Ruled Britannia

Maybe the talk with Marlowe was what he needed to get his wits going, though. That night, at the ordinary, he began work on the play Lord Burghley had asked of him. He wished he were as wealthy as one of the Bacons, or as Burghley himself. Committing treason was bad enough. Committing it in public.

He put a hand over his papers whenever Kate the serving woman came near. She found it funny instead of taking offense. 'I'll not steal your words,' she said. 'Since when could I, having no letters of mine own?'

She'd said before she needed to make a mark instead of signing her name. Shakespeare relaxed-a very little. Whenever anyone but Kate walked past the table where he wrote, he kept on covering up the manuscript. That, of course, drew more attention to it than it would have got had he kept on writing. A plump burgess looked down at the sheet in front of him, shook his head, and said, 'You need have no fear, sir. Nor God nor the Devil could make out your character.'

Geoffrey Martin had voiced similar complaints. But poor Martin had been the company's book-keeper; he naturally had a low opinion of the hand of a mere poet. To hear someone with less exacting standards scorn Shakespeare's script was oddly reassuring.

After a while, Shakespeare was the only customer left in the ordinary. His quill scratched across the paper so fast, the ink on one line scarcely had time to dry before his hand smudged it while writing the next. He started when Kate said, 'Curfew's nigh, Master Will.'

'So soon?' he said, amazed.

'Soon?' She shook her head. 'You've sat there writing sith you finished supper, none of you but your right hand moving. Look-two whole leaves filled. Never saw I you write so fast.'

Little by little, Shakespeare came forward in time a millennium and a half, from bold, outraged Britons and swaggering Romans to London in the year of our Lord 1598. 'I wrote two leaves? By God, I did.'

He whistled in wonder. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done so much of a night, either. Not even when he was finishing Love's Labour's Won had his pen flown like this.

'Is't something new, then?' she asked.

'Yes.' He nodded. He could safely say that much. And he could safely let her see the manuscript, as she'd reminded him earlier in the evening, for she couldn't read it. And. all of a sudden, he didn't feel like thinking about the play any more. 'Might I bide a little longer?' he asked. Kate nodded. She didn't seem much surprised.

Later, when they lay side by side on the narrow little bed in her cramped little chamber, she set her palm on the left side of his chest, perhaps to feel his heartbeat slow towards normal from its pounding peak of a few minutes before. Shakespeare set his own hand on hers. 'What's to become of us, Will?' she asked.

He sighed. He'd run into altogether too many questions lately for which he had no good answers. Here was another. Having no good answers, he responded with a question of his own: 'What can become of us? I've a wife and two daughters in Stratford. I've never hid 'em from thee.'

Kate nodded. 'Yes, thou'rt honest, in thine own fashion.' That neither sounded nor felt like praise. But here they lay together in her bed, warm and naked and sated. If that wasn't praise of the highest sort a woman could give a man, what was it?

'I do love thee,' he said. Kate snuggled against him. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, hoping he was telling the truth. He sighed again. 'Did I have a choice. '

But before Shakespeare was born, Henry VIII had wanted a choice, too. When the Pope wouldn't give him one, he'd pulled England away from Rome. Now, of course, the invading Spaniards had forcibly brought her back to the Catholic Church. But even if Elizabeth still reigned, even if England were still Protestant, divorce was for sovereigns and nobles and those rich enough to pay for a private act of Parliament, not for the likes of a struggling poet and player who lived in a Bishopsgate lodging house, had a sour wife far away, and sometimes slept with the serving woman at the ordinary around the corner.

'Didst thou have a choice. ' Kate echoed.

Before God, I know not what I'd do, Shakespeare thought. If he hadn't got Anne with child, he doubted he would have wed her. Years and years too late to worry about that now, though. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. He'd heard that text in sermons more times than he could count since the Armada put Isabella and Albert on the English throne. Priests harped on it, to show that Protestants who countenanced divorce were heretics and sinners.

'Didst thou have a choice. ' Kate repeated, a little more sharply this time.

Would she have me lie to her? Shakespeare wondered. He was just then and would keep on lying to practically everyone he knew. Why should a serving woman be different from anyone else? Because I do- because I might-love her. Not a perfect answer, but the best he could do.

'Did I have a choice, my chuck. ' Shakespeare sighed and shrugged, expecting her to throw him out of that narrow bed for not crying out that he would cleave to her come what might.

She startled him by laughing, and startled him again by kissing him on the cheek. 'Perhaps thou art truly honest, Will. Most men'd lie for the sake of their sweetheart's feelings.'

'I'll give thee what I can, Kate, and cherish all thou givest me. And now I had best be gone.'

Shakespeare got out of bed and began to dress.

'God keep thee, Will,' she said, a yawn blurring her words. 'Hurry to thy lodging. Surely curfew's past.'

'God keep thee,' he said, and opened the door to her room. He went out, closing the door behind him.

Lope De Vega came up to the priest. The Englishman marked his forehead with the ashes of the 'palm' (usually, in this northern clime, willow or box or yew) branches used the previous Palm Sunday. In Latin, the priest said, 'Remember, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.'

Crossing himself, Lope murmured, 'Amen,' and made his way out of St. Swithin's church. Most of the people he saw on the streets, English and Spaniards alike, already had their foreheads marked with the sign of repentance that opened the Lenten season. Anyone who didn't, especially in a year when Catholics and heretics celebrated Easter more than a month apart, would get some hard looks from those whose duty was to examine such things.

Though it was still the first week of February, the day was springlike: mild, almost warm, the sky a hazy blue with fluffy white clouds drifting slowly across it from west to east. The sun shone brightly. A few more such days and flowers would begin to open, seeds to bring forth new plants, leaves to bud on trees.

Once, Lope had seen this weather hold long enough for nature to be fooled-which made the following blizzard all the crueler by comparison. He didn't expect this stretch to last so long. Usually, they were like a deceitful girl who promised much more than she intended to give. Knowing as much, he didn't feel himself cheated, as he had when he'd first come to England.

'I am sure you are brokenhearted that Lord Westmorland's Men have got a dispensation to let them perform through Lent,' Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n said outside the church.

'Oh, of course, your Excellency,' de Vega replied. He was damned if he'd let this little pipsqueak, still wet behind the ears, outdo him in irony. He touched his forehead, as if to say the ashes there symbolized his mourning. But then he went on, 'Most of the acting companies gain these dispensations. They would have a hard time staying in business if they didn't.' Acting companies were by the nature of things shoestring operations (Lord Westmorland's Men a bit less than most); they could ill afford losing more than a tenth of their revenue by shutting down between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

'Well, go on up to the Theatre, then,' GuzmA?n said. 'See if anyone is bold enough to flaunt his heresy to the world at large. Whoever he is, he will pay.'

'Yes, sir,' Lope said. 'Sir, is there any further word of his Most Catholic Majesty? Shakespeare has asked after him. Not unreasonably, he wants some notion of how much time he has to compose the drama Don Diego Flores de Valdas set him.'

'I have news, yes, but none of it good,' Captain Guzman replied. 'The gout has attacked his neck, which makes both eating and sleeping very difficult for him. And the sores on his hands and feet show no sign of healing. If anything, they begin to ulcerate and spread. Also, his dropsy is no better-if anything, is worse.'

Tears stung Lope's eyes. He touched the ashes on his forehead again. 'The priest in the church spoke truly: to dust we shall return. But this is bitter, a man who was-who is-so great, having an end so hard and slow. Better if he simply went to sleep one night and never woke up.'

'God will do as He pleases, Senior Lieutenant, not as you please. Would you set your judgment against