Ruled Britannia

XIV

When Lope De Vega first came to himself, he didn't think he was awake at all. He thought he had died, and found himself in some stygian pit of hell. Slowly, so slowly, he realized he lived and breathed, but he feared he was blind. Then he saw that the blackness all around lay in front of his eyes, not behind them. Such blackness had a name. He groped for it and, groping, found it. Night. This was night.

He groaned and tried to sit up. That was a mistake. Motion fanned the throbbing agony in his head. His guts churned. He heaved up whatever his stomach held. Only little by little did he also notice sharper pain from his left arm, as from a cut. Had he been wounded there? He couldn't remember, not at first.

At first, he had trouble remembering his name, let alone anything else. He had no idea why he lay in the middle of some London street-yes, this was London; that much he knew-covered in blood and, now, puke. He had no idea who the corpses under him and around him and sprawling across his legs were, either. But that they were corpses he did not doubt; no living man's flesh could be so cold.

More cautiously this time, he tried again to sit. The pain forced another moan from him, but he succeeded. Crossing himself, he wriggled away from the dead body on him. But he could not escape them all. They were too many, and he too weak to move far yet.

Why such slaughter? Who were these slain? The why he could not recall, not with bells of torment clanging in his head. The who? There not far away, face pale and still in the moonlight, lay the sergeant who'd told him Captain GuzmA?n was down. He remembered that. How GuzmA?n had come to fall, though, remained beyond him.

And not just Guzman. " Madre de Dios, " Lope whispered softly, and crossed himself again. The corpses piled around him were all Spaniards, scores of Spaniards. He shuddered. His guts knotted anew, though now he had nothing left in him to give back.

Even as the spasm wracked him, what had to be cold truth slid into his clouded wits. They threw me here because they thought I was dead, too. At the moment, he rather wished he were. But then he saw a body with a slit throat gaping wide like a second mouth, and another, and another. They'd made sure of a lot of men. They hadn't bothered with him. He breathed. His heart beat-his temples thudded each time his heart beat. His eyes fell on another cut throat. No, he didn't-quite-feel like dying yet.

They? The English. It had to be the English. They'd risen. They must have risen. But why still eluded him.

Everything had been peaceful, as far as he could remember. He should have played Juan de IdiA?quez in King Philip at the Theatre. Had he? He didn't think so.

Nothing was peaceful now. Along with the death stench of so many men, he smelled more smoke than he should have even in smoky London. The night was alive, hideously alive, with shouts and screams from far and near. Somewhere a block or two away, a pistol banged. The report made Lope's head want to explode.

King Philip. The Theatre. Shakespeare. Cicely Sellis. De Vega stiffened. The chain of associations took his thoughts down a road closed till then. "That puta!" he gasped. "That bruja!" She'd bewitched him, seduced him, made him forget all about the Theatre, so that he went back towards the barracks instead, went back towards the barracks and. He cursed. He'd lost it, whatever it was.

He tried to stand. He needed three separate efforts before he could. Even then, he swayed like a scrawny sapling in a storm. A chorus of drunken English voices floated through the air:

"Death-Death-Death to the dons!" The Englishmen howled out laughter and obscenities, then took it up afresh. "Death-Death-Death to the dons!" More gloating laughter.

Lope's legs almost went out from under him. He staggered over to a wall and leaned against it. He'd heard that chorus before. He'd been fighting his way towards the Tower of London. He remembered that, and barricades in the streets, and every damned Englishman in the world running toward him and his comrades with whatever weapon he chanced to have. And.

"And we must have lost," Lope said. Explaining things to himself seemed to help. "By God and St. James, we must have lost." They'd shouted Santiago! He remembered that, too. His throat was still raw with it.

But God and St. James hadn't heeded them.

The Tower of London. Even with his wits scrambled, he knew who was kept there. He'd known that as long as he'd been in England. And, just in case he hadn't, those roaring, drunken Englishmen started a new chorus: "God bless good Queen Bess!"

Elizabeth free? If she was, she'd draw rebels as the North Pole drew a compass needle. England had never been much more than sullenly acquiescent to the Spanish occupation. Given time, it might have become quieter. But a rising now. A rising now could be very bad, and he knew it.

He laughed, a small, crackbrained laugh. Crackbrained indeed, he thought through his pulsing, pounding headache. This rising, plainly, was already about as bad as it could get.

Quiet footfalls-three or four Englishmen coming up the street. De Vega froze into immobility. The wall that half held him up was shadowed. They didn't see him. The thought of a live Spaniard never entered their minds, anyhow. They intended plundering the dead.

They shoved bodies this way and that. "We are come too late," one of them said sorrowfully. "Too many others here before us: we have but their leavings."

"You will steal, James, an egg out of a cloister," another replied; by the way he said it, he meant it as praise. "Think you not you'll find somewhat worth the having?"

"Haply so," James replied, "yet where's the ironmongery they had about 'em? Gone, lost as a town woman's maidenhead. We could have got good coin for casques and corselets and swords, but see you any of the like? I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter or an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle than those others to have spared the Spaniards' cutlery."

Soldiers and scavengers robbed the fallen after battle. They had since the beginning of time. Lope had done it himself here in England. But never had he heard it so calmly, so cold-bloodedly, hashed over.

"Here's a crucifix-might be gold," another robber said. Moonlight flashed from a knifeblade as he cut it free.

The one called James remained gloomy, saying, "Mind me, Henry: 'twill prove but brass when your glaziers gaze on't come daylight. Were't gold, it had been gone long since." But then he stooped and let out a soft grunt of pleasure. "Or peradventure I'm mistook, for here's a fine fat purse yet unslit, the which I cannot say of this wight's weasand."

Off to the west, a sharp volley of arquebus fire was followed a moment later by another, and then by the deep boom of a cannon. "Shall we cast down the dons and cast 'em out, think you?" the man called Henry asked.

"What boots it?" someone else replied. "Or the dogs tear the bear or the bear rend the dogs, the rats in the wainscoting thrive." They all laughed, and then, self-proclaimed rats, stole away.

Lope realized he had better leave, too. His comrades' bodies would draw more plunderers, and some might spy him. He could not have fought a mouse, let alone a rat. And he discovered he had nothing with which to fight. His rapier was gone. He hadn't even noticed till that moment. And, when his hand went to the sheath of his belt knife, sheath and knife had likewise vanished. Sure enough, plenty of robbers had already visited the Spaniards.

Where do I go? he wondered. What do I do?

More gunfire off to the west decided him. If there was still real fighting off in that direction, he would-he might-find his countrymen there. And if he found Englishmen before his countrymen, he would likely also find his death. He staggered up Thames Street, weaving from side to side like a sot. He made his way past two barricades, now mostly but not quite torn down, and past more bodies. He still remembered little of the fight, and nothing of the blow that had almost caved in his skull. He wondered if he ever would.

Little by little, his wits did seem to be coming back to life. Things like a raging thirst and the vile aftertaste of vomit in his mouth began to register, where before they'd been nothing but background to the thundering misery in his head. The river, he remembered, lay only a block away. He turned town an alley and made his way towards it at the best pace he could muster. He would have outsped any snail. A tortoise? Possibly not.

Across the Thames, a great fire-no, two-blazed in Southwark. The light hurt Lope's eyes, as it might have after too much wine. He looked down-looked down at himself for the first time since waking amongst the dead. His stomach lurched yet again. He was all over blood, from head to foot.

