As if by accident, de Vega let his hand rest on Nell's thigh. She stared at him in surprise; she might have forgotten he was there. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips slightly swollen. She set her hand on his. He smiled and kissed her. The noise she made at the back of her throat was almost as fierce as the ones coming from the pit. Lope laughed a little when they finally broke apart. Bear- and bull-baitings always made her wanton.
Three dogs were dead now, and a couple of others badly hurt. But blood dripped and poured from the bear everywhere. He wobbled on his feet; a pink loop of gut protruded from his belly. His grunts and bellows came slower and weaker. 'He'll not last,' Lope said. Nell nodded without looking at him-she had eyes only for the pit.
As if directed by a single will, all the mastiffs left alive, even the injured ones, sprang at the bear. As their teeth pierced him, Nell groaned as if Lope were piercing her. The bear fought back for a moment, but then sank beneath the dogs. The din in the arena all but deafened de Vega.
The shabby Englishman sitting next to him nudged him again. 'See you? You'd have won. He slew but four, unless that fifth be too much hurt to live.'
Lope said, 'Such is life,' a remark that gave the other man no room to comment.
Dog handlers in thick leather jerkins and breeches came out to drive the mastiffs back into their cages.
They needed the bludgeons they carried to get the big dogs off the bear's carcass. Once the dogs were out of the pit, an ass that rolled its eyes at the stink of blood dragged away the body. It would be butchered, and the meat sold.
'Hast thou eaten of bear's flesh?' Lope asked Nell.
She nodded. 'Seldom, but yes. Mighty fine it was, too: sweet as pork, tender as lamb.'
'I thought the same,' Lope said. 'I ate it once or twice in Spain. Were bears common as cattle, who would look at beef?'
More attendants raked the ground and spread sand and fresh dirt over the pools of blood. The first bear- baiting might never have happened. So Lope's senses said, at any rate. But when the handlers brought the next bear out to the stake, the lingering scent of blood in the air made him so wild, he almost broke free of them.
A fresh pack of mastiffs assailed the bear. He was smaller than the one that had fought before, but seemed wilier. He rolled again and again, and hunched himself so the dogs had trouble reaching his belly and privates. Mastiff after mastiff went down. Another one dragged itself out of the fight on stiff forelegs, its back broken. A handler smashed in its head with a club.
'He'll kill them all!' Nell was as happy to cheer for the bear as she had been to clap for the dogs in the first fight.
And the new bear did kill them all. As the last mastiff, its throat torn out, staggered off and fell down to die, Lope thought, Most of the bettors want to hang themselves-that hardly ever happens. And the dog breeders, too, with so many expensive animals dead. A whole new pack of mastiffs had to be loosed against the bear. Since it had taken so many wounds from the earlier pack, the baiting ended in a hurry.
That was as well. London's short day was drawing to a close. Lope rose and gave Nell Lumley his arm.
'Shall we away to the city and find a place for the two of us?'
Her answering smile had nothing coy in it. 'Yes, let's,' she said. Sure enough, after a bear-baiting her own animal spirits were in the ascendant.
Lope and Nell had just left the bear-baiting garden when someone called his name from behind. It was a woman's voice. As if in the grip of nightmare, Lope slowly turned. Out of the arena came his other mistress, Martha Brock, walking with a man who looked enough like her to be her brother, and probably was.
He would be, Lope thought in helpless horror. If she were betraying me, she couldn't get in much of a temper. But if she's not. Oh, by the Virgin, if she's not.! Too late, he realized the Virgin was the wrong one to ask for intercession here.
'Who's that?' Martha Brock demanded, pointing at Nell.
'Who's that?' Nell Lumley demanded, pointing at Martha.
'Dear ladies, I can explain-' Lope began hopelessly.
He never got the chance. He hadn't thought he would. 'You are no surer, no, than is the coal of fire upon the ice, or hailstone in the sun!' Nell cried. 'And I loved you!'
