Ruled Britannia

IX

It was the middle of a fine, bright morning. When Lope de Vega walked into his rooms in the Spanish barracks, he found his servant curled into a ball under the covers, fast asleep. De Vega sighed.

Diego had been almost unnaturally good and obedient these past few weeks. More surprising than his backsliding was how long it had taken.

Lope shook him, not at all gently. "Wake up! By God and St. James, you're not the best boy in Spain."

Diego muttered something that had no real words in it. Lope shook him again, even harder this time.

"Wake up!" he repeated.

His servant yawned and rubbed his eyes. "Oh, hello, seA±or. I didn't-"

"Expect you," de Vega finished for him, his tone sour. "You're supposed to do your job whether I'm here or not, Diego."

"I know, I know," Diego said sulkily. He yawned again, though he did get out of bed before Lope started screaming at him. "I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. It's only that. I get tired."

He meant it. He was the picture of rumpled sincerity. That he could mean it made Lope marvel. "And the less you do, the more tired you get, too," Lope said. "If you did nothing at all, you would sleep all day long and all night long as well-and you would love every moment of it. Are you a man or an oyster?"

"I am a man who likes oysters," Diego replied with dignity. "Now that you've got me up, what is it that's so important for me to do?"

" El mejor mozo de Espana," Lope told him. "You may not be the best boy in Spain, or even England, but you're damned well in The Best Boy in Spain, and it's time to rehearse. Come on. Get moving. Do you want Enrique to give you the horse laugh?"

"You think I care about that maricA?n?" Diego said. "Not likely. If his arsehole isn't wider than the Thames-"

"Enough of your filth!" Lope exclaimed. "You've said it before, but you've got no proof. None. Not a farthing's worth. Not a flyspeck's worth. So keep your mouth shut and don't make trouble. It'll turn out worse for you than for the people you're trying to hurt, and you can bet on that."

"Oh, yes. Oh, yes." Diego struck a pose more dramatic than any he was likely to take in The Best Boy in Spain. "When an ordinary fellow says anything about a nobleman's servant, he's always wrong. Even when he's right, he's wrong."

"When an ordinary fellow talks about a nobleman's servant, he'd better be right," Lope said. "And you aren't, or you can't prove you are. So you'd better shut up about that."

"All right, seA±or. I'll keep quiet." Diego still sounded surly. "But you'll see whether I'm right or not. In the end, you'll see. And when you do, I'm going to say, I told you so.' "

"Don't gloat till you have the chance," Lope said. "For that matter, remember your station in life. Whether you're right or you're wrong, you're still a servant. You're still my servant. So don't gloat too much even if you turn out to be right."

That sat none too well with Diego. Lope could see as much. But the servant put on a pair of shoes and accompanied him to the courtyard where his makeshift company was rehearsing El mejor mozo de Espana. Even in Spain, it would have made a spartan rehearsal ground. Here in England, where de Vega could compare it to the luxury of the Theatre and the other halls where plays were presented, it seemed more austere yet.

Austere? Lope laughed at himself. What you really mean is cheap, makeshift, shabby. He wondered what Shakespeare would think, seeing what he had to work with. Shakespeare was a gentle, courteous man. He would, without a doubt, give what praise he could. He would also, and equally without a doubt, be appalled.

As Lope had expected, Enrique was already there. He sat on the ground, his back against a brick wall, as he solemnly studied his parts. He was to play several small roles: a Moor, a page, and one of Ferdinand's friends. When he saw Lope, he sprang to his feet and bowed. " Buenos dias, senor."

Polite as a cat, he also bowed to Diego, though not so deeply. " Buenos dA-as."

"A good day to you as well," Lope replied, and bowed back as superior to inferior. Diego, still grouchy, only nodded. Lope trod on his foot. Thus cued, he did bow. Lope didn't want Captain Guzman's servant offended by anyone connected to him.

Enrique didn't seem offended. He seemed enthusiastic. He waved sheets of paper in the air. "This is an excellent play, senor, truly excellent. No one in Madrid will see anything better this year. I'm sure of that."

"You are too kind," Lope murmured. He was no more immune to flattery than anyone else-he was less immune to flattery than a lot of people. When he bowed again to show his pleasure, it was almost as equal to equal. Diego looked disgusted. De Vega debated stepping on his foot again.

Before he could, Enrique asked, "Tell me, seA±or, is it really true what the soldier over there says? A real woman, a real Spanish woman, is going to play Isabella? That will be wonderful-wonderful, I tell you. The wife of an officer who could afford to bring her here, he told me."

De Vega shot Diego a look that said, Would he be so happy about a woman if he didn't care for them? His servant's sneer replied, All he cares about is the play. If she makes it better, that's what matters to him. With a scowl, Lope turned back to Enrique. "A woman, yes. A Spaniard, of course-could an Englishwoman play our great Queen? The wife of an officer? No. Don Alejandro brought his mistress-her name's Catalina Ibanez-to London, not his wife. And a good thing, too, for the play. A nobleman's wife could never appear on stage. That would be scandalous. But his mistress?

No trouble there."

"Ah. I see." Enrique nodded. "I did wonder. But it is Don Alejandro de Recalde's woman, then?

Corporal Fernandez had that right?"

"Yes, he did," Lope said.

Diego guffawed. "If I had a choice between bringing my wife and my mistress to this miserable, freezing place, I'd bring the one who kept me warmer, too."

"Be careful, or you'll be sorry," Enrique whispered through lips that hardly moved. "Here she comes."

Don Alejandro's mistress knew how to make an entrance. She swept into the courtyard with a couple of serving women in her wake. They were both pretty, but seemed plain beside her. She was tiny but perfect. No, not quite perfect: she had a tiny mole by the corner of her mouth.

Be careful, or you'll be sorry. De Vega knew Enrique hadn't been talking to him, and hadn't meant that kind of care when he was talking to Diego. But the servant's words might have been meant for Lope. He couldn't take his eyes off Catalina IbaA±ez. and where his eyes went, he wanted his hands and his lips to follow.

He swept off his hat and bowed as low to her as if she really were Isabella of Castile, the first Queen of a united Spain. " Buenos dias, Dona Catalina," he said. A noble's mistress didn't really deserve to be called doA±a; out of the corner of his eye, he saw status-conscious Enrique raise an eyebrow some tiny fraction of an inch.

Catalina Ibanez accept the title as nothing less than her due. " Buenos dias," she replied with truly queenly condescension. Her black eyes snapped. "Is everyone ready? Is everything ready?" Everyone and everything had better be, her tone warned. When Lope didn't say no, she nodded grudging approval. "Let's get on with the rehearsal, then. I have plenty of other things to do once I'm finished here." She tossed her head.

Be careful, or you'll be sorry. Lope hadn't lived his life being careful. He found it wildly unlikely he'd start now. Yes, Catalina Ibanez was a nobleman's plaything. Yes, she was trouble in a beautiful wrapping. Yes, she had no more pity and no more regard for anyone else than a cat did. Lope knew all that. Every bit of it was obvious at first glance. None of it stopped him from falling in love. Nothing had ever stopped him from falling in love.

He hadn't fallen out of love with Lucy Watkins. He didn't fall out of love with one woman when he fell in love with another. No, his way was to pile one love on another, adding delight to delight. till the whole rickety structure came crashing down on top of him, as it had outside the bear-baiting arena down in Southwark.