He needed several heartbeats to figure out it wasn't all his. It couldn't be. If it were, he'd have had none left inside him. How many others had bled on him while he lay senseless? Too many. Oh, far too many!

He stumbled on towards the river. When at last he reached it, he sank to his knees, at least as much from weakness as from thirst, though he was very dry indeed. He cupped his hands and brought water to his mouth. It tasted of mud and-blood? He couldn't tell whether the blood was in the water or on his hands or on his face. He drank and drank, then splashed more water onto his cheeks and forehead. The cold hurt dreadfully for a moment, but then seemed to soothe.

He knew he should go looking for his countrymen again. He knew. but he was at the very end of his feeble strength. He lay by the Thames, panting like a dog, watching the fires on the far bank spread and spread.

"Death-Death-Death to the dons!" That hateful chant rose up once more, somewhere behind him. If the English found him here, they would give him the death he'd almost had before. He couldn't make himself care, or move.

Even in the midst of this madness, boats still made their way across the Thames, and up and down it.

Shouts of, "Eastward ho!" and, "Westward ho!" and, " 'Ware, you crusty botch of nature!" rang out, as they might have at any hour of any day or night.

A large boat, one with at least a dozen men at the oars, came out of the west, making for London Bridge.

In the stern sat a man and a woman. He slumped to one side; she sat very straight and stiff. As the boat passed by Lope, the rowers all pulling flat out to speed it down the river, she said something in Spanish.

De Vega couldn't make out her words, but the tongue was unmistakable. She sounded furious. The man answered in the same language, but with a guttural accent, more likely German than English. The boat slid down the Thames, under the bridge, and away to the east.

They're free. They've escaped, Lope thought vaguely, thoughhe had no idea who they were. He tried to get to his feet, tried and failed. Instead, he sank down into something perhaps a little closer to proper sleep than to the oblivion from which he'd emerged a little while before. As London boiled around him, he curled up on his side and snored.

Shakespeare felt drunk, though he'd had no more than a couple of mugs of ale hastily snatched up and even more hastily poured down. He'd been up all through the wild night, up and running and shouting and now and then throwing stones at Spaniards. Now he stood in Westminster, watching the sun rise bloody through the thick clouds of smoke above London and Southwark.

Cries of, "Death to the dons!" and, "Elizabeth!" and, "Good Queen Bess!" rang in his ears. Here and there, Spaniards still fought. Off in the distance, a shout of, " A?Santiago! " was followed by a ragged volley of gunfire and several screams.

Richard Burbage clapped Shakespeare on the back. Soot stained the player's face; sweat runneled pale tracks through it. Belike mine own seeming is the same, Shakespeare thought. Burbage's eyes were red-tracked, but glowed like lanterns. "Beshrew him if we've not broke 'em, Will!" he said.

"You may have the right of't," Shakespeare said in slow, weary wonder. "By God, you may." He yawned. "But where be Isabella and Albert? We've none of us set eyes on 'em here."

"I know that, and it likes me not," Burbage answered. "They may yet rally dons and traitors to their side, do we not presently bring 'em to heel." He yawned too, enormously.

Three Englishmen marched another, better dressed than they, up the street at sword's point. "I tell you, you do mistake me," their captive said. "I have ever loved Elizabeth, ever reckoned her my rightful sovereign, ever-"

"Ever an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of not one good quality," one of the men with a sword broke in. "Thou art a general offense, and every man should beat thee-and will have his chance. Get on!" He shoved the fellow forward.

"Now commenceth vengeance," Shakespeare remarked.

"Now commenceth cleansing," Burbage said. "For lo, the Augean stables were as sweet rainwater falling from heaven set beside the mire of iniquity that was our England these ten years gone by. Let the river of revenge flow free through it." He struck a pose, as if declaiming on the stage.

Shakespeare didn't argue with him. If Elizabeth triumphed, anyone who argued against rooting out every last man who might have helped the Spaniards and Isabella and Albert would endanger himself no less than someone arguing in favor of Elizabeth and her backers after she went to the Tower. How many injustices had the dons and their English henchmen worked then? A mort of 'em, the poet thought. And how many would the folk loyal to good Queen Bess work in return? He sighed. No fewer.

That mournful thought had hardly crossed his mind before another couple of men led another protesting prisoner past him and Burbage. "I tell you, gentles, I am no Spaniard's hound, but an honest Englishman,"

the fellow said, blinking nearsightedly back at his captors. He was thin and pockmarked, and carried a broken pair of spectacles in his left hand.

"Hold!" Shakespeare called to the rough-looking fellows who'd seized him. One of them held a pike, the other a pistol. Shakespeare was acutely aware of having no weapon but the dagger the player had given him at the end of Boudicca. But he went on, "I know Master Phelippes to be true and trusty."

Thomas Phelippes leaned towards him, peering, peering. "Is't you, Master Shakespeare? God bless you, sir! Without my precious spectacles, all past my nose is but a blur."

The man with the pistol swung it towards Shakespeare. The barrel suddenly seemed broad as a cannon's bore. "Go to, or own yourself likewise treacher, you detested parasitical thing," the ruffian snarled. "This accursed wretch was secretary to the Spaniards' commander-the which he denies not, nor scarce can he, being caught in's own den hard by the don's. And you style him a proper man? You pedlar's excrement, you stretch-mouthed rascal, how dare you?"

Showing anger to a man with a gun did not strike Shakespeare as wise. Picking his words with care, he answered, "I dare for that I know him to be one of Lord Burghley's-now one of Robert Cecil's-surest and most faithfullest intelligencers."

As he'd hoped, those were names to conjure with. The pistol wavered, ever so slightly. But the man holding it still sounded fierce as he demanded, " How know you this? And who are you, that you should know it? Answer quick, now! Waste no time devising lies."

"Heard you not Master Phelippes? — whose loyalty I also avouch," Richard Burbage boomed. "Here before you stands none other than the famous Will Shakespeare, whose grand Boudicca yesterday helped light the fire 'gainst the dons."

The man with the pike nudged the pistoleer. " 'Tis he, Wilf, by my troth-'tis. Have I not seen him full many a time astrut upon the stage? He'll know whereof he speaks. It were the gibbet for us, did we harm one of Crookback Bob's men."

Crookback Bob? Shakespeare couldn't imagine presuming to call Robert Cecil any such thing. To his vast relief, though, the man with the pistol-Wilf-lowered it. "Well, who's this cove with him, then?" he demanded.

Raw scorn filled the pikeman's voice: "What? Know you not Will Kemp when you see him?"

Burbage turned the color of a ripe apple. But Wilf's eyes almost bugged out of his head. "Will Kemp?" he whispered. "If the two o' them give this rogue their attestation, belike he is no rogue after all." He pushed Phelippes, not too hard, towards Shakespeare and Burbage. "Go with 'em, you, and praise God they knew you: else you were sped."

"Oh, I do praise Him," Phelippes said. "Rest assured, good sir, I do." He groped for Shakespeare's hand and squeezed it.

"Come," Wilf said to the pikeman. "Plenty of traitors undoubted yet to be smoked out." They hurried up the street.

Thomas Phelippes blinked towards Burbage, then bowed low. "And gramercy to you as well, Master Kemp," he said. "I would not seem ungrate-"

A grinding noise came from Burbage's throat. His voice a strange sort of strangled scream, he said, "I am not Will Kemp, nor fain to be he, neither." Plainly, he wanted to shout with all the force of his mighty frame. Just as plainly, he knew he must not, for fear of bringing the armed ruffians back at the run.

