Ruled Britannia

verses proper heed. Would I had been wrong.'

'Would you had. ' Shakespeare shook his head. 'No, never mind. 'Tis of no moment now. You must get hence, if they dog you for this. Want you money?'

'Nay. What I have sufficeth me,' Marlowe answered.

'Then what think you I might do that you cannot for yourself?' Shakespeare asked. 'Hie yourself down to the river. Take ship, if any ship there be that sails on the instant. If there be none such, take a boat away from London, and the first ship you may. So that you outspeed the hue and cry at your heels, all may yet be well, or well enough.'

'Or well enough,' Marlowe echoed gloomily. 'But hark you, Will: a€?well enough' is not. Even a€?well' is scarce well enough.'

Nothing ever satisfied him. Shakespeare had known that as long as he'd known the other poet. Marlowe had a jackdaw's curiosity, and a jackdaw's inability to hold a course when something-or someone-new and bright and shiny caught his eye. Shakespeare stepped forward and reached out in the fog. One groping hand grazed Marlowe's face. He dropped it to Marlowe's shoulder. 'God speed you, Kit. Get safe away, and come home again when. when times are better.'

Marlowe snorted. 'I hope I must not wait so long as that.' He hugged the breath out of Shakespeare, and kissed him half on the mouth, half on the cheek. 'You give good counsel. I'll take it, an I may.'

'I'll pray for you,' Shakespeare said.

'Belike 'twill do me no lasting harm,' Marlowe answered. Having got the last word, he hurried away. The fog muffled his footsteps, and soon swallowed them. Shakespeare sighed. He'd done what he could. If nothing else, he'd talked Marlowe out of his blind panic. That mattered. It might matter a great deal.

'It might,' Shakespeare muttered, trying to convince himself.

He made his way through the thick, swirling mist to the Widow Kendall's house. His landlady sat in the parlor, poking up the fire. 'I wondered if we'd lost you, Master Will,' she said as he closed the door behind him. 'Thick as clotted cream out there.'

'So it is,' Shakespeare agreed. Beads of fog dotted his face and trickled from his beard, as sweat would have on a hot day.

'Will you waste my wood, to give you light wherewith to write?' his landlady asked.

'An it serve my purpose, madam, I reckon it no waste,' Shakespeare said with dignity.

'Nay, and why should you?' the Widow Kendall replied. ' 'Tis not you buying the wood you burn.'

'Not so,' Shakespeare said. 'I buy it with the rent you have of me each month.' She sent him a stony stare. Not wanting her angry at him, he added, 'Be that as it may, I need no wood tonight. I finished a play at my ordinary, by the fine, clear light of the candles therein.'

'I am glad to hear it,' Jane Kendall said, 'both for the sake of my wood and for the sake of your rent. So long as you keep writing, so long as your company buys your plays, you'll pay me month by month, eh?'

'Just so,' Shakespeare agreed. Where Marlowe was pure, self-centered will, the Widow Kendall was equally pure, self-centered greed.

'And what call you this one?' she asked. 'Will't fetch you a fine, fat fee?'

'Very fine, God willing,' he said. As he had with Kate, he fought shy of naming Boudicca for her.

'Good, good,' she said, smiling. His money, or some of it, was destined to become her money. 'Is this the play on the life of good King Philip, then? That surely deserveth more than a common fee, its subject also being more than common.'

He shook his head. 'No, that will be a history-a pageant, almost a masque. The play I just now finished is a tragedy.' That much, he thought he could safely say.

'I'll tell you what's a tragedy, Master Shakespeare,' the Widow Kendall said. 'What I needs must pay for firewood-marry, 'tis the bleeding of mine own life's blood. '

She went on complaining till Shakespeare took advantage of a brief lull to slip away to his bedroom. Jack Street lay on his back, his mouth wide open, making the night hideous. Me? I snore not, the glazier had insisted. Shakespeare laughed quietly. Street might not be able to hear himself, but everyone else could.

