Ruled Britannia Part 43

As far as he could remember . . . Others, though, might remember further. He'd just turned into St.Swithin's Lane when a startled shout came from up ahead: "Lieutenant de Vega! Madre de Dios, se?or , what are you doing here at this hour?"

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Enrique," Lope said. "I'm coming back to the barracks, of course. What else should I be doing now?"

He meant it for a joke. But Captain Guzm?n's servant stared at him and answered, "What else should you be doing? Se?or , aren't you going to play, shouldn't you be playing, Don Juan de Idi?quez in Shakespeare's King Philip less than half an hour from now? I was going up to the Theatre to see you.

By G.o.d and all the saints, sir, I never expected to find you here."

"Don Juan de Idi?quez . . ." Lope gaped. He said the name as if he'd never heard it before in his life.

Indeed, for a moment that seemed to be true. But then it was as if a veil were torn from in front of his eyes. Memory, real memory, came flooding back: memory of why he should have been at the Theatre, and memory of why he'd gone to Cicely Sellis' lodging-house--to Shakespeare's lodging-house!--in the first place.

He crossed himself, not once but again and again. At the same time, he cursed as foully as he knew how--magnificent, rolling, guttural obscenity that left Enrique's eyes wider than ever and his mouth hanging open. De Vega didn't care. He wanted a bath, though even that might not make him feel clean again. He wondered if anything would ever make him feel clean again.

"That bruja, that wh.o.r.e--she bewitched me, Enrique, she bewitched me and she swived me and she sent me on my way like a . . . like a . . . like an I don't know what. And that means, that has to mean--"

"I don't understand, se?or ," Enrique broke in. "I don't understand any of this."

"Do you understand treason? Do you understand black, vile, filthy treason? And treason coming soon--soon, by G.o.d!--or she never would have . . ." De Vega didn't waste time finishing. He whirled and started back up St. Swithin's Lane.

"Where are you going?" Enrique cried after him.

"First, to kill that puta," Lope snarled. "And then to the Theatre, to do all I can to stop whatever madness they're hatching there." Even in his rage, he realized he might not--probably would not--be able to manage that by himself. He stabbed out a finger towards Enrique. "As for you, go back to Captain Guzm?n. Tell him to send a troop of men up to the Theatre as quick as he can. Tell him it's bad, very bad, as bad as can be. Run, d.a.m.n you!"

Enrique fled as if ten million demons from h.e.l.l bayed at his heels. Lope started up towards Bishopsgate at a fast, purposeful stride, halfway between a walk and a trot. Black fury filled him. He'd never imagined a woman could use him so. Mercenaries like Catalina Iba?ez he understood. But what Cicely Sellis had done to him was ten, a hundred, a thousand times worse. Not only had she stolen a piece of him, she'd taken her pleasure with him afterwards to waste more of his time and to make sure he didn't get that piece back.

And I wouldn't have, either, if I hadn't run into Enrique, he thought savagely. But I am myself again, and she'll pay. Oh, how she'll pay! His hand closed hungrily on the hilt of his rapier.

He'd just turned onto Lombard Street and pa.s.sed the church of St. Mary Woolnoth when he spied a Spanish patrol ahead of him. "You men!" he called, and gave them a peremptory wave. "Come with me!"

Their sergeant recognized him. "What do you want with us, Lieutenant de Vega? We have places weneed to check, and we're running late."

Lope set his hands on his hips. "And I have a bruja to catch and treason to put down," he rapped out.

"Which carries the greater weight?"

Gulping, the sergeant stiffened to attention. "I am your servant, se?or !"

"You'd better be. Come on, and my G.o.d come with us!"

The bells of St. Mary Woolnoth rang out two o'clock. All across London, dozens, hundreds, of church bells chimed the hour. De Vega cursed. He should have been up at the Theatre. Lord Westmorland's Men should be presenting King Philip. Were they? If they weren't, what were they giving instead? He didn't know. He couldn't know. But he could guess, and all his guesses sent ice racing along his spine.

And then, all at once, he had more things to worry about than Lord Westmorland's Men. Someone on a rooftop flung a stone or a brick at the patrol. It clanged off a soldier's morion. The man staggered, but stayed on his feet. "You all right, Ignacio?" the sergeant asked.

"Yes, thanks be to G.o.d--I've got a hard head," the soldier replied. "But where's the cowardly son of a wh.o.r.e who threw that? I'll murder the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Before the sergeant could answer, a chamber pot sailed out of a second-story window--not just the stinking contents, but the pot, too. It shattered between two Spaniards, spattering the whole patrol with filth. And then, while they were still cursing that, a pistol banged. With a howl of pain, a soldier slumped to the ground, clutching his leg. Crimson blood streamed out between his fingers.

