Ruled Britannia

III

Lope De Vega waved to a tall, scrawny Englishman in ragged clothes who stood, as hopefully as he could, by a rowboat. "You there, sirrah!" he said sharply. "How much to row us across to Southwark?"

He pointed to the far bank of the Thames.

"Tuppence, sir," the fellow answered, making a clumsy botch of his bow. "A penny each for you and your lady."

"Here, then." Lope gave him two bronze coins. "Put us ashore as near to the bear-baiting garden as you may."

"To the old one, or the new?" the boatman asked.

"To the new," de Vega replied.

"Yes, sir. I'll do't." The Englishman smiled at his companion. "Mind your step as you get in, my lady."

"Have no fear, my dear, my sweet," Lope said grandly, and gave Nell Lumley his arm. She smiled as she took it. She was as tall as he, blond and buxom, and called herself a widow for politeness' sake, though de Vega doubted she'd ever wed. But she was fond of him, and he always enjoyed squiring a pretty woman around. He expected to enjoy lying with her afterwards, too. Cold country, hot blood, he thought; Englishwomen had pleasantly surprised him.

And he enjoyed the feeling of being half, or a little more than half, in love. It heated his own blood, as a cup of wine would. As often as not, he discarded one mistress and chose another for no more reason-

but also, he told himself, for no less reason-than to have that sweet intoxication singing through his veins.

So now: he swept off his cloak, folded it a couple of times, and set it on the bench for Nell. She wagged a finger at him. "Ah, Lope, my sweetheart, thou needst not do that."

"I do't not for that I need to," he answered. "I do't for that I want to. Sit, sit, sit, sit." He clucked like a mother hen. Laughing, she sat.

The boatman pushed the rowboat into the Thames, then scrambled aboard himself, his boots dripping.

He knew how to handle the oars, feathering them so next to no water dripped from the blades. They hadn't gone far when Nell Lumley wrinkled her short, pert nose. "By Jesu, the river stinks." A dead dog, all puffy and bloated, chose that moment to float past them, heading downstream.

"How can it help stinking?" Lope replied. "It is London's sewer. And London stinks. What city stinks not? The city of heaven, mayhap, proving angels dwell therein."

Of course, folk downstream drank the water into which folk farther upstream poured their shit and piss and offal. Lope knew that. He'd always known it. How could he, how could anyone, help knowing it?

But it wasn't anything he usually thought about. He took it for granted, as anyone did. Now, bobbing on the stinking stream, he couldn't. He gulped.

" 'Steeth, lean over the side or ever you cast!" the boatman exclaimed.

And put more filth in the river, de Vega thought. He clamped his teeth together. In a little while, the sick spell passed. Nell said, "If passage over the Thames makes thee like to sick up thy dinner, what of coming here in the Invincible Armada?"

Remembering the passage from Lisbon to Dover almost did make him lose his last meal. He patted his mistress' hand and gave her the prettiest lie he could come up with: "The company I keep here makes me forget all that chanced before I set foot on England's shore."

Nell Lumley blushed and stammered. The boatman, sweat starting out under his arms despite the chilly weather, made a distinct retching noise. Lope shot him a hard look. He stared back, only effort on his face. Nell didn't seem to have noticed. Lope let it pass-for the moment. Englishmen were rude by nature.

The boat's keel grated on mud less than a furlong west of London Bridge. "Southwark, sir," the boatman said, as smoothly as if he hadn't been insolent a moment before. He pointed. "There's the new bear-baiting garden-you can see it past the roofs of the stews."

"Yes. Thank you." De Vega handed Nell out of the boat. He tipped the boatman only a farthing. True, the fellow had rowed well, but he didn't intend to forget the way the man had mocked his compliment.

Without a word, the boatman pocketed the small coin. Without a word, he shoved his boat into the Thames and started rowing back toward London. And then, out of range of Lope's rapier, he let fly:

"Leather-jerkin, crystal-button, knot-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue Spanish pouch!"

No matter how useless it was, Lope's hand flew to the hilt of his sword. Nell giggled, which did nothing to improve his temper. She said, "Fret not. He's jealous, nothing more."

"And so he hath good reason to be," Lope answered, mollified, "for am I not the luckiest man alive in Christendom?"

"Ah," Nell said softly, and dropped her eyes.

They had to walk down a street of stews to get to the bear-baiting. Even though de Vega went arm in arm with his companion, the lewd women called out invitations that made his ears burn. Pretending he didn't hear, he kept walking.

"He wants you not," one of the women called to another, "for see you? He hath already a whore of his own."

Where Lope had been angry at the boatman, Nell was furious at the prostitute. "Stinking, poxy callet!"

she yelled. "I bite the thumb at thee!" That was the thee of insult, not of intimacy.

The contents of a chamber pot came flying out of a third-story window and splashed in the street just in front of them. Fortunately, most of the splash went the other way; Lope and Nell weren't badly fouled.

Nell was still fuming. "Henry VIII closed the stews," she said, "nor did they open again until the coming of. Queen Isabella and King Albert."

In different company, she might have said something hot about the Spaniards, Lope thought. But he said only, "King Henry may have closed these stews, but surely, in a town the size of London, others flourished."

"That they dared cast whoredom in my face. " But Nell didn't directly answer Lope's comment, from which he concluded she couldn't very well disagree with him.

They hurried on toward the bear garden. A long queue of Englishmen and — women of all estates, leavened by a sprinkling of Spaniards, advanced toward the entry. The building was an oval that put de Vega in mind of a Roman amphitheater, though built of wood and not enduring stone. Inside, dogs were already barking and growling furiously.

At the entryway, Lope gave the fellow taking money a pair of pennies. The Englishman waved him forward. At the stairs farther on, most people went up. He handed fourpence to the man waiting there with another cash box. The man gave him a professionally courteous nod. "Want to be in at the death, eh?" he said. "Go on down, then, and find places for yourselves as close to the pit as ye may."

"There!" Nell pointed. A few spaces remained in the very lowest row of benches. "If we hurry-" Now she led Lope, not the other way round. She went so fast, she tripped on the hem of her skirt as she hurried down the stairs. She might have fallen had he not held her up. "Gramercy," she said, and kissed him on the cheek.

An Englishman and his wife and their young son were making for the same seats. They gave Lope and Nell sour looks when they found themselves edged out. The man, a big, burly fellow, muttered something into his beard. "Nay, hush," said his wife, whose pinched face bore what looked to be a perpetually worried expression. "Beshrew me if he be not a don."

"He's a thief, that's what he is," the man rumbled. "He'd steal an egg out of a cloister, he would, like all his breed." But he went off and found seats for himself and his family a good distance away from de Vega.

Lope looked back over his shoulder and bared his teeth in what was as much a challenge as a smile. The Englishman would not meet his eye. Lope nodded to himself, proud as a fighting cock that hadn't had to use his spurs to beat a rival.

Down in the pit, the first bear was already chained to the stout iron stake in the center of the earthen floor. He was a good-sized beast, and didn't look too badly starved. His hot, rank odor filled Lope's nostrils. The mastiffs, still caged, smelled him, too. Their barking grew more frantic by the moment.

The Englishman sitting next to Lope nudged him and said, "Half a crown on old bruin there to slay before they kill him six dogs or more. If you like, a crown."