In a low voice, Shakespeare said, "Master Phelippes, I present you to my good friend and fellow player, Richard Burbage."

After clasping Burbage's hand, Phelippes said, "I cry your pardon, for I should have known you by your voice, be your face and form never so indistinct to mine eyne."

"Let it go, sir; let it go," Burbage said gruffly. "There's reason you mistook me, whereas that gross and miserable ignorance just gone. " He shook his head. "By Jesu! That God should go before such villains!" He muttered more unpleasantries, these too low to make out.

"How fell you into the hands of such brabblesome coves?" Shakespeare asked Thomas Phelippes.

"How, sir? As you might think," Phelippes answered. "I came hither yesterday knowing the die was cast and purposing, if I might, to make it into a langret for Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s." Shakespeare bobbed his head, appreciating the figure; if one were to cast a die in such straits as these, a die not perfectly square would be the proper sort to cast. Phelippes let out a wry chuckle. "In the event, confusion proved well enough compounded even absent mine aid."

"What befell Don Diego?" Shakespeare asked. "A formidable wight, though he be a foe."

Phelippes nodded. "Formidable indeed. When report reached him the fighting waxed hot, he sprang to his feet, buckled on's sword, and fared forth to join it. a€?A general's place is in the van,' quotha. I know not if he breathe yet."

"Haply he had been wiser to stay behind, so that the Spaniards might have some single hand fully apprised of all that chanced throughout London and its surround," Burbage said.

"Haply so," Phelippes agreed. "But the dons-and English soldiers, too, I'll not deny-call such a clerkly wisdom, and do otherwise dispraise it. When the blood's up in 'em, they would spill it from their foes, knowing they were reckoned white-livered cravens for hanging back. Fear of ill fame's worse cowardice yet, though they see that not."

"If Don Diego needs must away to the wars, might he not have left some other to be the head and central wit of the Spanish enterprise?" Shakespeare said.

"Why, so he did." Even without his spectacles, Thomas Phelippes managed a sly, sharp-toothed smile.

The pockmarked little man bowed slightly. "Your servant, sir."

"Ho, ho!" Burbage thundered Jovian laughter. "And how many dons went astray on that account?"

"Perhaps a few." Phelippes' chuckle, meant to be self-deprecating, somehow seemed boastful instead.

"Ay, perhaps a few."

"You are an army in one man," Shakespeare said, wondering how many other Englishmen had aided this rebellion more. Few. Very few. But would the chroniclers remember a man like Phelippes? Would anyone write a play about the way he'd helped the uprising? Shakespeare thought about that, then shook his head. Phelippes' role had been important, yes, but not dramatic in any ordinary sense of the word.

Burbage asked, "Know you where Isabella and Albert might be?"

Phelippes shook his head. "No, and would I did, for they might rally not only the dons but also Englishmen of stout Romish faith." He looked about, as if searching for the Queen and King, then laughed at himself. "They might stand beside me and I'd ken 'em not, so sorry are mine eyne without assisting lenses."

"What befell your spectacles?" Shakespeare asked.

Thomas Phelippes laughed again, this time in embarrassment. A blush brought blood to his sallow cheeks. "The most prodigious bit of bungling any man might manage, forsooth-the undone laces of mine own shoon tripped me up, whereupon I did measure my length upon the floor, and the spectacles, flying off. " He sighed. "I felt a proper fool, but no help for't, not until God grant me the leisure to seek replacement for my loss."

"May that time come soon," Burbage said, "the which would signify our final victory o'er the Spaniards and all who'd oppress us."

Shakespeare's stomach growled. He'd been running on nerves and little else since the afternoon before, and was starting to feel the lack. "Simple hunger doth oppress me," he said. "I shall famish, a dog's death."

Burbage nodded, resting both hands on his protuberant belly. "Ay, e'en so," he said. "Bread and meat and wine-food fit for heroes. Or say rather, none can long the hero play without 'em."

"I pray you'll lead me to 'em, gentles, for I am not fit to find 'em on my own," Phelippes said.

"Let's seek nourishment, then," Shakespeare said, "and with good fortune we'll soon find ourselves in our aliment."

"Give over!" Burbage's groan had nothing to do with hunger. He rolled his eyes up to the heavens, muttering, "And they took me for clot-poll Kemp!" But no more than Shakespeare could he resist a quibble, for he wagged a finger at the poet and added, "Better fortune were to find our aliment in us."

They trudged through the streets of Westminster, past an Englishman pulling the boots off a dead Spaniard, past several dogs feeding at another corpse, past an Englishman hanged from the branch of an oak. A placard tied to the hanged man's body warned, LET THEM WHO SERVED SPAIN BEWARE. Thomas Phelippes was too shortsighted to see it, and Shakespeare didn't read it to him: that might too easily have been Phelippes dangling there.

Before long, they found an open tavern. Yesterday, the proprietor had probably bowed and scraped to Spaniards and to Englishmen in their pay. Now he served out beer and cheese and brown bread with a hearty, "God bless good Queen Bess!" The hanged man swung not far away. The taverner, plainly a flexible soul, did not care to join him.

And if, as may be, the dons cast us out again, 'twill be, "Buenos dias, senores " once more, Shakespeare thought with distaste. But that distaste extended only to the man himself; his provender was monstrous fine.

Running feet in the street outside. A cry of, "Fled! They're fled! By God, they're truly fled!" A voice cracking with excitement-then several voices, as more took up the shout.

Shakespeare and Burbage leaped up from their seats. Mugs and chunks of bread still in hand, they raced out to hear more. Thomas Phelippes stumbled after them, almost tripping over a stool. "Wait!" Burbage said in a great voice, a voice that brooked no argument. "Who's fled?"

But the man who'd brought the news shook his head. "Elizabeth? No, Lord love her, she's here. 'Tis Isabella and Albert who're fled like thieves in the night. We came upon a servant who packed 'em into a boat yesternight and watched 'em fare forth down the Thames, out of Westminster, out of London, to save their reeky gore. They're fled!" — another exultant whoop.

Burbage and Shakespeare stared at each other. Slowly, solemnly, they embraced. Shakespeare reached out and put an arm around Phelippes, too. Tears stung his eyes. "Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course," he said. "Now are we graced with wreaths of victory?"

"I have great hope in that," Burbage said.

"And I," Thomas Phelippes agreed.

"And I. And even I," Shakespeare whispered. "Perfect love, saith John, casteth out fear. Now I find me hope will serve as well, or peradventure better." He yawned till the hinges of his jaw creaked. "And now, with hope in my heart, I dare rest." To Burbage, he said, "If thou canst wake me by two o' the clock, I prithee, call me. Sleep hath seized me wholly."

But the player shook his big head. He yawned, too. "Not I, Will. Being likewise fordone, I'd liefer lay me down beside thee."

"Sleep, the both of you, and fear not," Phelippes said. "I'll stand watch, and wake you at the hour appointed: a tiny recompense for the service you have done me, I know, but a first building stone in the edifice of gratitude. Sleep dwell upon your eyes, my friends, peace in your breasts."

"Gramercy," Shakespeare said. Not far away was a lawn on whose yellowing grass several Englishmen already sprawled in slumber. Shakespeare and Burbage lay down among them. The poet twisted a couple of times. He reached up to brush away a blade of grass tickling his nose, then yawned once more and forgot the world.

