Ruled Britannia

'Know you of a wicked cove, hight Ingram Frizer?'

'No, sir. I ken him not.' Lope shook his head.

'Well, him I believe to be the benefactor in question.'

'I am sorry, sir,' Lope said. 'I am most terribly sorry. One of us hath of your tongue a grasp imperfect.

Which that may be. ' He threw his hands in the air. 'I own I know not.'

'I have spake English since I was a puling babe: it is the tongue of my captivity,' Strawberry said. 'You, then, needs must be inerrant.'

'Would I were!' Lope exclaimed. 'Tell me more of this man Frizer.' Maybe he would learn something.

He dared hope. Stranger things must have happened, though none occurred to him offhand.

'He hath a knife and a temper and a quick way with both,' Constable Strawberry said, and de Vega understood every word. The Englishman went on, 'You being intermittent with them of the Theatre, I feel it recumbent upon me to give you fair warning: this Ingram Frizer hath acquaintance with Nick Skeres.'

He paused expectantly.

'Again, I am sorry, but this name I know not,' Lope said.

'Do you not? Do you not indeed, sir? Well, Master Skeres, though he'll not slit your weasand with a cuttle, still and all he is a most vile cozening rogue, a cheat such that Judas In's Chariot hath not seen the like. And'- another portentous pause-' he hath acquaintance with Master Shakespeare, the poetaster.'

'Poetaster? Shakespeare? You show yourself no judge of poesy, Master Strawberry, an you place him so low. Can it be doubted he is amongst the finest poets of our time? I think not.'

'Can it be doubted he knows Nick Skeres? I think not,' Strawberry returned.

Again, Lope understood every word, at least individually. What he didn't understand was what, if anything, all those words meant taken together. He muttered something nasty under his breath, knowing he had no choice but to try to find out.

After another performance as the ghost in Prince of Denmark, Shakespeare scrubbed chalk and black greasepaint from his face in the tiring room. Every so often, someone would come up and tell him how frightful he'd been. His thanks were distinctly abstracted. He kept looking around the room, wondering if Christopher Marlowe would dare appear. His fellow poet would make a ghost even less welcome than that of the unhappy prince's father.

Thus far, no sign of Marlowe. Shakespeare knew nothing but relief. Maybe Kit's folly had limits after all.

Maybe. He dared hope.

'Well played, Master Shakespeare! Most well played!'

Shakespeare had a towel over his eyes at that moment, but he didn't need to see to be sure who spoke to him. 'For which kindness I do thank you, Lieutenant de Vega,' he replied.

'It is nothing, nothing at all,' Lope said grandly.

When Shakespeare took the towel away from his face, he got a surprise after all, for there beside the Spaniard stood Cicely Sellis, Mommet perched on her shoulder. Hoping to hide his alarm, Shakespeare bowed to the cunning woman. 'Give you good day as well, Mistress Sellis.'

'And to you,' she replied. 'I have more than once before seen you give the ghost, but never, methinks, better than today.'

'You are too generous by half,' Shakespeare murmured. I'd liefer give than give up the ghost, he thought. But have I the choice? He turned to Lope de

Vega and murmured again, this time only two words: 'How now?'

How are you now come hither with Mistress Sellis and not with the Spanish jade who cost a nobleman's life? was what he meant. By the way Lope coughed a couple of times and turned red, he understood all the words Shakespeare hadn't said. But he answered smoothly, saying, 'We two, being friends and having in common a friend, were together glad to see him play his famous role.'

'Just so,' Cicely Sellis said. Her cat yawned.

De Vega smiled. Shakespeare didn't care for the expression; Mommet might have worn it playing with a mouse. The Spaniard was going to take his revenge. And he did. 'Know you a man called Ingram Frizer, Master Shakespeare?'

I might have guessed, flashed through Shakespeare's mind. No one in the company had spoken much of Matthew Quinn's death. No one had seemed much surprised to hear of it, either, not when Quinn's tongue had flapped so free. But two murders in one company had drawn the dons' notice as well as that of Constable Strawberry, and Shakespeare didn't suppose he should have been much surprised at that.

No more than a heartbeat slower than he should have, he shook his head and answered, 'Frizer? No, Lieutenant, I ken no one of that name.' Nobody could prove otherwise-he hoped. A question of his own seemed safe: 'Why ask you me of him?'

Sure enough, de Vega replied, 'He is suspect in the murther of the player, Quinn.'

'May the hangman sell the rope by which he dances on the air, then,' Shakespeare said. 'But why, I pray you, think you he and I be known each to the other?'

'For that you are both known to one Nicholas Skeres,' the Spanish officer said, his voice suddenly hard.

How much did he know? If he knew enough, he wouldn't have brought Cicely Sellis along while he asked questions-he would have brought a squad of soldiers and dragged Shakespeare away. Realizing that helped the poet quell his fear. Lope was only fishing for whatever he might find.

Shakespeare resolved to give him as little as he could: 'I have met Nicholas Skeres, ay, but he is no friend of mine. Indeed, I misdoubt him not a little; as I live, he is like as not a queer-bird, his name writ down in the Black Book.' He had no idea whether Skeres had actually gone to prison and had his name inscribed in the register, but he wouldn't have been surprised. And he didn't mind in the least slandering a man he truly disliked. Skeres, he was sure, could take care of himself.

Lope said, 'This marches with that which you told unto Constable Strawberry.'

Damn Constable Strawberry for a very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow, Shakespeare thought. 'Is not the truth the truth?' he said aloud. 'That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.'

'I know not whether 'tis truth or another thing,' de Vega answered. 'I do know I will find where truth be hid, though it were hid indeed within the center. That a man saith twice the same thing proves not its truth, but only his constancy.'

'Are we not friends here?' Cicely Sellis asked. 'Use friends each the other so?'

To Shakespeare's surprise, Lope bowed to her and said, 'You are as wise as you are lovely. Let it be as you would have't, of course.'

She sketched a curtsy. She didn't bend low, to keep Mommet from either falling off or sinking in his claws. 'Gramercy,' she said. 'In a false quarrel there is no true valor.'

Lope nodded. 'That is well said.'

'Indeed it is,' Shakespeare agreed. But he knew the Spaniard hadn't stopped digging-he'd only paused while in the cunning woman's company. Even that was a good deal more than Shakespeare had expected. He watched the way de Vega's eyes caressed her. He'd fain be more than friend, the poet realized. What tangled skein have we here, and how will it unravel? He tried to imagine Lope coming regularly to the Widow Kendall's lodging-house, walking into Cicely Sellis' room, closing the door behind him.

Would Mommet watch? he wondered. Could a man bed a witch, her puckrel attending her? Would it not unman him? He eyed her himself. Would I know these things for the don's sake, or for mine own?

Haply for mine own.

Cicely Sellis' eyes, gray as the northern seas, met his own-met them and held them. Not for the first time, he had the feeling she knew every thought in his head. Considering what some of those thoughts were. He feared he blushed like a schoolboy.

If the cunning woman truly could divine his mind, she gave no sign of it. She leaned towards Lope and spoke to him in a voice too low for Shakespeare to make out. The Spaniard nodded, his smile indulgent-and more than a little hungry. A moment later, he was making his goodbyes to Shakespeare and leading her out of the tiring