Lope eyed him. He wasn't all that well dressed; five shillings-even two and sixpence-would be a lot of money for him. And he looked a little too eager, a little too confident. Men who knew too much about bears and dogs were the bane of the garden, cheating those without inside information. "I thank you, but no," de Vega said. "I'm here for to watch the fight, no more." The Englishman looked disappointed, but Lope had declined too politely for him to make anything of it.

"A cozener?" Nell asked in a low voice.

"Without a doubt," Lope answered.

A wineseller moved through the crowd. Nell waved to him. Lope bought a cup for her and one for himself.

He looked around the arena. It was almost full now. Before long, they would. He couldn't even finish the thought before they did. One man with a lever could lift the movable sides of all the mastiffs' cages at once. Baying like the wolves their cousins, the great dogs swarmed into the baiting pit.

One died almost at once, his neck broken by a shrewd buffet from the bear's great paw. The rest of the mastiffs, more furious than ever, leaped at the bear, clamping their jaws to his leg, his haunch, his belly, his ear. Roaring almost like a lion, he rolled in the dirt, crushing another animal beneath him. A couple of other mastiffs sprang free before his weight fell on them. Muzzles already red with blood, they sprang back into the fight.

"Oh, bravely done!" Nell Lumley cried from behind Lope. She clapped her hands. Her eyes glistened.

"Tear him to pieces!"

Nor was hers the only voice raised in the bear garden. Shouts of, "Kill him!" and, "Bite him!" rose from all three levels. So did yells of, "Rend the dogs!" and, "Rip 'em to rags!" Some of those surely came from folk who'd put money on the bear. But the English, seeing one animal chained and attacked by ten, were perversely likely to take him into their hearts, at least for a little while.

As if by accident, de Vega let his hand rest on Nell's thigh. She stared at him in surprise; she might have forgotten he was there. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips slightly swollen. She set her hand on his. He smiled and kissed her. The noise she made at the back of her throat was almost as fierce as the ones coming from the pit. Lope laughed a little when they finally broke apart. Bear- and bull-baitings always made her wanton.

Three dogs were dead now, and a couple of others badly hurt. But blood dripped and poured from the bear everywhere. He wobbled on his feet; a pink loop of gut protruded from his belly. His grunts and bellows came slower and weaker. "He'll not last," Lope said. Nell nodded without looking at him-she had eyes only for the pit.

As if directed by a single will, all the mastiffs left alive, even the injured ones, sprang at the bear. As their teeth pierced him, Nell groaned as if Lope were piercing her. The bear fought back for a moment, but then sank beneath the dogs. The din in the arena all but deafened de Vega.

The shabby Englishman sitting next to him nudged him again. "See you? You'd have won. He slew but four, unless that fifth be too much hurt to live."

Lope said, "Such is life," a remark that gave the other man no room to comment.

Dog handlers in thick leather jerkins and breeches came out to drive the mastiffs back into their cages.

They needed the bludgeons they carried to get the big dogs off the bear's carcass. Once the dogs were out of the pit, an ass that rolled its eyes at the stink of blood dragged away the body. It would be butchered, and the meat sold.

"Hast thou eaten of bear's flesh?" Lope asked Nell.

She nodded. "Seldom, but yes. Mighty fine it was, too: sweet as pork, tender as lamb."

"I thought the same," Lope said. "I ate it once or twice in Spain. Were bears common as cattle, who would look at beef?"

More attendants raked the ground and spread sand and fresh dirt over the pools of blood. The first bear-baiting might never have happened. So Lope's senses said, at any rate. But when the handlers brought the next bear out to the stake, the lingering scent of blood in the air made him so wild, he almost broke free of them.

A fresh pack of mastiffs assailed the bear. He was smaller than the one that had fought before, but seemed wilier. He rolled again and again, and hunched himself so the dogs had trouble reaching his belly and privates. Mastiff after mastiff went down. Another one dragged itself out of the fight on stiff forelegs, its back broken. A handler smashed in its head with a club.

"He'll kill them all!" Nell was as happy to cheer for the bear as she had been to clap for the dogs in the first fight.

And the new bear did kill them all. As the last mastiff, its throat torn out, staggered off and fell down to die, Lope thought, Most of the bettors want to hang themselves-that hardly ever happens. And the dog breeders, too, with so many expensive animals dead. A whole new pack of mastiffs had to be loosed against the bear. Since it had taken so many wounds from the earlier pack, the baiting ended in a hurry.

That was as well. London's short day was drawing to a close. Lope rose and gave Nell Lumley his arm.

"Shall we away to the city and find a place for the two of us?"

Her answering smile had nothing coy in it. "Yes, let's," she said. Sure enough, after a bear-baiting her own animal spirits were in the ascendant.

Lope and Nell had just left the bear-baiting garden when someone called his name from behind. It was a woman's voice. As if in the grip of nightmare, Lope slowly turned. Out of the arena came his other mistress, Martha Brock, walking with a man who looked enough like her to be her brother, and probably was.

He would be, Lope thought in helpless horror. If she were betraying me, she couldn't get in much of a temper. But if she's not. Oh, by the Virgin, if she's not.! Too late, he realized the Virgin was the wrong one to ask for intercession here.

"Who's that?" Martha Brock demanded, pointing at Nell.

"Who's that?" Nell Lumley demanded, pointing at Martha.

"Dear ladies, I can explain-" Lope began hopelessly.

He never got the chance. He hadn't thought he would. "You are no surer, no, than is the coal of fire upon the ice, or hailstone in the sun!" Nell cried. "And I loved you!"

"Impersevant thing!" Martha added. "A truant disposition!"

Lope tried again. "I can expl-"

Again, no good. They both screamed at him. They both slapped him. They didn't even quarrel with each other, which might have saved him. When they both burst into tears and cried on each others shoulders, Martha's brother said, "Sirrah, thou'rt a recreant blackguard. Get thee hence!" He didn't even touch his sword. With de Vega so plainly in the wrong, he didn't need it.

Jeered by the Englishmen who'd watched his discomfiture, Lope walked back toward the Thames all alone. When Pizarro's men conquered the Incas, one of them got as his share of the loot a great golden sun. and gambled it away before morning. He'd made himself a Spanish proverb, too. But here I've outdone him, Lope thought glumly. I lost not one mistress, but two, and both in the wink of an eye.

Will Kemp leered at Shakespeare. The clown's features were soft as clay, and could twist into any shape. What lay behind his mugging? Shakespeare couldn't tell. "The first thing we do," Kemp exclaimed,

"let's kill all the Spaniards!"

He didn't even try to keep his voice down. They were alone in the tiring room, but the tireman or his assistants or the Theatre watchmen might overhear. "God mend your voice," Shakespeare hissed. "You but offend your lungs to speak so loud."

"Not my lungs alone," Kemp said innocently. "Are you not offended?"

"Offended? No." Shakespeare shook his head. "Afeard? Yes, I am afeard."

"And wherefore?" the clown asked. "Is't not the desired outcome of that which you broached to me just now?"

"Of course it is," Shakespeare answered. "But would the fountain of your mind were clear again, you prancing ninny, that I might water an ass at it. Do you broadcast it to the general before the day, our heads go up on London Bridge and cur-dogs fatten on our bodies."

