Ruled Britannia

discretion-that was the line that had stuck in Lope's memory.

He had no trouble getting soldiers to come with him. When he told the men eating in the refectory what his mission was, they clamored to come along. 'By St. James, sir,' one of them said, crossing himself,

'the sooner we get rid of troublemakers like that, the better. They stir the Englishmen up against us, and that gives us no end of grief.'

'Let's go, then,' Lope said. Some of the Spaniards paused to gulp down wine or beer or stuff a last bite or two into their mouths, but for no more than that. They buckled on swords, picked up spears and arquebuses and back-and-breasts, set high-crowned morions on their heads, and followed de Vega south and east from the barracks towards noisome Pudding Lane.

London had been occupied long enough and grown peaceful enough to make a couple of dozen Spaniards tramping through the streets-obviously on some business, not merely patrolling-something less than ordinary. ' 'Ware! 'Ware!' The cry rang out again and again. So much for surprise, Lope thought.

From farther away, he heard another cry: 'Clubs!' That was the shout London apprentices raised when they went into a brawl. Before long, a pack of them-some armed with clubs, others carrying daggers or stones-came up the street towards the men he led.

'Give way,' he shouted in English. 'Give way, or you will be sorry for it!' He nodded to his own men.

They were better armed than the apprentices, and armored to boot. They also looked eager to take on the youngsters who'd come up against them. The 'prentices stopped, wavered. broke.

One of the soldiers laughed. 'They haven't got the cojones to stand up to real men,' he said. 'We beat them when we first got ashore, and we can beat them again if we have to.'

'That's right,' another soldier said. But then he added, 'I'd sooner not fight, so long as we can hold 'em down without it.' That perfectly summed up Lope's view of things.

He had wondered if his nose could guide him to Pudding Lane. But London was a city of such multifarious stinks, he had to ask his way. He had to ask his way twice, in fact; the first Englishman who gave him directions told him a lie and got him lost. No, they don't all love us, he thought.

But he made a better choice with the second man he asked. The fellow was sleek and prosperous, with fur trim on his doublet. He made a leg at Lope, and fawned on him like a dog hoping to be patted. 'Ay, good my lord, certes; 'tis no small honor to enjoy the privilege of directing you thither.' He pointed south.

'Do you go to the church of St. George in Botolph Lane, and then one street the further, and you have it.

God grant you catch whatever villain you seek, too.'

'God grant it indeed.' Lope crossed himself, and was not surprised to see the Englishman follow his lead.

Folk who had clung to the Roman faith before the Armada came were likeliest to uphold the new Queen and King-and the Spaniards who kept them on their throne.

This man said, 'We have seen too much of wars and strife. Let there be peace, of whatever kind.'

'Amen,' Lope replied. Privately, he thought that a craven's counsel. But it worked to keep the kingdom quiet. He would have had all the English so craven.

After more bows and a ceremonious leavetaking, Lope translated for his men what the sleek fellow had said. 'Let's find the church, let's find the street, let's find the son of a whore we're after, and then, by God, let's find something to drink,' one of them said. Several others nodded approval.

So did Lope. 'We may find this Walsh and something to drink together,' he said, 'for I hear he prophesies in taverns.'

The soldier who'd spoken before guffawed. 'And after he's drunk enough, he's one of these piss-prophets,' he said, which got a laugh from everyone else. Plenty of people made a living divining the future-or saying they did- by examining their clients' urine.

Someone emptied a chamber pot from a second-story window. No way to be sure if the stinking contents were aimed at the Spaniards. A couple of men-including the fellow who'd made the joke-got splashed, but most of the stuff just went into the mud of the street, which already held more than its fair share of ordure and piss. 'Eh, Sancho, now you're a piss-prophet,' one of the other troopers said.

Sancho's reply was almost as pungent as the air.

Pudding Lane was only a couple of blocks long, but made up in stench what it lacked in length. De Vega marveled that he hadn't found it by scent. Along with all the usual London miasmas, he smelled pig shit, pig piss, rotting swine's flesh, pig fear. 'Any man from this street must be a false prophet,' he said, 'for not even God Himself could stand getting close enough to him to tell him anything.'

He started asking after John Walsh. 'I don't ken the man,' one hog butcher said. 'Never heard of him,'

said a second. 'An he be who I think he is, he died o' the French pox summer afore last,' a third said. 'A went home to Wales, a did, whence a came,' a fourth offered. 'Seek him in Southwark. He dwelleth there these days, with a punk from a pick-hatch,' a fifth declared.

Patiently, Lope kept asking. Sooner or later, he was bound to come on someone who either favored Isabella and Albert or simply craved peace and quiet. And he did. A lean man in a pigskin apron looked up from his work and said, 'Belike you'll find him in the Blue Fox, half a block toward the Tower in East Cheap.'

Again, Lope translated for his men. 'A good thing we have you with us, seA±or,' irrepressible Sancho said. 'If we had to look for interpreters, everything would take three times as long, and like as not they'd tell us more lies than truth.'

De Vega wasn't sure the lean man hadn't told a lie. But the tavern, to his relief, did prove easy to find. A signboard with the silhouette of a running fox, bright blue, hung above the door. 'You men stay here in the street,' Lope said. 'I'll go in alone. If God is kind, I'll hear the man speaking treason from his own lips. Then I'll signal for you. 'If not'-he shrugged-'again, it's God's will.'

'Honor to your courage, Lieutenant,' a soldier said.

'This for courage.' Lope snapped his fingers. 'I want to deal with this fellow as quickly as may be, for I have business of my own to attend to.' Some of the men winked and sniggered and made lewd jokes he only half heard. Thanks to his reputation, they thought he meant business with a woman, or with more than one. But is not the Muse a woman, too? he thought.

He sat down at a table near the door in the Blue Fox. 'Ale,' he said when a barmaid came up to him: it was a word he could pronounce without revealing himself as a foreigner. He set a penny on the table.

The woman snatched it up and came back with a mug of nasty, sour stuff. He wished he'd taken a chance and asked for wine.

But he didn't have to drink much. He nursed the mug and looked around. He also wished someone had described John Walsh to him. The place was full of Englishmen, most of them-by their talk and by the smell-pig butchers. Was Walsh here? Could he ask without giving himself away? If that fellow in the pigskin apron had steered him away from the wanted man and not toward him.. I'll make him sorry if he did. I'll make him worse than sorry.

'Hear me, friends,' a squat, homely, pockmarked man said, and the folk in the tavern did hear him: something close to silence fell. Lope pretended to drink ale as the pockmarked man-who also had on a pigskin apron over his jerkin and hose-clambered up onto a table and went on, 'You know God hath it in His mind for us to be free o' the Spaniard, for doth He not say. When you therefore shall see the abomination of the desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand)'? And understand we not all too well who is the aforesaid abomination of the desolation? And stand not his minions on the holy soil of England?'

'That's right, John!' someone called.

'Tell us more!' someone else added.

'Right gladly will I,' said the pig butcher, who had to be John Walsh. 'Again, in the selfsame book of Matthew, saith not the Lord, a€?Then they shall deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations, for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another'? Saith He not that very thing? And are we not afflicted, yea, sore afflicted, and slain? And betray we not one another, and hate we not likewise one another? But hark ye to what He saith next. Hark ye, now: a€? And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.' '