Ruled Britannia

'Come, then,' she said, and went back into her room, Mommet trotting at her heels. Lope followed, eager as a green boy his first time. He closed and barred the door behind him.

As at his last visit, fat candles lit the closed room almost as bright as day. Mommet curled up in a corner, yawned once, and went to sleep. Cicely Sellis sat down on the bed. When Lope would have joined her there, she smiled again and, saying, 'Anon, anon,' waved him once more to the stool in front of it.

More than a bit sulkily, he perched there. 'Thou'dst not tease, I trust?' he said. The intimate pronoun was sweet in his mouth.

'Marry, no,' she replied. 'And yet never would a woman be ta'en for granted thus.'

De Vega was no green boy. Much experience told him she spoke the truth. He dipped his head to her.

'As thou'dst have it, so shall it be, though I needs must say in delay there lies no plenty.'

'Prithee, bear with me,' she said. 'We that are lovers run into strange capers.'

Before he could answer, she reached up and drew something out from under her dress: that sparkling glass pendant he'd seen once before, dangling on the end of its long chain. She swung it back and forth, back and forth. Lope thought it might have been a nervous habit, for she hardly seemed to know she was doing it. The pendant caught the candlelight and drew his eye to it as it swung. He looked away now and again, but his gaze kept coming back.

'Nay, a woman mislikes ever being hurried, ever being rushed, ever being told to give, and give forthwith.' For all that her words might have shown annoyance, Cicely Sellis spoke in a soft, calm, smooth voice. 'Is't not sweeter when freely offered, when tendered with full heart, with glad heart, with heart brimful of love, than when rudely seized ere the time be ripe, ere she be fully ready, ere she would do that which, in the fullness of time, she assuredly will do?'

'Assuredly,' Lope echoed, his voice abstracted. He'd only half noted her words. His eyes kept following that sparkling pendant, back and forth, back and forth. After a little while, he wasn't sure he could have taken them away from it. But he didn't want to, so what difference did that make?

The cunning woman talked on, as smoothly and quietly as before. De Vega could not have told what she said; he noted her voice mostly as soothing background to the endless motion of the pendant. Back and forth, back and forth. Watching it, he felt almost as if he were falling asleep.

Before too very long, she asked, 'Dear Lope, hearest thou me?'

'Ay.' The sound of his own voice left him dully surprised; it might have come from far, far away.

'Hearken well, then, for I speak truth,' she said. He nodded; in that moment, he could not possibly have doubted it. Even as he nodded, his eyes swung back and forth, back and. She went on, 'Master Shakespeare hath done no treason. Hearest thou me?'

'I hear. Master Shakespeare hath done no treason.' When she said it, when he affirmed it, it might have been carved in stone inside his mind.

'He hath no papers treasonous here: hence, no need to search. Hearest thou me, dear Lope?'

'No papers treasonous. No need to search.' When she said it, when he said it, it was so. Holy Scripture could have been no truer for him.

'Nor hast thou need to seek him this day in the Theatre, for all will be well there,' the cunning woman murmured.

'IdiA?quez. ' Lope began. IdiA?quez glimmered in the glitter of glass and was gone. 'No need to seek.

All will be well.'

'All will be well,' Cicely Sellis repeated. She led him through her catechism twice more. Then, as she stopped swinging the pendant and tucked it back into place, she said, 'In token thou hast heard me well, when I bring my hands together thou'lt blow yon candle'-she pointed-'and then become again thine own accustomed self. Hearest thou me?'

'Ay, blow out that candle,' Lope said. Cicely Sellis clapped her hands. He blinked and laughed, feeling as refreshed as if he'd just got out of bed after a good night's sleep. Then, laughing still, he sprang off the stool and blew out one of the candles by the head of the bed.

'Why didst thou so?' she asked.

'Its light shone in mine eyes,' he answered. One quick step brought him to her. 'And now, my sweet, my love, my life-' He took her in his arms.

She laughed, down deep in her throat. 'Thine own accustomed self,' she said, and it seemed to Lope for a heartbeat that he'd heard those words before. But then his lips came down on hers, and hers rose up to his, and he cared not a fig for anything he might have heard.

XIII

'Where's De Vega?' 'Where's the poxy Spaniard?' 'Where's the don?' Inside the Theatre, the questions tore at Shakespeare, again and again.

'I know not. Before God, I know not!' Trying to escape them, he fled from the stage back into the tiring room.

Richard Burbage pursued him, relentless as fate personified. 'See you not, Will, we needs must know?'

Burbage said. 'Had he come hither, we'd have seized and bound him, knocked him over the head, and gone forward with good heart. But where is he? Will he burst in the instant we are begun, soldiers at his back, crying, Hold! What foul treason is this?' Will he, Will?'

'I know not,' Shakespeare said again. Desperate for the escape he knew he could not have, he perched on a stool and hid his face in his hands. He pressed the fleshy bases of his thumbs against his closed eyes till swirling flashes and sparkles of color lit the blackness that he saw.

Better he should have covered his ears, for Burbage persisted: 'Were we not wiser, were we not safer, to give King Philip and not. the other play?' Even now, he would not name it. 'We still can, and right well you know it.'

'Dick, I know naught-naught, hear you?' Shakespeare wanted to scream it. Instead it came out as not much more than a whisper. 'There is no wisdom in me, only a most plentiful lack of wit. And I say further, e'en with Lope seized and bound, I should not have gone forward with good heart, for sure safety lurks nowhere in this tangled coil.'

Burbage grunted as if taking a blow in the belly. Shakespeare wondered why. As far as he could tell, he'd spoken simple truth, the only truth he knew. Voice a pain-filled groan, the player asked, 'What to do, then, Will? What are we to do?'

Reluctantly, Shakespeare lowered his hands and looked up at him. 'An you must think on somewhat, think on this: when they hang you for a traitor, would you liefer hang as traitor to the King of Spain or 'gainst old England?'

'I'd liefer not hang,' Burbage said.

Shakespeare laughed bitterly. 'Too late, for already your complexion is most perfect gallows-as is mine own.'

Burbage glared at him. 'Damn you.'

'Ay.' Shakespeare nodded. 'And so?'

'Come then, cullion.' Burbage reached out and, with frightening effortless strength, hauled him off the stool and to his feet. The player let him go then, but he followed Burbage back onto the stage. 'Hear me, friends,' Burbage boomed, and his big voice filled the Theatre. From all over the building, heads turned his way. 'Hear me,' he said again. 'We give Boudicca-and God help us every one.'

He had better, Shakespeare thought.

Will Kemp gave Burbage a mocking bow. 'Thou speakest well, as always. And how the hangman and the worms do love thee.'

With a shrug, Burbage answered, 'Be it so, then. Had I ordered King Philip shown this day, you might have said the same.'