Phelippes went on, 'Is there anything he desires me to look for in especial?'
'Yes-he desires your opinion of the trustiness of the two poets, Marlowe and Shakespeare,' de Vega said.
'I had liefer put my hand in the wolf his jaws than put my trust in Christopher Marlowe,' Phelippes said at once. 'He companies with all manner of cozeners and knaves, and revels in the doing of't. I fear me he'll come to a bad end, and never know why. Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs die in earnest.'
Lope smiled. 'You are a man of learning, I see, to bring Plutarch forth at need. Now, what of Shakespeare?'
Feature for feature, Thomas Phelippes' face was in no way remarkable. Somehow, though, he managed a sneer any aristocrat might have envied. 'Shakespeare? He knows no more than a puling babe of great affairs, and cares no more, either. All that matters to him is his company of players, and the plays he writes for 'em.'
'This was also my thought.' Lope did his best not to show his relief. 'And I'd not have mentioned his name, save only that Captain GuzmA?n noted a certain Edward Kelley had called out to him on his way to the Inquisition's cleansing fire.'
'Ah, Kelley. There was rubbish that wanted burning, in sooth,' Phelippes said with another fine sneer.
'But he was no intimate of Shakespeare's: that I know for a fact. Only a wretch seeking succor with none to be had.' The Englishman proved to own a nasty chuckle, too. 'I misdoubt he affrighted Master Will like to stop his heart.'
'I should say so!' De Vega wouldn't have wanted an inquisitor noting
'Your servant, sir.' Phelippes tapped the report with a fingernail, much as GuzmA?n had done. 'And I'll put this in brief for Don Diego. You know the tale, I'm sure: the greater the man, the less time hath he wherein to read.'
'Not always,' Lope said. 'There is the King.'
'What? Albert? I would not disagree with a new acquaintance, senor, but-'
'No, not Albert,' de Vega said impatiently. 'Philip. The King, God preserve him.' He crossed himself.
So did Phelippes. The way he did it told Lope he hadn't been doing it all his life. 'Amen,' he said. 'But what hear you of his health? The last news I had was not good.'
'Nor mine,' Lope admitted. 'He hath now his threescore and ten. He is in God's hands.' He made the sign of the cross again.
'He always was, and so are we all.' Phelippes signed himself again, too, no more smoothly than he had before.
Lope nodded approval. He hadn't thought the Englishman so pious. 'I'm for London, then,' he said. 'I hope to see you again, sir, and my thanks once more for setting my mind at rest.'
'My pleasure, sir.' Even before Lope was out the door, Phelippes returned to the ciphered message on which he'd been working.
When rehearsals went well, they were a joy. Shakespeare took more pleasure in few things than in watching what had been only pictures and words in his mind take shape on the stage before his eyes. When things went not so well, as they did this morning. He clapped a hand to his forehead. '
'Sdeath!' he shouted. 'Mechanical salt-butter rogues! Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops! You are not worth another word, else I'd call you knaves.'
Richard Burbage looked down his long nose at Shakespeare. He was the only player in Lord Westmorland's Men tall enough to do it. 'Now see here, Will, you've poor cause to blame us when you were the worst of the lot,' he boomed, turning his big, sonorous voice on Shakespeare alone instead of an audience.
He was right, too, as Shakespeare knew only too well. The poet gave the best defense he could: 'My part's but a small one-'
'Ha!' Will Kemp broke in. 'I never thought to hear a man admit as much.'
'Devils take you!' Shakespeare scowled at the clown. 'Not recalling your own lines, you aim to step on mine.' He gathered himself. 'If we play as we rehearsed, they'll pelt us with cabbages and turnips enough to make soup for a year.'
'We'll be better, come the afternoon. We always are.' Burbage had a wealthy man's confidence; the Theatre and the ground on which it stood belonged to his family. Though several years younger than Shakespeare, he had a prosperous man's double chin-partly concealed by his pointed beard-and the beginnings of an imposing belly.
'Not always,' Shakespeare said, remembering calamities he wished he could forget.
'Often enough,' Burbage said placidly. 'There's no better company than ours, and all London knows it.'
He eyes, deep-set under thick eyebrows, flashed. 'But you, Will. You're the steadiest trouper we have, and you always know your lines.' He chuckled. 'And so you ought, you having writ so many of 'em. But today? Never have I seen you so unapt, as if the very words were strange. Out on it! What hobgoblins prey on your mind?'
Shakespeare looked around the Theatre. Along with the company, the tireman and his assistants, the prompter, and the stagehands, a couple of dozen friends and wives and lovers milled about where the groundlings would throng in a few hours. Musicians peered down from their place a story above the tiring room. He had to talk to Burbage, but not before so many people. All he could do now was sigh and say,
'When troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.'
Burbage tossed his head like a horse troubled by flies. 'Pretty. It tells naught, of course, but pretty nonetheless.'
'Give over, if you please,' Shakespeare said wearily. 'I'm not bound to unburden myself before any but God, and you are not He.'
Kemp's eyes widened in well-mimed astonishment. 'He's not? Don't tell him that, for I warrant he did not know't.'
A flush mounted to Burbage's cheeks and broad, high forehead. 'Blaspheming toad.'
'Your servant, sir.' Kemp gave him a courtier's bow. Burbage snorted.
So did Shakespeare. The clown would mock anyone, and refused to let any insults stick to him.
Shakespeare said, 'Shall we try once more the scene that vexed us in especial, that in which Romeo comes between Mercutio and Tybalt fighting? We've given this tragedy often enough ere now, these past several years. We should do't better than we showed.'
'Too many lines from too many plays, all spinning round in our heads,' Kemp said. ' 'Tis a wonder we can speak a word some scribbling wretch did not pen for us.'
Shakespeare had rarely felt more wretched. As Mercutio, he crossed swords with Burbage's Tybalt. The other player had fought against the invading Spaniards, and actually used a blade; Shakespeare's swordplay belonged only to the stage. And Burbage fenced now as if out for blood; when the time came for him to run Mercutio through under Romeo's arm, he almost really did it.
'By God,' Shakespeare said, arising after he'd crumpled, 'my death scene there came near to being my death scene in sooth.'
Burbage grinned a predatory grin. 'Nothing less than you deserve, for havering at us before. Satisfies you now this scene?'
'It will serve,' Shakespeare said. 'Still, I have somewhat to say to you on the subject of your swordplay.'
The other player chose to misunderstand him. Setting a hand on the hilt of his rapier, he said, 'I am at your service.'
If they fought with swords in earnest, Shakespeare knew he was a dead man. What had Marlowe said about fanning quarrels? Surely not Burbage, Shakespeare thought, not when we've worked together so long. That such a thing could even occur to him was the measure of how many new worries he carried. I'll be like Kit soon, seeing danger in every face.
'Let it go, Dick,' Kemp said. 'An you spit him like a chine of beef, what are you then? Why, naught but a ghost-a pretty ghost, I'll not deny, but nonetheless a ghost-left suddenly dumb for having slain the one who gave you words to speak.'
'There are other scribblers,' Burbage rumbled ominously. But then he must have decided he'd gone too far, for he added, 'We, being the best of companies, do deserve that which we have: to wit, the best of poets.' He