High and shrill and blazing with excitement, a voice cried out in English: "Death to the dons!"

And, as if that one voice were a burning fuse leading to a keg of powder, a whole great chorus took up the shout. "Death--Death--Death to the dons!" In a heartbeat, the cry echoed up and down the streets of London. "Death--Death--Death to the dons!"

Lope's mind went clear and cold as the ice he'd imagined he felt. Suddenly, the patrol that had seemed so rea.s.suringly strong felt tiny and helpless as a baby. He nodded to the sergeant. "This is it. They are going to rise." His own voice held eerie certainty.

The sergeant tried to peer up at all the windows overlooking the street. Smoke still eddied in front of one.

The shot had come from there, but what odds the pistoleer still lingered? Slim, slim. He didn't order his men after the a.s.sa.s.sin, as he would have without that daunting cry. Instead, nodding to Lope, he asked, "And what do we do now, se?or ?"

"We win or we die--it's that simple," de Vega answered. But it wasn't, quite. He looked around, too, as the sergeant had, trying to see every which way at once. Plainly, the patrol would never get to the Theatre, nor even to Bishopsgate. He wished that soldier hadn't been wounded. He couldn't bear to leave the fellow behind, but bringing him along would hamper them. "We'd better get back to the barracks," he said reluctantly. "We'll have numbers on our side there."

"Yes, sir." The sergeant sounded relieved. Now that he had orders, he knew what to do with them.

"Jos?, Manuel: bandage Pedro's leg and get him up with his arms over your shoulders."

Both soldiers knelt to do as he told them, but one said, "We can't do much fighting that way, Sergeant."

"We'll worry about that later. Quick, now!" To punctuate the underofficer's words, another stone thudded down into the street. It hit no one, but could have smashed a skull if it had. Seeing it, hearing it,made Lope acutely aware he wore a felt hat with a jaunty plume, not a high-combed morion.

Pedro howled again when they hauled him upright. And the sergeant proved cleverer than de Vega had suspected: one of the soldiers supporting the wounded man was lefthanded, so they both had their swords free even with his arms draped over them.

"Let's get moving," Lope said, and they started back the way they had come.

"Death--Death--Death to the dons!" The cry seemed to come from everywhere at once, from near and far. More stones and more reeking waste flew out of windows. A furious trooper fired his arquebus at one of their tormentors, but only a mocking laugh rewarded him. And then the patrol had to pause while he reloaded: an empty arquebus was nothing but an awkward club.

Lope hated every heartbeat of delay. How long before the Englishmen nerved themselves to fight in the streets, if they weren't already elsewhere in London? How long before weapons long h.o.a.rded in hope came out of hiding? Not long, he feared, and he didn't have enough men at his back.

Half a dozen Englishmen, a couple armed with swords, the rest with bludgeons, came out of St. Mary Woolnoth and formed a ragged line across Lombard Street. "What do we do, se?or ?" the sergeant muttered.

"We fight if we have to, but let me try something first," Lope answered in a low voice. Then, in English, he shouted, "Stand aside, in the name of the Queen!"

He hissed out a great sigh of relief when they did stand aside. One of them doffed his cap and made a clumsy leg at de Vega, saying, "We cry your pardon, sir, but we took ye for a pack of stinking Spaniards."

"G.o.d bless Elizabeth!" another Englishman added.

They all nodded. So did Lope. He led the patrol past them without another word. If he spoke too much, his accent would betray him. And betrayal enough was already loose in London this day. If they dared speak imprisoned Elizabeth's name, if they believed he, leading soldiers, also spoke of Elizabeth and not Isabella . . . If that was so, treason ran far deeper than even de Vega had dreamt.

Behind him, one of the Englishmen said, "Come. Let's to the Tower, and help to set her free." Their departing footsteps were quick and purposeful. They thought they could do it. Whether they proved right or wrong, their confidence chilled Lope.

"Sergeant!" he said sharply.

"S?-, se?or? "

"Who garrisons the Tower of London? We, or the English?"

"Why, some of each, sir. We both want to make sure Elizabeth the heretic stays there till she dies, eh?"

The sergeant hadn't understood any of what Lope or the street ruffians said in English. De Vega's dread only grew. In times like these, how far could any Spaniard trust an Englishman?

As he and the patrol turned down into St. Swithin's Lane, a sharp volley of gunfire came from the south, from the direction of the barracks. He wanted to order a charge. With the wounded soldier slowing everyone else and hampering two healthy men, he couldn't.

Englishmen swarmed up the street towards them. They were fleeing, not fighting. No cries of, "Death tothe dons!" burst from their throats. They'd met death, and didn't like him. When one of them spied de Vega and his comrades, he cried, "Here's more o' the foul fiends! We are fordone!" But he and his friends pounded past before Lope and his little force could hope to halt them.

