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  "A robber, I suppose," Lope answered with a shrug. "I hear his purse was empty when the constables found his body."

  "Robbery, perhaps, but what else?" his superior persisted. "He was a good Catholic, and now he's dead.

  We might have learned a great deal from him."

  "Had someone approached him?" Lope asked. "If anyone had, I never knew it."

  "Nor I," Guzman said. "But that does not necessarily signify. He could have been talking to the English Inquisition with us none the wiser. The inquisitors always hold their cards close to their chests-sometimes too close to play them, I think, but they are not anxious for my opinion."

  "Losing the prompter is a blow to the company," Lope said. "They will have to replace him as soon as they can."

  "And with whom they replace him may be interesting." Captain Guzman eyed de Vega. "If Shakespeare is as much an innocent as you think, he certainly has odd things happen around him."

  "And if you think Shakespeare a footpad, your Excellency, you prove you do not know the man at all," de Vega replied.

  "That is not what I said, Senior Lieutenant," Guzman said, a distinct chill in his voice. "Please think about what I did say. You are dismissed." To show how very dismissed he was, his superior bent his head to his paperwork with him still in the office.

  Seething, Lope gave Guzman a salute whose perfection was an act of mockery. "Good day, your Excellency," he snarled sweetly. His about-face might almost have been a dance. He neither slammed Guzman's door on walking out nor shut it silently, as Enrique had. Instead, he left it open. The captain's exasperated sigh and the scrape of his chair on the wood floor as he pushed it back so he could get up and close the door himself were music to de Vega's ears.

  He knew nothing but thanks at escaping the barracks-thanks and cold, for snowflakes fluttered on the northwesterly breeze. It's January. It could be snowing in Madrid, too, he told himself. It was true. He knew it was true. It didn't help. When he thought of Madrid, he thought of a place where the vine and the olive flourished. He tried to imagine grapes and olives growing in London, and laughed at himself. Not even a poet's imagination stretched so far.

  In the street outside the barracks, a Spanish soldier and a skinny Englishwoman were striking a bargain.

  He gave her a coin. She led him away. Before long, he would get relief. Lope didn't know whether to envy or pity him for being satisfied so easily.

  "I'd sooner be a monk than buy a nasty counterfeit for love," he muttered. That didn't mean he enjoyed living like a monk. He had, though, ever since his two mistresses were so inconsiderate as to run into each other outside the Southwark bear garden. Goodbye, Nell. Farewell, Martha. High time I found someone new.

  He wouldn't do it by the barracks. He knew that. The Spanish soldiers stationed there drew trulls as a lodestone drew iron. De Vega didn't want women of easy virtue. He wanted women who would fall in love with him, and whom he would love. for a while.

  He wandered down towards the Thames, past the church of St. Lawrence Poultney in Candlewick Street. Not far from the church, a woman with a wicker basket called, "Whelks and mussels! Cockles and clams! Fresh today. Whelks and mussels.!"

  Maybe they were fresh today, maybe they weren't. In this weather, even shellfish stayed good for a while-one of its few virtues Lope could think of. He eyed the woman selling them. She was a few years younger than he, wrapped in a wool cloak she would have thrown out two years before if she could have afforded to replace it. The worried look on her face told how hard life could be.

  "Whelks or mussels, sir?" she said, feeling his eye on her. "Clams? Cockles? Good for dinner, good for supper, good for soup, good for stew." She all but sang the desperate little jingle.

  "Cockles, I think," Lope answered, "though I should be pleased to buy anything from so lovely a creature."

  Her weary sigh sent fog swirling from her mouth. "I sell that not," she said, voice hard and flat.

  "God forbid I meant any such thing!" Lope exclaimed, though he had, at least to test her. He swept off his hat, bowed, and told her his name, then gave her his most open, friendly smile and asked hers.

  "I oughtn't to tell it you," she said.

  "And why not?" He affected indignation. "What shall I do with it? Make witchcraft against you? They'd burn me, none less than the which I'd deserve. Nay, sweet lady, I want it only for to write it on the doorposts of mine heart. My heart?" He couldn't remember which was right.

