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  "I have no idea what you're talking about, Enrique," de Vega replied, deadpan. They both laughed. Lope closed the door behind him and headed for his own quarters.

  He expected to discover Diego there, snoring up a storm. Christmas was a holy day, too holy for almost all work (not that Diego felt like working on the most ordinary day of the year, either). But the servant's bed was empty. Lope crossed himself. "Truly this is a day of miracles," he murmured.

  In his own little inner room, he found paper and pen and ink. He opened the shutters, to take such advantage of England's fleeting December daylight as he could, and began to write. Maybe Christmas was too holy for that, too. De Vega had no intention of asking a priest's opinion about it.

  A ragged man on a street corner thrust a bowl of spiced wine at a pretty woman walking by.

  "Wassail!" he called.

  She looked him over, smiled, and nodded at him. "Drinkhail!" she replied. He handed her the bowl and kissed her on the cheek. She drank, then gave him back the bowl.

  "A happy New Year to you, sweetheart!" the ragged man called after her as she went on her way. He sang in a surprisingly sweet, surprisingly true baritone:

  "Wassail, wassail, as white as my name,

  Wassail, wassail, in snow, frost, and hail,

  Wassail, wassail, that much doth avail,

  Wassail, wassail, that never will fail."

  William Shakespeare tossed the fellow a penny. "A happy New Year to you as well, sirrah."

  The ragged man doffed his cap. "God bless you on the day, sir!" He held the bowl out to Shakespeare.

  "Wassail!"

  "Drinkhail!" Shakespeare replied, and drank. Returning the bowl, he added, "I'd as lief go without the kiss." Some Grecian, he couldn't remember who, had said the like to Alexander, and paid for it.

  Marlowe would know the name.

  With a chuckle, the ragged man said, "And I'd as lief not give it you. But by my troth, sir, full many a fair lady have I bussed, and thanks to the wassail bowl I owe." He lifted the cap from his head again. "Give you joy of the coming year."

  "And you." Shakespeare walked past him. A couple of blocks farther on, another man used a wassail bowl to gather coins and kisses. Shakespeare gave him a penny, too. He got in return a different song, one he hadn't heard before, and did his best to remember it. Bits of it might show up in a play years from now.

  All along the crowded street, men and women wished one another happy New Year. They'd done that even back before the coming of the Armada, for the Roman tradition of beginning the year in wintertime had lingered even though, before the Spaniards came, it had formally started on March 25. As with the calendar, Isabella and Albert had changed that to conform to Spanish practice. People called 1589 the Short Year, for it had begun on March 25 and ended on December 31.

  Snow crunched under Shakespeare's shoes. Soot and dirt streaked it. Back in Stratford, snow stayed white some little while after it fell. Not here. Stratford was a little market town; he would have been surprised had it held two thousand souls. London had at least a hundred times as many, and more than a hundred times as many fires belching smoke into the sky to smirch the snow sometimes even before it fell.

  A snowball whizzed past his head from behind. He whirled. The urchin who'd thrown it stuck out his tongue and scurried away. With a shrug, Shakespeare went on walking. He'd thrown snowballs when he was a boy, too. And my aim was better, he thought, though that might have been the man's view of the boy he'd been.

  He strode past a cutler's shop, then stopped, turned, and went back. The Widow Kendall had broken the wooden handle on her best carving knife not so long before, and had complained about it ever since.

  She kept talking about taking the knife to a tinker for a new handle, but she hadn't done it. Like as not, she never would get around to doing it, but would grumble about what a fine knife it had been for the rest of her days. A replacement, now, a replacement would make her a fine New Year's present.

  "Good morrow, sir, and a joyous New Year to you," the cutler said when Shakespeare stepped inside.

  "What seek you? An it have an edge, you'll find it here." Shakespeare explained what he wanted, and why. The cutler nodded. "I have the very thing." He offered Shakespeare a knife of about the same size as the one Jane Kendall had used.

  "Certes, 'tis a knife." Shakespeare tried the edge with his thumb. "It now seems sharp enough. But will't stay so?"

  "The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge," the cutler replied, "but it hath a better blade than most, and will serve for all ordinary work. And surely she for whom you buy't hath a whetstone?"

