Ruled Britannia

V

After Christmas mass, Lope de Vega and Baltasar Guzman happened to come out of the church of St. Swithin together. Lope bowed to his superior. " Feliz Navidad, your Excellency," he said.

Guzman, polite as a cat, returned the bow. "And a happy Christmas to you as well, Senior Lieutenant," he replied. "I have a duty for you."

De Vega wished he'd ignored courtesy. "On the holy day?" he asked, dismayed.

"Yes, on the holy day." Captain Guzman nodded. "I am sorry, but it is necessary, and necessary that you do it today." He didn't sound sorry. He never sounded sorry. He was stubborn as a cat, too; he went on, "I want you to take yourself to the church of St. Ethelberge"-another English name he massacred-"and ask the priest there if this poet friend of yours, this Shakespeare, has come to partake of our Lord's body and blood on the anniversary of His birth."

"Ah." However much Lope wished otherwise, Captain GuzmA?n was right here, as he had been with going after John Walsh-this was a necessary duty. "I shall attend to it directly. And if he has not?"

"If he has not, make note of it, but do no more now," GuzmA?n replied. "Then we watch him closely ten days from now. If he celebrates Christmas by the old calendar, the forbidden calendar, we shall know him for a Protestant heretic."

"Yes, sir." Lope sighed. "Heretic or not, we surely know him for a splendid poet."

"And if his splendid poetry serves Satan and the foes of Spain, isn't he all the more dangerous for being splendid?" Guzman said.

And he was right about that, too. Again, Lope wished otherwise. Again, he sighed. But, because Captain GuzmA?n was right, de Vega asked, "How do I find this church of St. Ethelberge?" He had almost as much trouble with the name as his superior had done, and added, "Where do the English find such people to canonize? Swithin here, Ethelberge there, and I hear there is also a St. Erkenwald in this kingdom.

Truly I wonder if Rome has ever heard of these so-called saints."

"I have plenty of worries, but not that one," Baltasar GuzmA?n said. "If the Inquisition and the Society of Jesus found these saints were fraudulent, the churches dedicated to their memories would not stay open."

He's right yet again, Lope thought, surprised and a little resentful. Three times in a row, all of a Christmas morning. He'd better be careful. If he keeps that up, I may have to start taking him seriously. He wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't, either. Since GuzmA?n hadn't answered him the first time, he tried again: "How do I find St. Ethelberge's church, Captain?"

"It's Shakespeare's parish church,? Shakespeare lives in Bishopsgate? Go to Bishopsgate. You know the way there?" Guzman waited for Lope to respond. He had to nod, for he did know the way to and through that district: it led out of London proper to the Theatre. "All right, then," the captain told him. "Go to Bishopsgate. If you find the church yourself, fine. If you don't, ask someone. Who wouldn't tell a man how to get to a church on Christmas morning?"

He was, of course, right yet again. "I go," Lope said, and hurried off toward Bishopsgate as much to escape Captain GuzmA?n and his alarmingly sharp wits as to find out whether Shakespeare had been to Mass. Even though the day was gloomy, London's houses and public buildings made a brave show, being decorated with wreaths and strands of holly and ivy, now and then wound up with broom. Many of the ornaments had candles burning in them, too. In the first couple of years after the coming of the Armada, such signs of the season had been rare. Elizabeth and her heretic advisors discouraged them, as they'd discouraged so many observances from the ritual year. But, with the return of Catholicism, the customs that had flourished before Henry VIII broke with Rome were also coming back to life.

Many doors stood open, the rich odors of cookery wafting out warring with those of garbage and sewage. From Advent, the fourth Sunday before the Nativity, to Christmas Eve, people restricted their diets. On Christmas Eve itself, meat, cheese, and eggs were all forbidden. But Christmas. Christmas was a day of release, and also of sharing. Only skinflints closed their doors against visitors on Christmas Day.

A man in what looked like a beggar's rags with a roast goose leg in one hand and a mug of wine in the other came up the street toward Lope. By the way he wobbled as he walked, he'd already downed several mugs. But he gave Lope an extravagant bow all the same. "God bless you on the day, sir," he said.

"And you, sir," de Vega replied, returning the bow as if to an equal. On Christmas, as on Easter, were not all men equal in Christ?

Lope did have to ask after St. Ethelberge's church. But people indeed proved eager to help him find it.

He got there just when a Mass was ending. And he got his answer without having to ask the priest, for with his own eyes he saw Shakespeare coming out of the church in a slashed doublet of black and crimson as fancy as anything Christopher Marlowe might wear.

Lope thought about waving and calling out a greeting. He thought about it for a heartbeat, and then thought better of it. He ducked around a corner instead, before Shakespeare spotted him. What excuse could he offer for being in Bishopsgate on Christmas morning, save that he was spying on the English poet? None, and he knew it.

He got back to the barracks in the center of town without asking anyone for directions. That left him proud of himself; he was strutting as he made his way to Captain Guzman's office. And he'd been right, and GuzmA?n, for once, wrong. That added to the strut. He looked forward to rubbing his superior's nose in it.

Whatever he looked for, he didn't get it. When he opened the door, Guzman wasn't there. His servant, Enrique, sat behind his desk, frowning in concentration over a quarto edition of one of Marlowe's plays.

He read English better than he spoke it, though still none too well.

He didn't notice the door opening. Lope had to cough. "Oh!" Enrique said in surprise, blinking behind his spectacles. "Good day, Senior Lieutenant."

"Good day," Lope replied politely. "Where's your principal?"

"He was bidden to a feast, sir," Guzman's servant replied. "He left me behind here to take your report.

Did the priest at this church with the name no sane man could pronounce see Senor Shakespeare at Mass today?"

"What do you do if I tell you no?" de Vega asked, trying not to show how angry he was. GuzmA?n could send him off to Bishopsgate on Christmas morning, but did the noble stay around to hear what he'd found? Not likely! He went off to have a good time. And if I'd been here, maybe someone would have invited me to this feast, too.

"I bring his Excellency the news, of course," Enrique said. "After that, I suppose he sends out an order for Shakespeare's arrest. Do I need to go to him?"

"No." Lope shook his head, then jabbed his chest with his thumb. "I myself saw Shakespeare leaving the church of St. Ethelberge"-he could pronounce it (better than most Spaniards, anyway), and didn't miss a chance to show off-"not an hour ago, so there's no need to disturb Captain GuzmA?n at his revels."

"I'm glad," Enrique said. De Vega wondered how he meant that. Glad he didn't have to go looking for GuzmA?n? But then the servant went on, "From everything I can tell, the Englishman is too fine a poet for me to want him to burn in hell for opposing the true and holy Catholic faith."

" Tienes razan, Enrique," Lope said. "I had the same thought myself." And if Enrique agrees with me, he must be right.

"Do you have any other business with my master, Lieutenant?" the servant asked.

Yes, but not the sort you mean-this shabby treatment he's shown me comes close to touching my honor, Lope thought. But he wouldn't tell that to Guzman's lackey. He would either take it up with the officer himself or, more likely, decide it wasn't a deliberate insult and stop worrying about it. All he said to Enrique was, "A happy Christmas to you."

"And to you, senor." As Lope turned to go, Enrique picked up the play once more. He read aloud:

" O lente, lente currite noctis equi:

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.

O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?'

This is very fine poetry, I think."

"And I," de Vega agreed, "even if he borrowed the slowly running horses of the night from Ovid."

"Well, yes, of course," said Enrique, who, despite being a servant, somewhere had acquired a formidable education. "But he uses the line in a way that makes it his own. He doesn't just trot it out to show how learned he is."

