"Christ, rising again from the dead, dieth no more. Death shall have no more dominion over Him. For in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Now let the Jews declare how the soldiers who guarded the sepulcher lost the King when the stone was placed, wherefore they kept not the rock of righteousness. Let them either produce Him buried, or adore Him rising, saying with us, Alleluia, Alleluia."

The crucifix was reverently placed on an altar on the north side of the church. Worshipers crept towards it, some on their knees, others on their bellies. Tears of rejoicing streamed down their faces as they adored the risen Christ.

Tears stung Shakespeare's eyes, too. His father had spoken of such ceremonies when he was a young man, and again in Mary's reign. Till the coming of the Armada, Shakespeare had never seen them himself.

Elizabeth had suppressed them along with so much other Catholic ritual. They did have a grandeur, a passion (fitting word for this season of the year), missing from the Protestant liturgy she'd imposed on England.

Matins began. And my treason thrive, all this once more'll be cast down, Shakespeare thought. That saddened part of him, the part that responded to the drama of Catholic ceremonial. But the rest. Did we choose it of our own will, well and good. But the dons forced it down the throat, as a farmer'll force an onion up the arse of a sick ox. Let them keep it.

Mass followed Matins. At the end of the ceremony, Shakespeare queued up to receive communion.

"Have to take my rights," someone in front of him muttered. He nodded, though the words hadn't been aimed at him. Taking communion on Easter Sunday marked one as part of the adult community; being denied the Host on this holiest of days ostracized and disgraced a man or a woman. In some towns-even in some churches in London, Shakespeare had heard-folk delinquent with parish dues could be refused the sacred wafer.

He reached the head of the line. " Hoc est enim Corpus Meum," the priest murmured, as he had so many times before, and popped the Host into Shakespeare's mouth. Sinners, it was said, choked on the Host.

To prevent embarrassing accidents, a parish clerk stood by the priest with a chalice of unconsecrated wine. He offered it to Shakespeare, who took a mouthful to wash down the unleavened morsel.

Often, when he left the church after Easter Mass, the green of new spring growth offered its own symbolic resurrection. Not this year. With Easter so early-only a day after the equinox-winter's grip still held the land. Trees and bushes remained bare-branched; the muddy ground was brown, with only the sickly yellow-gray of last year's dead grass showing here and there.

To his own surprise, he didn't much care. Maybe the Mass had inspired him. Or maybe. He stopped, a sudden delighted smile illuminating his face. Do I not work towards England's resurrection?

However much the thought pleased him, it did nothing for the fellow behind him, who bumped into him when he unexpectedly halted. "Here, pick up your feet, you breathing stone," the man grumbled.

"I pray pardon," Shakespeare said, and got out of the way. Still unhappy, the man who'd bumped him went up the street. Shakespeare followed more slowly. The glory of that notion still blazed in him. It struck him as a perfect cap for the day Christ rose from the dead.

It struck him as a perfect cap, that is, till he got back to the house where he lodged. Jane Kendall had gone to the early Mass, too, and had got back before him. She was already throwing fresh wood on the hearth. This day, for once, she cared nothing for expense. "God bless you, Master Will!" she said. "Now we feast!"

"Let it be so, my lady," Shakespeare answered. "Never before this year have I known Lent to seem so long."

"Nor I," his landlady said. "I had not thought on it thus, but you have the right of't. I wonder why it might be so."

"Haply for that Lent began so early," Shakespeare said. " 'Twas but the middle part of February, mind you."

Widow Kendall nodded. "Yes, it could be. But now Lent too is passed away. Will you do me the honor of carving the leg of pork I took just now from the fire?"

"A rare privilege!" Shakespeare cried, and bowed over her hand as he'd seen Lope de Vega bow over that of his latest lady friend. Jane Kendall giggled and simpered, playing the coquette for all she was worth. Shakespeare's stomach rumbled. He'd gone without meat for a long time at a hard season of the year, which made it seem even longer. Spit flooded into his mouth at the thought of finally breaking the fast.

As he carved slice after slice from the leg of pork, a few odd bits-or perhaps more than a few-found their way into his mouth. His landlady looked on indulgently. No matter how indulgent she looked, he did try to be moderate, and evidently succeeded well enough. "Pleaseth you the flavor?" she asked.

He made sure he swallowed the morsel in his mouth before answering, "Ay." He had no trouble sounding enthusiastic. The Widow Kendall had been lavish with cloves and cinnamon and pepper, and the meat was so fresh, it hardly even needed the spices to taste good-an advantage of Easter's coming in a cool season of the year.

One by one, the other lodgers came back to the house. Shakespeare exchanged Easter greetings with Jack Street and Cicely Sellis and Sam King and the rest. When Jane Kendall wasn't looking, he tossed Mommet a bit of pork. The cat made the treat disappear, then stared up at him as if tosay, Well, where's the rest of it?

Everyone ate pork and bread and boiled parsnips smothered in melted cheese and drank the Widow Kendall's fresh-brewed ale. Shakespeare wondered if he were the only one not only eating meat but making a point of eating it where others could see. Nobody, now, could claim he was continuing the Lenten fast and waiting for what the old calendar reckoned to be Easter.

Jack Street patted his belly. "Oh, that's monstrous fine," the glazier said. "Would I were so full every day."

Sam King nodded. He still remained without steady work, so a feast like this had to be an even bigger treat for him than for the other man. Grinning at Street, he said, "So it's the emptiness within you, then, that roars forth when you sleep?"

That made everyone laugh-everyone but the glazier, who asked, "What mean you?"

"Why, your snoring, man," King said. "What else?"

"What?" Jack Street shook his head. "I snore not."

Despite making every night hideous for his fellow lodgers-and, very likely, for their neighbors to either side as well-he meant it. The more the others tried to convince him he did indeed snore, the less willing he was to believe it. "Let's to the church once more," Sam King said, "and I'll take oath on the Gospel there."

Street shook his head again. "Nay, I'd not have you forsworn for the sake of a jape."

"Tell truth and shame the Devil, Master Street: you do snore of nights," Shakespeare said.

" 'Tis not the many oaths that make the truth, but the plain single vow that is vowed true-and I vow, I snore not." Jack Street was beginning to sound angry. He gulped down his mug of ale, then reached for the pitcher to pour it full again.

Shakespeare began to wish Sam King had kept his mouth shut. The silence that hovered round the feasters was distinctly uncomfortable. If Street didn't want to believe he snored, how could the rest of them persuade him? They couldn't, but they knew the truth too well to be content with his denials, no matter how vigorous. This quarrel was liable to fester and burst out again weeks from now.

Cicely Sellis drew out the chain she wore around her neck. It had a sparkling pendant at the end of it, one that had been hidden in the valley between her breasts. The pendant caught firelight and torchlight as she swung it in a small arc, back and forth, back and forth. "Be easy, Master Street," she said in a soft, soothing voice. "Be easy. No cause for wrath. Be easy."

"And why should I, when all mock and fleer at me?" the glazier said.

