Ruled Britannia

saying, 'Pass through. Quick now, mind.'

'Lean raw-boned rascals,' Burbage muttered, but he made sure the gallowglasses couldn't hear him.

'I do despise the bloody cannibals,' Shakespeare agreed, also in a low voice. 'May they prove roast meat for worms.'

'God grant it!' Burbage said. 'That the dons lord it over us is one thing-they earned the right, having beaten us in war. But these redpolled swashbucklers?' He shook his head. 'Men who'd never dare rise against the Spaniards will run riot to cast out Irish wolves.'

'Ay, belike.' Shakespeare wondered if Sir William Cecil had thought of inflaming Londoners against the savages from the western island. Likely he will have, the poet thought. He sees so much; would he have missed that? Still, he resolved to speak of it to Lord Burghley when next he saw him, or to Nick Skeres or Thomas Phelippes if he didn't see the noble soon.

Phelippes? Shakespeare kicked a pebble into a puddle. Whom did the clever, dusty little man really serve? Sir William? Don Diego? Or only himself, first, last, and always? As soon as Shakespeare shaped the question, he saw what the answer had to be. But where, in the end, would Phelippes judge his interest lay? And how much would that cost everyone on the other side?

Burbage clapped him on the back. 'I'm to mine own house. God give you good even, Will.'

'And you,' Shakespeare said absently. His head full of plots, he had to remind himself to turn off Bishopsgate Street and make for his lodging. Then he'd be off to the ordinary, to write as long as he could, and then back to the lodging once more, this time to sleep. 'God save me,' he muttered. 'May Day passed by, and I knew it not.' He wondered what else he'd missed, and decided he didn't want to know.

'Come on, Diego,' Lope de Vega said impatiently from horseback. 'You have only a donkey to mount. The two of you must be close cousins.'

' Senor, I would never mount my cousin. The Good Book forbids it-and besides, she's ugly,' his servant answered. As Lope blinked at such unexpected wit, Diego swung up into the saddle. The ass brayed pitifully at his weight.

'You have your costume?' Lope demanded. Diego set a hand on a saddlebag. De Vega nodded. 'Good.

To Westminster, then. They say England's Isabella may come to watch the play, to see Castile's performed on stage. She could make your fortune, Diego.' She could make mine, he thought.

Diego said, 'A servant playing a servant won't make much of a mark. You should have cast me as Ferdinand.'

They rode away from the Spanish barracks at the heart of London and west toward the court center.

Lope had to rein in to keep his horse, a high-spirited mare, from leaving Diego's donkey behind.

'Ferdinand!' Lope said. 'What mad dream is that? You're not asleep now, not so I can tell.'

'But am I not the perfect figure of a king?' Diego said.

Surveying his rotund servant, de Vega answered, 'You are the perfect figure of two kings-at least.'

Diego sent him a venomous glare.

Lope paid no attention. On such a day, he was happy enough to be outdoors. As always, spring had, to a Spaniard's reckoning, come late to England, but it was here at last. The sun shone brightly. The only clouds in the sky were small white ones, drifting slowly from west to east on a mild breeze. It had rained a couple of days before-not hard, just enough to lay the dust without turning the road into a bog.

Everything was green. New grass grew exuberantly: more so than it ever did in drier, hotter Castile.

Trees and bushes were in new leaf. The earliest spring flowers had begun to brighten the landscape.

Birdsong filled the moist air. Robins and chaffinches, cuckoos and larks, waxwings and tits all made music. They left England sooner and came back later than they did in Spain. Each spring, when they returned, Lope discovered anew how much he'd missed them and how especially empty and barren the winter had seemed without them.

Diego smiled to hear those songs, too. 'Mesh nets,' he murmured. 'Birdlime. By all the saints, there's nothing can match a big plate of songbirds, all nicely roasted on spits or maybe baked in a pie. I don't think much of English cookery, but they make some savory pies. Beefsteak and kidney's mighty tasty, too, and you can get that any season of the year.'

'Yes, that is a good one,' Lope agreed. 'And the song of the cow is much less melodious than that of the linnet or greenfinch.'

'The song of the cow, seA±or?' Diego asked. Before de Vega could answer, his servant shook his head.

'No, don't tell me. I don't think I want to know. It must be something only poets can hear.'

'Not at all, Diego.' Lope smiled sweetly. 'For example, whenever you open your mouth, everyone around you is treated to the song of the jackass.'

'Oh, I am wounded,' Diego moaned. He clutched at his heart. 'I have taken a mortal thrust. Send for the physician. No, send for the priest to shrive me, for I am surely slain.'

'You are surely a nuisance, is what you are,' Lope said, but he couldn't help laughing.

No more than a mile or so separated Westminster from London, with the space between the two cities only a bit less crowded than either one of them. De Vega never had the sensation of truly being out in the country, as he would have while traveling between a couple of towns in Spain. Whenever he looked to the left, a forest of sails on the Thames reminded him how brash and busy this part of the world was.

'Fancy houses,' Diego remarked as they rode into Westminster. 'You can tell this is a place for rich people. All the poor men-all the honest men-are back in London.'

Lope couldn't help laughing at that, either, but for a rather different reason. London drew the ambitious, the hungry, the desperate from all over England. A lot of them discovered that, no matter how ambitious and desperate they were, they stayed hungry. The hungrier they got, the less likely they were to stay honest. London had more thieves and robbers than any other three cities Lope could imagine.

Those fancy houses drew his eye, too-again, for a different reason. 'This is Drury Lane,' he said. 'Lord Burghley lives here, who was Elizabeth's chief minister. Anthony Bacon lived here, too, till the accursed sodomite fled the kingdom.'

'Sounds like a good street for a fire,' Diego said. 'Just by accident, of course.' He winked.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Lope answered, deadpan. The two of them exchanged knowing looks.

The Thames bent towards the south. The road followed it. De Vega and Diego rode past a tilt-yard and several new tenements before coming to a large area on their left enclosed by a brick wall. Over the top of the wall loomed the upper stories of some impressive buildings. 'What's that?' Diego asked, pointing to the enclosure.

'That? That is Scotland,' Lope said.

Diego scornfully tossed his head. 'You can't fool me, boss. You've been scaring me with Scotland for a while now. I know what it is-that kingdom up north of here, the one where the wild men live.'

'Some of the wild men,' Lope amended. 'But that yard, that too is Scotland.' He crossed himself to show he was telling the truth. 'When the King of the wild men comes to visit England, he is housed there, and so it took its name.' He wished the present King of Scotland would come to visit England. But, despite honeyed invitations, Protestant James VI was too canny to thrust his head into the Catholic lion's mouth. Lope continued, 'And there beyond lies Whitehall, where the company shall perform.'

'Oh, joy,' Diego said.

Whitehall had formerly been a noble's residence. Henry VIII, having taken it for his own, had enlarged it, adding tennis courts, bowling alleys, and another tilt-yard, with a second-story gallery from which he and his companions might observe the sport. Elizabeth had also watched jousts from that gallery, but neither Isabella nor her consort Albert much favored them. A wooden stage, not much different from that of the Theatre, had gone up on the tilt-yard, in front of the gallery. The highest-ranking English and Spanish grandees would view El mejor mozo de EspaA±a from the comfort of the gallery. The rest, prominent enough to be invited but not enough to keep company with the Queen and King, would impersonate the groundlings who packed the theatres out beyond London's walls. They didn't have to pay a penny for the privilege, though.

In the makeshift tiring room behind the stage, players donned costumes, put on makeup, and mumbled their lines, trying to hold them in their memory. When Lope came in, Catalina IbaA±ez rushed up to him.