Ruled Britannia

I

Two spanish soldiers swaggered up Tower Street toward William Shakespeare. Their boots squelched in the mud. One wore a rusty corselet with his high-crowned morion, the other a similar helmet with a jacket of quilted cotton. Rapiers swung at their hips. The fellow with the corselet carried a pike longer than he was tall; the other shouldered an arquebus. Their lean, swarthy faces wore what looked like permanent sneers.

People scrambled out of their way: apprentices without ruffs and in plain wool caps; a pipe-smoking sailor wearing white trousers with spiral stripes of blue; a merchant's wife in a red wool doublet spotted with white-almost a man's style-who lifted her long black skirt to keep it out of puddles; a ragged farmer in from the countryside with a donkey weighted down with sacks of beans.

Shakespeare flattened himself against the rough, weather-faded timbers of a shop along with everybody else. The Spaniards had held London-held it down for Queen Isabella, daughter of Philip of Spain, and her husband, Albert of Austria-for more than nine years now. Everyone knew what happened to men rash enough to show them disrespect to their faces.

A cold, nasty autumn drizzle began sifting down from the gray sky. Shakespeare tugged his hat down lower on his forehead to keep the rain out of his eyes-and to keep the world from seeing how thin his hair was getting in front, though he was only thirty-three. He scratched at the little chin beard he wore.

Where was the justice in that?

On went the Spaniards. One of them kicked at a skinny, ginger-colored dog gnawing a dead rat. The dog skittered away. The soldier almost measured himself full length in the sloppy street. His friend grabbed his arm to steady him.

Behind them, the Englishmen and — women got back to their business. A pockmarked tavern tout took Shakespeare's hand. "Try the Red Bear, friend," the fellow said, breathing beer fumes and the stink of rotting teeth into his face. "The drink is good, the wenches friendly-"

"Away with you." Shakespeare twisted free. The man's dirty hand, he noted with annoyance, had smudged the sleeve of his lime-green doublet.

"Away with me? Away with me?" the tout squeaked. "Am I a black-beetle, for you to squash?"

"Black-beetle or no, I'll spurn you with my foot if you trouble me more," Shakespeare said. He was a tall man, on the lean side but solidly made and well fed. The tout's skin stretched drumhead tight over cheekbones and jaw. He slunk off to earn his pennies-his farthings, more likely-somewhere else.

A few doors down stood the tailor's shop to which Shakespeare had been going. The man working inside peered at him through spectacles that magnified his red-tracked eyes. "Good morrow to you, Master Will," he said. "By God, I am glad to see you in health."

"And I you, Master Jenkins," Shakespeare replied. "Your good wife is well, I hope, and your son?"

"Very well, the both of them," the tailor said. "I thank you for asking. Peter would be here to greet you as well, but he is taking to the head of the fishmongers a cloak I but now finished: to their hall in Thames Street, in Bridge Ward."

"May the fishmongers' chief have joy in it," Shakespeare said. "And have you also finished the kingly robe you promised for the players?"

Behind those thick lenses, Jenkins' eyes grew bigger and wider yet. "Was that to be done today?"

Shakespeare clapped a hand to his forehead, almost knocking off his hat. As he grabbed for it, he said, "

'Sblood, Master Jenkins, how many times did I tell you it was wanted on All Saints' Day, and is that not today?"

"It is. It is. And I can only cry your pardon," Jenkins said mournfully.

"That doth me no good, nor my fellow players," Shakespeare said. "Shall Burbage swagger forth in his shirt tomorrow? He'll kill me when he hears this, and I you afterwards." He shook his head at that-fury outrunning sense.

To the tailor, fury counted for more. "It's near done," he said. "If you'll but bide, I can finish it within an hour, or may my head answer for it." He made a placating gesture and, even more to the point, shoved aside the doublet on which he'd been sewing.

"An hour?" Shakespeare sighed heavily, while Jenkins gave an eager nod. Drumming his fingers on his arm, Shakespeare nodded, too. "Let it be as you say, then. Were it not that the royal robe in our tiring room looks more like a vagabond's rags and tatters, I'd show you less patience."

"Truly, Master Will, you are a great gentleman," Jenkins quavered as he took the robe of scarlet velvet from under the counter.

"I trust you'll note this unseemly delay in your price," Shakespeare said. By the tailor's expression, he found that not in the least gentlemanly. While Shakespeare kept on drumming his fingers, Jenkins sewed in the last gaudy bits of golden thread and hemmed the robe.

"You could wear it in the street, Master Will, and have the commonality bow and scrape before you as if in sooth you were a great lord," he said, chuckling.

"I could wear it in the street and be seized and flung in the Counter for dressing above my station,"

Shakespeare retorted. " 'Tis a thing forbidden actors, save when on the stage." Jenkins only chuckled again; he knew that perfectly well.

He was finished almost as soon as he'd promised, and held up the robe to Shakespeare as if he were the tireman about to dress him in it. "You did but jest as to the scot, I am sure," he said.

" 'Steeth, Master Jenkins, I did not. Is mine own time a worthless thing, that I should spend it freely for the sake of your broken promise?"

"Broken it was not, for I promised the robe today, and here it is."

"And had I come at eventide, and not of the morning? You had been forsworn then. You may have mended your promise, but that means not it was unbroken."

They argued a while longer, more or less good-naturedly. At last, the tailor took five shillings off the price he'd set before. "More than you deserve, but for the sake of your future custom I shall do't," he told Shakespeare. "Which still leaves you owing fourteen pounds, five shillings, sixpence."

"The stuffs you use are dear indeed," Shakespeare grumbled as he gave Jenkins the money. Some of the silver and copper coins he set on the counter bore the images of Isabella and Albert, others-the older, more worn, ones-that of the deposed Elizabeth, who still languished in the Tower of London, only a furlong or so from where Shakespeare stood. He looked outside. It was still drizzling. "Can you give me somewhat wherewith to cover this robe, Master Jenkins? I am not fain to have the weeping heavens smirch it."

"I believe I may. Let me see." Jenkins rummaged under the counter and came up with a piece of coarse canvas that had seen better days. "Here, will this serve?" At Shakespeare's brusque nod, the tailor wrapped the cloth around the robe and tied it with some twine. He bobbed his head to Shakespeare as he passed him the bundle. "Here you are, Master Will, and I am sorry for the inconvenience I put you to."

Shakespeare sighed. "No help for it. Now I needs must-" Horns blared and drums thudded out in the street. He jumped. "What's that?"

"Did you not recall?" The tailor's face twisted. "By decree of the Spaniards, 'tis the day of the great auto de fe."

"Oh, a pox! You are right, and it had gone out of my head altogether." Shakespeare looked out into the street as horn calls and drums came again. In response to that music, people swarmed from all directions to gape at the spectacle.

"A lucky man, who can forget the inquisitors," Jenkins said. "A month gone by, as is their custom, they came down Tower Street making proclamation that this. ceremony would be held." He might have been about to offer some comment on the auto de fe, but he didn't. Shakespeare couldn't blame him for watching his tongue. In London these days, a word that reached the wrong ears could mean disaster for a man.

He felt disaster of a different, smaller, sort brushing against him. "In this swarm of mankind, I shall be an age making my way back to my lodgings."

"Why not go with the parade to Tower Hill and see what's to be seen?" Jenkins said. "After all, when in Rome. and we are all Romans now, is't not so?" He chuckled once more.