The cunning woman didn't answer directly. She kept swinging that pendant in the same slow, steady rhythm. Ever so slightly, she shook her head. "By no means, Master Street," she said, still quietly. "We are your friends here. We are all your friends here. No one seeks to do you harm."

"Methought otherwise," Street said, but less belligerently than he'd spoken before. His eyes followed the cheap glass pendant as it moved. His head began to go back and forth at the same rate. Shakespeare had trouble keeping his eyes off the pendant, too, but he managed. Jack Street didn't even try.

"No one seeks to do you harm," Cicely Sellis repeated.

Sam King made as if to speak. Shakespeare used his long legs to kick the young man under the table.

Something out of the ordinary was going on here. He didn't know what, but he didn't want to see the spell broken. Not till that phrase crossed his mind did he wonder whether he'd been wise to kick King after all.

Cicely Sellis went on as she had before: "All's well, Master Street. Naught's amiss. No need for fury.

Hear you me?"

"I hear." Street's voice came from far away, as if he heard with but half an ear. His eyes, his head, still followed the pendant's motion, though he didn't seem to know they were doing it. When he reached for his mug of ale, he did so without looking away from the sparkling glass.

"Good." The cunning woman let the shiny pendant go back and forth for another minute or so, then asked, "Hear you me?" once more as she kept on swinging it.

"I hear," Street said, even more distantly than before.

"Then hear also there's no cause for fuss, no reason to recall the warm words just past, no purpose to holding 'em in your memory."

"No cause for fuss," Jack Street echoed dreamily. "No reason to recall. No purpose to holding."

"E'en so." Cicely Sellis nodded. "Shall it be as I ask of you, then?"

"It shall be so." The glazier tried to nod, but the motion of the pendant still held him captive.

"Good. Let it be so, then, and fret no more on't." Cicely Sellis stopped swinging the bauble, and tucked it away again. When she spoke once more, her voice was loud and brisk: "Would you pass me the pitcher of ale, Master Street? I'm fain for another mug myself."

"Eh?" Street started, as if suddenly wakened. "Oh, certes, Mistress Sellis. Here you are." He gave her the pitcher. With a chuckle, he said, "Belike you'll hold it better than I, for what I drank mounted straight to my head. Methought I dozed at table. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was; man had as well snore as go about to expound this dream. Methought I was-there is no man can tell what. And methought I had-but man is but a sleepy fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had."

"I'd drink somewhat of ale myself, Mistress Sellis, when you have poured your fill," Shakespeare said.

Nodding, the cunning woman passed him the pitcher. He filled his mug, too, then quickly emptied it. Jack Street gave no sign of remembering the argument over whether he snored. He talked, he laughed, he joked. How had Cicely Sellis managed that?

Sam King leaned forward to take the pitcher after Shakespeare finished with it. The young man's eyes were wide and staring as he poured golden ale into his mug. He mouthed something across the table at Shakespeare. The poet raised an eyebrow, not having got it. King mouthed the words again, more exaggeratedly than before: "She's a witch."

That was indeed the other name for a cunning woman. Even so, Shakespeare kicked King under the table again. Some names were better left unspoken. And King did keep quiet after that. But the fear never left his eyes.

After the feast, Shakespeare stooped to stroke Mommet. The cat arched its back and purred. "You please him," Cicely Sellis said.

"Haply he'll fetch me a mouse or rat, then, as token of's praise," Shakespeare answered. Mommet twisted to scratch behind one ear. Shakespeare thought he saw a flea fly free, but couldn't be sure: a flea on a rammed-earth floor simply disappeared. Mommet went on scratching.

With a smile, the cunning woman said, "You ken cats well." Shakespeare was the only lodger who spoke to her-or, for that matter, even acknowledged she was alive and in the house. If she noticed, she gave no sign of it.

In a low voice, he said, "You made them afeard." In an even lower voice, he added, "You made me afeard."

"Wherefore, Master Shakespeare?"

"Wherefore?" Shakespeare still held his voice down, but couldn't hold the anger from it-anger and fear often being two sides of the same coin. "Why else but for your show of witchery?"

"Witchery?" Cicely Sellis started to laugh, but checked herself when she saw how serious he was. "Thank you I be in sooth a witch?"

"I know not," he answered. "By my halidom, I know not. But this I know: no one else dwelling here hath the least doubt." He shook his head. "No, I mistake me. You are yet clean in Jack Street's eyes, for he recalleth naught of what you worked on him."

That got through to her. Her mouth tightened. The lines that ran to either corner of it filled with shadow, making her suddenly seem five years older, maybe more. Slowly, she said, "I but sought to forestall a foolish quarrel."

"And so you did-but at what cost?" Shakespeare's eyes flicked towards Sam King, who seemed to have set to work getting drunk. "Would you have the English Inquisition put you to the question?"

Cicely Sellis' gaze followed the poet's. "He'd not blab," she said, but her voice held no conviction.

"God grant you be right," Shakespeare said, wondering if God would grant a witch any such thing. "But you put me in fear, and I am a man who earns his bread spinning fables. Nay more-I am a man who struts the stage, who hath played a ghost, who hath known somewhat of strangeness. And, as I say, you affrighted me. What, then, of him?" His voice dropped to a whisper: "And what too of the Widow Kendall?"

"I pay her, and well." The cunning woman didn't try to hide her scorn. But her eyes, almost as green as her cat's, went back to Sam King. "I'd liefer not seek a new lodging so soon again."

"Again? Came you here, then, of a sudden?" Shakespeare asked.

Reluctantly, Cicely Sellis nodded. Shakespeare ground his teeth till a twinge from a molar warned he'd better do no more of that. Did the English Inquisition already know her name? Were inquisitors already poised to swoop down on this house? If they seized the cunning woman, would they seize her and no one else? Or would they also lay hold of everyone who'd had anything to do with her, to seek evidence against her and to learn what sort of heresy her acquaintances might harbor? Shakespeare didn't know the answer to that, but thought he could make a good guess.

"I meant no harm," Cicely Sellis said, "nor have I never worked none."

"That you have purposed none-that I believe," Shakespeare answered. "What you have worked. "

He shrugged. He hoped she was right. He hoped so, yes, but he didn't believe it, no matter how much he wished he could.

Captain Baltasar Guzman looked disgusted. "I have just learned Anthony Bacon has taken refuge at the court of King Christian IV," he said.

Sure enough, that explained his sour expression. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, then,"

Lope de Vega answered, "if its King will give shelter to a proved sodomite. He shows himself to be no Christian, despite his name-only a God-cursed Lutheran heretic."

Captain Guzman nodded. "Yes, and yes, and yes. Every word you say is true, Senior Lieutenant, but none of your truth does us the least bit of good. Denmark and Sweden persist in their heresy, as they persist in being beyond our reach."

"Yes, sir," Lope agreed. "A pity he escaped us. If you like, though, we can always go back and arrest his younger brother."

"Nothing is proved against Francis Bacon, and the family has connections enough that we cannot proceed against him without proof. That too is a pity." GuzmA?n sighed. After a moment, though, he brightened. "Forty years ago, after Mary died and the English relapsed into heresy, who would have imagined we would grow strong enough to come here and correct them? In a generation or two, Denmark's turn, and Sweden's, may yet come."

