Ruled Britannia

'Tis pity I have not Spanish enough to follow comfortably, else I had come to see how you wrought.'

Lope de Vega bowed again. 'You are too kind.'

'By no means, sir.' Yes, when Marlowe chose, he could charm the birds from the trees- as can any serpent, Shakespeare thought uneasily.

The Spaniard turned to him. 'You will tell me at once, Master Shakespeare: is the Prince of Denmark mad, or doth he but feign his affliction?'

Marlowe's eyes gleamed. 'I have asked myself that very question. So would any man of sense, on seeing the play. But here we have a man of better sense, for he asks not himself but the poet!'

'He is but mad north-northwest,' Shakespeare answered. 'When the wind is southerly he knows a hawk from a handsaw.'

'Fie on you!' de Vega said, as Marlowe burst out laughing. Lope went on, 'You give back the Prince's words, not your own.'

'But, good my sir, if the Prince's words be not my own, whose then are they?' Shakespeare said, his voice as innocent as he could make it. 'Certes, I purpose the question being asked. And I purpose each hearer to answer in himself, for himself.'

'Men seek God and, seeking, find Him-so saith the Grecian poet,' Marlowe observed. 'Who'd have thought the like held for madness?'

He and Shakespeare could, if they chose, hash it out over pint after pint of bitter beer. If Lope de Vega reckoned himself insulted, or trifled with, that was a more serious matter. But the Spaniard seemed willing to let it pass. He changed the subject: 'You are to write a play on the life of his Most Catholic Majesty, I hear.'

'I have been given that privilege, yes,' Shakespeare said, privilege striking him as a better word than cross.

'You are fortunate in your subject, his Majesty in his poet,' de Vega said-he made no mean courtier himself. Marlowe's glance was half rueful, half scornful. Lope continued, 'It will please me very much to help you in your enterprise however I may.'

'Truly, sir, you are too kind.' The last thing Shakespeare wanted was Lope's help. 'But there's no need for-'

'No, no.' Lope waved his protest aside. 'I insist.' He grinned disarmingly. 'For, by helping you, I help myself to coming to the Theatre whenever I please. Should you desire a veritable hombre de EspaA ±a to play a Spaniard, nothing would like me better.'

Shakespeare wanted to shriek. He couldn't tell de Vega everything he wanted to, or even a fraction of it.

But. ' Tacite, Will,' Marlowe said quickly.

In Latin, that meant be quiet. In English, it would have been good advice. Even in Latin, it was good advice. But was it also something more? Was it an allusion to Tacitus and to the Annals? How much did Marlowe know? How much did he want to show that he knew? And how much did Lope know, and how much was Marlowe liable to reveal to him for no more reason than that he could not take the good advice he so casually gave?

One of Lieutenant de Vega's eyebrows rose. In slow Latin of his own, he asked, 'And why should Magister Guglielmus keep silent, I pray you?'

Damn you, Kit, Shakespeare thought. But Marlowe, a university man as fluent in Latin as in English, kept right on in the ancient tongue: 'Why? To keep from offering you the role of Philip himself, of course.

I doubt his company would stand for it, and I am certain Master Burbage's fury at being balked of the hero's role would know no bounds.' He talked himself out of trouble almost as readily as he talked himself into it.

Richard Burbage had little Latin, but he did have the player's ability to hear his name mentioned at a remarkable distance. He came up to Marlowe and asked, 'What said you of me, sir?' By the way he leaned forward and set his right hand on his belt near his sword, he would make Marlowe regret it if the answer were not to his liking.

But Marlowe spoke in English as he had in Latin: 'I said you would mislike it, did Lieutenant de Vega here take the part of King Philip in the play Will is to write. He hath graciously offered to attempt some role in the drama, but that, meseems, were a part too great.'

Just for a heartbeat, Burbage's eyes flashed to Shakespeare. The poet gave back a bland, blank face. He knew he couldn't trust the Spaniard, and didn't know he could trust Christopher Marlowe. If Marlowe had hoped to learn more than he already knew from the actor, he got little, for Burbage laughed, slapped him on the back, and said, 'Why, Kit, no man can have a part too great-thus say the ladies, any road.'

