Ruled Britannia

'My good fellow, you are a thief professed,' Shakespeare exclaimed. 'But your theft is too open. Your filching is like an unskilful singer; you keep not time.'

'Say what you will, Will, but I'll have my price or you'll not have your book,' Seymour said. 'I give thanks to the holy Mother of God that I can stay at my trade at all. Times are hard, and grow no easier.'

'I am not some wanderer, staggering half drunk past your stall. I do regularly give you my custom when I seek some work of scholarship-or so I have done, up till now.' Shakespeare's indignation was part perfectly real, part feigned. If he gave in too easily, the bookseller might wonder why-and Seymour's oath had proved him a Catholic. I must seem as I always was, Shakespeare thought. The deeper into this exercise he got, the harder that would grow.

'You know not what I had to pay Master Daniels, the which rendered into our tongue the noble Roman's words,' Seymour protested.

Sensing weakness, Shakespeare pressed him: 'That you're a subtle knave, a villain with a smiling cheek, makes you no less a knave and a villain.' He made as if to thrust the Annals back at Seymour.

The bookseller had grit. 'Save your player's tricks for the stage,' he said. 'I gave you my price.'

'And I give you my farewell, if you use me so.' Shakespeare didn't want to have to search for a different translation elsewhere, not when he had this one in his hands, but he didn't want to pay six shillings, either.

Nine days' wages for a soldier, on one book?

Harry Seymour made a rumbling, unhappy noise down deep in his throat. 'Five and sixpence, then,' he said, as if wounded unto death, 'and for no other man alive would I lessen the price even a farthing.'

His honor salved, Shakespeare paid at once, saying, 'There, you see? I knew you for the gentleman you are, exceedingly well read and wondrous affable: stuffed, as they say, with honorable parts.'

'You reckon him a gentleman who doth as you list,' Seymour said sourly. 'Go your way, Master Shakespeare; I am yet out of temper with you. May you have joy of the sixpence you prised from me.'

His joy in that sixpence quite quenched, Shakespeare strode north and east, back towards his Bishopsgate lodgings. Light faded from the sky with every step he took. The winter solstice was coming soon, with Christmas hard on its heels. They were both coming sooner, indeed, than he reckoned right.

After their coronation, Isabella and Albert had imposed on England Pope Gregory's newfangled calendar, cutting ten days out of June in 1589 to bring the kingdom into conformity with Spain and the rest of Catholic Europe. When Shakespeare looked at things logically, he understood those ten days weren't really stolen. When he didn't- which was, mankind being what it was, more often-he still felt as if he'd had his pocket picked of time.

Some stubborn souls still celebrated the feast of the Nativity on what Gregory's calendar insisted was January 4. They did so in secret. They had to do so in secret, for the English Inquisition prowled hardest at this season of the year, sniffing after those who showed affection for the old calendar and thus for the Protestant faith adhering to it.

Along with darkness, fog began filling the streets. Here and there, men lit cressets in front of their homes and shops, but the flickering flames did little to pierce the gloom. Shakespeare hurried up Cheapside to the Poultry, past the smaller churches of St. Peter and St. Mildred, and up onto Threadneedle Street, which boasted on the west side churches dedicated to St. Christopher-le-Stock and St. Bartholomew.

He let out a sigh of relief when Threadneedle Street opened on to Bishopsgate. A moment later, he let out a gasp, for a squad of Spaniards tramped toward him. But their leader only gave him a brusque jerk of the thumb, as if to tell him to hurry home.

'I thank our worship,' he murmured, and touched his hand to the brim of his hat as he ducked down the side street that would take him to the Widow Kendall's. The Spaniard nodded in return and led his men south and west along Threadneedle. A decent man doing well the task to which he was set, Shakespeare thought. More than a few of the occupiers were decent men. Still, the task to which Philip had set them was the subjugation of England. And, on nine years' evidence, they did it well.