"A point," Lope said. "Marlowe is a very clever man-and if you don't believe me, ask him."

Guzman's servant grinned. "Meaning no offense to you, senor, but conceit is a vice not unknown amongst poets."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Enrique," de Vega replied, deadpan. They both laughed. Lope closed the door behind him and headed for his own quarters.

He expected to discover Diego there, snoring up a storm. Christmas was a holy day, too holy for almost all work (not that Diego felt like working on the most ordinary day of the year, either). But the servant's bed was empty. Lope crossed himself. "Truly this is a day of miracles," he murmured.

In his own little inner room, he found paper and pen and ink. He opened the shutters, to take such advantage of England's fleeting December daylight as he could, and began to write. Maybe Christmas was too holy for that, too. De Vega had no intention of asking a priest's opinion about it.

A ragged man on a street corner thrust a bowl of spiced wine at a pretty woman walking by.

"Wassail!" he called.

She looked him over, smiled, and nodded at him. "Drinkhail!" she replied. He handed her the bowl and kissed her on the cheek. She drank, then gave him back the bowl.

"A happy New Year to you, sweetheart!" the ragged man called after her as she went on her way. He sang in a surprisingly sweet, surprisingly true baritone:

"Wassail, wassail, as white as my name,

Wassail, wassail, in snow, frost, and hail,

Wassail, wassail, that much doth avail,

Wassail, wassail, that never will fail."

William Shakespeare tossed the fellow a penny. "A happy New Year to you as well, sirrah."

The ragged man doffed his cap. "God bless you on the day, sir!" He held the bowl out to Shakespeare.

"Wassail!"

"Drinkhail!" Shakespeare replied, and drank. Returning the bowl, he added, "I'd as lief go without the kiss." Some Grecian, he couldn't remember who, had said the like to Alexander, and paid for it.

Marlowe would know the name.

With a chuckle, the ragged man said, "And I'd as lief not give it you. But by my troth, sir, full many a fair lady have I bussed, and thanks to the wassail bowl I owe." He lifted the cap from his head again. "Give you joy of the coming year."

"And you." Shakespeare walked past him. A couple of blocks farther on, another man used a wassail bowl to gather coins and kisses. Shakespeare gave him a penny, too. He got in return a different song, one he hadn't heard before, and did his best to remember it. Bits of it might show up in a play years from now.

All along the crowded street, men and women wished one another happy New Year. They'd done that even back before the coming of the Armada, for the Roman tradition of beginning the year in wintertime had lingered even though, before the Spaniards came, it had formally started on March 25. As with the calendar, Isabella and Albert had changed that to conform to Spanish practice. People called 1589 the Short Year, for it had begun on March 25 and ended on December 31.

Snow crunched under Shakespeare's shoes. Soot and dirt streaked it. Back in Stratford, snow stayed white some little while after it fell. Not here. Stratford was a little market town; he would have been surprised had it held two thousand souls. London had at least a hundred times as many, and more than a hundred times as many fires belching smoke into the sky to smirch the snow sometimes even before it fell.

A snowball whizzed past his head from behind. He whirled. The urchin who'd thrown it stuck out his tongue and scurried away. With a shrug, Shakespeare went on walking. He'd thrown snowballs when he was a boy, too. And my aim was better, he thought, though that might have been the man's view of the boy he'd been.

He strode past a cutler's shop, then stopped, turned, and went back. The Widow Kendall had broken the wooden handle on her best carving knife not so long before, and had complained about it ever since.

She kept talking about taking the knife to a tinker for a new handle, but she hadn't done it. Like as not, she never would get around to doing it, but would grumble about what a fine knife it had been for the rest of her days. A replacement, now, a replacement would make her a fine New Year's present.

"Good morrow, sir, and a joyous New Year to you," the cutler said when Shakespeare stepped inside.

"What seek you? An it have an edge, you'll find it here." Shakespeare explained what he wanted, and why. The cutler nodded. "I have the very thing." He offered Shakespeare a knife of about the same size as the one Jane Kendall had used.

"Certes, 'tis a knife." Shakespeare tried the edge with his thumb. "It now seems sharp enough. But will't stay so?"

"The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge," the cutler replied, "but it hath a better blade than most, and will serve for all ordinary work. And surely she for whom you buy't hath a whetstone?"

"Surely." Shakespeare had no idea whether Jane Kendall owned a whetstone. He supposed she must; how could she keep a kitchen in good order without one? Setting the knife down on the counter, he asked the next important question: "What's your price?" When the cutler told him, he flinched. "So much?

Half that were robbery, let alone the whole of't. 'Tis for a tallowchandler's widow, not silver clad in parcel gilt for the kitchen of a duke."

They haggled amiably enough. Not for all his poet's eloquence could Shakespeare beat the cutler down very far. At last, still muttering under his breath, he paid. The cutler did give him a leather sheath for the knife. "The better your widow cares for't, the better 'twill serve her. Dirt and wet breed rust as filth breeds maggots."

"I understand." Shakespeare didn't intend to lecture his landlady on housewifery. What the Widow Kendall would say to him if he showed such cheek did not bear thinking about.

He took the knife back to his lodgings. On the way there, he slipped a halfpenny into the sheath. Giving the Widow Kendall the knife without the propitiatory coin would have been inviting her to cut herself with it.

"Oh, God bless you, Master Will!" she exclaimed when he handed her the knife. She gave him a muscular hug and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. That was another kiss he could have done without; her breath stank with eating toasted cheese. He did his best to smile as she said, "I've thought me of getting a new one since that handle broke, but. " She shrugged.

But you'd sooner have done without, or gone on with the old marred one, than have fared forth yourself to a tinker's or a cutler's, he thought. "May you have good use of it," he said.

"I'm sure I shall," she said. "Come take a mug of ale, an't please you."

That mug was the only New Year's gift he had from her. Since he'd expected nothing more, he wasn't disappointed. But Christopher Marlowe came by the house later that day and gave him a copy of Tacitus' Annals-in the original Latin. "I dare hope you may find it. inspiring," the other poet murmured.

As was Marlowe's habit, he'd spent lavishly. The book was bound in maroon leather and stamped with gold. Shakespeare wanted to hit him over the head with it; with any luck, it would smash in his skull.

How much did Marlowe know? How much did he want Shakespeare to think he knew? How badly did he want to drive Shakespeare to distraction? That, more than the other two together, Shakespeare judged

Showing Marlowe he'd drawn blood only encouraged him to try to draw more. With a smile, Shakespeare answered, "I'm sure I shall. The treason trials under Tiberius, perchance?" Ever so slightly, he stressed the word treason.

Marlowe bared his teeth in something that looked like a smile. "Treason? What word is that? And in what tongue? Tartar? I know it not."

"Perdie, Kit, may that be so," Shakespeare said. "May the day come when that Tartar word's clean forgot in England."

Laughing, Marlowe patted him on the cheek, as an indulgent father might pat a son. "Our lines will fail or ever that word's routed from our. " He drew back, sudden concern on his face. "Will, what's amiss?"

"You will find a better time to speak of failing lines than when my only son's but a little more than a year in's grave," Shakespeare said tightly. His fists bunched. He took a step towards the other poet, whom he saw for a moment through a veil of unshed tears.

Marlowe backed away. "Pardon my witlessness, I pray you," he said.

"I will-one day," Shakespeare answered, angry still. Marlowe left the lodging house moments later.

Shakespeare wasn't sorry to see him go, not only because of what he'd said but also because he wouldn't linger to make more gibes about Tacitus and treason that might stick in someone's mind.

Though it was snowing hard on Sunday, Shakespeare made a point of going to Mass at the church of St.