  The girl with the basket of shellfish didn't enlighten him. A tiny smile did lift the corners of her mouth for a moment, though. She said, "There's a deal of foolery in you, is't not so?"

  "I know not whereof you speak," Lope said, donning a comically droll expression.

  That smile was like a shy wild thing he had to lure from hiding. He felt rewarded when he saw it. "I'm Lucy Watkins, sir," she said.

  "My lady!" Lope bowed again. She wasn't his lady. Maybe she never would be. But he intended to make trial of that.

  VI

  Smoke from the fireplace, smoke from the flames under a roasting capon, and smoke from half a dozen pipes of tobacco filled the Boar's Head in East Cheap. Shakespeare's eyes stung and watered.

  "What's the utility of tobacco?" he asked the player beside him, who'd been drinking sack with singleminded dedication for some little while now. "What pleasure takes one from the smoking of it, besides the pleasure of setting fire to one's purse?" The stuff was, among other things, devilishly expensive.

  The player blinked at him in owlish solemnity. "Why, to pass current, of course," he answered. After a soft belch, he buried his nose in the mug of sack once more.

  "It suffices not," Shakespeare murmured.

  "Pay him no heed," Christopher Marlowe said from across the table. Marlowe had a pipe. He paused to draw in smoke, then blew a perfect smoke ring. Shakespeare goggled. He'd never seen that before. It almost answered his question by itself. Laughing at his flabbergasted expression, Marlowe went on, "He is sensible in nothing but blows, and so is an ass."

  "Is that so?" the player said. "Well, sirrah, you can kiss mine arse."

  Marlowe rose from his stool in one smooth motion. "Right gladly will I." He came around the table, kissed the fellow on the mouth, and returned to his place. The drunken player gaped and then, too late, cursed and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his doublet. Loud, raucous laughter filled the Boar's Head.

  Under it, Marlowe nodded to Shakespeare. "You were saying, Will?"

  "What good's tobacco?" Shakespeare asked.

  "What good is't?" Now Marlowe was the one who stared. "Why, let Aristotle and all your philosophers say what they will, there is nothing to be compared with tobacco. Have you tried it, at the least?"

  "I have, four or five years gone by. I paid my shilling for the damned little clay pipe, and two shillings more for the noxious weed to charge it with, and I smoked and I smoked till I might have been a chimneytop. And. "

  "And?" Marlowe echoed.

  "And I cast up the good threepenny supper I'd had not long before-as featly as you please, mind, missing my shoes altogether-and sithence have had naught to do with tobacco, nor wanted to."

  "Liked you the leek when first you ate of it? Or the bitter taste of beer?"

  "Better than that horrid plant from unknown clime." Shakespeare shuddered at the memory of how his guts had knotted.

  "By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you," Marlowe said. "You have not so much brain as ear-wax; in sooth, there will be little learning die then that day you are hanged." He leered at Shakespeare. "And who knows which day that will be, eh, my chuck?"

  "Go to," Shakespeare snarled. Marlowe would not keep his mouth shut. "More of your conversation would infect my brain. You draw out the thread of your verbosity finer than the style of your argument, you scambling, outfacing, fashion-mongering peevish lown."

  "Well shot, Will," Thomas Dekker called. The young poet whooped and clapped his hands. Lord Westmorland's Men had put on his first play
only a few weeks before. He lifted up his mug of wine in salute. "Reload and give him another barrel!" He drained the mug and slammed it down.

  Shakespeare caught a barmaid's eye and pointed to Dekker. When she filled the youngster's mug again, Shakespeare paid her. Dekker was chronically short of funds; till Shakespeare's company bought his comedy, he'd been one step from debtor's prison-and now, rumor had it, was again.

  Marlowe clucked reproachfully. "Buying a claque? I reckoned it beneath you. The Devil will not have you damned, lest the oil that's in you should set hell on fire." He emptied his mug, and gave the barmaid a halfpenny to refresh it. "I pay mine own way," he declared, drinking again.

  "I am sure, Kit, though you know what temperance should be, you know not what it is," Shakespeare answered sweetly.

  "Me? Me?" Marlowe's indignation was convincing. Whether it was also genuine, Shakespeare had no idea. "What of you, eh? I am too well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way."

