Ruled Britannia

VI

Smoke from the fireplace, smoke from the flames under a roasting capon, and smoke from half a dozen pipes of tobacco filled the Boar's Head in East Cheap. Shakespeare's eyes stung and watered.

"What's the utility of tobacco?" he asked the player beside him, who'd been drinking sack with singleminded dedication for some little while now. "What pleasure takes one from the smoking of it, besides the pleasure of setting fire to one's purse?" The stuff was, among other things, devilishly expensive.

The player blinked at him in owlish solemnity. "Why, to pass current, of course," he answered. After a soft belch, he buried his nose in the mug of sack once more.

"It suffices not," Shakespeare murmured.

"Pay him no heed," Christopher Marlowe said from across the table. Marlowe had a pipe. He paused to draw in smoke, then blew a perfect smoke ring. Shakespeare goggled. He'd never seen that before. It almost answered his question by itself. Laughing at his flabbergasted expression, Marlowe went on, "He is sensible in nothing but blows, and so is an ass."

"Is that so?" the player said. "Well, sirrah, you can kiss mine arse."

Marlowe rose from his stool in one smooth motion. "Right gladly will I." He came around the table, kissed the fellow on the mouth, and returned to his place. The drunken player gaped and then, too late, cursed and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his doublet. Loud, raucous laughter filled the Boar's Head.

Under it, Marlowe nodded to Shakespeare. "You were saying, Will?"

"What good's tobacco?" Shakespeare asked.

"What good is't?" Now Marlowe was the one who stared. "Why, let Aristotle and all your philosophers say what they will, there is nothing to be compared with tobacco. Have you tried it, at the least?"

"I have, four or five years gone by. I paid my shilling for the damned little clay pipe, and two shillings more for the noxious weed to charge it with, and I smoked and I smoked till I might have been a chimneytop. And. "

"And?" Marlowe echoed.

"And I cast up the good threepenny supper I'd had not long before-as featly as you please, mind, missing my shoes altogether-and sithence have had naught to do with tobacco, nor wanted to."

"Liked you the leek when first you ate of it? Or the bitter taste of beer?"

"Better than that horrid plant from unknown clime." Shakespeare shuddered at the memory of how his guts had knotted.

"By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you," Marlowe said. "You have not so much brain as ear-wax; in sooth, there will be little learning die then that day you are hanged." He leered at Shakespeare. "And who knows which day that will be, eh, my chuck?"

"Go to," Shakespeare snarled. Marlowe would not keep his mouth shut. "More of your conversation would infect my brain. You draw out the thread of your verbosity finer than the style of your argument, you scambling, outfacing, fashion-mongering peevish lown."

"Well shot, Will," Thomas Dekker called. The young poet whooped and clapped his hands. Lord Westmorland's Men had put on his first play only a few weeks before. He lifted up his mug of wine in salute. "Reload and give him another barrel!" He drained the mug and slammed it down.

Shakespeare caught a barmaid's eye and pointed to Dekker. When she filled the youngster's mug again, Shakespeare paid her. Dekker was chronically short of funds; till Shakespeare's company bought his comedy, he'd been one step from debtor's prison-and now, rumor had it, was again.

Marlowe clucked reproachfully. "Buying a claque? I reckoned it beneath you. The Devil will not have you damned, lest the oil that's in you should set hell on fire." He emptied his mug, and gave the barmaid a halfpenny to refresh it. "I pay mine own way," he declared, drinking again.

"I am sure, Kit, though you know what temperance should be, you know not what it is," Shakespeare answered sweetly.

"Me? Me?" Marlowe's indignation was convincing. Whether it was also genuine, Shakespeare had no idea. "What of you, eh? I am too well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way."

As Shakespeare had with Dekker, so Marlowe also had a partisan: a boy actor of about fourteen, as pretty as one of the girls he played. He laughed and banged his fist down on the tabletop. Marlowe bought him more of whatever he was drinking-beer, Shakespeare saw when the serving woman poured his mug full again. He'd already had quite a lot; hectic color glowed on his cheeks, as if he were coming down with a fever.

Marlowe blew another smoke ring, then passed the pipe to the boy, who managed a couple of unskillful puffs before coughing piteously and turning even redder than he was. Marlowe took back the pipe. He kissed the stem where the boy's lips had touched it, then put it in his own mouth again.

Watching intently was a tall, thin, pale man who wore wore a rich doublet of slashed silk. His tongue played over his red lips as he watched Marlowe and the boy. "Who's that?" Shakespeare asked Dekker.

He pointed. "I have seen him aforetimes, but recall not his name."

"Why, 'tis Anthony Bacon," the other poet replied. "He hath a. liking for beardless boys." He laughed and drank again. Shakespeare nodded. Not only had he seen Bacon, he'd visited the house Anthony shared with his younger brother, Francis, to see Sir William Cecil. He suddenly wondered what Anthony knew of the plot. Wonder or not, he had no intention of trying to find out.

Marlowe and Shakespeare weren't the only poets and players and other theatre folk dueling with words in the Boar's Head. Will Kemp had got George Rowley, an actor notorious for his slow thinking, splutteringly furious at him. As Rowley cast about for some devastating comeback-and looked more and more unhappy as none occurred to him-Kemp gave him a mocking bow and sang out, "Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike."

"I'll strike you, you-you-you. fool!" Rowley shouted amidst general laughter, which only got louder at his sorry reply.

"Is his head worth a hat? Or his chin worth a beard?" Kemp demanded of the crowd, and got back shouts of, "No!" that pierced the smoke and came echoing back from the stout oak beams of the roof.

George Rowley surged up from his bench and did try to strike him then, but other actors held them apart.

Marlowe smiled across the table at Shakespeare. "Ah, the Boar's Head," he said fondly. "What things we have seen, done at the Boar's Head! Heard words that have been so nimble, so full of subtle flame-"

Shakespeare broke in, "As if that everyone from whence they came. " He paused in thought, then carried on: "Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, and had resolved to live a fool the rest of his dull life."

"Not bad, Will," Marlowe said. "No, not bad, and all the better for the internal rhyme. Purposed you that from when you began to speak?"

"An I say yes, you'll call me liar; an I say no, you'll call me lucky clot-poll," Shakespeare answered. The other poet grinned back at him, altogether unabashed. Shakespeare turned thoughtful. "Think you the like hath value in shaping dialogue?"

Marlowe leaned forward. "A thought of merit! It might lead mere leaden prose towards the suppleness of blank verse."

They batted the idea back and forth, nearly oblivious to the racket around them, till the pretty boy beside Marlowe, indignant at being ignored, got up to go. Shakespeare wondered if Marlowe would notice even that. Anthony Bacon did, he saw. Despite the lure of versification, the lure of the boy proved stronger for Marlowe. He spoke soothingly. When that failed to have the desired effect, he charged his pipe with tobacco, lit it with a splinter kindled from a nearby candle, and offered it to the boy. The youngster took another puff, made a horrible face, and coughed as if in the final stages of some dreadful tisick.

Shakespeare's sympathies were with him.

Regardless of Shakespeare's sympathies, the boy and Marlowe left the Boar's Head together. Marlowe's arm was around the boy's waist; the youngster's head nestled against his shoulder. Bacon watched them hungrily. Anyone looking at them would have guessed they were sweethearts. And so, Shakespeare supposed, they were. But Marlowe could not hide-indeed, took pride in not hiding-his appetites. The English Inquisition might burn him for sodomy. Secular authorities, if they caught him, would merely hang him.

