Ruled Britannia

Fly not to Norwich, nor to any other place.' He realized he was pleading. 'You perform this afternoon, you know, and on the morrow as well.'

'There's no more valor in you than in a wild duck,' Kemp said scornfully. 'You are as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse.'

He told the truth. Shakespeare knew too well how little courage he held. But he wagged a finger at Will Kemp and said, 'If you'd bandy insults, think somewhat before you speak. You twice running used valor; it might better in the first instance have been courage.'

'Woe upon you, and all such false professors!' Kemp retorted. 'O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts.'

Shakespeare threw his hands in the air. 'Enough!' And so, however maddening, it was. Kemp had, in his own way, said he'd do what needed doing. Shakespeare didn't think the clown would betray him to the Spaniards after that-not on purpose, anyhow. 'Not a word now, on your life,' he warned. On my life, too, not that Kemp cares a farthing for it.

'What, gone without a word?' the clown said. 'Oh, very well, for your joy.'

When Shakespeare came out of the tiring room, he felt he'd aged ten years. The tireman gave him a curious glance. 'What's toward?' he asked.

'That Kemp is more stubborn-hard than hammered iron,' Shakespeare said disdainfully, telling the truth and acting at the same time. 'At last, meseems, he hath been brought towards reason.'

'Towards doing what you'd have him do, you mean,' the tireman said. His name was Jack Hungerford.

His beard, which once had been red, was now white; that only made his eyes seem bluer. He'd had charge of costumes and props for decades before Marlowe's Tamberlane made blank verse the standard for plays, and he had all the shrewdness of his years.

Here, though, he played into Shakespeare's hands. 'I'll not say you're mistaken,' the poet replied, and Hungerford looked smug. But keeping the tireman happy wasn't enough. As much as the players, he would be a part of what followed. Shakespeare picked his words with care: 'How now, Master Jack?

You've seen more than is to most men given.'

'And if I have?' Hungerford asked. His eyes were suddenly intent, while the rest of his face showed nothing whatever. Shakespeare had seen that blank vizard more times than he could count, these years since the Armada landed. Indeed, he'd worn that blank vizard more times than he could count. It was an Englishman's shield against discovery, against treachery, in a land no longer his own. Having it raised against him saddened Shakespeare, but he understood why Hungerford showed so little. The safest answer to the question Whom to trust? was No one.

He'll make me discover myself to him, Shakespeare thought unhappily. Then the risk is mine, not his.

Well, no help for't. He said, 'You well recall the days before Isabella and Albert took the throne.'

' 'Twas not so long ago, Master Will,' Hungerford replied, his tone studiously neutral. 'You recall 'em yourself, though you've only half my years.'

'Good days, I thought,' Shakespeare said.

'Some were. Some not so good.' The tireman revealed nothing, nothing at all. Behind Shakespeare's back, one of his hands folded into a fist. I might have known it would be like this. But then Hungerford went on, 'Better days, I will allow, than some of those we live in. I say as much-I hope I say as much-not only for that a man's youth doth naturally seem sweeter in the years of his age.'

'Think you those good days might come again?'

'I know not,' Hungerford said, and Shakespeare wanted to hit him. 'Would it were so, but I know not.'

Was that enough encouragement to go on? Shakespeare didn't think so. Damn you, Jack Hungerford, he raged, but only to himself. He stalked away from the tireman as if Hungerford had offered him some deadly insult. Behind him, Hungerford called for one of his assistants. If he knew where Shakespeare had been heading, he gave no sign of it.

That day, Lord Westmorland's Men put on Marlowe's The Cid. Shakespeare had only a small part: one of the Moorish princes whom the Cid first befriended and then, in the name of Christianity, betrayed. He unwound his turban, shed his bright green robe, and left the Theatre early, hoping to take advantage of what little daylight was left in the sky.

Booksellers hawked their wares in the shadow of St. Paul's. Most of them sold pamphlets denouncing Protestantism and hair-raising accounts of witches out in the countryside. Some others offered the texts of plays-as often as not pirated editions, printed up from actors' memories of their lines. The volumes usually proved actors' memories less than they might have been.

Shakespeare ground his teeth as he walked past a stall full of such plays. He'd suffered from stolen and surreptitious publications himself. That he got nothing for them was bad enough. That they mangled his words was worse. What they'd done to his Prince of Denmark.

He'd added injury to insult by buying his own copy of that one, to see if it were as bad as everyone told him. It wasn't. It was worse. When he thought about the Prince's so-called soliloquy: To be, or not to be. Aye there's the point.

To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all:

No, to sleep, to dream, aye marry there it goes.

He'd seen that, burned it into his memory, so he could quote it as readily as what he'd really written. He could-but he didn't have the stomach to get past the third line.

Splendid in his red robes, a bishop came out of St. Paul's and down the steps, surrounded by a retinue of more plainly dressed priests and laymen. The soldiers on guard at the bottom of the stairs stiffened to attention. One of them-by his fair hair, surely an Englishman-knelt to kiss the cleric's ring as he went past.

The Spaniards enslaved some of us, Shakespeare thought. Others, though-others enslaved themselves. No one had made that soldier bend the knee to the bishop. No one would have thought less of him had he not done it. But he had. By all appearances, he'd been proud to do it.

Even if I go on with this madcap scheme, will it have the issue Lord Burghley desires?

Shakespeare shrugged. He'd come too far to back away now unless he inclined to treason. That might save you. It might make you rich. He shrugged again. Some things were bought too dear.

Motion up at the top of St. Paul's caught his eye. A man in artisan's plain hose and jerkin was walking about on the flat-roofed steeple, now and then stooping as if to measure. We have a Catholic Queen and King once more. Will they order the spire finished at last? Shakespeare shrugged one more time. It would be yet another sign we are not what we were, what we once set out to be. But how many even care? Gloom threatened to choke him.

Gloom also made him inattentive, so that he almost walked past the stall he sought. It wasn't the sight of the books that made him pause, but the sight of the bookseller. 'Good den, Master Seymour,' he said.

'Why, Master Shakespeare! God give you good den as well,' Harry Seymour replied. He was a tall, lean man who would have been good-looking had he not had a large, hairy wen on the end of his nose.

'Do you but pass the time of day, or can I find summat for you?'

'I'm always pleased to pass the time of day with you,' Shakespeare answered, which was true: he'd never known Seymour to print or sell pirated plays. He went on, 'But if you've the Annals of Tacitus done into English, I'd be pleased to buy it of you.'

'As my head lives, Master Shakespeare, I do indeed. And I'll take oath I fetched hither some few of that title this morning.' Seymour came around to the front of the stall. 'Now where did I put 'em?. Ah!

Here we are.' He handed Shakespeare a copy. 'Will you want it for a play?'

'I might. But my Latin doth stale with disuse, wherefore I'm fain to take the short road to reminding me what he treats of.' Shakespeare admired the ornate first page, illustrated with a woodcut of swaggering, toga-clad Romans. 'A handsome volume, I'll not deny.'

' 'Twould be handsomer still, cased in buckram or fine morocco.' Like any book dealer, Seymour sold his wares unbound; what boards they eventually wore depended on the customer's taste and purse.

'No doubt,' Shakespeare said politely, by which he meant he didn't intend to bind the book at all. Not even Baron Burghley's gold could tempt him to such extravagance. As a player and a poet, he knew too well how money could rain down one day and dry up the next. He would cling to as many of those coins as he could. In aid of which. He held up the translation. 'What's the scot?'

'Six shillings,' Harry Seymour answered.