Ruled Britannia Part 21

It was, perhaps, not by accident that his mind and his pen turned to the revolt Britain, under the queen of the Iceni, raised against the Romans, and to the Romans' horrified response. How would they feel, seeing a province they thought subdued rise and smite 'em? he wondered.

His pen began to move. Poenius Postumus, a Roman officer, began to speak on the page:

"Nor can Rome task us with impossibilities, Or bid us fight against a flood; we serve her, That she may proudly say she hath good soldiers, Not slaves to choke all hazards. Who but fools, That make no difference betwixt certain dying And dying well, would fling their fames and fortunes Into this Britain-gulf, this quicksand-ruin, That, sinking, swallows us! what n.o.ble hand Can find a subject fit for blood there? or what sword Room for his execution? what air to cool us, But poison'd with their blasting breaths and curses, Where we lie buried quick above the ground, And are, with labouring sweat and breathless pain, Kill'd like slaves, and cannot kill again?"

Shakespeare paused to read what he'd just written, and nodded in satisfaction. He started to add something to Poenius' speech, but his pen chose that moment to run dry. Muttering, hoping he wouldn't lose his inspiration, he inked it and resumed:

"Set me to lead a handful of my menAgainst an hundred thousand barbarous slaves, That have march'd name by name with Rome's best doers?

Serve 'em up some other meat; I'll bring no food To stop the jaws of all those hungry wolves; My regiment's mine own."

He nodded again. Yes, that would do nicely. Poenius would later kill himself for shame at not having joined Suetonius' victorious army. Meanwhile, his anguished despair would move the play forward--and make the groundlings cheer his British, female foe.

After the Romans first conquered Britain, Tacitus said, they'd flogged Boudicca and violated her daughters. Rumor said the Spaniards had raped England's Virgin Queen after capturing her. Shakespeare didn't know whether rumor was true, but he intended to use it in the play.

But not tonight, he thought, yawning. He began to rest his head on his arms, then jerked upright with alarm tingling through him. If he fell asleep in front of the hearth and someone else got a look at what he was writing . . . If that happened, he was a dead man, and Lord Burghley's plan dead with him. He made himself get up and put away the deadly dangerous ma.n.u.script before he went to bed. His last thought as slumber seized him was, I may not make this business easier, but I will not make it harder.

WHEN LOPE DE VEGA walked into his chamber, he expected to find Diego asleep. He wouldn't even have been angry if he had; it couldn't have been far from midnight. The dice had rolled Lope's way, and he'd stayed in the game longer than he'd expected. Gambling during Lent was probably a sin. Whether it was or not, it was certainly profitable.

A lamp burned in the outer room where Diego dwelt. The servant wasn't even in bed, but sitting on a stool. Lope grinned at him. "If you sleep all day, will you stay awake all night? Why aren't you . . . ?"

He'd intended to say snoring, but his voice trailed away. He stared at Diego in astonished dismay. His servant stared back, more appalled still. Diego had just cut a bite from a big chunk of roast beef, and now stopped with that bite halfway to his mouth. The dim, flickering lamplight was more than enough to show how pale he went.

"Madre de Dios," Lope whispered. "Diego, you idiot, have you turned Protestant now?"

Diego's fleshy jowls wobbled as he shook his head. "Protestant? G.o.d save me, no, sir!"

"How is G.o.d supposed to save you if you eat meat during Lent? Don't you know we're hunting Englishmen who do the very same thing? Are you out of your mind?"

"No, sir. I'm just hungry," his servant answered. "Bread and cheese, bread and cheese . . . To the Devil with bread and cheese!"

"No, no, no." Now de Vega was the one who shook his head. "To the Devil with eating meat at this season of the year. Or, I should say, the idea of eating meat at this season of the year has come straight from Satan.""No such thing, sir," Diego said indignantly. "No such thing. I got hungry, that's all. It's nothing else."

"Nothing, eh? Suppose I call Captain Guzm?n? Suppose I call a priest? Suppose I call a priest from the Spanish Inquisition, or the English? Will they think it's nothing? Would you have turned the color of whey if you thought it was nothing?"

Diego shot him a resentful stare. "What are you doing here, anyway? When you didn't come back and you didn't come back, I thought you were off s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g your new Englishwoman. If you hadn't walked in when you weren't supposed to, you never would have seen me."

