Ruled Britannia

'Before God, ay-we are ever before God,' Will Kemp said. 'But can you stand and deliver before the groundlings? There's the rub.'

He couldn't mean he thought the groundlings a more important and more difficult audience than God.

could he? No one could be that blasphemous. The English Inquisition would get its hooks into a man who dared say anything of the sort-would get them in and never let go again. An ordinary man, fetched before the inquisitors, would have no defense. But a player, Lope realized, just might. He could say he'd put the thought of his craft ahead of his soul for a moment. He probably wouldn't escape scot-free, but might avoid the worst.

'Let us try again,' Shakespeare said. 'The more we work afore ourselves alone, the better we shall seem when the Theatre's full.'

'Or not, an God will it so,' Kemp said. 'The best-rehearsed company will now and again make a hash of things.'

'I have myself seen the same, more often than I should wish,' Lope agreed.

'Ay, certes. So have we all,' Shakespeare said. 'But a company less than well rehearsed will make a hash of things more than now and again. Thus I tell you, once more into the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the show up with our bungled lines. Disguise fair nature with hard-summoned art. When the trumpet's blast blows in your ears, then imitate the action of the Spaniard.'

'I need not imitate,' Lope pointed out.

Shakespeare made a leg at him. 'Indeed not, Lieutenant. But as for you others, I'd see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. Follow your spirit, and upon your cue cry, a€?God for Philip! Sweet Spain and Saint James!' '

Richard Burbage had left the stage, probably for the jakes. Returning, he clapped his hands and said, 'By God, Will, I've gone off to war with words less heartening ringing in my ears.'

'Never mind war,' Shakespeare said. 'Let us instead piece together this King Philip. Take your places.

We shall once more essay the scene.'

This time, Lope remembered his lines. He sent them ringing out into the empty Theatre. As he spoke and gestured, he tried to imagine the place full of noisy, excited people, all straining forward to catch his every word- and all ready to pelt him with whatever they had handy if he came up dry, or simply if they didn't care for what he had to say. From everything he'd seen, English audiences had less mercy in them than their Spanish counterparts. When they scented weakness, they went straight for the kill.

Here, though, Shakespeare seemed satisfied. 'Enough for now, methinks,' he said. 'God grant we have time aplenty for further work herewith. The day's play, however, we must give at two o' the clock. That wherein we should be good betimes needs must yield pride of place to that wherein we must be good anon. Master Lope, gramercy for your work this day.'

'The pleasure is mine.' De Vega touched a finger to the broad brim of his hat in salute. The phrase was an English translation of a Spanish commonplace, but he meant it. 'You-all of you-show me every day I am here what a company of players should be.'

' 'Steeth, Master Lope, I take it as an insult that anyone should style me an exemplar,' Will Kemp growled. 'Do you withdraw it, or will you give satisfaction?'

For a moment, de Vega thought he'd truly been challenged. Then he thought he might draw on the clown, to cure him of such insolence once for all. But, after a pause that couldn't have spanned two heartbeats, he drew himself up as if affronted. 'I, give satisfaction, sirrah? Do you take me for a woman?'

The players laughed. Will Kemp's grin showed uneven teeth. 'By my troth, no,' he answered. 'D'you take me for Kit Marlowe?'

More laughter arose, the baying laughter of men mocking one another's prowess. 'I am wounded,' de Vega said, and clapped both hands over his heart.

'Which only shows you know not where Kit'd wound you,' Kemp said, and clapped both his hands over his backside. That coarse, baying laughter redoubled.

Lope joined it. He'd admired-still did admire-Marlowe the poet. It was as if Marlowe the sodomite were some different creature, divorced from the other. Life would have been simpler were that true. But they both made up different parts of the same man. De Vega wondered, not for the first time, how God could instill such great gifts and such a great sin into the same flesh and spirit. He sometimes thought God did such things to keep mortals from believing they understood Him and getting an exaggerated notion of their own cleverness.

Does Marlowe's fall, then, save other men from sins of their own? he wondered. If that be so, does it not make Marlowe like our Lord? Lope shook his head. There was one bit of speculation his confessor would never hear. If it should reach an inquisitor's ears. No, Lope didn't want to think about that.

As Lord Westmorland's Men began going through the play they'd put on when the Theatre opened, de Vega walked out, swung up onto his horse, and rode back to London. This time, no one in the crowded tenements outside the wall troubled him: not beyond the usual catcalls and curses from behind his back.

Ignoring those was always easier; trying to track down the folk who loosed them led only to frustration and fury.

At Bishopsgate, the Irish guards also recognized him for a Spaniard. From them, he got respect instead of scorn. Their sergeant, an immense man, made a clumsy leg at him. The common soldiers murmured in what might have been Irish or might have been what they reckoned English. Either way, it was unintelligible to Lope. He tipped his hat and rode on.

Not far inside the gate, he was struck by the spectacle of a handsome woman coming out of an ordinary with a cat perched on her left shoulder as if it were a sailor's bird. He reined in. 'Give you good day, my lady,' he said, 'and why, I pray you, sits the beast there?'

She gave him a measuring look. 'Good day to you, sir,' she answered. Lope realized then she was a few years older than he; he hadn't noticed at first glance, as he would have with most women. Her smile held a certain challenge. 'As for Mommet here-well, porquA© no? '

Of course she would know him for a Spaniard by his dress, his looks, his accent. He laughed. 'Why not indeed? What an extraordinary beast, though, to stay where you choose to set it.'

The cat-Mommet-sent him a slit-eyed green stare a good deal more dismissive than its mistress'. Its yawn displayed needle teeth and a pink tongue. The woman said, 'What cat is not an extraordinary beast? Come to that, what man is not an extraordinary beast?'

Lope blinked. He was in love with Lucy Watkins. He was also in love with Catalina IbaA±ez, a love that tormented his soul-among other things-all the more because it remained as yet unconsummated. Even so, a woman who spoke in riddles could not help but intrigue him. Love of the body, yes. Love of the spirit-yes, that, too. But also love of the mind, especially for a man with a leaping, darting mind like Lope's, a love neither of his two present amours returned.

'Who are you?' he asked urgently.

He wondered if she would tell him. A modest woman wouldn't have. But then, a modest woman wouldn't have spoken to him in the street at all. 'I'm called Cicely Sellis,' she answered, with no hesitation he noted. 'And you, sir, are.?'

With another woman, or with a woman of another sort, he would have given his rank and the rolling grandeur of his full name. To this one, he said only, 'I am known as Lope de Vega.' He couldn't help bowing in the saddle and adding, 'Very much at your service, Mistress Sellis.'

Mommet yawned again, as if to say how little his service meant. Cicely Sellis dropped him a token curtsy, careful not to dislodge the cat. 'You are Master Shakespeare's friend,' she said.

He started to cross himself-it hadn't been a question, but a calm statement of fact. Arresting the gesture, he demanded, 'How know you that?'

'No mystery.' Amusement sparkled in her eyes. 'His lodging-house and mine own are the same, and full many a time hath he spoke your name.'

'Oh.' Lope wanted to ask what Shakespeare had said about him. Regretfully, he decided that wouldn't be a good idea. With a nod, he urged his horse forward. 'I hope to see you again, Mistress Sellis.'

'May it be so,' she said, and English spring truly came home to Lope.

Jack Hungerford showed Shakespeare a row of cheap, rusty helmets somewhat brightened by splashes of