Ruled Britannia Part 37

"An the dons lay hold of him, how shall he save himself?" Phelippes asked.

The question hung in the air. Phelippes didn't answer it. Neither did Robert Cecil. Silence did the job for them. One possibility immediately occurred to Shakespeare--by telling them all he knows. That had been in his mind ever since he'd had the misfortune to discover his fellow poet hadn't had the sense to get out of England while he could.Cecil looked his way again. "Gramercy, Master Shakespeare, for bringing this word to my notice. Doubt not I shall attend to't."

"By the which you mean, do your confederates find him, he likewise dies the death," Shakespeare said.

Now Cecil's gaze was perfectly opaque. Shakespeare realized he'd blundered, and might have blundered badly. It wasn't that he was wrong. It was, in fact, that he was right. Such things might better have stayed unspoken. Then the younger Cecil wouldn't either have to admit to planning Marlowe's untimely death or to tell a lie by denying it.

"Would he'd gone abroad," Thomas Phelippes murmured: as much of an answer as Shakespeare was likely to get.

"I shall ask once more, have you other news we should hear?" Cecil, this time, sounded as if he meant the question, not as if he were asking it for form's sake alone.

But Shakespeare shook his head. When next I see Kit, I must tell him both sides'd fain know the color of's blood, he thought. He didn't know he'd see Marlowe again, but found it all too likely. Icarus flew nigh the sun, and perished thereby. Kit outdoth him in folly, first helping kindle the flame that now will burn him.

Phelippes pointed towards the door. "We are in Paternoster Row, by St. Paul's," he said. "Knowing so much, can you wend your way homeward?"

"I can, an I be not robbed or murthered faring thither," Shakespeare answered. Nicholas Skeres had told him London's miscreants were ordered to leave him alone. He'd seen some signs it might be so. But he still remained far from sure Skeres' word was to be trusted. And, on a night as dark as this, even an honest footpad might make an honest mistake and fall on him.

The night wasn't so dark when he left the house as it had been when he got there: the third-quarter moon, looking like half a glowing gold angel or mark, had climbed up over the rooftops to the northeast. In fact, it made a pretty fair guide for Shakespeare as he hurried back towards Jane Kendall's lodging-house.

He was out after curfew. Twice he had to duck into shadowed doorways as a Spanish patrol--always several men together, as single Spaniards weren't safe on the streets past sunset--marched by. Once, somebody else out late didn't disappear fast enough. A Spaniard called out. The Englishman ran instead of coming forward. Shouting and cursing, the dons pounded after him. One of them fired a pistol. No scream followed, so Shakespeare supposed the ball missed. He waited till the soldiers had rounded a corner, then went on his own way.

He got home with no more trouble. He even got a little writing done. Sleep? He might have got a little that night. He wasn't sure.

XII.

LOPE DE VEGA and Cicely Sellis stood just outside the door to the cunning woman's room. As she set her hand on the latch, she said, "We are friends, mind you, Master de Vega, not lovers. I trust you'll recall as much when we go within, and seek not to paw me or do me other such discourtesies.""G.o.d forbid it," Lope exclaimed, making the sign of the cross to show his sincerity. Then he let out a melodramatic sigh to show he wasn't so sincere as all that. She made a face at him. He winked and blew her a kiss, saying, "Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt. And my kissing is as full of sanct.i.ty as the touch of holy bread."

She rolled her eyes. "Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do. Now--swear and swear true, or stay without my door."

"As you wish, so shall it be," Lope said solemnly. "This I swear." And if, once they were inside and alone together, she wished for something other than that he keep his distance, he would gladly oblige her. And if he could persuade her to wish for something other than that, why then, he would.

Something in Cicely Sellis' expression said she knew perfectly well what lay in his mind. That irked Lope; he didn't like women seeing through him. She is a cunning woman, after all, he reminded himself, and then, not for the first time, reminded himself of the other, shorter, name for a cunning woman: witch.

Some things he might try with other women he would perhaps be wise to forget with this one.

"I shall take you at your word," she said, and opened the door. "Enter, an't please you."

He did, curious not least to see what a witch's room was like. It seemed ordinary enough: bed, stool, chest of drawers with basin and pitcher atop it, undoubtedly a chamber pot under the bed. The only thing even slightly strange was a box half full of raw, uncombed wool. That puzzled Lope till Mommet stuck his head out of the box and mewed.

"A clever nest," the Spaniard said.

"It suits him." Cicely Sellis waved to the stool. "Sit you down." She herself perched on the edge of the bed.

He would rather have sat beside her, but he couldn't very well do that, not when she'd been so definite.

Mommet leaped from the box, paused to scratch behind an ear, and wandered over to sniff at his boots.