So did Shakespeare, sourly. "How could it be otherwise?" he returned. In Elizabeth's day, Catholic recusants had had to pay a fine for refusing to attend Protestant services. Now, with their Catholic Majesties ruling England, with the Inquisition and the Jesuits zealously bringing the country back under the dominion of the Pope, not going to Mass could and often did mean worse than fines. Like most people, Shakespeare conformed, as he'd conformed under Elizabeth. Some folk went to church simply because it was the safe thing to do; some, after nine years and more of Catholic rule, because they'd come to believe. But almost everyone did go.

"Why not what?" Jenkins repeated. "Think what you will of the dons and the monks, but they do make a brave show. Mayhap you'll spy some bit of business you can filch for one of your dramas."

Shakespeare had thought nothing could make him want to watch an auto de fe. Now he discovered he was wrong. He nodded to the tailor. "I thank you, Master Jenkins. I had not thought of that. Perhaps I shall." He tucked the robe under his arm, settled his hat more firmly on his head, and went out into Tower Street.

Spanish soldiers-and some blond-bearded Englishmen loyal to Isabella and Albert-in helmets and corselets held pikes horizontally in front of their bodies to keep back the crowd and let the procession move toward Tower Hill. They looked as if they would use those spears, and the swords hanging from their belts, at the slightest excuse. Perhaps because of that, no one gave them any such excuse.

Two or three rows of people stood in front of Shakespeare, but he had no trouble seeing over any of them save one woman whose steeple-crowned hat came up to the level of his eyes. He looked east, toward the church of St. Margaret in Pattens' Lane, from which the procession was coming. At its head strode the trumpeters and drummers, who blasted out another fanfare even as he turned to look at them.

More grim-faced soldiers marched at their heels: again, Spaniards and Englishmen mixed. Some bore pikes. Others carried arquebuses or longer, heavier muskets. Tiny wisps of smoke rose from the lengths of slow match the men with firearms bore to discharge their pieces. The drizzle had almost stopped while Shakespeare waited for the tailor to finish the robe. In wetter weather, the matchlocks would have been useless as anything but clubs. As they marched, they talked with one another in an argot that had grown up since the Armada's men came ashore, with Spanish lisps and trills mingling with the slow sonorities of English.

Behind the soldiers tramped a hundred woodmongers in the gaudy livery of their company. One of those robes would do as well to play the king in as that which I have here, Shakespeare thought. But the woodmongers, whose goods would feed the fires that burned heretics today, seemed to be playing soldiers themselves: like the armored men ahead of them, they too marched with arquebuses and pikes.

From a second-story window across the street from Shakespeare, a woman shouted, "Shame on you, Jack Scrope!" One of the woodmongers carrying a pike whipped his head around to see who had cried out, but no faces showed at that window. A dull flush stained the fellow's cheeks as he strode on.

Next came a party of black-robed Dominican friars-mostly Spaniards, by their looks-before whom a white cross was carried. They chanted psalms in Latin as they paraded up Tower Street.

After them marched Charles Neville, the Earl of Westmorland, the Protector of the English Inquisition.

The northerner's face was hard and closed and proud. He had risen against Elizabeth a generation before, spent years in exile in the Netherlands, and surely relished every chance he got for revenge against the Protestants. The old man carried the standard of the Inquisition, and held it high.

For a moment, Shakespeare's gaze swung to the left, to the gray bulk of the Tower, though the church of Allhallows Barking hid part of the fortress from view. He wondered if, from one of those towers, Elizabeth were watching the auto de fe. What would the imprisoned Queen be thinking if she were? Did she thank King Philip for sparing her life after the Duke of Parma's professional soldiers swept aside her English levies? "Though she herself slew a queen, I shall not stoop to do likewise," Philip had said. Was that generosity? Or did Elizabeth, with all she'd labored so long to build torn to pieces around her, reckon her confinement more like hell on earth?

'I would make a splendid tragedy, Shakespeare thought, were setting so little as a single line of't to paper not worth my life-and a hard, cruel death I'd have, too. Written or not, though, those scenes began to shape themselves in his mind. He shook his head like a fly-bedeviled horse, trying to clear it.

More than a little to his relief, a murmur in the crowd brought his attention back to the parade. Behind the Protector of the Inquisition stalked Robert Parsons, the Archbishop of Canterbury. His cold, thin features made Neville's look genial. He'd spent a generation in exile, struggling from afar against English Protestantism.

After the prelate marched another company of guardsmen. These were wild Irishmen, brought over to help the Spaniards hold England down. Most spoke only Irish; the few who used some English had brogues so thick, it was hard to tell from the other tongue.

The crowd stirred and buzzed. A couple of men pointed. A woman exclaimed. After the sallet comes the main course, Shakespeare thought. A couple of dozen men exhibited life-sized pasteboard images of those convicted by the Inquisition who had either died in gaol or had escaped its clutches and were being outlawed. More servitors carried trunks that bore the bones of the former. The sides and tops of the trunks were painted with hellfire's flames.

Then came the prisoners themselves. First was a group of about a dozen men and women with conical pasteboard caps fully a yard high on their heads. Most of the caps had HERETIC written on them in large letters in English and Latin. One said ALCHEMIST, another SODOMITE. In the first years after the triumph of the Duke of Parma's men, Shakespeare remembered, the words had been written in Spanish as well. These days, though, the English Inquisition operated on its own, with little help from its former teachers. Each of the condemned had a rope around his neck and carried a torch in his right hand.

More prisoners, also carrying torches, followed the first lot. They wore sanbenitos-coarse yellow penitential tunics without sleeves-with the cross of St. Andrew painted on the back in red. Some of them, after their condemnation at the ceremony, would return to imprisonment. Others would be released, but sentenced to wear the sanbenito forever as a mark of their crimes. "More ignoble and more humiliating than death itself," a fat man near Shakespeare said. Two familiars of the Inquisition accompanied each of them.

And after them tramped the dozen or so who had been condemned to the flames. They wore not only sanbenitos but also pasteboard caps, all of which were painted with flames and devils. Along with the familiars of the Inquisition, four or five monks accompanied them to prepare their souls for death.

One prisoner, a big, burly man, shook off all attempts at consolation. "I go gladly to my death," he declared, "knowing I shall soon see God face to face and rejoice in His glory for ever and ever."

"You are wrong, Philip Stubbes," a monk said urgently. "If you confess your sins, you may yet win free of hell to Purgatory."

"Purgatory's a dream, a lie, one of the myriad lies the Pope farts forth from his mouth," the Puritan said.

The monk crossed himself. "You will also win an easier death for yourself, for the executioner will throttle you ere the flames bite."

Stubbes shook his head. "Elizabeth cut off my brother's hand for speaking the truth. Torment me as you will, as the Romans tormented the martyrs of old. The flames will have me for but a little while, but you and all your villainous kind for an eternity."

Another man, a red-bearded fellow with a clever, frightened face and cropped ears, spoke urgently to a somber monk: "I'll say anything you want. I'll do anything you want. Only spare me from the fire."

A vagrant drop of rain landed on the monk's tonsured pate. He wiped it away with his hand before answering, "Kelley, your confessions, your renunciations, are worthless, as you have proved time and again. You will return to your alchemy, as a dog returneth to its vomit. Did not the heretic Queen's men petition you for gold wherewith to oppose the cleansing Armada?"

"I gave them none," Kelley said quickly.

"And did you not die for this," the monk went on, inexorable as an avalanche, "you surely would for coining counterfeit money in base metal."

"I did no such thing," Kelley insisted.

