Ruled Britannia Read online

  That was as well. London's short day was drawing to a close. Lope rose and gave Nell Lumley his arm.

  "Shall we away to the city and find a place for the two of us?"

  Her answering smile had nothing coy in it. "Yes, let's," she said. Sure enough, after a bear-baiting her own animal spirits were in the ascendant.

  Lope and Nell had just left the bear-baiting garden when someone called his name from behind. It was a woman's voice. As if in the grip of nightmare, Lope slowly turned. Out of the arena came his other mistress, Martha Brock, walking with a man who looked enough like her to be her brother, and probably was.

  He would be, Lope thought in helpless horror. If she were betraying me, she couldn't get in much of a temper. But if she's not. Oh, by the Virgin, if she's not.! Too late, he realized the Virgin was the wrong one to ask for intercession here.

  "Who's that?" Martha Brock demanded, pointing at Nell.

  "Who's that?" Nell Lumley demanded, pointing at Martha.

  "Dear ladies, I can explain-" Lope began hopelessly.

  He never got the chance. He hadn't thought he would. "You are no surer, no, than is the coal of fire upon the ice, or hailstone in the sun!" Nell cried. "And I loved you!"

  "Impersevant thing!" Martha added. "A truant disposition!"

  Lope tried again. "I can expl-"

  Again, no good. They both screamed at him. They both slapped him. They didn't even quarrel with each other, which might have saved him. When they both burst into tears and cried on each others shoulders, Martha's brother said, "Sirrah, thou'rt a recreant blackguard. Get thee hence!" He didn't even touch his sword. With de Vega so plainly in the wrong, he didn't need it.

  Jeered by the Englishmen who'd watched his discomfiture, Lope walked back toward the Thames all alone. When Pizarro's men conquered the Incas, one of them got as his share of the loot a great golden sun. and gambled it away before morning. He'd made himself a Spanish proverb, too. But here I've outdone him, Lope thought glumly. I lost not one mistress, but two, and both in the wink of an eye.

  Will Kemp leered at Shakespeare. The clown's features were soft as clay, and could twist into any shape. What lay behind his mugging? Shakespeare couldn't tell. "The first thing we do," Kemp exclaimed,

  "let's kill all the Spaniards!"

  He didn't even try to keep his voice down. They were alone in the tiring room, but the tireman or his assistants or the Theatre watchmen might overhear. "God mend your voice," Shakespeare hissed. "You but offend your lungs to speak so loud."

  "Not my lungs alone," Kemp said innocently. "Are you not offended?"

  "Offended? No." Shakespeare shook his head. "Afeard? Yes, I am afeard."

  "And wherefore?" the clown asked. "Is't not the desired outcome of that which you broached to me just now?"

  "Of course it is," Shakespeare answered. "But would the fountain of your mind were clear again, you prancing ninny, that I might water an ass at it. Do you broadcast it to the general before the day, our heads go up on London Bridge and cur-dogs fatten on our bodies."

  "Ah, well. Ah, well." Maybe Kemp hadn't thought of that at all. Maybe, too, he'd done his best to give Shakespeare an apoplexy. His best was much too good. He went on, "An you write the play, I'll act in't.

  There." He beamed at Shakespeare. "Are you happy now, my pet?" He might have been soothing a fractious child.

  "Why could you not have said that before?" Shakespeare did his best to hold his temper, but couldn't help adding another, "Why?"

  "You want everything all in its place." Again, Will Kemp might have been-likely was-humoring him. "I can see how that might be so for you-after all, you'd want Act First done or ever you went on to Act Second, eh?"

  "I should hope so," Shakespeare said between his teeth. What was the clown prattling about now?

  Kemp deigned to explain: "But you're a poet, and so having all in order likes you well. But for a clown?"

  He shook his head. "As like as not, I've no notion what next I'll do on stage."

  "I've noticed that. We've all of us noticed that," Shakespeare said.

  "Good!" Kemp twisted what had been meant for a reproach into a compliment. "If I know not, nor can the groundlings guess. The more they're surprised, the harder they laugh."

  "Regardless of how your twisted turn mars the fabric o' the play," Shakespeare said.