"God grant it be so." De Vega crossed himself. So did his superior. With a grin, Lope went on, "I confess, your Excellency, I won't be sorry to miss that Armada, though."

"No, nor I." But Guzman's eyes glowed with what Lope recognized after a moment as crusading zeal.

"But after Denmark and Sweden are brought back into the true and holy Catholic faith, what then? The Russians do not admit the supremacy of his Holiness the Pope."

"Before I came to England, I'm not sure I'd ever even heard of Russia," Lope said. "Now I've talked to a few men who've been there. They say the weather in Russia is as much worse than it is here as the weather here is worse than Spain's. If that's so, God has already punished the Russians for their heresy."

"It could be," Guzman said. "But it could also be that the men you talked to are liars. I don't think any place could have weather that bad."

"You may be right, your Excellency." Lope snapped his fingers, remembering something. "With Anthony Bacon in Denmark, is there any word that Tom, the boy actor from Shakespeare's company at about the same time, is with him?"

"Let me see." Baltasar GuzmA?n ran his finger down the report he'd received. He got close to the bottom before stopping and looking up. "He is accompanied by a handsome youth, yes. No name given, but. "

"But we are well rid of two sodomites, and the Danes are welcome to them," Lope said.

"We are well rid of them, yes, but better they should have gone to the gallows or the fire than to Denmark." Captain GuzmA?n had no give in him.

And Lope could hardly disagree. "You're right, of course, your Excellency. With some luck, we'll catch the next ones we flush from cover before they can flee."

"Just so, Senior Lieutenant. Just exactly so." Guzman set down the paper. "Now you know my news.

What have you for me?"

"Shakespeare continues to make good progress on King Philip, " de Vega answered. "I wish your English were more fluent, sir. I'd quote you line after line that will live forever. The man is good. He is so very good, I find him intimidating when I sit down to write, even though he works in a different language."

"As things are, spare me the quotations," GuzmA?n said. "If anything's more deadly than listening to verses you don't understand, I can't imagine what it is." He steepled his fingertips and looked over them at Lope. "You are writing again, then? In spite of the intimidation, I mean?"

"Yes, your Excellency."

"Part of me says I should congratulate you," Baltasar GuzmA?n observed. "Part of me, though, believes I'm not keeping you busy enough. With everything else you have to do, how do you find time to set pen to paper?"

GuzmA?n had a habit of asking dangerous questions. He also had a habit of asking them so they didn't sound dangerous unless his intended victim listened carefully. Otherwise, a man could easily launch into a disastrous reply without realizing what he'd done till too late. Here, Lope recognized the trap. He said, "I will answer that in two ways, your Excellency. First, a man who will write does not find time to do it. He makes time to do it, even if that means sleeping less or eating faster. And second, sir, lately I've had more help from Diego than I've been used to getting."

"Yes, Enrique mentioned something about that to me," GuzmA?n said. "I would have thought you needed a miracle to get Diego to do even half the work a proper servant should. How did you manage it?"

"Maybe I was lucky. Maybe Diego saw the light," Lope answered, not wanting to admit his blackmail.

"Or maybe it's simply spring, and the sun is waking him as it does the frogs and the snakes and the dormice and all the other creatures that sleep through winter."

"A pretty phrase, and a pretty conceit," Captain Guzman said with a laugh. "But Diego has been your servant a long time now, and he's always been just as sleepy and lazy in the summertime as he has with snow on the ground. What's the difference now?"

"Maybe he's finally seen the error of his ways," de Vega replied.

"It could be. The only way he was likely to see such a thing, though, it seems to me, was up the barrel of a pistol," GuzmA?n said. Lope didn't answer. His superior shrugged. "All right, if you want to keep a secret, you may keep a secret, I suppose. But do tell me, since you are writing, what are you writing about?"

By the way he leaned towards Lope, he was more interested than he wanted to let on. He'd always held his enthusiasm for Lope's plays under tight rein. Maybe, though, he really enjoyed them more than he showed. Lope said, "I'm calling this one El mejor mozo de EspaA±a."

" The Best Boy in Spain'?" Captain Guzman echoed. "What's it about, a waiter?"

"No, no, no, no, no." Lope shook his head. "The best boy in Spain is Ferdinand of Aragon, who married Isabella and made Spain one kingdom. I told you, your Excellency-Shakespeare's rubbing off on me.

He's writing a play about history, and so am I."

"As long as you don't start writing one in English," GuzmA?n said.

"That, no." De Vega threw his hands in the air at the mere idea. "I would not care to work in a language where rhymes are so hard to come by and rhythms so irregular. Shakespeare is clever enough in English-just how splendid he would be if he wrote in Spanish frightens me."

"Well, he doesn't, so don't worry your head about it," Captain GuzmA?n said-easier advice for him to give than for Lope to take. But he went on, "I did very much enjoy your last play, the one about the lady who was a nitwit."

"For which I thank you, your Excellency," Lope said.

"If this next one is as good, it should have a bigger audience than Spanish soldiers stranded in England,"

his superior said. "Write another good play, Senior Lieutenant, and I will do what I can to get both of them published in Spain."

" Senor! " Lope exclaimed. Baltasar Guzman, being both rich and well connected, could surely arrange publication as easily as he could snap his fingers. Lope's heart thudded in his chest. He'd dreamt of a chance like that, but knew dreams to be only dreams. To see that one might come true. "I am your servant, your Excellency! And I would be honored-you have no idea how honored I would be-were you to become my patrA?n." He realized he was babbling, but couldn't help it. What would I do, for the chance to have my plays published? Almost anything.

GuzmA?n smiled. Yes, he knew what power he wielded with such promises. "Write well, Senior Lieutenant. Write well, and make sure the Englishman writes well, too. I cannot tell you to neglect your other duties. I wish I could, but I cannot."

"I understand, sir." De Vega was quick to offer sympathy to a man who offered him the immortality of print. He knew Captain Guzman was saying, Do everything I tell you to do, and then do this on your own. Normally, he would have howled about how unfair that was. But when his superior dangled the prospect of publication before him.

I am a fish, swimming in the stream. I know that tempting worm may have a hook in it. I know, but I have to bite it anyway, for oh, dear God, I am so very hungry.

Shakespeare looked at what he'd written. Slowly, he nodded. The ordinary was quiet. He had the place almost to himself, for most of the folk who'd eaten supper there had long since left for home.

He had the ordinary so much to himself, in fact, that he'd dared work on Boudicca here, which he seldom did.

And now. Ceremoniously, he inked his pen one last time and, in large letters, wrote a last word at the bottom of the page. Finis.

" 'Sblood," he muttered in weary amazement. "Never thought I to finish't." Even now, he half expected the Spaniards or the English Inquisition to burst in and drag him away in irons.

But all that happened was that Kate asked, "What said you, Master Will?"

"Naught worth hearing, believe you me." Shakespeare folded his papers so no untoward eye might fall on them. "I did but now set down the ending for a tragedy o'er which I've labored long."

"Good for you, then," the serving woman answered. "What's it called, and when will your company perform it?"