'Impersevant thing!' Martha added. 'A truant disposition!'
Lope tried again. 'I can expl-'
Again, no good. They both screamed at him. They both slapped him. They didn't even quarrel with each other, which might have saved him. When they both burst into tears and cried on each others shoulders, Martha's brother said, 'Sirrah, thou'rt a recreant blackguard. Get thee hence!' He didn't even touch his sword. With de Vega so plainly in the wrong, he didn't need it.
Jeered by the Englishmen who'd watched his discomfiture, Lope walked back toward the Thames all alone. When Pizarro's men conquered the Incas, one of them got as his share of the loot a great golden sun. and gambled it away before morning. He'd made himself a Spanish proverb, too. But here I've outdone him, Lope thought glumly. I lost not one mistress, but two, and both in the wink of an eye.
Will Kemp leered at Shakespeare. The clown's features were soft as clay, and could twist into any shape. What lay behind his mugging? Shakespeare couldn't tell. 'The first thing we do,' Kemp exclaimed,
'let's kill all the Spaniards!'
He didn't even try to keep his voice down. They were alone in the tiring room, but the tireman or his assistants or the Theatre watchmen might overhear. 'God mend your voice,' Shakespeare hissed. 'You but offend your lungs to speak so loud.'
'Not my lungs alone,' Kemp said innocently. 'Are
'Offended? No.' Shakespeare shook his head. 'Afeard? Yes, I am afeard.'
'And wherefore?' the clown asked. 'Is't not the desired outcome of that which you broached to me just now?'
'Of course it is,' Shakespeare answered. 'But would the fountain of your mind were clear again, you prancing ninny, that I might water an ass at it. Do you broadcast it to the general before the day, our heads go up on London Bridge and cur-dogs fatten on our bodies.'
'Ah, well. Ah, well.' Maybe Kemp hadn't thought of that at all. Maybe, too, he'd done his best to give Shakespeare an apoplexy. His best was much too good. He went on, 'An you write the play, I'll act in't.
There.' He beamed at Shakespeare. 'Are you happy now, my pet?' He might have been soothing a fractious child.
'Why could you not have said that before?' Shakespeare did his best to hold his temper, but couldn't help adding another, 'Why?'
'You want everything all in its place.' Again, Will Kemp might have been-likely was-humoring him. 'I can see how that might be so for you-after all, you'd want Act First done or ever you went on to Act Second, eh?'
'I should hope so,' Shakespeare said between his teeth. What was the clown prattling about now?
Kemp deigned to explain: 'But you're a poet, and so having all in order likes you well. But for a clown?'
He shook his head. 'As like as not, I've no notion what next I'll do on stage.'
'I've noticed that. We've all of us noticed that,' Shakespeare said.
'Good!' Kemp twisted what had been meant for a reproach into a compliment. 'If I know not, nor can the groundlings guess. The more they're surprised, the harder they laugh.'
'Regardless of how your twisted turn mars the fabric o' the play,' Shakespeare said.
Kemp only shrugged. Shakespeare would have been angrier had he expected anything else. The clown said, 'I know not what I'll do tomorrow, nor care. If I play, then I play. If I choose instead to morris-dance from London to Norwich, by God, I'll do that. I'll do well by it, too.' He seemed to fancy the ridiculous idea. 'Folk would pay to watch me on the way, and I might write a book afterwards.
Kemp's Nine Days Wonder, I'd call it.'
'No man could in nine days dance thither,' Shakespeare said, interested in spite of himself.
'I've ten pound to say you're a liar.' By the gleam in Kemp's eye, he was ready to strap bells on his legs and set off with a man to play the flute and drums. He'd meant what he told Shakespeare-he didn't know what he'd do next, on stage or anywhere else. 'Come on, poet. Will you match me?'
The man's a weathervane, blowing now this way, now that, in the wind of his appetites, Shakespeare thought. He held up a placating hand. 'I haven't the money to set against you,' he lied. 'Let it be ven as you claim.