Bodies lay in the lane, some unmoving, some thrashing in pain. Spanish soldiers moved among them, methodically putting to the sword any who still lived. More Spaniards, pikemen and arquebusiers, formed a line of battle in front of the barracks. One of the soldiers with sword in hand looked up from his grim work and growled, "Who the devil are you?" as Lope led the patrol towards him.

"Senior Lieutenant de Vega," Lope answered.

The other Spaniard's face changed. "Oh! You're the fellow who knew this mess was coming. Pa.s.s on, se?or --pa.s.s on. If we hadn't had a few minutes' warning of trouble, those d.a.m.ned Englishmen might've taken us unawares."

"De Vega! Is that you?" From one end of the line of battle, Captain Guzm?n waved.

"Yes, your Excellency." Lope waved back.

"G.o.d be praised you're all right," Guzm?n said. "When Enrique came running back here with your report, I feared we'd never see you again. I was about to go after you to the Theatre when we were attacked ourselves."

"Never mind the Theatre, or me." Even Lope, far from the least self-centered man ever born, knew some things were more important than he was. "The English are going to try to free Elizabeth from the Tower.

If they do--"

Always the courtier, Guzm?n bowed to him. "I am the senior officer present right now. I was going to hold the barracks against whatever they threw at us. Now you've given me something more urgent to do.

Muchas gracias." He shouted orders. More Spanish soldiers came tumbling out of the building and rushed up from the south: a few hundred all told, Lope judged. Guzm?n said, "Form a column, boys.

We have to get to the Tower, and it's liable to be warm work. Are you up to it?"

"Yes, sir!" the soldiers roared. By the way they sounded, no Englishman could stop them or even slow them down.

Baltasar Guzm?n bowed again. "May we have the pleasure of your company, Senior Lieutenant de Vega?"

"Of course, your Excellency. But I have a wounded man here, and--"

"Leave him." Guzm?n's voice was hard and flat. "We can't bring him, and we can't spare men to guard him. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"

He waited for Lope's reply. Lope had none, and he knew it. At his nod, Jos? and Manuel eased Pedro to the ground. What is he thinking? Lope wondered. He shook his head. Better not to know.

Captain Guzm?n raised his voice: "To the Tower, fast as we can go. For G.o.d and St. James, forward-- march!"

"For G.o.d and St. James!" the soldiers shouted. Off they went, a ragged regiment against a city. To see them strut, the city was the outnumbered one.

Perhaps half a mile separated the barracks from the Tower of London. Moving as fast as they could, thesoldiers might have got there in five minutes: they might have, had n.o.body between the one and the other had other ideas.

Guzm?n marched the Spaniards towards the river to Upper Thames Street, which became Lower Thames Street east of London Bridge and which led straight to the Tower. That the street close by the Thames led straight to the Tower, though, quickly proved to have been obvious to others besides him.

No sooner had his men turned into Thames Street and started east than bricks and stones flew down from rooftops and windows: not the handful of them that had greeted Lope's patrol in Lombard Street, but a regular fusillade. The missiles clattered from helmets and corselets. Men cursed or howled when stones struck home where they weren't armored. A soldier who got hit in the face crumpled without a sound. A moment later, another went down.

"What do we do, Captain?" a trooper cried.

"We go on," Guzm?n answered grimly. "If we stop and kill Englishmen here, we have great sport, but we don't get where we need to go on time. Forward!" Lope admired the n.o.bleman's discipline. Had he himself commanded the Spaniards, he knew he might have yielded to the sweet seduction of revenge against the cowards and skulkers who plagued them. Guzm?n had better sense.

Just past the church of All Hallows the Less, a barricade blocked Thames Street: planks and carts and rubbish and rocks and dirt. The Englishmen behind it brandished a motley a.s.sortment of halberds and bills and pikes and swords. Two or three arquebus muzzles poked over the top, aimed straight at the oncoming Spanish soldiers. "Death to the dons!" the Englishmen shouted.

Captain Guzm?n's lips drew back from his teeth in a savage smile. "Now we can come to close quarters with some of these motherless dogs," he said. "Give them a volley, boys, and then show them what a proper charge means."

The front rank of arquebusiers dropped to one knee. The second rank aimed their guns over the heads of the first. On the other side of the barrier, the Englishmen fired their few guns. Flames belched from the muzzles. A bullet cracked past Lope and smacked wetly into flesh behind him. A soldier shrieked. Puffs of thick gray smoke clouded the barricade.

Then Captain Guzm?n yelled, "Fire!" The end of the world might have visited Upper Thames Street.