"I know not," he told her.

"You know not what it's called?"

"Nay," Shakespeare said impatiently. Too late, he realized she was teasing, and made a face at her. "I know not when we'll give it." He avoided telling her the title. She wouldn't know what it meant-no one without Latin would-but she might remember it, and an inquisitor might be able to tear it out of her.

Shakespeare hadn't steeped himself in conspiracy his whole life long, as men like Robert Cecil and Nick Skeres had done, but he could see the advantages to keeping to himself anything that might prove dangerous if anyone else knew it.

Kate, unfortunately, saw he was holding back. "You're telling me less than you might," she said, more in sorrow than in accusation.

"Telling you aught is more than I should," Shakespeare said, and then, "Telling you that is more than I should."

He paused, hoping she would take the point. She did. She was ignorant, but far from stupid. "I'll ask no more, then," she said. "Go on. Curfew draws nigh." She lowered her voice to add, "God keep thee."

"And thee," Shakespeare answered. He rose from the stool where he'd perched most of the evening, bowed over her hand and kissed it, and left the ordinary for his lodging.

The night was foggy and dank. The moon, not quite two weeks after what the Catholic Church called Easter Sunday, was nearly new. It wouldn't rise till just before sunrise, and wouldn't pierce the mist once it did. A stranger abroad in the London night would get hopelessly lost in moments. Shakespeare intended to go back to the Widow Kendall's house more by the way the street felt under the soles of his feet and by smell than by sight.

His intention collapsed about a dozen paces outside the ordinary. Somebody came hurrying up from the direction of his lodging house. The fog muffled sound, too, so Shakespeare heard only the last few footfalls before the fellow bumped into him. "Oof!" he said, and then, "Have a care, an't please you!"

"Will! Is that you?" The other man's voice came out of darkness impenetrable.

Shakespeare knew it all the same. He wished he didn't. "Kit?" he replied, apprehension making him squeak like a youth. "Why come you hither?"

"Oh, God be praised!" Christopher Marlowe exclaimed-a sure danger sign, for when all went well he was likelier to take the Lord's name in vain than to petition Him with prayer. "Help me, Will! Sweet Jesu, help you me! They bay at my heels, closer every minute."

Ice ran through Shakespeare. "Who dogs you? And for what?" Is it peculiar to you alone, or hath ruin o'erwhelmed all?

"Who?" Marlowe's voice fluttered like a candle flame in a breeze. "The dons, that's who!"

"Mother Mary!" Shakespeare said, an oath he never would have chosen had the Spaniards not landed on English soil. He realized that later; at the moment, panic tried to rise up and choke him, so that he almost turned and fled at random through the shrouded streets of London. Something, though, made him repeat,

"Why seek they you?"

"You know I fancy boys," Marlowe began, and some of Shakespeare's panic fell from his shoulders like a discarded cloak.

"Belike half of London knows you fancy boys," Shakespeare answered; the other poet had never figured out the virtues inherent in simply keeping his mouth shut. But if the dons wanted him because he fancied boys.

They did. Marlowe said, "Anthony Bacon was but the first. They'd fain rid the realm of all sodomites and ingles, and so they'll put me on the gallows if I into their hands do fall. But how could I be otherwise?

Nature that framed us of our elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, did shape me so."

Even on the brink of dreadful death, he struggled to justify himself. That constance left Shakespeare half saddened, half amused-and altogether frightened. "What would you of me?" he asked.

"Why, to help me fly, of course," the other poet answered.

"And how, prithee, might I do that?" Shakespeare demanded. "Am I Daedalus, to give thee wings?" He didn't know himself whether he used thee with Marlowe for the sake of intimacy or insult. Exasperated, he went on, "E'en had I wings to give thee, belike thou'dst fly too near the sun, another Icarus, and plummet into the briny sea."

"Twit me, rate me, as thou wouldst, so that thou help me," Marlowe said. "For in sooth, dear Will"-he laughed a ragged laugh-"where's the harm in loving boys? Quoth Jove, dandling his favorite upon his knee,

"Come, gentle Ganymede and play with me;

I love thee well, say Juno what she will.' "

Shakespeare burst out laughing. He couldn't help himself. Only Marlowe could be vain enough to recite the opening lines from one of his own plays in such an extremity. With pleasure more than a little malicious, Shakespeare used a high, thin, piping voice to give back Ganymede's reply from Dido, Queen of Carthage:

" I would have a jewel for mine ear,

And a fine brooch to put in my hat,

And then I'll hug with you an hundred times.' "

Marlowe hissed like a man trying to bear a wound bravely. "And here, Will, I thought you never paid my verses proper heed. Would I had been wrong."

"Would you had. " Shakespeare shook his head. "No, never mind. 'Tis of no moment now. You must get hence, if they dog you for this. Want you money?"

"Nay. What I have sufficeth me," Marlowe answered.

"Then what think you I might do that you cannot for yourself?" Shakespeare asked. "Hie yourself down to the river. Take ship, if any ship there be that sails on the instant. If there be none such, take a boat away from London, and the first ship you may. So that you outspeed the hue and cry at your heels, all may yet be well, or well enough."

"Or well enough," Marlowe echoed gloomily. "But hark you, Will: a€?well enough' is not. Even a€?well' is scarce well enough."

Nothing ever satisfied him. Shakespeare had known that as long as he'd known the other poet. Marlowe had a jackdaw's curiosity, and a jackdaw's inability to hold a course when something-or someone-new and bright and shiny caught his eye. Shakespeare stepped forward and reached out in the fog. One groping hand grazed Marlowe's face. He dropped it to Marlowe's shoulder. "God speed you, Kit. Get safe away, and come home again when. when times are better."

Marlowe snorted. "I hope I must not wait so long as that." He hugged the breath out of Shakespeare, and kissed him half on the mouth, half on the cheek. "You give good counsel. I'll take it, an I may."

"I'll pray for you," Shakespeare said.

"Belike 'twill do me no lasting harm," Marlowe answered. Having got the last word, he hurried away. The fog muffled his footsteps, and soon swallowed them. Shakespeare sighed. He'd done what he could. If nothing else, he'd talked Marlowe out of his blind panic. That mattered. It might matter a great deal.

"It might," Shakespeare muttered, trying to convince himself.

He made his way through the thick, swirling mist to the Widow Kendall's house. His landlady sat in the parlor, poking up the fire. "I wondered if we'd lost you, Master Will," she said as he closed the door behind him. "Thick as clotted cream out there."

"So it is," Shakespeare agreed. Beads of fog dotted his face and trickled from his beard, as sweat would have on a hot day.

"Will you waste my wood, to give you light wherewith to write?" his landlady asked.

"An it serve my purpose, madam, I reckon it no waste," Shakespeare said with dignity.

"Nay, and why should you?" the Widow Kendall replied. " 'Tis not you buying the wood you burn."

"Not so," Shakespeare said. "I buy it with the rent you have of me each month." She sent him a stony stare. Not wanting her angry at him, he added, "Be that as it may, I need no wood tonight. I finished a play at my ordinary, by the fine, clear light of the candles therein."