"Each lie you tell but makes the flames of hell hotter. Compose your spirit now, and pray for mercy from a just God Whose judgments are true and righteous altogether."

And then, to Shakespeare's horror, Kelley's eyes-green as a cat's, and showing white all around the iris-found his in the crowd and locked on them. "Will! Will! For the love of God, Will, tell 'em I'm true and trusty!"

Shakespeare wondered if he turned white or red. He felt dipped in ice and dire, both together. He'd met Edward Kelley perhaps half a dozen times over as many years, enough to know he'd lost his ears for making and passing false coins. The alchemist moved in some of the same circles as Christopher Marlowe, and some of Marlowe's circles were also Shakespeare's.Wheels within wheels, as in the epicycles of Master Ptolemy. But for Kelley to point him out to the Inquisition.

Before he could speak, either to curse Kelley-which was what he wanted to do-or to praise him, the monk said, "Where your own words will not save you, why think you any other man's might? Go on, wretch, and die as well as you may."

But he looked in the same direction the alchemist had. And his eyes, too, met Shakespeare's. He nodded thoughtfully to himself. He knows my face, Shakespeare thought with something not far from despair.

Other people saw as much, too, and moved away from him, so that he stood on a little island of open space in the ocean of the crowd. He'd come down with a disease as deadly as smallpox or the black plague: suspicion. Devils roast you black, Kelley, and use your guts for garters.

On went the procession. Other voices drowned out Edward Kelley's whining claims of innocence.

Behind the condemned prisoners rode the Grand Inquisitor, somber in a purple habit, and several members of the House of Commons, their faces smug and fat and self-satisfied. Another company of soldiers-Spaniards and Englishmen mixed again-and the parade was done.

As it went past, the pikemen who'd been holding back the crowd shouldered their weapons. Some folk went on about their business. More streamed after the procession to Tower Hill, to watch the burnings that would follow. Shakespeare stepped out into the muddy street. Along with the rest of the somber spectacle, he wanted to see Edward Kelley die.

"Say what you will about the Spaniards, but they've brought us a fine show," said a man at his elbow.

The fellow's friend nodded. "Better than a bear-baiting or a cockfight, and I never thought I'd say that of any sport."

Tower Hill, north and west of the Tower itself, had been an execution ground since the days of Edward IV, more than a hundred years before. Things were more elaborate now than they had been. Stakes with oil-soaked wood piled high around them waited for the condemned prisoners. Iron cages waited for them, too, in which they would listen to the charges that had brought them here. More iron cages, small ones, awaited the pasteboard effigies of the folk who had died in gaol or escaped the Inquisition's clutches.

At a safe distance from the stakes stood a wooden grandstand. Queen Isabella and King Albert sat on upholstered thrones, surrounded by grandees both English and Spanish on benches. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Grand Inquisitor, and the other dignitaries from the procession joined them. The first group of soldiers fanned out to protect the grandstand along with the men already there. The rest kept back the crowd.

After Philip Stubbes was locked in his cage, he began singing hymns and shouting, "Vanity and lies! Beware of Popish vanity and lies!" A monk spoke to him. He defiantly shook his head and kept on shouting. The monk unlocked the cage. He and several of his fellows went in. They bound Stubbes' hands and gagged him to keep him from disrupting the last part of the ceremony.

That worked less well than they must have hoped. When the charge of heresy was read out against him, he made a leg like a courtier, as if it were praise. More than a few people in the crowd laughed and clapped their hands.

Shakespeare didn't. No way to know whose eyes may be upon me, and all the more so after that Kelley-damnation take him! — called out my name. He nervously fingered his little chin beard. A hard business, living in a kingdom where the rulers sit uneasy on the throne and their minions course after foes as hounds course after stags. He plucked out a hair. The small, brief pain turned his thoughts to a new channel.In a play, could I place a man of Stubbes' courage? he wondered. Or would the groundlings find him impossible to credit? One by one, the captives sentenced to more imprisonment or to wear the sanbenito were led away. Only those who would die remained. They were led out of their cages and chained to the stakes. As monks made the sign of the cross, executioners strangled a couple of them: men who had repented of their errors, whether sincerely or to gain an easier death.

Edward Kelley cried, "Me! Me! In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, me!" But his Latin, his learning, did him no good at all.

The inquisitors looked toward the Queen. Isabella was in her early thirties, a couple of years younger than Shakespeare, and swarthy even for a Spaniard-to English eyes, she seemed not far from a Moor.

The enormous, snowy-white ruff she wore only accented her dark skin. Swarthy or not, though, she was the Queen; Albert held the throne through his marriage to her. She raised her hand, then let it fall.

And, as it fell, the executioners hurled torches into the waiting fagots. They caught at once. The roar of the flames almost drowned out the screams from the burning men. The roar of the crowd came closer still. That baying had a heavy, almost lustful, undertone to it. Watching others die while one still lived.

Better him than me, Shakespeare thought as fire swallowed Edward Kelley. The mixture of shame and relief churning inside him made him want to spew. Oh, dear God, better him than me. He turned away from the stakes, from the reek of charred flesh, and hurried back into the city.

Lope Felix De Vega Carpio had been in London for more than nine years, and in all that time he didn't think he'd been warm outdoors even once. The English boasted of their springtime. It came two months later here than in Madrid, where it would have been reckoned a mild winter. As for summer.

He rolled his eyes. As best he could tell, there was no such thing as an English summer.

Still and all, there were compensations. He snuggled down deeper under the feather-filled comforter and kissed the woman he kept company there. "Ah, Maude," he said, "I understand why you English women are so fair." He had a gift for language and languages; his English, though accented, was fluent.

"What's that, love?" Maude Fuller asked, lazy and sleepy after love. She was in her middle twenties, around ten years younger than he, and not merely a blonde-blondes were known in Spain-but with hair the color of fire and a skin paler than milk. Even her nipples held barely a tinge of color.

Idly, Lope teased one between his thumb and forefinger. "I know why thou art so fair," he repeated.

"How couldst thou be otherwise, when the sun never touches thee?"

He let his hand stray lower, sliding along the smooth, soft skin of her belly toward the joining of her legs.

The hair there was as astonishingly red as that on her head. Just thinking about it inflamed him. Since the weather here will never warm me, as well the women do, he thought. Of course, the women back in Spain had warmed him, too. Had he sailed off to America instead of joining the Armada and coming to England aboard the San Juan, no doubt he would have become enamored of one, or two, or six, of the copper-skinned, black-haired Indian women there. Loving women was in his blood.

"What, again, my sweet?" Maude said around a yawn. But his caresses heated her better than the embers in the hearth could. Before long, they began once more. He wondered if he would manage the second round so soon after the first, and knew no little pride when he did. Ten years ago, I'd have taken it for granted, he thought as his thudding heart slowed. Ten years from now. He shook his head. He didn't care to think about that. God and the Virgin, but time is cruel.

To hold such thoughts at bay, he kissed the Englishwoman again. "Ah, querida-beloved, seest thou what thou dost to me?" he said. But lots of women did that to him. He had two other mistresses in London, though Maude, a recent conquest, knew about neither of them.

And she had secrets from him, as he discovered the worst way possible. Downstairs, a door opened, then slammed shut. "Oh, dear God!" she exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. "My husband!"

"Thine husband?" Despite his horror, de Vega had the sense to keep his voice to a whisper. "Lying minx, thou saidst thou wert a widow!"

"Well, I would be, if he were dead," she answered, her tone absurdly reasonable.

