Ruled Britannia

woman said, as if to an audience only she could see. Then her attention unmistakably swung back to Lope. 'Said you the like to Catalina IbaA±ez? Said you the like to Lucy Watkins? Said you the like to Nell Lumley? To Martha Brock? To Maude Fuller, or ever you dove out her window?'

De Vega gaped. 'How know you of her?' He was sure Shakespeare didn't, which meant Cicely Sellis couldn't have heard about that from him.

'I have my ways,' she said. He crossed himself, thinking, Witch! She is a bruja after all. Affecting not to notice, she went on, 'Her sister is my washerwoman, and hath been known to gossip.'

'Oh.' Lope felt foolish. Cicely Sellis always had, or said she had, some natural means of gaining her knowledge. Maybe she wasn't a witch. Maybe, on the other hand, she just did a good job of covering her tracks. Who could know for certain? De Vega knew he didn't. Every time he thought he was sure, more confusion followed.

'Are you answered?' she asked.

'I am,' he said, more or less truthfully. Rather more to the point, his ardor was cooled. He realized he would not lie with Cicely Sellis today. 'Peradventure I had best get hence,' he murmured, hoping against hope she would ask him to stay.

But she didn't. She only gave him a brisk nod. 'That were best, methinks. I am ever glad to see you, Master de Vega, and to talk with you. You are a man of parts. Not all those parts, though, would I take into me.'

Had a woman ever said anything bawdier in turning him down? Most women who let him into their beds never said anything bawdier. Jolted, he bowed, muttered, 'God give you good day, then,' and hurried out of her room.

He intended to hurry out of the lodging-house, too, but he almost ran over William Shakespeare on the way out. Both men exclaimed in surprise. Shakespeare said, 'I had not looked to meet you here, Master Lope.'

'Mistress Sellis is a friend, as you know,' Lope said.

'Indeed,' Shakespeare answered. The word seemed to hang in the air. What lay behind it? Jealousy?

Had the English poet cast longing glances at Cicely Sellis, too? She'd given no sign of it. But what did that prove? He hadn't told her about his other lady friends, either-not that that mattered, for she knew about them anyhow. An edge in his voice, Shakespeare asked, 'And what passed betwixt you twain?'

Thinking to reassure him, de Vega answered, 'We spoke of many things, yourself not least amongst 'em.'

If Shakespeare imagined the two of them talking, he wouldn't imagine them naked and entwined. They hadn't been, but imagination could prove more dangerous than fact, even in as normally unwarlike a man as Shakespeare.

But the Englishman remained pretty obviously unreassured. 'How found my name its way into your mouths?' he asked, his voice harsh.

'Why, for your poesy-how else?' Lope said. 'I told her how I envied her the chance to know your verses or ever anyone else may.'

'That doth she not.' Shakespeare's glower matched his tone. 'None but mine own self hears even a line ere it go forth to Lord Westmorland's Men.' He coughed, then spoke again with more self-control:

'Thieves skulk everywhere, e'en as is. Is't not the same in Spain?'

'There you speak sooth,' de Vega admitted, 'and be damned to them.' He made as if to step towards a stool in the parlor, to sit down and chat a while. Shakespeare shifted to put himself between Lope and the stool. Taking the hint, Lope left the lodging-house. He is jealous of me, whether he'll admit it or not, he thought sadly. I hope it doesn't hurt our friendship. But he didn't hope so enough to want to keep from seeing Cicely Sellis again.

The Ghost IN Prince of Denmark wasn't the only one Shakespeare played. Crouched under the stage as the specter in Christopher Marlowe's Cambyses King of Persia, he peered out at the crowd through chinks and knotholes. Powdered chalk from his makeup and smoke that would rise with him through the trap door both tickled his nose; he hoped he wouldn't sneeze. The smoke made his eyes sting, too, but he couldn't rub them for fear of smearing the black greasepaint around them.

What would the groundlings do when-if-Lord Westmorland's Men put on Boudicca? He knew what Lord Burghley, Robert Cecil, and the other would-be rebels wanted the crowd to do on seeing a play about Britons oppressed by invaders from across the sea. Would the people give the plotters what they wanted?An they give not, God give mercy to us all, he thought gloomily.

He stiffened. There not ten feet away stood Lope de Vega, with Cicely Sellis beside him. She laughed at something the Spaniard said. What were they talking about? Shakespeare turned his head and set his ear to the chink through which he'd been looking, but couldn't separate their talk from the rest of the noise.

Finding Lope in his lodging-house had been a nasty surprise. If he'd still been working on Boudicca.

He shuddered and shook, as if the sweating sickness had seized him.

Still shaking, he moved to another chink a few feet away. A moment later, he stiffened into immobility so thorough and profound, a glance from a cockatrice might have turned him to stone. There stood Marlowe. He remained clean-shaven and close-cropped, but he also remained himself. He wasn't very far from Lope; he wasn't very far at all. Would the don know him despite his altered seeming? If he shouted something like any groundling who'd poured down too much beer, would de Vega know his voice?

Shog off! Shakespeare thought at him, as urgently as he could. Get hence! Aroint thee! Avaunt! But Marlowe, of course, didn't move. He stood there as if no one had ever wanted to hang him for sodomizing boys. When a man with a tray of sausages pushed his way through the crowd, Marlowe bought from him and munched away like any tanner or stockfish-seller or dyer.

By then, Shakespeare wished he'd never started looking at the crowd in the first place. And so, when he spied Walter Strawberry a little to Marlowe's left, he didn't panic, as he might have otherwise. He'd already sunk down towards despair. The constable couldn't send him there, not when he'd got there on his own.

Performing in the play itself came as a great relief. While he trod the boards, he didn't have to-he couldn't- think about anything else. Hearing people gasp at his first appearance, hearing a woman up in the galleries let out half a shriek, assured him he still played a specter better than anyone else. He only wished he had more lines, the better to keep himself distracted.

Aye, I make me a passing fine ghost, he thought as he crouched under the stage again, awaiting his next scene. Shall I make me a ghost in sooth ere this coil unravel to the fullest? That seemed altogether too likely.

He came out on stage for his bows after Cambyses King of Persia ended, still in ghost makeup and turban. He saw de Vega applauding (and Cicely Sellis with him). He saw Marlowe applauding, too, which gave him an odd prick of pleasure. He even saw dour Walter Strawberry applauding. But the only thing that stuck in his mind was, I go well acclaimed to my doom.

Back in the tiring room, he accepted congratulations with half an ear. As it always did in a play with a ghost, the chore of getting off his unusually elaborate makeup gave him an excuse for not paying too much attention to people who came up to him. He could always soap and splash and scrub and say,

'Gramercy,' without really worrying about what they were trying to tell him. Today of all days, that suited him well. He wanted to escape from the Theatre-which was just how he thought of it-as fast as he could.

He said hello to Lope, and to the cunning woman on his arm. Do they lie together? he wondered. By the way they spoke and touched and looked at each other, he didn't think so, but they were both, in a way, players, and so likely better at dissembling than most. That made him wonder what else Lope might be concealing. Did the Spaniard know of Boudicca? Was he biding his time, waiting to scoop up all the plotters when the time was ripe?

There's a question I'd give much to ask. But Shakespeare had to dissemble, too. He had to dissemble, and to pray no one betrayed him before the day, whenever that day should come. And he had to pray the rising that would come on and after the day succeeded, for its failure likewise doomed him and all of Lord Westmorland's Men unless they could flee abroad ahead of Spanish-and English-vengeance.