Lope De Vega stirred, muttered, and sat up. His head still ached abominably, but he was closer to having his wits about him. Glancing up at the sun, he blinked in surprise. It was close to noon. He'd slept-or lain senseless-the clock around. He shook his head, and managed to do it without hurting himself too much more. This felt restorative, not merely. blank, like his previous round of unconsciousness.

An old woman coming along the riverbank towards him let out a startled cackle. "I thought you dead till you stirred," she said, her voice mushy and hard to understand because of missing front teeth.

"Not I," Lope answered. "What news?" He was glad he spoke English. If she realized he was a Spaniard, she might try to make sure he was dead-and, in his present feeble state, she might manage it, too.

"Well, you'll know Elizabeth's enlarged?" she asked. De Vega nodded. The old woman hadn't sounded certain he would know even that. Looking down at his blood-drenched clothes, Lope supposed she'd had her reasons. Seeing him with some working wits, though, she went on, "And belike you'll also know Isabella and Albert are fled, one jump in front of the headsman."

"No!" Lope said, but then, a moment later, softly, "Yes." That boat on the Thames the night before, when he was washing his face.

"I'll miss the dons not, an they be truly routed," the old Englishwoman said. "Vile, swaggering coxcombs, the lot of 'em."

"Yes," Lope said again, meaning anything but. The old woman nodded and went on her way. De Vega cocked his poor, battered head to one side, listening. He heard very little: no gunfire, no shouts of, Death to the dons! That had to mean London lay in English hands.

What do I do now? he wondered. He couldn't hire a wherry to take him out of the city, following Isabella and Albert's example. Maybe they'd fled to gather strength elsewhere and try to return. But maybe also-and more likely, he judged-they'd got away just ahead of a baying pack of Englishmen who would have killed them if they'd caught them. The old woman seemed likely to be right about that.

The first thing Lope did was drink again. He was thirsty as could be. He was hungry, too, but food would have to wait. He splashed more water on his head. The cold did a little, at least, to ease his pain.

Staying upright was easier than it had been during the night. Deciding where to go was harder, especially with his head still cloudy. He let his feet take him where they would. They may be the smartest part of me now, he thought.

They carried him in the direction of the barracks from which Spanish soldiers had dominated London for the past ten years. Before long, he stumbled past a pile of bodies like the one from which he'd emerged when he came back to his senses. He shuddered, crossed himself, and went on. No, his countrymen didn't dominate this city any more.

Just around the corner from that dreadful pile, he almost stumbled over the corpse of a gray-haired Englishman. The fellow had been knocked in the head. He hadn't bled much, and what blood had spilled ran away from his body instead of puddling under it. He wasn't far from Lope's size. A scavenger had already stolen his shoes and his belt pouch, but he still wore doublet and hose.

Lope stripped him-an awkward business, since he'd begun to stiffen-then got out of his own bloody clothes. The dead man's hose were a little too short, but the doublet fit well. Not only was the outfit far cleaner than what de Vega had worn, it also helped make him look more like an Englishman himself.

He wished he had a weapon of some sort, even if only an eating knife. Then he shrugged, which made his battered head hurt. There would be more bodies in the street, of that he was sure. Not all of them would have been thoroughly plundered, not yet.

He soon acquired a dagger a good deal more formidable than an eating knife. A few coins also jingled in his pouch-not so many as he'd had before he was robbed while lying senseless, but a few. The Englishman from whom he took them would never need to worry about money again.

Lope used a couple of pennies to buy a loaf and a cup of ale. The man who sold them to him gave him a hard look. "Your way of speaking's passing strange, friend," he remarked.

Are you a Spaniard? was what he meant. Lope answered, "It wonders me I can speak at all. Some caitiff rogue did rudely yerk me on the knob, wherefrom my wits yet wander."

"Ah." The tavernkeeper relaxed and nodded. "Ay, belike a filchman to the nab'll leave you crank for a spell. Well, give you good day, then."

"E'en so." De Vega drained the ale and walked on, tearing chunks from the loaf as he went. A club to the head could indeed make a man act like an epileptic for a while-as he knew only too well.

Half a block later, he turned up St. Swithin's Lane. As he walked past the London Stone and spied the Spanish barracks, hope suddenly soared in him: soldiers stood guard outside the entrance. But, when he drew nearer, that hope crashed to earth as quickly as it had taken flight. Those big, fair-haired, grinning troopers were Englishmen, not Spaniards. "God bless good Queen Bess!" a passerby called to one of them.

The man nodded. His grin got even wider. "Bless her indeed," he said. "You'll have seen, good sir, we've made a proper start at clearing the rats from their nest here."

With a wave and a grin of his own, the passerby kept on his way. He walked past Lope without recognizing him for what he was, as so many had already done. The English sentries likewise paid no attention to him. When he saw the corpses piled against the northern wall of the barracks, he discovered what the soldier had meant by clearing the rats. Most of the bodies there belonged to servants, for the Spanish soldiers who'd been in the barracks when the uprising broke out had gone off to try to hold the Tower of London-and, as Lope knew, had never got there. Their remains lay farther east.

But there was Pedro, the wounded soldier from the patrol Lope had led back here. And there lay Enrique, his clever head smashed in. He too had come back here at de Vega's orders. And. was that.? Lope took a couple of steps towards the corpses to be sure. He had to fight his right hand down when it started to rise of its own accord-he couldn't cross himself here, not without giving himself away. But that was Diego, poor, fat, lazy Diego, who'd always been too indolent to threaten anyone or anything except his master's temper. The Englishmen hadn't cared. They'd murdered him along with the rest of his countrymen they'd caught.

" Requiescat in pace," Lope murmured. Tears stung his eyes. How anyone could have imagined sleepy Diego needed killing. Well, he would sleep forever now. "God have mercy on his soul." That was a murmur, too, a murmur in English, for safety's sake.

"See you one there who galled you in especial?" an Englishman asked. Lope had to nod. Again, any other response would have betrayed him. Hating himself, he went on. Behind him, the Englishman let out a gloating laugh. He admired the corpses Lope mourned.

Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen? Unbidden, the words from Shakespeare's Prince of Denmark rose in Lope's mind. He cursed under his breath.

He'd been near here-oh, farther up St. Swithin's Lane, but only a stone's throw-when Enrique, smart as a whip Enrique now dead as Diego, made him realize Shakespeare was a traitor and Cicely Sellis.

When he thought of Cicely Sellis and what she'd done with him, to him, he wished the blow he'd taken had robbed him of even more of his memory. He recalled that all too well. Shame blazed in him, a self-devouring flame.

"But I can still have my vengeance," he whispered. He'd been on his way for vengeance the day before, when London erupted around him. He might even have got it, had he not chosen to bring the chance-met patrol with him. Who would have tried to stop one lone man? No one, most likely. Who would try to stop one lone man today? No one, or so he hoped.

Up St. Swithin's Lane again, then. Right into Lombard Street, as he'd done before. Past the church of St.

Mary Woolnoth. He hadn't been far past it when church bells rang two o' clock and hell broke loose. He wasn't far past it today when they rang the same hour.

Along the street towards him came a long column of dejected men, their hands in the air: captive Spanish soldiers and officers. Their eyes, dark and dismal in long, sad faces, flicked over Lope. He recognized some of them. Some of them, no doubt, recognized him. No one said a word or gave a sign. The laughing, mocking English guards hustling them along took no notice of him.