'Oh, Master Will, 'tis good to see you,' Jane Kendall said when Shakespeare came into her house. As he went over to stand by the fire, she continued, 'I was sore afeard them Spanish devils had took you.'

'Not so. As you see, I'm here.' Shakespeare looked around the parlor. 'But where's Master Foster?

Most days, he is before me, and, having somewhat to do betwixt close of Theatre and my coming hither, I know I am later than I might be.'

'Later than you ought to be,' the Widow Kendall said in reproving tones. 'And as for Master Peter-'

Before she could go on, Jack Street broke in: 'He's in the Hole. They nabbed him at last. I wouldn't guess what his law was, but outside the law, certes.'

Shakespeare didn't know what his missing roommate's illegal specialty was, either, but wasn't surprised to learn those in authority thought Peter Foster had one. 'Can we do aught for him?' he asked.

Jack Street gloomily shook his head. 'Not unless we want them bastards asking after us next,' the glazier said, which struck Shakespeare as altogether too likely.

'He's paid till the end of the month,' Widow Kendall said. 'An he bide yet in gaol then, I'll sell his goods for what they bring.' She thought more of what she might do for herself than for her lodger.

After warming himself by the fire, Shakespeare went off to the ordinary around the corner for supper. A sizzling beefsteak and half a loaf to sop up the juices made him a happy man. He took out his quill and his bottle of ink and set to work on Love's Labour's Won. 'By God, Master Will, what is it like, to have so many words in your head?' the serving woman asked.

'So that they come forth, Kate, all's well,' he answered. 'But if my thoughts be dammed, then I'm damned with them.' He pounded his forehead with the heel of his hand to try to show her the feeling he got when the words would not move from his mind to the page in front of him.

She laughed and nodded and said, 'Will another mug of beer loose the flow?'

'One other may,' he said, and she poured his mug full from the pitcher she carried. He went on, 'Ask me not again, I pray you, for with too much drink I've trouble knowing whether the words that come be worth the having.'

'I'll leave you to't, then,' Kate said, and she did.

But tonight the words, whether worth the having or not, did not want to come. Shakespeare stared into the candle flame and tried all the other tricks he knew to break the wall between his wit and his pen, but had little luck. While the upper part of his mind dutifully tried to get on with Love's Labour's Won, the deeper wellspring, the part from which inspiration sprang, dwelt with the woes of the ancient Iceni, not with his present characters. He smote his forehead again, this time in good earnest. The sudden pain did him no good, either.

He looked around in frustration. He had none but himself to blame for his troubles. The hour grew late; he was the only customer left in the place. With everything quiet and serene, he should have written as if fiends were after him. He muttered a curse. Fiends were after him, but not the sort that set his pen free.

When Kate came by again, he laid down the pen with a sigh. She gave him a sympathetic smile, saying, 'I saw you troubled, but did not like to speak, for fear I might send flying the one word that'd free you.'

'That word's nowhere to be found tonight, or else already flown,' Shakespeare answered ruefully. 'Were my pen a poniard, it would not stab.'

'Say not so, for I know thy yard pierces,' Kate said. Her smile, this time, was of a different kind.

'Ah. Sits the wind in that quarter, then?' Without waiting for an answer, Shakespeare got to his feet.

Even at such a moment, he was careful to gather up his precious manuscript and pens and ink before heading for the stairway with the serving woman. 'Thou'rt sweet, Kate, to give of thyself to a spring gone dry like me.'

'Spring's a long way off, and it's cold outside,' she said. 'And I doubt me thou'rt dry in all thy humors.

Else, after last we lay between the sheets, why found I a wet spot there?'

Laughing, he slipped an arm around her waist. 'I own myself outargued,' he said. She snuggled against him and sighed softly. He held up his papers. 'Belike thou couldst outwrite me, too. Art fain to try?'

'Go to,' she said. 'Me that needs must make a mark to set down my name?'

They came to the top of the stairs. Her door stood just to the right. She opened it. They went inside.

Kate closed the door. Shakespeare took her in his arms. 'Kiss me,' he said. She did.