  Kemp only shrugged. Shakespeare would have been angrier had he expected anything else. The clown said, "I know not what I'll do tomorrow, nor care. If I play, then I play. If I choose instead to morris-dance from London to Norwich, by God, I'll do that. I'll do well by it, too." He seemed to fancy the ridiculous idea. "Folk would pay to watch me on the way, and I might write a book afterwards.

  Kemp's Nine Days Wonder, I'd call it."

  "No man could in nine days dance thither," Shakespeare said, interested in spite of himself.

  "I've ten pound to say you're a liar." By the gleam in Kemp's eye, he was ready to strap bells on his legs and set off with a man to play the flute and drums. He'd meant what he told Shakespeare-he didn't know what he'd do next, on stage or anywhere else. "Come on, poet. Will you match me?"

  The man's a weathervane, blowing now this way, now that, in the wind of his appetites, Shakespeare thought. He held up a placating hand. "I haven't the money to set against you," he lied. "Let it be ven as you claim. Fly not to Norwich, nor to any other place." He realized he was pleading. "You perform this afternoon, you know, and on the morrow as well."

  "There's no more valor in you than in a wild duck," Kemp said scornfully. "You are as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse."

  He told the truth. Shakespeare knew too well how little courage he held. But he wagged a finger at Will Kemp and said, "If you'd bandy insults, think somewhat before you speak. You twice running used valor; it might better in the first instance have been courage."

  "Woe upon you, and all such false professors!" Kemp retorted. "O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts."

  Shakespeare threw his hands in the air. "Enough!" And so, however maddening, it was. Kemp had, in his own way, said he'd do what needed doing. Shakespeare didn't think the clown would betray him to the Spaniards after that-not on purpose, anyhow. "Not a word now, on your life," he warned. On my life, too, not that Kemp cares a farthing for it.

  "What, gone without a word?" the clown said. "Oh, very well, for your joy."

  When Shakespeare came out of the tiring room, he felt he'd aged ten years. The tireman gave him a curious glance. "What's toward?" he asked.

  "That Kemp is more stubborn-hard than hammered iron," Shakespeare said disdainfully, telling the truth and acting at the same time. "At last, meseems, he hath been brought towards reason."

  "Towards doing what you'd have him do, you mean," the tireman said. His name was Jack Hungerford.

  His beard, which once had been red, was now white; that only made his eyes seem bluer. He'd had charge of costumes and props for decades before Marlowe's Tamberlane made blank verse the standard for plays, and he had all the shrewdness of his years.

  Here, though, he played into Shakespeare's hands. "I'll not say you're mistaken," the poet replied, and Hungerford looked smug. But keeping the tireman happy wasn't enough. As much as the players, he would be a part of what followed. Shakespeare picked his words with care: "How now, Master Jack?

  You've seen more than is to most men given."

  "And if I have?" Hungerford asked. His eyes were suddenly intent, while the rest of his face showed nothing whatever. Shakespeare had seen that blank vizard more times than he could count, these years since the Armada landed. Indeed, he'd worn that blank vizard more times than he could count. It was an Englishman's shield against discovery, against treachery, in a land no longer his own. Having it raised against him saddened Shakespeare, but he understood why Hungerford showed so little. The safest answer to the question Whom to trust? was No one.

  He'll make me discover myself to him, Shakespeare thought unhappily.
Then the risk is mine, not his.

  Well, no help for't. He said, "You well recall the days before Isabella and Albert took the throne."

  " 'Twas not so long ago, Master Will," Hungerford replied, his tone studiously neutral. "You recall 'em yourself, though you've only half my years."

  "Good days, I thought," Shakespeare said.

  "Some were. Some not so good." The tireman revealed nothing, nothing at all. Behind Shakespeare's back, one of his hands folded into a fist. I might have known it would be like this. But then Hungerford went on, "Better days, I will allow, than some of those we live in. I say as much-I hope I say as much-not only for that a man's youth doth naturally seem sweeter in the years of his age."

  "Think you those good days might come again?"

  "I know not," Hungerford said, and Shakespeare wanted to hit him. "Would it were so, but I know not."