As the last prisoners in the column tramped past, de Vega turned to look back at them. What would happen to them? He hoped they would be ransomed or exchanged, not killed out of hand. The Spaniards hadn't murdered captives after their victories in 1588. Could he dare hope Elizabeth's ragtag followers would remember?

He wouldn't know, not for a while, maybe not ever. "Step lively, you rump-fed ronyons!" an Englishman called. Few of the captured men would have understood him, but gestures and the occasional buffet steered them down St. Swithin's Lane.

Lope's business lay in the other direction. His right hand fell to the hilt of the dagger he'd found. He was too battered to step lively, but nobody required it of him. At the best pace he could manage, he made his way east along Lombard Street, towards Bishopsgate, towards his revenge.

Shakespeare woke to someone shaking him. He yawned and looked around, trying to remember where he was and what he was doing here. Beside him, Richard Burbage was sitting up, also yawning and trying to knuckle sleep from his eyes. Thomas Phelippes spoke anxiously: "Your pardon, gentles, for it still lacks somewhat of two o' the clock, but I must away, and thought you better roused than left to sleep past the hour you set me."

"You must away?" Shakespeare paused to yawn again. He wouldn't have minded sleeping longer, not at all. "Wherefore?"

Phelippes didn't answer. Nicholas Skeres, who stood next to him, did: "For that he is summoned presently to Robert Cecil's side."

"Ah." Shakespeare nodded. No, Phelippes couldn't very well refuse that summons to keep standing over a couple of players. "Would Master Cecil see me as well?"

Skeres shook his head. "In due course, belike, but not yet."

That stung. Shakespeare had just reminded himself that he and Burbage didn't stand so high in the scheme of things. Having scornful Nick Skeres remind him of the same thing-having Robert Cecil remind him of the same thing through Skeres-made him wish this Westminster lawn would cover him up.

Phelippes said, "Mind you, Master Shakespeare, this signifies no want of respect for you, or for all you have wrought for England. But I stand-stood, I had better say-high in the Spaniards' councils; haply what I know o' their secrets will aid in our casting 'em forth."

"You do soothe me, sir, and in most gracious wise," Shakespeare said.

"Tom speaks sooth," Skeres said. "My principal's men have been abroad seeking him since yesterday, but in the garboil we found him not. He saith we (I myself, as't chanced) should not have found him, neither-should not have found him living, rather-were it not for you twain. In the kingdom's name, gramercy." By his tone, by his manner, he had every right to speak for England. Shakespeare found that as absurd as anything that had happened these past two mad days.

From Phelippes' tone, he didn't. "Lead. Guide. I follow as best I may," he told Skeres. "By your mustard doublet shall I know you-that I make out plain, spectacles or no." The two of them hurried off together.

Burbage heaved himself to his feet. "I'm away, too, Will. I must learn if Winifred be hale and safe, and the children." His face clouded at the last word. He and his wife had lost two sons in the past three years, and of their surviving son and daughter the girl was sickly.

"I'm with you as far as your house, an you'd have my company," Shakespeare said. Burbage nodded and gave him a hand to help him up. Brushing dry grass from himself, the poet went on, "Then to my lodging, that the Widow Kendall may know I live yet, and shall pay her rent-and that I may sleep in mine own bed."

"Onward, then," Burbage said. As they started east from Westminster, the player shook his head and laughed ruefully. "I'd give much to know how this our uprising fares beyond London. Isabella and Albert be fled, ay-but whither? Will they return anon, an army at their backs? Or do they purpose taking ship for Holland or Spain, there to preserve themselves?"

"I know not. Would I did," Shakespeare answered. "The inaudible and noiseless foot of time shall tell the tale."

Bodies lay here and there along the Strand and Fleet Street. Carrion birds rose from them in skrawking clouds as Shakespeare and Burbage walked past, then settled again to renew their feast. Most of the bodies were already naked, garments stolen by human scavengers there ahead of the birds.

"Holla, what scene is this?" Burbage said, pointing at the long column of men emerging from Ludgate and trudging towards him and Shakespeare.

Shakespeare shaded his eyes to peer through the cloud of dust the men kicked up. "Why, Spanish prisoners, an I mistake me not," he said a moment later. "So many swarthy souls cannot be of English race."

"You have the right of it," Burbage agreed when the head of the column came a little closer. "Those guardsmen-see you? — they're surely Englishmen."

"E'en so," Shakespeare said. One of the guards at the head of the column, a huge fellow with butter-yellow hair and beard who bore an old-fashioned cut-and-thrust broadsword-no fancy rapier for him! — waved cheerfully at the two men from the Theatre. Shakespeare and Burbage returned the salute.

They left the road and stood on the verge as the prisoners shambled past.

Shakespeare stared at the stream of sad, dark faces. "Seek you de Vega?" Burbage asked.

"I do," the poet answered. "I'd fain know what befell him. Why came he not to the Theatre yesterday?"

"Whatever the reason, I'll shed no tears o'er him," Burbage said. "And in especial I'll shed no tears o'er the said absence, nor o'er its long continuance. I trembled lest he burst in halfway through Act Three at the head of a company of dons, crying, a€?Give over! All's up!' "

"I had me the selfsame thought." Shakespeare knew he would never remember that first production of Boudicca without remembering the raw fear that went with it, the fear he could smell in the tiring room.

He kept peering at the Spaniards. "Here, though, I see him not. nor any other."

"Eh?" Burbage said. "What's that?" Shakespeare didn't answer. He'd been eyeing not only the captives but also their guards, wondering if he'd find Ingram Frizer among the latter. Having already encountered Nick Skeres, he found the prospect of meeting another of Robert Cecil's men not at all unlikely. And the chances for robbery-and perhaps for murder as well-shepherding a column of prisoners offered seemed right up Frizer's alley. But Shakespeare saw no more of him than of Lope de Vega.

He and Burbage came into London through Ludgate. Not far inside the gate, on the north side of Bowyer Row, stood a church dedicated to St. Martin. Two priests, still in their cassocks, had been hanged from the branches of a chestnut beside the church. I SERVED ROME, said a placard tied to one of them. The placard tied to the other lewdly suggested just how he'd served the Pope.

Burbage stared, unmoved, at the dangling bodies. "May all the inquisitors suffer the same fate," he said in a voice like iron.

"May it be so indeed." Shakespeare knew he sounded fiercely eager. Fostered by the dons, the English Inquisition had had ten years to force the faith of Rome down its countrymen's throats. "They played the tyrant over us; let all their misdeeds come down on their own heads to haunt 'em."

He and Burbage walked on for a few paces. Then the player said, "If Elizabeth triumph here-which God grant-how many Papist priests'll be left alive in a year's time?"

"But a few, and those all desperate lest the hounds take them," Shakespeare said. Burbage nodded, plainly liking the prospect. Shakespeare sighed. Part of him would miss the grandeur of Catholic ritual.

He knew better than to say any such thing: he had not the stuff of martyrs in him. He'd likewise meekly accepted the Romish rite after Isabella and Albert drove Elizabeth from her throne.

Old men here, men of Lord Burghley's age, would have seen their kingdom's faith change-Shakespeare had to pause to count on his fingers-five different times, from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant to Catholic and now back to Protestant again. How could a man have any real faith left after so many swings? Better not to say that, either. Better not even to think it.

