'Oh,
He glanced around to make sure Don Alejandro was out in the audience and not hovering backstage here, then leaned forward and gave her a kiss that might have seemed careless. 'Don't you worry about a thing, sweetheart. You'll be wonderful!' he told her, and sent up a quick, silent prayer that he'd prove right.
A lackey rushed into the tiring room. 'The Queen and King have taken their places in the gallery,' he said.
'Then we'd better perform for them, hadn't we?' Lope said. 'Come on, my friends, show them what you can do.' He looked around again, to make sure everyone was ready. 'Diego, in the name of God, don't fall asleep now!'
'I wasn't falling asleep,' Diego said. 'I was only-'
'Resting my eyes,' Lope finished for him. 'You've used that one before. Don't use it again, unless you want to get to know the real Scotland, not the yard here.' One last quick, worried look. Then he nodded to Catalina IbaA±ez and one of her maidservants, who would open the play as Isabella and DoA±a Juana, her lady-in- waiting.
Catalina crossed herself. Her maidservant giggled. They went out onto the stage. The audience, which had been mumbling and buzzing, gave them its ears. As soon as Catalina IbaA±ez got on stage, she was fine-better than fine. Lope breathed a sigh of relief.
Everything went as well as he'd hoped. Everything, in fact, went better than he'd dared hope. The actors remembered their lines. Even the most wooden ones delivered them with some feeling. Diego made a better servant on stage than he ever had for real. An hour and a half flew by as if in a dream. The applause for the players was thunderous.
From the tiring room, Lope heard Catalina IbaA±ez call, 'And here is the man who gave us these golden words to say: Senior Lieutenant Lope FA©lix de Vega Carpio!'
More applause as Lope, who felt as if he were dreaming himself, came out onto the stage and bowed to the audience-especially to the central gallery, where Isabella and Albert of England sat. How had Catalina learned his full name? No time to wonder about that now; Queen Isabella was calling, 'Well done,
Back in the tiring room, he went over to Catalina IbaA±ez and said, 'How can I thank you for calling me out there?'
Her eyes were as warm with promise as an early summer morning. 'If you're as clever as Queen Isabella says,
Sam King came up to Shakespeare in the parlor of the lodgings they shared. A little shyly, he said,
'I have somewhat for you, Master Will.' He held out his hand and gave Shakespeare three pennies-two stamped with the visages of Isabella and Albert, the third an older coin of Elizabeth's.
'Gramercy,' Shakespeare said in surprise. Up till now, King hadn't had enough money for himself, let alone to pay back anyone else. Shakespeare had almost forgotten the threepence he'd given the younger man for a supper, and certainly hadn't expected to see it again.
But, a touch of pride in his voice, King said, 'I pay what I owe, I do.'
'Right glad am I to hear't,' Shakespeare answered. 'You've found work, then?'
'You might say so.' But King's nod seemed intended to convince himself at least as much as to convince Shakespeare. 'Ay, sir, you might say so.'
'And what manner of work is't, pray tell?'
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Shakespeare wished he had them back. Had Sam King landed an apprenticeship with a carpenter or a bricklayer, he would have shouted the news to the skies, and would have deserved to. As things were. As things were, he turned red. 'I am. stalled to the rogue,' he replied at last.
'Are you?' Shakespeare tried to sound happy for the man who slept in the same room as he did. For someone on his own and hungry in London, even being formally initiated as a beggar had to seem a step up. Carefully, the poet went on, 'God grant men be generous to you.'
He wondered how long they would stay generous. King was young and healthy, even if on the scrawny side. A beggar with one leg or a missing eye or some other injury or ailment that inspired pity might have a better chance at pennies and ha'pennies and farthings. But King smiled and said, 'There are all manner of cheats to pry the bite from a gentry cove, or from your plain cuffin, too. I've a cleym, now, fit to make a man spew an he see it.'
'Have you indeed?' Shakespeare wasn't surprised to hear that. He'd known other beggars who used false sores to get money from those who saw them.
'Ay, sir,' Sam King said. 'And the moe I learn the art, the better the living I shall have of it.' Yes, he might almost have been speaking of carpentry or bricklaying.
'May it be so,' Shakespeare said, as politely as he could. He wished the other man would go away. He gave beggars coins now and again, and did not care to think of them as frauds.
King, though, bubbled with enthusiasm for his new trade. 'I take crowfoot, spearwort, and salt, and, bruising these together, I lay them upon the place of the body I wish to make sore,' he said, grinning.
'The skin by this means being fretted, I first clap a linen cloth, till it stick fast, which plucked off, the raw flesh hath ratsbane thrown upon it, to make it look ugly; and then cast over that a cloth, which is always bloody and filthy.'
Shakespeare's stomach lurched, as it might have in a small boat on rough water. Fascinated in spite of himself, he asked, 'But doth your flesh not from such rude usage take true hurt?'
'Nay, nay.' Sam King shook his head. 'I do't so often, that in the end I feel no pain, neither desire I to have it healed, but I will travel with my great cleym from market to market, being able by my maunding to get quite five shillings in a week, in money and in corn.'
'No wonder you could repay me, then,' Shakespeare remarked. Five shillings a week wouldn't make a man rich, but he wouldn't starve on such earnings, either.
'No wonder at all,' King agreed happily. 'I company with two or three other artificial palliards, and we sing out boldly, thus. ' His voice rose to a shrill, piercing whine: 'Ah, the worship of God look out with your merciful eyne! One pitiful look upon sore, lame, grieved, impotent people, sore troubled with the grievous disease, and we have no rest day nor night by the canker and worm, that continually eateth the flesh from the bone! For the worship of God, one cross of your small silver, to buy us salve and ointment, to ease the poor wretched body, that never taketh rest; and God reward you for it in heaven!'
Jane Kendall hurried into the parlor. 'Begone! We want no beggars here,' she began, and then checked herself. 'Oh, 'tis you, Master King. Methought you some other tricksy wretch seeking to beguile silver by cleyms and other frauds. I'll not have such doings in this house. I know better.'
She didn't mind if King begged elsewhere. She simply didn't want her lodgers tricked out of money that might otherwise assure her of her rent. Having dwelt in her house some little while, Shakespeare was certain of that. He said, 'Fear not. He did but learn me his law, the which is indeed most quaint and bene.'
'We'll say no more about it, then.' The Widow Kendall heaved a sigh. 'This place is not what it was-by my halidom, it is not. That I should have lodging here, all at the same time, a beggar and a witch and a poet. ' She shook her head.
Shakespeare resented being lumped together with Sam King and Cicely Sellis. A moment's reflection, though, told him they might resent being lumped together with him. He said, 'So that we pay what you require on the appointed day, where's your worry, Mistress Kendall?'
'So that you do, all's well,' she answered. 'But with such trades. Sweet Jesu, who ever heard of a rich poet?'
She could imagine a rich beggar. She could imagine a cunning woman with money. A poet? No.
Shakespeare was tempted to brag of the gold he'd got from Lord Burghley and Don Diego. He was tempted, for a good half a heartbeat. Then common sense prevailed. The best way to keep from being robbed or having his