Ethelberge the Virgin. It was, by Pope Gregory's calendar, the fourth of January-by England's old reckoning, December twenty-fifth. He wanted to be sure he was seen at Catholic services that day. If he were not, he might be suspected of observing Christmas on the day the Spaniards-and the English Inquisition-deemed untimely. Since he truly deserved suspicion, he had all the more reason not to want to see it fall on him. The pews in the little church were more crowded than usual. Maybe-probably-he wasn't the only soul there making a point of being seen.

He went to St. Ethelberge's again two days later, for the feast of Epiphany, the twelfth and last day of Christmas. A gilded brass Star of Bethlehem hung from the rood loft. Some of the parishioners put on a short drama about the recognition of the Christ Child by the Three Kings. Shakespeare found the performances frightful and the dialogue worse, but the audience here wasn't inclined to be critical. In the Theatre, the groundlings would have mewed and hissed such players off the stage, and pelted them with fruit or worse till they fled.

After Twelfth Night passed, the mundane world returned. When Shakespeare went off to the Theatre the next day, he carried with him the finished manuscript of Love's Labour's Won. He flourished it in triumph when he saw Richard Burbage. "Here, Dick: behold the fatted calf."

Burbage just jerked a thumb back toward the tiring room. "I care not a fig to see't, not until Master Martin hath somewhat smoothed it."

With a sigh, Shakespeare went. Geoffrey Martin, the company's prompter and playbook-keeper, would indeed dress the fatted calf he carried. He had a habit of writing elaborate, impractical stage directions.

And, like any author in the throes of enthusiasm, he sometimes made mistakes, changing a character's name between appearances or giving a line or two to someone who happened not to be on stage at the moment. Martin's job was to catch such things, to have scribes prepare parts for all the principal actors in a play, and to murmur their lines to them if they faltered during a performance.

Martin also worked closely with Sir Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, who made sure nothing blasphemous or treasonous appeared on stage. If Lord Burghley's plan was to go forward, Martin had to be part of the plot.

The prompter was about forty. He'd probably been handsome once, but nasty scars from a fire stretched across his forehead, one cheek, and the back of his left hand. The work he had-precise, important, but out of the public's eye-suited him well.

"Good morrow to you, Master Shakespeare," he said, looking up from a playbook. "Here at last, is it?

We've waited longer than we might have, to see what flowed from your pen."

"I know, Master Martin," Shakespeare said humbly. "I'm sorry for't." Facing the prompter made him feel as if he were back in school again, the only difference being that Geoffrey Martin wielded a pen of his own, not a switch.

He read faster and more accurately than anyone else Shakespeare knew. That pen of his drank from the ink pot on the table in front of him, then darted at the manuscript of Love's Labour's Won like a striking asp. "When will you learn to put stage directions in a form players can actually use?" he asked, more in sorrow than in anger: he said the same thing every time Shakespeare handed him a manuscript.

"Your pardon, Master Martin," Shakespeare said. "I do essay precision, but-"

"You succeed too well," the prompter told him, also not for the first time. "With directions such as these, you break the action like a man disjointing a roast fowl. Simplicity, sir-simplicity's what wins the race."

Shakespeare wasn't convinced Martin was right. Like any playwright, he wanted things just so, with all the actors moving at his direction as Copernicus and his followers said planets moved around the sun.

But the prompter's word carried more weight in such matters than his. As Martin went from one page to the next, Shakespeare did presume to ask, "What think you?"

"Aside from these wretched stage directions, very pleasant, very gay," Geoffrey Martin answered.

"Without a doubt, the company will buy the play of you. And then you'll put all your work towards the new King Philip, is't not so?"

"As much of it as I may, yes," Shakespeare answered. The prompter's question gave him the opening he needed: "Tell me, Master Martin, what think you of-?"

But before he could finish the question, Martin lifted a hand. "Hold," he said, and such was the authority in his voice that Shakespeare fell silent. "Here in your second act, you have entering three lords and three ladies."

"I do," Shakespeare agreed, looking down at what he'd written-the second act seemed a long way off these days.

"See you here, though. Only two of these ladies speak: the one Rosaline, the other Katharine. What point to the third one, the one you style Maria?"

"Why, for to balance the third lord, of course," Shakespeare answered.

Geoffrey Martin shook his head. "It sufficeth not. Give her somewhat to do, or else take her out."

"Oh, very well," Shakespeare said testily. "Lend me your pen, then." He scratched out a name and substituted another. "Now hath she this passage, once Katharine's."

"Good enough." Martin read on. After a bit, he looked up and said, "I am much taken with your Signor Adriano di Armato, your fantastical Venetian. Some poets I need not name might have sought instead to make of him a Spaniard, the which the Master of the Revels would never countenance."

Shakespeare's first thought had been to make him a Spaniard, to get the extra laughs mocking the invaders would bring. But he too had concluded Sir Edmund would never let him get away with it. Again, though, he had the chance to ask the question he wanted, or one leading towards it: "What think you, Master Martin, of having to take such care to keep from rousing the Spaniards' ire?"

"Working with the Master would be simpler without such worries, no doubt of't," the prompter replied.

"But you'll not deny, I trust, that heresy's strong grip'd yet constrain us had they not come hither. I have now the hope of heaven. Things being different, hellfire'd surely hold me after I cast my mortal slough."

"Ay, belike," Shakespeare said, none too happily. Without a doubt, Geoffrey Martin had given him an honest answer, but he hadn't said what Shakespeare wanted to hear.

"Why? Believe you otherwise?" Martin asked-he'd heard how half-hearted Shakespeare's answer sounded, which the poet hadn't wanted at all.

"By my troth, no," Shakespeare said, this time using his experience on the stage to sound as he thought Geoffrey Martin would want him to.

"I should hope not, sir," the prompter said. "King Philip, God keep him, is a great man, a very great man.

He hath from ourselves saved us, and in our own despite. Of whom else might one say the like, save only our Lord Himself?"

"Even so," Shakespeare said, and got away from Martin as fast as he could. The players he'd sounded had all been willing, even eager, to help try to expel the Spaniards from England. The tireman had been noncommittal. The prompter, plainly, took the Spaniards' part. And if Geoffrey Martin suspected treason, he knew important ears into which to whisper-or shout-his suspicions.

"Why the long face, Will?" Burbage called when Shakespeare wandered out onto the stage again.

"Mislikes he the mouse your mountain at last delivered?"

"Nay, the jests seemed to please him well enough," Shakespeare answered. "But he hath.

misgivings. in aid of. certain other matters."

Someone clapped him on the shoulder. He jumped; he hadn't heard anybody come up behind him. Will Kemp's elastic features leered at him. Cackling with mad glee, the clown said, "What better time than the new year for a drawing and quartering? Or would you liefer rout out winter's chill with a burning? I'll stake you would."

"Go to!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "Get hence!"

"And wherefore should I?" Kemp replied. "I know as much as doth Dick here." Before Shakespeare could deny that, the clown continued, "I know enough to hang us all, than the which what could be more?"

Put so, he had a point. Burbage said, "The object is not to let others know enough to hang us all- others now including a certain gentleman (marry, a very certain gentleman he is, too) who all too easily can confound us."

"Knew you not that Geoff Martin hath his nose in the Pope of Rome's arsehole?" Kemp said with another mocking smile.

" 'Steeth, Will-soft, soft!" Shakespeare hissed, the ice outside having nothing to do with the chill that ran through him. "He need but cock his head hither and he'll hear you."

"He's right, man," Burbage said. "D'you want your neck stretched or your bowels cut out or the flesh roasted from your bones? Talk too free and you'll win your heart's desire."