More dead priests either swung or lay in front of every church Shakespeare and Burbage passed. After a while, the corpses lost their power to shock. Custom hath made it in me a property of easiness: Shakespeare's own words sounded inside his head. Then he and Burbage came to St. Paul's. What the rampaging English had done to the priests there. Any man who could have stayed easy after seeing that had to be dead of soul.

"Oh, sweet Jesu," Burbage mumbled. He turned his head away. Shakespeare did the same. Too late, too late. He would spend years trying to forget, and knew he would spend them in vain.

Burbage dwelt in Cordwainer Street Ward, east of the great church. His house stood not far from the Red Lion, a wooden beast that marked a courtyard whose shops sold broadcloths and other draperies.

As he and Shakespeare came up to the front door, it flew open. His wife dashed out and threw herself into his arms.

"God be praised, thou'rt hale!" Winifred Burbage cried, politely adding, "and you as well, Master Shakespeare." She gave her attention back to her husband. "This past day a thousand deaths I've died, knowing what thou'dst essay, dreading for that you came not hither. " She was a well-made woman in her late twenties, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, worry now robbing her of much of her beauty.

Burbage kissed her, then struck a pose. "I am hale, as thou seest. What of thyself, and of William and Isabel?"

"We are well." His wife seemed to be fighting to convince herself as well as him. "The broil commencing, we kept within doors. A don was slain yonder, in front of Master Goodpasture's." She pointed across the street. No sign of the body remained. Gathering herself, she went on, "But for that, all might have seemed to pass in some far country, but 'twas real, 'twas real." She shivered.

So did Shakespeare, who'd seen more than she of how very real it was. He set a hand on Burbage's arm. "I praise the Lord all's well with you, and now I must away."

"God keep you safe, Will," the player said. Winifred Burbage nodded. In times like these, that was no idle phrase, but a real and urgent wish.

Church bells chimed two as Shakespeare started away from Burbage's house. He shivered again. Had it been but a day since Lord Westmorland's Men gave Boudicca instead of King Philip? That seemed impossible, but had to be true. He'd never known twenty-four more crowded hours. On a normal day, the company would be offering another play even now. Not today. He hoped the Theatre still stood. If not, how would he make his living? Like any player, he worried about that despite the money he'd got from Lord Burghley and from the dons for his two plays.

A man swaggered up the street with a featherbed over his shoulder, a cage with several small, frantically chirping birds in one hand, and a pistol in the other. How many Englishmen had used the uprising as an excuse for rapine against their own folk? That had hardly crossed Shakespeare's mind before a woman several blocks away screamed. How many Englishmen were using the uprising as an excuse for rape, too? They revel the night, rob, murder, and commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways, he thought sadly.

Here and there, fires still smoldered. Had the wind been stronger, much of London might have burned.

He started to cross himself to thank God that hadn't happened, but arrested the gesture before it was well begun. Up till yesterday, not signing himself could have marked him as a Protestant heretic. Now, using the sign of the cross might make him out to be a stubborn Papist. Men of fixed habit, men who could not quickly and easily adapt to changing times, would surely die because others judged them to be of the wrong opinion. It had happened before, the last time ten years ago.

He turned up Bishopsgate Street and hurried north towards his lodging-house. Less than a day earlier, he'd roared south down the same street towards the Tower of London, shouting, "Death-Death-Death to the dons!" And death had come to a great many of them since, and to a great many Englishmen as well. Yes, death had had his day, and Shakespeare feared him not yet glutted.

Turning left off Bishopsgate Street, the poet made his way through the maze of side streets and stinking alleys to the Widow Kendall's house. When he passed the ordinary where he often supped, he murmured, "Oh, praise God," to see it unharmed. That likely meant Kate was all right. He almost stopped to let her know he was safe, but, yawning, kept on instead. Tonight would do. He desperately craved more sleep.

The front door to the Widow Kendall's house stood open. Shakespeare frowned. That was unusual. His landlady habitually kept it closed, fearing-with some reason-thievery. Then a shriek rang from within the house. Shakespeare broke into a run.

Jane Kendall screamed again as he dashed through the front door and into the parlor. Cicely Sellis held a stool in front of her as if she were a lion-tamer, doing her best to keep at bay a man who menaced her with a dagger that almost made a smallsword.

Altogether without thinking, Shakespeare tackled the man from behind. The fellow let out a startled grunt.

The knife flew from his hand. The Widow Kendall let out another shriek. Shakespeare noticed it only absently. He bore the man to the ground as Cicely Sellis grabbed the dagger. His foe tried to twist and strike at him, but all his movements were slow and clumsy. Though anything but a fighting man, Shakespeare had no trouble subduing him.

And when he did. "De Vega!" he exclaimed.

A great swollen livid bruise covered the left half of Lope's forehead. Shakespeare marveled that anyone could take such a hurt without having his skull completely smashed. No wonder the Spaniard was slower and less formidable than he might have been.

Almost as an afterthought, Shakespeare remembered he too had a knife. He pulled it free and held it to Lope's throat. "Give over!" he panted. "Cease your struggles, else you perish on the instant."

De Vega tensed for a final heave, but then went limp instead. "I yield me," he said sullenly. When he stared up at Shakespeare, one pupil was bigger than the other.

"Wherefore came you hither?" the poet asked him. "And why your menace 'gainst Mistress Sellis?"

"Wherefore?" Lope echoed. "For to kill this bruja, this witch, this whore-"

"I am no man's whore," Cicely Sellis said. Shakespeare noted she did not deny the other.

"Heaven be praised you came when you did, Master Will," the Widow Kendall said. "Methought there'd be foul, bloody murther done in mine own parlor."

"Haply not, had you helped more and wailed less," the cunning woman told her, voice tart.

Jane Kendall glared. She looked as if she wanted to answer sharply but did not have the nerve.

Shakespeare would have thought twice before angering Cicely Sellis, too.

He pulled his attention back to Lope de Vega. "Say on. What mean you?"

De Vega hesitated, then shrugged. "Well, why not? What boots it now? Having heard you were seen consorting with Robert Cecil in the street, I hastened hither yesterday, to learn if you purposed treason despite your fine verses on his Most Catholic Majesty."

Shakespeare shivered. So some spy had recognized Robert Cecil even with his beggar's disguise! By what flimsy threads the uprising had hung! But they hadn't broken, not quite. Shakespeare asked, "How hath this aught to do with Mistress Sellis?"

"Why, we chanced to meet in this very parlor," Lope answered, as if Shakespeare should already have known that. "We chanced to meet and, she asking why I was come, I spake the truth, thinking her honest-"

"And so I am," Cicely Sellis said. By the Widow Kendall's expression, her opinion differed, but she held her tongue.

"She bade me enter her chamber," Lope continued. Jane Kendall stirred yet again. Yet again, she dared do no more than stir. "She bade me enter her chamber," the Spaniard repeated, "and there she bewitched me. By some foul sorcery, she cast oblivion upon me, made me to forget why I'd come hither, made me to forget I was for the Theatre bound, there to play Don Juan de IdiA?quez. "

At that, the Widow Kendall did cross herself. Her lips moved in a silent paternoster. Cicely Sellis only shrugged. Mommet came out of her chamber and wove around her ankles. Bending to scratch behind the cat's ears, she said, " 'Twas but the same sleight I used to calm Master Street this Easter past." Mommet purred. He pushed his face against the cunning woman's hand.

"Ah," Shakespeare said: the most noncommittal noise he could make. He'd thought what she did to Jack Street then was witchcraft, and no mere sleight. His landlady's fear-filled eyes said she thought the same.