"Ah, well. Ah, well." Maybe Kemp hadn't thought of that at all. Maybe, too, he'd done his best to give Shakespeare an apoplexy. His best was much too good. He went on, "An you write the play, I'll act in't.

There." He beamed at Shakespeare. "Are you happy now, my pet?" He might have been soothing a fractious child.

"Why could you not have said that before?" Shakespeare did his best to hold his temper, but couldn't help adding another, "Why?"

"You want everything all in its place." Again, Will Kemp might have been-likely was-humoring him. "I can see how that might be so for you-after all, you'd want Act First done or ever you went on to Act Second, eh?"

"I should hope so," Shakespeare said between his teeth. What was the clown prattling about now?

Kemp deigned to explain: "But you're a poet, and so having all in order likes you well. But for a clown?"

He shook his head. "As like as not, I've no notion what next I'll do on stage."

"I've noticed that. We've all of us noticed that," Shakespeare said.

"Good!" Kemp twisted what had been meant for a reproach into a compliment. "If I know not, nor can the groundlings guess. The more they're surprised, the harder they laugh."

"Regardless of how your twisted turn mars the fabric o' the play," Shakespeare said.

Kemp only shrugged. Shakespeare would have been angrier had he expected anything else. The clown said, "I know not what I'll do tomorrow, nor care. If I play, then I play. If I choose instead to morris-dance from London to Norwich, by God, I'll do that. I'll do well by it, too." He seemed to fancy the ridiculous idea. "Folk would pay to watch me on the way, and I might write a book afterwards.

Kemp's Nine Days Wonder, I'd call it."

"No man could in nine days dance thither," Shakespeare said, interested in spite of himself.

"I've ten pound to say you're a liar." By the gleam in Kemp's eye, he was ready to strap bells on his legs and set off with a man to play the flute and drums. He'd meant what he told Shakespeare-he didn't know what he'd do next, on stage or anywhere else. "Come on, poet. Will you match me?"

The man's a weathervane, blowing now this way, now that, in the wind of his appetites, Shakespeare thought. He held up a placating hand. "I haven't the money to set against you," he lied. "Let it be ven as you claim. Fly not to Norwich, nor to any other place." He realized he was pleading. "You perform this afternoon, you know, and on the morrow as well."

"There's no more valor in you than in a wild duck," Kemp said scornfully. "You are as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse."

He told the truth. Shakespeare knew too well how little courage he held. But he wagged a finger at Will Kemp and said, "If you'd bandy insults, think somewhat before you speak. You twice running used valor; it might better in the first instance have been courage."

"Woe upon you, and all such false professors!" Kemp retorted. "O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts."

Shakespeare threw his hands in the air. "Enough!" And so, however maddening, it was. Kemp had, in his own way, said he'd do what needed doing. Shakespeare didn't think the clown would betray him to the Spaniards after that-not on purpose, anyhow. "Not a word now, on your life," he warned. On my life, too, not that Kemp cares a farthing for it.

"What, gone without a word?" the clown said. "Oh, very well, for your joy."

When Shakespeare came out of the tiring room, he felt he'd aged ten years. The tireman gave him a curious glance. "What's toward?" he asked.

"That Kemp is more stubborn-hard than hammered iron," Shakespeare said disdainfully, telling the truth and acting at the same time. "At last, meseems, he hath been brought towards reason."

"Towards doing what you'd have him do, you mean," the tireman said. His name was Jack Hungerford.

His beard, which once had been red, was now white; that only made his eyes seem bluer. He'd had charge of costumes and props for decades before Marlowe's Tamberlane made blank verse the standard for plays, and he had all the shrewdness of his years.

Here, though, he played into Shakespeare's hands. "I'll not say you're mistaken," the poet replied, and Hungerford looked smug. But keeping the tireman happy wasn't enough. As much as the players, he would be a part of what followed. Shakespeare picked his words with care: "How now, Master Jack?

You've seen more than is to most men given."

"And if I have?" Hungerford asked. His eyes were suddenly intent, while the rest of his face showed nothing whatever. Shakespeare had seen that blank vizard more times than he could count, these years since the Armada landed. Indeed, he'd worn that blank vizard more times than he could count. It was an Englishman's shield against discovery, against treachery, in a land no longer his own. Having it raised against him saddened Shakespeare, but he understood why Hungerford showed so little. The safest answer to the question Whom to trust? was No one.

He'll make me discover myself to him, Shakespeare thought unhappily. Then the risk is mine, not his.

Well, no help for't. He said, "You well recall the days before Isabella and Albert took the throne."

" 'Twas not so long ago, Master Will," Hungerford replied, his tone studiously neutral. "You recall 'em yourself, though you've only half my years."

"Good days, I thought," Shakespeare said.

"Some were. Some not so good." The tireman revealed nothing, nothing at all. Behind Shakespeare's back, one of his hands folded into a fist. I might have known it would be like this. But then Hungerford went on, "Better days, I will allow, than some of those we live in. I say as much-I hope I say as much-not only for that a man's youth doth naturally seem sweeter in the years of his age."

"Think you those good days might come again?"

"I know not," Hungerford said, and Shakespeare wanted to hit him. "Would it were so, but I know not."

Was that enough encouragement to go on? Shakespeare didn't think so. Damn you, Jack Hungerford, he raged, but only to himself. He stalked away from the tireman as if Hungerford had offered him some deadly insult. Behind him, Hungerford called for one of his assistants. If he knew where Shakespeare had been heading, he gave no sign of it.

That day, Lord Westmorland's Men put on Marlowe's The Cid. Shakespeare had only a small part: one of the Moorish princes whom the Cid first befriended and then, in the name of Christianity, betrayed. He unwound his turban, shed his bright green robe, and left the Theatre early, hoping to take advantage of what little daylight was left in the sky.

Booksellers hawked their wares in the shadow of St. Paul's. Most of them sold pamphlets denouncing Protestantism and hair-raising accounts of witches out in the countryside. Some others offered the texts of plays-as often as not pirated editions, printed up from actors' memories of their lines. The volumes usually proved actors' memories less than they might have been.

Shakespeare ground his teeth as he walked past a stall full of such plays. He'd suffered from stolen and surreptitious publications himself. That he got nothing for them was bad enough. That they mangled his words was worse. What they'd done to his Prince of Denmark.

He'd added injury to insult by buying his own copy of that one, to see if it were as bad as everyone told him. It wasn't. It was worse. When he thought about the Prince's so-called soliloquy: To be, or not to be. Aye there's the point.

To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all:

No, to sleep, to dream, aye marry there it goes.

He'd seen that, burned it into his memory, so he could quote it as readily as what he'd really written. He could-but he didn't have the stomach to get past the third line.

Splendid in his red robes, a bishop came out of St. Paul's and down the steps, surrounded by a retinue of more plainly dressed priests and laymen. The soldiers on guard at the bottom of the stairs stiffened to attention. One of them-by his fair hair, surely an Englishman-knelt to kiss the cleric's ring as he went past.

The Spaniards enslaved some of us, Shakespeare thought. Others, though-others enslaved themselves. No one had made that soldier bend the knee to the bishop. No one would have thought less of him had he not done it. But he had. By all appearances, he'd been proud to do it.