"O ye of little faith!" Kemp jeered. "Dear Geoff's prompter and book-keeper. He hath before him a new play-so new, belike the ink's still damp. What'll he do? Plunge his beak into its liver, like the vulture with Prometheus. A cannon could sound beside him without his hearing't."

Burbage looked thoughtful. "He may have reason," he said to Shakespeare.

"He may be right," Shakespeare said. "Right or wrong, reason hath he none. Where's the reason in a man who will hazard his life for nothing but to hear his own chatter? God deliver me from being subject to the breath of every fool, whose sense no more can feel but his own fancies."

"Doth thy other mouth call me?" Will Kemp retorted. He strode away, then stopped, bent, and spoke loudly with his other mouth.

"Whoreson beetle-headed, flap-eared knave," Shakespeare burst out-but quietly. He remembered all too well that, if he angered Kemp, the clown could betray him, too.

"A bacon-fed knave, very voluble," Burbage agreed, "but when have you known a clown who was otherwise?" He too spoke in a low voice. After a moment, he went on, "And what, think you, may we do about Martin?"

"In sooth, I know not," Shakespeare said miserably. "Would we could just sack him, but the company'd rise in revolt-and with reason (that word again!), did we try it without good cause."

Burbage nodded. "True. Every word of't true."

"But this business cannot go forward without him, nor with him in opposition," Shakespeare said.

"Look you to your part of't," Burbage told him. "Write the words that needs must be writ. Think on that, for none else can do't. As for the other-haply you misread Martin's mind and purpose."

"That I did not," Shakespeare declared.

"Well, as may be," Burbage said with a shrug. "But I say this further: we are embarked here on no small enterprise, is't not so?" After waiting for Shakespeare to nod, he went on, "We may be sure, then, we are not alone embarked. We need not, unaided, solve all conundrums attached hereto."

"It could be," Shakespeare said after some thought. "Ay, it could be. But, an we solve them not, who shall?"

"That is hidden from mine eyes, and so should it be, for what I know not, no inquisitor can tear from me,"

Burbage said. Shakespeare nodded again, a little more heartily; he'd had the same thought. Smiling, Burbage continued, "But to say it is hidden from mine eyes is not to say it hath no existence. Others, knowing little of the parts we play, will be charged with shifting such burthens as an o'erstubborn prompter. Is that not so?"

"It is," Shakespeare said. "Or rather, it must be. But would I knew it for a truth, not for an article of faith."

"As what priest or preacher hath not said?" Burbage answered with a laugh. "Write the words, Will.

When the time comes, I'll say 'em. And what follows from thence. 'tis in God's hands, not ours."

He was right. He was bound to be right-which went some way towards setting Shakespeare's mind at ease, but not so far as he would have liked. It did let him get through the day at the Theatre without making a fool of himself, which he might not have managed had Burbage not calmed him.

A couple of evenings later, as the poet was making his way down Shoreditch High Street towards Bishopsgate after a performance, a man stepped out of the evening shadows and said, "You're Master Shakespeare, are you not?"

"I am," Shakespeare said cautiously. "And who, sir, are you?"

He used that sir from caution; had he felt more cheerful about the world and the people in it, he would have said sirrah. The fellow who'd asked his name looked like a mechanical, a laborer, in leather jerkin and laddered hose. When he smiled, he showed a couple of missing teeth. "Oh, you need not know my name, sir," he said.

"Then we have no business, one with the other," Shakespeare answered, doing his best to sound polite and firm at the same time. "Give you good den." He started on.

"Hold!" the stranger said. As he set a hand on the hilt of his belt knife to emphasize the word, Shakespeare stopped. In grumbling tones, the fellow added, "Nick said you were a tickle 'un. There's a name for you, by God and St. George! You ken Nick Skeres?"

Skeres had led him to Sir William Cecil. "I do," Shakespeare said reluctantly.

"Well, good on you, then." The stranger gave him another less than reassuring smile. "Nick sent me to your honor. You've someone in your company more friendlier to the dons than an honest Englishman ought to be?"

From whom had Skeres heard about Geoffrey Martin? Burbage? Will Kemp? Someone else altogether?

Or had this bruiser any true connection to Skeres at all? With such dignity as he could muster, Shakespeare said, "I treat not with a man who hath no name."

"Damn you!" the fellow said. But he didn't draw that knife. Instead, exasperated, he flung a name-"Ingram!" — at the poet.

Christian name? Surname? Shakespeare couldn't guess. But the man had given him some of what he wanted. Shakespeare answered him in turn: "Yes, there is such a one, Master Ingram."

"His name's Martin, eh? Like the bird?" Ingram asked. With odd hesitation, Shakespeare nodded. So did the other man. "All right, friend." He touched the brim of his villainous cap. "God give you good even," he said, and vanished once more into the deepening shadows. The poet stared after him, scratching his head.

"Surely,senor Shakespeare, you know that his holiness Pope Sixtus promised King Philip a million ducats when the first Spanish soldier set foot on English soil, and that he very handsomely paid all he had promised," Lope de Vega said. "A million gold ducats, mind you."

"Yes, I understand," Shakespeare replied. "A kingly sum, in sooth."

They sat with their heads together in the tiring room at the Theatre. De Vega puffed on a pipe of tobacco.

The smoke rising from it fought with that from torches, lamps, and braziers. "I am glad you follow, sir," he said. "This needs must appear in the play on his Most Catholic Majesty's life."

Shakespeare had been scribbling notes in a character Lope could not have deciphered had his life depended on it. Now he looked up sharply. "Wherefore?" he asked. "It doth little to advance the action, the more so as Pope and King never met to seal this bargain, it being made by underlings."

"But it shows how beloved of his Holiness was the King," Lope replied.

"By the King's own deeds shall I show that," Shakespeare said, "deeds worth the showing on a stage.

Here, he doth-or rather, his men do-naught but chaffer like tradesmen at the market over the sum to be paid. Were this your play, Master de Vega, would you such a scene include?"

After some thought, Lope spread his hands. "I yield me," he said. He sucked at the clay pipe, hoping the smoke would calm him. Working with Shakespeare was proving harder than he'd expected. The Englishman knew what was required of him: a play celebrating and memorializing Philip II's life and victories. But he had his own ideas of what belonged in such a play and how the pieces should fit together.

Having won his point, he could be gracious. "My thanks, sir," he said. "Sith the play'll bear my name, I want it to be a match for the best of my other work."

"For your pride's sake," Lope said.

"For my honor's sake," Shakespeare said.

Lope sprang from his stool and bowed low, sweeping off his hat so that the plume brushed the floor.

"Say no more, sir. Your fellow poets and players would think less of you, did you write below your best.

This I understand to the bottom of my soul, and I, in my turn, honor you for it. I am your servant.

Command me."

"Sit, sit," Shakespeare urged him. "I own I stand in need of your counsel on the incidents of your King's life and on how to show 'em, the which is made more harder by his seldom leaving Madrid, those in his command working for him all through the Spanish Empire."

"Even so." Lope returned to his seat. He eyed the English poet with considerable respect. "You have more experience bringing history to the stage than I."

Shakespeare's smile somehow didn't quite reach his eyes. "When I put words into the mouths of Romans, I may do't without fear the Master of the Revels will think my ghosts and shadows speak of matters political."

Lope nodded. "Certes. This is one of the uses of the distant past." He leaned forward. "Here, though, not so distant is the past of which we speak. How thought you to portray the King's conquest of the heretic Dutchmen?"

"Why, through his kinsman, the Duke of Parma."

"Excellent," Lope said. "Most excellent. Parma being dead, no unsightly jealousies will to him accrue."

