'Ah.' Shakespeare nodded. No, Phelippes couldn't very well refuse that summons to keep standing over a couple of players. 'Would Master Cecil see me as well?'
Skeres shook his head. 'In due course, belike, but not yet.'
That stung. Shakespeare had just reminded himself that he and Burbage didn't stand so high in the scheme of things. Having scornful Nick Skeres remind him of the same thing-having Robert Cecil remind him of the same thing through Skeres-made him wish this Westminster lawn would cover him up.
Phelippes said, 'Mind you, Master Shakespeare, this signifies no want of respect for you, or for all you have wrought for England. But I stand-stood, I had better say-high in the Spaniards' councils; haply what I know o' their secrets will aid in our casting 'em forth.'
'You do soothe me, sir, and in most gracious wise,' Shakespeare said.
'Tom speaks sooth,' Skeres said. 'My principal's men have been abroad seeking him since yesterday, but in the garboil we found him not. He saith we (I myself, as't chanced) should not have found him, neither-should not have found him living, rather-were it not for you twain. In the kingdom's name, gramercy.' By his tone, by his manner, he had every right to speak for England. Shakespeare found that as absurd as anything that had happened these past two mad days.
From Phelippes' tone, he didn't. 'Lead. Guide. I follow as best I may,' he told Skeres. 'By your mustard doublet shall I know you-that I make out plain, spectacles or no.' The two of them hurried off together.
Burbage heaved himself to his feet. 'I'm away, too, Will. I must learn if Winifred be hale and safe, and the children.' His face clouded at the last word. He and his wife had lost two sons in the past three years, and of their surviving son and daughter the girl was sickly.
'I'm with you as far as your house, an you'd have my company,' Shakespeare said. Burbage nodded and gave him a hand to help him up. Brushing dry grass from himself, the poet went on, 'Then to my lodging, that the Widow Kendall may know I live yet, and shall pay her rent-and that I may sleep in mine own bed.'
'Onward, then,' Burbage said. As they started east from Westminster, the player shook his head and laughed ruefully. 'I'd give much to know how this our uprising fares beyond London. Isabella and Albert be fled, ay-but whither? Will they return anon, an army at their backs? Or do they purpose taking ship for Holland or Spain, there to preserve themselves?'
'I know not. Would I did,' Shakespeare answered. 'The inaudible and noiseless foot of time shall tell the tale.'
Bodies lay here and there along the Strand and Fleet Street. Carrion birds rose from them in skrawking clouds as Shakespeare and Burbage walked past, then settled again to renew their feast. Most of the bodies were already naked, garments stolen by human scavengers there ahead of the birds.
'Holla, what scene is this?' Burbage said, pointing at the long column of men emerging from Ludgate and trudging towards him and Shakespeare.
Shakespeare shaded his eyes to peer through the cloud of dust the men kicked up. 'Why, Spanish prisoners, an I mistake me not,' he said a moment later. 'So many swarthy souls cannot be of English race.'
'You have the right of it,' Burbage agreed when the head of the column came a little closer. 'Those guardsmen-see you? — they're surely Englishmen.'
'E'en so,' Shakespeare said. One of the guards at the head of the column, a huge fellow with butter-yellow hair and beard who bore an old-fashioned cut-and-thrust broadsword-no fancy rapier for him! — waved cheerfully at the two men from the Theatre. Shakespeare and Burbage returned the salute.
They left the road and stood on the verge as the prisoners shambled past.
Shakespeare stared at the stream of sad, dark faces. 'Seek you de Vega?' Burbage asked.
'I do,' the poet answered. 'I'd fain know what befell him. Why came he not to the Theatre yesterday?'
'Whatever the reason, I'll shed no tears o'er him,' Burbage said. 'And in especial I'll shed no tears o'er the said absence, nor o'er its long continuance. I trembled lest he burst in halfway through Act Three at the head of a company of dons, crying, a€?Give over! All's up!' '
'I had me the selfsame thought.' Shakespeare knew he would never remember that first production of
He kept peering at the Spaniards. 'Here, though, I see him not. nor any other.'