Even if I go on with this madcap scheme, will it have the issue Lord Burghley desires?

Shakespeare shrugged. He'd come too far to back away now unless he inclined to treason. That might save you. It might make you rich. He shrugged again. Some things were bought too dear.

Motion up at the top of St. Paul's caught his eye. A man in artisan's plain hose and jerkin was walking about on the flat-roofed steeple, now and then stooping as if to measure. We have a Catholic Queen and King once more. Will they order the spire finished at last? Shakespeare shrugged one more time. It would be yet another sign we are not what we were, what we once set out to be. But how many even care? Gloom threatened to choke him.

Gloom also made him inattentive, so that he almost walked past the stall he sought. It wasn't the sight of the books that made him pause, but the sight of the bookseller. "Good den, Master Seymour," he said.

"Why, Master Shakespeare! God give you good den as well," Harry Seymour replied. He was a tall, lean man who would have been good-looking had he not had a large, hairy wen on the end of his nose.

"Do you but pass the time of day, or can I find summat for you?"

"I'm always pleased to pass the time of day with you," Shakespeare answered, which was true: he'd never known Seymour to print or sell pirated plays. He went on, "But if you've the Annals of Tacitus done into English, I'd be pleased to buy it of you."

"As my head lives, Master Shakespeare, I do indeed. And I'll take oath I fetched hither some few of that title this morning." Seymour came around to the front of the stall. "Now where did I put 'em?. Ah!

Here we are." He handed Shakespeare a copy. "Will you want it for a play?"

"I might. But my Latin doth stale with disuse, wherefore I'm fain to take the short road to reminding me what he treats of." Shakespeare admired the ornate first page, illustrated with a woodcut of swaggering, toga-clad Romans. "A handsome volume, I'll not deny."

" 'Twould be handsomer still, cased in buckram or fine morocco." Like any book dealer, Seymour sold his wares unbound; what boards they eventually wore depended on the customer's taste and purse.

"No doubt," Shakespeare said politely, by which he meant he didn't intend to bind the book at all. Not even Baron Burghley's gold could tempt him to such extravagance. As a player and a poet, he knew too well how money could rain down one day and dry up the next. He would cling to as many of those coins as he could. In aid of which. He held up the translation. "What's the scot?"

"Six shillings," Harry Seymour answered.

"My good fellow, you are a thief professed," Shakespeare exclaimed. "But your theft is too open. Your filching is like an unskilful singer; you keep not time."

"Say what you will, Will, but I'll have my price or you'll not have your book," Seymour said. "I give thanks to the holy Mother of God that I can stay at my trade at all. Times are hard, and grow no easier."

"I am not some wanderer, staggering half drunk past your stall. I do regularly give you my custom when I seek some work of scholarship-or so I have done, up till now." Shakespeare's indignation was part perfectly real, part feigned. If he gave in too easily, the bookseller might wonder why-and Seymour's oath had proved him a Catholic. I must seem as I always was, Shakespeare thought. The deeper into this exercise he got, the harder that would grow.

"You know not what I had to pay Master Daniels, the which rendered into our tongue the noble Roman's words," Seymour protested.

Sensing weakness, Shakespeare pressed him: "That you're a subtle knave, a villain with a smiling cheek, makes you no less a knave and a villain." He made as if to thrust the Annals back at Seymour.

The bookseller had grit. "Save your player's tricks for the stage," he said. "I gave you my price."

"And I give you my farewell, if you use me so." Shakespeare didn't want to have to search for a different translation elsewhere, not when he had this one in his hands, but he didn't want to pay six shillings, either.

Nine days' wages for a soldier, on one book?

Harry Seymour made a rumbling, unhappy noise down deep in his throat. "Five and sixpence, then," he said, as if wounded unto death, "and for no other man alive would I lessen the price even a farthing."

His honor salved, Shakespeare paid at once, saying, "There, you see? I knew you for the gentleman you are, exceedingly well read and wondrous affable: stuffed, as they say, with honorable parts."

"You reckon him a gentleman who doth as you list," Seymour said sourly. "Go your way, Master Shakespeare; I am yet out of temper with you. May you have joy of the sixpence you prised from me."

His joy in that sixpence quite quenched, Shakespeare strode north and east, back towards his Bishopsgate lodgings. Light faded from the sky with every step he took. The winter solstice was coming soon, with Christmas hard on its heels. They were both coming sooner, indeed, than he reckoned right.

After their coronation, Isabella and Albert had imposed on England Pope Gregory's newfangled calendar, cutting ten days out of June in 1589 to bring the kingdom into conformity with Spain and the rest of Catholic Europe. When Shakespeare looked at things logically, he understood those ten days weren't really stolen. When he didn't-which was, mankind being what it was, more often-he still felt as if he'd had his pocket picked of time.

Some stubborn souls still celebrated the feast of the Nativity on what Gregory's calendar insisted was January 4. They did so in secret. They had to do so in secret, for the English Inquisition prowled hardest at this season of the year, sniffing after those who showed affection for the old calendar and thus for the Protestant faith adhering to it.

Along with darkness, fog began filling the streets. Here and there, men lit cressets in front of their homes and shops, but the flickering flames did little to pierce the gloom. Shakespeare hurried up Cheapside to the Poultry, past the smaller churches of St. Peter and St. Mildred, and up onto Threadneedle Street, which boasted on the west side churches dedicated to St. Christopher-le-Stock and St. Bartholomew.

He let out a sigh of relief when Threadneedle Street opened on to Bishopsgate. A moment later, he let out a gasp, for a squad of Spaniards tramped toward him. But their leader only gave him a brusque jerk of the thumb, as if to tell him to hurry home.

"I thank our worship," he murmured, and touched his hand to the brim of his hat as he ducked down the side street that would take him to the Widow Kendall's. The Spaniard nodded in return and led his men south and west along Threadneedle. A decent man doing well the task to which he was set, Shakespeare thought. More than a few of the occupiers were decent men. Still, the task to which Philip had set them was the subjugation of England. And, on nine years' evidence, they did it well.

"Oh, Master Will, 'tis good to see you," Jane Kendall said when Shakespeare came into her house. As he went over to stand by the fire, she continued, "I was sore afeard them Spanish devils had took you."

"Not so. As you see, I'm here." Shakespeare looked around the parlor. "But where's Master Foster?

Most days, he is before me, and, having somewhat to do betwixt close of Theatre and my coming hither, I know I am later than I might be."

"Later than you ought to be," the Widow Kendall said in reproving tones. "And as for Master Peter-"

Before she could go on, Jack Street broke in: "He's in the Hole. They nabbed him at last. I wouldn't guess what his law was, but outside the law, certes."

Shakespeare didn't know what his missing roommate's illegal specialty was, either, but wasn't surprised to learn those in authority thought Peter Foster had one. "Can we do aught for him?" he asked.

Jack Street gloomily shook his head. "Not unless we want them bastards asking after us next," the glazier said, which struck Shakespeare as altogether too likely.

"He's paid till the end of the month," Widow Kendall said. "An he bide yet in gaol then, I'll sell his goods for what they bring." She thought more of what she might do for herself than for her lodger.

After warming himself by the fire, Shakespeare went off to the ordinary around the corner for supper. A sizzling beefsteak and half a loaf to sop up the juices made him a happy man. He took out his quill and his bottle of ink and set to work on Love's Labour's Won. "By God, Master Will, what is it like, to have so many words in your head?" the serving woman asked.