"And you still would have sinned," Lope said.

"And so what?" his servant replied. "G.o.d would have known, and maybe my confessor, but n.o.body else.

I'm not doing any harm."

Lope pointed to the chunk of beef. "Get rid of that. Wrap a rag around it so n.o.body can see what it is and get rid of it. You didn't think anyone would catch you, but now somebody has. And do you know what that means? Do you, Diego?"

"What?" Diego asked apprehensively.

"It means you are mine," de Vega answered. "Mine, do you hear me? I hold your life in my hand, and if I choose to squeeze. . . ." He held out his right hand, palm up, and slowly folded it into a fist. He made the fist as tight as he could, to make sure Diego got the idea.

His servant shuddered. "You wouldn't do such a thing, se?or . . . would you?"

That last frightened question, one Diego surely didn't want to ask but also one he couldn't hold back, told Lope just how worried he was. "Maybe I wouldn't," Lope said. "But, on the other hand, maybe I would, too. That depends on you, don't you think?"

"On me?" Diego didn't like the sound of that.

"On you," Lope said again. "Maybe you were just hungry this once, as you say. If you were, maybe we can forget about it. If you keep your nose clean from now on--if you stay awake, by G.o.d, and if you do all the things you're supposed to do--then n.o.body needs to know about it. But if you think you can go on being lazy and useless, well, even if I can't wake you up, I'd bet the inquisitors d.a.m.ned well can."

Diego looked sullen. "That's blackmail."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" de Vega agreed cheerfully. "A shame I need to blackmail you into doing what you ought to be doing anyhow, but if that's what it takes, that's what I'll do. You will stay awake from now on, won't you?"

"S?-, se?or ," Diego said, sounding more sullen still.

He sounded sullen enough, in fact, to make Lope wonder whether he might prove dangerous. Best to forestall that, Lope judged. "Don't even think about poisoning me or knocking out my brains while I'm asleep," he warned. "I'm going to write down just what I've seen, and I'm going to seal the letter and give it to someone I trust. If anything happens to me, you know what will happen to you, don't you?"

"S?-, se?or ," his servant repeated, his voice gloomy.

Lope smiled. "Very good. Now, while I'm writing suppose you take that roast beef away. Then comeback and go to bed. You won't mind doing that, will you?"

"No, sir." Diego heaved an enormous sigh. He wrapped the offending meat in a rag, as de Vega had suggested, and carried it out. Lope went into his own chamber, using the lamp in the anteroom to light the one inside. Because he worked on plays in odd moments, he always had paper and pens and ink handy.

He sat down on the stool and started to write.

Diego came back very quietly. As if by magic, the pen vanished from de Vega's hand and his rapier replaced it. "You don't want to try anything foolish, do you, Diego?" he said softly.

"No, se?or ." The servant didn't even bother pretending he hadn't been thinking about it. "I guess I don't. Good night."

"Good night," Lope said. "When I finish what I'm working on here, I'm going to take off my boots and leave them out there for you to black. I'll expect them to be ready when I get up in the morning. You'll do a good job, won't you?"

"I'll take care of them, yes." Diego sounded like a man utterly without hope. Lope used the rapier to wave him out of the room. Once his man was gone, Lope did finish the letter--better safe went through his mind. He sealed the letter then got out of his boots and put them in the anteroom. When he went back into his bedchamber, he barred the door from the inside. As soon as the letter was in someone else's hands, he'd be reasonably safe. Till then--better safe, he told himself again.

Out beyond the barred door, Diego cursed quietly. His blasphemies were music to Lope's ears. Then Diego picked up the boots; their heels thumped together. Lope hugged himself with glee as he got into bed. Not even the threat of the Scottish border had turned Diego into a tolerable servant. The threat of the Inquisition, though, seemed to have turned the trick.

And when Lope woke the next morning, he found Diego already up and waiting for him. "Here are your boots, se?or ," the servant said tonelessly. All the mud and scuff marks were gone from them; the leather gleamed with grease. Still with no expression in his voice, Diego went on, "What else do you require?"

"Do I hear rain outside?" Lope asked. Diego nodded. De Vega said, "Well, in that case, you can fetch me my good wool cloak, and get me a hat with an extra wide brim."