He stroked the cat. It purred, then snapped. He jerked his hand away. Mommet went right on purring.

"Faithless beast," he muttered.

"He is a cat," the cunning woman said. "From one moment to the next, he knows not what he'd have. Is he then so different from those who go on two legs?"

"Treason's in his blood," de Vega said.

"Is he then so different . . . ?" Cicely Sellis didn't repeat all of her last question, only enough to make it plain.

In doing so, she gave Lope an opening. "Know you of any such?" he asked, keeping his tone as light and casual as he could. "For surely you must hear all manner of fearful and curious things."

"The confessional hath its secrets," she said. "No less my trade. Who'd speak to a cunning woman, knowing his words were broadcast to the general? No less than a priest, I hear of adulteries and fornications and cozenings and, as you say, all manner of proof Adam's get be a sinful lot."

A cunning woman, of course, lacked the immunity of a priest hearing confession. Lope didn't mention that. She had to know it only too well. And, while she'd mentioned several kinds of things she heard about, she hadn't said a word about treason. If he pressed her on it, he would make her suspicious.

Instead, he changed the subject, or seemed to: "How I envy you, lodging here cheek by jowl with Master Shakespeare. Hath he told you aforetime what his next play's to be?"Cicely Sellis shook her head. "Nay, nor hath he spoke treason in my hearing, neither."

Lope's ears burned. He hadn't been so subtle there as he would have wished. If he acknowledged the hit, though, she would think him more interested in spying on her than interested in her. He was interested in spying on her, but that didn't mean he wasn't interested in her: on the contrary. "Right glad I am to know it, then," he said. "Ears so sweet as yours should hear no base, no gross, no disgusting thing."

She laughed. The cat sat up on its haunches like a begging dog, staring at her. "What should they hear, then?"

"Why, how beautiful thou art," he answered at once. "Thou dost teach the torches to burn bright--beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear."

That made her laugh again. "Said I not, we are friends? Say you so to all you hold in friendship?"

"I do not," Lope said. "But, whilst we are friends, I'd fain we were more. I own it. 'Twould curd my blood to say otherwise."

"You flatter me." Cicely Sellis drew out a sparkling gla.s.s trinket that hung on a chain around her neck.

She let the pendant swing back and forth a couple of times; it drew Lope's eye as a lodestone draws iron. Then, smiling to herself, she tucked it back under her blouse, into the shadowed vale between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His gaze followed it till it disappeared. Seeing that made her smile wider. "You'd say the like to any woman you found comely."

That held some truth, but only some. "I have seen comely women aplenty," he said. "I have loved comely women aplenty. And, having done it, I find loving 'em for comeliness' sake alone doth stale." He thought of Catalina Iba?ez, and wished he hadn't. "I'd sooner love one who might love me in return for reasons as several and various as mine for loving her."

"I tell you yet again, we are not lovers," she said.

"I tell thee yet again, would we were!" Lope exclaimed. Being balked only made him burn hotter.

"You flatter me," Cicely Sellis said once more.

"Nay, for flattery is lies, whilst I am full of truth," Lope said.

"When this man swears that he is made of truth, I near believe him, though I know he lies," the cunning woman said, as if to an audience only she could see. Then her attention unmistakably swung back to Lope. "Said you the like to Catalina Iba?ez? Said you the like to Lucy Watkins? Said you the like to Nell Lumley? To Martha Brock? To Maude Fuller, or ever you dove out her window?"

De Vega gaped. "How know you of her?" He was sure Shakespeare didn't, which meant Cicely Sellis couldn't have heard about that from him.

"I have my ways," she said. He crossed himself, thinking, Witch! She is a bruja after all. Affecting not to notice, she went on, "Her sister is my washerwoman, and hath been known to gossip."

"Oh." Lope felt foolish. Cicely Sellis always had, or said she had, some natural means of gaining her knowledge. Maybe she wasn't a witch. Maybe, on the other hand, she just did a good job of covering her tracks. Who could know for certain? De Vega knew he didn't. Every time he thought he was sure, more confusion followed.

"Are you answered?" she asked."I am," he said, more or less truthfully. Rather more to the point, his ardor was cooled. He realized he would not lie with Cicely Sellis today. "Peradventure I had best get hence," he murmured, hoping against hope she would ask him to stay.

But she didn't. She only gave him a brisk nod. "That were best, methinks. I am ever glad to see you, Master de Vega, and to talk with you. You are a man of parts. Not all those parts, though, would I take into me."

Had a woman ever said anything bawdier in turning him down? Most women who let him into their beds never said anything bawdier. Jolted, he bowed, muttered, "G.o.d give you good day, then," and hurried out of her room.