"So that they come forth, Kate, all's well," he answered. "But if my thoughts be dammed, then I'm damned with them." He pounded his forehead with the heel of his hand to try to show her the feeling he got when the words would not move from his mind to the page in front of him.

She laughed and nodded and said, "Will another mug of beer loose the flow?"

"One other may," he said, and she poured his mug full from the pitcher she carried. He went on, "Ask me not again, I pray you, for with too much drink I've trouble knowing whether the words that come be worth the having."

"I'll leave you to't, then," Kate said, and she did.

But tonight the words, whether worth the having or not, did not want to come. Shakespeare stared into the candle flame and tried all the other tricks he knew to break the wall between his wit and his pen, but had little luck. While the upper part of his mind dutifully tried to get on with Love's Labour's Won, the deeper wellspring, the part from which inspiration sprang, dwelt with the woes of the ancient Iceni, not with his present characters. He smote his forehead again, this time in good earnest. The sudden pain did him no good, either.

He looked around in frustration. He had none but himself to blame for his troubles. The hour grew late; he was the only customer left in the place. With everything quiet and serene, he should have written as if fiends were after him. He muttered a curse. Fiends were after him, but not the sort that set his pen free.

When Kate came by again, he laid down the pen with a sigh. She gave him a sympathetic smile, saying, "I saw you troubled, but did not like to speak, for fear I might send flying the one word that'd free you."

"That word's nowhere to be found tonight, or else already flown," Shakespeare answered ruefully. "Were my pen a poniard, it would not stab."

"Say not so, for I know thy yard pierces," Kate said. Her smile, this time, was of a different kind.

"Ah. Sits the wind in that quarter, then?" Without waiting for an answer, Shakespeare got to his feet.

Even at such a moment, he was careful to gather up his precious manuscript and pens and ink before heading for the stairway with the serving woman. "Thou'rt sweet, Kate, to give of thyself to a spring gone dry like me."

"Spring's a long way off, and it's cold outside," she said. "And I doubt me thou'rt dry in all thy humors.

Else, after last we lay between the sheets, why found I a wet spot there?"

Laughing, he slipped an arm around her waist. "I own myself outargued," he said. She snuggled against him and sighed softly. He held up his papers. "Belike thou couldst outwrite me, too. Art fain to try?"

"Go to," she said. "Me that needs must make a mark to set down my name?"

They came to the top of the stairs. Her door stood just to the right. She opened it. They went inside.

Kate closed the door. Shakespeare took her in his arms. "Kiss me," he said. She did.

When he left the ordinary, he'd come no further forward on Love's Labour's Won. His head was high and he had a spring in his step even so. He started to whistle a ballad, then fell silent and shrank into a dark doorway when he heard other footsteps coming down the dark street. If it wasn't curfew time, it was close. Running into a patrol now was the last thing he wanted. The men who walked by spoke in low voices, and in English. He would have bet they too didn't want to run into a patrol. And he didn't want to run into them, either, and silently sighed with relief when they vanished into the fog.

He sat down at the table in the parlor once he got back to his lodgings, hoping he could set a few words down on paper before he got too sleepy to work. But he hadn't written above a line and a half before Peter Foster stuck his head into the room to see what was going on. "Oh. Master Will. God give you good even," he said.

"Give you good even," Shakespeare echoed automatically. Then he gaped. "They said you were in the Hole!"

"Why, so I was." Foster laid a finger by the side of his nose. "God gave me a good even, and a good set of gilks and a bit of charm besides." He held up the skeleton keys for Shakespeare to admire. He looked like a man used to picking locks, sure enough.

"Bravely done," the poet said. "But will they not come after you again?"

"Since when? Belike the turnkey knows not I'm gone," Peter Foster said with fine contempt. "Nay, Will, I'll couch a hogshead here tonight, then budge a beak come morning. I tell you true, I'll be glad to 'scape that sawmill who sleeps with us."

"As you reckon best," Shakespeare said with a shrug. "Me, I'd not care to sleep here in my own bed before fleeing the sheriffs."

"You fret more than I," Foster said, not unkindly; perhaps he was doing his best not to call Shakespeare a coward. "May I turn Turk if they're here or ever I'm gone. You've seen naught of me, mind."

"Think what you will of me, but I'm no delator," Shakespeare said. And if they pull off my boots and give me the bastinado till I can bear no more? He did his best not to think about that. He was glad when Peter Foster nodded, apparently satisfied, and went off to bed. But, by the way Love's Labour's Won foundered, it might have been aboard Sir Patrick Spens' ship on the luckless voyage to Norway.

Shakespeare went to bed himself. Jack Street did indeed make the night hideous, but his snores were the least of what kept Shakespeare awake so long.

When he got up, Foster was gone. No one had come after the clever little man with the interesting tools.

Shakespeare went off to the Theatre in a thoughtful mood. His roommate knew crime as he himself knew poesy, and might well have made a better living at his chosen trade.

" Buenos dias, Your Excellency," Lope de Vega said, sweeping off his hat and bowing to Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n. "How may I serve you this morning?"

" Buenos dias, Lieutenant," Guzman replied. "First of all, let me compliment you on La dama boba.

Your lady was a most delightful boob, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her antics yesterday."

Lope bowed again, this time almost double. "I am your servant, sir!" he exclaimed in delight. His superior had never before paid him such a compliment for his theatrical work-or, indeed, for work of any other kind.

Captain Guzman went on, "And my compliments especially for wringing such a fine performance from your Diego. I know that cannot have been easy."

"Had I known I would have to use him, I would have made the servant a sleepier man," de Vega said.

"As things were-" He mimed cracking a whip over Diego's back.

"Even so." Guzman nodded. Then he raised an elegant eyebrow and asked, "Tell me: after which of your mistresses was Lady Nisea modeled? Or should I say, which of your former mistresses? The story is, they had it in mind to throw you into the bear pit for the mastiffs' sport."

"Please believe me, your Excellency, it was not so bad as that." He asked Captain GuzmA?n to believe him. He didn't tell his superior that what he said was true.

Guzman's eyebrows rose higher still. "No, eh? It certainly has been a mighty marvel hereabouts. I suppose I should admire your energy, if not your luck at the bear garden. Everyone who saw them says a man would be lucky to have one such woman, let one two."

How can I answer that? de Vega wondered. Deciding he couldn't, he didn't try. Instead, he repeated, "How may I serve you, sir?"

Rather than answering him directly, Baltasar Guzman said, "Your timing could have been better, Lieutenant. In fact, it could hardly have been worse."

"Sir?"

"Have you forgotten you are to meet with Cardinal Parsons this morning?" GuzmA?n eyed him, then assumed a severe expression. "I see you have. What a pity. It could be that the Cardinal, being an Englishman and having just come from Canterbury, has not heard of your, ah, escapade. It could be. I hope it is. But I would not count on it. The man is devilishly well informed."

Lope sighed. "Yes, sir. I know he is," he said glumly. "I'll do the best I can."

"Splendid. I'm sure you said the same to both your lady friends."