He gazed at Catalina Ibanez-and found her looking back, those midnight eyes full of old, cold wisdom. She knew. Oh yes, she knew. He hadn't said a word yet, but she knew everything there was to know. He didn't think she could read or write, but some things, plainly, she'd been born knowing.

Be careful, or you'll be sorry. Lope sighed. He saw no way this could possibly end well. He intended to go on with it, go through with it, anyhow.

Later. Not yet. El mejor mozo de Espana came first. Even set beside his love affairs, the words, the rhymes, the verses in his head counted for more. What had Shakespeare said in Prince of Denmark?

The play's the thing-that was the line. "Take your places, then, ladies and gentlemen," Lope said. "First act, first scene. We'll start from where Rodrigo the page enters with his guitar and speaks to Isabella."

Rodrigo was played by the strapping Spanish corporal named Joaquin Fernandez. He was tall as a tree, blond as an Englishman, handsome as an angel-and wooden as a block. He stumbled through his lines.

Catalina Ibanez replied,

"Tres cosas parecen bien:

el religioso rezando,

el gallardo caballero

ejercitando el acero,

y la dama honesta silando."

She wasn't just pretty. She could act. Unlike poor Fernandez (whose good looks still worried Lope), when she spoke, you believed three things seemed good to her-a monk praying, a gallant knight going to war sword in hand, and an honest woman spinning.

That had to be acting. De Vega couldn't imagine Catalina IbaA±ez caring about monks or honest women spinning-gallant knights were liable to be a different story. But, listening to her, you believed she cared, and that was the mystery of acting. If the audience believed, nothing else mattered.

On they went. Joaquin Fernandez had at least learned his lines. He might get better-a little. Catalina sparkled without much help. Lope knew how hard that was. No matter who surrounded her, this play would work as long as she was in it. De Vega felt that in his bones.

I wish Shakespeare had Spanish enough to follow this, he thought as the scene ended. I wish he could see the difference using actresses makes, too. He shrugged. The Englishman would just have to bumble along in his own little arena with its own foolish conventions. If that meant his work never got the attention it deserved in the wider world, well, such was life.

"Bravo, Corporal Fernandez!" Lope said. Fernandez blinked. He wasn't used to getting praise from the playwright. Lope went on, "And brava, DoA±a Catalina, your Majesty! Truly Spain will come into its own with you on the throne."

"Thank you, Senior Lieutenant," Catalina IbaA±ez purred. She dropped him a curtsy. Their eyes locked.

Oh, yes, she'd noticed him watching her. Or rather, she'd noticed the way he watched her-not just as an author and director watched an actress, which he had every right to do, but as a man watched a woman he desired. If she wanted him, too, then in some sense he had every right to do that as well-though Don Alejandro de Recalde, her keeper, would have a different opinion.

"All right," Lope said. "Let's go on." He might have been speaking to the assembled players. People shifted, getting ready for the next scene.

Or he might have been speaking to Catalina IbaA±ez alone, all the rest of them forgotten. By the way her red, full lips curved into the smallest of smiles, she thought he was. Her eyes met his again, just for a moment. Yes, let's, they said.

Kate poured beer into Shakespeare's mug. "I thank you," he said absently. He'd eaten more than half of his kidney pie before noticing how good it was-or, indeed, paying much attention to what it was.

Most of him focused on King Philip. He'd stormed ahead the night before, and he couldn't wait to get to work tonight. The candle at his table was tall and thick and bright. It would surely burn till curfew, or maybe even a little longer.

The door to the ordinary opened. Shakespeare didn't look up in alarm, as he'd had to whenever it opened while he was working on Boudicca. He'd seldom dared write any of that play here, but even having it at the forefront of his thoughts left him nervous-left him, to be honest, terrified. If Spaniards or priests from the English Inquisition burst in now, he could show them this manuscript with a clear conscience.

But the man who came in was neither don nor inquisitor. He was pale, slight, pockmarked, bespectacled: a man who'd blend into any company in which he found himself. The poet hardly heeded him till he pulled up a stool and sat down, saying, "Give you good den, Master Shakespeare."

"Oh!" Shakespeare stared in surprise-and yes, alarm came flooding back. He tried to hide it behind a nod that was almost a seated bow. "God give you good even, Master Phelippes."

"I am your servant, sir," Thomas Phelippes said, a great thumping lie: the dusty little man was surely someone's servant, but not Shakespeare's. Did he rank above Nick Skeres or under him? Above, Shakespeare thought. Phelippes, after all, was the one who'd brought him into this business in the first place.

Kate came up to the table. "Good even, sir," she said to Phelippes. "The threepenny supper is kidney pie, an't please you."

"Monstrous fine, too," Shakespeare added, spooning up some more of his.

Phelippes shook his head. "I have eat, mistress," he said. "A stoup of Rhenish wine'd please me, though."

"I'll fetch it presently." Kate hurried away and, as she'd promised, returned with the wine at once.

Phelippes set a penny on the table. She took it and withdrew.

"What would you?" Shakespeare asked. "Or is't, what would you of me?"

"Seek you a scribe?" Phelippes inquired in return. "So I am given to understand."

Shakespeare frowned. "I grow out of patience with others knowing my affairs ere I learn of them myself."

"I know all manner of strange things," the dusty little man answered, not without pride.

He would never be a hero on the battlefield, nor, Shakespeare judged, with the ladies, and so had to make do with what he knew. Twitting him about it would only make an enemy. "Ken you a scribe, then?"

Shakespeare asked. "A scribe who can read what's set before him, write out a fair copy, and speak never a word of't thereafter?"

"I ken such a man, but not well," Phelippes said with a small smile.

"That will not serve," Shakespeare said. "If you cannot swear he be trusty-"

Phelippes held up a hand. That small smile grew bigger. "You mistake me, sir. I but repeat a Grecian's jest when asked by someone who knew him not if he knew himself. I am the man."

"Ah?" Shakespeare was not at all convinced Phelippes was trusty. After all, he worked at the right hand of Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s. And yet, plainly, Don Diego's was not the only right hand at which he worked. Wanting very much to ask him about that, Shakespeare knew he couldn't: he would get back either no answer or whatever lie seemed most useful to Phelippes. But he could say, "I'd fain see your character or ever I commend you to Master Vincent."

"Think you my claim by some great degree outdoth performance?" Thomas Phelippes sounded dryly amused. His mirth convinced Shakespeare he likely could do as he claimed. Even as Shakespeare started to say he needed no proof after all, the pockmarked little man cut him off: "Have you pen and paper here?"

"Ay." Shakespeare left them on the floor by his feet while he ate, to keep from spilling gravy on them. He bent now, picked them up, and set them on the table.

"Good. Give them me, I pray you," Phelippes said. "I shall see what I make of your hand, and you will see what you make of mine." He looked at some of what Shakespeare had written, then up at the poet himself. "This is Philip, sending forth the Armada?"

"It is," Shakespeare answered. "But for myself, you are the first to see't."

"A privilege indeed," Phelippes murmured, and then began to read:

" a€?Rough rigor looks outright, and still prevails:

Let sword, let fire, let torments be their end.

Severity upholds both realm and rule.

What then for minds, which have revenging moods,

And ne'er forget the cross they boldly bear?