  Was that enough encouragement to go on? Shakespeare didn't think so. Damn you, Jack Hungerford, he raged, but only to himself. He stalked away from the tireman as if Hungerford had offered him some deadly insult. Behind him, Hungerford called for one of his assistants. If he knew where Shakespeare had been heading, he gave no sign of it.

  That day, Lord Westmorland's Men put on Marlowe's The Cid. Shakespeare had only a small part: one of the Moorish princes whom the Cid first befriended and then, in the name of Christianity, betrayed. He unwound his turban, shed his bright green robe, and left the Theatre early, hoping to take advantage of what little daylight was left in the sky.

  Booksellers hawked their wares in the shadow of St. Paul's. Most of them sold pamphlets denouncing Protestantism and hair-raising accounts of witches out in the countryside. Some others offered the texts of plays-as often as not pirated editions, printed up from actors' memories of their lines. The volumes usually proved actors' memories less than they might have been.

  Shakespeare ground his teeth as he walked past a stall full of such plays. He'd suffered from stolen and surreptitious publications himself. That he got nothing for them was bad enough. That they mangled his words was worse. What they'd done to his Prince of Denmark.

  He'd added injury to insult by buying his own copy of that one, to see if it were as bad as everyone told him. It wasn't. It was worse. When he thought about the Prince's so-called soliloquy: To be, or not to be. Aye there's the point.

  To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all:

  No, to sleep, to dream, aye marry there it goes.

  He'd seen that, burned it into his memory, so he could quote it as readily as what he'd really written. He could-but he didn't have the stomach to get past the third line.

  Splendid in his red robes, a bishop came out of St. Paul's and down the steps, surrounded by a retinue of more plainly dressed priests and laymen. The soldiers on guard at the bottom of the stairs stiffened to attention. One of them-by his fair hair, surely an Englishman-knelt to kiss the cleric's ring as he went past.

  The Spaniards enslaved some of us, Shakespeare thought. Others, though-others enslaved themselves. No one had made that soldier bend the knee to the bishop. No one would have thought less of him had he not done it. But he had. By all appearances, he'd been proud to do it.

  Even if I go on with this madcap scheme, will it have the issue Lord Burghley desires?

  Shakespeare shrugged. He'd come too far to back away now unless he inclined to treason. That might save you. It might make you rich. He shrugged again. Some things were bought too dear.

  Motion up at the top of St. Paul's caught his eye. A man in artisan's plain hose and jerkin was walking about on the flat-roofed steeple, now and then stooping as if to measure. We have a Catholic Queen and King once more. Will they order the spire finished at last? Shakespeare shrugged one more time. It would be yet another sign we are not what we were, what we once set out to be. But how many even care? Gloom threatened to choke him.

  Gloom also made him inattentive, so that he almost walked past the stall he sought. It wasn't the sight of the books that made him pause, but the sight of the bookseller. "Good den, Master Seymour," he said.

  "Why, Master Shakespeare! God give you good den as well," Harry Seymour replied. He was a tall, lean man who would have been good-looking had he not had a large, hairy wen on the end of his nose.

  "Do you but pass the time of day, or can I find summat for you?"

  "I'm always pleased to pass the time of day with you," Shakespeare answered, which was true: he'd never known Seymour to print or sell pirated plays. He went on, "But if you've the Annals of Tacitus done into English, I'd be pleased to buy it of you."

  "As my head lives, Master Shakespeare, I do indeed. And I'll take oath I fetched hither some few of that title this morning." Seymour came around to the front of the stall. "Now where did I put 'em?. Ah!

  Here we are." He handed Shakespeare a copy. "Will you want it for a play?"

  "I might. But my Latin doth stale with disuse, wherefore I'm fain to take the short road to reminding me what he treats of." Shakespeare admired the ornate first page, illustrated with a woodcut of swaggering, toga-clad Romans. "A handsome volume, I'll not deny."

  " 'Twould be handsomer still, cased in buckram or fine morocco." Like any book dealer, Seymour sold his wares unbound; what boards they eventually wore depended on the customer's taste and purse.

  "No doubt," Shakespeare said politely, by which he meant he didn't intend to bind the book at all. Not even Baron Burghley's gold could tempt him to such extravagance. As a player and a poet, he knew too well how money could rain down one day and dry up the next. He would cling to as many of those coins as he could. In aid of which. He held up the translation. "What's the scot?"