Maybe the talk with Marlowe was what he needed to get his wits going, though. That night, at the ordinary, he began work on the play Lord Burghley had asked of him. He wished he were as wealthy as one of the Bacons, or as Burghley himself. Committing treason was bad enough. Committing it in public.

He put a hand over his papers whenever Kate the serving woman came near. She found it funny instead of taking offense. "I'll not steal your words," she said. "Since when could I, having no letters of mine own?"

She'd said before she needed to make a mark instead of signing her name. Shakespeare relaxed-a very little. Whenever anyone but Kate walked past the table where he wrote, he kept on covering up the manuscript. That, of course, drew more attention to it than it would have got had he kept on writing. A plump burgess looked down at the sheet in front of him, shook his head, and said, "You need have no fear, sir. Nor God nor the Devil could make out your character."

Geoffrey Martin had voiced similar complaints. But poor Martin had been the company's book-keeper; he naturally had a low opinion of the hand of a mere poet. To hear someone with less exacting standards scorn Shakespeare's script was oddly reassuring.

After a while, Shakespeare was the only customer left in the ordinary. His quill scratched across the paper so fast, the ink on one line scarcely had time to dry before his hand smudged it while writing the next. He started when Kate said, "Curfew's nigh, Master Will."

"So soon?" he said, amazed.

"Soon?" She shook her head. "You've sat there writing sith you finished supper, none of you but your right hand moving. Look-two whole leaves filled. Never saw I you write so fast."

Little by little, Shakespeare came forward in time a millennium and a half, from bold, outraged Britons and swaggering Romans to London in the year of our Lord 1598. "I wrote two leaves? By God, I did."

He whistled in wonder. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done so much of a night, either. Not even when he was finishing Love's Labour's Won had his pen flown like this.

"Is't something new, then?" she asked.

"Yes." He nodded. He could safely say that much. And he could safely let her see the manuscript, as she'd reminded him earlier in the evening, for she couldn't read it. And. all of a sudden, he didn't feel like thinking about the play any more. "Might I bide a little longer?" he asked. Kate nodded. She didn't seem much surprised.

Later, when they lay side by side on the narrow little bed in her cramped little chamber, she set her palm on the left side of his chest, perhaps to feel his heartbeat slow towards normal from its pounding peak of a few minutes before. Shakespeare set his own hand on hers. "What's to become of us, Will?" she asked.

He sighed. He'd run into altogether too many questions lately for which he had no good answers. Here was another. Having no good answers, he responded with a question of his own: "What can become of us? I've a wife and two daughters in Stratford. I've never hid 'em from thee."

Kate nodded. "Yes, thou'rt honest, in thine own fashion." That neither sounded nor felt like praise. But here they lay together in her bed, warm and naked and sated. If that wasn't praise of the highest sort a woman could give a man, what was it?

"I do love thee," he said. Kate snuggled against him. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, hoping he was telling the truth. He sighed again. "Did I have a choice. "

But before Shakespeare was born, Henry VIII had wanted a choice, too. When the Pope wouldn't give him one, he'd pulled England away from Rome. Now, of course, the invading Spaniards had forcibly brought her back to the Catholic Church. But even if Elizabeth still reigned, even if England were still Protestant, divorce was for sovereigns and nobles and those rich enough to pay for a private act of Parliament, not for the likes of a struggling poet and player who lived in a Bishopsgate lodging house, had a sour wife far away, and sometimes slept with the serving woman at the ordinary around the corner.

"Didst thou have a choice. " Kate echoed.

Before God, I know not what I'd do, Shakespeare thought. If he hadn't got Anne with child, he doubted he would have wed her. Years and years too late to worry about that now, though. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. He'd heard that text in sermons more times than he could count since the Armada put Isabella and Albert on the English throne. Priests harped on it, to show that Protestants who countenanced divorce were heretics and sinners.

"Didst thou have a choice. " Kate repeated, a little more sharply this time.

Would she have me lie to her? Shakespeare wondered. He was just then and would keep on lying to practically everyone he knew. Why should a serving woman be different from anyone else? Because I do- because I might-love her. Not a perfect answer, but the best he could do.

"Did I have a choice, my chuck. " Shakespeare sighed and shrugged, expecting her to throw him out of that narrow bed for not crying out that he would cleave to her come what might.

She startled him by laughing, and startled him again by kissing him on the cheek. "Perhaps thou art truly honest, Will. Most men'd lie for the sake of their sweetheart's feelings."

"I'll give thee what I can, Kate, and cherish all thou givest me. And now I had best be gone."

Shakespeare got out of bed and began to dress.

"God keep thee, Will," she said, a yawn blurring her words. "Hurry to thy lodging. Surely curfew's past."

"God keep thee," he said, and opened the door to her room. He went out, closing the door behind him.

Lope De Vega came up to the priest. The Englishman marked his forehead with the ashes of the "palm" (usually, in this northern clime, willow or box or yew) branches used the previous Palm Sunday. In Latin, the priest said, "Remember, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return."

Crossing himself, Lope murmured, "Amen," and made his way out of St. Swithin's church. Most of the people he saw on the streets, English and Spaniards alike, already had their foreheads marked with the sign of repentance that opened the Lenten season. Anyone who didn't, especially in a year when Catholics and heretics celebrated Easter more than a month apart, would get some hard looks from those whose duty was to examine such things.

Though it was still the first week of February, the day was springlike: mild, almost warm, the sky a hazy blue with fluffy white clouds drifting slowly across it from west to east. The sun shone brightly. A few more such days and flowers would begin to open, seeds to bring forth new plants, leaves to bud on trees.

Once, Lope had seen this weather hold long enough for nature to be fooled-which made the following blizzard all the crueler by comparison. He didn't expect this stretch to last so long. Usually, they were like a deceitful girl who promised much more than she intended to give. Knowing as much, he didn't feel himself cheated, as he had when he'd first come to England.

"I am sure you are brokenhearted that Lord Westmorland's Men have got a dispensation to let them perform through Lent," Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n said outside the church.

"Oh, of course, your Excellency," de Vega replied. He was damned if he'd let this little pipsqueak, still wet behind the ears, outdo him in irony. He touched his forehead, as if to say the ashes there symbolized his mourning. But then he went on, "Most of the acting companies gain these dispensations. They would have a hard time staying in business if they didn't." Acting companies were by the nature of things shoestring operations (Lord Westmorland's Men a bit less than most); they could ill afford losing more than a tenth of their revenue by shutting down between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

"Well, go on up to the Theatre, then," GuzmA?n said. "See if anyone is bold enough to flaunt his heresy to the world at large. Whoever he is, he will pay."

"Yes, sir," Lope said. "Sir, is there any further word of his Most Catholic Majesty? Shakespeare has asked after him. Not unreasonably, he wants some notion of how much time he has to compose the drama Don Diego Flores de Valdas set him."

"I have news, yes, but none of it good," Captain Guzman replied. "The gout has attacked his neck, which makes both eating and sleeping very difficult for him. And the sores on his hands and feet show no sign of healing. If anything, they begin to ulcerate and spread. Also, his dropsy is no better-if anything, is worse."

Tears stung Lope's eyes. He touched the ashes on his forehead again. "The priest in the church spoke truly: to dust we shall return. But this is bitter, a man who was-who is-so great, having an end so hard and slow. Better if he simply went to sleep one night and never woke up."

"God will do as He pleases, Senior Lieutenant, not as you please. Would you set your judgment against His?"