And as for England's desperate and disloyal plots

Spaniards, remember, write it on your walls,

That rebels, traitors and conspirators

Shall feel the flames of ever-flaming fire

Which are not quenched with a sea of tears.' "

Looking up again, he nodded. " 'Twill serve-'twill serve very well. And a pretty contrast you draw 'twixt his Most Catholic Majesty's just fury here and the mercy of her life he grants Elizabeth conquered."

"Gramercy," Shakespeare said automatically, and then, staring, "How know you of that?"

Phelippes clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Your business is to write, the which you do most excellent well. Mine, I told you, is to know. Think you. "-the pause was a name he did not say aloud-"would choose me, would use me, did I not know passing well?"

Had he named that name, would it have been Sir William Cecil's or that of Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s? Or might he have chosen one as readily as the other? Shakespeare wished the question hadn't occurred to him. Phelippes openly avowed being a tool. Might not any man take up a tool and cut with it?

Phelippes tore off the bottom part of the sheet of paper on which Shakespeare had been writing.

Shakespeare stifled a sigh. The other man surely would not pay him for the paper. Phelippes inked a pen.

He began to write. Shakespeare's own hand was quick and assured, if not a thing of beauty. But his eyes widened as he watched Phelippes. The bespectacled little man's talents weren't showy, but talents he unquestionably had. The goose quill raced over the paper at a speed that put Shakespeare's best to shame.

"Here." Phelippes handed him the scrap he'd torn off. "Will it serve, think you?"

He'd copied out the bit of King Philip's speech he'd read before. Shakespeare stared. He himself used the native English hand he'd learned in school back in Stratford; his writing had grown more fluid over the years because he did so much of it, but had never changed its essential nature. Phelippes' studied Italian script, by contrast, was so very perfect, an automaton might have turned it out. And he'd written in haste here, not at leisure.

"You know full well 'twill serve, ay, and more than serve," Shakespeare answered. "I yield you the palm, Master Phelippes, and own I have not seen so fine a character writ so swift in all my days. The writing masters who show their art before the general could not outdo you."

He'd meant it for praise, but Thomas Phelippes only sniffed and looked at him over the tops of his spectacles. "Those disguised cheaters and prating mountebanks," he said scornfully. "Thread-bare jugglers, the lot of them. They write to be writing. I write to be read, and need no great show towards that end."

He prides himself in his very obscurity, Shakespeare realized. He'd liefer be a greyhen, unseen against the heather, than a strutting peacock flashing his feathers for all to admire. That struck the poet as a perverse pride. Most Englishmen-and Spaniards, too-gloried in display, so much so as to make deliberate self-effacement seem unnatural.

But that was wide of the mark. "I shall give Master Vincent your name," Shakespeare said. Phelippes nodded complacently. The poet asked, "How shall he inquire after you?"

"Never mind," Phelippes said. "So that he hath my name, it sufficeth me. Come the time, we shall know each the other." He rose from his stool. "Farewell." With no more flourish than when he'd come in, he slipped out of the ordinary.

"What a strange little man," Kate said a few minutes later-she seemed to need so long to realize Phelippes had gone.

"Strange?" Shakespeare considered that. After a moment, he shook his head. "He is far stranger than simply strange."

The serving woman frowned. "Will you speak in riddles?"

"How not, speaking of one?" He didn't explain himself. He wasn't sure he could have explained himself, poet though he was. But he knew what he meant.

When he went to the Theatre the next day, he told Thomas Vincent of Phelippes. The prompter nodded, but asked, "Hath he the required discretion?"

"Of discretion he hath a surplusage," Shakespeare answered. "He wants some of the goodly qualities framing a man of parts, but discretion? Never."

"I rely on your judgment, as I needs must here," Vincent said. "An you be mistook-" He broke off, as if he didn't even want to think about that.

Neither did Shakespeare, but he said, "Therein, I am not."

"God grant it be so," Vincent said. "And when may I look for King Philip?"

He was as pushy as a prompter should be. "Anon," Shakespeare told him. "Anon."

"Anon, anon," Thomas Vincent echoed mockingly. "Are you then metamorphosed into a drawer at the Boar's Head, ever vowing to cure ails with ale and never bringing the which is promised?"

"You'll have't, and in good time," the poet said, letting a little irritation show. "King Philip breathes yet, mind you. We stray close to treason, treating of his mortality ere it be proved."

"Don Diego hath given you his commission," Vincent said. "That being so, treason enters not into the question."

"The question, say you?" Shakespeare shivered, though the day was mild enough. When he thought of the question, he thought of endless hogsheads of water funneled down his throat, of thumbscrews, of iron boots thrust into the fire, of all the fiendish ingenuity Spaniards and home-grown English inquisitors could bring to bear in interrogating some luckless wretch who'd fallen into their clutches.

And he had no trouble at all seeing himself as a luckless wretch.

"How may I find this Master. Phillips, said you?"

"Phelippes," Shakespeare corrected. "He told me he would make himself known to you in good time."

"He told you that, did he?" Vincent turned his head a little to one side and brought a hand up to his ear, as if imagining he were listening to a conversation at which he hadn't been present. "Quotha, a€?I shall make myself known to him in good time.' " He sounded preposterously pompous. "And then you would have nodded and said, a€?Let it be so, Master Phelippes.' " Suddenly he stabbed a forefinger at Shakespeare. "But if he fail to make himself known to me?"

"Then we are betrayed, and God have mercy on our souls," Shakespeare said. Thomas Vincent asked him no more questions.

He wished the same would have been true of the players. He'd had to sound them out, one by one, knowing a wrong word in the wrong ear would bring catastrophe down upon them all. He felt as if he were defusing the Hellburner of Antwerp each time he spoke to one of them. At his nod, Richard Burbage had eased a couple of devout Papists from the company-both of them hired men, fortunately, and not sharers whom the other sharers would have had to buy out. Some of those who remained, and who knew what was toward, seemed to think it certain no one not of their persuasion was left in the Theatre. They were careless enough with what they said to make Shakespeare flinch several times a day-or, when things were bad, several times an hour.

It would have been even worse had they seen their parts for Boudicca and begun throwing around lines from the play. That would come soon enough-all too soon, Shakespeare feared. Even now, a robustious periwig-pated fellow named Matthew Quinn got a laugh and a cheer by shouting out that all Jesuits should be flung into the sea.

"Only chance, only luck, Lieutenant de Vega came not this morning, else he had been here to catch that,"

Shakespeare said to Burbage in the tiring room after the company gave the day's play.

"I have spoke to Master Quinn," Burbage answered grimly. "The rascally sheep-biter avouches he shall not be so spendthrift of tongue henceforward."

Will Kemp came up to the two of them puffing on a pipe of tobacco. Still nervous and irritable, Shakespeare spoke more petulantly than he might have: "How can you bear that stinking thing?"

"How?" Kemp, for a wonder, took no offense. "Why, naught simpler-it holds from my nostrils the reek of yon affectioned ass." He pointed with his chin towards Matt Quinn. "And they style me fool and clown." He rolled his eyes.

"They call you by the names you have earned," Burbage said. "The names Master Quinn hath earned for this day's business needs must be named by Satan himself, none other having the tongue to withstand the flames therefrom engendered."

"Better Quinn were dis gendered," Shakespeare said. "The fright he gave me, I'd not sorrow to see him lose both tongue and yard."

"You're a bloody kern today," Kemp said.

"Nay." Shakespeare shook his head. "I thirst for no blood, nor want none spilled-most especially not mine own."