He intended to hurry out of the lodging-house, too, but he almost ran over William Shakespeare on the way out. Both men exclaimed in surprise. Shakespeare said, "I had not looked to meet you here, Master Lope."

"Mistress Sellis is a friend, as you know," Lope said.

"Indeed," Shakespeare answered. The word seemed to hang in the air. What lay behind it? Jealousy?

Had the English poet cast longing glances at Cicely Sellis, too? She'd given no sign of it. But what did that prove? He hadn't told her about his other lady friends, either--not that that mattered, for she knew about them anyhow. An edge in his voice, Shakespeare asked, "And what pa.s.sed betwixt you twain?"

Thinking to rea.s.sure him, de Vega answered, "We spoke of many things, yourself not least amongst 'em."

If Shakespeare imagined the two of them talking, he wouldn't imagine them naked and entwined. They hadn't been, but imagination could prove more dangerous than fact, even in as normally unwarlike a man as Shakespeare.

But the Englishman remained pretty obviously unrea.s.sured. "How found my name its way into your mouths?" he asked, his voice harsh.

"Why, for your poesy--how else?" Lope said. "I told her how I envied her the chance to know your verses or ever anyone else may."

"That doth she not." Shakespeare's glower matched his tone. "None but mine own self hears even a line ere it go forth to Lord Westmorland's Men." He coughed, then spoke again with more self-control: "Thieves skulk everywhere, e'en as is. Is't not the same in Spain?"

"There you speak sooth," de Vega admitted, "and be d.a.m.ned to them." He made as if to step towards a stool in the parlor, to sit down and chat a while. Shakespeare shifted to put himself between Lope and the stool. Taking the hint, Lope left the lodging-house. He is jealous of me, whether he'll admit it or not, he thought sadly. I hope it doesn't hurt our friendship. But he didn't hope so enough to want to keep from seeing Cicely Sellis again.

THE GHOST IN Prince of Denmark wasn't the only one Shakespeare played. Crouched under the stage as the specter in Christopher Marlowe's Cambyses King of Persia, he peered out at the crowd through c.h.i.n.ks and knotholes. Powdered chalk from his makeup and smoke that would rise with him through the trap door both tickled his nose; he hoped he wouldn't sneeze. The smoke made his eyes sting, too, but he couldn't rub them for fear of smearing the black greasepaint around them.

What would the groundlings do when--if--Lord Westmorland's Men put on Boudicca? He knew whatLord Burghley, Robert Cecil, and the other would-be rebels wanted the crowd to do on seeing a play about Britons oppressed by invaders from across the sea. Would the people give the plotters what they wanted? An they give not, G.o.d give mercy to us all, he thought gloomily.

He stiffened. There not ten feet away stood Lope de Vega, with Cicely Sellis beside him. She laughed at something the Spaniard said. What were they talking about? Shakespeare turned his head and set his ear to the c.h.i.n.k through which he'd been looking, but couldn't separate their talk from the rest of the noise.

Finding Lope in his lodging-house had been a nasty surprise. If he'd still been working on Boudicca . . .

He shuddered and shook, as if the sweating sickness had seized him.

Still shaking, he moved to another c.h.i.n.k a few feet away. A moment later, he stiffened into immobility so thorough and profound, a glance from a c.o.c.katrice might have turned him to stone. There stood Marlowe. He remained clean-shaven and close-cropped, but he also remained himself. He wasn't very far from Lope; he wasn't very far at all. Would the don know him despite his altered seeming? If he shouted something like any groundling who'd poured down too much beer, would de Vega know his voice?

Shog off! Shakespeare thought at him, as urgently as he could. Get hence! Aroint thee! Avaunt! But Marlowe, of course, didn't move. He stood there as if no one had ever wanted to hang him for sodomizing boys. When a man with a tray of sausages pushed his way through the crowd, Marlowe bought from him and munched away like any tanner or stockfish-seller or dyer.

By then, Shakespeare wished he'd never started looking at the crowd in the first place. And so, when he spied Walter Strawberry a little to Marlowe's left, he didn't panic, as he might have otherwise. He'd already sunk down towards despair. The constable couldn't send him there, not when he'd got there on his own.

Performing in the play itself came as a great relief. While he trod the boards, he didn't have to--he couldn't--think about anything else. Hearing people gasp at his first appearance, hearing a woman up in the galleries let out half a shriek, a.s.sured him he still played a specter better than anyone else. He only wished he had more lines, the better to keep himself distracted.

Aye, I make me a pa.s.sing fine ghost, he thought as he crouched under the stage again, awaiting his next scene. Shall I make me a ghost in sooth ere this coil unravel to the fullest? That seemed altogether too likely.