Ears burning, Lope beat a hasty retreat from Captain GuzmA?n's office. As he'd feared, Enrique waylaid him in the hall. GuzmA?n's servant also bubbled with enthusiasm for La dama boba. "I especially admired Nisea's transformation from a boob to a woman with a mind-and a good mind-of her own," he said.

Since Lope had worked especially hard to bring off that transformation, Enrique's praise should have delighted him. And, in fact, it did leave him pleased, but he had no time for Enrique now. "You will excuse me, I hope," he said, "but I'm on my way to St. Paul's."

"Oh, yes, of course, for your meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury." Enrique nodded wisely.

Everyone knows my business better than I do, de Vega thought with a stab of resentment. Captain Guzman's servant continued, "He is a very wise man, and a very holy man, too, no doubt."

"I know," Lope said, desperate to be gone. "If you will excuse me-" Retreating still, he hurried out of the Spanish barracks and west to the greatest cathedral in London. The booksellers near the steps tempted him to linger, but he resisted temptation and went up the stairs and into the great church. If books came bound in skirts, though. Annoyed at himself, he shook his head to try to dislodge the vagrant thought. A deacon came up to him as he stepped into the cool, dim quiet. "And you would be, sir.?" the fellow asked in English.

Lope proudly replied in his own Castilian tongue: "I have the honor to call myself Senior Lieutenant Lope de Vega Carpio."

He was not surprised to find the deacon spoke Spanish, too. "Ah, yes. You will be here to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury. Come with me, seA±or."

Quiet evaporated as the deacon led de Vega through the cathedral. Masterless men dickered with merchants and artisans who might have work for them. Lawyers in rich robes traded gossip. Smiling bonarobas, fragrant with sweet perfume and showing as much soft flesh as they dared, lingered near the lawyers. One of the women smiled at Lope. He ignored her, which turned the smile to a scowl. He didn't care to buy a tart's favors, no matter how fancy and lovely she was: he preferred to fall in love, or at least to imagine he'd fallen in love. And what's the difference? he wondered. Only how long the feeling lasts.

"Do have a care," the deacon warned him. "Picking pockets, or slitting them, is a sport here."

"This too, I suppose, is Christian charity," Lope said. The deacon gave him an odd look.

Away from the vast public spaces of St. Paul's were the chambers the clergy used for their own. The deacon led de Vega to one of those. Then, like Enrique going in to see Captain Guzman, he said, "Wait here for a moment, please," and ducked into the room by himself. When he returned, he beckoned. "His Eminence awaits you with pleasure."

"He is too kind," Lope murmured.

Even in the rich regalia of a cardinal, Robert Parsons looked like a monk. His face was long and thin and pale; his close-cropped, graying beard did nothing to hide the hollows under his cheekbones. He held out his ring for de Vega to kiss. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Senior Lieutenant," he said in Latin.

"Thank you, your Eminence," Lope replied in the same language. He switched to English: "I speak your tongue, sir, an you have no Spanish."

"I prefer Latin. It is more precise," Parsons said. By his appearance, he was nothing if not a precise man.

"As you wish, of course." Lope hoped his own Latin would meet the test. He read it well, but he was no clergyman, and so did not often speak it. "I am at your service in every way."

"Good." Cardinal Parsons looked down at some notes on his desk and nodded to himself. "I am told you are the Spanish officer most concerned with sniffing out treason in the English theatre."

"Yes, your Eminence, I believe that to be true," Lope answered, pleased he'd remembered to use the infinitive.

"This is because"-the Archbishop of Canterbury checked his notes again-"you are yourself an aspiring dramatist?"

"Yes, your Eminence," de Vega repeated, wondering if the English churchman would take him to task for it.

But Parsons only said, "I am glad to hear it, Lieutenant. For treason is afoot in that sphere, and you, being familiar with its devices, are less likely to let yourself be cozened than would someone uninitiated in its mysteries."

Lope had to think before he answered. The cardinal's Latin was so fluent, so confident, he might have been whisked by a sorcerer from the days of Julius Caesar to this modern age. He made no concessions to Lope's weaker Latinity; Lope got the idea Parsons made few concessions to anyone, save possibly the Pope.

"Your Eminence, I go to the theatre more to watch the audience than to watch the actors," de Vega said.

"Many of them I know well, and they have not shown themselves disloyal to Queen Isabella and King Albert."

Robert Parsons snorted like a horse. Lope needed a moment to realize that was intended for laughter.

Parsons said, "And how likely is it that they would declare their treason before an officer of his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain?"

"You make me out to be a fool, a child," Lope said angrily.

"By no means, Lieutenant." The Archbishop of Canterbury's smile was cold as winter along the Scottish border. "With your own words, you make yourself out to be such."

Without his intending it, de Vega's hand moved a couple of inches toward the hilt of his rapier. He arrested the motion. Even if he was insulted, drawing sword on a prelate would certainly send him to gaol, and probably to hell. He gave the cardinal a stiff bow. "If you will excuse me, your Eminence-"

"I will not." Parsons' voice came sharp as a whipcrack. "I tell you there is treason amongst these men, and you will be God's instrument in flensing it out."

"But, your Eminence"-Lope spread his hands-"if they do not show it to me, how can I find it? There is no treason in plays that are performed. The Master of the Revels sees and approves them before a play reaches the stage. Sir Edmund Tilney is the one who will know if the poets plan sedition-indeed, he has arrested some for trying to say what must not be said."

Like Parsons' face, his fingers were long and thin and pale. When he drummed them on the desktop, they reminded de Vega of a spider's legs. "Again, you speak of overt treason," Parsons said. "The enemies of God and Spain, like Satan their patron, are more subtle than that. They skulk. They conspire. They-"

"With whom?" Lope broke in.

"I shall tell you with whom: with the English nobles who still dream of setting at liberty that murderous heretic jade, Elizabeth their former Queen." Parsons' eyes flashed. "King Philip was too merciful by half in not burning her when first she was seized, and again in not slaying more of the men who served her and upheld her while she ruled."

He had, Lope remembered, spent more than twenty years in exile from his native land. When he spoke of skulking and conspiring, he spoke of what he knew. Cautiously, de Vega asked, "Have you anyone in particular in mind?"

He expected the Archbishop of Canterbury to name Christopher Marlowe-everyone seemed to put Marlowe at the head of his list of troublemakers-or George Chapman or Robert Greene (though Greene, he'd heard, was ill unto death after eating of a bad dish of pickled herring). But Parsons, after an abrupt nod, replied, "Yes. A slanderous villain by the name of William Shakespeare."

"Shakespeare?" Lope said in surprise. "I pray your Eminence to forgive me, but you must be mistaken. I know Shakespeare well. He is a man of good temper-of better temper than most poets, I would say."

"What of the friends of poets?" Cardinal Parsons asked.

Lope needed a heartbeat to notice he'd put the feminine ending on friends. Well, Baltasar GuzmA?n had warned not much got past the cardinal, and he was right. "Your Eminence!" Lope said reproachfully.

"Let it go. Let it go. Forget I said it," Parsons told him. "But I warn you, Lieutenant, there is more to that man than meets the eye. He has been seen in homes where a man of his station has no fit occasion to call, and he keeps company no honest man would keep, or want to keep."

"He knows Marlowe well," Lope said. "Knowing Marlowe, he will also know Marlowe's acquaintances.