"Master Quinn will attend henceforth," Burbage promised. "He stakes his life upon't."

"The game hath higher stakes than that," Shakespeare said, "for his I reckon worthless, but I crave mine own to keep."

"And they style me fool and clown," Will Kemp repeated. Shakespeare left-all but fled-the tiring room a moment later. He knew this plot was all too likely to miscarry, but wished Kemp hadn't reminded him of it quite like that.

"Ah, my love, I must go," Lope de Vega murmured regretfully.

Lucy Watkins clung to him. "Stay with me," she said. "Stay with me forever. Till I met thee, I knew not what love was."

"Thy lips are sweet," he said, and kissed her. But then he got out of the narrow bed and began to dress.

"Still, I must away. Duty calls." Duty would consist of more rehearsals for El mejor mozo de Espana.

Lope knew he would go back to his games with Catalina IbaA±ez. The more he saw of Don Alejandro de Recalde's mistress, the more games he wanted to play with her. That didn't mean he despised Lucy, but the thrill of the chase was gone.

Softly, Lucy began to weep. "Would thou gavest me all thy duty."

"I may not. What I may give thee, I do." What I don't give to Catalina, Lope thought. Lucy knew nothing of the other woman. Lope dabbed at her face with the coverlet. "Here, dry thine eyes. We'll meet again, and soon. And when we do meet, let it be with gladness."

"I always come to thee with gladness," the Englishwoman said. "But when thou goest. " She shook her head and snuffled. At last, though, she too sat up and reached for the clothes she'd so carelessly let fall to the floor a little while earlier.

By then, Lope was pulling on his boots. He'd had plenty of practice dressing in a hurry. He didn't urge Lucy to move faster. Better-more discreet-if they weren't seen coming down the stairs together from the rooms above this alehouse. He kissed her again. "Think of me whilst we are parted, that the time until we meet again might seem the shorter."

Even as he tasted her tears on his lips, she shook her head. "Always it is an age, an eternity. Never knew I time crawled so slow."

He had no answer for that, or none that would make her happy. That being so, he slipped out of the cramped little room without another word. Before long, Lucy would come forth, too. What else could she do, after all? The stairs were uneven and rickety. He stepped carefully on them, and used care of a different sort going out through the throng of Englishmen drinking below. He walked very erect, hand on the hilt of his rapier, as if eager for one of them to challenge him. Because he looked so ready, none did.

Behind him, one of them asked, "What doth the don here?"

"What doth he? Why, his doxy," a drawer answered, and masculine laughter rose from the crowd. De Vega ignored it. The server wasn't even wrong, or not very wrong, though Lucy Watkins was no whore.

She'd fallen in love with Lope as he'd fallen in love with her. If she hadn't, he would have lost interest in her right away. Getting to a woman's secret place was easy. Getting to her heart was harder, and mattered more.

His own heart leaped when he began directing Catalina IbaA±ez, explaining to her just exactly how she as Isabella was falling in love with the soldier playing Ferdinand of Aragon. And if you as yourself happen to fall in love with me as I think I'm falling in love with you. Lope thought. He intended to give Catalina all the help he could along those lines.

No matter what he intended, though, he had to restrain himself for the time being. "Don Alejandro, darling!" Catalina Ibanez squealed when a handsome, tawny-bearded fellow strutted into the courtyard where Lope was putting his mostly ragtag company through its paces. "You did come to see me rehearse!"

"I told you I would," Don Alejandro de Recalde replied, bowing to her. "I keep my word." He nodded to Lope. "You are the playwright, senor?"

"At your service, your Excellency," Lope said, with a bow of his own. At your mistress' service.

Especially at your mistress' service.

If the nobleman knew what was in de Vega's mind, he gave no sign of it. With another friendly nod, he said, "I've been listening to Catalina practicing her lines these past few days, and I have to tell you I'm impressed. I heard a good many dreary comedies in Madrid that couldn't come close to what you're doing here in this godforsaken wilderness."

Slightly dazed, Lope murmured, "You're far too kind, your Excellency." He scratched his head. He wasn't impervious to guilt. Here was this fellow praising his work, and he wanted to sleep with the man's mistress? He took another look at Catalina IbaA±ez, at her sparking eyes, the delicate arch of her nose, her red lips and white teeth, the sweetly curved figure her brocaded dress displayed. Well, as a matter of fact, yes, Lope thought. The game is worth the candle.

"Do I hear you write plays in English as well as Spanish?" Don Alejandro asked.

"No, sir, that is not so. I speak English, but I have never tried to write it," de Vega answered. "I am working with SeA±or Shakespeare, though, on his play about his Most Catholic Majesty. The Englishman has even written a small part for me into his King Philip. That may be what you heard."

"Yes, it could be," de Recalde agreed, still friendly and polite. "Would you do me the honor of letting me see what you have here so far?"

Lope didn't really want to do that. The production was still ragged, and no one knew it better than he.

But he saw no way to refuse a nobleman's request: however polite it sounded, it was really more a nobleman's order. He did feel he could warn de Recalde: "It won't be the show you'd see in a few more days."

"Of course. Of course." Don Alejandro waved aside the objection. "But I do want to see how my sweetheart's lines fit in with everybody else's."

He gazed fondly at Catalina IbaA±ez. Lope would have sold his soul for the look she sent the nobleman in return. But then she turned one equally warm on him, as she said, "He's given me such lovely words to use."

"He certainly has," Don Alejandro agreed. Because of his wealth and good looks, was he too complacent to believe Catalina might be interested in a man who had little to offer but words? If he was that complacent, did he have reason to be so?

I hope not, Lope thought. Aloud, he said, "Take your places, everyone! We're going to start from the beginning for his Excellency. Madre de Dios! Somebody kick Diego and wake him up."

Diego rose with a yelp. "What was that for?" he demanded indignantly. "I wasn't asleep. I was only resting my eyes."

Arguing with him was more trouble than it was worth. De Vega didn't try. He just said, "No time for rest now, lazybones. We're going to take it from the top for Don Alejandro, so he can see what we've been up to."

"Ah, senor, since when have you wanted anybody knowing what you're up to?" Diego murmured, his eyes sliding towards Catalina IbaA±ez. Lope coughed and spluttered. Diego might make a miserable excuse for a servant, but that didn't mean he didn't know the man he served so badly. Instead of looking at Catalina himself, Lope glanced toward Alejandro de Recalde. The nobleman, fortunately, hadn't paid any attention to Diego.

"Places! Places!" Lope shouted, submerging would-be lover so playwright and director could come forth. Being all those people at once, he sometimes felt very crowded inside. Were other people also so complex? When he thought of Diego, he had his doubts. When he thought of Christopher Marlowe. I won't think of Marlowe, he told himself. He's gone, and I don't have to worry about seizing him any more. But oh, by God, how I'll miss his poetry.

De Vega's own poetry poured forth from his amateur company

He screamed, cajoled, prompted, and kept looking at Don Alejandro. Catalina's keeper plainly enjoyed El mejor mozo de EspaA±a. He laughed in all the right places, and clapped loud enough to seem a bigger audience than he was. He didn't applaud only his mistress, either, which proved him a gentleman.