"No, sir-not that it would do any good if I did, for He can act and all I can do is talk."

GuzmA?n relaxed. "So long as you understand that. With a man who makes plays. Forgive me, but I wondered if you arrogated some of the Lord's powers to yourself, since you make your characters and move them about as if you were the Almighty for them."

Lope looked at him in astonishment. "I have had those blasphemous thoughts, yes, sir. My confessor has given me heavy penance on account of them. How could you guess?"

"It seemed logical," Guzman said. "You have a world inside your head, an imaginary world filled with imaginary people. Who could blame you for believing, now and again, that that imaginary world is real?

You make it seem real to others in your plays-why not to yourself as well?"

"Do you know, your Excellency, I am going to have to pay serious attention to you, whether I want to or not," de Vega said slowly.

Baltasar Guzman set a hand on his shoulder. "Now, now, Senior Lieutenant. You had better be careful what you say, or you'll embarrass both of us. Being your superior, I should do the embarrassing. Let me try: how is your latest lady friend?"

Lope wasn't embarrassed. He flashed GuzmA?n a grin. "She's very well, thank you," he said, and heaved a sigh. "I do believe she is the sweetest creature I ever met."

"And I do believe you've said that about every woman for whom you ever conceived an affection, which must be half the women in England, at the very least." Captain GuzmA?n grinned, too, a nasty, crooked grin. "How am I doing?"

"Pretty well, thanks," Lope answered. "You make me glad I'm going to the Theatre." He wasn't sorry to hurry away from St. Swithin's, for Captain GuzmA?n's shot had hit in the white center of the target. Lope did passionately believe, at least for a while, that each new girl was the one upon whom God had most generously bestowed His gifts. What point to loving someone, after all, if she weren't special? Lucy Watkins, now.

As he made his way through the teeming streets of London, he thought of her shy little smile, of her soft voice, of the pale little wisps of hair that came loose no matter how tightly plaited the rest was. and of the taste of her lips, of her uncommonly sweet smell, of the charms he hadn't sampled yet but soon hoped to.

A constable and a tavern-keeper stood arguing outside the latter's door. The constable wagged his finger in the other fellow's face. "Marry, there is another indictment upon thee," he said severely, "for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which I think thou wilt howl."

"All victuallers do so," the tavern-keeper protested. "What's a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?"

"In a whole Lent?" the constable said. "A whole Lent, with Ash Wednesday scarce begun? Thou'lt go to the dock for this, beshrew me if thou dost not. Every soul is of a mind to crush out Protestantism like it was a black-beetle in amongst the sallat greens. Bad business, heresy, terrible bad."

"Protestantism? Heresy? Art daft, George Trimble? What's that to do with a bit o' mutton? — for the which thou'st shown no small liking, Lents gone by."

"Liar!" the constable exclaimed, in tones that couldn't mean anything but, In the name of God, keep your mouth shut! He went on, "Besides, Lents gone by have naught to do with now. It's all the calendar, it is, that has to do with heresy."

"How?" the tavern-keeper demanded.

"Why, for that it does, that's how," George Trimble said. Lope sighed and went on his way. He could have explained what the problem was, but he didn't think either of the quarreling Englishmen would have cared to listen to him.

By now, the men who took money at the Theatre recognized Lope and waved him through as if he were one of the sharers among Lord Westmorland's Men. He wished he were. The life of a Spanish lieutenant was as nothing next to that which Burbage or Shakespeare or Will Kemp lived. De Vega was sure of it.

Kemp threw back his head and howled like a wolf when Lope walked into the Theatre. De Vega gave back a courtier's bow, which at least disconcerted the clown for a moment. Kemp, he noticed, wore no ashes on his forehead. What did that mean? Did it mean anything? With Kemp, you could never be sure.

Swords clashed as a couple of actors rehearsed a fight scene. One glance told de Vega neither of them had ever used a blade in earnest. Burbage, he'd seen, had some notion of what he was about. These fellows? The Spaniard shook his head. They were even worse than Shakespeare, who'd never pretended to be a warrior.

Burbage, now, boomed out the Scottish King's lines:

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?' "

" Therein the patient must minister to himself,' " replied the hireling playing the doctor.

Burbage frowned. Lope had seen the Scottish play a couple of times, and admired it. He knew, or thought he knew, what the actor was supposed to say next. And, sure enough, someone hissed from the tiring room: " a€?Throw physic to the dogs.' "

" Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it,' " Burbage finished, and went on in his own voice: "My thanks, Master Vincent. The line would not come to me."

"No need to praise my doing only that for which you took me into your company," replied Thomas Vincent, the new prompter and playbook-keeper. He came out to nod to Burbage. "You should reprove me if I keep silence." He was about Lope's age, lean, and seemed bright. Lope had learned he went to Mass every Sunday. Before the Armada came, he'd been as zealous in attending Protestant Sunday services.

A trimmer, de Vega thought scornfully. Whichever way the wind blows, that's the way he'll go. But a lot of men, likely a majority, were like that. It made things easier for those who would rule them.

Shakespeare's like that, too, Lope reminded himself. He was no Catholic when Elizabeth ruled this land. Which was one more reason to reckon him an unlikely traitor. He'd made his compromises with the way things were. The ones you had to worry about were those who refused to change, no matter what refusing cost them.

Geoffrey Martin, Lope thought. He'd paid no special attention to the prompter while Martin lived. Now that Martin was dead, it was too late. Sir Edmund Tilney-or, if not the Master of the Revels, someone in his office-could tell me more about him.

"Seek you Master Will?" Richard Burbage called.

"An you do, you've found him." But that was Will Kemp, not Shakespeare. The clown went from making a leg at Lope to collapsing in a heap before him: one of the better pratfalls he'd seen.

De Vega shook his head. "Many thanks, but nay. I have that for which I came." He bowed to Burbage (who looked surprised at his saying no) and to Kemp, resisting the impulse to try to match the fool's loose-jointed toppling sprawl. Then he hurried out of the Theatre.

Captain Guzman didn't think of this. Maybe I'll learn something important. Even if I don't, I'll look busy. If I have my own ideas and follow them up, how can Guzman complain about me? He can't-and if I'm busy on another play of my own, well, by God, he'll have a hard time complaining about that, too.

"Have you a moment, Master Hungerford?" Shakespeare hated asking the question, and the ones that would follow. He hated it even more than he had when he'd spoken with Geoffrey Martin. When Martin gave the wrong answers, the inconvenient answers, Shakespeare hadn't known what would happen next. Now he did. If blood flowed, it would drip from his hands.

But the tireman only nodded. "Certes, Master Will. What would you?" He flicked a speck of lint from a velvet robe.

"What costumes have we for a Roman play?" Shakespeare asked.

"A Roman play?" The tireman frowned. "Meseems we could mount one at need." In most dramas, no matter when or where they were set, players wore clothes of current fashion. Audiences expected nothing else. But Roman plays were different. People had a notion that the Romans had dressed differently. And so actors strode the boards in knee-length white tunics and in gilded helms with nodding crests mounted (often insecurely) above them. Despite his answer, Hungerford's frown didn't go away.

"Why ask you that, though? I know for a certainty we offer no Roman plays any time soon, nor Grecian ones, neither."

Shakespeare nodded nervously. "You speak sooth. But I am writing a Roman play, one that may be shown soon after it's done."

"Ah?" Hungerford quirked a gingery eyebrow; they'd held their color better than his hair or his beard.