  As Shakespeare had with Dekker, so Marlowe also had a partisan: a boy actor of about fourteen, as pretty as one of the girls he played. He laughed and banged his fist down on the tabletop. Marlowe bought him more of whatever he was drinking-beer, Shakespeare saw when the serving woman poured his mug full again. He'd already had quite a lot; hectic color glowed on his cheeks, as if he were coming down with a fever.

  Marlowe blew another smoke ring, then passed the pipe to the boy, who managed a couple of unskillful puffs before coughing piteously and turning even redder than he was. Marlowe took back the pipe. He kissed the stem where the boy's lips had touched it, then put it in his own mouth again.

  Watching intently was a tall, thin, pale man who wore wore a rich doublet of slashed silk. His tongue played over his red lips as he watched Marlowe and the boy. "Who's that?" Shakespeare asked Dekker.

  He pointed. "I have seen him aforetimes, but recall not his name."

  "Why, 'tis Anthony Bacon," the other poet replied. "He hath a. liking for beardless boys." He laughed and drank again. Shakespeare nodded. Not only had he seen Bacon, he'd visited the house Anthony shared with his younger brother, Francis, to see Sir William Cecil. He suddenly wondered what Anthony knew of the plot. Wonder or not, he had no intention of trying to find out.

  Marlowe and Shakespeare weren't the only poets and players and other theatre folk dueling with words in the Boar's Head. Will Kemp had got George Rowley, an actor notorious for his slow thinking, splutteringly furious at him. As Rowley cast about for some devastating comeback-and looked more and more unhappy as none occurred to him-Kemp gave him a mocking bow and sang out, "Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike."

  "I'll strike you, you-you-you. fool!" Rowley shouted amidst general laughter, which only got louder at his sorry reply.

  "Is his head worth a hat? Or his chin worth a beard?" Kemp demanded of the crowd, and got back shouts of, "No!" that pierced the smoke and came echoing back from the stout oak beams of the roof.

  George Rowley surged up from his bench and did try to strike him then, but other actors held them apart.

  Marlowe smiled across the table at Shakespeare. "Ah, the Boar's Head," he said fondly. "What things we have seen, done at the Boar's Head! Heard words that have been so nimble, so full of subtle flame-"

  Shakespeare broke in, "As if that everyone from whence they came. " He paused in thought, then carried on: "Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, and had resolved to live a fool the rest of his dull life."

  "Not bad, Will," Marlowe said. "No, not bad, and all the better for the internal rhyme. Purposed you that from when you began to speak?"

  "An I say yes, you'll call me liar; an I say no, you'll call me lucky clot-poll," Shakespeare answered. The other poet grinned back at him, altogether unabashed. Shakespeare turned thoughtful. "Think you the like hath value in shaping dialogue?"

  Marlowe leaned forward. "A thought of merit! It might lead mere leaden prose towards the suppleness of blank verse."

  They batted the idea back and forth, nearly oblivious to the racket around them, till the pretty boy beside Marlowe, indignant at being ignored, got up to go. Shakespeare wondered if Marlowe would notice even that. Anthony Bacon did, he saw. Despite the lure of versification, the lure of the boy proved stronger for Marlowe. He spoke soothingly. When that failed to have the desired effect, he charged his pipe with tobacco, lit it with a splinter kindled from a nearby candle, and offered it to the boy. The youngster took another puff, made a horrible face, and coughed as if in the final stages of some dreadful tisick.

  Shakespeare's sympathies were with him.

  Regardless of Shakespeare's sympathies, the boy and Marlowe left the Boar's Head together. Marlowe's arm was around the boy's waist; the youngster's head nestled against his shoulder. Bacon watched them hungrily. Anyone looking at them would have guessed they were sweethearts. And so, Shakespeare supposed, they were. But Marlowe could not hide-indeed, took pride in not hiding-his appetites. The English Inquisition might burn him for sodomy. Secular authorities, if they caught him, would merely hang him.

  Maybe the talk with Marlowe was what he needed to get his wits going, though. That night, at the ordinary, he began work on the play Lord Burghley had asked of him. He wished he were as wealthy as one of the Bacons, or as Burghley himself. Committing treason was bad enough. Committing it in public.