  "Surely." Shakespeare had no idea whether Jane Kendall owned a whetstone. He supposed she must; how could she keep a kitchen in good order without one? Setting the knife down on the counter, he asked the next important question: "What's your price?" When the cutler told him, he flinched. "So much?

  Half that were robbery, let alone the whole of't. 'Tis for a tallowchandler's widow, not silver clad in parcel gilt for the kitchen of a duke."

  They haggled amiably enough. Not for all his poet's eloquence could Shakespeare beat the cutler down very far. At last, still muttering under his breath, he paid. The cutler did give him a leather sheath for the knife. "The better your widow cares for't, the better 'twill serve her. Dirt and wet breed rust as filth breeds maggots."

  "I understand." Shakespeare didn't intend to lecture his landlady on housewifery. What the Widow Kendall would say to him if he showed such cheek did not bear thinking about.

  He took the knife back to his lodgings. On the way there, he slipped a halfpenny into the sheath. Giving the Widow Kendall the knife without the propitiatory coin would have been inviting her to cut herself with it.

  "Oh, God bless you, Master Will!" she exclaimed when he handed her the knife. She gave him a muscular hug and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. That was another kiss he could have done without; her breath stank with eating toasted cheese. He did his best to smile as she said, "I've thought me of getting a new one since that handle broke, but. " She shrugged.

  But you'd sooner have done without, or gone on with the old marred one, than have fared forth yourself to a tinker's or a cutler's, he thought. "May you have good use of it," he said.

  "I'm sure I shall," she said. "Come take a mug of ale, an't please you."

  That mug was the only New Year's gift he had from her. Since he'd expected nothing more, he wasn't disappointed. But Christopher Marlowe came by the house later that day and gave him a copy of Tacitus' Annals-in the original Latin. "I dare hope you may find it. inspiring," the other poet murmured.

  As was Marlowe's habit, he'd spent lavishly. The book was bound in maroon leather and stamped with gold. Shakespeare wanted to hit him over the head with it; with any luck, it would smash in his skull.

  How much did Marlowe know? How much did he want Shakespeare to think he knew? How badly did he want to drive Shakespeare to distraction? That, more than the other two together, Shakespeare judged

  Showing Marlowe he'd drawn blood only encouraged him to try to draw more. With a smile, Shakespeare answered, "I'm sure I shall. The treason trials under Tiberius, perchance?" Ever so slightly, he stressed the word treason.

  Marlowe bared his teeth in something that looked like a smile. "Treason? What word is that? And in what tongue? Tartar? I know it not."

  "Perdie, Kit, may that be so," Shakespeare said. "May the day come when that Tartar word's clean forgot in England."

  Laughing, Marlowe patted him on the cheek, as an indulgent father might pat a son. "Our lines will fail or ever that word's routed from our. " He drew back, sudden concern on his face. "Will, what's amiss?"

  "You will find a better time to speak of failing lines than when my only son's but a little more than a year in's grave," Shakespeare said tightly. His fists bunched. He took a step towards the other poet, whom he saw for a moment through a veil of unshed tears.

  Marlowe backed away. "Pardon my witles
sness, I pray you," he said.

  "I will-one day," Shakespeare answered, angry still. Marlowe left the lodging house moments later.

  Shakespeare wasn't sorry to see him go, not only because of what he'd said but also because he wouldn't linger to make more gibes about Tacitus and treason that might stick in someone's mind.

  Though it was snowing hard on Sunday, Shakespeare made a point of going to Mass at the church of St.

  Ethelberge the Virgin. It was, by Pope Gregory's calendar, the fourth of January-by England's old reckoning, December twenty-fifth. He wanted to be sure he was seen at Catholic services that day. If he were not, he might be suspected of observing Christmas on the day the Spaniards-and the English Inquisition-deemed untimely. Since he truly deserved suspicion, he had all the more reason not to want to see it fall on him. The pews in the little church were more crowded than usual. Maybe-probably-he wasn't the only soul there making a point of being seen.