"I am glad to hear it," Jane Kendall said, "both for the sake of my wood and for the sake of your rent. So long as you keep writing, so long as your company buys your plays, you'll pay me month by month, eh?"

"Just so," Shakespeare agreed. Where Marlowe was pure, self-centered will, the Widow Kendall was equally pure, self-centered greed.

"And what call you this one?" she asked. "Will't fetch you a fine, fat fee?"

"Very fine, God willing," he said. As he had with Kate, he fought shy of naming Boudicca for her.

"Good, good," she said, smiling. His money, or some of it, was destined to become her money. "Is this the play on the life of good King Philip, then? That surely deserveth more than a common fee, its subject also being more than common."

He shook his head. "No, that will be a history-a pageant, almost a masque. The play I just now finished is a tragedy." That much, he thought he could safely say.

"I'll tell you what's a tragedy, Master Shakespeare," the Widow Kendall said. "What I needs must pay for firewood-marry, 'tis the bleeding of mine own life's blood. "

She went on complaining till Shakespeare took advantage of a brief lull to slip away to his bedroom. Jack Street lay on his back, his mouth wide open, making the night hideous. Me? I snore not, the glazier had insisted. Shakespeare laughed quietly. Street might not be able to hear himself, but everyone else could.

After a moment, the poet's laughter faltered. So far as he could tell, Street recalled nothing of the argument they'd had at Easter. Whatever Cicely Sellis had done to him, its effect lingered. Maybe it wasn't witchcraft. Shakespeare had yet to find another name that fit half so well, though.

He put his papers and pens and ink in his chest, and made sure the lock clicked shut. Then he pulled off his shoes, shed his ruff, and lay down on the bed in doublet and hose. His eyes slid shut. Maybe he snored, too. If he did, he never knew it.

When he woke the next morning, Jack Street's bed was empty. Sam King was dressing for another day of pounding London's unforgiving streets looking for work. "God give you good morrow, Master Will,"

he said as Shakespeare sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"And a good morrow to you as well," Shakespeare answered around a yawn.

"I'm for a bowl of the widow's porridge, and then whatever I can find," King said. The porridge was liable to be the only food he got all day. He had to know as much, but didn't fuss about it.

Shakespeare couldn't help admiring that bleak courage. "Good fortune go before you," he said.

King laughed. "Good fortune hath ever gone before me: so far before me, I see it not. An I run fast enough, though, peradventure I'll catch it up." He bobbed his head in a shy nod, then hurried out to the Widow Kendall's kitchen for whatever bubbled in her pot this morning.

Shakespeare broke his fast on porridge, too. Having eaten, he went up to the Theatre for the day's rehearsal. He worried all the way there. If inquisitors came after Cicely Sellis, would they search everywhere in the house? If they opened his chest and saw the manuscript of Boudicca, he was doomed.

And another question, one that had been in the back of his mind, now came forward: even with Boudicca finished, how could the company rehearse it without being betrayed? The players would have to rehearse. He could see that. When word of Philip's death reached England, they would-they might-give the play on the shortest of notice. They would have to be ready. But how? Yes, he saw the question clearly. The answer? He shook his head.

He was among the first of the company to get to the Theatre. Richard Burbage paced across the stage like a caged wolf-back and forth, back and forth. He nodded to Shakespeare as the poet came in through the groundlings' entrance. "God give you good day, Will," he boomed. "How wags your world?"

Even with only a handful of people in the house, he pitched his voice so folk in the upper gallery-of whom there were at the moment none-could hear him with ease.

"I fare well enough," Shakespeare answered. "And you? Wherefore this prowling?"

"I am to be Alexander today," Burbage reminded him. "As he pursues Darius, he is said to be relentless."

He waved a sheet of paper with his part and stage directions written out. "Seemed I to you relentless?"

"Always," Shakespeare said. Burbage pursued wealth and fame with a singlemindedness that left the poet half jealous, half appalled.

Laughing, Burbage said, "It is one of Kit's plays, mind. A relentless man of his is twice as relentless as any other poet's, as an angry man of his hath twice the choler and a frightened man twice the fear. With his mighty line, he is never one to leave the auditors wondering what sort of folk his phantoms be."

Shakespeare nodded. "Beyond doubt, you speak sooth. But come you down." He gestured. "I'd have a word with you."

"What's toward?" Burbage sat at the edge of the stage, then slid down into the groundlings' pit.

In a low voice, Shakespeare said, "Marlowe is fled. I pray he be fled. Anthony Bacon, belike, was but the first boy-lover the dons and the inquisitors sought. An Kit remain in England, I'd give not a groat for his life."

"A pox!" Burbage exclaimed, as loud as ever-loud enough to make half a dozen players and stagehands look toward him to see what had happened. He muttered to himself, then went on more quietly: "How know you this?"

"From Kit's own lips," Shakespeare answered. "He found me yesternight. I bade him get hence, quick as ever he could-else he'd not stay quick for long. God grant he hearkened to me."

"Ay, may it be so." Burbage made a horrible face. "May it be so indeed. But e'en Marlowe fled's a heavy blow strook against the theatre. For all his cravings sodomitical-and for all his fustian bombast, too-he's the one man I ken fit to measure himself alongside you."

"I thank you for your kindness, the which he would not do." Shakespeare sighed. "We are of an age, you know. But he came first to London, first to the theatre. I daresay he reckoned me but an upstart crow.

And when my name came to signify more than his, it gnawed at him as the vulture at Prometheus his liver." He remembered how very full of spleen Marlowe had been when Thomas Phelippes passed over him for this plot.

"Never could he dissemble," Burbage said, "not for any cause." In an occupied kingdom, he might have been reading Marlowe's epitaph.

"I know." Shakespeare sighed again. "I sent him down to the Thames. I hope he found a ship there, one bound for foreign parts. If not a ship, a boatman who'd bear him out of London to some part whence he might get himself gone."

"Boatmen there aplenty, regardless of the hour." Richard Burbage seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as Shakespeare. After a moment, he added, "What knows Kit of. your enterprise now in train?"

"That such an enterprise is in train, the which is more than likes me," Shakespeare answered. It was also less than the truth, he realized, remembering the copy of the Annals Marlowe had given him. But he said no more to Burbage. What point to worrying the player? If the Spaniards or the English Inquisition caught Marlowe, he knew enough to put paid to everyone and everything. And what he knew he would tell; he had not the stuff of martyrs in him.

"They seek him but for sodomy." Yes, Burbage was trying to reassure himself. Sodomy by itself was a fearsome crime, a capital crime. Next to treason, though, it was the moon next to the sun.

"The enterprise"-Shakespeare liked that bloodless word-"goes on apace. Last night, or ever I saw Marlowe, I wrote finis to Boudicca."

"Good. That's good, Will." Burbage set a hand on his shoulder. "Now God keep Boudicca from writing finis to us all."

A squad of Spanish soldiers at his back, Lope de Vega strode along the northern bank of the Thames, not far from London Bridge. Not so long ago, he'd taken a boat across the river with Nell Lumley to see the bear-baiting in Southwark. He kicked a pebble into the river. He'd crossed the Thames with his mistress-with one of his mistresses-but he'd come back alone.