In a play, a line like that would have got a laugh. Lope de Vega mentally filed it away. He'd tried his hand at a few comedies, to entertain his fellows on occupation duty in London, and he went to the English theatres whenever he found the chance. But what was funny in a play could prove fatal in real life. He sprang from the bed and threw on his clothes by the dim light those embers gave.

Drawers. Upperstocks. Netherstocks. Shirt. Doublet with slops. He didn't bother fastening it-that could wait. Hat. Cloak. Boots. Too cursed many clothes, when he was in a hurry. Footsteps on the stairs.

Heavy footsteps-these beefeating Englishmen were ridiculously large men. A quick kiss for Maude, not that she deserved it, not when she'd tried to get him killed.

Lope threw open the shutters. Cold, damp air streamed into the bedchamber. " Adios," he whispered. " Hasta la vista." He scrambled out the window, hung by his hands from the sill for a moment, and then let go and dropped to the street below.

He landed lightly and didn't get hurt, but his left foot came down with a splash in a puddle of something that stank to high heaven. A rough male voice floated out the window he'd just vacated: "What the Devil was that? And why are these shutters open, Maude? Art mad? Thou'lt catch thy death."

Much as Lope would have liked to, he didn't stay to listen to Maude's excuses. He didn't fear fighting her husband, but an adulterer had no honor, win or lose. Instead of using the rapier at his hip, he hurried round a corner.

Behind him, the Englishman said, "What's that?" again, and then, " 'Swounds, woman, play you the strumpet with me?"

"Oh, no, Ned." Maude's voice dripped honey. Oh, yes, Ned, de Vega thought. He didn't hear whatever else she said, but he would have bet she talked her way out of it. By all the signs, she had practice.

Whatever Lope had landed in, it still clung to his boot. He wrinkled his nose. Had the Englishwoman's husband chosen to come after him, the man could have tracked him by scent, as if he were a polecat.

When he stepped on a stone in the roadway, he scraped his heel and sole against it. That helped a little, but only a little.

He looked around. He'd gone only a couple of blocks from Maude's house, but in the fog and the darkness he'd got turned around. How am I supposed to find my way back to the London barracks, let alone to Westminster, when I don't think I could find my way back to the bedroom I just left?

Madrid boasted far more torches of nights.

Lope shrugged and laughed softly. He had a long, bony face that seemed ill-suited to humor, but his sparkling eyes gave those bones the lie. One way or another, I expect I'll manage.

To make sure he did manage, he drew his rapier. London had a curfew, and he was out well after it.

That wouldn't matter if he came across a squad of Spanish soldiers patrolling the streets. The only Englishmen likely to be out and about, though, were curbers and flicks and nips and high lawyers: thieves and robbers who might have a professional interest, as it were, in making his acquaintance. If they also made the acquaintance of his blade, they wouldn't bother him.

Down an alley, a dog growled and then started to bark. The rapier would also keep him safe against animals that went on four legs. But a chain clanked, and the dog yelped in frustration. Lope nodded to himself. He wouldn't have to worry about that, anyhow.

He picked his way westward, or hoped he did. If he was going in the right direction, he was heading toward the barracks, which lay not far from St. Swithin's church. Who St. Swithin was, he had no idea.

He wondered if Rome did.

He heard footsteps from a side street. His right hand tightened on the leather-wrapped hilt of the rapier.

Whoever was going along that street must have heard him, too, for those other footsteps stopped. Lope paused, listened, muttered, "The Devil take him, whoever he is," and went on. After a few strides, he paused to listen again. A woman's sigh of relief came to his ear. He smiled, tempted to go back and see who she was, and of what quality. After a moment, he shook his head. Another time, he thought.

A few blocks farther west-he thought it was west, anyhow-he heard noise he couldn't ignore. Half a dozen men, maybe more, came toward him without bothering in the least about stealth. He shrank back into a doorway. Maybe that was a patrol. On the other hand, maybe the men were English bandits, numerous and bold enough to take on a patrol if they ran into one.

They turned a corner. The fog couldn't hide their torches, though it tried. Lope tensed as those pale beams cast a shadow across his boot. Then he recognized the sweet, lisping sounds of Castilian.

" Gracias a Dios! " he exclaimed, and stepped out into the roadway.

The soldiers had had no notion he was there. They jerked in surprise and alarm. One of them swung an arquebus his way; another pointed a pistol at him. "Who are you, and what are you doing out after curfew?" their leader growled. "Advance and be recognized-slowly, if you know what's good for you."

Before advancing, before becoming plainly visible, de Vega slid the rapier back into its sheath. He didn't want anyone to start shooting or do anything else he might regret out of surprise or fear. When he drew near, he bowed low, as if the sergeant leading the patrol were a duke rather than-probably-a pigkeeper's son. "Good evening," he said. "I have the honor to be Senior Lieutenant Lope de Vega Carpio."

"Christ on His cross," one of the troopers muttered. "Another stinking officer who thinks the rules don't matter for him."

Lope pretended not to hear that. He couldn't ignore the reproach in the sergeant's voice: "Sir, we might have taken you for an Englishman and blown your head off."

"I'm very glad you didn't," Lope de Vega replied.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant said. "You still haven't said, sir, what you're doing out so long after curfew. We have the authority to arrest officers, sir." He might have had it, but he didn't sound delighted at the prospect of using it. An officer with connections and a bad temper could make him sorry he'd been born, no matter how right he was. Lope didn't have such connections, but how could the sergeant know that?

"What was I doing out so late?" he echoed. "Well, she had red hair and blue eyes and-" His hands described what else Maude had. He went on, "While I was with her, I didn't care what time it was."

"You should have spent the night, sir," the sergeant said.

"I would have liked that. She would have liked that, too. Her husband. alas, no." Lope shook his head.

"Her husband, eh?" The sergeant's laugh showed a missing tooth. A couple of his men let out loud, bawdy guffaws. "An Englishman?" he asked, and answered his own question: "Yes, of course, a heretic dog of an Englishman. Well, good for you, by God."

"And so she was," de Vega said, which got him another laugh or two. With the easy charm that made women open their hearts-and their legs-to him, he went on, "And now, my friends, if you would be so kind as to point me back to the barracks, I would count myself forever in your debt."

"Certainly, sir." The sergeant gestured with his torch. "That way, not too far."

" That way?" Lope said in surprise. "I thought that way led south, down toward the Thames." The soldiers shook their heads as one man. He'd seen it done worse on stage. He gave them a melodramatic sigh. "Plainly, I am mistaken. I'm glad I ran into you men, then. I got lost in this fog."

"The Devil take English weather," the sergeant said, and his men nodded with as much unity as they'd shown before. "Yes, the Devil take the cold, and the rain, and the fog-and he's welcome to the Englishmen while he's at it. They're all heretics at heart, no matter how many of them we burn." The rest of the patrol nodded yet again.

"Amen," de Vega said. "Well, now that I know where I'm going, I'll be off. I thank you for your help." He bowed once more.

Returning the bow, the sergeant said, "Sir, I'm afraid you'll only get lost again, and the streets aren't safe for a lone gentleman. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you." If anything does happen to you, I'll get blamed for it-Lope knew how to translate what he said into what he meant. The underofficer turned to his men. "Rodrigo, FernA?n, take the lieutenant back to the barracks."

"Yes, Sergeant," the troopers chorused. One of them made a splendid flourish with his torch. "You come along with us, sir. We'll get you where you're going."