When the play ended, Catalina Ibanez curtsied to him. Then, deliberately, as if she really were Queen Isabella, she curtsied to Lope, too. He bowed in return, also as if she were the Queen. Don Alejandro de Recalde laughed and cheered for them both. Catalina's eyes lit up. She smiled out at the nobleman-but somehow managed to include Lope in that smile, too.

She's trying to see how close to the wind she can sail, he realized, playing games with me right under Don Alejandro's nose. He'll kill her-and likely me, too-if he notices. But if he doesn't-oh, if he doesn't.

Lope slid closer to her. As softly as he could, he murmured, "When can I see you? Alone?"

Had she shown surprise then, surprise or offense, he would have been a dead man. But she, unlike most of her companions here, really was an actress; Lope had had that thought before. "Soon," she whispered back. "Very soon." Her expression never changed, not a bit.

She's going to betray Don Alejandro, Lope thought. How long before she betrays me, too? His eyes traveled the length of her again. For the life of him-and he knew it might be for the life of him-he couldn't make himself worry about that.

Thomas Vincent held sheets of paper under Shakespeare's nose. " 'Steeth, Master Vincent, mind what you do," Shakespeare said. "None should look on those who hath not strongest need."

"Be you not amongst that number?" the prompter returned. "Methought you'd fain see our scribe his work."

"I have seen his work," Shakespeare said. "Had I not, I had given you the name of another."

But he took a sheet from Vincent even so. Thomas Phelippes had had to work like a man possessed to copy out all the parts of Boudicca so quickly. However fast he'd written, though, his script hadn't suffered. It remained as clear as it had been when he'd demonstrated it in Shakespeare's ordinary.

"You could get no better," Shakespeare said, and Thomas Vincent nodded. The poet gave back the part.

"Now then-make this disappear. Place it not where any sneaking spy nor prowling Spaniard might come upon't."

"I am not so fond as you hold me," the prompter said. "None shall see it but he whose part it is-and him I shall not suffer to take it from the Theatre."

"Marry, I hope you do not," Shakespeare said. "Yet will even that suffice us? For know you, we may also be done to death by slanderous tongues."

"I know't well, sir: too well, by Jesu," Vincent replied. "Here I am come unto a fear of death, a terrible and unavoided danger."

"Let only the fear thereof be unavoided, the thing itself passing over us like the Angel of Death o'er the children of Israel in Egypt. From this nettle, danger, may we pluck the flower, safety."

Before Thomas Vincent could answer, one of the tireman's helpers who stood at the entrance to the Theatre began to whistle the tune to a particular bawdy song. The players on the stage, who'd begun learning their parts for Boudicca, switched on the instant to rehearsing the piece they would put on that afternoon. The prompter said, "Mark you, now-in sooth, they do vanish." He vanished himself, disappearing into the tiring room.

Shakespeare wished he too could disappear. No such luck. Instead, he walked out to greet Lieutenant de Vega, of whose arrival that bawdy song had warned. "God give you good morrow," he called, and made a leg at the Spaniard.

"And you, sir." Lope swept off his hat and bowed in return. "You are well, I hope?"

"Passing well, I thank you." Shakespeare didn't mind exchanging courtesies with de Vega. As long as they talked in commonplaces, peril seemed far away. It wasn't; he knew that full well. But it seemed so, and even the semblance of tranquility was precious.

"How fares King Philip?" Lope asked.

"Passing well," Shakespeare repeated, adding, "or so I hope." The commission he had from Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s was far safer than the one Lord Burghley had given him. Part of him hoped Lord Westmorland's Men would offer their auditors King Philip, not Boudicca. That would pluck safety from the nettle of danger. It would be a craven's safety, but safety nonetheless. Let Boudicca once see the light of day, and.

Let Boudicca once see the light of day, and God grant I get free of England, as Kit hath done, Shakespeare thought. England had lain under the Spaniards' boots for almost ten years now. Could she rise up and cast them out? If she could, why hadn't she long since?

"How fares King Philip himself?" he inquired

Lope de Vega frowned. "Not well, I fear me: not well at all. Late word from Spain hath it he waxeth dropsical, his belly and thighs now much distended whilst his other members waste away."

He crossed himself. Shakespeare did the same. He couldn't quite hide a shudder. He'd seen the horrid bloating of dropsy, seen it rob its victims of life an inch at a time. They'd had to press a board against one luckless player's belly to help him make water, as if they were squeezing the juice from grapes in a wine press. Next to that, the swift certainty of the gallows seemed a mercy. But you'd have no swift end, not now.

"Best you finish the play, quick as you might," de Vega told him. "Soon enough-all too soon-the company will show it forth."

"It lacks but little," Shakespeare said.

"Glad I am to hear you say so," the Spaniard said. "As soon as all the parts be finished, let your prompter give them to the scribes, that they might make fair copies of them for the players to learn by heart."

"Certes, your honor. Just as you say, so shall it be." Now Shakespeare bowed. "You know well the customary usages of a theatre not your own."

He put more sarcasm into that than perhaps he should have. De Vega, fortunately, did not seem to notice. He answered, "They are not so different from those of Spain. Your prompter is new to his work, not so?"

"Indeed, his predecessor having. died." Guilt stabbed at Shakespeare. He did his best not to show it.

De Vega here might one day talk to Constable Strawberry, and Strawberry, in his own plodding way, had already connected Shakespeare and Ingram Frizer, though he didn't quite know what connections he'd made.

But, for now, Lope de Vega's attention focused on King Philip and the problems involved in producing it. "An he have trouble finding scribes fit for the matter, I ken a man who'd suit it."

"Ah?" Shakespeare said: the most noncommittal noise he could make.

Lope nodded. "Ay, sir: an Englishman already in the employ of Don Diego, and thus acquainted with all you purpose here. I have seen his writing, and know him to have an excellent character, most legible. He is called Thomas. ah. Phelippes."

He pronounced the name in the Spanish manner, as if it had three syllables. That kept Shakespeare from recognizing it for a moment. When he did, he felt as if a thunderbolt had crashed to earth at his feet. Lope knew Phelippes well enough to know what sort of scribe he made? Did the Spanish officer have a fair copy of Boudicca? Had he got it before Thomas Vincent got his?

Whom may I trust? Shakespeare wondered dizzily. Vincent? Phelippes? Nick Skeres? Lord Burghley? Anyone in all the world? The deeper into the plot he sank, the closer he came to the moment when the company would offer one play or the other, the more certain he became that no one had any business ever trusting anyone else.

"What think you, senor?" Lope asked when Shakespeare didn't answer right away.

"Master Vincent, meseems, hath already scribes enough for the work," Shakespeare said, picking his words with the greatest of care. "You were wiser, though, to speak to him in this matter than to me. He is quite out of countenance with my character, reckoning it to show mine own bad character."

The Spanish officer chuckled at his feeble wordplay, not knowing how hard Shakespeare was working to distract him and to conceal his own alarm. "As you suggest, so shall I do," de Vega said. "Shall I find him in the tiring room?"

"I know not," Shakespeare replied, hoping Vincent had had the sense, and the time, to hide the fair copy-the fair copy Thomas Phelippes had written out! — of Boudicca.

"I'll seek him there," Lope said, and off he went before Shakespeare could try to delay him any more. No howls of fright or fury came from behind the stage, so Shakespeare dared hope the prompter had proved prompt enough in concealing the dangerous play.