They kept at it till the prompter summoned Shakespeare to sort out something or other in the new play he'd offered the company. A harried look on his face, the English poet returned a couple of minutes later to say, "Your pardon, Master de Vega, but this bids fair to eat up some little while. He hath set upon my pride a blot, catching me with my characters doing now one thing, now another quite different. Having marred it, I now needs must mend it."

" Qula stima," Lope said, and then, in English, "What a pity." He got to his feet. "I am wanted elsewhere anon. Shall we take up again on the morrow?"

" 'Twere better the day following," Shakespeare answered.

Lope nodded. "Until the day. Hasta luego, senor." Shakespeare dipped his head, then hurried off. De Vega left the Theatre. He'd come on horseback today. One of the tireman's helpers had kept an eye on the beast to make sure it would still be there when he came out. Lope gave the Englishman a halfpenny for his trouble. By the fellow's frown, he'd hoped for more, but every man's hopes miscarried now and again.

Riding through the tenements that huddled outside the city wall, Lope felt something of a conquering caballero. He'd seldom had that feeling afoot. Now, though, he looked down on the English. From literally looking down on them, I do so metaphorically as well, he thought. A man's mind is a strange thing.

The English knew him for a conqueror, too. That made his passage harder, not easier. They got in his way, and feigned deafness when he shouted at them. They flung curses and catcalls from every other window. They flung other things, too: stones to make his horse shy and rear, lumps of filth to foul the beast and him. He never saw his tormentors. The ones not safe inside buildings melted into the crowds on Shoreditch High Street whenever he whirled in the saddle to try to get a glimpse of them.

By the time he got back down to Bishopsgate, he was in a perfect transport of temper. One of the Irish gallowglasses at the gate, seeing his fury, asked, "Would your honor have joy of us breaking some heads for you, now?"

"No. Let it go. You cannot hope to punish the guilty," Lope said, once he'd made sense of the heavily armed foot soldier's brogue.

With a laugh, the Irishman said, "And what difference might that make? 'Sdeath, sir, not a groat's worth.

A broken head'll make you shy of tormenting a gentleman afterwards, be you guilty or no."

But Lope repeated, "Let it go." The gallowglasses and kerns brought over from the western island looked for excuses to fall upon the English. Considering what the English had done in Ireland over the years, they had reason for wanting revenge. But the outrage their atrocities spawned made them almost as much liability as asset for the Spaniards and for Isabella and Albert.

Lope rode into London. He still drew catcalls and curses. Inside the wall, though, Spaniards were more common, as were Englishmen who favored the Spanish cause. A man who flung, say, a ball of dung ran some real risk of being seen and noted. Catcalls Lope took in stride.

When he got back to the barracks, the stable boys clucked at the horse's sorry state. "And what of me?"

Lope said indignantly. "Am I a plant in a pot?"

"It could be so, senor," one of them answered. "And if it is, you're a well manured plant, by God and St. James." He held his nose. His friends laughed. Had the misfortune befallen someone else, Lope might have laughed, too. Since it was his own, laughter only enraged him. He stormed off to his chamber.

There he found his servant, sleeping the sleep of the innocent and just. "Diego!" he shouted. Diego's snores changed timbre, but not rhythm. " Diego! " Lope screamed. The servant muttered something vaguely placating and rolled from his back to his belly. Lope shook him like a man trying to shake fleas out of a doublet.

Diego's eyes opened. "Oh, buenos dias, senor," he said. "Is it an earthquake?"

"If there were an earthquake, it would swallow you as the whale swallowed Jonah," Lope said furiously.

"And do you know what? Do you know what, you son of a debauched sloth?"

His servant didn't want to answer, but saw he had no choice. "What, senor?" he quavered.

"If there were an earthquake, it would swallow you as the whale swallowed Jonah, and you wouldn't even know it! " Lope bellowed. "Scotland-"

That got Diego's attention, where nothing up till then really had. "Not Scotland, senor, I beg you," he broke in. "The Scots are even worse than the Irish, from all I hear. May the holy Mother of God turn her back on me if I lie. They cook blood in a sheep's stomach and call it supper, and some say it is the blood of men "

"Scotland, I was going to say, is too good for you," de Vega snarled. He had the satisfaction of watching Diego quail, a satisfaction marred when his servant yawned in the midst of cringing. "By God, Diego, if you fall asleep now I'll murder you in your bed. Do you think I'm lying? Do you want to find out if I'm lying?"

"No, senor. All I want to do is. " Diego stopped, looking even more miserable than he had. He'd undoubtedly been about to say, All I want to do is go back to sleep. He wasn't very bright, but he could see that that would land him in even more trouble than he'd already found. A querulous whine crept into his voice as he went on, "I thought you'd stay at that damned Theatre a lot longer than you did."

"And so?" Lope said. "And so? Because I'm not here, does that mean you get to lie there like a salt cod?

Why weren't you blacking my boots? Why weren't you mending my shirts? Why weren't you keeping your ears open for anything that might be to my advantage, the way Captain Guzman's Enrique does?"

Why does that vain little thrip of a Baltasar GuzmA?n get a prince among servants, while I'm stuck with a donkey, and a dead donkey at that?

Diego said something inflammatory and scandalous about exactly how intimate Enrique and Captain GuzmA?n were. "How would you know that?" Lope jeered. "When have you been awake to see them?"

"It's true, senor," Diego answered. "Everybody says so."

Lecturing his servant on what "everybody said" was worth struck de Vega as a waste of breath. But his pause was thoughtful for more reasons than that. If Guzman really did prove a marican, a sodomite, he might lose his position. He would, in fact, if he brought scandal to himself or to the Spanish occupiers as a group. And who would benefit if Baltasar GuzmA?n fell? I would, Lope thought. People can call me a great many things, but a sodomite? Never!

Diego's narrow little eyes glittered nastily. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"No," Lope said, not without well-concealed regret. "I am thinking that maybe you would do better asleep after all. When you're awake, your mind goes from the chamber pot to the sewage ditch. For I happen to know Captain GuzmA?n had a mistress till they quarreled a few months ago."

"And why would they quarrel?" Diego asked. "If he'd sooner-"

" A?Basta! " Lope said. "And not just enough but too much. Get up. Get out of here. Do what you're supposed to do. Then, once you've done that-which will include cleaning the clothes I have on, for the English threw filth at me and my horse today-once you've done that, I say, you'll have earned your rest, and you'll enjoy it more."

His servant looked highly dubious. De Vega supposed he had some reason. The only way he could enjoy his rest more would be to make love without waking up. Diego also thought about making some remark on the state of Lope's clothes. Again, he was wise to think twice. Grumbling under his breath, he did at last get out of bed.

Lope pulled off his boots, shed his stinking netherstocks and hose, and got out of his befouled doublet.

He changed quickly; the room was cold. And then he went off to make the day's report to Captain Guzman. "Damn you, Diego," he muttered under his breath as he went. No matter what everybody said about GuzmA?n-if everybody said anything about him-Lope still had to deal with him. That was hard enough already, and would be harder still if de Vega watched his superior out of the corner of his eye, looking for signs he might be a sodomite.

Before he got to Guzman's office, he ran into Enrique. Or had Enrique contrived to run into him? Eyes wide with excitement behind the lenses of his spectacles, Captain Guzman's servant said, "Tell me at once, Senior Lieutenant-what is it like, shaping a play with SeA±or Shakespeare?"

"I don't shape here," Lope said, remembering he might have to watch Enrique out of the corner of his eye, too. "I only have some lumber to sell. Shakespeare is the carpenter. He cuts and carves and nails things together. He'll do it very well, too, I think."