"And then," Lope went on, "and then. " He shot a furiously burning glare at the cunning woman. "And then she did lie with me in love, to maze me further and lead me astray from my purpose in coming hither.

Nor did she fail of hers." Reproach filled his voice. For himself or for her? Shakespeare wondered.

Belike both. His own gaze flicked from de Vega to Cicely Sellis and back again. He hadn't expected to be so jealous of the Spaniard.

Jealousy wasn't what Jane Kendall felt. "So thou art a doxy, then," she spat at Cicely Sellis. "Whore!

Trull! Poxy callet!"

"Oh, be still, you stale, mouse-eaten cheese," the cunning woman replied. "Your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of those French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats dryly."

The Widow Kendall stared, popeyed with fury. Having had a husband, she surely was no virgin. And yet, after what she'd called the younger woman, the word seemed to stick to her, and in no flattering way.

Calmly, Cicely Sellis nodded to Shakespeare. "Ay, I lay with him. Both you and he had made it pikestaff plain somewhat of no small import was afoot, the which he must not let nor hinder. I lay with him, and thought of England."

"Of England?" Lope yelped. "I on her belly fell, she on her back, and she bethought her of England?

Marry, what a liar thou art, Mistress Sellis! 'Twas not of England, but of thy-" He seemed to have lost the English word. Shakespeare did not supply it. De Vega, miffed and more than miffed, addressed his words to him: "I do assure you, Master Will, her caterwauls were like to those coming from the throat of this accursed beast, her witchy familiar." He jerked a thumb towards Mommet.

The cat arched its back and hissed. Cicely Sellis flushed. By that, Shakespeare judged she likely had thought of other things besides England when she bedded Lope, and taken more pleasure than she cared to admit now. But that didn't mean she hadn't thought of England. And if she'd kept the Spanish officer from going through the papers in Shakespeare's chest, she might have saved the uprising. Had the dons had even a few hours to make ready. Shakespeare didn't want to think about that.

He said, "One may do for love of country that which one would not else." De Vega howled. The Widow Kendall sniffed. The cunning woman nodded again. Was that relief on her face? Shakespeare couldn't be sure, not least because up till now she'd always been so much in control of herself that he didn't recall her wearing such an expression before.

"I still say-" Jane Kendall began.

"Wait, an't please you," Shakespeare said. His landlady blinked; he seldom presumed to interrupt her. He went on, "You were wise, Mistress Kendall, to say not that which may not be mended. For the times do change, will you or nill you, and it will go hard for those who change not with them."

The times would change, if the rebellion succeeded. He didn't know it would. But the Widow Kendall didn't know it wouldn't. And, as one who'd shown herself to be a devout Catholic these past ten years, she stood to lose perhaps a great deal if people she knew denounced her. She licked her lips.

Shakespeare could see that realization growing in her. She must have seen-the dons had made sure all England saw-what happened to stubborn Protestants. With a new spin of the wheel, it would be the Papists' turn. She exhaled with what might have been anger, but said not another word.

Cicely Sellis nodded towards Lope. "What would you with him, Master Will?" she asked.

"I?" Shakespeare sounded startled, even to himself. He'd never held a man's life in his hands before. If he cut de Vega's throat here in the parlor, no one would think the less of him (save possibly Jane Kendall, on account of the mess it would make). If. He sighed and shook his head. "I have not the murtherer's blood in me," he said, as if someone had claimed he did. "He acted but from duty, and from loyalty to his own King. Let him be made prisoner, to be ransomed or exchanged or otherwise enlarged as fate allow."

"Gramercy," Lope said softly. "I am your servant." He managed a ragged chuckle. "And, but for yon witch, I should have made a splendid Don Juan de IdiA?quez."

That jerked a laugh and a nod from Shakespeare. "Ay, belike," he said, and then, " 'Twould like me one day to see King Philip on the stage. An you bide yet in England, Master Lope, the part's yours."

De Vega gave him a crooked grin. "With our Lord, I say, let this cup pass from me."

Shakespeare had had that thought, too. "Come now," Shakespeare said, gesturing towards the door with his knife. "I will give you over into the charge of those whose duty is to take captives, for I know there be such men. Think not to flee, neither. You have yielded-and flight would prove the worse for you, we English holding London."

"Before God, I shall not flee." As Lope got to his feet, he put a hand to his bruised head. "Before God, I cannot flee far. But I would not, even if I could. I have seen your London wolves stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining at the start, and would not have them dog my heels."

"Let's away, then," Shakespeare said. "By my troth, I'll give you into the hands of none others but them that will hold you safe until you may once more be set at liberty." De Vega nodded. Even that small motion must have pained him, for he hissed and gingerly touched his head again. Shakespeare made a leg at Jane Kendall and Cicely Sellis. "Farewell, ladies."

His landlady dropped him an awkward curtsy by way of reply. Cicely Sellis dipped her head, murmuring,

"I stand much in your debt, Master Will."

And how would I have that debt repaid? he wondered. In the same coin she gave the Spaniard? He shoved Lope. "Let's away," he said again, sounding rough as a soldier.

He didn't have to take de Vega far. They'd just come out into Bishopsgate Street when a fresh column of captives shambled down from the north. "Move along, you poor cuckoldy knaves; you louts; you remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villains," shouted the Englishman at their head. "Ay, move along, or 'twill be the worse for you, you blackguards, you virgin-violators, you inexcrable dogs." Most of the Spaniards couldn't have understood a word of the abuse he showered on them, but they did understand they had to keep moving.

Shakespeare waved to that loud Englishman, calling, "Bide a moment! I've another don here, for to add to your party."

"Well, bring him on, then, the damned murtherous fat-kidneyed rascal," the fellow replied.

Careless of whatever anguish it might have cost, Lope gave him a courtier's bow. "I am thy servant, thou proud disdainful haggard," he said.

It must have sounded like praise to the Englishman. "You're a sweet-tongued losel, eh?" he said. "Belike the lickerish ladies think the same?" De Vega nodded, which the man didn't seem to expect. He jerked a thumb towards the captives. "Get in amongst 'em. No trouble, or you'll be sorry for it."

"I am already sorry for it," Lope replied, but he took his place with the rest of the Spaniards. Away they went, down deeper into London.

As Shakespeare turned back towards his lodging-house, a brisk spatter of gunfire rang out not too far away: close enough, at any rate, for him to hear the cries of wounded men immediately afterwards. The fight for London hadn't quite finished. He couldn't tell whether the cries were in English or Spanish. Men in torment sounded much the same in either language.

The sun was sinking fast, though clouds and smoke-more of the former and less of the latter than he'd seen the day before. Most of the time, he would have gone to the Widow Kendall's and then to his ordinary for supper. He'd already been to the lodging-house. The excitement with de Vega had chased sleep from him-and there stood the ordinary, its door open and inviting.

When he walked in, Kate was setting candles on the tables and lighting them with a burning splinter. One man had already taken his place near the hearth. He was cutting up the beefsteak that sat on a wooden trencher in front of him. "Will!" Kate exclaimed, and dropped the candles she was holding. She ran to him, took him in her arms, squeezed the breath out of him, and kissed him. "Sweet Will! God be praised I see thee whole and hale!" She kissed him again.

"A right friendly dive, this," said the man with the beefsteak, a grin on his greasy face.

Shakespeare ignored him. Holding Kate, kissing her, he forgot about Cicely Sellis. No, that went too far.