Many of them, I fear, are men such as you describe."

"There is more to it than that," Cardinal Parsons insisted. "I do not know how much more. That, I charge you to uncover. But I tell you, Lieutenant, there is more to find." His nostrils quivered, like those of a hunting hound straining to take a scent.

Captain GuzmA?n had dark suspicions about Shakespeare, too. Lope had dismissed those: who ever thinks his immediate superior knows anything? But if Robert Parsons and GuzmA?n had the same idea, perhaps there was something to it. "I shall do everything I can to aid the cause of Spain, your Eminence,"

de Vega said.

Chill disapproval in his voice, Parsons answered, "It is not merely the cause of Spain. It is the cause of God." But then he softened: "I do take your point, Lieutenant. Work hard. And work quickly. My latest news is that his Most Catholic Majesty does not improve, but draws closer day by day to his eternal reward. With his crisis, very likely, will come the crisis of our holy Catholic faith here in England. No less than the inquisitors, you defend against heresy. Go forth, knowing God is with you."

"Yes, your Eminence. Thank you, your Eminence." Lope kissed Cardinal Parsons' ring once more. He left the cardinal's study, left St. Paul's, as fast as his legs would take him. No doubt Parsons had intended a compliment in comparing him to an inquisitor. But what he'd intended and what Lope felt were very different things.

The Inquisition was necessary. Of that de Vega had no doubt. But there was also a difference between what was necessary and what was to be admired. Vultures and flies are necessary. Without them, the ground would be littered with dead beasts, he thought. No one invites them to dinner, though, and no one ever will.

Shakespeare knelt in the confessional. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he said. The priest in the other side of the booth murmured a question he hardly heard. He confessed his adultery with the serving woman at the ordinary, his rage at Will Kemp (though not all his reasons for it), his jealousy over Christopher Marlowe's latest tragedy, and such other sins as came to mind. and as could safely be told to a Catholic priest.

As Shakespeare had conformed to Protestant worship during Elizabeth's reign, so he conformed to Romish ritual now that Isabella and Albert sat on the English throne and Philip of Spain stood behind them. More often than not, conforming came easy. The Catholic Church's rituals had a grandeur, a glamour, missing from Protestantism. Had Shakespeare been able to choose faiths on his own, he might well have chosen Rome's. His father had quietly stayed Catholic all through Elizabeth's reign. But having invaders impose his creed on him galled Shakespeare, as it galled many Englishmen.

The priest gave him his penance, and then, with a low-voiced, "Go, and sin no more," sent him on his way. He went up toward the altar in the small parish church of St. Ethelberge the Virgin-the church closest to his lodgings-knelt in a pew, and began to say off the Ave Maria s and Pater Noster s the priest had assigned him. By the time he finished, he did feel cleansed of sin, although, being a man, he knew he would soon stumble into it again.

Nine years of conforming to Catholic ways was also long enough to leave him full of guilt about what he hadn't confessed. Despite the sanctity of the confessional, any mention of his meeting with Lord Burghley would have gone straight to the English Inquisition, and no doubt to the secular authorities as well. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name. Even so, he raised his eyes to the heavens as he finished his last Ave Maria. The priest wouldn't know what he kept to himself, but God would.

Crossing himself-another gesture that had grown close to automatic since the coming of the Armada-he got to his feet to leave St. Ethelberge's. As he walked down the aisle toward the door, Kate came out of the confessional and started up toward the altar. Dull embarrassment made Shakespeare look down at the stone floor. She'd probably confessed to the same passage of lovemaking as he had. For her, of course, it was only fornication, not adultery.

He forced himself to look her in the face. "God give you good day," he said, as if he knew her, but not in the Biblical sense.

"And you, Master Will," she answered quietly. "Shall we see you again at the ordinary this even?"

"Belike," he said. She walked on by him. Her small, secret smile said she might have confessed, but hadn't fully repented.

He started back to the Widow Kendall's. He wanted to get in what writing he could while some daylight lingered, and before most of the other lodgers came home and made the place too noisy for him to think in the rhythms of blank verse. He wished he were a rich man, like the Bacons in whose home he'd met Lord Burghley. Being able to sit down in a room without half a dozen other people chattering in his ear. is beyond your means, so what point fretting yourself over it?

He hadn't gone far before an apprentice-easy enough to recognize by his clothes, for he wore a plain, flat cap and only a small ruff at his throat-pointed to him and said, "There goes Master Shakespeare."

Being a man whose face many saw, Shakespeare had that happen fairly often. He almost made a leg to the 'prentice, to acknowledge he was who the young man thought he was. But something in the fellow's tone made him hold back. The apprentice hadn't just recognized him; by the way he sounded, others were looking for Shakespeare, too. He didn't care for that at all.

Sure enough, though, another man and a woman pointed him out to their friends on his way back to his lodgings. And, when he got there, Jane Kendall was in a swivet. "Oh, sweet Jesu!" she exclaimed. "First Master Foster, now you! Whatever shall I do?"

"What mean you, Madam?" he asked, thinking, What will you do? Find more lodgers; what else? But if they pursue me as they pursue Peter Foster, whatever shall I do? He doubted whether running to Stratford would help him. They'd track him down there. Could he get over the border to Scotland? Have they got theatres in Scotland? Might a player live there, or would he slowly starve?

"Why, Master Shakespeare, the fellow asking after you, he looked a right catchpole, he did," his landlady answered. "Had a great gruff deep voice, too, enough to make anybody afeard. Oh, Master Shakespeare, what have you done?"

"Naught," Shakespeare answered. And that was true, or something close to true. He'd set down not a word on paper. The closest thing to evidence anyone might find among his possessions was the translation of Tacitus' Annals. But it wasn't the only work of history in his trunk, and he hadn't so much as dogeared the relevant page. As far as proof went, they'd be on thin ice.

But how much would that matter? The bastinado, the rack, thumbscrews, the water torture the English Inquisition favored. If they hauled him away and began tormenting him, how long could he hold out?

He shuddered. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. He was no hero, and knew it too well. If they tortured him, he would tell all he knew, and quickly, too.

Doing his best not to think of such things, he went to the ordinary for supper and for work. All he knew about what he ate was that it cost threepence. He did notice Kate's smile, and absentmindedly gave it back. After she took away his wooden trencher, he got to work on Love's Labour's Won. Tonight, the writing went well: better than it had for a fortnight, at least. He dipped his quill in the bottle of ink again and again; it raced across the page.

Kate knew better than to talk to him when the words tumbled forth like the Thames at flood. When at last she came over to his table, it was only to warn him: "Curfew's nigh."

"Oh." He didn't want to stop, but he didn't want to be caught out, either, not if they were looking for him anyway. As he gathered up his pens and papers and ink, he came back to the real world. Now the smile he gave the serving woman was sheepish. "Another time, I fear me."

She nodded, not much put out. "When I saw you writing so, I knew that would be the way of't." Her voice softened. "God keep thee."

"And thee." Shakespeare pushed his stool back from the table. He couldn't have gone on much longer, anyhow; the candle was burnt almost to the end. With an awkward nod-almost the nod a youth might have given a pretty maid he was too shy to court-he hurried out of the ordinary.