"He has a mind of his own?" Enrique asked.

" Por Dios, " Lope exclaimed, and the clever young servant laughed. "You can think it's funny," de Vega told him. "You don't have to work with the Englishman."

Enrique sighed. "Oh, but I wish I did!"

"Is your master in?" Lope asked.

"Yes, I think so," Enrique said. "He was at a. friend's house last night, but he said before he left that he'd try to return in good time."

He said amiga, not amigo: the "friend" was of the feminine persuasion. So much for what everybody says, Lope thought. "Have you seen her?" he asked. "Is she pretty?"

"I should hope so, senor!" Enrique said enthusiastically. "A face like an angel's, and tits out to here." He held a hand an improbable distance in front of his chest.

So much indeed for what everybody says, de Vega thought. When he walked into Baltasar GuzmA?n's office, the young captain looked like a cat that had just fallen into a bowl of cream. And when GuzmA?n asked, "What's the latest, Senior Lieutenant?" he didn't sound as if he'd bite Lope's head off if he didn't like the answer. He must have had a night to remember.

I wish I were in love again. I probably will be soon, but I'm not now, and I miss it. Sighing, de Vega summarized his session with Shakespeare. He also summarized the English attitude toward lone Spaniards on horseback: "Only my good luck they chose to throw more dung than stones. I might not have made it back if they'd gone the other way."

Captain Guzman said, "I'm glad you're safe, de Vega. You're a valuable man." While Lope was still gaping, wondering if he'd heard straight, his superior added, "And I'm glad things are going so well with the English poet. Keep up the good work."

Lope left his office in something of a daze. Maybe Guzman's amiga really did have the face of an angel and tits out to there. Lope couldn't imagine what else would have made the sardonic nobleman seem so much like a human being.

"Where's Master Martin?" Shakespeare asked in the tiring room at the Theatre. "He was to have the different several parts from Love's Labour's Won ready to go to the scribes, that they might make for the players fair copies."

"Good luck to 'em," Will Kemp said. "There's not a rooster living could read your hen scratchings."

The clown exaggerated, but not by a great deal-not enough, at any rate, to make Shakespeare snap back at him. Richard Burbage looked around. "Ay, where is he?" Burbage said, as if Kemp hadn't spoken. "Geoff's steady as the tides, trusty as a hound-"

"Ah, Dick," Kemp murmured. "You shew again why you're so much better with another man's words in your mouth."

He'd made that crack before. It must have stung even so, for Burbage glared at him. A couple of players laughed, but they quickly fell silent. Not only was Burbage a large, powerful man, but he and his family owned the Theatre. Insulting him to his face took nerve- or a fool's foolishness, Shakespeare thought.

"Pray God he hath not absconded," Jack Hungerford said.

That drew a loud, raucous guffaw from Will Kemp. "Pray God indeed!" the clown said. "He's to the broggers with all our papers, for the which, they'll assuredly pay him not a farthing under sixpence ha'penny-he's rich for life, belike."

He got a bigger laugh there than he had when he mocked Burbage. Shakespeare didn't find the crack funny. "Loose papers may not signify to thee, that hast not had pirates print 'em without thy let and without thy profit," he growled. "As ever, thou think'st naught for any of the company but thyself. Thou'rt not only fool, but ass and dog as well."

"A dog, is it?" Kemp said. "Thy mother's of my generation; what's she, if I be a dog?"

Shakespeare sprang for him. They each landed a couple of punches before the others of the company pulled them apart. Smarting from a blow on the cheek, Shakespeare snarled, "A dog thou art, and for the sake of bitchery." He didn't know that Kemp sought whores more than any other man, but flung the insult anyhow, too furious to care about truth.

Before the clown could reply in like vein, someone with a loud, booming voice called out from the doorway to the tiring room: "Here, now! Here now, by God! What's the meaning of this? What's the meaning of't, by God?"

"Constable Strawberry!" Burbage said. "Good day, sir."

"Good day," Walter Strawberry said. He was a jowly, middle-aged man who looked like a bulldog and had little more wit.

"I hope you are well?" Burbage said. The Theatre belonging to his family, he dealt with the constable. "I have not seen you long; how goes the world?"

"It wears, sir, as it grows," the constable replied.

"Ay, that's well known." Burbage's tone grew sharper: "Why come you here?" He quietly paid the constable and his helpers to stay away from the Theatre except when the players needed aid.

"First tell you me, what's this garboil here in aid of? What's it about, eh?" He pointed to the men holding Shakespeare and the others with a grip on Kemp.

"Words, words, words," Shakespeare answered, twisting free. "Good words are better than bad strokes, and the strokes Will and I gave each other were poor as any ever given. We are, meseems, friends again." He looked toward the clown.

Kemp had also got loose. "Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly," he said. Shakespeare stiffened. With a nasty smile, Kemp added, "But not ours." He came over to Shakespeare and planted a large, wet, smacking kiss on his cheek, whispering, "Scurvy, dotard, thin-faced knave," as he did so.

His acting wouldn't have convinced many, but it sufficed for Constable Strawberry. "Good, good," he boomed. "High spirits, animal spirits, eh?"

"Why come you here?" Richard Burbage repeated, as Shakespeare and Kemp, both cued by animal spirits, mouthed, Ass, at each other.

"Why come I here?" the constable echoed, as if he himself might have forgotten. He coughed portentously, then went on, "Know you a certain wight named Geoffrey Martin?"

"We do," Burbage answered.

Will Kemp said, "A more certain wight never was born, by God." Strawberry ignored that, which probably meant he didn't understand it.

"Why come you here?" Burbage asked for the third time. "Hath aught amiss befallen him?"

"Amiss? Amiss?" Walter Strawberry said. "You might say so. You just might-an you reckon murther aught amiss, you might."

"Murther?" The dreadful word came from half the company, Shakespeare among them. Horror and astonishment filled most voices. Shakespeare's held horror alone. He realized he was not surprised, and wished to heaven he were.

"Murther, yes, murther most foul," Constable Strawberry said. "Master Martin, a were found besides an ordinary, stabbed above an eye-the dexterous one, it were-the said wound causing his deceasing to be.

Murther, the which were to be demonstarted."

"Who'd do such a heinous deed?" Burbage said. Again, Shakespeare knew, or thought he knew, all too well. Ingram had looked the sort to be handy with a knife.

"Master Burbage, sir, I know that not. This while, I know that not," the constable said gravely. "I put it to you-ay, to all of ye-what manner of enemies had he, of foes, of rivals, of opposants, and other suchlike folk who wished him not well? Never set I mine eyne upon the man till overlooking his dead corpse, so haply you will have known him better than I."

Behind Shakespeare, someone murmured, " Vere legitur, lex asinus est."

"What's that?" Strawberry said sharply. "What's that? If you know somewhat of the case, speak out! An you know not, keep a grave silence, like to Master Martin's keeping the silence of the grave. If you be lukewarm of knowing, spew nothing out of your mouths."

"Truly, you are a revelation to us," Will Kemp said.

"Doth any man here know who might have been the prime motion of the said Master Geoffrey Martin's untimely coming to dust?" the constable asked.

Shakespeare felt Richard Burbage's eye on him. Misery roweled him. I meant it not to come to this, tolled in his mind again and again, like a great iron bell. Before God, I meant it not. But come to this it had, whether he'd meant it or not. He couldn't even be surprised. Had he not embarked on treason, or what Isabella and Albert and their Spanish props would reckon treason, no one would have slain poor Geoff Martin. And treason and murther ever keep together, as two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose.

Walter Strawberry looked from one player to another, searching the faces of men and boys, making them search their consciences. Shakespeare had never known the tiring room so silent.