"This alongside your King Philip?"

"Yes," Shakespeare said: one syllable covering a lot of ground.

"You've much to do, then, and scant time wherein to do't," Hungerford said. Shakespeare nodded; that was a manifest truth. The tireman asked, "And what title hath this latest?"

" Boudicca," Shakespeare answered, and waited to see what would come of that. If Jack Hungerford knew Latin and remembered his Roman history, the title would be plenty to alarm him-and to hang Shakespeare, if he mentioned it to the wrong people.

But the name was only a nonsense word to Hungerford; Shakespeare saw as much in his eyes. "Scarce sounds Roman at all," the tireman said.

"It is, though," Shakespeare said, and summarized the plot in a few sentences.

Even before he finished, Hungerford held up a hand. "Are you daft, Master Shakespeare? Never would Sir Edmund let that be seen. No more would the dons. Our lives'd answer for the tenth part of't-no, for the hundredth."

"I know't," Shakespeare said. Marry, how I know't! "And yet I purpose going forward even so. What say you?"

Jack Hungerford didn't say anything for some little while. He stroked his chin, studying the poet. "You sought to sound me once before on this matter, eh?"

"I did," Shakespeare agreed.

The tireman shook his head. "No, sir. You did not. You fought shy of 't then."

"And if I did?" Shakespeare threw that back as a challenge. "You hold my life in the hollow of your hand.

Close it and I perish."

"I wonder," Hungerford murmured. "Tell me, an you will: did you discover yourself to Geoff Martin?"

Shakespeare said not a word. He hoped his face gave no answer, either. Hungerford grunted softly. "If I say you nay, will Constable Strawberry, that good and honest man, sniff after my slayer like a dog too old to take a scent after a bone that never was there?"

"I devised not poor Geoff's death, nor compassed it," Shakespeare said.

"The which is not what I asked," the tireman observed. Shakespeare only waited. Jack Hungerford grunted again. "I'm with you," he said. "I have not so much life left, and mislike living on my knees what remains."

"Praise God!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "I know not how we could have gone on without you."

"With a new tireman, belike, as we have a new prompter," Hungerford said. "Will you tell me I'm mistook?" Shakespeare wished he could and knew he couldn't. Hungerford nodded to himself. "A Roman play, is't? But tell me what you require, Master Will, and you shall have't presently."

"My thanks." My thanks if you cozen me not, if you fly not to the Spaniards soon as I turn my back.

"Which of the boys thought you to play the part wherefrom the piece takes its name?" Hungerford asked.

"Why, Tom, of course," Shakespeare answered. "No woman, I'll swear, could better a woman personate."

But the tireman shook his head. "He will not serve."

"What? 'Swounds, why not?"

"Item: his elder brother is a priest. Item: his uncle is a sergeant amongst Queen Isabella's guards." Jack Hungerford ticked off points on his fingers as he made them. "Item: his father gave the rood screen at their parish church, such adornments having been ordained once more on our being returned to Romish ways. Item: the lad himself more than once in my hearing hath said he's fain on becoming a man to follow his brother into the priesthood." He glanced over at Shakespeare. "Shall I go on?"

"By my troth, no. Would you had not gone so long!" Shakespeare made an unhappy hissing noise. "Why knew I so little of the lad his leanings?"

"Why? I'll tell you why, Master Will." Hungerford chuckled. "To you, he's but a boy playing parts writ or by you or by some other poet. You think on him more than you think on a fancy robe some player wears, ay, but not much more. Did you think on him as a boy, now. " His voice trailed away, then picked up again: "I warrant you, I'd need to instruct Master Kit in none o' this."

"Belike that's so. Indeed, I'm sure Kit hath made it a point to learn all worth knowing of the boy, from top to bottom."

"Just so. Your bent being otherwise, you-" The tireman broke off. The look he sent Shakespeare was somewhere between reproachful and horrified. "You said that of a purpose."

"I?" Shakespeare looked as innocent as he could. His own worries helped keep glee from his face as he went on, "If the part be for another, as meseems it needs must, what of him? How keep we him in ignorance of this our design?"

"Haply his voice will break, or his beard sprout. He's rising fifteen," Hungerford said. "Some troubles themselves resolve."

"Haply." Shakespeare made the word into a curse. " a€?Haply' suffices not. You spoke of Geoff Martin.

Are you fain to have his fate befall a boy, for no cause but that he's of Romish faith? He will die the death, I tell you, unless he be eased from this company ere we give our Boudicca." If ever we give't, he thought unhappily.

The tireman frowned, too. "Sits the wind in that corner?"

"Nowhere else," Shakespeare answered. "What's a mere boy, to those who'd dice for a kingdom?"

"An they think thus, should they win it?" Hungerford asked.

"Are their foes better?" Shakespeare returned. "Saw you the auto de fe this past autumn?"

"Nay, I saw't not, for which I give thanks to God. But I've seen others, and I take your point." Jack Hungerford bared his teeth in what was anything but a smile. "Would someone's hands were clean."

"Pilate's were. He washed 'em," Shakespeare said. Hungerford showed his teeth again. With a sigh, Shakespeare continued, "Would they'd tasked another with the deed, but, sith 'tis mine, how can I do't save with the best that's in me?"

Hungerford eyed him. "They might have chose worse. In many several ways, they might have."

"You do me o'ermuch honor," Shakespeare said. The tireman shook his head. Shakespeare refused to let himself be distracted: "What of Tom? We must separate him from ourselves."

"If he is to be driven hence, Dick Burbage is the man to do't," the tireman said.

"I'll speak to him," Shakespeare said at once. The more someone, anyone, else did, the less he would have to do himself, and the less guilty he would feel. He looked down at his hands. They already had Geoffrey Martin's blood on them. He didn't want Tom's there, too. He didn't even want the burden of pushing Tom from Lord Westmorland's Men. He already carried too many burdens.

Only when he went looking for Burbage did he stop and think about the burdens the other player carried.

Tom was without a doubt the best boy actor the company had. Once he was gone, which of the others would take his roles? Which of the others could take his roles? How much damage would his leaving cause to performances? On the other hand, how much damage would his staying cause to him?

Burbage listened with more patience than Shakespeare would have expected-with more patience, in fact, than the poet thought he could have mustered himself. At last, he let out a long sigh. "What of the company will be left once you have your way with it?" he asked somberly.

"Would you liefer see Tom dead?" Shakespeare asked.

"I'd liefer see him playing," Burbage said.

"Tell me he is not of the Romish persuasion, and have your wish."

With another sigh, Burbage shook his head. "I cannot, for he is." He set his meaty hand on Shakespeare's shoulder. "But hear me, Will. Hear me well."

"I am your servant," Shakespeare said.

"Buzz, buzz!" Burbage said scornfully. "Go to, Will. I dance to your piping now, and well we both know't."

"Would it were my piping, my friend, for my feet too tread its measures."

"The which brings me back to what I'd tell you. Mark my words, now; mark 'em well. The purpose you undertake is dangerous, the friends you have uncertain, the time itself unsorted, and your whole plot too light, for the counterpoise of so great an opposition."

"Say you so?" Shakespeare asked. "Say you so?"

"Marry, I do."

Shakespeare wished he could fly into a great temper. I say unto you, you are a shallow cowardly hind, and you lie, he wanted to shout. By the Lord our plot is as good a plot as ever was laid, our friends true and constant! A good plot, good friends, and full of expectation! A good plot, very good friends! What a frosty-spirited rogue are you!