He didn't forget about her, but did put her in perspective. She was a temptation: a sweet one, but no more. Kate. Were he not tied to Anne back in Stratford, he would gladly have made her his wife.

He pushed that thought aside, as he had to. "As you see me," he said, "and passing glad to see thee."

Now he kissed her. The fellow by the hearth whooped. Neither of them paid him the least attention.

At last the kiss ended, but they still clung to each other. Kate asked, "What wouldst thou, my darling?"

"Thou knowest full well what I would," Shakespeare answered. "What I will, what I can, what I may. "

He shrugged. "Thou knowest likewise the difficulties, the impediments, the obstacles before me. I have not lied to thee." He took a certain forlorn pride in that. Kate nodded. He went on, "An I be able them to thrust aside, I'll do't in a heartbeat."

"May it be so. Oh, may it be so! With all in flux, who can say this or that shall not come to pass? If Elizabeth be free o' the Tower-"

"She is," Shakespeare said. "With mine own eyne I saw her leave it, borne on Sir Robert Devereux his shoulders."

"Well, then," Kate said, as if that proved something. Maybe, to her, it did. "Who could have dreamt such a thing, e'en a week gone by? So great a miracle being worked for England, why not a smaller one, for us twain alone?"

"Ay, why not?" Shakespeare agreed, and kissed her once more. That he remained alive and free to do it struck him as more than miracle enough right now.

When one of Lope de Vega's lovers caught him with another outside the bear-baiting arena in Southwark, he'd thought the round wooden building, so like a theatre in construction, would remain forever the scene of his worst humiliation. Now here he was back at the arena, and humiliated again: the English were using it to house the Spanish prisoners they'd taken. He squatted glumly on the sand-strewn dirt floor where so many bears and hounds had died.

The beasts were gone, taken away to another pit. Their stenches lingered: the sharp stink of the dogs and the bears' ranker, muskier reek. With so many captives packed into the place, the commonplace smells of unwashed men and their wastes were crowding out the animal odors.

Gray clouds gathered overhead. If it rained, the arena floor would turn to mud. Lope knew he would have to find himself a place in one of the galleries. I should have done that sooner, he thought. But he hadn't had the energy. He'd been sunk in lethargy since taking the blow that almost broke his skull, and especially since failing to avenge himself on Cicely Sellis. After that failure, nothing seemed to matter.

Not far away, one of his countrymen asked another, "In the name of God, why does no one rescue us?"

"Those who win, rescue," the other Spaniard said. "If we are not rescued, it is because we do not win."

That made much more sense than Lope wished it did. The first Spaniard said, "But how can we lose to this English rabble? We beat them before-beat them with ease. Are they such giants now? Have we turned into dwarfs these past ten years?"

"Our army is scattered over the country now," the other man answered. "English soldiers were supposed to do much of the job for us, so a lot of our men could go back to the Netherlands and put down the rebels there."

"Oh, yes. Oh, yes!" the first captive said. "The English did a wonderful job of holding down the countryside-till they turned on us like so many rabid dogs."

Lope said, "And the Netherlands have risen in revolt again, too, or so the English say. Just when we thought we had them quiet at last. " He wanted to shake his head, but didn't. Even now, more than a week after he'd been struck down, such motion could bring on blinding headaches. After a moment, he continued, "And who knows what Philip III will do once word of this finally reaches him?"

Neither of the other men answered for a little while. At last, one of them murmured, "Ah, if only his father were still alive." His friend nodded. So did Lope, cautiously. Philip II would have had the determination to fight hard against an uprising like this. That, of course, was not the smallest reason the English had waited till he was dead to rebel. And everyone knew all too well that Philip III was not the man, not half the man, his father had been.

That night, cannon fire off to the east interrupted Lope's rest. He wondered what it meant, but no one inside the bear-baiting arena could see out. He'd just dozed off in spite of the distant booms when an enormous explosion, much larger than a mere cannon blast, jerked him upright and make him wonder if his head would burst as well. After that, the gunfire quickly diminished. An almost aching silence returned.

Having nothing else he could do, he lay down and went back to sleep.

When the sun rose, the Englishmen who came in to feed their captives were jubilant. "Some of your galleons essayed sailing up the Thames," said the fellow who handed Lope a bowl of sour-smelling porridge, "but we sent 'em back, by God, tails 'twixt their legs."

"How, I pray you?" Lope asked. He shoveled the porridge into his mouth with his fingers, for he had not even a horn spoon to call his own.

"How? Fireships, the which we sent at 'em from just beyond London Bridge," the Englishman answered.

"The current slid the blazing hulks against your fleet sailing upriver, the which had to go about right smartly and flee before 'em: else they too had been given o'er to the flames. As indeed the San Juan was-heard you not the great roar when the fire reached her magazine?"

"The San Juan?" Lope crossed himself, muttering an Ave Maria. He'd come to England in that ship.

"And the San Mateo de Portugal lies hard aground," the fellow added, "hard aground and captured. I doubt not e'en you cock-a-hoop dons'll think twice or ever you try the like again." He went on to feed someone else.

"What does he say?" a Spaniard asked Lope. "I heard in amongst his English the names of our ships."

De Vega translated. He added, "I don't know that he was telling the truth, mind."

"It seems likely," the other man said. "It seems only too likely. Would a lie have such detail?"

"A good one might," Lope answered, though he knew he was trying to convince himself at least as much as the man with whom he was talking.

Day followed day. No Spanish force fought its way into London. At least as much as anything else, that convinced Lope the Englishman had told him the truth. The longer he stayed in the bear-baiting arena, the plainer it grew that the English uprising was succeeding.

With the arena still full of prisoners, some of the Londoners' usual sport was taken away from them.

Escorted by armed and armored guards, they began coming in to view the Spanish captives. Lope suspected it was a poor amusement next to what they were used to. Maybe they'll set mastiffs on us instead of on the bears, he thought. He took care never to say that aloud. When it first crossed his mind, it seemed a bitter joke. But the English might do it, if only it occurred to them.

Most of the men who came to see the Spaniards showed them a certain respect. Anyone who'd fought in war knew misfortune could befall even the finest soldiers. The women were worse. They jeered and mocked and generally made Lope think the guardsmen were protecting his countrymen and him from them rather than the reverse.

And then, one drizzly day, he saw a black-haired, black-eyed beauty on an English nobleman's arm. The nobleman stared at the Spaniards as if at so many animals in a cage. So did his companion, who laughed and murmured in his ear and rubbed against him and did everything but set her hand on his codpiece right there in front of everyone. And he only strutted and swaggered and slipped his arm around her waist, displaying to the world the new toy he'd found.

Slowly and deliberately, Lope turned away. He might have known Catalina IbaA±ez would make the best of whatever happened in England. He could have told that nobleman a thing or two, but what point?

Besides, sooner or later the fellow would find out for himself.

De Vega did hope Catalina didn't recognize him. By now, the beard was dark on his cheeks and jawline as well as his chin. To her eye, he should have been just one more glum and grimy prisoner among so many. Having her gloat over his misery would have been more than he could bear. He watched her out of the corner of his eye.

She gave no sign she knew him: a tiny victory, but all he'd get in here. She laughed again, a sound like tinkling bells, and stood on tiptoe to kiss her new protector on the cheek. Chuckling indulgently, he patted her backside. Lope prayed for a bear, or even for mastiffs. God must have been busy somewhere else, for Catalina and the Englishman strolled out of the arena together.