He did not break the silence. Neither did Burbage.

"Well," the constable said at last. "Well and well and well, and yet, not so well. A man is murthered. His blood crieth out for revengeance. I had fondly hoped you might make the way more simpler-"

"Fondly, quotha," someone said in a penetrating whisper.

Strawberry stared, but did not spy the miscreant. He coughed and repeated himself: "I fondly hoped you might make the way more simpler, but an't be no, 'tis no. Whosoever the wretch that strook him down may be, I purpose discovering him. And what I purpose, I aim at. Give you good morrow." He turned on his heel and ponderously strode away.

That clotted silence held the tiring room for another minute or two, till the players were sure the constable was out of earshot. Then almost everyone started talking at once. Almost everyone: Shakespeare held aloof, listening without speaking. One wild guess followed another: footpads? an outraged husband? a creditor? a debtor?

"Methinks our prize poet done it," Kemp put in, "for that Master Geoffrey was ever changing his precious verses."

That roused Shakespeare to speech: "Did I slay on such account, you had been years dead, and more deserving of't than our poor prompter."

"Ah, but I make you better," the clown said smugly.

"Enough!" Richard Burbage's roar filled the room, startling everyone into momentary silence once more.

He pointed first at Kemp, then at Shakespeare. "Too much, by God! Give over, else you quarrel with me."

Shakespeare nodded. After a moment, so did Will Kemp. Shakespeare wondered how long the truce would last. From what he knew of the clown, not long. And, of course, Burbage could throw wood on the fire, too. And so can you, Shakespeare reminded himself.

More quietly, Burbage went on, "We need a new man to perform the office of playbook-keeper and prompter as soon as may be, for we shall make proper ninnies of ourselves without him. Know ye of a man able to do't and at liberty?"

Nobody said anything. At last, Jack Hungerford spoke up: "I'll nose about. Players, now, players come and go, but we who tread not the boards incline more towards finding one place and holding it."

"We'll find someone," Burbage said with the air of a man trying to sound confident. "But meanwhile, we all must needs watch our fellows' backs. Any one of us may of a day be dull. If a player have forgot his part and be out, let him not go even to a full disgrace. Whisper to him-give him the words he wants. All will go forward, and all for the best."

Hungerford said, "Till we have our new man, it were better to give plays we have done before many a time and oft, that by familiarity we feel as little as may be the lack."

Burbage nodded to the tireman. "Well said." He eyed Hungerford in a speculative way. "Until this exigency be past, could you, Jack, undertake some of what Master Martin did, your helpers taking your place with costumes and the like?"

Hungerford looked unhappy. "I'd be scarce a 'prentice in's trade, as my helpers are scarce more than

'prentices in mine. 'Twould make us weaker all around than we are."

"Weaker in the whole of the fabric, yes, but without the rent this garment our company would otherwise suffer," Burbage said. "And only for a brief space of time, till we find the man can take poor Geoffrey's place."

Burbage usually thundered like Jove, browbeating, pushing the company along the path he wanted by force of will. Here, though, he roared as gently as any sucking dove, cajoling the tireman into doing what he wanted. In truth, Jack Hungerford needed little cajoling. "I'll do't," he said, "but only for a little while, mind."

"Gramercy," Burbage said, and made a leg. The tireman chuckled in embarrassed pleasure.

"Gramercy," Shakespeare echoed, moving his lips without sound. Had Hungerford stayed stubborn in his refusal, Burbage's eye likely would have fallen on him next. Who would do better for a makeshift prompter than the man who'd penned many of the plays in the first place and might reasonably be expected, therefore, to know everyone's lines?

And I have not the time in which to do't, he thought desperately. Two plays to write, not a word set down on either. and he still had to act, too. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to lock himself in a room with nothing but his books and do nothing but set words on paper. He could have none of what he wanted.

They got through the afternoon's performance without disgracing themselves. As Shakespeare left the Theatre afterwards, Richard Burbage came up beside him. His shoulders sagged in a silent sigh, but he wasn't really surprised. Burbage said, "Sad for poor Martin's family. He had a new babe, I believe, o' the lady he wed after his first wife perished in the fire that marked him."

"Most piteous sad indeed." Shakespeare trudged down Shoreditch High Street towards filthy, crowded London: towards his home.

Burbage matched him stride for stride. After a while, he said, "Will. "

Shakespeare didn't answer. He just kept walking.

"Will. "

"What is't?" Shakespeare snapped. "Are you sure you want to know?" This time, Burbage was the one who didn't say anything. He only waited. After a moment, Shakespeare realized what he was waiting for.

"God be my judge, Dick, I devised his death not."

"I thought naught other. There's none o' the killing blood in you-else, as you say, Will Kemp were long since sped." But Burbage's smile quickly faded from his fleshy lips. "That you devised it not, I believe with all my heart. That it grieved you, I believe also. That it amazed you, as it amazed us. " He shook his head. "No."

"Why say you so?" Shakespeare asked.

"For that you spake of Martin his Popery as hurtful to a. a certain enterprise," Burbage answered.

"Was't the second Henry who cried out, a€?Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?'-and behold! there's Becket dead."

Shakespeare laughed uneasily. That shot struck much too close to the center of the target. Trying to lead Burbage away from the truth he'd found, the poet said, " 'Tis treason or folly or both together to set alongside a king's my name."

Burbage, however, was not so easily distracted. "An I hire me another Popish prompter, will he too lie dead in a ditch the day after?"

"I know not," Shakespeare said.

"What think you?" the player persisted.

"I think. I think a great ship is setting sail. I am thereon, haply, one small sail. If the wind blow foul,

'twill tear me to ribbons-and they'll haul me down in a trice, and raise in my place another. and the ship'll sail on as before. Are you answered, Dick?"

"I am answered," Burbage said heavily. "And I'll inquire of those with whom I speak how they stand with Rome."

"Softly! Softly!" Shakespeare warned. "If they wonder why you put such questions, 'twere better never to have asked at all."

"You take me for a fool," Burbage said. "He's the other wight."

"Heh," Shakespeare said. "Another one who's fain to jape on's own."

"We're not on the boards now, Will."

"Think you not?" Shakespeare shook his head. "Till this. enterprise go forward, if it go forward, we are players everywhere, players always. Forget it at your peril."

Burbage chewed on that for a few paces. By the sour face he pulled, he did not like the taste. He pointed ahead. "There's Bishopsgate." He hurried on alone, flinging words back over his shoulder: "If you have the right of't, best not to be seen with you."

That hurt. It would have hurt worse had Shakespeare not been convinced he was right-which made Burbage right to avoid his company. The player passed through the gate and disappeared. Shakespeare followed more slowly. He felt he ought to ring a bell like a leper, to warn folk of his presence. His touch was liable to prove as deadly as any leper's. That he knew too well.

And then, when he was only a couple of houses from the one where he lodged, something else occurred to him. Geoffrey Martin had proved an annoyance to those who'd framed this plot. He'd proved an annoyance, and they'd brushed him aside as casually as if he were a flea on a doublet. And if I prove an annoyance? Shakespeare shivered. But Lord Burghley styled me his strong right arm. The poet shivered again. Plenty of people in the street that chilly afternoon were shivering, so he went unnoticed. If I prove an annoyance, they'll brush me aside as yarely as poor Geoff Martin.

Captain Baltasar Guzman held up a sheet of paper to Lope de Vega. "We are ordered to take special notice, Senior Lieutenant, of any who profane Lent this year by eating of foods forbidden these forty days."