  "Six shillings," Harry Seymour answered.

  "My good fellow, you are a thief professed," Shakespeare exclaimed. "But your theft is too open. Your filching is like an unskilful singer; you keep not time."

  "Say what you will, Will, but I'll have my price or you'll not have your book," Seymour said. "I give thanks to the holy Mother of God that I can stay at my trade at all. Times are hard, and grow no easier."

  "I am not some wanderer, staggering half drunk past your stall. I do regularly give you my custom when I seek some work of scholarship-or so I have done, up till now." Shakespeare's indignation was part perfectly real, part feigned. If he gave in too easily, the bookseller might wonder why-and Seymour's oath had proved him a Catholic. I must seem as I always was, Shakespeare thought. The deeper into this exercise he got, the harder that would grow.

  "You know not what I had to pay Master Daniels, the which rendered into our tongue the noble Roman's words," Seymour protested.

  Sensing weakness, Shakespeare pressed him: "That you're a subtle knave, a villain with a smiling cheek, makes you no less a knave and a villain." He made as if to thrust the Annals back at Seymour.

  The bookseller had grit. "Save your player's tricks for the stage," he said. "I gave you my price."

  "And I give you my farewell, if you use me so." Shakespeare didn't want to have to search for a different translation elsewhere, not when he had this one in his hands, but he didn't want to pay six shillings, either.

  Nine days' wages for a soldier, on one book?

  Harry Seymour made a rumbling, unhappy noise down deep in his throat. "Five and sixpence, then," he said, as if wounded unto death, "and for no other man alive would I lessen the price even a farthing."

  His honor salved, Shakespeare paid at once, saying, "There, you see? I knew you for the gentleman you are, exceedingly well read and wondrous affable: stuffed, as they say, with honorable parts."

  "You reckon him a gentleman who doth as you list," Seymour said sourly. "Go your way, Master Shakespeare; I am yet out of temper with you. May you have joy of the sixpence you prised from me."

  His joy in that sixpence quite quenched, Shakespeare strode north and east, back towards his Bishopsgate lodgings. Light faded from the sky with every step he took. The winter solstice was coming soon, with Christmas hard on its heels. They
were both coming sooner, indeed, than he reckoned right.

  After their coronation, Isabella and Albert had imposed on England Pope Gregory's newfangled calendar, cutting ten days out of June in 1589 to bring the kingdom into conformity with Spain and the rest of Catholic Europe. When Shakespeare looked at things logically, he understood those ten days weren't really stolen. When he didn't-which was, mankind being what it was, more often-he still felt as if he'd had his pocket picked of time.

  Some stubborn souls still celebrated the feast of the Nativity on what Gregory's calendar insisted was January 4. They did so in secret. They had to do so in secret, for the English Inquisition prowled hardest at this season of the year, sniffing after those who showed affection for the old calendar and thus for the Protestant faith adhering to it.

  Along with darkness, fog began filling the streets. Here and there, men lit cressets in front of their homes and shops, but the flickering flames did little to pierce the gloom. Shakespeare hurried up Cheapside to the Poultry, past the smaller churches of St. Peter and St. Mildred, and up onto Threadneedle Street, which boasted on the west side churches dedicated to St. Christopher-le-Stock and St. Bartholomew.

  He let out a sigh of relief when Threadneedle Street opened on to Bishopsgate. A moment later, he let out a gasp, for a squad of Spaniards tramped toward him. But their leader only gave him a brusque jerk of the thumb, as if to tell him to hurry home.

  "I thank our worship," he murmured, and touched his hand to the brim of his hat as he ducked down the side street that would take him to the Widow Kendall's. The Spaniard nodded in return and led his men south and west along Threadneedle. A decent man doing well the task to which he was set, Shakespeare thought. More than a few of the occupiers were decent men. Still, the task to which Philip had set them was the subjugation of England. And, on nine years' evidence, they did it well.

  "Oh, Master Will, 'tis good to see you," Jane Kendall said when Shakespeare came into her house. As he went over to stand by the fire, she continued, "I was sore afeard them Spanish devils had took you."

  "Not so. As you see, I'm here." Shakespeare looked around the parlor. "But where's Master Foster?