He straightened, fighting against remembered humiliation. Hadn't he been getting tired of Nell anyway?

Now that he was in love with Lucy Watkins, what did the other Englishwoman matter?

One of the troopers with him pointed. "There's another boatman, seA±or."

" Gracias, Miguel. I see him, too," Lope answered. He shifted to English to call out to the fellow: "God give you good day."

"And to you, sir." The boatman swept off his ragged hat (which, in an earlier, a much earlier, life had probably belonged to a gentleman) and gave de Vega an awkward bow. "Can't carry you and all your friends, sir, I fear me." His gap-toothed smile showed that was meant for a jest.

Lope smiled back. Some wherrymen took their boats out into the Thames empty to keep from talking to him. He'd do what he could to keep this one happy. With a bow of his own-a bow he was careful not to make too smooth, lest it be seen as mockery-he said, "Might I ask you somewhat?"

"Say on, Master Don. I'll answer."

Better and better, de Vega thought. "Were you here on the river night before last?"

"That I was, your honor," the boatman replied. "Meseems I'm ever here. Times is hard. Needs must get what coin I can, eh?"

"Certes," Lope said. "Now, then-saw you a gentleman, an English gentleman, that evening? A man of my years, he would be, more or less, handsome, round-faced, with dark hair longer than mine own and a thin fringe of beard. He styles himself Christopher Marlowe, or sometimes Kit."

He looked for another pebble to kick, but didn't find one. He did not want to hunt Marlowe, not after spending so much time with him in tiring rooms and taverns. But if what he wanted and what his kingdom wanted came into conflict, how could he do anything but his duty?

The wherryman screwed up his face in badly acted thought. "I cannot rightly recollect, sir," he said at last.

"That surprises me not," Lope said sourly, and gave him a silver sixpence. He'd already spent several shillings, and got very little back for his money.

Nor did he this time. The boatman pocketed the coin and took off his hat again. "Gramercy, your honor.

God bless you for showing a poor man kindness. I needs must say, though, I saw me no such man." He spread his oar-callused hand in apology.

A couple of Lope's troopers knew some English. One of them said, "We ought to give that bastard a set of lumps for playing games with us."

Maybe the boatman understood some Spanish. He pointed to the next fellow with a rowboat, saying,

"Haply George there knows somewhat of him you seek."

"We shall see," Lope said in English. In Spanish, he added, "I wouldn't waste my time punishing this motherless lump of dung." If the boatman could follow that, too bad.

The trooper who'd suggested beating the fellow said, "This river smells like a motherless lump of dung."

He wrinkled his nose.

Since he was right, Lope couldn't very well disagree with him. All he said was, "Come on. Let's see what George there has to say." Let's see if I can waste another sixpence.

Gulls soared above the Thames in shrieking swarms. One swooped down and came up with a length of gut as long as Lope's arm in its beak. Half a dozen others chased it, eager to steal the prize. De Vega's stomach did a slow lurch. A pursuing gull grabbed the gut and made away with it. The bird that had scooped it from the water screeched in anger and frustration.

Boats of all sizes went up and down the river. "Westward ho!" shouted the wherrymen bound for Westminster or towns farther up the Thames. "Eastward ho!" shouted the men heading towards the North Sea. Westbound and eastbound boats had to dodge those going back and forth between London and Southwark. Sometimes they couldn't dodge, and fended one another off with oars and poles and impassioned curses.

"Consumption catch thee, thou gorbellied knave!" a boatman yelled.

"Jolt-head! Botchy core! Moon-calf! Louse of a lazar!" returned the fellow who'd fallen foul of him.

Instead of trying to hold their boats apart, they started jabbing at each other with their poles. One of them went into the river with a splash.

"Not the worst sport to watch," a Spanish soldier said.

" Si," Lope said, and then went back to English, calling, "You there, sirrah! Be you George?"

"Ay, 'tis the name my mother gave me," the wherryman answered. "What would you, seA±or?" He pronounced it more like the English word senior.

De Vega asked him about Marlowe. He waited for the vacant stare he'd seen so many times before. To his surprise, he didn't get it. Instead, George nodded. "I carried such a man, yes," he said. "What's he done? Some cozening law, an I mistake me not. A barrator, peradventure, or a figure caster. Summat shrewd."

"Whither took you him?" Lope asked, excitement rising in him. Marlowe wasn't (so far as Lope knew) an agent provocateur or an astrologer, but he was a clever man-though he might have been more clever not to let his cleverness show. "Tell me!"

Now George looked blank. De Vega paid him without hesitation. The boatman eyed the little silver coin, murmured, "God bless the Queen and the King," and made it disappear. He nodded to Lope. "As you say, sir, not yesternight, but that afore't. Ten of the clock, methinks, or a bit later. I'd fetched back a gentleman and his lady from the bear-baiting at Southwark. " He pointed across the Thames, as if towards a foreign country.

"I know of the bear-baiting, and of crossing the river," Lope said tightly. He knew more of such things than he'd wanted to. Shaking his head didn't make the memories go away. "What then?"

"Why, then, sir, I bethought myself, should I hie me home, for that it was a foggy night and for that curfew would come anon, or should I stay yet a while to see what chance might give? Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered, they say. And my boat-the wight whereof I speak, you understand-"

"Yes, yes." Lope fought to hide his impatience. Did this ignorant wherryman think him unable to grasp a metaphor? "Say on, sirrah. Say on."

"I'll do't," George said. "This wight came along the river seeking a boat. a€?Whither would you?' I asked him. I mind me the very words he said. He said, You could row me to hell, and to-night I'd thank you for't.' Then he made as if to shake his head, and laughed a laugh that left me sore afeard, for meseemed

'twas a madman's laugh, and could be none other. And he said, a€?Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' I thought him daft, but-I see you stir, your honor. Know you these words?"

"I do. I know them well. They are from a play, a play writ by the man I seek. That your man spake them proves him that very man. Were he mad or not, you took his penny?"

The boatman nodded. "I did, for a madman's penny spends as well as any other. He bade me take him to Deptford, to the Private Dock there, and so I did. A longer pull than some I make, for which reason I told him I'd have tuppence, in fact, not just the single penny, and he gave it me."

"To Deptford, say you?" That was a shrewd choice. It was close to London, but beyond the city's jurisdiction, lying in the county of Kent. Till the Armada came, it had been a leading English naval yard; even now, many merchant ships tied up at the Private Dock. Lope knew he would have to go through the motions of pursuit, but any chance of catching Marlowe was probably long gone.

"Ay, sir. Deptford. He was quiet as you please in the boat-even dozed somewhat. I thought I'd judged too quick. But he was ta'en strange again leaving the boat. He looked about him, and he said, a€?Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place; for where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be.' I had a priest bless the boat, sir, the very next day, to be safe." He crossed himself.

Had he been a Catholic while Elizabeth ruled England? Maybe, but Lope wouldn't have bet a ha'penny on it. He also made the sign of the cross. "I think you need not fear," he told the wherryman. "Once more, Marlowe but recited words he had earlier writ." He wasn't surprised Marlowe had quoted his own work. He would have been surprised-he would have been thunderstruck-had Marlowe quoted, say, Shakespeare. The man was too full of himself for that.