He came out on stage for his bows after Cambyses King of Persia ended, still in ghost makeup and turban. He saw de Vega applauding (and Cicely Sellis with him). He saw Marlowe applauding, too, which gave him an odd p.r.i.c.k of pleasure. He even saw dour Walter Strawberry applauding. But the only thing that stuck in his mind was, I go well acclaimed to my doom.

Back in the tiring room, he accepted congratulations with half an ear. As it always did in a play with a ghost, the ch.o.r.e of getting off his unusually elaborate makeup gave him an excuse for not paying too much attention to people who came up to him. He could always soap and splash and scrub and say, "Gramercy," without really worrying about what they were trying to tell him. Today of all days, that suited him well. He wanted to escape from the Theatre--which was just how he thought of it--as fast as he could.

He said h.e.l.lo to Lope, and to the cunning woman on his arm. Do they lie together? he wondered. By the way they spoke and touched and looked at each other, he didn't think so, but they were both, in a way, players, and so likely better at dissembling than most. That made him wonder what else Lope might be concealing. Did the Spaniard know of Boudicca? Was he biding his time, waiting to scoop up all theplotters when the time was ripe?

There's a question I'd give much to ask. But Shakespeare had to dissemble, too. He had to dissemble, and to pray no one betrayed him before the day, whenever that day should come. And he had to pray the rising that would come on and after the day succeeded, for its failure likewise doomed him and all of Lord Westmorland's Men unless they could flee abroad ahead of Spanish--and English--vengeance.

He kept looking around the tiring room for Christopher Marlowe, especially after the company had given one of the other poet's plays. Kit had had the chance to flee abroad ahead of Spanish vengeance. He'd had it, and he hadn't taken it. Zany, Shakespeare thought. Marlowe did seem to have the sense to stay away from this chamber, where his disguise could not hope to hold up.

Shakespeare was about to slip out of the tiring room himself, out of the tiring room and out of the Theatre, when Walter Strawberry pushed his way towards him through the crowd. "Good day to you, Master Shakespeare," the constable boomed. "Good day."

"And the same to you, sir," Shakespeare answered.

"Your performance this day was ghastly, pa.s.sing ghastly indeed," Strawberry said.

By his smile, that was evidently intended for praise. Shakespeare dipped his head in what he hoped would pa.s.s for modesty. "I thank you for your gracious kindness," he murmured. He didn't ask Strawberry what he wanted. If he didn't ask, maybe the constable would prove not to have wanted anything and leave him alone.

Forlorn hope. Strawberry planted his wide frame in front of Shakespeare and said, "Know you, in his last hours under this earth, Matt Quinn spake traitorously? It be so, a certain witness hath demurred to me."

"I knew this not, sir," Shakespeare lied, and did his best to spread confusion wherever he could: "But if he were a traitor, then belike he who slew him loved his country."

"Think you so, eh?" Constable Strawberry said. "Well, I have my suppositions on that. Ay, some suppositious coves yet run free, a murtherer's blood adrip from their fingers."

"Surely it were the blood of them that were murthered," Shakespeare said.

"The which is what I said, not so?"

"G.o.d forbid I should quarrel with your honor."

"G.o.d forbid it? G.o.d forbid it indeed! For I tell you, sir, them as quarrel with me have cause to beget it afterwards," the constable declared.

"I doubt not you speak sooth," Shakespeare said soberly.

"Mark it well, then," the constable said, "for the day of beckoning draws nigh."

"I shall keep your words ever within my mind." Shakespeare hesitated, then asked, "What sort of treason spake this Matthew Quinn?"

"Vile, unlawful treason: most vile. Know you another sort?"

"Might you make yourself more clear, more plain?"

"Why, sir, I aim to be as clear as the nose on my face, as plain as a peac.o.c.k," Strawberry said. "And soI shall exculpate more upon this matter. The said Quinn did speak insultingly on the King of Spain, dislikening him to a common bawd."

"A bawd?" Shakespeare said, frowning.

Walter Strawberry nodded. "The very same, sir: a bawd which hath two debauched daughters. An this be not treason, what name shall you give it?"

Shakespeare didn't answer right away; he was trying to make the pieces fit together. And then, with sudden, frightening ease, he did. Whoever had given Strawberry the story must have misheard bawd for Boudicca, subst.i.tuting a familiar word for the unfamiliar name. And the Queen of the Iceni had had two daughters the Romans had ravished. A good thing whatever witness the constable--and the Spaniards?--had found seemed to know nothing of Roman history, or he would have given a clearer picture of Matt Quinn's folly. From the report that had come back to the Theatre through Will Kemp, Quinn had said far more than Walter Strawberry knew.