"That's right," the other agreed. "We know this miserable, fleabitten town. We'd better-we've tramped all through it, night and day."

"I throw myself on your mercy, then," Lope said. They wouldn't be sorry to take him back, not when it got them out of the rest of the patrol. He didn't know how long that was; he'd lost track of time.

They proved as good as their word, too, guiding him back to the big wooden building by the London Stone. Some Englishmen swore the great stone with its iron bars was magical; some Spaniards believed them. Lope de Vega didn't care one way or the other. He was just glad to see it looming out of the mist.

A sentry called out a challenge. The soldiers answered it. "What are you bastards doing back here?" the sentry demanded. "You only went out an hour ago."

"We've got a lost gentleman, a lieutenant, with us," the trooper named FernA?n replied. "Sergeant Diaz sent us back with him-couldn't very well leave him running around loose for some English cabrA?n to knock him over the head."

"I may be a lieutenant, but I am not a child," Lope said as he advanced. FernA?n and Rodrigo and the sentry all found that very funny. What sort of lieutenants have they dealt with? he wondered. Or am I better off not knowing?

The sentry did salute him in proper fashion, and let him go in. A sergeant inside should have taken his name, but the fellow was dozing in front of a charcoal brazier. Lope slipped past him and into his room, where he pulled off his hat and boots and sword belt and went to bed. Diego, his servant, already lay there snoring. Diego, from everything Lope had seen, would sleep through the Last Judgment.

I might as well have no servant at all, de Vega thought, drifting toward sleep. But a gentleman without a servant would be. Unimaginable was the word that should have formed in his mind.

What did occur to him was better off. He yawned, stretched, and stopped worrying about it.

When he woke, it was still dark outside. He felt rested enough, though. In fall and winter, English nights stretched ungodly long, and the hours of July sunshine never seemed enough to make up for them. Diego didn't seemed to have moved; his snores certainly hadn't changed rhythm. If he ever felt rested enough, he'd given no sign of it.

Leaving him in his dormouse-like hibernation, Lope put on what he'd taken off the night before, adjusting the bright pheasant plume in his braided-leather hatband to the proper jaunty angle. He resisted the temptation to slam the door as he went out to get breakfast. My virtue surely piles up in heaven, he thought.

He joined a line of soldiers who yawned and knuckled their red eyes. Breakfast was wine and a cruet of olive oil-both imported from Spain, as neither the grape nor the olive flourished in this northern clime-and half a loaf of brown bread. The bread was local, and at least as good as he would have had back in Madrid.

He was just finishing when his superior's servant came up to him. Captain GuzmA?n's Enrique was the opposite of his own Diego in every way: tall, thin, smarter than a servant had any business being, and alarmingly diligent. "Good day, Lieutenant," Enrique said. "My principal requests the honor of your company at your earliest convenience."

Gulping down the last of the wine, Lope got to his feet. "I am at his Excellency's service, of course." No matter how flowery a servant made an order, an order it remained.

No matter how much Lope hurried, Enrique got to Guzman's office ahead of him. "Here's de Vega," he told GuzmA?n in dismissive tones. As a captain's man, he naturally looked down his nose at a creature so lowly as a lieutenant, even a senior lieutenant.

" Buenos dias, your Excellency," Lope said as he walked in. He swept off his hat and bowed.

"Good day," Captain Baltasar Guzman replied, nodding without rising from his seat. He was a dapper little man whose mustaches and chin beard remained wispy with youth: though Lope's superior, he was a good fifteen years younger. He had some sort of connection with the great noble house of GuzmA?n-the house of, among others, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander of the Armada-which explained his rank. He wasn't a bad officer, though, in spite of that. Enrique wouldn't let him be a bad officer, Lope thought.

"And how may I serve you today, your Excellency?" he asked.

Captain Guzman wagged a forefinger at him. "I hear you were out late last night."

"She was very pretty," de Vega replied with dignity. "Very friendly, too."

"No doubt," Guzman said dryly. "Our job, though, is to hunt down the English who are not friendly to King Philip, God bless him, not to seek out those who are."

"I wasn't on duty then." Lope tried to change the subject: "Is there any new word on his Majesty's health?"

"He's dying," Baltasar Guzman said, and crossed himself. "The gout, the sores. Last I heard, those are getting worse. He may go before the Lord tomorrow, he may last a year, he may even last two. But dying he is."

Lope crossed himself, too. "Surely his son will prove as illustrious as he has himself."

"Surely," GuzmA?n said, and would not meet his eyes. Philip II was no great captain, no warrior whom men would follow into battle with a song on their lips and in their hearts. But such captains did his bidding. In his more than forty years of gray, competent rule, he had beaten back the Turks in the Mediterranean and brought England and Holland out of heresy and back into the embrace of the Catholic Church. More flamboyant men had accomplished far less.

His son, the prince who would be Philip III, also was not flamboyant. But, from everything Lope de Vega had heard-from everything everyone had heard-he was not particularly competent, either. Lope said, "God will protect us, as He has till now."

Guzman crossed himself again. "May it be so." Now he did look de Vega full in the face. "And, of course, our duty is to help God as best we can. What are your plans for today, Lieutenant? — leaving Englishwomen out of the bargain, I mean."

"There is to be a play this afternoon at the Theatre," Lope replied. "I shall go there and stand among the groundlings, listen to them, see the play, and chat with the actors afterwards if I have the chance."

"A duty you hate, I'm sure," Captain GuzmA?n said. "I do wonder whether your attendance is for the benefit of Queen Isabella and King Albert, God bless them; for the benefit of King Philip, God bless him and keep him; or for the benefit of one Lope FA©lix de Vega Carpio."

"And may God bless me as well," de Vega said. Guzman's nod looked grudging, but it was a nod. Lope went on, "When I stand among the ordinary English, I hear their grumbles. And when I mingle with the actors, I may hear more. Some of them are more than actors. Some of them have connections with the English nobles who are their patrons. Some of them, now and again, do their patrons' bidding."

"Someof them indeed have connections with their patrons." Guzman gave the word an obscene twist.

But then he sighed. "Still, I can't say you're wrong. Some of them are spies, and so. and so, Lieutenant, I know you are mixing pleasure with your business, but I cannot tell you not to do it. I want a full report, in writing, when you get back."

"Just as you say, your Excellency, so shall it be," Lope promised, doing his best to hide his relief. He turned to leave.

Baltasar Guzman let him take one step toward the door, then raised a finger and stopped him in his tracks. "Oh-one other thing, de Vega."

"Your Excellency?"

"I want a report that deals with matters political. Literary criticism has its place. I do not argue with that.

Its place, however, is not here. Understand me?"

"Yes, your Excellency." You're a Philistine, your Excellency. It's God's own miracle you can read and write at all, your Excellency. But GuzmA?n was the man with the rank. Guzman was the man with the family.

Guzman was also the man with the literate, intelligent, curious servant. As de Vega left the office, Enrique said, "Sir, your English is much better than mine. I would be glad to hear what these playwrights are doing, to compare them to our own."

Keeping Enrique sweet might help keep Captain Guzman sweet. And Lope was passionate about the theatre. He wished his useless Diego were passionate about anything but slumber. "Of course, Enrique. When I get back."

The Theatre stood in Shoreditch, beyond the walls of London and, in fact, beyond the jurisdiction of the city. Before the Catholic restoration, the grim Protestants who called themselves Puritans had kept theatres out of London proper. Many of the same men still governed the capital of England. They had made a peace of sorts with the Church, but not with gaiety; there still were no theatres within the bounds of the city.

