Ruled Britannia

'What costumes have we for a Roman play?' Shakespeare asked.

'A Roman play?' The tireman frowned. 'Meseems we could mount one at need.' In most dramas, no matter when or where they were set, players wore clothes of current fashion. Audiences expected nothing else. But Roman plays were different. People had a notion that the Romans had dressed differently. And so actors strode the boards in knee-length white tunics and in gilded helms with nodding crests mounted (often insecurely) above them. Despite his answer, Hungerford's frown didn't go away.

'Why ask you that, though? I know for a certainty we offer no Roman plays any time soon, nor Grecian ones, neither.'

Shakespeare nodded nervously. 'You speak sooth. But I am writing a Roman play, one that may be shown soon after it's done.'

'Ah?' Hungerford quirked a gingery eyebrow; they'd held their color better than his hair or his beard.

'This alongside your King Philip?'

'Yes,' Shakespeare said: one syllable covering a lot of ground.

'You've much to do, then, and scant time wherein to do't,' Hungerford said. Shakespeare nodded; that was a manifest truth. The tireman asked, 'And what title hath this latest?'

' Boudicca,' Shakespeare answered, and waited to see what would come of that. If Jack Hungerford knew Latin and remembered his Roman history, the title would be plenty to alarm him-and to hang Shakespeare, if he mentioned it to the wrong people.

But the name was only a nonsense word to Hungerford; Shakespeare saw as much in his eyes. 'Scarce sounds Roman at all,' the tireman said.

'It is, though,' Shakespeare said, and summarized the plot in a few sentences.

Even before he finished, Hungerford held up a hand. 'Are you daft, Master Shakespeare? Never would Sir Edmund let that be seen. No more would the dons. Our lives'd answer for the tenth part of't-no, for the hundredth.'

'I know't,' Shakespeare said. Marry, how I know't! 'And yet I purpose going forward even so. What say you?'

Jack Hungerford didn't say anything for some little while. He stroked his chin, studying the poet. 'You sought to sound me once before on this matter, eh?'

'I did,' Shakespeare agreed.

The tireman shook his head. 'No, sir. You did not. You fought shy of 't then.'

'And if I did?' Shakespeare threw that back as a challenge. 'You hold my life in the hollow of your hand.

Close it and I perish.'

'I wonder,' Hungerford murmured. 'Tell me, an you will: did you discover yourself to Geoff Martin?'

Shakespeare said not a word. He hoped his face gave no answer, either. Hungerford grunted softly. 'If I say you nay, will Constable Strawberry, that good and honest man, sniff after my slayer like a dog too old to take a scent after a bone that never was there?'

'I devised not poor Geoff's death, nor compassed it,' Shakespeare said.

'The which is not what I asked,' the tireman observed. Shakespeare only waited. Jack Hungerford grunted again. 'I'm with you,' he said. 'I have not so much life left, and mislike living on my knees what remains.'

'Praise God!' Shakespeare exclaimed. 'I know not how we could have gone on without you.'

'With a new tireman, belike, as we have a new prompter,' Hungerford said. 'Will you tell me I'm mistook?' Shakespeare wished he could and knew he couldn't. Hungerford nodded to himself. 'A Roman play, is't? But tell me what you require, Master Will, and you shall have't presently.'

'My thanks.' My thanks if you cozen me not, if you fly not to the Spaniards soon as I turn my back.

'Which of the boys thought you to play the part wherefrom the piece takes its name?' Hungerford asked.

'Why, Tom, of course,' Shakespeare answered. 'No woman, I'll swear, could better a woman personate.'

But the tireman shook his head. 'He will not serve.'

'What? 'Swounds, why not?'

'Item: his elder brother is a priest. Item: his uncle is a sergeant amongst Queen Isabella's guards.' Jack Hungerford ticked off points on his fingers as he made them. 'Item: his father gave the rood screen at their parish church, such adornments having been ordained once more on our being returned to Romish ways. Item: the lad himself more than once in my hearing hath said he's fain on becoming a man to follow his brother into the priesthood.' He glanced over at Shakespeare. 'Shall I go on?'

'By my troth, no. Would you had not gone so long!' Shakespeare made an unhappy hissing noise. 'Why knew I so little of the lad his leanings?'

'Why? I'll tell you why, Master Will.' Hungerford chuckled. 'To you, he's but a boy playing parts writ or by you or by some other poet. You think on him more than you think on a fancy robe some player wears, ay, but not much more. Did you think on him as a boy, now. ' His voice trailed away, then picked up again: 'I warrant you, I'd need to instruct Master Kit in none o' this.'

'Belike that's so. Indeed, I'm sure Kit hath made it a point to learn all worth knowing of the boy, from top to bottom.'

'Just so. Your bent being otherwise, you-' The tireman broke off. The look he sent Shakespeare was somewhere between reproachful and horrified. 'You said that of a purpose.'

'I?' Shakespeare looked as innocent as he could. His own worries helped keep glee from his face as he went on, 'If the part be for another, as meseems it needs must, what of him? How keep we him in ignorance of this our design?'

'Haply his voice will break, or his beard sprout. He's rising fifteen,' Hungerford said. 'Some troubles themselves resolve.'

'Haply.' Shakespeare made the word into a curse. ' a€?Haply' suffices not. You spoke of Geoff Martin.

Are you fain to have his fate befall a boy, for no cause but that he's of Romish faith? He will die the death, I tell you, unless he be eased from this company ere we give our Boudicca.' If ever we give't, he thought unhappily.

The tireman frowned, too. 'Sits the wind in that corner?'

'Nowhere else,' Shakespeare answered. 'What's a mere boy, to those who'd dice for a kingdom?'

'An they think thus, should they win it?' Hungerford asked.

'Are their foes better?' Shakespeare returned. 'Saw you the auto de fe this past autumn?'

'Nay, I saw't not, for which I give thanks to God. But I've seen others, and I take your point.' Jack Hungerford bared his teeth in what was anything but a smile. 'Would someone's hands were clean.'

'Pilate's were. He washed 'em,' Shakespeare said. Hungerford showed his teeth again. With a sigh, Shakespeare continued, 'Would they'd tasked another with the deed, but, sith 'tis mine, how can I do't save with the best that's in me?'

Hungerford eyed him. 'They might have chose worse. In many several ways, they might have.'

'You do me o'ermuch honor,' Shakespeare said. The tireman shook his head. Shakespeare refused to let himself be distracted: 'What of Tom? We must separate him from ourselves.'

'If he is to be driven hence, Dick Burbage is the man to do't,' the tireman said.

'I'll speak to him,' Shakespeare said at once. The more someone, anyone, else did, the less he would have to do himself, and the less guilty he would feel. He looked down at his hands. They already had Geoffrey Martin's blood on them. He didn't want Tom's there, too. He didn't even want the burden of pushing Tom from Lord Westmorland's Men. He already carried too many burdens.

Only when he went looking for Burbage did he stop and think about the burdens the other player carried.

Tom was without a doubt the best boy actor the company had. Once he was gone, which of the others would take his roles? Which of the others could take his roles? How much damage would his leaving cause to performances? On the other hand, how much damage would his staying cause to him?

Burbage listened with more patience than Shakespeare would have expected-with more patience, in fact, than the poet thought he could have mustered himself. At last, he let out a long sigh. 'What of the company will be left once you have your way with it?' he asked somberly.