Ruled Britannia

'And a good morrow to you,' de Vega answered, advancing towards the stage. He surveyed the struggling players with a critical eye. 'Many of these would die quickly, did they take the field in earnest.'

'They are not soldiers. They but personate them,' Shakespeare said.

'But their personation wants persuasion,' Lope said. Shakespeare glanced towards Burbage. Ever so slightly, the player nodded. He'd been a soldier, and knew whereof Lope spoke.

'A soldier's eye may discern the flaws, but will the generality?' Shakespeare asked.

'Those of them have fought in war will know they see no war upon the stage,' Lope told him.

'We shall do what we can.' Shakespeare did his best to hide a sigh. He didn't think de Vega noticed.

Burbage did, and smiled. Shakespeare asked the question uppermost in his, uppermost in everyone's, mind: 'How fares his Most Catholic Majesty?'

'He fares not well at all.' De Vega's handsome face looked old and worn, as if he were speaking of his own dying father. 'As I have said before, he is bedridden. The least movement pains him to the marrow.

His sores advance apace. When the surgeons cut them to loose the pus, it hath a vile stench. He is dropsical-more so by the day, they say. And yet his heart is strong. He fails, but fails by degrees.'

All over the stage, players nodded. Most men had watched deaths like that, as well as the quicker, easier, more merciful kind. Signing himself with the cross, Shakespeare said, 'God grant him ease from suffering.'

'May it be so.' Lope also crossed himself. 'It likes me to watch the work here advance.'

'I had liefer see King Philip go unproduced,' Shakespeare said.

De Vega made a leg at him. 'You are gracious, Master Shakespeare, to say so.'

I am an ordinary ramping fool, with no more brain than a stone, Shakespeare thought. Lope de Vega had taken him to mean he wanted Philip II to live forever. That was how he'd meant to be taken.

But the Spaniard could have taken his words another way, as meaning he wanted to see some other play go on in place of King Philip. And he did. But to let Lieutenant de Vega know that would have meant nothing but catastrophe.

Burbage had noticed the same thing. With a growl that might have come from the throat of a bear chained to the pole in the baiting pit, he said, 'You will make show of your wit, eh?'

'Wherefore should he not?' Lope asked. 'Would you ask a poet to hide his wit? Would you ask a woman to hide her beauty?'

'A poet's wit may lead him into danger,' Shakespeare said. 'And a woman's beauty may likewise lead her- and him that sees her-into danger. Or would you say otherwise?'

Burbage suddenly brightened. Shakespeare couldn't resist preening a little, proud of his own cleverness.

If anything could make Lope turn away from untoward meanings, thinking of himself and his brush with death ought to do it. The Spaniard's hand fell to the hilt of his rapier. A few inches of the blade slid from the sheath as he struck a pose. 'Danger knows full well that Lope is more dangerous than he.'

His strutting would have seemed laughable had he not just killed a man. As things were, he'd earned the right to swagger. 'Beauty itself doth of itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator,' Shakespeare said. 'Will you bring to the Theatre the beauty hath ensnared you, that we all may marvel and envy you for your conquest?'

'Alas, no, I fear me, for she speaks not your tongue,' Lope replied.

Will Kemp chose that moment to come out of the tiring room. The clown gave Lope a courtier's bow exaggerated to absurdity. 'Whether she speak or no, doth her tongue not please you?' he inquired.

Maybe the Spaniard wouldn't understand just what Kemp meant. So Shakespeare hoped. Lope's English, while good, wasn't perfect. But it was good enough, and he did. 'How dare you have her tongue in your mouth?' he snarled, and made as if to draw the rapier again.

'Never did I that, nor she neither,' Kemp said. But he seemed less afraid than Shakespeare would have been, having insulted a man who'd proved himself sword in hand. 'Put up,' he told de Vega. 'Know you not, an you blood your blade in a fool, 'twill surely rust?'

The absurdity of that stopped the Spaniard where nothing else might have. 'But what then becomes of the fool?' he asked.

Kemp let out a horrible scream, clutched his belly, and thrashed and writhed on the stage in well-feigned agony. As abruptly as he'd begun, he left off. 'Thus, belike,' he answered, getting to his feet once more.

Lope laughed and shook his head. 'Truly God must love fools,' he said. 'How may I do less?'

'How should you find it hard, where most men find it easy?' Kemp returned. 'But then, did you not find it hard-'

'Enough!' Shakespeare and Burbage spoke the same word at the same time. Kemp flew to disaster like a moth to flame.

After that afternoon's performance, Shakespeare left the Theatre as soon as he scrubbed off his makeup.

Usually, he would have stayed in the tiring room to share gossip and gibes, or else repair to a tavern to hash over the play with players and friends. Not today, not least because Lope de Vega came back there. Sometimes, keeping company with the Spanish officer was too much for him to bear.

But leaving brought him scant relief. As he hurried out of the Theatre, Constable Walter Strawberry marched in, a grim expression on his face. Shakespeare wondered if Strawberry were after him for more questions, but the constable, after giving him a somber nod, kept on going. So did Shakespeare, in the other direction.

He hadn't got far when a medium-sized, homely man of about his own age sidled up alongside him and said, 'A good day to you, Master Shakespeare.' His voice suggested he knew all manner of interesting things, some of them perhaps even licit.

'Master Skeres.' Shakespeare hoped he sounded less dismayed than he felt. 'And to you a good day as well, sir. I've not had the pleasure of your company for some little while.' Nor wanted it, neither, he thought. 'What would you?'

'I'd tell you somewhat I'd liefer not have to speak, but e'en so somewhat you should know,' Nick Skeres answered.

When he didn't go on, Shakespeare asked, 'And that is?'

'Lord Burghley's on his deathbed,' Skeres said bluntly. 'He'll not rise from it again, save to go in's coffin.'

For Shakespeare, the news was like a blow in the belly. 'God give him peace,' he said. 'He and Philip die together, as he said they would when first we met.'

'Ay.' Skeres' chuckle showed uneven teeth. 'His mind's still hale, and he jests of't yet.'

'What of. the enterprise?' Shakespeare would say no more than that, not in the open in Shoreditch High Street. Later, he remembered he should have spoken with Nicholas Skeres about raising the English mob against Spain's hated Irish soldiers. At the moment, with Skeres' news, the thought never entered his mind.

The other man replied without hesitation: 'It goes forward as before, under Lord Burghley his son. And mark me, 'twill go as well under Robert Cecil as ever it could under his sire. Crookback though he be, his wit and will run straight.'

'May you prove a true prophet.' But Shakespeare couldn't help worrying-worrying even more than he had before. Sir William Cecil had been a power in the land longer than he'd been alive. He'd been in eclipse since the coming of the Armada, yes, but Robert, his son, seemed always to have dwelt and dealt in the shadows. Could he come out into the light now, at greatest need? He must essay it, Shakespeare thought, and kicked at the dirt. The timing couldn't have been worse.

XI

When Lope De Vega visited the Theatre with Lucy Watkins, he didn't take her back to the tiring room after the performance. Will Kemp or another would-be wit was too likely to ask him why he hadn't brought his Spanish lady instead. He didn't want Lucy finding out about Catalina Ibanez. Bad things happened when one of his ladies learned of another: so he'd painfully discovered.