Lope's cloak and hat shielded him from the endless autumn drizzle as he made his way out through Bishopsgate and up Shoreditch High Street. Leaving the wall behind didn't mean leaving behind what still seemed like a city, even if it was no longer exactly London. Stinking tenements lined narrow streets and leaned toward one another above them. Here a man might be murdered without even the excuse of sleeping with another man's wife. Lope kept a hand on the hilt of his rapier and strode on with a determination that warned all and sundry he would be hard to bring down. Instead of troubling him, people scrambled

out of his way. Better to be bold, he thought.

Stews flourished beyond the reach of the London city government, too. A skinny, dirty bare-breasted woman leaned out a window and called to de Vega: "How about it, handsome?"

What went through his mind was, God grant I never grow so desperate. He swept off his hat, bowed, and kept walking. "Cheap bugger!" she shouted after him. "Marican! " Did she know him for a Spaniard, or was that just another insult, one new here since the coming of the Armada? He never found out.

Buildings ended. Fields, orchards, and garden plots began. Plenty of people were making their way toward the Theatre. Lope tremendously admired it and the other theatres on the outskirts of London. No such places in which to put on plays existed in Spain. There, actors performed in a square in front of a tavern, with the audience looking down from the buildings on the other three sides of that square. Real playhouses. Did the Englishmen know how lucky they were? He doubted it. From all he'd seen, they seldom did.

Though brightened with paint, the Theatre's timbers were themselves old and faded; the three-story polygonal building had been standing for more than twenty years. Gay banners on the roof helped draw a crowd. So did a big, colorful signboard above the entrance, advertising the day's show:

IF YOU LIKE IT, A NEW COMEDY BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Dissolute-looking men were making pennies for drink by going-staggering-through the streets bawling out the name of the play.

Lope paid his penny at the door. "Groundling!" called the man who took the coin. Another man directed de Vega to the standing room around the brightly painted stage, where he jostled his way forward. Had he paid tuppence or threepence, he could have had a seat in one of the galleries looking down on the action. Here among the poorer folk, though, he would likely find more of interest.

Hawkers fought through the press, selling sausages and pasties and cider and beer. Lope bought a sausage and a cup of cider. He stood there chewing and sipping, guarding his place with his elbows as he listened to the men and women around him.

"Nasty way to die, burning," a white-bearded fellow remarked.

"You ever see anybody braver nor Parsons Stubbes the other day?" a woman said. "Couldn't be nobody braver. God's bound to love a man like that-only stands to reason. I expect he's up in heaven right now."

"How about them what burned him?" another man asked.

"Oh, I don't know anything about that," the woman answered quickly. She'd already said too much, and realized it, but she wouldn't say any more. Nine years of the Inquisition had taught these talkative people something, at least, of holding their tongues. And before that they'd had a generation of stern heresy under Elizabeth, and before that Catholicism under Mary and Philip, and before that more heresy under Henry VIII. They'd swung back and forth so many times, it was a marvel they hadn't looked toward the Turks and had a go at being Mahometans for a while.

Then such thoughts left him, for two actors appeared on stage, and the play began. Lope had to give all his attention to it. His English was good, but not so good that he could follow the language when quickly spoken without listening hard. And Shakespeare, as was his habit, had cooked up a more complicated plot than any Spanish playwright would have thought of using: squabbling noble brothers, the younger having usurped the elder's place as duke; the quarreling sons of a knight loyal to the exiled rightful duke, and the daughters of the rightful duke and his brother.

Those "daughters," Rosalind and Celia, almost took Lope out of the play for a moment. As was the English practice, they were played by beardless boys with unbroken voices. Women didn't act on stage here, as they'd begun to do in Spain. One of the boys playing the daughters was noticeably better at giving the impression of femininity than the other. Had the company had real actresses to work with, the problem wouldn't have arisen.

But Shakespeare, as de Vega had seen him do in other plays, used English conventions to advantage.

Rosalind disguised herself as a boy to escape the court of her wicked uncle: a boy playing a girl playing a boy. And then a minor character playing a feminine role fell for "him": a boy playing a girl in love with a boy playing a girl playing a boy. Lope couldn't help howling laughter. He was tempted to count on his fingers to keep track of who was who, or of who was supposed to be who.

Spanish plays ran to three acts. Shakespeare, following English custom, had five acts-about two hours-in which to wrap up all the loose ends he'd introduced and all the hares he'd started. He did it, too, getting the daughters of the two noblemen married to the sons of the knight and having the usurping duke retire to a monastery so his older brother could reclaim the throne.

How would the Englishman have managed that if his kingdom were still Protestant? Lope wondered as the boy playing Rosalind, the better actor, delivered an epilogue asking the audience for applause. That struck Lope as almost as unnatural as not employing actresses. He'd used the last couple of lines in his plays to say farewell, but he never would have written in a whole speech.

But it didn't bother the people around him. They clapped their hands and stamped their feet and shouted till his ears rang. The actors came out to take their bows. Richard Burbage, who'd played the usurping duke, made a leg in a robe King Philip wouldn't have been ashamed to wear. His crown was surely polished brass, not gold, but it gleamed brightly. Shakespeare, who'd played his older brother, also had on a royal robe, but one that was much less splendid, as befit his forest exile- a nice touch, Lope thought. When Shakespeare doffed his brass crown, his own crown gleamed brightly, too. Lope, who had all his hair, noted that with smug amusement.

One further advantage of a stage-from the company's point of view-was that they could sell a few seats right up on the edge of it, and charge more for those than for any others in the house. The men and women who rose from those seats to applaud showed more velvet and lace and threadwork of gold and silver than all the groundlings put together. Pearls and precious stones glittered in the women's hair. Gold gleamed on the men's belts, and on their scabbards, and on the hilts of their rapiers.

Despite those visible signs of wealth and power, the groundlings behind the rich folk weren't shy about making their views known. "Sit you down!" they shouted, and "We came to see the players, not your arses!" and "God sees through you, but we can't!"

One of the grandees half turned and set a beringed hand on the fancy hilt of his sword. A flying chunk of sausage smirched his orange doublet with grease. Safe in the anonymity of the crowd, another groundling threw something else, which flew past the nobleman and bounced halfway across the stage. The poor folk in their frowzy wool raised a cheer.

Just as a Spanish noble would have done, the Englishman purpled with fury. But the woman beside him, whose neckline was even more striking than her pile of blond curls, set a hand on his sleeve and said something in a low voice. His reply was anything but low, and thoroughly sulfurous. She spoke again, as if to say, What can you do? You can't kill them all. Grudgingly, he turned away from the groundlings, though his back still radiated fury. They jeered louder than ever.

After the last bow, the players went back into the tiring room behind the stage to change into their everyday clothes once more. Most of the crowd filed out through the narrow doorways by which they'd entered. Friends and sweethearts of the company pressed forward to join the actors backstage. So did the stagestruck: would-be actors, would-be writers, would-be friends and sweethearts.

The tireman's assistants-a couple of big, burly men who kept cudgels close by-stood in front of the doors leading to the tiring room. Lope de Vega, though, had no trouble; he went backstage after every performance he attended. "God give you good day, Master Lope," one of the assistants said, doffing his cap and standing aside to let the Spaniard pass.

"And to you also, Edward," de Vega replied. "What thought you of the show today?"

"We had us a good house," Edward said-the first worry of any man in an acting company. Then he blinked. "Oh, d'you mean the play?"