He wanted to say all that, and more besides. He wanted to, but could not. "What of't?" he said, and did not try to hide his own bitterness. "We go forward e'en so-forward, or to the Spaniards. There's your choice, and none other."

Burbage's eyes had the look of a fox's as the hounds closed in. "Damn you, Will."

"Anon," Shakespeare said, understanding Burbage's hunted expression all too well-he'd felt hunted himself for months. "But, for now, you'll see to Tom?"

"I'll do't," Burbage said. Forward, Shakespeare thought

.

"Now here is an interesting bit of business." Captain Baltasar Guzman held up a sheet of paper.

Lope de Vega hated it when his superior did that. It was always for effect; GuzmA?n never let him actually read the papers he displayed. And Lope was in a testy mood anyhow, for his visit to Sir Edmund Tilney had yielded exactly nothing useful about Geoffrey Martin and whoever had slain him. With such patience as he could muster, de Vega said, "Please tell me more, sir."

"Well, Senior Lieutenant, you will know better than I how the pretty boy actors in these English theatrical companies draw sodomites as a bowl of honey draws flies," GuzmA?n said.

"Oh, yes, sir," Lope agreed. "It is a scandal, a shame, and a disgrace."

Captain Guzman waved the paper. "We now have leave to go after one of these wicked fellows, and an important one, too."

"Ah?" de Vega said. "Who?" If it turned out to be Christopher Marlowe, he would go after the English poet with a heavy heart. Marlowe didn't hide that he loved boys. Far from hiding it, in fact, he flaunted it.

He was so blatant about his leanings, Lope sometimes wondered if part of him wanted to be caught and punished. Whatever that part wanted, the rest of him would not care to be humiliated and then executed.

But GuzmA?n said, "A certain Anthony Bacon. Do you know the name?"

" Madre de Dios, I should hope so!" Lope exclaimed. "The older brother of Francis, the nephew of Lord Burghley. How did you learn that such a man favored this dreadful vice?" How is it that you can think of arresting such an important man, with such prominent connections, for sodomy? was what he really meant. The rich and the powerful often got away with what would ruin someone ordinary.

But not here?

Not here. Guzman answered, "Oh, this Bacon's habits are not in doubt. Even as long ago as 1586, when he was an English spy in France, he debauched one of his young servants. He was lucky the French court was full of perverts"-his lip curled-"or he would have suffered more than he did."

"We aren't arresting him for what happened in France while Elizabeth was still Queen of England, are we?" Lope asked. Even for a charge as heinous as sodomy, that might go too far.

But Baltasar GuzmA?n shook his head. "By no means, Senior Lieutenant. He has taken up with one of the boy actors in a company, and there can be no doubt he's stuck it in as far as it would go."

Do you know, do you have the faintest idea, what's being said of you and Enrique? Lope wondered. He shook his head. Guzman couldn't possibly. He couldn't speak with such disgusted relish about what Anthony Bacon had done if he'd done the like himself, or if he knew people thought he'd done the like. Lope had seen good acting in the Spanish theatre, and in the English, but nothing to compare to GuzmA?n's performance, if performance it were.

"A question, your Excellency?" de Vega asked. Captain GuzmA?n nodded. Lope went on, "How is it that this falls to us and not to the English Inquisition? Bacon has committed the sin of buggery, not treason against Isabella and Albert or rebellion against his Most Catholic Majesty."

"As it happens, Don Diego Flores de Valdas referred the matter to us," GuzmA?n replied. "It may yet come down to treason. Remember-not so long ago, your precious Shakespeare visited the house Anthony and Francis Bacon share. Why? We still don't know. We have no idea. But if we take Bacon and squeeze him till-"

"Squeeze him till the grease runs out of him," Lope broke in. Captain GuzmA?n looked blank. Lope explained: " Bacon, in English, means the same as tocino in Spanish."

"Does it?" Guzman's smile was forced. "Shall we stick to the business at hand? If we take Bacon and squeeze him, we may finally find out why Shakespeare was there-and from that, who knows where we might go? If it were up to me, Burghley would have lost his head with the rest of Elizabeth's chief officers."

"King Philip ordered otherwise," de Vega said. His superior grimaced, but that was an argument no one could oppose.

GuzmA?n said, "We will go seize Bacon, then. We will seize him, and we will see how he fries." He waited for Lope to laugh. Lope dutifully did, even if he'd made the joke first.

Half an hour later, the two of them rode hotspur out of London towards Westminster at the head of a troop of Spanish cavalrymen. They had passed through Ludgate and were trotting west along Fleet Street when Lope suddenly whipped his head around. "What is it?" asked Baltasar Guzman, who missed very little.

"I thought that fellow walking back towards London, the one who scrambled off the road to get out of our way, was Shakespeare," de Vega answered. "Is it worth our while to stop and find out?"

GuzmA?n considered, then shook his head. "No. Even if it was, he could have too many good reasons, reasons that have nothing to do with the Bacons' house, for being on this side of London. Walking in his own city is not evidence of anything, and neither is getting out of the way of cavalrymen."

" Muy bien," Lope said. "I would have used these arguments with you, but if you hadn't been persuaded. " He shrugged. "You are the captain."

"Yes. I am." Guzman bared his teeth in a hunter's grin. "And now I want a taste of Bacon-of tocino, eh?" Now he wouldn't leave the pun alone.

The troop of horsemen pounded up Drury Lane. Westminster seemed to Lope a different world from London: less crowded, with far bigger, far grander homes, homes that would have done credit to a Spanish nobleman. Only the abominable weather reminded him in which kingdom he dwelt.

Captain Guzman reined in. He pointed to a particularly splendid half-timbered house. "That one," he said. "Senior Lieutenant de Vega, you will interpret for us."

"I am at your service, your Excellency." Lope dismounted.

So did Guzman and the cavalrymen. A few of the latter held horses for the rest. The others drew swords and pistols and advanced on the estate behind the two officers. "I hope the heretics inside put up a fight and give us an excuse to sack the place," a trooper said hungrily. "God cover my arse with boils if you couldn't bring away a year's pay without half trying." A couple of other men growled greedy agreement.

"By God, if they give us any trouble, we will sack them," Captain GuzmA?n declared. "They're only Englishmen. They have no business standing in our way. They have no right to stand in our way." The cavalrymen nodded, staring avidly-wolfishly-at the house upon which they advanced.

Pale English faces stared out of them through the windows, whose small glass panes were held together by strips of lead. Before de Vega and GuzmA?n reached the door, it opened. A frightened-looking but well-dressed servant bowed to them. "What would ye, gentles?" he asked. "Why come ye hither with such a host at your backs?"

"We require the person of Senor-of Master-Anthony Bacon, he to be required to give answer to certain charges laid against him," Lope answered. He quickly translated for Captain Guzman.

His superior nodded approval, then turned and rapped out an order to the cavalrymen: "Surround the place. Let no one leave."

As the troopers hurried to obey, the house servant said, "Bide here a moment, my masters. I'll return presently, with one who'll tell ye more than I can." He ducked into the house, but did not presume to close the door.

"Can they hide him in there?" Lope asked.

"Not from us." Guzman spoke with great conviction. "And I'll tear the place down around their ears if I think that's what they're trying."

The servant was as good as his word, coming back almost at once. Behind him strode a man made several inches taller by a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat. The newcomer's enormous, fancy ruff and velvet doublet proclaimed him a person of consequence. So did his manner; though no bigger than Lope (apart from that hat), he contrived to look down his nose at him. When he spoke, it was in elegant Latin:

"What do you desire?"

