Ruled Britannia

that not so?'

'It is,' Shakespeare said. 'Or rather, it must be. But would I knew it for a truth, not for an article of faith.'

'As what priest or preacher hath not said?' Burbage answered with a laugh. 'Write the words, Will.

When the time comes, I'll say 'em. And what follows from thence. 'tis in God's hands, not ours.'

He was right. He was bound to be right-which went some way towards setting Shakespeare's mind at ease, but not so far as he would have liked. It did let him get through the day at the Theatre without making a fool of himself, which he might not have managed had Burbage not calmed him.

A couple of evenings later, as the poet was making his way down Shoreditch High Street towards Bishopsgate after a performance, a man stepped out of the evening shadows and said, 'You're Master Shakespeare, are you not?'

'I am,' Shakespeare said cautiously. 'And who, sir, are you?'

He used that sir from caution; had he felt more cheerful about the world and the people in it, he would have said sirrah. The fellow who'd asked his name looked like a mechanical, a laborer, in leather jerkin and laddered hose. When he smiled, he showed a couple of missing teeth. 'Oh, you need not know my name, sir,' he said.

'Then we have no business, one with the other,' Shakespeare answered, doing his best to sound polite and firm at the same time. 'Give you good den.' He started on.

'Hold!' the stranger said. As he set a hand on the hilt of his belt knife to emphasize the word, Shakespeare stopped. In grumbling tones, the fellow added, 'Nick said you were a tickle 'un. There's a name for you, by God and St. George! You ken Nick Skeres?'

Skeres had led him to Sir William Cecil. 'I do,' Shakespeare said reluctantly.

'Well, good on you, then.' The stranger gave him another less than reassuring smile. 'Nick sent me to your honor. You've someone in your company more friendlier to the dons than an honest Englishman ought to be?'

From whom had Skeres heard about Geoffrey Martin? Burbage? Will Kemp? Someone else altogether?

Or had this bruiser any true connection to Skeres at all? With such dignity as he could muster, Shakespeare said, 'I treat not with a man who hath no name.'

'Damn you!' the fellow said. But he didn't draw that knife. Instead, exasperated, he flung a name-'Ingram!' — at the poet.

Christian name? Surname? Shakespeare couldn't guess. But the man had given him some of what he wanted. Shakespeare answered him in turn: 'Yes, there is such a one, Master Ingram.'

'His name's Martin, eh? Like the bird?' Ingram asked. With odd hesitation, Shakespeare nodded. So did the other man. 'All right, friend.' He touched the brim of his villainous cap. 'God give you good even,' he said, and vanished once more into the deepening shadows. The poet stared after him, scratching his head.

'Surely,senor Shakespeare, you know that his holiness Pope Sixtus promised King Philip a million ducats when the first Spanish soldier set foot on English soil, and that he very handsomely paid all he had promised,' Lope de Vega said. 'A million gold ducats, mind you.'

'Yes, I understand,' Shakespeare replied. 'A kingly sum, in sooth.'

They sat with their heads together in the tiring room at the Theatre. De Vega puffed on a pipe of tobacco.

The smoke rising from it fought with that from torches, lamps, and braziers. 'I am glad you follow, sir,' he said. 'This needs must appear in the play on his Most Catholic Majesty's life.'

Shakespeare had been scribbling notes in a character Lope could not have deciphered had his life depended on it. Now he looked up sharply. 'Wherefore?' he asked. 'It doth little to advance the action, the more so as Pope and King never met to seal this bargain, it being made by underlings.'

'But it shows how beloved of his Holiness was the King,' Lope replied.

'By the King's own deeds shall I show that,' Shakespeare said, 'deeds worth the showing on a stage.

Here, he doth-or rather, his men do-naught but chaffer like tradesmen at the market over the sum to be paid. Were this your play, Master de Vega, would you such a scene include?'

After some thought, Lope spread his hands. 'I yield me,' he said. He sucked at the clay pipe, hoping the smoke would calm him. Working with Shakespeare was proving harder than he'd expected. The Englishman knew what was required of him: a play celebrating and memorializing Philip II's life and victories. But he had his own ideas of what belonged in such a play and how the pieces should fit together.

Having won his point, he could be gracious. 'My thanks, sir,' he said. 'Sith the play'll bear my name, I want it to be a match for the best of my other work.'

'For your pride's sake,' Lope said.

'For my honor's sake,' Shakespeare said.

Lope sprang from his stool and bowed low, sweeping off his hat so that the plume brushed the floor.

'Say no more, sir. Your fellow poets and players would think less of you, did you write below your best.

This I understand to the bottom of my soul, and I, in my turn, honor you for it. I am your servant.

Command me.'

'Sit, sit,' Shakespeare urged him. 'I own I stand in need of your counsel on the incidents of your King's life and on how to show 'em, the which is made more harder by his seldom leaving Madrid, those in his command working for him all through the Spanish Empire.'

'Even so.' Lope returned to his seat. He eyed the English poet with considerable respect. 'You have more experience bringing history to the stage than I.'

Shakespeare's smile somehow didn't quite reach his eyes. 'When I put words into the mouths of Romans, I may do't without fear the Master of the Revels will think my ghosts and shadows speak of matters political.'

Lope nodded. 'Certes. This is one of the uses of the distant past.' He leaned forward. 'Here, though, not so distant is the past of which we speak. How thought you to portray the King's conquest of the heretic Dutchmen?'

'Why, through his kinsman, the Duke of Parma.'

'Excellent,' Lope said. 'Most excellent. Parma being dead, no unsightly jealousies will to him accrue.'

They kept at it till the prompter summoned Shakespeare to sort out something or other in the new play he'd offered the company. A harried look on his face, the English poet returned a couple of minutes later to say, 'Your pardon, Master de Vega, but this bids fair to eat up some little while. He hath set upon my pride a blot, catching me with my characters doing now one thing, now another quite different. Having marred it, I now needs must mend it.'

' Qula stima,' Lope said, and then, in English, 'What a pity.' He got to his feet. 'I am wanted elsewhere anon. Shall we take up again on the morrow?'

' 'Twere better the day following,' Shakespeare answered.

Lope nodded. 'Until the day. Hasta luego, senor.' Shakespeare dipped his head, then hurried off. De Vega left the Theatre. He'd come on horseback today. One of the tireman's helpers had kept an eye on the beast to make sure it would still be there when he came out. Lope gave the Englishman a halfpenny for his trouble. By the fellow's frown, he'd hoped for more, but every man's hopes miscarried now and again.

Riding through the tenements that huddled outside the city wall, Lope felt something of a conquering caballero. He'd seldom had that feeling afoot. Now, though, he looked down on the English. From literally looking down on them, I do so metaphorically as well, he thought. A man's mind is a strange thing.

The English knew him for a conqueror, too. That made his passage harder, not easier. They got in his way, and feigned deafness when he shouted at them. They flung curses and catcalls from every other window. They flung other things, too: stones to make his horse shy and rear, lumps of filth to foul the beast and him. He never saw his tormentors. The ones not safe inside buildings melted into the crowds on Shoreditch High Street whenever he whirled in the saddle to try to get a glimpse of them.

By the time he got back down to Bishopsgate, he was in a perfect transport of temper. One of the Irish gallowglasses at the gate, seeing his fury, asked, 'Would your honor have joy of us breaking some heads for you, now?'

'No. Let it go. You cannot hope to punish the guilty,' Lope said, once he'd made sense of the heavily armed