Ruled Britannia Part 18

"Yes. I am." Guzm?n bared his teeth in a hunter's grin. "And now I want a taste of Bacon--of tocino, eh?" Now he wouldn't leave the pun alone.

The troop of hors.e.m.e.n pounded up Drury Lane. Westminster seemed to Lope a different world from London: less crowded, with far bigger, far grander homes, homes that would have done credit to a Spanish n.o.bleman. Only the abominable weather reminded him in which kingdom he dwelt.

Captain Guzm?n reined in. He pointed to a particularly splendid half-timbered house. "That one," he said. "Senior Lieutenant de Vega, you will interpret for us."

"I am at your service, your Excellency." Lope dismounted.

So did Guzm?n and the cavalrymen. A few of the latter held horses for the rest. The others drew swords and pistols and advanced on the estate behind the two officers. "I hope the heretics inside put up a fight and give us an excuse to sack the place," a trooper said hungrily. "G.o.d cover my a.r.s.e with boils if you couldn't bring away a year's pay without half trying." A couple of other men growled greedy agreement.

"By G.o.d, if they give us any trouble, we will sack them," Captain Guzm?n declared. "They're only Englishmen. They have no business standing in our way. They have no right to stand in our way." The cavalrymen nodded, staring avidly--wolfishly--at the house upon which they advanced.

Pale English faces stared out of them through the windows, whose small gla.s.s panes were held together by strips of lead. Before de Vega and Guzm?n reached the door, it opened. A frightened-looking but well-dressed servant bowed to them. "What would ye, gentles?" he asked. "Why come ye hither with such a host at your backs?""We require the person of Se?or --of Master--Anthony Bacon, he to be required to give answer to certain charges laid against him," Lope answered. He quickly translated for Captain Guzm?n.

His superior nodded approval, then turned and rapped out an order to the cavalrymen: "Surround the place. Let no one leave."

As the troopers hurried to obey, the house servant said, "Bide here a moment, my masters. I'll return presently, with one who'll tell ye more than I can." He ducked into the house, but did not presume to close the door.

"Can they hide him in there?" Lope asked.

"Not from us." Guzm?n spoke with great conviction. "And I'll tear the place down around their ears if I think that's what they're trying."

The servant was as good as his word, coming back almost at once. Behind him strode a man made several inches taller by a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat. The newcomer's enormous, fancy ruff and velvet doublet proclaimed him a person of consequence. So did his manner; though no bigger than Lope (apart from that hat), he contrived to look down his nose at him. When he spoke, it was in elegant Latin: "What do you desire?"

So much for my translating, de Vega thought. "I desire to know who you are, to begin with," Captain Guzm?n replied, also in Latin.

"I? I am Francis Bacon," the Englishman replied. He was in his late thirties--not far from Lope's age--with a long face, handsome but for a rather tuberous nose; a pale complexion; dark beard and eyebrows, the latter formidably expressive; and the air of a man certain he was talking to his inferiors. It made de Vega want to bristle.

It put Baltasar Guzm?n's back up, too. "You are the younger brother of Anthony Bacon?" he snapped.

"I have that honor, yes. Who are you, and why do you wish to know?"

Guzm?n quivered with anger. "I am an officer of his Most Catholic Majesty, Philip II of Spain, and I have come to arrest your brother, sir, for the abominable crime of sodomy. So much for your honor.

Now where is he? Speak, or be sorry for your silence."

Francis Bacon had nerve. He eyed Guzm?n as if the captain were something noxious he'd found floating in a mud puddle. "You may be an officer of the King of Spain, but this is England. Show me your warrant, or else get hence. For the house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defense against injury and violence as for his repose."

Guzm?n's rapier cleared the scabbard with a wheep! Lope also drew his sword, backing his superior's play. The troopers with pistols behind them pointed their weapons at Bacon's face. "d.a.m.nation to you and d.a.m.nation to your castle, sir," the dapper little n.o.ble ground out. "Here is my warrant. Obey it or die.

The choice is yours."

For a moment, Lope thought Francis Bacon would let himself be killed on the spot. But then, very visibly, the Englishman crumpled. "I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed," he said. "Ask. I will answer."

In Spanish, Captain Guzm?n said to Lope, "You see? Fear of death makes cowards of them all."

"Yes, your Excellency," de Vega answered in the same language. Watching Bacon's face, he added,"Have a care, sir. I think he understands this tongue, whether he cares to speak it or not."

