Ruled Britannia

his two thumbnails. Seeing that made Shakespeare want to scratch, too. Maybe getting rid of the vermin cheered the gallowglass, for he waved Shakespeare forward. 'Pass on.'

'Gramercy. God give you good day.' Not least from fear, Shakespeare was always polite around the savages from the western island.

Out beyond the wall, the tenements were as crowded and squalid as anything within, maybe worse.

Shakespeare strutted up Shoreditch High Street towards the Theatre as fiercely as he could. Footpads had never set on him, and he hoped a show of belligerency from a good-sized man would keep making them choose other targets.

Only the night watchman was at the Theatre when Shakespeare got there. He sat on a stool, his back against the wall by the outer entrance, his hat down over his eyes to shield him from the sunlight. Soft snores rose from him. Shakespeare hoped he'd been more alert during the night.

He paused in front of the entrance and coughed. The watchman's snores changed rhythm. Shakespeare coughed again, louder this time. The other man yawned and stretched and raised his hat enough to see out from under the brim. 'Oh, 'tis you, Master Will,' he said around a yawn that showed bad teeth.

'Good day, sir. Go on in, an't please you. You're first here today.'

'How know you that?' Like Pilate asking, What is truth? Shakespeare didn't want an answer. He nodded and went into the Theatre. The watchman pulled his hat down again. He was ready for more sleep.

He turned out to be right; no one from the company had gone past him while he dozed. Shakespeare had the Theatre all to himself. He looked up to the wide ring of heaven. A kestrel flashed by overhead. The little hawk never had any doubts of what prey nature intended it to take, nor of how to go about the tasks nature had appointed it. For his part, Shakespeare had never imagined he might envy a bird's pure simplicities. He'd never imagined it, but it was so.

While he stood with his feet on the hard-packed earth (it smelled faintly of spilt beer; despite the sweepers, nutshells, bits of bread, a broken clay pipe, and other refuse still lay all around), he stretched out his arms full length and wistfully flapped them. He envied the kestrel its ability to fly out of trouble, too.

From behind him, someone said, 'Lo! Here the gentle lark, weary of rest, from his moist cabinet mounts on high, and wakes the morning.'

Shakespeare spun round. There stood Richard Burbage, a grin on his handsome, fleshy face. 'I am no songbird,' Shakespeare said. 'But the crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark when neither is attended.'

'No songbird? Haply not, not in your own person,' Burbage said. 'But verily you give others music, killing care and grief of heart. Orpheus with his lute made trees bow themselves when he did sing. So you as well, e'en if it be through the throats of others.'

'You are gracious,' Shakespeare said, 'and I thank you for't.'

'How d'you come here, the hour being so young?' Burbage asked. 'I had looked to be alone yet some little while, as usually chances.'

'How, Dick? I'll tell you how.' Shakespeare spoke of how Cicely Sellis had asked him about Lieutenant de Vega. 'She ghasted me out of doors betimes, nor am I shamed to own it.'

'And yet 'twas no witchery that you should speak, or even that they should meet. Passing strange, that.'

Burbage snapped his fingers. 'I mind me we need not fear dear Master Lope for some little while, at the least.'

'Wherefore say you so?' Shakespeare asked. 'If Dame Rumor run abroad, she hath not caught me up.'

'I supped yesternight at an ordinary close by the dons' barracks. There was talk in Spanish amongst 'em, and in English back and forth 'twixt the tapman and the drawer, the which I might follow. De Vega hath slain a man, a noble Spaniard.'

' 'Swounds!' Shakespeare said. 'Shall he be hanged for't?'

Burbage shook his head. 'Methinks not. 'Twas in some affray over a woman.'

'With Master de Vega? You astound me,' Shakespeare said. Burbage laughed. He too knew-he could hardly help knowing-Lope de Vega's passion for passionate conquests. Shakespeare went on, 'Still and all, that could be murther, did he lie in wait for his rival or smite from behind.'

'Why, so it could,' Burbage admitted. 'I had not thought on it, the Spaniard seeming a tolerable man of his hands, but haply you have the right of't. I know not, nor could I glean it from the talk I overheard. But he shan't come hither soon, an I mistake me not.'

'May it be so,' Shakespeare said. 'A few days' time to rehearse our Boudicca in peace were a blessing.'

'Ay. Naught compares to moving about the stage for the refining of bits of business, and breaking off in the midst of a scene jars hardly less than breaking off in the midst with a wench,' Burbage said.

'A fit figure, in view of what's passed.' Shakespeare inclined his head.

'I'm certain sure she had a fit figure,' Burbage said. 'The Spaniard hath an eye for 'em.'

'Hold the tireman's helper on high,' Shakespeare warned. 'If Master Lope return of a sudden, we dare not be caught out.'

'That I know, Will,' Burbage said heavily. 'By my troth, that I know.'

Lope De Vega stood at stiff attention before Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n. 'Before God, sir, it was self-defense, nothing else,' he declared. A pen scratched across paper off to one side: Guzman's servant, Enrique, writing down every word he said. 'Don Alejandro came at me sword in hand. If I hadn't defended myself, some other officer would be taking his statement now.'

Some other officer might be taking his statement now, Lope thought. Or, then again, maybe not.

Had Don Alejandro de Recalde slain him, how much of an inquiry would there have been? He was only a lieutenant, after all, from a family not particularly eminent. As likely as not, they would have buried him, patted Don Alejandro on the back for his fine swordsmanship, and gone on about their business.

Baltasar GuzmA?n, now, said nothing at all. He sat behind his desk, staring up at de Vega. 'You will have questioned my companion,' Lope said stiffly. ' Senorita Ibanez's account should match mine.'

'And so it does,' Guzman admitted, 'or you would be in a great deal more trouble than you are.'

'Your Excellency, if Senorita Ibanez's account does match mine, I should be in no trouble at all.'

'Unfortunately, Senior Lieutenant, it is not quite so simple. What were you doing with the woman when Don Alejandro discovered the two of you alone together?'

'We'd had a picnic, sir,' Lope said stolidly. 'We were leaving the yard for the Kings of Scotland when Don Alejandro burst in.' Scratch, scratch, scratch went the quill in Enrique's clever

right hand.

'A picnic?' One of Captain GuzmA?n's eyebrows leaped.

'Yes, your Excellency. A picnic. The soldiers who came after the fight took the coverlet we sat on, and the wine bottle we drank from, and the mugs, and the bread and honey we had there.'

'One-or two-can do other things on a coverlet besides sitting.'

'No doubt, sir. We were having a picnic,' Lope said. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

'Will you see Senorita Ibanez again?' Guzman asked.

'How can I know, your Excellency?' de Vega answered. 'She is. an attractive woman, and her protector-her former protector-is now unfortunately deceased.'

'Yes. Most unfortunately. I saw the corpse,' Captain GuzmA?n said. 'When you fight a man, you don't do things by halves, do you, Senior Lieutenant?'

'Sir, he came at me bellowing like a bull. If I hadn't fought to kill, he would have killed me,' Lope replied.

That was not only true, it was what he had to say to keep himself safe. Guzman's respect, though, however reluctantly granted, warmed him, for his superior was a formidable man with a rapier in his hand. De Vega added, 'He was good with a blade-very quick, very strong, very clean-but purely a school fighter.'

'Ah.' Captain Guzman nodded. 'So that's how it was, eh? No, you don't learn those strokes in school.