  He went to St. Ethelberge's again two days later, for the feast of Epiphany, the twelfth and last day of Christmas. A gilded brass Star of Bethlehem hung from the rood loft. Some of the parishioners put on a short drama about the recognition of the Christ Child by the Three Kings. Shakespeare found the performances frightful and the dialogue worse, but the audience here wasn't inclined to be critical. In the Theatre, the groundlings would have mewed and hissed such players off the stage, and pelted them with fruit or worse till they fled.

  After Twelfth Night passed, the mundane world returned. When Shakespeare went off to the Theatre the next day, he carried with him the finished manuscript of Love's Labour's Won. He flourished it in triumph when he saw Richard Burbage. "Here, Dick: behold the fatted calf."

  Burbage just jerked a thumb back toward the tiring room. "I care not a fig to see't, not until Master Martin hath somewhat smoothed it."

  With a sigh, Shakespeare went. Geoffrey Martin, the company's prompter and playbook-keeper, would indeed dress the fatted calf he carried. He had a habit of writing elaborate, impractical stage directions.

  And, like any author in the throes of enthusiasm, he sometimes made mistakes, changing a character's name between appearances or giving a line or two to someone who happened not to be on stage at the moment. Martin's job was to catch such things, to have scribes prepare parts for all the principal actors in a play, and to murmur their lines to them if they faltered during a performance.

  Martin also worked closely with Sir Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, who made sure nothing blasphemous or treasonous appeared on stage. If Lord Burghley's plan was to go forward, Martin had to be part of the plot.

  The prompter was about forty. He'd probably been handsome once, but nasty scars from a fire stretched across his forehead, one cheek, and the back of his left hand. The work he had-precise, important, but out of the public's eye-suited him well.

  "Good morrow to you, Master Shakespeare," he said, looking up from a playbook. "Here at last, is it?

  We've waited longer than we might have, to see what flowed from your pen."

  "I know, Master Martin," Shakespeare said humbly. "I'm sorry for't." Facing the prompter made him feel as if he were back in school again, the only difference being that Geoffrey Martin wielded a pen of his own, not a switch.

  He read faster and more accurately than anyone else Shakespeare knew. That pen of his drank from the ink pot on the table in front of him, then darted at the manuscript of Love's Labour's Won like a striking asp. "When will you learn to put stage directions in a form players can actually use?" he asked, more in sorrow than in anger: he said the same thing every time Shakespeare handed him a manuscript.

  "Your pardon, Master Martin," Shakespeare said. "I do essay precision, but-"

  "You succeed too well," the prompter told him, also not for the first time. "With directions such as these, you break the action like a man disjointing a roast fowl. Simplicity, sir-simplicity's what wins the race."

  Shakespeare wasn't convinced Martin was right. Like any playwright, he wanted things just so, with all the actors moving at his direction as Copernicus and his followers said planets moved around the sun.

  But the prompter's word carried more weight in such matters than his. As Martin went from one page to the next, Shakespeare did presume to ask, "What think you?"

  "Aside from these wretched stage directions, very pleasant, very gay," Geoffrey Martin answered.

  "Without a doubt, the company will buy the play of you. And then you'll put all your work towards the new King Philip, is't not so?"

  "As much of it as I may, yes," Shakespeare answered. The prompter's question gave him the opening he needed: "Tell me, Master Martin, what think you of-?"

  But before he could finish the question, Martin lifted a hand. "Hold," he said, and such was the authority in his voice that Shakespeare fell silent. "Here in your second act, you have entering three lords and three ladies."

  "I do," Shakespeare agreed, looking down at what he'd written-the second act seemed a long way off these days.

  "See you here, though. Only two of these ladies speak: the one Rosaline, the other Katharine. What point to the third one, the one you style Maria?"

  "Why, for to balance the third lord, of course," Shakespeare answered.

  Geoffrey Martin shook his head. "It sufficeth not. Give her somewhat to do, or else take her out."

  "Oh, very well," Shakespeare said testily. "Lend me your pen, then." He scratched out a name and substituted another. "Now hath she this passage, once Katharine's."

  "Good enough." Martin read on. After a bit, he looked up and said, "I am much taken with your Signor Adriano di Armato, your fantastical Venetian. Some poets I need not name might have sought instead to make of him a Spaniard, the which the Master of the Revels would never countenance."