Shakespeare had only a small part in the day's production, Marlowe's Caligula. The poet was fled, but his plays lived on. Shakespeare would have been glad with more to do; he might have worried less. As things were, he'd never been so glad to escape the Theatre once the show was done.

He hadn't gone far towards London before Richard Burbage fell into step with him. "Give you good even," the other player said, and then, "It went right well, methought."

He'd played the title role, and milked it for all it was worth. Still, Shakespeare nodded; as Marlowe had written it, the role was worth milking. "This was the frightfullest Roman of them all," Shakespeare said.

"In sooth, he is a choice bit of work," Burbage said. "And, in sooth, could we but show more of what he did, he'd seem frightfuller yet."

"It wonders me the Master of the Revels gave Kit leave to present e'en as much as the play offers,"

Shakespeare said.

"Come the day, we'll show more than Sir Edmund wots of," Burbage observed.

"Come the day," Shakespeare echoed. "And, by what the Spaniard saith, the day comes soon: Philip hath declined further." He walked along for a few paces, then added, "Or, come the day, we'll give the auditors King Philip, and all will weep for fallen glory."

Burbage was also silent for a little while. "Peradventure we will," he said at last. "But ere I sleep each night, I pray God they'll see the other." Here in Shoreditch High Street, he named no names. Who could tell which jade or ragamuffin might take some incautious word to the dons or the English Inquisition?

"Well, Dick, your prayer, at least, is to the purpose," Shakespeare said wearily. "When I petition the Lord, it is that He let this cup pass from me. I fear me, though, He hears me not." He threw his hands in the air. " 'Swounds, why fled I not this madness or ever it laid hold of me?"

"The heart hath its reasons, whereof reason knoweth naught," Burbage said.

Shakespeare stopped in surprise. "That is well said. Is't your own?" When Burbage nodded, Shakespeare set a hand on his shoulder. "When next Will Kemp assails you as being but the mouthpiece for other men, cast defiance in's teeth."

"So I would, and so I will," the other player answered. "But gramercy for your courtesy."

"Your servant, sir," Shakespeare said. "Would I were penning some trifling comedy of lovers loving will they, nill they; I'd engraft your line therein fast as ever I could." He sighed. "Shall I ever again labor over aught so sweet and simple?"

"But if all go well. " Burbage said.

"Perhaps," Shakespeare said, and said no more. He didn't want his hopes to rise too high. They would only have further to fall.

Burbage might have sensed as much. Instead of going on with the argument, he pointed ahead.

"Bishopsgate draws nigh. Spring at last being arrived, it likes me having daylight left once we've strutted and fretted our two hours upon the stage."

"Why, it doth like me as well," Shakespeare said in surprise. He clapped a hand to his forehead. "By my troth, Dick, I've scarce noted proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, putting a spirit of youth in everything. Goose quill and paper have compassed round my life."

"Belike, for it's April no moe," Burbage told him. "These are May's new-fangled shows, and far from the best of 'em."

"May?" Shakespeare cried. "Surely not! Surely they'd have decked the streets with greenery, as is the custom, and burnt bonfires, and run up maypoles for that they might dance round 'em."

"Surely they would have. Surely they did. Surely you never marked it." Richard Burbage eyed him with amused pity.

"Wait!" Shakespeare snapped his fingers. "I mind me we gave the groundlings The Taming of the Shrew on the day. There! D'you see? I had some knowledge of it after all." That felt very important to him just then.

Burbage's expression changed not a jot. "And so we did. But why know you of it? Only for that it came to pass within the Theatre's bourne. Otherwise. " He shook his head.

As usual, Irishmen with long, hungry faces and fiery eyes stood guard at Bishopsgate. The gallowglasses glowered at Shakespeare and Burbage: the two players were big enough and young enough to seem dangerous no matter how mildly they behaved. One of the guards said something in his own musical language, of which Shakespeare understood not a word. Another started to draw his sword. But their sergeant-distinguishable only because he was a few years older and a little more scarred-shook his head. He waved the Englishmen into London, saying, "Pass through. Quick now, mind."

"Lean raw-boned rascals," Burbage muttered, but he made sure the gallowglasses couldn't hear him.

"I do despise the bloody cannibals," Shakespeare agreed, also in a low voice. "May they prove roast meat for worms."

"God grant it!" Burbage said. "That the dons lord it over us is one thing-they earned the right, having beaten us in war. But these redpolled swashbucklers?" He shook his head. "Men who'd never dare rise against the Spaniards will run riot to cast out Irish wolves."

"Ay, belike." Shakespeare wondered if Sir William Cecil had thought of inflaming Londoners against the savages from the western island. Likely he will have, the poet thought. He sees so much; would he have missed that? Still, he resolved to speak of it to Lord Burghley when next he saw him, or to Nick Skeres or Thomas Phelippes if he didn't see the noble soon.

Phelippes? Shakespeare kicked a pebble into a puddle. Whom did the clever, dusty little man really serve? Sir William? Don Diego? Or only himself, first, last, and always? As soon as Shakespeare shaped the question, he saw what the answer had to be. But where, in the end, would Phelippes judge his interest lay? And how much would that cost everyone on the other side?

Burbage clapped him on the back. "I'm to mine own house. God give you good even, Will."

"And you," Shakespeare said absently. His head full of plots, he had to remind himself to turn off Bishopsgate Street and make for his lodging. Then he'd be off to the ordinary, to write as long as he could, and then back to the lodging once more, this time to sleep. "God save me," he muttered. "May Day passed by, and I knew it not." He wondered what else he'd missed, and decided he didn't want to know.

"Come on, Diego," Lope de Vega said impatiently from horseback. "You have only a donkey to mount. The two of you must be close cousins."

" Senor, I would never mount my cousin. The Good Book forbids it-and besides, she's ugly," his servant answered. As Lope blinked at such unexpected wit, Diego swung up into the saddle. The ass brayed pitifully at his weight.

"You have your costume?" Lope demanded. Diego set a hand on a saddlebag. De Vega nodded. "Good.

To Westminster, then. They say England's Isabella may come to watch the play, to see Castile's performed on stage. She could make your fortune, Diego." She could make mine, he thought.

Diego said, "A servant playing a servant won't make much of a mark. You should have cast me as Ferdinand."

They rode away from the Spanish barracks at the heart of London and west toward the court center.

Lope had to rein in to keep his horse, a high-spirited mare, from leaving Diego's donkey behind.

"Ferdinand!" Lope said. "What mad dream is that? You're not asleep now, not so I can tell."

"But am I not the perfect figure of a king?" Diego said.

Surveying his rotund servant, de Vega answered, "You are the perfect figure of two kings-at least."

Diego sent him a venomous glare.

Lope paid no attention. On such a day, he was happy enough to be outdoors. As always, spring had, to a Spaniard's reckoning, come late to England, but it was here at last. The sun shone brightly. The only clouds in the sky were small white ones, drifting slowly from west to east on a mild breeze. It had rained a couple of days before-not hard, just enough to lay the dust without turning the road into a bog.

Everything was green. New grass grew exuberantly: more so than it ever did in drier, hotter Castile.

Trees and bushes were in new leaf. The earliest spring flowers had begun to brighten the landscape.

Birdsong filled the moist air. Robins and chaffinches, cuckoos and larks, waxwings and tits all made music. They left England sooner and came back later than they did in Spain. Each spring, when they returned, Lope discovered anew how much he'd missed them and how especially empty and barren the winter had seemed without them.