He rose the next morning in darkness; in December, the sun stayed long abed. Porridge from the pot on the hearth and a mug of the Widow Kendall's ale broke his fast. And he wasn't the first lodger up; Jack Street went out the door while he was still eating.

When Shakespeare followed the glazier out of the lodging house, a big man stepped from the shadows and said, "You are Master William Shakespeare." He had to be the fellow who'd spoken to Jane Kendall; his voice came rumbling forth from deep in his chest.

"And if I be he?" Shakespeare asked. "Who are you, and what business have you with me?"

"You are to come with me to Westminster," the man replied. "Forthwith."

"But I'm wanted at the Theatre," Shakespeare said.

"You're wanted in Westminster, and thither shall you go," the big man said implacably. "The wind lies in the east. Come-let's to the river for a wherry. 'Twill be quicker thus." He made the sign of the cross.

"God be my witness, Master Shakespeare, you are not arrested. Nor shall you be, so that you do as you are bid. Now come. Soonest there, soonest gone."

"I am your servant," Shakespeare said, ever so glad he was not-or apparently was not-the other man's captive.

Morning twilight had begun to chase the dark from the eastern sky when they got down to the Thames.

Even so early, half a dozen boatmen shouted at them, eager for a fare. "Whither would you go, my lord?"

one of them asked after the fellow sent to fetch Shakespeare set a silver groat in his hand.

"Westminster," the big man answered.

"I'll hie you there right yarely, sir," the boatman said. He proved good as his word, using both sail and oars to fight his way west against the current. The wind did indeed blow briskly from the east, which helped speed the small boat to Westminster. They got there faster than Shakespeare would have cared to walk, especially when he still would have had trouble seeing where to put his feet.

His-guide? — took him through the maze of palaces and other state buildings. He heard Spanish in the lanes and hallways almost as often as English; Westminster was the beating heart of the Spanish occupation of his country. The mere word made him queasy-it was often used of a man's lying with a woman. And, indeed, through his soldiers King Philip had thrown down Queen Elizabeth, thrown down all of England, and.

"Bide here a moment," the Englishman with the deep voice said, and ducked into an office. He soon came back to the doorway and beckoned. "Come you in." Turning to the man behind the large, ornate desk, he spoke in Spanish: "Don Diego, I present to you SeA±or Shakespeare, the poet." Shakespeare had little Spanish, but followed him well enough to make sense of that. The Englishman gave his attention back to Shakespeare and returned to his native tongue: "Master Shakespeare, here is Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s."

Shakespeare made a leg to the Spaniard. "I am honored beyond my deserts, your Excellency," he said.

In fact, he was more nearly appalled. Diego Flores commanded all of King Philip's soldiers in England.

What knows he?

Instead of translating, as Shakespeare had expected, his guide politely inclined his head to the Spanish grandee and withdrew. Flores proved to speak good if accented English, saying, "Please seat yourself, Senor Chakespeare." He waved to a stool in front of the desk. Like most Spaniards, he made a hash of the sh sound at the start of Shakespeare's name and pronounced it as if it had three syllables.

"Thank you, my lord." Shakespeare perched warily on the stool. He would sooner have fled. Even knowing flight would doom him made it no less tempting. He took a deep breath and forced some player's counterfeit of calm on himself. "How may I serve you today?"

Don Diego Flores studied him before answering. The Spanish commandant was in his fifties, his beard going gray, his hooked nose sharper in his thin face than it might have seemed when he was young. When he said, "I am told you are the best poet in England," he sounded like a man not in the habit of believing what he was told.

"Again I say, your Excellency, you do me too much honor."

"Who surpasseth you?" Flores asked sharply, the Spanish lisp making his English sound old-fashioned.

When Shakespeare did not reply, the officer laughed. "There. You see? Honor pricks you on, more than you think. This I understand. This I admire. If it be a sin to covet honor, I myself am the most offending soul alive." He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. "And so-for this were you summoned hither. Because you are the best."

"What would you of me? Whatever sort of poet I be, I am a poet of English. I know not the Spanish tongue."

" Claro que sa-," Don Diego said, and then, seeing Shakespeare's puzzled expression, "But of course.

You are desired because you write English so well." Shakespeare was sure he looked more puzzled than ever. Flores continued, "Have you not heard that King Philip, God love him, fails in regard to his health?"

Was that a trap? Ought I to claim ignorance? Shakespeare wondered. After some thought, he rejected the idea: the King of Spain's decline was too widely known to make such knowledge dangerous.

Cautiously, the poet said, "Ay, your Excellency, I have heard somewhat of't."

" Muy bien. Very good." The Spaniard again translated for himself, though this time Shakespeare followed him perfectly well. Crossing himself, Flores went on, "Soon the good Lord will summon to his bosom the great King."

"May King Philip live and reign for many years." Shakespeare saw no way to say anything else, not to Philip's commandant in England.

"May it be so, — , but Philip is a mortal man, being in that like any other." Flores sounded impatient; perhaps he knew more of the state of Philip's health than was common gossip in London. "To make for him a memorial, a monument: it is for this I summoned you hither."

"My lord?" Shakespeare still felt at sea. "As I told you, I am a poet, a player, not a stonecutter."

The Spanish grandee snorted. One unruly eyebrow rose for a moment. He forced it down, but still looked exasperated; plainly, Shakespeare struck him as something of a dullard. That suited Shakespeare well enough; he wished he struck Flores as a mumbling, drooling simpleton. The officer gathered himself.

"May the memorial, the monument, you make prove immortal as cut stone. I would have from you, seA±or, a drama on the subject of his Most Catholic Majesty's magnificence, to be presented by your company of actors when word of the King's mortality comes to this northern land: a show of his greatness for to awe the English people, to make known to them they were conquered by the greatest and most Christian prince who ever drew breath, and to awe them thereby. Can you do this thing? I promise you, you shall be furnished with a great plenty of histories and chronicles wherefrom to draw your scenes and characters. What say you?"

Do I laugh in his face, he'll hold me lunatic-and stray not far from truth. How can I do't? Another thought immediately followed that one: how can I say him nay? Shakespeare did his best: "May't please your Excellency, I find myself much engaged in press of business, and-"

Don Diego Flores de Valdas waved that aside with a dry chuckle. "For his Most Catholic Majesty, himself the best, none save the best will serve. We bind not the mouths of the kine who tread the grain.

Your fee is an hundred pound. I pay it now, and desire you to set to work at once, none of us knowing what God's plan for King Philip may be." He took from a drawer a fat leather sack and tossed it to Shakespeare. Chuckling again, he added, "And what say you now of this business of yours?"

Dizzily, Shakespeare caught the sack. Gold clinked sweetly. Nothing else could be so heavy in so small a space, for Flores would scarcely try to trick him with lead. An I live, I am rich. But how can I live, with Burghley and the Spaniard both desiring plays of me? He had no answer to that. "I am your servant," he murmured once more.

" Saes verdad." Don Diego didn't bother translating that. He pointed to the door. "You may go. I look for the play in good time."

Shakespeare rose. He left-almost staggered from-the commandant's chamber. The big Englishman with the deep voice waited outside to take charge of him. As they walked down the hall, Shakespeare saw Thomas Phelippes writing in a nearby room. Did Phelippes have anything to do with this? If so, did that make it better or worse? Again, Shakespeare had no answer.