Ruled Britannia

To his surprise, Shakespeare answered, 'Both. Nor knew I which would play, nor which be reckoned treason, until the very day.'

'Truly?'

'Truly,' the English poet said, and Lope could not help believing him.

'That is a marvel, I'll not deny,' he said, and rose to his feet. Shakespeare got up, too. 'The Oom Karl, said you?' he asked. Shakespeare nodded. Lope had asked only for form's sake. He remembered the name of the ship. It might indeed serve him well. Ostend lay within the Spanish Netherlands. From there, he could easily find a ship bound for Spain and home.

Home! Even the word seemed strange. He'd spent almost a third of his life-and almost all his adult life-here in England. What would Madrid be like after ten years, under a new King? Would anyone there remember him? Would that printer Captain GuzmA?n knew have put his plays before the world?

That might help ease his way back into the Spanish community of actors and poets. He dared hope.

'I'm for Broken Wharf, then,' he said.

'Good fortune go with you.' Shakespeare set a penny on the table between them. 'Here: this for the wherryman, to take you o'er the Thames.'

'My thanks.' Lope scooped up the coin. 'You English be generous to your foes, I own. This fine dinner and a penny from you, Master Will, and I have a pound in gold of some English knight to pay my way towards Spain.'

'Do you indeed?' Shakespeare murmured. He gave de Vega an odd, almost sour smile. 'Belike we think us well shut of you.'

'Belike you should.' Lope came around the table, stood on tiptoe, and kissed Shakespeare on the cheek. 'God guard thee, friend.'

'Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman,' Shakespeare said, and gave back the kiss. 'If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; if not, why then this parting was well made.'

'Just so.' Lope left the ordinary without looking back. When he got to the river, he waved for a boatman.

Waving in reply, the fellow glided up. He touched the brim of his cap. 'Whither would you, sir?'

'Broken Wharf, as close by the Oom Karl as you may,' de Vega replied.

'Let's see your penny,' the wherryman said. Lope gave him the coin-stamped, he saw, with Isabella and Albert's images. Well, they'd fled England before him. The wherryman touched his cap again. His grin showed a couple of missing teeth. 'Broken Wharf it shall be, your honor, and right yarely, too.'

He did put his back into the stroke, and his heart into the abuse he bawled at other boats on the river. He had to fight the current; Broken Wharf lay some distance upstream from London Bridge, almost to St. Paul's.

As the wharf neared, Lope pointed to a three-masted carrack tied up there. 'The Oom Karl?' he asked.

'Ay, sir, the same.' The wherryman's voice suddenly rose to a furious scream: 'Give way, thou unlicked bear-whelp!' De Vega, far from the strongest of swimmers, wondered if he could make it to the carrack after what looked like a sure collision. Somehow, though, his man's boat and the other didn't smash together. He decided God might possibly love him after all. The wherryman took it all in stride. He glided up to the base of the wharf. 'We are arrived, sir. Good fortune go with you.'

'Gramercy.' Lope scrambled out of the boat. He walked up the wharf towards the Oom Karl. A tall man with a bushy blond beard and a gold hoop in one ear stood on deck, calling orders in guttural Dutch to the crew and cursing fluently in English at the longshoremen hauling crates and bundles aboard the ship. 'God give you good day,' Lope called to him, also in English. 'You're bound for Ostend? What's your fare?'

A clay pipe clenched between the tall man's teeth twitched. ' SA-, seA±or, we're bound for Ostend,' he replied in Spanish as quick and confident as his English and Dutch. To catch Lope's accent from so little, he had to have a good ear as well as a clever tongue. 'As for the fare-two ducats should do.'

Two ducats made ten shillings-that would swallow one of Lope's precious and irreplaceable angels. 'I have English money,' he said, returning to his own mother tongue. 'I'll give you five shillings.'

'No,' the fellow said, his voice flat and hard. 'A Spaniard leaving England's in no place to bargain. You'll pay what I tell you, and thank God and the Blessed Virgin it isn't more. Yes or no?'

De Vega knew he had no choice. If he stayed here, he'd be fair game, and how the Englishmen would enjoy pulling him down! Once he got to Ostend, he could hope for the charity of his own countrymen there. He nodded and choked out the word he had to say: 'Yes.'

'Come aboard, then, and give me your money,' the blond-bearded man said around his pipe. 'We're fully laden, or near enough as makes no difference. We'll weigh anchor and set sail when the tide turns.'

' Alles goed, Kapitein Adams,' a sailor said as Lope handed the piratical-looking skipper his gold coin.

That was close enough to English to let Lope follow it. It also surprised him. 'Captain Adams?' he asked.

'You're an Englishman? I took you for Dutch.'

'Will Adams, at your service,' Adams said in English, and made a leg at him. 'Very much at your service, now I have your angel.' He flipped the coin up into the air, caught it, and stuck it in his belt pouch. 'Will you go below now, or stay on deck until we sail?'

'By your leave, I'd liefer stay,' de Vega answered.

'As you wish: so I told you.' After that, Captain Adams went back to Dutch. The crew obeyed him as if he were one of their own countrymen. Before long, the last longshoreman scurried off the carrack. The sailors stowed the gangplank. Up came the anchors, men straining at the capstans at bow and stern. They brought in the lines that bound the Oom Karl to the wharf. As she began to slide downstream with the current, sails blossomed on her masts.

London Bridge loomed ahead. Will Adams skillfully steered the ship between two piers. Her masts missed scraping against the planking of the bridge by only a couple of feet. Had the Thames run higher, she couldn't have got free.

There beyond the bridge stood the Tower of London. Lope stared at it as the carrack glided past. Then he looked east, towards the North Sea. Soon London-soon all of England-would lie behind him. In spite of everything, he was on his way home.

Kate's eyes got big and round. 'A bill of divorcement?' she whispered.

'Ay.' Shakespeare nodded. 'I begged it of the Queen, and she gave it me.' He took her hands in his.

'That being so, art thou fain to wed me?'

'I will. With all my heart I will, dear Will. But. ' She hesitated, then nodded, as if deciding the question had to be asked. 'But what of your. your lady wife in Stratford? What of your daughters there?'

'They shall not want, not for nothing. The Queen hath settled on them a hundred and fifty pound.'

Shakespeare didn't mention that that was part of what she'd given him. He could wish it were otherwise, but knew better than to complain. Never in all his dreams had he imagined getting so much of what he wanted.

Kate's eyes widened again. 'A hundred and fifty pound? Jesu! A princely sum, in sooth. But wherein lieth the justice, they having more than thou when thou hast done so much for Elizabeth and they naught?'

'Fear not, my sweeting, for justice is done: they have not more than I,' Shakespeare assured her, and her eyes went wide once more. He nodded. 'By my halidom, Kate, 'tis true.'

'Right glad was I to wed thee, taking thee for no richer than any other player who might here chance to sup,' Kate said. 'An't be otherwise. An't be otherwise, why, right glad am I.'

'And I,' Shakespeare said. He kissed her. The kiss took on a life of its own. They still clung to each other when the door opened and a customer came in.

The man swept off his hat and bowed in their direction as they sprang apart. 'Your pardon, I pray ye. I meant not to disturb ye.'

'You are welcome, sir,' Kate said as the fellow sat down. 'What would you have?'

'Some of what you gave your tall gentleman there'd like me well,' he replied, 'but belike he hath the whole of't. That failing, what's the threepenny supper this even?'

'Mutton stew.'

'Is it indeed? Well, a bit o' mutton's always welcome.' The man winked at Shakespeare. Kate squeaked