Ruled Britannia

Marry, I'd best bathe, to wash the taint away. A constable!' She muttered something else, which Shakespeare, perhaps fortunately, could not make out.

He had intended going back to his lodging and working on Boudicca there. He'd just sat down in front of the fire, though, when Cicely Sellis came out of her room with a swarthy fellow who lifted his hat to her, said, ' Muchas gracias,' and then vanished into the night.

As casually as he could, Shakespeare said, 'That was a Spaniard.' He hoped his words covered the pounding of his heart.

The cunning woman nodded. 'He is. friend to a woman who hath oft come hither, and so thought to ask of me a question of his own.'

'I hope he paid well,' Shakespeare said.

Cicely Sellis nodded again, and smiled. 'He did indeed. The dons are fools with their money, nothing less. Whether I gave him full. satisfaction I know not, though I dare hope.'

'Ah.' Shakespeare had been about to ask what the Spaniard had wanted, and had been afraid she wouldn't tell him. Now he thought he knew, especially as the fellow was well into his middle years. 'He hath a difficulty in rising to the occasion?'

'E'en so.' Amusement glinted in Cicely Sellis' eye.

'And have you a physic for the infirmity in's firmity?' Shakespeare coughed. 'I do but inquire from curiosity, mind.'

'Certes.' That amused glint got brighter. 'How shall I say't? Often-times, if a man believe I have this physic, why then I do.'

Shakespeare found himself amused, too. 'Strong reasons make strong actions, then?' he asked.

'Betimes they do, Master Shakespeare,' the cunning woman said. 'Ay, betimes they do. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.'

'A truth. Without doubt, a truth. Would more knew it.'

Now Cicely Sellis shook her head. 'Nay, say not so. Were it other than a secret close kept, who would visit cunning women? Do you publish it, and I starve.' She clasped her hands together in mock distress.

'No.' Shakespeare laughed out loud as he too shook his head.

'How not? How could it be otherwise?'

'How? I'll tell you straight. What's the common curse of mankind? Folly and ignorance. To wisdom man's a fool that will not yield. I do now mind me of a saying, a€?The fool doth think he is wise'-and you may as well forbid the sea for to obey the moon, as or by oath remove or counsel shake the fabric of man's folly. That is truth, or there be liars.'

'You think not much of them God made.'

'I think God made them-fools,' Shakespeare said. 'Or will you quarrel?'

'Not I,' Cicely Sellis said. 'Never let it be said I could do such an unchristian thing as that. And I'll leave you to your work now, good sir, lest you find reason to quarrel with me.' She dropped him a curtsy that might have come from a noblewoman-not that he'd ever had a noblewoman drop him a curtsy-and drew back into her room. 'God give you good even,' she said, closing the door behind her.

'And you,' Shakespeare answered, though he wasn't sure she heard. He perched on the stool in front of the table, then nervously got up and put more wood on the fire. The Widow Kendall would complain in the morning when she found it gone, but she wasn't here now, and Shakespeare needed the light. He also needed to take a deep breath and calm himself before setting pen to paper on Boudicca. First Constable Strawberry, then that whoreson Spaniard. 'Swounds, an I die not of an apoplexy, 'twill be the hand of God on my shoulder, holding me safe from harm.

It was, perhaps, not by accident that his mind and his pen turned to the revolt Britain, under the queen of the Iceni, raised against the Romans, and to the Romans' horrified response. How would they feel, seeing a province they thought subdued rise and smite 'em? he wondered.

His pen began to move. Poenius Postumus, a Roman officer, began to speak on the page:

'Nor can Rome task us with impossibilities,

Or bid us fight against a flood; we serve her,

That she may proudly say she hath good soldiers,

Not slaves to choke all hazards. Who but fools,

That make no difference betwixt certain dying

And dying well, would fling their fames and fortunes

Into this Britain-gulf, this quicksand-ruin,

That, sinking, swallows us! what noble hand

Can find a subject fit for blood there? or what sword

Room for his execution? what air to cool us,

But poison'd with their blasting breaths and curses,

Where we lie buried quick above the ground,

And are, with labouring sweat and breathless pain,

Kill'd like slaves, and cannot kill again?'

Shakespeare paused to read what he'd just written, and nodded in satisfaction. He started to add something to Poenius' speech, but his pen chose that moment to run dry. Muttering, hoping he wouldn't lose his inspiration, he inked it and resumed:

'Set me to lead a handful of my men

Against an hundred thousand barbarous slaves,

That have march'd name by name with Rome's best doers?

Serve 'em up some other meat; I'll bring no food

To stop the jaws of all those hungry wolves;

My regiment's mine own.'

He nodded again. Yes, that would do nicely. Poenius would later kill himself for shame at not having joined Suetonius' victorious army. Meanwhile, his anguished despair would move the play forward-and make the groundlings cheer his British, female foe.

After the Romans first conquered Britain, Tacitus said, they'd flogged Boudicca and violated her daughters. Rumor said the Spaniards had raped England's Virgin Queen after capturing her. Shakespeare didn't know whether rumor was true, but he intended to use it in the play.

But not tonight, he thought, yawning. He began to rest his head on his arms, then jerked upright with alarm tingling through him. If he fell asleep in front of the hearth and someone else got a look at what he was writing. If that happened, he was a dead man, and Lord Burghley's plan dead with him. He made himself get up and put away the deadly dangerous manuscript before he went to bed. His last thought as slumber seized him was, I may not make this business easier, but I will not make it harder.

When Lope De Vega walked into his chamber, he expected to find Diego asleep. He wouldn't even have been angry if he had; it couldn't have been far from midnight. The dice had rolled Lope's way, and he'd stayed in the game longer than he'd expected. Gambling during Lent was probably a sin. Whether it was or not, it was certainly profitable.

A lamp burned in the outer room where Diego dwelt. The servant wasn't even in bed, but sitting on a stool. Lope grinned at him. 'If you sleep all day, will you stay awake all night? Why aren't you.?'

He'd intended to say snoring, but his voice trailed away. He stared at Diego in astonished dismay. His servant stared back, more appalled still. Diego had just cut a bite from a big chunk of roast beef, and now stopped with that bite halfway to his mouth. The dim, flickering lamplight was more than enough to show how pale he went.

'Madre de Dios,' Lope whispered. 'Diego, you idiot, have you turned Protestant now?'