'Eh?' Burbage said. 'What's that?' Shakespeare didn't answer. He'd been eyeing not only the captives but also their guards, wondering if he'd find Ingram Frizer among the latter. Having already encountered Nick Skeres, he found the prospect of meeting another of Robert Cecil's men not at all unlikely. And the chances for robbery-and perhaps for murder as well-shepherding a column of prisoners offered seemed right up Frizer's alley. But Shakespeare saw no more of him than of Lope de Vega.
He and Burbage came into London through Ludgate. Not far inside the gate, on the north side of Bowyer Row, stood a church dedicated to St. Martin. Two priests, still in their cassocks, had been hanged from the branches of a chestnut beside the church. I SERVED ROME, said a placard tied to one of them. The placard tied to the other lewdly suggested just how he'd served the Pope.
Burbage stared, unmoved, at the dangling bodies. 'May all the inquisitors suffer the same fate,' he said in a voice like iron.
'May it be so indeed.' Shakespeare knew he sounded fiercely eager. Fostered by the dons, the English Inquisition had had ten years to force the faith of Rome down its countrymen's throats. 'They played the tyrant over us; let all their misdeeds come down on their own heads to haunt 'em.'
He and Burbage walked on for a few paces. Then the player said, 'If Elizabeth triumph here-which God grant-how many Papist priests'll be left alive in a year's time?'
'But a few, and those all desperate lest the hounds take them,' Shakespeare said. Burbage nodded, plainly liking the prospect. Shakespeare sighed. Part of him would miss the grandeur of Catholic ritual.
He knew better than to say any such thing: he had not the stuff of martyrs in him. He'd likewise meekly accepted the Romish rite after Isabella and Albert drove Elizabeth from her throne.
Old men here, men of Lord Burghley's age, would have seen their kingdom's faith change-Shakespeare had to pause to count on his fingers-five different times, from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant to Catholic and now back to Protestant again. How could a man have any real faith left after so many swings? Better not to say that, either. Better not even to think it.
More dead priests either swung or lay in front of every church Shakespeare and Burbage passed. After a while, the corpses lost their power to shock. Custom hath made it in me a property of easiness: Shakespeare's own words sounded inside his head. Then he and Burbage came to St. Paul's. What the rampaging English had done to the priests there. Any man who could have stayed easy after seeing that had to be dead of soul.
'Oh, sweet Jesu,' Burbage mumbled. He turned his head away. Shakespeare did the same. Too late, too late. He would spend years trying to forget, and knew he would spend them in vain.
Burbage dwelt in Cordwainer Street Ward, east of the great church. His house stood not far from the Red Lion, a wooden beast that marked a courtyard whose shops sold broadcloths and other draperies.
As he and Shakespeare came up to the front door, it flew open. His wife dashed out and threw herself into his arms.
'God be praised, thou'rt hale!' Winifred Burbage cried, politely adding, 'and you as well, Master Shakespeare.' She gave her attention back to her husband. 'This past day a thousand deaths I've died, knowing what thou'dst essay, dreading for that you came not hither. ' She was a well-made woman in her late twenties, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, worry now robbing her of much of her beauty.
Burbage kissed her, then struck a pose. 'I
'We are well.' His wife seemed to be fighting to convince herself as well as him. 'The broil commencing, we kept within doors. A don was slain yonder, in front of Master Goodpasture's.' She pointed across the street. No sign of the body remained. Gathering herself, she went on, 'But for that, all might have seemed to pass in some far country, but 'twas real, 'twas real.' She shivered.
So did Shakespeare, who'd seen more than she of how very real it was. He set a hand on Burbage's arm. 'I praise the Lord all's well with you, and now I must away.'
'God keep you safe, Will,' the player said. Winifred Burbage nodded. In times like these, that was no idle phrase, but a real and urgent wish.
