Ruled Britannia

That comparison, perhaps fortunately, didn't occur to Lope till he'd got a horse from the stables and ridden out through Bishopsgate. When it did, the rain-a steady downpour-muffled his bad language so that only the couple of Englishmen closest to him turned their heads his way.

Lope squelched through the mud around the Theatre. The space within the wooden O where the groundlings would stand was muddy, too. On stage, actors rehearsed under the protection of a painted canvas canopy-the heavens, they called it. 'Where is Master Shakespeare?' Lope called in English to Richard Burbage. 'I see him not.'

The big player's broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. 'He should have come hither,' Burbage answered. 'He should have, but he did not do't. I know not where he is myself, Master de Vega, and wish to heaven 'twere otherwise.'

'Keep dry, now,' the Widow Kendall called out as William Shakespeare left her house to go to the Theatre. With rain drumming down, the advice struck him as useless, but was no doubt kindly meant. He nodded and hurried away.

His belly growled as he hurried through Bishopsgate. Lent wore on him. But he dared not break the fast, not in this year of all years. He was much more virtuous than he might have been, to make sure the Spaniards paid him no special notice.

'Master Shakespeare?'

The voice came out of the rain. Shakespeare jumped. 'Who is it?' he asked sharply, peering through the dripping early-morning gloom.

'Here I am, your honor.'

Shakespeare's heart sank. He'd heard that sly, whining voice before, seen that clever, ugly face. 'What would you, Master Skeres?' he said. 'Let it be brief, an you can. I must to the Theatre.'

Nicholas Skeres shook his head. 'I fear me not, or not yet. You needs must come with me, and straightaway.'

'Wherefore?' Shakespeare demanded.

Skeres' smile showed his bad teeth. It also made Shakespeare want to drive them down his throat. 'The wherefore of't's not for me to say,' Skeres answered. 'Still and all, them as sent me, they'd not be happy did I come back to 'em solus.'

'And who did send you?'

'Them you'll meet when I fetch you thither.' From everything Shakespeare had seen, Nick Skeres delighted in being uninformative. He also delighted in the power he held over Shakespeare. When he said, 'Come,' the snap of command filled his voice.

And Shakespeare had to go with him. He knew as much. He hated it, but he knew it. He did say, 'They'll miss me, up in Shoreditch.'

Nick Skeres shrugged. 'Better that than they miss you whose man I am.' He turned away towards the southwest. Heart sinking, Shakespeare followed, however much he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

A horse trying to haul a wagon full of barrels through the muck blocked a narrow street. The wagon had bogged down. The driver rained blows on the horse's back. With all its strength, the beast strained against the weight and the mud. Then, with a noise like a pistol shot, it broke a leg. Its scream was like that of a woman on the rack.

'Cut its throat,' Skeres said with a laugh. 'It's knacker's meat now.'

So it is, Shakespeare thought grimly. And you'd cut my throat as heartlessly, you bloody, bawdy villain, did I likewise break down in your employ. Nick Skeres laughed again, as if to say he knew what was going through Shakespeare's mind-knew and didn't care. And that was all too likely true.

'We've not far to go,' Skeres said after a while.

'What? Hereabouts?' Shakespeare pointed. 'There's the London Stone, the which signifies the Spaniards' barracks cannot lie a stone's throw distant. Beard we the dons in their den?'

Skeres laughed again, which did nothing to reassure Shakespeare. 'They think the same: that none'd be so fond as to plot under their very noses.' Even as he spoke, a squad of unhappy-looking Spaniards tramped past on patrol. One man glanced towards the two Englishmen and kept walking. The rest paid them no attention at all.

'Madness,' Shakespeare muttered. Nick Skeres grinned at the Spanish soldiers, who disappeared round a corner one after another. Reluctantly-most reluctantly-Shakespeare nodded. 'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.'

'E'en so,' Skeres said. 'Here. Come you with me. This is the house we seek.'

The building in question was large and well made. 'Whose it it?' Shakespeare asked.

'It belongs to Sir John Hart, the alderman,' Skeres answered. 'But that's nor here nor there.'

Instead of going to the door and knocking, as he had at the Bacons' house in Drury Lane a few months before, he led Shakespeare to a side gate that opened onto an enclosed garden: one surely splendid in spring and summer, but sad now, with scarcely any green to be seen. 'Who'd meet us here?'

Shakespeare said, pulling his hat down lower to keep his face dry.

'Why, the men who're fain to see you. Who else?' Nick Skeres replied. Shakespeare glared. The other man looked back, unperturbed and resolutely close-mouthed. He took Shakespeare towards a rose arbor that no doubt perfumed the air and gave welcome shade when the sun shone high and hot, but that seemed as badly out of season as the rest of the garden now. As Shakespeare drew closer to it, he saw through the rain that two men sat in that poor shelter-waiting for him?

' 'Sblood, Master Skeres, they'll take their deaths,' he exclaimed.

Shrugging, Skeres answered, 'An they fret not, why should you?' He sounded altogether indifferent. The milk of human kindness ran thin in him, if it ran at all.

When Shakespeare ducked his way into the arbor, both waiting men slowly got to their feet. 'God give you good morrow,' Sir William Cecil rumbled.

Shakespeare bowed low. 'And you, your Grace,' he said. 'But. should you not go inside, where.

where it's warm and dry?' Where I may hope you'll die not on the instant, was what he meant. Lord Burghley was paler and puffier than he had been the previous autumn; he wheezed with every breath he took, and shivered despite being swaddled in furs.

But he shook his head even so. 'Who knows what ears lurk within? As the matter advanceth, so advanceth also the need to keep't secret. And here, in sooth, we speak under the rose.' He chuckled rheumily. Despite the laugh and his bold words, though, his lips had a bluish cast that alarmed Shakespeare. He gathered strength and went on, 'When last we met, I told you my son would take this matter forward. Allow me to present you to him now. Robert, here is Master Shakespeare, the poet.'

'I am your servant, sir,' Shakespeare murmured, bowing to the younger man as he had to the elder.

Robert Cecil gave back a bow of his own. He was about Shakespeare's age, with a long, thin, pale face made longer still by the pointed chin beard he wore and by his combing his seal-brown hair back from his forehead. He would not have been a tall man even had he stood straight; a crooked back robbed him of several more inches. But when he said, 'I take no small pleasure at making your acquaintance, Master Shakespeare, being an admirer of your dramas,' Shakespeare bowed again, knowing he'd got praise worth having. The younger Cecil's voice was higher and lighter than his father's, but no less full of sharp, even prickly, intelligence.

Sir William Cecil sank back to the bench from which he'd risen. To Shakespeare's relief, his color improved slightly when he sat down. Switching to Latin, he asked, 'How fares your play upon the rebellion of Boudicca?'

'I hope to finish it before spring ends,' Shakespeare replied in the same language. 'I am certain sure, my lord, you will already know I am also ordered to write a play upon the life of King Philip.'

'Yes, I do know that.' Lord Burghley nodded. 'I also know the Spaniards are paying you more than I gave you at our last meeting. Robert, be so good as to make amends for that.'

'Certes, Father.' Robert Cecil reached under his cloak. His hands were long and thin and pale, too-hands a musician might have wished he had. He gave Shakespeare a small but nicely heavy leather sack. 'We cannot let ourselves be outbid.'

'By God, sir-' Shakespeare began, alarmed back into English.

The younger Cecil waved him to silence. 'Did we fear betrayal from you, we'd work with another. This is for