Diego smiled to hear those songs, too. "Mesh nets," he murmured. "Birdlime. By all the saints, there's nothing can match a big plate of songbirds, all nicely roasted on spits or maybe baked in a pie. I don't think much of English cookery, but they make some savory pies. Beefsteak and kidney's mighty tasty, too, and you can get that any season of the year."

"Yes, that is a good one," Lope agreed. "And the song of the cow is much less melodious than that of the linnet or greenfinch."

"The song of the cow, seA±or?" Diego asked. Before de Vega could answer, his servant shook his head.

"No, don't tell me. I don't think I want to know. It must be something only poets can hear."

"Not at all, Diego." Lope smiled sweetly. "For example, whenever you open your mouth, everyone around you is treated to the song of the jackass."

"Oh, I am wounded," Diego moaned. He clutched at his heart. "I have taken a mortal thrust. Send for the physician. No, send for the priest to shrive me, for I am surely slain."

"You are surely a nuisance, is what you are," Lope said, but he couldn't help laughing.

No more than a mile or so separated Westminster from London, with the space between the two cities only a bit less crowded than either one of them. De Vega never had the sensation of truly being out in the country, as he would have while traveling between a couple of towns in Spain. Whenever he looked to the left, a forest of sails on the Thames reminded him how brash and busy this part of the world was.

"Fancy houses," Diego remarked as they rode into Westminster. "You can tell this is a place for rich people. All the poor men-all the honest men-are back in London."

Lope couldn't help laughing at that, either, but for a rather different reason. London drew the ambitious, the hungry, the desperate from all over England. A lot of them discovered that, no matter how ambitious and desperate they were, they stayed hungry. The hungrier they got, the less likely they were to stay honest. London had more thieves and robbers than any other three cities Lope could imagine.

Those fancy houses drew his eye, too-again, for a different reason. "This is Drury Lane," he said. "Lord Burghley lives here, who was Elizabeth's chief minister. Anthony Bacon lived here, too, till the accursed sodomite fled the kingdom."

"Sounds like a good street for a fire," Diego said. "Just by accident, of course." He winked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lope answered, deadpan. The two of them exchanged knowing looks.

The Thames bent towards the south. The road followed it. De Vega and Diego rode past a tilt-yard and several new tenements before coming to a large area on their left enclosed by a brick wall. Over the top of the wall loomed the upper stories of some impressive buildings. "What's that?" Diego asked, pointing to the enclosure.

"That? That is Scotland," Lope said.

Diego scornfully tossed his head. "You can't fool me, boss. You've been scaring me with Scotland for a while now. I know what it is-that kingdom up north of here, the one where the wild men live."

"Some of the wild men," Lope amended. "But that yard, that too is Scotland." He crossed himself to show he was telling the truth. "When the King of the wild men comes to visit England, he is housed there, and so it took its name." He wished the present King of Scotland would come to visit England. But, despite honeyed invitations, Protestant James VI was too canny to thrust his head into the Catholic lion's mouth. Lope continued, "And there beyond lies Whitehall, where the company shall perform."

"Oh, joy," Diego said.

Whitehall had formerly been a noble's residence. Henry VIII, having taken it for his own, had enlarged it, adding tennis courts, bowling alleys, and another tilt-yard, with a second-story gallery from which he and his companions might observe the sport. Elizabeth had also watched jousts from that gallery, but neither Isabella nor her consort Albert much favored them. A wooden stage, not much different from that of the Theatre, had gone up on the tilt-yard, in front of the gallery. The highest-ranking English and Spanish grandees would view El mejor mozo de EspaA±a from the comfort of the gallery. The rest, prominent enough to be invited but not enough to keep company with the Queen and King, would impersonate the groundlings who packed the theatres out beyond London's walls. They didn't have to pay a penny for the privilege, though.

In the makeshift tiring room behind the stage, players donned costumes, put on makeup, and mumbled their lines, trying to hold them in their memory. When Lope came in, Catalina IbaA±ez rushed up to him.

"Oh, Senor de Vega, God help me, I'm so nervous!" she cried. "I want to explode!"

He glanced around to make sure Don Alejandro was out in the audience and not hovering backstage here, then leaned forward and gave her a kiss that might have seemed careless. "Don't you worry about a thing, sweetheart. You'll be wonderful!" he told her, and sent up a quick, silent prayer that he'd prove right.

A lackey rushed into the tiring room. "The Queen and King have taken their places in the gallery," he said.

"Then we'd better perform for them, hadn't we?" Lope said. "Come on, my friends, show them what you can do." He looked around again, to make sure everyone was ready. "Diego, in the name of God, don't fall asleep now!"

"I wasn't falling asleep," Diego said. "I was only-"

"Resting my eyes," Lope finished for him. "You've used that one before. Don't use it again, unless you want to get to know the real Scotland, not the yard here." One last quick, worried look. Then he nodded to Catalina IbaA±ez and one of her maidservants, who would open the play as Isabella and DoA±a Juana, her lady-in-waiting.

Catalina crossed herself. Her maidservant giggled. They went out onto the stage. The audience, which had been mumbling and buzzing, gave them its ears. As soon as Catalina IbaA±ez got on stage, she was fine-better than fine. Lope breathed a sigh of relief.

Everything went as well as he'd hoped. Everything, in fact, went better than he'd dared hope. The actors remembered their lines. Even the most wooden ones delivered them with some feeling. Diego made a better servant on stage than he ever had for real. An hour and a half flew by as if in a dream. The applause for the players was thunderous.

From the tiring room, Lope heard Catalina IbaA±ez call, "And here is the man who gave us these golden words to say: Senior Lieutenant Lope FA©lix de Vega Carpio!"

More applause as Lope, who felt as if he were dreaming himself, came out onto the stage and bowed to the audience-especially to the central gallery, where Isabella and Albert of England sat. How had Catalina learned his full name? No time to wonder about that now; Queen Isabella was calling, "Well done, Senor de Vega. You are a very clever fellow." Lope bowed again. Isabella tossed him a small leather purse. He caught it out of the air. It was heavy, heavy enough to be stuffed with gold. He bowed once more, this time almost double. Dazedly, he followed the company offstage.

Back in the tiring room, he went over to Catalina IbaA±ez and said, "How can I thank you for calling me out there?"

Her eyes were as warm with promise as an early summer morning. "If you're as clever as Queen Isabella says, SeA±or de Vega, I'm sure you'll think of something," she purred. Only later did he wonder whether she was really looking at him or at the purse he'd just got.

Sam King came up to Shakespeare in the parlor of the lodgings they shared. A little shyly, he said,

"I have somewhat for you, Master Will." He held out his hand and gave Shakespeare three pennies-two stamped with the visages of Isabella and Albert, the third an older coin of Elizabeth's.

"Gramercy," Shakespeare said in surprise. Up till now, King hadn't had enough money for himself, let alone to pay back anyone else. Shakespeare had almost forgotten the threepence he'd given the younger man for a supper, and certainly hadn't expected to see it again.

But, a touch of pride in his voice, King said, "I pay what I owe, I do."

"Right glad am I to hear't," Shakespeare answered. "You've found work, then?"

"You might say so." But King's nod seemed intended to convince himself at least as much as to convince Shakespeare. "Ay, sir, you might say so."

