Ruled Britannia

But here, it seemed, he was bound to have trouble. He and Lucy had just left the Theatre on their way back into London when she said, 'Is it true you killed a man?'

Unease prickled through de Vega. He tried his best to misunderstand her, saying, 'My love, I am a soldier. This chances in the soldier's trade.'

She shook her head. 'No. Of late. A Spanish gentleman, they say.'

'A nobleman, but by my troth no gentleman,' he said. Then he stopped and sighed. He'd told her what she needed to know, or most of it.

And she'd already heard, or heard of, the rest, too. 'They say you fought him over a lady.'

As he'd called Don Alejandro de Recalde no gentleman, so he wanted to call Catalina IbaA±ez no lady.

But that wouldn't help. He sighed again. 'Yes, that is so.'

Lucy nodded. 'I was fain to hear it from your lips first. I owed you so much, before saying farewell.'

'Say no such thing!' Lope exclaimed. 'I love thee!'

'And the other lady?'

'And her,' Lope agreed.

'You may not love more than one,' Lucy said sadly.

'Wherefore may I not?' he asked. 'I have had this stricture laid against me ere now, but never have I grasped it.'

'That I credit. But if you love two'-she'd stopped using thou, a bad sign-'then two will love you, each to herself wanting all you have to give, as she hath given all she hath. Can you in equal measure return the love of two? Give me leave to doubt. Loving more than one, you love not wisely, but too well.'

'How can one love too well? A fond notion, a notion not possible.'

'Love two women at but a single time-say you love two women at but a single time-and you love too well,' Lucy insisted.

'Do but let me show thee thou art mistook, that-' Lope began.

'How? Wouldst thou put us twain, this Spanish hussy and me, in but a single bed?' Now Lucy used thou again, but in insult, not intimacy. 'Whether she'd go or no, I would not, nor I will not. Where I shall go is far from thee, now and forever.' Her voice held tears. 'So we loved, as love in twain had the essence but in one. We were two distincts, division none: number there in love was slain. So between us love did shine, that one lover saw her right flaming in her lover's sigh. Either was the other's mine. But for us, lovers, now sigh a prayer.' She walked away.

Love, to Lope, was like a child that longed for everything it could come by. Telling that to Lucy seemed unlikely to change her mind. 'We that are true lovers run into strange capers,' he called after her. 'Alas that love, gentle in his view, should be tyrannous and rough in proof.'

'In proof? Thou canst give no proof of love, not loving another besides myself.' Lucy kept walking. A few paces farther on, she stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it at Lope with unladylike dexterity. If he hadn't ducked, it would have hit him in the face. She bent down for another stone.

'Fie! Give over!' Lope exclaimed. 'I'll trouble thee-you-no more.'

Lucy let the stone fall. 'Would thou'dst never asked my name. Would thou'dst never spoke me fair.

Would thou'dst never found thy Spanish popsy fair, for thou canst not have her and me together. Mary, pity women!' She rounded a corner and was gone.

'Fret not, friend,' said an Englishman who'd listened with amusement to the quarrel. 'Women are like fish: another'll come along soon enough, to nibble the end o' your pole.' He laughed.

So did Lope, when he got the joke a moment later. He didn't go after Lucy; that, plainly, was a lost cause. Instead, he trudged back towards Bishopsgate. He still had Catalina IbaA±ez's fiery affections, but he found he didn't want them right now. He wanted Lucy, whom he'd just lost. Had he lost Catalina and kept Lucy, he had no doubt he would have pined for the Spanish woman's caresses instead. I know what I am, by God, he thought. What to do about it? That's a different question.

The Irish soldiers at the gate recognized Lope for a Spaniard. They swept off their hats and bowed to him as he went by. He nodded in return. Once inside Bishopsgate, he slowed down and looked around.

If he was lucky.

And he was. Cicely Sellis came out of a ribbonmaker's shop, a couple of yards of green ribbon wrapped around the left sleeve of the mannish doublet she wore, her cat following at her heel like a dog. Lope made a leg. 'Mistress Sellis. So good to see you. Give you good day.'

She curtsied as if he were a duke, not a junior officer. 'And good day to you, Master Lope. How wags your world?'

'I have known it better,' he replied.

'Why, surely those set over you have agreed you fought Don Alejandro only for to save your own life,'

she said. 'How could it be otherwise, with Mistress IbaA±ez telling a tale like unto yours?'

'The difficulty lies elsewhere,' de Vega said, before blinking and wondering how she knew of that. He started to ask, but found he lacked the nerve. He started to cross himself, but found he also lacked the nerve for that. Bruja, he thought, and shivered in the warm-for England, at any rate-July sun.

'Where?' Cicely Sellis asked. She didn't let him answer, but showed more of what might have been witchery by softly singing,

'On a day, alack the day!

Love, whose month is ever May,

Spied a blossom passing fair

Playing in the wanton air:

Through the velvet leaves the wind,

All unseen, can passage find;

That the lover, sick to death,

Wished himself the heaven's breath.

Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;

Air, would I might triumph so!

But alack! my hand is sworn

Ne'er to pluck from thee thy thorn;

Vow, alack! for youth unmeet,

Youth so apt to pick a sweet.

Do not call it sin in me,

That I am forsworn for thee;

Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear

Juno but an Ethiop were;

And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love.'

This time, Lope did cross himself, and violently. 'How knew you of my affections?' he demanded, his voice harsh. 'Tell it me this instant, else others holier than I shall ask it of you.'

Her cat bristled at him, but she remained smiling, unconcerned. 'This needs not the cunning woman's arts, Master Lope. You came towards me all cast down. When late you fought Don Alejandro, you kept company with his mistress, but is it not so you had also another sweetheart? An I mistake me not, she hath given you her farewell.'

Bruja, Lope thought again. But maybe not. What she said made good logical sense-as much as anything to do with women ever made good logical sense. Slowly, grudgingly, he said, 'You are a cunning woman indeed.'

Cicely Sellis curtsied again. 'For the which I thank you. And you have my sympathy-the which, like all such, is worth its weight in gold-for her who was too blind to see your true worth.'

He stared at her, open-mouthed. It wasn't for her looks, though she was fair enough, and would have been lovely at eighteen. But he had never known a woman who used words as a bravo used a rapier-and was as deadly with them as any bravo ever born. 'Before God,' he breathed, hardly knowing he spoke aloud, 'I must know thee