"Thank you. I will note it, I promise you." Guzm?n returned to Latin as he gave his attention back to the Englishman: "So. You are the brother of the abominable sodomite, Anthony Bacon."

"I--" Francis Bacon bit his lip. "I am Anthony Bacon's brother, yes. I said so."

"Where is your brother?"

"He is not here."

The point of Guzm?n's rapier leaped out and caressed Bacon's throat just above his ruff, just below his beard. "That is not what I asked, Englishman. One more time: where is he?"

"I--I--I do not know. You may take my life, but before G.o.d it is the truth. I do not know. Day before yesterday, he left this house. He did not say whither he was bound. I have not seen him since."

"Tipped off?" Lope wondered aloud.

"By whom?" Captain Guzm?n demanded. "What Spaniard would do such a wicked, treacherous thing?"

"Perhaps another sodomite, a secret one," de Vega said.

Guzm?n grimaced and grunted. "Yes, d.a.m.n it, that could be. Or it could be that Se?or Home-is-his-castle here is lying through his teeth. He'll be sorry if he is, but it could be. We'll find out, by G.o.d." He turned and called over his shoulder to the cavalrymen at his back: "Now we take the place apart." The troopers whooped with glee.

One of the first things they found, in the front hall, was, not Anthony Bacon himself, but a painting of him.

He was even paler than his brother, with a longer, wispier, more pointed beard and with a long, thin, straight nose rather than a lumpy one. But for their noses, the resemblance between the two of them was striking.

Pointing to the portrait, Lope told the cavalrymen, "Here is the wretch we seek. Whoever finds him will have a reward." He jingled coins in his belt pouch. The troopers grinned and nudged one another. With a grin of his own, de Vega said, "Go on, my hounds. Hunt down this rabbit for us."

The Spaniards went through the Bacons' home with a methodical ferocity that said they would have done well as robbers--and that might have said some of them had more than a little practice at the trade. They examined every s.p.a.ce that might possibly have held a man, from the cellars to the kitchens to the attic.

They knocked holes in several walls: some Protestants' houses had "preacher holes" concealed with marvelous cunning. A couple of troopers went out onto the roof; Lope listened to their boots clumping above his head.

They did not find Anthony Bacon.

His brother Francis asked, "How much of my own will they leave me?" By the way the troopers' pouches got fatter and fatter as time went by, the question seemed reasonable.

But Captain Guzm?n was not inclined to listen to reason. His hand dropped to the hilt of his rapier once more. "You will cease your whining," he said in a soft, deadly voice. "Otherwise, I shall start inquiring amongst the younger servants here about your habits."If he had any evidence that Francis Bacon liked boys, too, he hadn't mentioned it to Lope. But if that was a shot in the dark, it proved an inspired one. The younger Bacon sucked in a horrified breath and went even whiter than the portrait of his brother.

With more clumping, the cavalrymen on the roof came down. The ones who'd gone through the house returned to the front hall. "No luck, your Excellencies," their sergeant said. "Not a slice of this Bacon did we find." Now he was making de Vega's joke.

Lope did his best to look on the bright side. "We'll run him down."

Baltasar Guzm?n nodded. "We'll run him down, or we'll run him out of the kingdom. Let him play the b.u.g.g.e.r in France or Denmark. They deserve him. Let's go." He led Lope and the troop of cavalrymen out of the house. Francis Bacon stared after them, but said not another word.

As Lope mounted his horse and started riding back to London, he thought, n.o.body would dare call Guzm?n a maric?n now, not after the way he's hunted Anthony Bacon. The troop had almost got back to the barracks before something else along those lines occurred to him. No one would dare call Captain Guzm?n a maric?n now, but does that really prove he isn't one? He worried at that the rest of the day, but found no answer to it.

THE EXPRESSION WILL KEMP aimed at Shakespeare lay halfway between a leer and a glower.

"Well, Master Poet, what have you done with Tom?"

"Naught," Shakespeare answered, blinking. "Is he not here?" He looked around the Theatre. He'd just got there, a little later than he might have. He saw no sign of the company's best boy actor.

Kemp went on leering. "An you've done naught, what wish you you'd done with him?"

"Naught!" Shakespeare said again, this time in some alarm. Tom was a comely--more than a comely--youth, and such liaisons happened often enough in the tight, altogether masculine world of the theatre. But what might be a jest at another time could turn deadly now. If the Spaniards or the English Inquisition started wondering if he were a sodomite, they might also start wondering if he were a traitor.