"Just as you say," Diego answered, and went to do it. He didn't grumble. He didn't even yawn. It was like a miracle. Lope had no idea how long it would last, but aimed to enjoy it while it did. Taking the letter he'd written with him, he went off to get his breakfast. Even the porridge the barracks kitchen served up tasted better than usual this morning.

With a bowl of barley mush and a cup of wine inside him, he went to see his superior. As usual, Captain Baltasar Guzm?n's servant intercepted him before he got through the door. "You're looking cheerful this morning, Senior Lieutenant," Enrique remarked.

"I feel cheerful," de Vega replied.

"Shakespeare's play goes well?"

"Yes, I think so," Lope said. If Enrique wanted to think that was why he felt happy, the servant was welcome to do so. De Vega added, "As a matter of fact, I'm going up to the Theatre as soon as I see Captain Guzm?n. Is his Excellency in?"

"Un momento, por favor." Enrique ducked behind the door, as if to see whether Guzm?n was there,though he had to know perfectly well. But he was smiling when he came out again. "He says he is delighted to see you. Go right in."

"Gracias." De Vega walked past Enrique and made a leg at Captain Guzm?n, who nodded in return from behind his desk. "I trust your Excellency is well?" Lope said.

"I'll do," Guzm?n said dryly. As Enrique had, he went on, "You look pleased with yourself today, Senior Lieutenant."

"And so I am, sir." Lope handed him the letter he'd written. "Would you do me the courtesy of holding this unread unless some misfortune befalls me?"

Captain Guzm?n raised an eyebrow as he took the sealed sheet of paper. "Just as you say, of course.

May I ask whether it has to do with your theatrical connections or with your women?"

"With neither," de Vega answered, and had the satisfaction of watching that eyebrow jump in surprise again. But Guzm?n stowed the letter in his desk without another word. Lope bowed. "Many thanks, your Excellency. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for Sh.o.r.editch."

"How alarmingly diligent," Guzm?n murmured. He might almost have been Lope himself, talking to Diego. That comparison, perhaps fortunately, didn't occur to Lope till he'd got a horse from the stables and ridden out through Bishopsgate. When it did, the rain--a steady downpour--m.u.f.fled his bad language so that only the couple of Englishmen closest to him turned their heads his way.

Lope squelched through the mud around the Theatre. The s.p.a.ce within the wooden O where the groundlings would stand was muddy, too. On stage, actors rehea.r.s.ed under the protection of a painted canvas canopy--the heavens, they called it. "Where is Master Shakespeare?" Lope called in English to Richard Burbage. "I see him not."

The big player's broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. "He should have come hither," Burbage answered. "He should have, but he did not do't. I know not where he is myself, Master de Vega, and wish to heaven 'twere otherwise."

"KEEP DRY, NOW," the Widow Kendall called out as William Shakespeare left her house to go to the Theatre. With rain drumming down, the advice struck him as useless, but was no doubt kindly meant. He nodded and hurried away.

His belly growled as he hurried through Bishopsgate. Lent wore on him. But he dared not break the fast, not in this year of all years. He was much more virtuous than he might have been, to make sure the Spaniards paid him no special notice.

"Master Shakespeare?"

The voice came out of the rain. Shakespeare jumped. "Who is it?" he asked sharply, peering through the dripping early-morning gloom.

"Here I am, your honor."

Shakespeare's heart sank. He'd heard that sly, whining voice before, seen that clever, ugly face. "What would you, Master Skeres?" he said. "Let it be brief, an you can. I must to the Theatre."

Nicholas Skeres shook his head. "I fear me not, or not yet. You needs must come with me, andstraightaway."

"Wherefore?" Shakespeare demanded.

Skeres' smile showed his bad teeth. It also made Shakespeare want to drive them down his throat. "The wherefore of't's not for me to say," Skeres answered. "Still and all, them as sent me, they'd not be happy did I come back to 'em solus."

"And who did send you?"

"Them you'll meet when I fetch you thither." From everything Shakespeare had seen, Nick Skeres delighted in being uninformative. He also delighted in the power he held over Shakespeare. When he said, "Come," the snap of command filled his voice.

And Shakespeare had to go with him. He knew as much. He hated it, but he knew it. He did say, "They'll miss me, up in Sh.o.r.editch."