"Are you done with me, sir?" George asked.

"Nearly." Lope took out a sheet of paper and pen and ink. He wrote, in Spanish, a summary of what the boatman had said. "Have you your letters?" he asked. As he'd expected, George shook his head. Lope thrust paper and pen at him. "Make your mark below my writing, then."

"What say the words?" The boatman couldn't even tell English from Spanish. De Vega translated. George took the pen and made a sprawling X. De Vega and one of his soldiers who was literate witnessed the mark. George asked, "Why seek you this fellow?" Maybe, despite the sixpence, he regretted talking to a Spaniard.

Too late for your second thoughts now, Lope thought as he answered, "Because he is a sodomite."

"Oh." Whatever regrets the Englishman might have had disappeared. "God grant you catch him, then. A filthy business, buggery."

"Yes." De Vega nodded. He meant it, too. And yet, all the same, no small part of him did mourn the pursuit of Marlowe. True, the man violated not only the law of England and Spain but also that of God.

But God had also granted him a truly splendid gift of words. Lope wondered why the Lord had chosen to give the same man the great urge to sin and the great gift. That, though, was God's business, not his.

While he spoke in English with the wherryman, the soldier who'd witnessed the man's statement told the other troopers what was going on. One of them asked, "Sir, do we go down the river to this Deptford place?"

"I think we do," Lope answered, not quite happily. "I hope the Englishmen there don't obstruct us."

"If they do, we give 'em a good kick in the cojones, and after that they won't any more," another soldier said. The rest laughed the wolfish laughs of men who looked forward to giving the English another good kick.

George's boat wouldn't hold Lope and all his men. They had to walk along the riverside till they found a wherryman who could take the lot of them to Deptford. De Vega paid him, and off they went. "Eastward ho!" the boatman cried at the top of his lungs.

Though Deptford lay just down the Thames from London, Lope was conscious of being in a different world when he got out of the boat. London brawled. Deptford ambled. And he and his troopers drew more surprised looks and more hard looks in five minutes in Deptford than they would have in a day in London. London was England's beating heart, and the Spaniards had to hold it to help Isabella and Albert hold the kingdom. That meant they were an everyday presence there. Not in Deptford; once they'd closed the naval shipyard there, they'd left the place to its own devices.

Lope hadn't been asking questions along the wharfs for very long before a sheriff came up to question him. The fellow wore a leather tunic over his doublet to keep it clean, a black felt hat with a twisted hatband, slops, hose dyed dark blue with woad, and sturdy shoes. The staff of office he carried could double as a formidable club. He introduced himself as Peter Norris.

After Lope explained whom he sought, and why, Norris shrugged and said, "I fear me you'll not lay hands on him, sir: he's surely fled. These past two days, we've had a carrack put to sea bound for Copenhagen, a galleon bound for Hamburg, and some smaller ship-I misremember of what sort-bound for Calais. An he had the silver for to buy his passage, he'd be aboard one or another of 'em."

"I fear me you have reason, Sheriff," Lope said. No, he wasn't altogether sorry, however much he tried to keep that to himself.

"It sorrows me he hath escaped you. A bugger's naught but gallows-fruit," Norris said. "And you have come from London on a bootless errand, which sorrows me as well."

He sounded as if he meant it. Lope wondered if he would have seemed so friendly had the chase been for a traitor rather than a sodomite. The Spaniard had his doubts, but didn't have to test them. this time. He said, "For your kindness, sir, may I stand you to a stoup of wine?"

Norris touched the brim of his hat. "Gramercy, Don Lope. Eleanor Bull's ordinary, close by in Deptford Strand, hath a fine Candia malmsey."

The ordinary proved a pleasant place in other ways as well. It had a garden behind it that would prove more enjoyable when the plants came into full leaf. The proprietress showed Sheriff Norris, Lope, and his soldiers into a room with a bed, a long table, and a bench next to the table. De Vega and the Englishmen sat side by side. The Spanish soldiers sprawled here, there, and everywhere.

As Norris had said, Eleanor Bull's malmsey was excellent. Sipping the sweet, strong wine, Lope asked,

"Can you find for me the names of the ships wherein Marlowe might have fled?"

"Certes. I'll send 'em in a letter," Peter Norris said. Lope nodded. Maybe the sheriff would, maybe he wouldn't. Either way, de Vega had enough for a report that would satisfy his own superiors. Norris hesitated, then asked, "This Marlowe. Seek you the poet of that name?"

" 'Tis the very man, I fear me," Lope replied.

"Pity," Norris said. "By my halidom, sir, his art surpasseth even Will Shakespeare's."

"Think you so?" Lope said. "I believe you are mistook, and right gladly will I tell you why." He and Sheriff Norris spent the next couple of hours arguing about the theatre. He hadn't expected to be able to mix business and pleasure so, and was sorry when at last he did have to go back to London.

Shakespeare had never imagined that one day he might actually want to find Nicholas Skeres, but he did. Skeres had a way of appearing out of thin air, most often when he was least welcome, and throwing Shakespeare's days, if not his life, into confusion. Now Shakespeare found himself looking for the smooth-talking go-between whenever he went outside, looking for him and not seeing him.

Skeres found him one day when spring at last began to look as if it were more than a date in the almanac, a day when the sun shone warm and the air began to smell green, a day when redbreasts and linnets and chaffinches sang. He fell into stride beside Shakespeare as the poet made his way up towards Bishopsgate. "Give you good morrow, Master Will," he said.

"And you, Master Nick," Shakespeare told him. "I had hoped we might meet."

"Time is ripe." Skeres didn't explain how he knew it was, or why he thought so. Shakespeare almost asked him, but in the end held back. Skeres' answer would either be evasive or an outright lie. Smiling, the devious little man went on, "All's well with you, sir?"

"Well enough, and my thanks for asking." Shakespeare looked about. If Skeres could appear from nowhere, a Spanish spy might do the same. That being so, the poet named no names: "How fares your principal?"

"Not so well. He fails, and knows himself to fail." The corners of Nick Skeres' mouth turned down.

"Despite his brave spirit, 'tis hard, sore hard-and as hard for his son, who shall inherit the family business when God's will be done." He too was careful of the words he spoke where anyone might hear.

"Sore hard indeed," Shakespeare said. He had seen for himself in the house close by the Spanish barracks that the shadow of death lay over Sir William Cecil. That formidable intellect, that indomitable will-now trapped in a body ever less able to meet the demands they made on it? Shakespeare shivered as if a black cat had darted across the street in front of him. When my time comes, Lord, by Thy mercy let it come quickly. Till meeting Lord Burghley, he'd never thought to make such a prayer. But dying by inches, knowing each inch lost was lost forever. He shook his head. He feared death less than dying.

And well you might, bethinking yourself of the death the Spaniards or the Inquisition would give you. All at once, he wanted to do as Marlowe had done, to take ship and flee out of England. I would be safe in foreign parts, with no dons nor inquisitors to dog me. Speaking with Nick Skeres brought home the danger he faced.