What was b.u.g.g.e.ry, after all, but treason against the King of Heaven?

But from the tiring room came a sharp command: "Go to, Kemp! Give over."

Had Richard Burbage spoke to the clown like that, a fight would have blown up on the spot. Not even Kemp, though, failed to respect Jack Hungerford. He asked the tireman, "Know you somewhat o' this matter, then?"

"Ay, somewhat, and more than somewhat, the which is somewhat more than you," Hungerford answered.

"What's toward, then, Master Hungerford?" Shakespeare asked. Maybe, if everyone stuck to facts, no one would throw any more insults around. And maybe the horse will learn to sing, Shakespeare thought--one more bit of Grecian not quite folly he had from Christopher Marlowe.

"My knowledge is not certain, mind," the tireman said. Shakespeare braced himself to squelch Will Kemp before the clown could offer sardonic agreement there, but Kemp, for a wonder, simply waited for Hungerford to go on. And go on he did: "Some will know and some will have guessed Tom hath been . . . an object of desire for those whose affections stand in that quarter."That proved too much for Kemp to resist. "When their affections stand," he said, "they want to stick 'em up his--"

He didn't finish. Somebody--Shakespeare didn't see who--shied a pebble or a clod of dirt at him. He let out an irate squawk. Before he could do anything more, Shakespeare broke in to say, "Carry on, Master Hungerford, I pray you."

"Gramercy. So I shall. As I said, he's a Ganymede fit to tempt any who'd fain be Jove. But even as Jove cast down Saturn, so Tom's Jove himself's been o'erthrown. Anthony Bacon's fled London, a short jump ahead of the dons."

"Bacon?" Shakespeare said. "Lord Burghley's nephew?" He'd met Burghley in the house that belonged to Anthony Bacon and his younger brother.

Hungerford nodded. "The same, methinks."

"He is fled?"

The tireman nodded again. "Not caught yet, by all accounts. He being a man of parts, haply he may cross to the Continent still free."

"To the Continent? No, sir. No!" Kemp said. "Were he continent, he'd need not flee, now would he?

And forsooth! a man of parts. I knew not till this moment sausage was a Bacon's troublous part."

Shakespeare groaned. Hungerford looked pained. Kemp preened. Shakespeare asked, "Tom was Bacon's ingle, then? I own I have seen Bacon here, though never to my certain knowledge overtopping the bounds of decency."

" 'To my certain knowledge,' " Kemp echoed in a mocking whine. "Why think you he came hither?

For the plays?" He laughed that idea to scorn, adding, "Quotha, his brother could write the like, did he please to do't."

"A rasher Bacon never spake," Shakespeare said indignantly. Will Kemp opened his mouth for another gibe of his own, then did a better double take than most he used on stage, sending Shakespeare a reproachful stare. The poet looked back blandly.

Missing the byplay, Jack Hungerford said, "I fear me Tom'll not return to the boards. He's smirched, and would smirch us did we use him henceforward."

That had several possibilities. Kemp rose to none of them. Shakespeare eyed him in some surprise. The wealth of his wit outdone by the wealth of his choices? the poet wondered. No other explanation made sense.

Then, suddenly, Shakespeare raised a hand to his mouth to smother a laugh. What did Paul say in his epistle to the Romans? All things work together for good to them that love G.o.d, that was the verse.

Now he couldn't have to worry about either asking Catholic Tom to play Boudicca or finding some good reason for not asking him. He hadn't just found a good reason--the Spaniards themselves had handed him one.

But the more he thought about it, the less inclined he was to laugh. Maybe the way that verse from Paul's epistle had worked out here was a sign G.o.d truly lay on his side, Lord Burghley's side, Elizabeth's side, England's side. Shakespeare hoped so with all his heart. Their side needed every sc.r.a.p of help it could get.Hungerford went on with his own train of thought: "He being smirched, I wonder who'll play his parts henceforward."

Will Kemp had avoided temptation once. Twice, no. He said, "Why, man, had this Bacon not played with his parts, we'd worry on other things." The tireman coughed. Shakespeare would have been more annoyed at the clown had the identical thought not popped into his mind the instant before Kemp said it.