Shakespeare's laugh was relieved, Marlowe's somewhat forced-he had scant interest in or experience of what the ladies said in such matters. Lope de Vega scratched his head. ' 'Tis a jest,' he said. 'I know't must be, but I apprehend it not.' After Shakespeare explained it, de Vega laughed, too, and bowed to Burbage. 'You have a wit of your own, sir, and not just with another's words in your mouth.'

Will Kemp reckons otherwise, Shakespeare thought. Burbage bowed back to the Spaniard. 'You are too kind, sir,' he purred, meaning nothing else but, I'm more clever than either of these two, and if I but wrote. He had a player's vanity, too, in full measure. It sometimes irked Shakespeare. Today he gladly forgave it. He would have forgiven anything that put the Spaniard off the scent.

But how, dear God, am I to write Lord Burghley's play with de Vega ever sniffing about? And even if Thou shouldst work a miracle, for that I may write it, how can we rehearse it? How can we offer it forth? He waited hopefully. As he'd feared, though, God gave no answers. Lope De Vega couldn't have screamed louder or more painfully as a betrayed lover. He knew that for a fact; he'd screamed such screams before. This, however. 'But, sir, you promised me!' he cried.

'I am sorry, Lieutenant,' said Captain GuzmA?n, who sounded not sorry in the least. 'I warned that, in an emergency, I would shift your duty. Here we have an emergency, and so I shall shift you.'

'A likely story.' Lope was convinced his superior intended to drive him mad. GuzmA?n knew how to make his intentions real, too. 'What kind of emergency?'

'A soothsayer, prophesying against Spain and against King Philip,' GuzmA?n answered.

'Oh,' Lope said in crestfallen tones. Unfortunately, that was an emergency. Soothsayers and witches and what the English called cunning men caused no end of trouble. But then he had a brighter, more hopeful thought. 'Could not the holy inquisitors deal with this false prophet? Surely such a rogue breaks God's law before he breaks man's.'

Baltasar GuzmA?n shook his head. 'They call it treason first and blasphemy only afterwards. They have washed their hands of the fellow.'

'As Pilate did with our Lord,' de Vega said bitterly.

'Senior Lieutenant. ' GuzmA?n drummed his fingers on the desk. 'Senior Lieutenant, I bear you no ill will. You should thank God and the Virgin and the saints that I bear you no ill will. Were it otherwise, the Inquisition would hear of that remark, and then, in short order, you would hear from the Inquisition. You have your pen, and some freedom in how you use it. You would be wise to guard your tongue.'

He was right. That hurt worse than anything else. 'I thank you, your Excellency,' Lope mumbled, hating to have to thank the man at whom he was furious. He sighed. 'Well, if there's no help for it, I'd best get the business over with as fast as I can. Who is this soothsayer, and where can I find him?'

'He is called John. Walsh.' Captain GuzmA?n made heavy going of the English surname. 'He dwells in'-the officer checked his notes-'in the ward called Billingsgate, in Pudding Lane. He is by trade a butcher of hogs, but he is to be found more often in a tavern than anywhere else.'

'May I find him in a tavern!' Lope exclaimed. 'I know Pudding Lane too well, and know its stinks. They make so much offal there, it goes in dung boats down to the Thames.'

'Wherever you find him, seize him and clap him in gaol. We'll try him and put him to death and be rid of him once for all,' GuzmA?n said. As de Vega turned to go, his superior held up a hand. 'Wait. Don't hunt this, ah, Walsh yourself. Take a squad of soldiers. Better, take two. When you catch him, the Englishmen he has fooled are liable to try a rescue. You will want swords and pikes and guns at your back.'

'Very well, sir.' De Vega wasn't sure whether it was very well or not. Alone, he might slip in and get away with John Walsh with no one else the wiser. With a couple of squads at his back, he had no hope of that. But Captain GuzmA?n had a point. If he went after Walsh by himself and got into trouble, he wouldn't come out of Billingsgate Ward again. How had Shakespeare put it in Alcibiades? The better part of valor is