That danger would only get worse after William Cecil died, too. Crookbacked Robert was naturally a creature of the shadows, and had thrived for years in the enormous shadow his great father cast. Once that shadow vanished, could Robert Cecil carry on in full light of day? He would have to try, but it wouldn't be easy for him.

"What seek you of me?" Skeres asked.

"Know your masters that my commission for them is complete?" Shakespeare asked in return.

Nicholas Skeres nodded. "Yes. They know. 'Twas on that account they sent me to you. I ask again: what need you of them, or of me?"

"The names of certain men," Shakespeare said, and explained why.

"Ah." Skeres gave him another nod. "You may rely on them, and on me." He hurried away, and soon vanished into the crowd. Shakespeare went on towards Bishopsgate. He knew he could rely on the Cecils; they would do all they could for him. Relying on Nick Skeres? Shakespeare shook his head at the absurdity of the notion and kept on walking.

At the Theatre that day, Lord Westmorland's Men offered The Cobbler's Holiday, a comedy by Thomas Dekker. It was a pleasant enough piece of work, even if the plot showed a few holes. Most of the time, Shakespeare-a good cobbler of dramas himself-would have patched those holes, or found ways for Dekker to do it himself, before the play reached the stage. He hadn't had the chance here, not when he was busy with two of his own.

It might have gone off well enough even so. Such plays often did. Good jests (even more to the point, frequent jests) and spritely staging hid flaws that would have been obvious on reading the script.

Not this time. Among the groundlings were a dozen or more Oxford undergraduates, come to London on some business of their own and taking in a play before or after it. The university trained them to pick things to pieces. They jeered every flaw they found and, as undergraduates were wont to do, went from jeering flaws to jeering players. Even by the rough standards groundlings set, they were loud and obnoxious.

Richard Burbage, who played the cobbler, went on with his role as if the Oxonians did not exist. Will Kemp, ideally cast in the role of the title character's blundering, befuddled friend, had a thinner skin.

Shakespeare tried to calm him when he retreated to the tiring room during a scene in which he didn't appear: "This too shall pass away."

"May the lot of them pass away," the clown growled, "and be buried unshriven."

"Tomorrow they'll be gone," Shakespeare said. "Never do they linger."

"Nay-only the stink of 'em," Kemp said. But Shakespeare thought he'd soothed the other man's temper before Kemp had to go out again.

And then one of the university wits noticed an inconsistency Dekker had left in the plot and shouted to Kemp: "No, fool, you said just now she'd gone to Canterbury! What a knavish fool thou art, and the blockhead cobbler, too!" His voice was loud and shrill. The whole Theatre must have heard him. Giggles and murmurs and gasps rose from every side.

Burbage started into his next speech. Will Kemp raised a hand. Burbage stopped, startled; the gesture wasn't one they'd rehearsed. Kemp glared out at the undergraduates. "Is it not better," he demanded, "to make a fool of the world as I have done, than to be fooled of the world as you scholars are?"

Their jeers brought the play to a standstill, as he must have known they would. "Wretched puling fool!"

they shouted. "Thou rag! Thou dishclout! Spartan dog! Superstitious, idle-headed boor!"

Kemp beamed out at them, a smile on his round face. "Say on, say on!" he urged them. "Ay, say on, you starveling popinjays, you abject anatomies. Be merry my lads, for coming here you have happened upon the most excellent vocation in the world for money: they come north and south to bring it to our playhouse. And for honors, who is of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kemp?"

He bowed low. A moment later, Burbage swept off his hat and did the same. The groundlings whooped and cheered them. A couple of the university wits kept trying to mock Kemp and the other players, but most fell silent. They lived a hungry life at Oxford. Had it been otherwise, they would have paid more than a penny each to see The Cobbler's Holiday.

Will Kemp bowed again. "Have we your leave, gentles, to proceed?"

"Ay!" the groundlings roared. The same shout came from the galleries.

"Gramercy," he said, and turned back to Burbage. "I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble and depart." As effortlessly as he'd stepped out of character, he returned to it.

"God keep thee out of my sight," Burbage retorted, and the play went on. The Oxford undergraduates troubled it no more. Kemp had outfaced them. Shakespeare hadn't been sure anyone could, but the clown had brought it off.

Afterwards, in the tiring room, everyone made much of Kemp. He was unwontedly modest. As he cleaned greasepaint from his cheeks, he said, "Easy to be bold, bawling out from a crowd like a calf-a moon-calf-seeking his dam's teat. But they went mild as the milk they cried for on seeing me bold in my own person, solus, from the stage."

"Three cheers!" someone called, and they rang from the roof and walls. Will Kemp sprang to his feet and bowed, as he had after subduing the university wits. That set off fresh applause from the crowd around him.

The noise made Shakespeare's head ache. He soaped his face and splashed water on it from a basin.

The sooner he could leave the Theatre today, the happier he would be. He wanted to work on King Philip. The sooner that piece was done, the sooner he could start thinking of his own ideas once more.

They might bring less lucre than those proposed by English noble or Spanish don, but they were his.

His face was buried in a towel when someone spoke in a low voice: "A word with you, Master Shakespeare, an I may?"

He lowered the linen towel. There stood the company's new book-keeper and prompter, the late Geoffrey Martin's replacement. Having compassed the one man's death, Shakespeare dared not ignore the other. "What would you, Master Vincent?" he asked.

"I'd speak with you of your latest, Master Shakespeare, whilst other business distracts the company."

Thomas Vincent nodded towards the crowd of people still hanging on Will Kemp's every word, still sniggering at his every smirk. He had the sense not to name Boudicca; as usual after a performance, not all the folk in the tiring room belonged to Lord Westmorland's Men.

And, for aught I know, we have our own spying serpent amongst us, as Satan did even in Eden, Shakespeare thought. "I attend," he told Vincent.

"A scribe shall make your foul papers into parts the players shall use to learn their lines," the prompter said.

"Certes." Shakespeare nodded. "My character, I know, can be less than easy to make out."

Thomas Vincent nodded, too, relief on his face. "I would not offend, sir, not for the world, but. You knowing of the trouble, I may speak freely."

"By all means," Shakespeare said. Vincent was more polite about it than poor Geoff Martin had been.

Had Shakespeare believed all the late prompter's slanders, he would never have presumed to take pen in hand.

Even if Vincent was polite, he pressed ahead: "And, were your hand never so excellent, your latest still causeth. ah, difficulties in choosing a scribe."

Every time a new pair of eyes saw Boudicca, the risk of betrayal grew. Vincent did his best to say that without actually saying it. Shakespeare didn't need it spelled out. He knew it all too well, as he had since Thomas Phelippes first drew him into the plot. If a scribe writing out fair copies for the players took them to the Spaniards. If that happened, everyone in Lord Westmorland's Men would die the death.

But the poet said, "Fear not." Hearing those words coming from his mouth almost made him laugh out loud. Only when he was sure he wouldn't did he go on, "Haply I may name you a name anon."

"May it be so," Vincent said, and Shakespeare had to remember not to cross himself to echo that sentiment.