The day's play was another offering of Romeo and Juliet; they keenly felt Tom's absence, and the groundlings let them hear about it. Caleb, who played Juliet in his place, made a hash of his lines several times and wouldn't have measured up to Tom even if he hadn't.

Richard Burbage was not pleased. He bearded Shakespeare in the tiring room after the performance. "I am told this was the Spaniards' doing," he said heavily.

"I am told the same," Shakespeare answered.

Burbage glowered at him. "Were I not so told, I'd blame you. Since this madness of yours commenced, the company is stirred, as with a spoon--a long spoon."

"One fit to sup with devils?" Shakespeare asked, and Burbage gave him a cold nod. That hurt. To try to hide how much it hurt, Shakespeare busied himself with the lacings of his doublet. When he thought he could speak without showing what he felt, he said, "This came not from me, hath naught to do with me, and I am called a devil for't? How would you use me were I guilty of somewhat, having spent all your wrath upon mine innocence?"

"You came to me. You said, Tom needs must avoid, else . . . thus and so advanceth not. What said I? I said, I'd liefer see him playing."

"You said also you'd tend to it regardless."

Burbage ignored that. "Well, he's gone now." His gesture suggested crumpling a sc.r.a.p of waste paper and throwing it away. Then he drew himself up. "I lead this company. D'you deny it?"

"Not I, nor would I never," Shakespeare said at once.

He might as well have kept silent. Burbage went on as if he had, repeating, "I lead this company. The land we stand on, the house we play in--we Burbages lease the one and own the other. D'you deny that ?".

"How could I?" Shakespeare asked reasonably. "All true, every word of 't."

"All right, then. All right." Burbage's angry exhalation might have been the snort of a bull just before it lowered its head and charged. "Here's what I'd ask of you: if I in any way obstruct you, who takes my place, and what befalls me?"

Shakespeare wished he could pretend he didn't understand what his fellow player was talking about. He couldn't, not without making himself into a liar. Miserably, he said, "I know not."

"G.o.d d.a.m.n you, then, Will!" Burbage's thunderous explosion made heads turn his way and Shakespeare's, all over the tiring room. Shakespeare wished he could sink through the floor as he'd sunk down through the trap door while playing the ghost in Prince of Denmark.

When the buzz of conversation picked up again and let him speak without having everyone in the crowded room hear what he said, he answered, "There is in this something you see not."Burbage folded his arms across his broad chest. "That being?" By his tone, he believed he saw everything, and all too clearly.

But Shakespeare said, "An I prove a thing obstructive, I too am swept away for another, I know not whom. You reckon me agent, d.i.c.k. Would I were. Would I might persuade myself I were, for a man's always fain to think himself free. Agent I am none, though. I am but tool, tool to be cast aside quick as any other useless thing of wood or iron."

He waited, watching Burbage. The player was a man who delighted in being watched. He probably made up his mind well before he deigned to let Shakespeare know he'd made up his mind. He played deciding as if the Theatre were full, and every eye on him alone. "Mayhap," he said at last--a king granting mercy to a subject who probably did not deserve it. Shakespeare felt he ought to applaud.

Instead, he said, "I'm for Bishopsgate. I've endless work to spend on King Philip."

"And on . . ." Burbage was vain and bad-tempered, but not a fool. He would not name, or even come close to naming, Boudicca--not here, not where so many ears might hear.

"Yes." Shakespeare let it go at that. He set his hat on his head. Having his own share of a player's vanity, he tugged it down low on his forehead to hide his receding hairline. He'd squandered a few shillings on nostrums and elixirs purported to make hair grow back. One smelled like tar, another like roses, yet another like cat p.i.s.s. None did any good; over the past year or so, he'd stopped wasting his money.

The Lenten threepenny supper at his ordinary was a stockfish porridge. Stockfish took hours of soaking to soften and to purge itself of the salt that preserved it. Even then, it was vile. It was also cheap, and doubtless helped pad the place's profit.

Because the ordinary was crowded, Shakespeare worked on King Philip there. The more of the other play he wrote, the more he worried about strangers' eyes seeing it. When he went back to his lodging house, he intended to sit by the fire and see if he could change horses. Most of the other people who dwelt with the Widow Kendall would lie abed by then.

His landlady herself remained awake when he came in. "Give you good even," she said.

"And you, my lady." Shakespeare swept off his hat and gave her a bow Lieutenant de Vega might have admired. Jane Kendall smiled and simpered; she enjoyed being made much of.