After a moment, the poet's laughter faltered. So far as he could tell, Street recalled nothing of the argument they'd had at Easter. Whatever Cicely Sellis had done to him, its effect lingered. Maybe it wasn't witchcraft. Shakespeare had yet to find another name that fit half so well, though.

He put his papers and pens and ink in his chest, and made sure the lock clicked shut. Then he pulled off his shoes, shed his ruff, and lay down on the bed in doublet and hose. His eyes slid shut. Maybe he snored, too. If he did, he never knew it.

When he woke the next morning, Jack Street's bed was empty. Sam King was dressing for another day of pounding London's unforgiving streets looking for work. 'God give you good morrow, Master Will,'

he said as Shakespeare sat up and rubbed his eyes.

'And a good morrow to you as well,' Shakespeare answered around a yawn.

'I'm for a bowl of the widow's porridge, and then whatever I can find,' King said. The porridge was liable to be the only food he got all day. He had to know as much, but didn't fuss about it.

Shakespeare couldn't help admiring that bleak courage. 'Good fortune go before you,' he said.

King laughed. 'Good fortune hath ever gone before me: so far before me, I see it not. An I run fast enough, though, peradventure I'll catch it up.' He bobbed his head in a shy nod, then hurried out to the Widow Kendall's kitchen for whatever bubbled in her pot this morning.

Shakespeare broke his fast on porridge, too. Having eaten, he went up to the Theatre for the day's rehearsal. He worried all the way there. If inquisitors came after Cicely Sellis, would they search everywhere in the house? If they opened his chest and saw the manuscript of Boudicca, he was doomed.

And another question, one that had been in the back of his mind, now came forward: even with Boudicca finished, how could the company rehearse it without being betrayed? The players would have to rehearse. He could see that. When word of Philip's death reached England, they would-they might-give the play on the shortest of notice. They would have to be ready. But how? Yes, he saw the question clearly. The answer? He shook his head.

He was among the first of the company to get to the Theatre. Richard Burbage paced across the stage like a caged wolf-back and forth, back and forth. He nodded to Shakespeare as the poet came in through the groundlings' entrance. 'God give you good day, Will,' he boomed. 'How wags your world?'

Even with only a handful of people in the house, he pitched his voice so folk in the upper gallery-of whom there were at the moment none-could hear him with ease.

'I fare well enough,' Shakespeare answered. 'And you? Wherefore this prowling?'

'I am to be Alexander today,' Burbage reminded him. 'As he pursues Darius, he is said to be relentless.'

He waved a sheet of paper with his part and stage directions written out. 'Seemed I to you relentless?'

'Always,' Shakespeare said. Burbage pursued wealth and fame with a singlemindedness that left the poet half jealous, half appalled.

Laughing, Burbage said, 'It is one of Kit's plays, mind. A relentless man of his is twice as relentless as any other poet's, as an angry man of his hath twice the choler and a frightened man twice the fear. With his mighty line, he is never one to leave the auditors wondering what sort of folk his phantoms be.'

Shakespeare nodded. 'Beyond doubt, you speak sooth. But come you down.' He gestured. 'I'd have a word with you.'

'What's toward?' Burbage sat at the edge of the stage, then slid down into the groundlings' pit.

In a low voice, Shakespeare said, 'Marlowe is fled. I pray he be fled. Anthony Bacon, belike, was but the first boy-lover the dons and the inquisitors sought. An Kit remain in England, I'd give not a groat for his life.'

'A pox!' Burbage exclaimed, as loud as ever-loud enough to make half a dozen players and stagehands look toward him to see what had happened. He muttered to himself, then went on more quietly: 'How know you this?'

'From Kit's own lips,' Shakespeare answered. 'He found me yesternight. I bade him get hence, quick as ever he could-else he'd not stay quick for long. God grant he hearkened to me.'