"We are ordered to do all sorts of foolish things," Lope answered. "This is more foolish than most. The English, from all I've seen in my time here, break the rules as often as they keep them." He exaggerated, but not by an enormous amount. A surprising amount of meat got eaten here in the weeks before Easter.

GuzmA?n waved the paper. "But this," he said portentously, "is a special year."

"How is this year special?" de Vega asked, as he knew he was supposed to do. "I know his Holiness has declared that 1600 will be a year of jubilee, but 1598?" He shrugged. "To me, it seems a year among years."

"Not so." His superior waved the paper again. Lope was getting tired of seeing it without being able to read it. GuzmA?n went on, "Ash Wednesday, this year, is the fourth of February, and Easter the twenty-second of March."

"They're early," Lope remarked. "Is that enough to make it special?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," GuzmA?n answered. "It is, it says here, as early as Easter can come." He waved that damned paper one more time. "This is, of course, the twenty-second of March by the calendar Pope Gregory ordained fifteen years ago."

"Yes, ten days earlier by the old calendar the heretics still love," Lope agreed. "But Easter isn't like Christmas-we don't have one day and they another."

"Ah, but this year, we do," Captain Guzman said. "By their calendar, what we call the paschal full moon falls before the vernal equinox. They will count the Sunday after the next full moon as Easter-April the twenty-sixth by our reckoning, the sixteenth by theirs. Now do you understand?"

After a moment, de Vega nodded. "I think so. If their Easter is later, their Lent will begin later, too, and-"

"And they will find it no sin to eat meat during the first part of our Lent," GuzmA?n broke in. "They either have to keep the fast an extra month to make themselves both safe and what they call holy, or-"

Lope interrupted in turn: "Or break the law of God and the fast. I see it now, your Excellency. You're right-this is a special year." He wouldn't have wanted to keep the Lenten fast for more than two months, and he doubted whether many stubbornly Protestant Englishmen would, either.

Baltasar GuzmA?n nodded. "We can smoke out a lot of heretics who've hidden from us since the Armada landed. The sooner we get rid of the last of them, the sooner we'll have peace in the kingdom."

"Peace." Lope sighed. "It seems like one of those mirages that fool travelers lost in the desert. You follow the mirage, and what looks like water recedes before you. If we had peace here, maybe one day I could go home to Spain. I wonder if I would recognize Madrid. After so long here, I'd probably think it was beastly hot."

"One thing is certain, though," Captain Guzman said. "As long as there are still Protestants in England, we'll have no peace. This kingdom has to follow the holy Catholic faith. All the world, one day, will follow the holy Catholic faith. Then, truly, peace will come." He crossed himself. His eyes glowed with a Crusader's vision.

"Yes." De Vega crossed himself, too. But then, incautiously, he said, "We've fought the Portuguese and the French, and they're Catholic, too-after a fashion."

GuzmA?n waved that aside. "When all the world is Catholic, there will be peace," he declared, as if challenging Lope to argue with him. Lope didn't. He might not have been so passionately certain of that as Guzman was, but he believed it, too.

"Is there anything else, your Excellency?" he asked.

To his surprise and disappointment, Guzman nodded. "Yes. What do you make of the murder of, ah, Geoffrey Martin?" He made heavy going of the dead man's Christian name.

"A robber, I suppose," Lope answered with a shrug. "I hear his purse was empty when the constables found his body."

"Robbery, perhaps, but what else?" his superior persisted. "He was a good Catholic, and now he's dead.

We might have learned a great deal from him."

"Had someone approached him?" Lope asked. "If anyone had, I never knew it."

"Nor I," Guzman said. "But that does not necessarily signify. He could have been talking to the English Inquisition with us none the wiser. The inquisitors always hold their cards close to their chests-sometimes too close to play them, I think, but they are not anxious for my opinion."

"Losing the prompter is a blow to the company," Lope said. "They will have to replace him as soon as they can."

"And with whom they replace him may be interesting." Captain Guzman eyed de Vega. "If Shakespeare is as much an innocent as you think, he certainly has odd things happen around him."

"And if you think Shakespeare a footpad, your Excellency, you prove you do not know the man at all," de Vega replied.

"That is not what I said, Senior Lieutenant," Guzman said, a distinct chill in his voice. "Please think about what I did say. You are dismissed." To show how very dismissed he was, his superior bent his head to his paperwork with him still in the office.

Seething, Lope gave Guzman a salute whose perfection was an act of mockery. "Good day, your Excellency," he snarled sweetly. His about-face might almost have been a dance. He neither slammed Guzman's door on walking out nor shut it silently, as Enrique had. Instead, he left it open. The captain's exasperated sigh and the scrape of his chair on the wood floor as he pushed it back so he could get up and close the door himself were music to de Vega's ears.

He knew nothing but thanks at escaping the barracks-thanks and cold, for snowflakes fluttered on the northwesterly breeze. It's January. It could be snowing in Madrid, too, he told himself. It was true. He knew it was true. It didn't help. When he thought of Madrid, he thought of a place where the vine and the olive flourished. He tried to imagine grapes and olives growing in London, and laughed at himself. Not even a poet's imagination stretched so far.

In the street outside the barracks, a Spanish soldier and a skinny Englishwoman were striking a bargain.

He gave her a coin. She led him away. Before long, he would get relief. Lope didn't know whether to envy or pity him for being satisfied so easily.

"I'd sooner be a monk than buy a nasty counterfeit for love," he muttered. That didn't mean he enjoyed living like a monk. He had, though, ever since his two mistresses were so inconsiderate as to run into each other outside the Southwark bear garden. Goodbye, Nell. Farewell, Martha. High time I found someone new.

He wouldn't do it by the barracks. He knew that. The Spanish soldiers stationed there drew trulls as a lodestone drew iron. De Vega didn't want women of easy virtue. He wanted women who would fall in love with him, and whom he would love. for a while.

He wandered down towards the Thames, past the church of St. Lawrence Poultney in Candlewick Street. Not far from the church, a woman with a wicker basket called, "Whelks and mussels! Cockles and clams! Fresh today. Whelks and mussels.!"

Maybe they were fresh today, maybe they weren't. In this weather, even shellfish stayed good for a while-one of its few virtues Lope could think of. He eyed the woman selling them. She was a few years younger than he, wrapped in a wool cloak she would have thrown out two years before if she could have afforded to replace it. The worried look on her face told how hard life could be.

"Whelks or mussels, sir?" she said, feeling his eye on her. "Clams? Cockles? Good for dinner, good for supper, good for soup, good for stew." She all but sang the desperate little jingle.

"Cockles, I think," Lope answered, "though I should be pleased to buy anything from so lovely a creature."

Her weary sigh sent fog swirling from her mouth. "I sell that not," she said, voice hard and flat.

"God forbid I meant any such thing!" Lope exclaimed, though he had, at least to test her. He swept off his hat, bowed, and told her his name, then gave her his most open, friendly smile and asked hers.

"I oughtn't to tell it you," she said.

"And why not?" He affected indignation. "What shall I do with it? Make witchcraft against you? They'd burn me, none less than the which I'd deserve. Nay, sweet lady, I want it only for to write it on the doorposts of mine heart. My heart?" He couldn't remember which was right.

The girl with the basket of shellfish didn't enlighten him. A tiny smile did lift the corners of her mouth for a moment, though. She said, "There's a deal of foolery in you, is't not so?"

"I know not whereof you speak," Lope said, donning a comically droll expression.

That smile was like a shy wild thing he had to lure from hiding. He felt rewarded when he saw it. "I'm Lucy Watkins, sir," she said.

"My lady!" Lope bowed again. She wasn't his lady. Maybe she never would be. But he intended to make trial of that.