Nick Skeres shrugged. "Better that than they miss you whose man I am." He turned away towards the southwest. Heart sinking, Shakespeare followed, however much he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

A horse trying to haul a wagon full of barrels through the muck blocked a narrow street. The wagon had bogged down. The driver rained blows on the horse's back. With all its strength, the beast strained against the weight and the mud. Then, with a noise like a pistol shot, it broke a leg. Its scream was like that of a woman on the rack.

"Cut its throat," Skeres said with a laugh. "It's knacker's meat now."

So it is, Shakespeare thought grimly. And you'd cut my throat as heartlessly, you b.l.o.o.d.y, bawdy villain, did I likewise break down in your employ. Nick Skeres laughed again, as if to say he knew what was going through Shakespeare's mind--knew and didn't care. And that was all too likely true.

"We've not far to go," Skeres said after a while.

"What? Hereabouts?" Shakespeare pointed. "There's the London Stone, the which signifies the Spaniards' barracks cannot lie a stone's throw distant. Beard we the dons in their den?"

Skeres laughed again, which did nothing to rea.s.sure Shakespeare. "They think the same: that none'd be so fond as to plot under their very noses." Even as he spoke, a squad of unhappy-looking Spaniards tramped past on patrol. One man glanced towards the two Englishmen and kept walking. The rest paid them no attention at all.

"Madness," Shakespeare muttered. Nick Skeres grinned at the Spanish soldiers, who disappeared round a corner one after another. Reluctantly--most reluctantly--Shakespeare nodded. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."

"E'en so," Skeres said. "Here. Come you with me. This is the house we seek."

The building in question was large and well made. "Whose it it?" Shakespeare asked.

"It belongs to Sir John Hart, the alderman," Skeres answered. "But that's nor here nor there."

Instead of going to the door and knocking, as he had at the Bacons' house in Drury Lane a few months before, he led Shakespeare to a side gate that opened onto an enclosed garden: one surely splendid inspring and summer, but sad now, with scarcely any green to be seen. "Who'd meet us here?"

Shakespeare said, pulling his hat down lower to keep his face dry.

"Why, the men who're fain to see you. Who else?" Nick Skeres replied. Shakespeare glared. The other man looked back, unperturbed and resolutely close-mouthed. He took Shakespeare towards a rose arbor that no doubt perfumed the air and gave welcome shade when the sun shone high and hot, but that seemed as badly out of season as the rest of the garden now. As Shakespeare drew closer to it, he saw through the rain that two men sat in that poor shelter--waiting for him?

" 'Sblood, Master Skeres, they'll take their deaths," he exclaimed.

Shrugging, Skeres answered, "An they fret not, why should you?" He sounded altogether indifferent. The milk of human kindness ran thin in him, if it ran at all.

When Shakespeare ducked his way into the arbor, both waiting men slowly got to their feet. "G.o.d give you good morrow," Sir William Cecil rumbled.

Shakespeare bowed low. "And you, your Grace," he said. "But . . . should you not go inside, where . . .

where it's warm and dry?" Where I may hope you'll die not on the instant, was what he meant. Lord Burghley was paler and puffier than he had been the previous autumn; he wheezed with every breath he took, and s.h.i.+vered despite being swaddled in furs.

But he shook his head even so. "Who knows what ears lurk within? As the matter advanceth, so advanceth also the need to keep't secret. And here, in sooth, we speak under the rose." He chuckled rheumily. Despite the laugh and his bold words, though, his lips had a bluish cast that alarmed Shakespeare. He gathered strength and went on, "When last we met, I told you my son would take this matter forward. Allow me to present you to him now. Robert, here is Master Shakespeare, the poet."

"I am your servant, sir," Shakespeare murmured, bowing to the younger man as he had to the elder.

Robert Cecil gave back a bow of his own. He was about Shakespeare's age, with a long, thin, pale face made longer still by the pointed chin beard he wore and by his combing his seal-brown hair back from his forehead. He would not have been a tall man even had he stood straight; a crooked back robbed him of several more inches. But when he said, "I take no small pleasure at making your acquaintance, Master Shakespeare, being an admirer of your dramas," Shakespeare bowed again, knowing he'd got praise worth having. The younger Cecil's voice was higher and lighter than his father's, but no less full of sharp, even p.r.i.c.kly, intelligence.

Sir William Cecil sank back to the bench from which he'd risen. To Shakespeare's relief, his color improved slightly when he sat down. Switching to Latin, he asked, "How fares your play upon the rebellion of Boudicca?"