"Indeed yes, the play," Lope said. "So much going on there, almost all at once."

"Master Will don't write 'em simple," the tireman's assistant agreed. "But he hath the knack of helping folk recall who's who, and meseems the crowd followed tolerably well." Nodding, de Vega passed by.

Edward glowered at the Englishman behind him. "And who are you, friend?"

Chaos reigned in the tiring room. Some of the players were still in costume; some had already returned to the drabber wear normal to men and boys of their class; and some, between the one stage and the other, wore very little. They took near nudity in stride, as Spanish actors would have done. The room was close with the reek of sweat and perfume and torch smoke.

Lope moved through as best he could, shaking hands, bowing when he had the space, and congratulating the players. Someone-he didn't see who-handed him a leather drinking jack. Sipping, he found it full of sweet, strong Spanish wine. The English were even fonder of it than his own folk, perhaps because they had to import it and couldn't take it for granted.

He bumped into a woman-someone's wife, he couldn't remember whose. "So sorry, my lady," he said.

"With your permission?" He bowed over her hand and kissed it. She smiled back in a manner that might have been encouraging.

"Watch out for Master Lope," round-faced Will Kemp said behind him. "Lope the loup, Lope the lobo."

The company clown howled wolfishly. Raucous laughter rose. Lope joined it, the easiest way he knew to deflect suspicion. The woman turned to talk to an Englishman, so there was no suspicion to deflect, anyhow. Aes la vida, de Vega thought, and sighed.

He congratulated Burbage and the boy who'd played Rosalind. "I thank you kindly, sir," the youth replied. In his powder and paint, he still looked quite feminine-even tempting-but his natural voice, though not yet a man's, was deeper than the one he'd used on stage. He wouldn't be able to pretend to womanhood much longer.

At last, de Vega made his way to Shakespeare. The actor and playwright stood off in a corner, talking shop with darkly handsome Christopher Marlowe. Lope bowed in delight. "My two favorites of the English stage, here together!" he cried.

"Good day-or should I say good even, Master de Vega?" Shakespeare replied. "Have you met Master Marlowe here?" To Marlowe, he added, "Lieutenant de Vega writes plays in Spanish, and more than once hath trodden the boards with Lord Westmorland's Men as extra."

"Indeed?" Marlowe murmured. His cool, dark eyes measured Lope. "How. versatile of him." He nodded and bowed. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir."

"We have met once or twice, sir, but how can I be surprised if you recall it not?" de Vega said. By the way Marlowe eyed him, though, he wondered if the Englishman ever forgot anything. Enrique, Captain GuzmA?n's servant, had that same too-clever-by-half look, and he never did.

But then Lope started talking shop with the English playwrights, and forgot everything else for a while. He didn't worry about spying. He didn't even worry about the pretty women in the room. What did any of that matter, next to the passion for the word, for the play, the three men shared?

A torch guttered out, sending shadows swooping through the tiring room, filling a quarter of it with darkness, and adding the reek of hot fat to the crowded air. Christopher Marlowe clapped a hand to his forehead in one of the melodramatic gestures he used so naturally. " 'Struth!" he burst out. "Would the poxy Spaniard never leave?"

Shakespeare stood several inches taller. He set a hand on the other playwright's shoulder. "However long he lingered, he's gone now, Kit. He's harmless, or as harmless as a man of his kingdom can be. Mad for the stage, as you heard."

"Think you so?" Marlowe said, and Shakespeare nodded. Marlowe rolled his eyes. "And think you babes are hid 'neath cabbage leaves for their mothers to find?"

The tireman coughed. He wanted the room empty so he could lock up the precious costumes and go home. Only a few people were left now, still hashing over what they'd done, what they might have done, what they would do the next time they put on If You Like It. Even Will Kemp, a law unto himself, took the tireman seriously. With a mocking bow to those who remained, he swept out the door.

Irked, Shakespeare stayed where he was. He snapped, "I know whence babes come-I know better than you, by God." Even in the dim, uncertain light left in the tiring room, he saw Marlowe flush. The other poet chased boys as avidly as prickproud Lope went after other men's wives.

"All right, Will." Marlowe visibly held in his anger. "You're no blushing maid-be it so stipulated. But he loves us not for ourselves alone. Were we wenches, then yes, mayhap. Things being as they are. " He shook his head.

"What, you reckon Lope Stagestruck an intelligencer?" Shakespeare almost laughed in his face. "Where's the reason behind that?"

" Imprimis, he's a Spaniard. Secundus, he's a man. Tertius, an you suspect a man not, he'll ever prove the viper who ups and stings you."

He meant every word. Shakespeare saw as much. He let out a sigh as exasperated as the tireman's cough. "A pretty world wherein you must live, Kit, there within the fortress of your skull."

"I do live," Marlowe said, "and I purpose living some while longer, too. Were I so careless as you, I had died ten times over ere now. Quarrels are easy enough to frame: a swaggering bravo imagining an insult in the street, peradventure, or over the reckoning in a little room. You're a better man than I am. See to it your goodness harms you not."

"Gentlemen, please," the tireman said, something close to despair in his voice.

Shakespeare walked out of the Theatre, Marlowe in his wake. Autumn twilight came early, and was falling fast. Before long, the gray clouds overhead would turn black. With the play over, the streets around the Theatre were almost empty. As he started back toward London and his lodgings, Shakespeare said, "Well, the Spaniard's not about. What would you say to me you could not say within the spying rascal's hearing?"

"You make a mock of it," Marlowe said. "One day you'll be sorry-God grant it be not soon. What would I say? I've said already more than I would say."

"Then say no more, and have done." Shakespeare lengthened his stride; Marlowe had to half trot to try to keep up. Over his shoulder, Shakespeare added, "Enough real worries in the world-aye, enough and to spare-without the hobgoblins bubbling from the too fertile cauldron of your fears."

"Damn you, will you listen to me?" Marlowe shouted. A limping old woman carrying a pail of water stared at him.

"Listen? How, when you will not speak, save only in riddles?" But Shakespeare stopped.

Marlowe took a deep breath. Slowly, deliberately, he let it out. "Hear me plain, then," he said, and gave Shakespeare a mocking bow. "I should like you to meet a friend of mine."

"A friend?" Shakespeare said in surprise. As far as he knew-as far as anyone in London knew-Christopher Marlowe neither had nor particularly wanted friends. He did have a great many acquaintances of one degree of intimacy or another, that being defined by how useful they proved to him.

He was almost as aware of the lack as were other folk. He hesitated before nodding, and added, "A man with whom I've been yoked in harness some little while."

"Yoked in harness of what sort?" Shakespeare asked.

"Side by side, vile-minded lecher, not fore and aft," Marlowe said. " 'Tis a matter of business on which he's fain to make your acquaintance." His shoulders hunched. He glared down at the ground. He was furious, and not trying hard at all to hide it.

Shakespeare judged he would burst like the hellburner of Antwerp if not humored. Marlowe in a temper was nothing to take lightly, so Shakespeare said, "I'll meet him, and right gladly, too, whosoever he may be. Bring him to my ordinary while I dine or sup, an't please you."

"I'll do't," Marlowe said, though he sounded far from pleased. If anything, he seemed angrier than ever.

In God's name, what now? Shakespeare wondered. Now, instead of hastening on toward Bishopsgate, he stopped in his tracks. Marlowe was the one who kept striding on before also halting a few paces farther on. "I have said I will do as you would have me do, Kit," Shakespeare said. "Wherefore, then, wax you wroth with me still?"