  He put a hand over his papers whenever Kate the serving woman came near. She found it funny instead of taking offense. "I'll not steal your words," she said. "Since when could I, having no letters of mine own?"

  She'd said before she needed to make a mark instead of signing her name. Shakespeare relaxed-a very little. Whenever anyone but Kate walked past the table where he wrote, he kept on covering up the manuscript. That, of course, drew more attention to it than it would have got had he kept on writing. A plump burgess looked down at the sheet in front of him, shook his head, and said, "You need have no fear, sir. Nor God nor the Devil could make out your character."

  Geoffrey Martin had voiced similar complaints. But poor Martin had been the company's book-keeper; he naturally had a low opinion of the hand of a mere poet. To hear someone with less exacting standards scorn Shakespeare's script was oddly reassuring.

  After a while, Shakespeare was the only customer left in the ordinary. His quill scratched across the paper so fast, the ink on one line scarcely had time to dry before his hand smudged it while writing the next. He started when Kate said, "Curfew's nigh, Master Will."

  "So soon?" he said, amazed.

  "Soon?" She shook her head. "You've sat there writing sith you finished supper, none of you but your right hand moving. Look-two whole leaves filled. Never saw I you write so fast."

  Little by little, Shakespeare came forward in time a millennium and a half, from bold, outraged Britons and swaggering Romans to London in the year of our Lord 1598. "I wrote two leaves? By God, I did."

  He whistled in wonder. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done so much of a night, either. Not even when he was finishing Love's Labour's Won had his pen flown like this.

  "Is't something new, then?" she asked.

  "Yes." He nodded. He could safely say that much. And he could safely let her see the manuscript, as she'd reminded him earlier in the evening, for she couldn't read it. And. all of a sudden, he didn't feel like thinking about the play any more. "Might I bide a little longer?" he asked. Kate nodded. She didn't seem much surprised.

  Later, when they lay side by side on the narrow little bed in her cramped little chamber, she set her palm on the left side of his chest, perhaps to feel his heartbeat slow towards normal from its pounding peak of a few minutes before. Shakespeare set his own hand on hers. "What's to become of us, Will?" she asked.

  He sighed. He'd run into altogether too many questions lately for which he had no good answers. Here was another. Having no good answers, he responded with a question of his own: "What can become of us? I've a wife and two daughters in Str
atford. I've never hid 'em from thee."

  Kate nodded. "Yes, thou'rt honest, in thine own fashion." That neither sounded nor felt like praise. But here they lay together in her bed, warm and naked and sated. If that wasn't praise of the highest sort a woman could give a man, what was it?

  "I do love thee," he said. Kate snuggled against him. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, hoping he was telling the truth. He sighed again. "Did I have a choice. "

  But before Shakespeare was born, Henry VIII had wanted a choice, too. When the Pope wouldn't give him one, he'd pulled England away from Rome. Now, of course, the invading Spaniards had forcibly brought her back to the Catholic Church. But even if Elizabeth still reigned, even if England were still Protestant, divorce was for sovereigns and nobles and those rich enough to pay for a private act of Parliament, not for the likes of a struggling poet and player who lived in a Bishopsgate lodging house, had a sour wife far away, and sometimes slept with the serving woman at the ordinary around the corner.

  "Didst thou have a choice. " Kate echoed.

  Before God, I know not what I'd do, Shakespeare thought. If he hadn't got Anne with child, he doubted he would have wed her. Years and years too late to worry about that now, though. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. He'd heard that text in sermons more times than he could count since the Armada put Isabella and Albert on the English throne. Priests harped on it, to show that Protestants who countenanced divorce were heretics and sinners.

  "Didst thou have a choice. " Kate repeated, a little more sharply this time.

  Would she have me lie to her? Shakespeare wondered. He was just then and would keep on lying to practically everyone he knew. Why should a serving woman be different from anyone else? Because I do- because I might-love her. Not a perfect answer, but the best he could do.

  "Did I have a choice, my chuck. " Shakespeare sighed and shrugged, expecting her to throw him out of that narrow bed for not crying out that he would cleave to her come what might.