"And what manner of work is't, pray tell?"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Shakespeare wished he had them back. Had Sam King landed an apprenticeship with a carpenter or a bricklayer, he would have shouted the news to the skies, and would have deserved to. As things were. As things were, he turned red. "I am. stalled to the rogue," he replied at last.

"Are you?" Shakespeare tried to sound happy for the man who slept in the same room as he did. For someone on his own and hungry in London, even being formally initiated as a beggar had to seem a step up. Carefully, the poet went on, "God grant men be generous to you."

He wondered how long they would stay generous. King was young and healthy, even if on the scrawny side. A beggar with one leg or a missing eye or some other injury or ailment that inspired pity might have a better chance at pennies and ha'pennies and farthings. But King smiled and said, "There are all manner of cheats to pry the bite from a gentry cove, or from your plain cuffin, too. I've a cleym, now, fit to make a man spew an he see it."

"Have you indeed?" Shakespeare wasn't surprised to hear that. He'd known other beggars who used false sores to get money from those who saw them.

"Ay, sir," Sam King said. "And the moe I learn the art, the better the living I shall have of it." Yes, he might almost have been speaking of carpentry or bricklaying.

"May it be so," Shakespeare said, as politely as he could. He wished the other man would go away. He gave beggars coins now and again, and did not care to think of them as frauds.

King, though, bubbled with enthusiasm for his new trade. "I take crowfoot, spearwort, and salt, and, bruising these together, I lay them upon the place of the body I wish to make sore," he said, grinning.

"The skin by this means being fretted, I first clap a linen cloth, till it stick fast, which plucked off, the raw flesh hath ratsbane thrown upon it, to make it look ugly; and then cast over that a cloth, which is always bloody and filthy."

Shakespeare's stomach lurched, as it might have in a small boat on rough water. Fascinated in spite of himself, he asked, "But doth your flesh not from such rude usage take true hurt?"

"Nay, nay." Sam King shook his head. "I do't so often, that in the end I feel no pain, neither desire I to have it healed, but I will travel with my great cleym from market to market, being able by my maunding to get quite five shillings in a week, in money and in corn."

"No wonder you could repay me, then," Shakespeare remarked. Five shillings a week wouldn't make a man rich, but he wouldn't starve on such earnings, either.

"No wonder at all," King agreed happily. "I company with two or three other artificial palliards, and we sing out boldly, thus. " His voice rose to a shrill, piercing whine: "Ah, the worship of God look out with your merciful eyne! One pitiful look upon sore, lame, grieved, impotent people, sore troubled with the grievous disease, and we have no rest day nor night by the canker and worm, that continually eateth the flesh from the bone! For the worship of God, one cross of your small silver, to buy us salve and ointment, to ease the poor wretched body, that never taketh rest; and God reward you for it in heaven!"

Jane Kendall hurried into the parlor. "Begone! We want no beggars here," she began, and then checked herself. "Oh, 'tis you, Master King. Methought you some other tricksy wretch seeking to beguile silver by cleyms and other frauds. I'll not have such doings in this house. I know better."

She didn't mind if King begged elsewhere. She simply didn't want her lodgers tricked out of money that might otherwise assure her of her rent. Having dwelt in her house some little while, Shakespeare was certain of that. He said, "Fear not. He did but learn me his law, the which is indeed most quaint and bene."

"We'll say no more about it, then." The Widow Kendall heaved a sigh. "This place is not what it was-by my halidom, it is not. That I should have lodging here, all at the same time, a beggar and a witch and a poet. " She shook her head.

Shakespeare resented being lumped together with Sam King and Cicely Sellis. A moment's reflection, though, told him they might resent being lumped together with him. He said, "So that we pay what you require on the appointed day, where's your worry, Mistress Kendall?"

"So that you do, all's well," she answered. "But with such trades. Sweet Jesu, who ever heard of a rich poet?"

She could imagine a rich beggar. She could imagine a cunning woman with money. A poet? No.

Shakespeare was tempted to brag of the gold he'd got from Lord Burghley and Don Diego. He was tempted, for a good half a heartbeat. Then common sense prevailed. The best way to keep from being robbed or having his throat slit was not to let on he had anything worth stealing.

Mommet stalked into the parlor. The cat rubbed the side of its head against Shakespeare's ankle and began to purr. A little uncomfortably, Shakespeare stroked it. The cunning woman's cat-her familiar? — had seemed to like him from their first meeting. What would an inquisitor on the trail of witchcraft make of that? Nothing good, Shakespeare was sure.

Sam King said, "Mistress Kendall, may I take a mug of your fine ale?" At her nod, King hurried into the kitchen. When he came back with the mug, mischief lit his face. He squatted by Mommet and poured out a little puddle on the floor.

The Widow Kendall's voice rose in sharp indignation: "Here, now! What do you do? Would you waste it?"

"By no means." King crooned, "Here, puss, puss, puss," to the animal. "Come on your ways-open your mouth-here is that which will give language to you, cat. Open your mouth!"

Mommet sniffed at the ale slowly soaking into the rammed-earth floor. The cat's head bent. Ever so delicately, it lapped at the puddle. Then it looked up. It eyes caught the firelight from the hearth and glowed green.

"What game play you at?"

Sam King started violently and made the sign of the cross. Shakespeare jerked in surprise, too. But it wasn't the cat that had spoken. It was Cicely Sellis, standing in the doorway to her room, hands on hips, her face furious.

"What play you at?" she asked again. "Tell me straight out, else I'll make you sorry for your silence."

"N-N-N-Naught, Mistress Sellis," King stammered, his face going gray with fear. "I was but, ah, giving your cat, ah, somewhat to drink."

"You play the palliard," the cunning woman said. "Play not the fool, sirrah, or you'll find more in the way of foolery than ever was in your reckoning. Hear you me?"

"I–I do," King answered in a very small voice.

"See to't, then," Cicely Sellis snapped. She made a small, clucking sound. "Come you here, Mommet."

Cats didn't come when called. Shakespeare had known that since he was a little boy in Stratford. Cats did as they pleased, not as anyone else pleased. But Mommet trotted over to Cicely Sellis like a lapdog.

The cat's contented buzz filled the parlor.

That frightened Sam King all over again. "God be my judge, mistress, I meant no harm," he whispered.

The look the cunning woman gave him said she would judge him, and that God would have nothing to do with it. "Some men there are that love not a gaping pig," she said, "some, that are mad if they behold a cat. As there is no firm reason to be rendered why he cannot abide a harmless necessary cat, so he were wiser to show mercy, and pity, than to sport with a poor dumb beast that knoweth naught of sport. Or think you otherwise?"

"No." King's lips shaped the word, but without sound. He vanished into the bedchamber he shared with Shakespeare. Jane Kendall disappeared almost as quickly.

That left Shakespeare all alone with Cicely Sellis-and with Mommet. He could have done without the honor, if that was what it was. As she stroked the cat's brindled coat, he asked, "Go you to the arena to see bears baited, or bulls, or to the cockfights?"

To his relief, she didn't take offense, and did take the point of the question. Shaking her head, she answered, "I go not to any such so-called sports. I cannot abide them. I am of one piece in mine affections and opinions, Master Shakespeare. Can you say the same?"

"Me, lady? Nay, nor would I essay it, for my wits are all in motley, now of one shade, now another. And which of us is better for't?" Shakespeare asked. Cicely Sellis thought, then shrugged, which struck him as basically honest.