"I do not." Marlowe flung the three words at him and started on again.

"What then?" Now Shakespeare had to hurry after him-either that or shout after him and make their talk a public matter for any who cared to hear it. He asked the only question that occurred to him: "If not for me, is your anger for your a€?friend'?"

"It is." Two more words, bitten off short.

"Here's a tangled coil!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "Why such fury for him?"

"Because he's fain to see you in this business," Marlowe said sullenly.

By then, with the darkness coming on fast, with a few drops of drizzle falling cold on his hand, Shakespeare was beginning to lose his temper, too. "Enough of riddles, of puzzles, of conundrums," he said. "Do me the honor, do me the courtesy, of speaking plain."

"I could speak no plainer-because he's fain to see you in this business." But then, unwillingly, Marlowe made it a great deal plainer: "Because he's fain to see you, and not me. Damn you." He hurried off, leaning forward as if into a heavy wind.

"Oh, Kit!" Now Shakespeare knew exactly where the trouble lay. What he did not know was whether he could mend it. Marlowe had been a success in London before Shakespeare rose from performing in plays to trying to write them. Some of Shakespeare's early dramas bore Marlowe's stamp heavily upon them. If a man imitate, let him imitate the best, Shakespeare thought.

Marlowe remained popular even now. He made a living by his pen, as few could. But those who had given him first place now rated him second. For a proud man, as he surely was, that had to grate. If the

"business" had to do with the theatre, if his "friend" wanted Shakespeare and not him. No wonder he was scowling.

"Wait!" Shakespeare called, and loped after him. "Shall I tell this cullion that, if he be your friend, the business should be yours?"

To his surprise, the other playwright shook his head. "Nay. He hath reason. For what he purposes, you were the better choice. I would 'twere otherwise, but the world is as it is, not as we would have it."

"You intrigue me mightily, and perplex me, too," Shakespeare said.

Marlowe's laugh held more bile than mirth. "And I might say the same of you, Will. Did you tender me this plum, I'd not offer it back again. You may be sure of that."

Shakespeare was. In a cutthroat business, Marlowe owned sharper knives than most. Unlike some, he seldom bothered pretending otherwise. After a moment's thought, Shakespeare said, "God be praised, I am not so hungry I needs must take bread from another man's mouth."

"Ah, dear Will. An there be a God, He might do worse than hear praises from such as you. You're a blockhead, but an honest blockhead." Marlowe stood up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "I'll bring the fellow to your ordinary at eventide tomorrow-I know the place you favor. Till then." He hurried toward Bishopsgate. This time, the set of his shoulders said Shakespeare would have been unwelcome had he tried to stay up with him.

With a sigh, Shakespeare trudged down Shoreditch High Street after him. Just when a man looked like understanding Marlowe, he would do something like that. He could not praise without putting a poison sting in amongst the honey, but the kiss had been, or at least had seemed, real.

"Hurry up, hurry up," guards at the gate called. "Get on in, the lot of you." They were a mixed lot, Englishmen and rawboned Irish mercenaries. The Irish soldiers looked achingly eager to kill someone, anyone. Rumor said they ate human flesh. Shakespeare didn't care to find out if rumor were true. Not meeting their fierce, falconlike gazes, he scuttled into the city.

His lodgings were in Bishopsgate Ward, not far from the wall, in a house owned by a widow who made her living by letting out most of the space. He had his own bed, but two others crowded the room where he slept. One of the men who shared the chamber, a glazier named Jack Street, had a snore that sounded like a lion's roar. The other, a lively little fellow called Peter Foster, called himself a tinker. Shakespeare suspected he was a sneakthief. He didn't foul his own nest, though; nothing had ever gone missing at the lodging house.

"You're late today, Master William," said Jane Kendall, Shakespeare's landlady. "By Our Lady, I hope all went well at the Theatre." She made the sign of the cross. From things she'd said over the couple of years he'd lived there, she'd been a Catholic even before the Armada restored England's allegiance to Rome.

"Well enough, I thank you," he replied. "Sometimes, when talking amongst ourselves after the play, we do lose track of time." With so many people living so close together, secrets were hard to keep. Telling a piece of the truth often proved the best way to keep all of it from coming out.

"And the house was full?" Widow Kendall persisted.

"Near enough." Shakespeare smiled and made a leg at her, as if she were a pretty young noblewoman, not a frowzy, gray-haired tallowchandler's widow. "Never fear. I'll have no trouble with the month's rent."

She giggled and simpered like a young girl, too. But when she said, "That I'm glad to hear," her voice held nothing but truth. A lodger without his rent became in short order a former lodger out on the street.

Still, he'd pleased her, for she went on, "There's new-brewed ale in the kitchen. Take a mug, if you care to."

"That I will, and right gladly." Shakespeare fitted action to word. The widow made good ale. Hopped beer, these days, was commoner than the older drink, for it soured much more slowly. He savored the mug, and, when his landlady continued to look benign, took another. Nicely warmed, he said, "Now I'm to the ordinary for supper."

She nodded. "Don't forget the hour and keep scribbling till past curfew," she warned.

"I shan't." I hope I shan't, Shakespeare thought. Or do I? The eatery made a better place to work than the lodging house. On nights when ideas seemed to flow straight from his mind onto the page, he could and sometimes did lose track of time. He'd ducked home past patrols more than once.

From the chest by his bed, he took his second-best spoon-pewter-a couple of quills, a knife to trim them, ink, and three sheets of paper. He sometimes wished he followed a less expensive calling; each sheet cost more than a loaf of bread. He locked the chest once more, then hurried off to the ordinary around the corner. He sat down at the table with the biggest, fattest candle on it: he wanted the best light he could find for writing.

A serving woman came up to him. "Good even, Master Will. What'll you have?"

"Hello, Kate. What's the threepenny tonight?"

"Kidney pie, and monstrous good," she said. He nodded. She brought it to him, with a mug of beer. He dug in with the spoon, eating quickly. When he was through, he spread out his papers and got to work.

Love's Labour's Won wasn't going so well as he wished it would. He couldn't lose himself in it, and had no trouble recalling when curfew neared. After he went back to the lodging house, he got a candle of his own from his trunk-Jack Street was already snoring in the bed next to his-lit it at the hearth, and set it on a table. Then he started writing again, and kept at it till he could hold his eyes open no more. He had his story from Boccaccio, but this labor, won or lost, reminded him of the difference between a story and a finished play.

The next day, he performed again at the Theatre. He almost forgot he had a supper engagement that evening, and had to grab his best spoon-silver-and rush from his lodging house. To his relief, Christopher Marlowe and his mysterious friend hadn't got there yet. Shakespeare ordered a mug of beer and waited for them.

They came in perhaps a quarter of an hour later. The other man was no one Shakespeare had seen before: a skinny little fellow in his forties, with dark blond hair going gray and a lighter beard that didn't cover all his pockmarks. He wore spectacles, but still squinted nearsightedly. Marlowe introduced him as Thomas Phelippes. Shakespeare got up from his stool and bowed. "Your servant, sir."

"No, yours." Phelippes had a high, thin, fussily precise voice.

They all shared a roast capon and bread and butter. Phelippes had little small talk. He seemed content to listen to Shakespeare and Marlowe's theatre gossip. After a while, once no one sat close enough to overhear, Shakespeare spoke directly to him: "Kit says you may have somewhat of business for me. Of what sort is't?"

"Why, the business of England's salvation, of course," Thomas Phelippes told him.