So much for my translating, de Vega thought. "I desire to know who you are, to begin with," Captain Guzman replied, also in Latin.

"I? I am Francis Bacon," the Englishman replied. He was in his late thirties-not far from Lope's age-with a long face, handsome but for a rather tuberous nose; a pale complexion; dark beard and eyebrows, the latter formidably expressive; and the air of a man certain he was talking to his inferiors. It made de Vega want to bristle.

It put Baltasar Guzman's back up, too. "You are the younger brother of Anthony Bacon?" he snapped.

"I have that honor, yes. Who are you, and why do you wish to know?"

GuzmA?n quivered with anger. "I am an officer of his Most Catholic Majesty, Philip II of Spain, and I have come to arrest your brother, sir, for the abominable crime of sodomy. So much for your honor.

Now where is he? Speak, or be sorry for your silence."

Francis Bacon had nerve. He eyed GuzmA?n as if the captain were something noxious he'd found floating in a mud puddle. "You may be an officer of the King of Spain, but this is England. Show me your warrant, or else get hence. For the house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defense against injury and violence as for his repose."

Guzman's rapier cleared the scabbard with a wheep! Lope also drew his sword, backing his superior's play. The troopers with pistols behind them pointed their weapons at Bacon's face. "Damnation to you and damnation to your castle, sir," the dapper little noble ground out. "Here is my warrant. Obey it or die.

The choice is yours."

For a moment, Lope thought Francis Bacon would let himself be killed on the spot. But then, very visibly, the Englishman crumpled. "I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed," he said. "Ask. I will answer."

In Spanish, Captain Guzman said to Lope, "You see? Fear of death makes cowards of them all."

"Yes, your Excellency," de Vega answered in the same language. Watching Bacon's face, he added,

"Have a care, sir. I think he understands this tongue, whether he cares to speak it or not."

"Thank you. I will note it, I promise you." GuzmA?n returned to Latin as he gave his attention back to the Englishman: "So. You are the brother of the abominable sodomite, Anthony Bacon."

"I-" Francis Bacon bit his lip. "I am Anthony Bacon's brother, yes. I said so."

"Where is your brother?"

"He is not here."

The point of Guzman's rapier leaped out and caressed Bacon's throat just above his ruff, just below his beard. "That is not what I asked, Englishman. One more time: where is he?"

"I–I-I do not know. You may take my life, but before God it is the truth. I do not know. Day before yesterday, he left this house. He did not say whither he was bound. I have not seen him since."

"Tipped off?" Lope wondered aloud.

"By whom?" Captain Guzman demanded. "What Spaniard would do such a wicked, treacherous thing?"

"Perhaps another sodomite, a secret one," de Vega said.

GuzmA?n grimaced and grunted. "Yes, damn it, that could be. Or it could be that SeA±or Home-is-his-castle here is lying through his teeth. He'll be sorry if he is, but it could be. We'll find out, by God." He turned and called over his shoulder to the cavalrymen at his back: "Now we take the place apart." The troopers whooped with glee.

One of the first things they found, in the front hall, was, not Anthony Bacon himself, but a painting of him.

He was even paler than his brother, with a longer, wispier, more pointed beard and with a long, thin, straight nose rather than a lumpy one. But for their noses, the resemblance between the two of them was striking.

Pointing to the portrait, Lope told the cavalrymen, "Here is the wretch we seek. Whoever finds him will have a reward." He jingled coins in his belt pouch. The troopers grinned and nudged one another. With a grin of his own, de Vega said, "Go on, my hounds. Hunt down this rabbit for us."

The Spaniards went through the Bacons' home with a methodical ferocity that said they would have done well as robbers-and that might have said some of them had more than a little practice at the trade. They examined every space that might possibly have held a man, from the cellars to the kitchens to the attic.

They knocked holes in several walls: some Protestants' houses had "preacher holes" concealed with marvelous cunning. A couple of troopers went out onto the roof; Lope listened to their boots clumping above his head.

They did not find Anthony Bacon.

His brother Francis asked, "How much of my own will they leave me?" By the way the troopers' pouches got fatter and fatter as time went by, the question seemed reasonable.

But Captain Guzman was not inclined to listen to reason. His hand dropped to the hilt of his rapier once more. "You will cease your whining," he said in a soft, deadly voice. "Otherwise, I shall start inquiring amongst the younger servants here about your habits."

If he had any evidence that Francis Bacon liked boys, too, he hadn't mentioned it to Lope. But if that was a shot in the dark, it proved an inspired one. The younger Bacon sucked in a horrified breath and went even whiter than the portrait of his brother.

With more clumping, the cavalrymen on the roof came down. The ones who'd gone through the house returned to the front hall. "No luck, your Excellencies," their sergeant said. "Not a slice of this Bacon did we find." Now he was making de Vega's joke.

Lope did his best to look on the bright side. "We'll run him down."

Baltasar Guzman nodded. "We'll run him down, or we'll run him out of the kingdom. Let him play the bugger in France or Denmark. They deserve him. Let's go." He led Lope and the troop of cavalrymen out of the house. Francis Bacon stared after them, but said not another word.

As Lope mounted his horse and started riding back to London, he thought, Nobody would dare call GuzmA?n a maricA?n now, not after the way he's hunted Anthony Bacon. The troop had almost got back to the barracks before something else along those lines occurred to him. No one would dare call Captain Guzman a marican now, but does that really prove he isn't one? He worried at that the rest of the day, but found no answer to it.

The expression Will Kemp aimed at Shakespeare lay halfway between a leer and a glower.

"Well, Master Poet, what have you done with Tom?"

"Naught," Shakespeare answered, blinking. "Is he not here?" He looked around the Theatre. He'd just got there, a little later than he might have. He saw no sign of the company's best boy actor.

Kemp went on leering. "An you've done naught, what wish you you'd done with him?"

"Naught!" Shakespeare said again, this time in some alarm. Tom was a comely-more than a comely-youth, and such liaisons happened often enough in the tight, altogether masculine world of the theatre. But what might be a jest at another time could turn deadly now. If the Spaniards or the English Inquisition started wondering if he were a sodomite, they might also start wondering if he were a traitor.

What was buggery, after all, but treason against the King of Heaven?

But from the tiring room came a sharp command: "Go to, Kemp! Give over."

Had Richard Burbage spoke to the clown like that, a fight would have blown up on the spot. Not even Kemp, though, failed to respect Jack Hungerford. He asked the tireman, "Know you somewhat o' this matter, then?"

"Ay, somewhat, and more than somewhat, the which is somewhat more than you," Hungerford answered.

"What's toward, then, Master Hungerford?" Shakespeare asked. Maybe, if everyone stuck to facts, no one would throw any more insults around. And maybe the horse will learn to sing, Shakespeare thought-one more bit of Grecian not quite folly he had from Christopher Marlowe.

"My knowledge is not certain, mind," the tireman said. Shakespeare braced himself to squelch Will Kemp before the clown could offer sardonic agreement there, but Kemp, for a wonder, simply waited for Hungerford to go on. And go on he did: "Some will know and some will have guessed Tom hath been. an object of desire for those whose affections stand in that quarter."

That proved too much for Kemp to resist. "When their affections stand," he said, "they want to stick 'em up his-"

He didn't finish. Somebody-Shakespeare didn't see who-shied a pebble or a clod of dirt at him. He let out an irate squawk. Before he could do anything more, Shakespeare broke in to say, "Carry on, Master Hungerford, I pray you."