The roar of twenty-five or thirty arquebuses was a palpable blow against the ears. More smoke billowed.

Its brimstone stink and taste put Lope in mind of the h.e.l.l to which he hoped the volley had sent a good many Englishmen. Screams from in back of the barricade said some of those bullets had struck home.

Baltasar Guzm?n gave another order. "Charge! St. James and at them!"

"Santiago!" the Spaniards cried. Swordsmen and pikemen swarmed past the arquebusiers towards the barrier blocking their way. They scrambled over it and tore openings in it with their hands. The English irregulars behind the barricade chopped and hacked at them, trying to hold them back. A pistol banged, then another. The irregulars yelled as loudly for St. George as Guzm?n's men did for St. James.

As the Englishmen held them up at the barricade, more bricks and stones rained down on the Spaniards from the buildings on either side of Thames Street. The pikeman next to de Vega dropped his weapon and staggered back, his face a gory mask. But, even with the help of the barrier, the English couldn't stop Guzm?n's men for long. Lope sprang up onto a cart and then leaped down on the far side of the barricade. A halberdier tried to hold him off. He rushed forward and ran the Englishman through. In the press, a polearm was too clumsy to do much good.

After the irregulars lost the barricade, the ones still on their feet tried to flee. The Spaniards cut and shot them down. "Forward!" Captain Guzm?n shouted again, and forward his men went. The bulk ofLondon Bridge loomed to Lope's right. But, before he and his comrades got even as far as the bridge, another barricade loomed ahead. This one looked more solid than the one they'd just overwhelmed.

And, from the east, Englishmen rushed to defend it. Sunlight glinted off armor over there. De Vega cursed. At least some English soldiers who had served Isabella and Albert were now on the other side, the side of rebellion.

Arquebuses and pistols bellowed: more than had defended the first barricade. A Spaniard near Lope who'd turned his head at just the wrong instant staggered back, half his jaw shot away. Blood fountained.

His tongue flapped among shattered teeth. Horrid anguished gobbling noises poured from that ruin of a mouth.

"A volley!" Captain Guzm?n commanded. But, in the disorder after the first fight and pursuit, the volley took longer to organize. Meanwhile, those English guns kept banging away at the Spanish soldiers in the street in front of them.

Indifferent to the enemy fire, the arquebusiers elbowed their way forward and into position, some kneeling, others standing. They might have been one man pulling the trigger. De Vega wondered if he would have any hearing left at the end of the day. Crying, "Santiago!" the Spaniards rushed at the second barricade.

The fight at the first barrier had been savage but brief. The English hadn't had enough men there to hold the position long. Things were different here. Real soldiers with corselets and helmets of their own were far harder to down than irregulars had been. They wielded pike and sword with the same professional skill as Lope and his countrymen. And the irregulars who battled alongside them seemed altogether indifferent to whether they lived or died. If one of them could tackle a Spaniard so another could stab him while he was down, he would die not only content but joyous.

As before, the English had set up the barricade between tall buildings. Stones and bricks and saucepans and stools--anything heavy and small enough to go out a window--rained down on the Spaniards.

Pistoleers fired from upper-story windows, too.

Lope grabbed a morion someone had lost and jammed it onto his head. It was too big; it almost came down over his eyes. He didn't care. It was better than nothing. He pushed his way forward, trying to get to the barricade. A wounded Spaniard, clutching at the spurting stumps of two missing fingers, stumbled back past him, out of the fight. He slid forward into the place the other man had vacated, and found himself next to Captain Guzm?n. "Ah, de Vega," Guzm?n said, as if they held wine goblets rather than rapiers.

"Can we get to the Tower?" Lope asked.

"I hope so," Guzm?n answered calmly.

"How many more barricades in front of us?" Lope went on. The captain only shrugged, as if to say it didn't matter. But it did, especially if every one of them was held this stubbornly. Lope persisted: "Should we try some different street to get there?"

"This is the shortest way," Guzm?n said.

He was right, in terms of distance. In terms of time, in terms of effort and lives lost . . . "I beg pardon, your Excellency," Lope said, "but how much good will we do if we get there tomorrow with three men still standing?"

"I command here, and I must do as I think best," Captain Guzm?n replied. "If I go down and you takecharge, you will do what you will do, and the result will be as G.o.d wills. In the meantime, we have a job to tend to here in front of us, s?-?"

Lope found no answer to that but pushing forward once more. A dead Spaniard lay just in front of the barricade. Lope scrambled up onto his corpse. A man behind him shoved him onto a dirt-filled barrel blocking the street. An Englishman thrust at him. He beat the spearhead aside with his blade. A pistol ball whined malevolently past his ear.