  Shakespeare's first thought had been to make him a Spaniard, to get the extra laughs mocking the invaders would bring. But he too had concluded Sir Edmund would never let him get away with it. Again, though, he had the chance to ask the question he wanted, or one leading towards it: "What think you, Master Martin, of having to take such care to keep from rousing the Spaniards' ire?"

  "Working with the Master would be simpler without such worries, no doubt of't," the prompter replied.

  "But you'll not deny, I trust, that heresy's strong grip'd yet constrain us had they not come hither. I have now the hope of heaven. Things being different, hellfire'd surely hold me after I cast my mortal slough."

  "Ay, belike," Shakespeare said, none too happily. Without a doubt, Geoffrey Martin had given him an honest answer, but he hadn't said what Shakespeare wanted to hear.

  "Why? Believe you otherwise?" Martin asked-he'd heard how half-hearted Shakespeare's answer sounded, which the poet hadn't wanted at all.

  "By my troth, no," Shakespeare said, this time using his experience on the stage to sound as he thought Geoffrey Martin would want him to.

  "I should hope not, sir," the prompter said. "King Philip, God keep him, is a great man, a very great man.

  He hath from ourselves saved us, and in our own despite. Of whom else might one say the like, save only our Lord Himself?"

  "Even so," Shakespeare said, and got away from Martin as fast as he could. The players he'd sounded had all been willing, even eager, to help try to expel the Spaniards from England. The tireman had been noncommittal. The prompter, plainly, took the Spaniards' part. And if Geoffrey Martin suspected treason, he knew important ears into which to whisper-or shout-his suspicions.

  "Why the long face, Will?" Burbage called when Shakespeare wandered out onto the stage again.

  "Mislikes he the mouse your mountain at last delivered?"

  "Nay, the jests seemed to please him well enough," Shakespeare answered. "But he hath.

  misgivings. in aid of. certain other matters."

  Someone clapped him on the shoulder. He jumped; he hadn't heard anybody come up behind him. Will Kemp's elastic features leered at him. Cackling with mad glee, the clown said, "What
better time than the new year for a drawing and quartering? Or would you liefer rout out winter's chill with a burning? I'll stake you would."

  "Go to!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "Get hence!"

  "And wherefore should I?" Kemp replied. "I know as much as doth Dick here." Before Shakespeare could deny that, the clown continued, "I know enough to hang us all, than the which what could be more?"

  Put so, he had a point. Burbage said, "The object is not to let others know enough to hang us all- others now including a certain gentleman (marry, a very certain gentleman he is, too) who all too easily can confound us."

  "Knew you not that Geoff Martin hath his nose in the Pope of Rome's arsehole?" Kemp said with another mocking smile.

  " 'Steeth, Will-soft, soft!" Shakespeare hissed, the ice outside having nothing to do with the chill that ran through him. "He need but cock his head hither and he'll hear you."

  "He's right, man," Burbage said. "D'you want your neck stretched or your bowels cut out or the flesh roasted from your bones? Talk too free and you'll win your heart's desire."

  "O ye of little faith!" Kemp jeered. "Dear Geoff's prompter and book-keeper. He hath before him a new play-so new, belike the ink's still damp. What'll he do? Plunge his beak into its liver, like the vulture with Prometheus. A cannon could sound beside him without his hearing't."

  Burbage looked thoughtful. "He may have reason," he said to Shakespeare.

  "He may be right," Shakespeare said. "Right or wrong, reason hath he none. Where's the reason in a man who will hazard his life for nothing but to hear his own chatter? God deliver me from being subject to the breath of every fool, whose sense no more can feel but his own fancies."

  "Doth thy other mouth call me?" Will Kemp retorted. He strode away, then stopped, bent, and spoke loudly with his other mouth.

  "Whoreson beetle-headed, flap-eared knave," Shakespeare burst out-but quietly. He remembered all too well that, if he angered Kemp, the clown could betray him, too.

  "A bacon-fed knave, very voluble," Burbage agreed, "but when have you known a clown who was otherwise?" He too spoke in a low voice. After a moment, he went on, "And what, think you, may we do about Martin?"