"Gramercy. So I shall. As I said, he's a Ganymede fit to tempt any who'd fain be Jove. But even as Jove cast down Saturn, so Tom's Jove himself's been o'erthrown. Anthony Bacon's fled London, a short jump ahead of the dons."

"Bacon?" Shakespeare said. "Lord Burghley's nephew?" He'd met Burghley in the house that belonged to Anthony Bacon and his younger brother.

Hungerford nodded. "The same, methinks."

"He is fled?"

The tireman nodded again. "Not caught yet, by all accounts. He being a man of parts, haply he may cross to the Continent still free."

"To the Continent? No, sir. No!" Kemp said. "Were he continent, he'd need not flee, now would he?

And forsooth! a man of parts. I knew not till this moment sausage was a Bacon's troublous part."

Shakespeare groaned. Hungerford looked pained. Kemp preened. Shakespeare asked, "Tom was Bacon's ingle, then? I own I have seen Bacon here, though never to my certain knowledge overtopping the bounds of decency."

" a€?To my certain knowledge,' " Kemp echoed in a mocking whine. "Why think you he came hither?

For the plays?" He laughed that idea to scorn, adding, "Quotha, his brother could write the like, did he please to do't."

"A rasher Bacon never spake," Shakespeare said indignantly. Will Kemp opened his mouth for another gibe of his own, then did a better double take than most he used on stage, sending Shakespeare a reproachful stare. The poet looked back blandly.

Missing the byplay, Jack Hungerford said, "I fear me Tom'll not return to the boards. He's smirched, and would smirch us did we use him henceforward."

That had several possibilities. Kemp rose to none of them. Shakespeare eyed him in some surprise. The wealth of his wit outdone by the wealth of his choices? the poet wondered. No other explanation made sense.

Then, suddenly, Shakespeare raised a hand to his mouth to smother a laugh. What did Paul say in his epistle to the Romans? All things work together for good to them that love God, that was the verse.

Now he couldn't have to worry about either asking Catholic Tom to play Boudicca or finding some good reason for not asking him. He hadn't just found a good reason-the Spaniards themselves had handed him one.

But the more he thought about it, the less inclined he was to laugh. Maybe the way that verse from Paul's epistle had worked out here was a sign God truly lay on his side, Lord Burghley's side, Elizabeth's side, England's side. Shakespeare hoped so with all his heart. Their side needed every scrap of help it could get.

Hungerford went on with his own train of thought: "He being smirched, I wonder who'll play his parts henceforward."

Will Kemp had avoided temptation once. Twice, no. He said, "Why, man, had this Bacon not played with his parts, we'd worry on other things." The tireman coughed. Shakespeare would have been more annoyed at the clown had the identical thought not popped into his mind the instant before Kemp said it.

The day's play was another offering of Romeo and Juliet; they keenly felt Tom's absence, and the groundlings let them hear about it. Caleb, who played Juliet in his place, made a hash of his lines several times and wouldn't have measured up to Tom even if he hadn't.

Richard Burbage was not pleased. He bearded Shakespeare in the tiring room after the performance. "I am told this was the Spaniards' doing," he said heavily.

"I am told the same," Shakespeare answered.

Burbage glowered at him. "Were I not so told, I'd blame you. Since this madness of yours commenced, the company is stirred, as with a spoon-a long spoon."

"One fit to sup with devils?" Shakespeare asked, and Burbage gave him a cold nod. That hurt. To try to hide how much it hurt, Shakespeare busied himself with the lacings of his doublet. When he thought he could speak without showing what he felt, he said, "This came not from me, hath naught to do with me, and I am called a devil for't? How would you use me were I guilty of somewhat, having spent all your wrath upon mine innocence?"

"You came to me. You said, Tom needs must avoid, else. thus and so advanceth not. What said I? I said, I'd liefer see him playing."

"You said also you'd tend to it regardless."

Burbage ignored that. "Well, he's gone now." His gesture suggested crumpling a scrap of waste paper and throwing it away. Then he drew himself up. "I lead this company. D'you deny it?"

"Not I, nor would I never," Shakespeare said at once.

He might as well have kept silent. Burbage went on as if he had, repeating, "I lead this company. The land we stand on, the house we play in-we Burbages lease the one and own the other. D'you deny that?"

"How could I?" Shakespeare asked reasonably. "All true, every word of 't."

"All right, then. All right." Burbage's angry exhalation might have been the snort of a bull just before it lowered its head and charged. "Here's what I'd ask of you: if I in any way obstruct you, who takes my place, and what befalls me?"

Shakespeare wished he could pretend he didn't understand what his fellow player was talking about. He couldn't, not without making himself into a liar. Miserably, he said, "I know not."

"God damn you, then, Will!" Burbage's thunderous explosion made heads turn his way and Shakespeare's, all over the tiring room. Shakespeare wished he could sink through the floor as he'd sunk down through the trap door while playing the ghost in Prince of Denmark.

When the buzz of conversation picked up again and let him speak without having everyone in the crowded room hear what he said, he answered, "There is in this something you see not."

Burbage folded his arms across his broad chest. "That being?" By his tone, he believed he saw everything, and all too clearly.

But Shakespeare said, "An I prove a thing obstructive, I too am swept away for another, I know not whom. You reckon me agent, Dick. Would I were. Would I might persuade myself I were, for a man's always fain to think himself free. Agent I am none, though. I am but tool, tool to be cast aside quick as any other useless thing of wood or iron."

He waited, watching Burbage. The player was a man who delighted in being watched. He probably made up his mind well before he deigned to let Shakespeare know he'd made up his mind. He played deciding as if the Theatre were full, and every eye on him alone. "Mayhap," he said at last-a king granting mercy to a subject who probably did not deserve it. Shakespeare felt he ought to applaud.

Instead, he said, "I'm for Bishopsgate. I've endless work to spend on King Philip."

"And on. " Burbage was vain and bad-tempered, but not a fool. He would not name, or even come close to naming, Boudicca-not here, not where so many ears might hear.

"Yes." Shakespeare let it go at that. He set his hat on his head. Having his own share of a player's vanity, he tugged it down low on his forehead to hide his receding hairline. He'd squandered a few shillings on nostrums and elixirs purported to make hair grow back. One smelled like tar, another like roses, yet another like cat piss. None did any good; over the past year or so, he'd stopped wasting his money.

The Lenten threepenny supper at his ordinary was a stockfish porridge. Stockfish took hours of soaking to soften and to purge itself of the salt that preserved it. Even then, it was vile. It was also cheap, and doubtless helped pad the place's profit.

Because the ordinary was crowded, Shakespeare worked on King Philip there. The more of the other play he wrote, the more he worried about strangers' eyes seeing it. When he went back to his lodging house, he intended to sit by the fire and see if he could change horses. Most of the other people who dwelt with the Widow Kendall would lie abed by then.

His landlady herself remained awake when he came in. "Give you good even," she said.

"And you, my lady." Shakespeare swept off his hat and gave her a bow Lieutenant de Vega might have admired. Jane Kendall smiled and simpered; she enjoyed being made much of.

But her smile disappeared when Shakespeare put a fresh chunk of wood on the fire. He'd known it would, and had hoped to sweeten her beforehand. No such luck. "Master Will!" she said, her voice sharp with annoyance. "With the winter so hard, have you any notion how dear wood's got?"

