Ruled Britannia

Keep up the good work.'

Lope left his office in something of a daze. Maybe Guzman's amiga really did have the face of an angel and tits out to there. Lope couldn't imagine what else would have made the sardonic nobleman seem so much like a human being.

'Where's Master Martin?' Shakespeare asked in the tiring room at the Theatre. 'He was to have the different several parts from Love's Labour's Won ready to go to the scribes, that they might make for the players fair copies.'

'Good luck to 'em,' Will Kemp said. 'There's not a rooster living could read your hen scratchings.'

The clown exaggerated, but not by a great deal-not enough, at any rate, to make Shakespeare snap back at him. Richard Burbage looked around. 'Ay, where is he?' Burbage said, as if Kemp hadn't spoken. 'Geoff's steady as the tides, trusty as a hound-'

'Ah, Dick,' Kemp murmured. 'You shew again why you're so much better with another man's words in your mouth.'

He'd made that crack before. It must have stung even so, for Burbage glared at him. A couple of players laughed, but they quickly fell silent. Not only was Burbage a large, powerful man, but he and his family owned the Theatre. Insulting him to his face took nerve- or a fool's foolishness, Shakespeare thought.

'Pray God he hath not absconded,' Jack Hungerford said.

That drew a loud, raucous guffaw from Will Kemp. 'Pray God indeed!' the clown said. 'He's to the broggers with all our papers, for the which, they'll assuredly pay him not a farthing under sixpence ha'penny-he's rich for life, belike.'

He got a bigger laugh there than he had when he mocked Burbage. Shakespeare didn't find the crack funny. 'Loose papers may not signify to thee, that hast not had pirates print 'em without thy let and without thy profit,' he growled. 'As ever, thou think'st naught for any of the company but thyself. Thou'rt not only fool, but ass and dog as well.'

'A dog, is it?' Kemp said. 'Thy mother's of my generation; what's she, if I be a dog?'

Shakespeare sprang for him. They each landed a couple of punches before the others of the company pulled them apart. Smarting from a blow on the cheek, Shakespeare snarled, 'A dog thou art, and for the sake of bitchery.' He didn't know that Kemp sought whores more than any other man, but flung the insult anyhow, too furious to care about truth.

Before the clown could reply in like vein, someone with a loud, booming voice called out from the doorway to the tiring room: 'Here, now! Here now, by God! What's the meaning of this? What's the meaning of't, by God?'

'Constable Strawberry!' Burbage said. 'Good day, sir.'

'Good day,' Walter Strawberry said. He was a jowly, middle-aged man who looked like a bulldog and had little more wit.

'I hope you are well?' Burbage said. The Theatre belonging to his family, he dealt with the constable. 'I have not seen you long; how goes the world?'

'It wears, sir, as it grows,' the constable replied.

'Ay, that's well known.' Burbage's tone grew sharper: 'Why come you here?' He quietly paid the constable and his helpers to stay away from the Theatre except when the players needed aid.

'First tell you me, what's this garboil here in aid of? What's it about, eh?' He pointed to the men holding Shakespeare and the others with a grip on Kemp.

'Words, words, words,' Shakespeare answered, twisting free. 'Good words are better than bad strokes, and the strokes Will and I gave each other were poor as any ever given. We are, meseems, friends again.' He looked toward the clown.

Kemp had also got loose. 'Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly,' he said. Shakespeare stiffened. With a nasty smile, Kemp added, 'But not ours.' He came over to Shakespeare and planted a large, wet, smacking kiss on his cheek, whispering, 'Scurvy, dotard, thin-faced knave,' as he did so.

His acting wouldn't have convinced many, but it sufficed for Constable Strawberry. 'Good, good,' he boomed. 'High spirits, animal spirits, eh?'

'Why come you here?' Richard Burbage repeated, as Shakespeare and Kemp, both cued by animal spirits, mouthed, Ass, at each other.

'Why come I here?' the constable echoed, as if he himself might have forgotten. He coughed portentously, then went on, 'Know you a certain wight named Geoffrey Martin?'

'We do,' Burbage answered.

Will Kemp said, 'A more certain wight never was born, by God.' Strawberry ignored that, which probably meant he didn't understand it.

'Why come you here?' Burbage asked for the third time. 'Hath aught amiss befallen him?'

'Amiss? Amiss?' Walter Strawberry said. 'You might say so. You just might-an you reckon murther aught amiss, you might.'

'Murther?' The dreadful word came from half the company, Shakespeare among them. Horror and astonishment filled most voices. Shakespeare's held horror alone. He realized he was not surprised, and wished to heaven he were.

'Murther, yes, murther most foul,' Constable Strawberry said. 'Master Martin, a were found besides an ordinary, stabbed above an eye-the dexterous one, it were-the said wound causing his deceasing to be.

Murther, the which were to be demonstarted.'

'Who'd do such a heinous deed?' Burbage said. Again, Shakespeare knew, or thought he knew, all too well. Ingram had looked the sort to be handy with a knife.

'Master Burbage, sir, I know that not. This while, I know that not,' the constable said gravely. 'I put it to you-ay, to all of ye-what manner of enemies had he, of foes, of rivals, of opposants, and other suchlike folk who wished him not well? Never set I mine eyne upon the man till overlooking his dead corpse, so haply you will have known him better than I.'

Behind Shakespeare, someone murmured, ' Vere legitur, lex asinus est.'

'What's that?' Strawberry said sharply. 'What's that? If you know somewhat of the case, speak out! An you know not, keep a grave silence, like to Master Martin's keeping the silence of the grave. If you be lukewarm of knowing, spew nothing out of your mouths.'

'Truly, you are a revelation to us,' Will Kemp said.

'Doth any man here know who might have been the prime motion of the said Master Geoffrey Martin's untimely coming to dust?' the constable asked.

Shakespeare felt Richard Burbage's eye on him. Misery roweled him. I meant it not to come to this, tolled in his mind again and again, like a great iron bell. Before God, I meant it not. But come to this it had, whether he'd meant it or not. He couldn't even be surprised. Had he not embarked on treason, or what Isabella and Albert and their Spanish props would reckon treason, no one would have slain poor Geoff Martin. And treason and murther ever keep together, as two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose.

Walter Strawberry looked from one player to another, searching the faces of men and boys, making them search their consciences. Shakespeare had never known the tiring room so silent.

He did not break the silence. Neither did Burbage.

'Well,' the constable said at last. 'Well and well and well, and yet, not so well. A man is murthered. His blood crieth out for revengeance. I had fondly hoped you might make the way more simpler-'

'Fondly, quotha,' someone said in a penetrating whisper.

Strawberry stared, but did not spy the miscreant. He coughed and repeated himself: 'I fondly hoped you might make the way more simpler, but an't be no, 'tis no. Whosoever the wretch that strook him down may be, I purpose discovering him. And what I purpose, I aim at. Give you good morrow.' He turned on his heel and ponderously strode away.

That clotted silence held the tiring room for another minute or two, till the players were sure the constable was out of earshot. Then almost everyone started talking at once. Almost everyone: Shakespeare held aloof, listening without speaking. One wild guess followed another: footpads? an outraged husband? a creditor? a debtor?