"In sooth, my lady, you'd have set it there yourself ere long," Shakespeare said, as soothingly as he could.

"You'd be wood to spare wood, would you not?" He smiled, both to sweeten her further and because his wordplay pleased him.

It failed to please her, for she failed to notice it. "Daft, he calls me," she said to no one in particular-perhaps she was letting God know of his sins. "Bought he the wood he spares not? Marry, he did not. Cared he what it cost? Marry, not that, either. But called he me wood? Marry, he did. He'll drive me to frenzy thus, to frenzy and to bed." On that anticlimactic note, she left the parlor.

Shakespeare pushed a table and a stool up close to the fire. He took out the latest sheet of paper for Boudicca-no others-and set to work. A couple of minutes later, he yawned. Over the years, he'd got used to writing plays in odd moments snatched from other work and sleep.

Something brushed against his ankle. Before he could start, the cat said, "Meow."

"Good den, Mommet." Shakespeare scratched the gray tabby behind the ears and stroked its back.

Mommet purred ecstatically. When Shakespeare stopped stroking the cat so he could write, it sat up on its hind legs and tapped his shin with a front paw, as ifto say, Why don't you go on?

He glanced down at it, a trifle uneasily. Would a common cat sit so? he wondered. Or hath this beast more wit than a common cat? Still purring, the animal twisted into an improbable pose and began licking its private parts and anus. Shakespeare laughed. Would a familiar do anything so undignified?

Cicely Sellis appeared in the doorway. "God give you good even, Master Shakespeare," she said-she certainly had no trouble pronouncing the name of the Lord, as witches were said to do. "Have you seen-? Ah, there he is. Mommet!"

The cat went on licking itself as Shakespeare answered, "And you, Mistress Sellis?"

She snapped her fingers and cooed. Mommet kept ignoring her. With a small, rueful shrug, she smiled at Shakespeare. "He does as he would, not as I would."

"Care killed a cat, or so they say," the poet replied.

Laughing, the cunning woman said, "If he die of care, he'll live forever. But how is it with you? Did he disturb you from your work? Do I?"

"No, and no," Shakespeare said, the first no truthful, the second polite. "I am well enough. How is't with yourself?"

"Well enough, as you say," Cicely Sellis answered. "Truly, I have been pleased to make your acquaintance, for your name I hear on everyone's lips."

"You ken my creditors, then?" Shakespeare said. "Better they should come to you for their fortunes than to me."

"A thing I had not heard was that you were in debt." She paused, then sent him a severe look. "Oh. You quibble on a€?fortune.' "

"Had I one, my lady, I should not quibble on't."

She snorted. That made the cat look up from grooming itself. She snapped her fingers again. The cat rose to its feet, stretched, purred-and rubbed up against Shakespeare once more. "Vile, fickle beast!" Cicely Sellis said in mock fury.

Shakespeare reached down and stroked the cat. It began to purr even louder. "Ay, there's treason in

'em, in their very blood," he said.

"How, then, differ they from men?" she asked.

That put him back on uncomfortable ground-all the more so, considering what he was writing. He stopped petting the gray tabby. It looked up at him and meowed. When he didn't start again, it walked over to its mistress. "And now you think I'll make much of you, eh?" she said as she picked it up. It purred. She laughed. "Belike you're right." She glanced over to Shakespeare. "Shall I bid you good night?"

"By no means," he answered, polite once more: polite and curious. "You'll think me vain, Mistress Sellis, but from whose lips hear you of me?"

Vanity had something to do with the question, but only so much; he wasn't Richard Burbage. But he might learn something useful, something that would help keep him alive. The more he knew, the better his chances. He was sure of that. He was also sure-unpleasantly sure-they weren't very good no matter how much he knew.

"From whose lips?" Cicely Sellis pursed her own before answering, "I'll not tell you that, not straight out.

Many who come to me would liefer not be known to resort to a cunning woman. There are those who'd call me witch."

"I believe it," Shakespeare said. What's in a name? he wondered. The English Inquisition could, no doubt, give him a detailed answer.

"Well you might," she said. "But believe also no day goes by when I hear not some phrase of yours, repeated by one who likes the sound, likes the sense, and knows not, nor cares, whence it cometh.

a€?Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' or-"

Shakespeare laughed. "Your pardon, I pray you, but that is not mine, and Kit Marlowe would wax wroth did I claim it."

"Oh." She laughed, too. "It's I who must cry pardon, for speaking of your words and speaking forth another's. What am I then but a curst unfaithful jade, like unto mine own cat? I speak sooth even so."

"You do me too much honor," Shakespeare said.

"I do you honor, certes, but too much? Give me leave to doubt it. Why, I should not be surprised to hear the dons admiring your plays."

He looked down at what he'd just written. Queen Boudicca, who had been flogged by the Roman occupiers of Britannia, and whose daughters had been violated, was urging the Iceni to revolt, saying,

"But mercy and love are sins in Rome and hell.

If Rome be earthly, why should any knee

With bending adoration worship her?

She's vicious; and, your partial selves confess,

Aspires to the height of all impiety;

Therefore 'tis fitter I should reverence

The thatched houses where the Britons dwell

In careless mirth; where the blest household gods

See nought but chaste and simple purity.

'Tis not high power that makes a place divine,

Nor that men from gods derive their line;

But sacred thoughts, in holy bosoms stor'd,

Make people noble, and the place ador'd."

What would the dons say if they heard those lines? What will the dons say when they hear those lines? He laughed. He couldn't help himself. Give me leave to doubt they will admire them.

Cicely Sellis misunderstood the reason for his mirth, if mirth it was. She sounded angry as she said, "If you credit yourself not, who will credit you in your despite?"

"Not the dons, methinks," he answered.

"But have I not seen 'em 'mongst the groundlings?" she returned. "And have I not seen you yourself in converse earnest with 'em? Come they to the Theatre for that they may dispraise you?"

Damn you, Lieutenant de Vega, Shakespeare thought, not for the first time. Not only did the man threaten to discover his treason whenever he appeared, but now he'd just cost him an argument Shakespeare's fury at the Spaniard was all the greater for being so completely irrational.

When he did not respond, the cunning woman smiled a smile that told him she knew she'd won. She said,

"When the dons and their women come to see me, shall I ask 'em how they think on you?"

"The dons. come to see you, Mistress Sellis?" Shakespeare said slowly.

"In good sooth, they do," she answered. "Why should they not? Be they not men like other men? Have they not fears like other men? Sicknesses like other men? Fear not their doxies they are with child, or poxed, or both at once? Ay, they see me. Some o' the dons'd liefer go to the swarthy wandering Egyptians, whom in their own land they have also, but they see me."

"Very well. I believe't. An it please you, though, I would not have my name in your mouth, no, nor in the Spaniards' ears neither."

Shakespeare thought he spoke quietly, calmly. But Mommet's fur puffed up along his back. The cat's eyes, reflecting the firelight, flared like torches as it hissed and spat. By the way it stood between Shakespeare and its mistress, it might have been a watchdog defending its home.

"Easy, my poppet, my chick, easy." Cicely Sellis bent and stroked the cat. Little by little, its fur settled.

Once it began to purr once more, she looked up at Shakespeare. "Fear not. It shall be as you desire."

"For which I thank you."

"I'll leave you to't, then," she said, scooping Mommet up into her arms. "Good night and good fortune."

She spoke as if she could bestow the latter. Shakespeare wished someone could. He would gladly take it wherever it came from.