Ruled Britannia Part 45

SHAKESPEARE FELT DRUNK, though he'd had no more than a couple of mugs of ale hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed up and even more hastily poured down. He'd been up all through the wild night, up and running and shouting and now and then throwing stones at Spaniards. Now he stood in Westminster, watching the sun rise b.l.o.o.d.y through the thick clouds of smoke above London and Southwark.

Cries of, "Death to the dons!" and, "Elizabeth!" and, "Good Queen Bess!" rang in his ears. Here and there, Spaniards still fought. Off in the distance, a shout of, "Santiago!" was followed by a ragged volley of gunfire and several screams.

Richard Burbage clapped Shakespeare on the back. Soot stained the player's face; sweat runneled pale tracks through it. Belike mine own seeming is the same, Shakespeare thought. Burbage's eyes were red-tracked, but glowed like lanterns. "Beshrew him if we've not broke 'em, Will!" he said.

"You may have the right of't," Shakespeare said in slow, weary wonder. "By G.o.d, you may." He yawned. "But where be Isabella and Albert? We've none of us set eyes on 'em here."

"I know that, and it likes me not," Burbage answered. "They may yet rally dons and traitors to their side, do we not presently bring 'em to heel." He yawned too, enormously.

Three Englishmen marched another, better dressed than they, up the street at sword's point. "I tell you, you do mistake me," their captive said. "I have ever loved Elizabeth, ever reckoned her my rightful sovereign, ever--""Ever an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of not one good quality," one of the men with a sword broke in. "Thou art a general offense, and every man should beat thee--and will have his chance. Get on!" He shoved the fellow forward.

"Now commenceth vengeance," Shakespeare remarked.

"Now commenceth cleansing," Burbage said. "For lo, the Augean stables were as sweet rainwater falling from heaven set beside the mire of iniquity that was our England these ten years gone by. Let the river of revenge flow free through it." He struck a pose, as if declaiming on the stage.

Shakespeare didn't argue with him. If Elizabeth triumphed, anyone who argued against rooting out every last man who might have helped the Spaniards and Isabella and Albert would endanger himself no less than someone arguing in favor of Elizabeth and her backers after she went to the Tower. How many injustices had the dons and their English henchmen worked then? A mort of 'em, the poet thought. And how many would the folk loyal to good Queen Bess work in return? He sighed. No fewer.

That mournful thought had hardly crossed his mind before another couple of men led another protesting prisoner past him and Burbage. "I tell you, gentles, I am no Spaniard's hound, but an honest Englishman,"

the fellow said, blinking nearsightedly back at his captors. He was thin and pockmarked, and carried a broken pair of spectacles in his left hand.

"Hold!" Shakespeare called to the rough-looking fellows who'd seized him. One of them held a pike, the other a pistol. Shakespeare was acutely aware of having no weapon but the dagger the player had given him at the end of Boudicca. But he went on, "I know Master Phelippes to be true and trusty."

Thomas Phelippes leaned towards him, peering, peering. "Is't you, Master Shakespeare? G.o.d bless you, sir! Without my precious spectacles, all past my nose is but a blur."

The man with the pistol swung it towards Shakespeare. The barrel suddenly seemed broad as a cannon's bore. "Go to, or own yourself likewise treacher, you detested parasitical thing," the ruffian snarled. "This accursed wretch was secretary to the Spaniards' commander--the which he denies not, nor scarce can he, being caught in's own den hard by the don's. And you style him a proper man? You pedlar's excrement, you stretch-mouthed rascal, how dare you?"

Showing anger to a man with a gun did not strike Shakespeare as wise. Picking his words with care, he answered, "I dare for that I know him to be one of Lord Burghley's--now one of Robert Cecil's--surest and most faithfullest intelligencers."

As he'd hoped, those were names to conjure with. The pistol wavered, ever so slightly. But the man holding it still sounded fierce as he demanded, "How know you this? And who are you, that you should know it? Answer quick, now! Waste no time devising lies."

"Heard you not Master Phelippes?--whose loyalty I also avouch," Richard Burbage boomed. "Here before you stands none other than the famous Will Shakespeare, whose grand Boudicca yesterday helped light the fire 'gainst the dons."

The man with the pike nudged the pistoleer. " 'Tis he, Wilf, by my troth--'tis. Have I not seen him full many a time astrut upon the stage? He'll know whereof he speaks. It were the gibbet for us, did we harm one of Crookback Bob's men."

Crookback Bob? Shakespeare couldn't imagine presuming to call Robert Cecil any such thing. To his vast relief, though, the man with the pistol--Wilf--lowered it. "Well, who's this cove with him, then?" he demanded.Raw scorn filled the pikeman's voice: "What? Know you not Will Kemp when you see him?"

Burbage turned the color of a ripe apple. But Wilf's eyes almost bugged out of his head. "Will Kemp?" he whispered. "If the two o' them give this rogue their attestation, belike he is no rogue after all." He pushed Phelippes, not too hard, towards Shakespeare and Burbage. "Go with 'em, you, and praise G.o.d they knew you: else you were sped."

"Oh, I do praise Him," Phelippes said. "Rest a.s.sured, good sir, I do." He groped for Shakespeare's hand and squeezed it.

"Come," Wilf said to the pikeman. "Plenty of traitors undoubted yet to be smoked out." They hurried up the street.

Thomas Phelippes blinked towards Burbage, then bowed low. "And gramercy to you as well, Master Kemp," he said. "I would not seem ungrate--"

A grinding noise came from Burbage's throat. His voice a strange sort of strangled scream, he said, "I am not Will Kemp, nor fain to be he, neither." Plainly, he wanted to shout with all the force of his mighty frame. Just as plainly, he knew he must not, for fear of bringing the armed ruffians back at the run.

In a low voice, Shakespeare said, "Master Phelippes, I present you to my good friend and fellow player, Richard Burbage."

After clasping Burbage's hand, Phelippes said, "I cry your pardon, for I should have known you by your voice, be your face and form never so indistinct to mine eyne."

"Let it go, sir; let it go," Burbage said gruffly. "There's reason you mistook me, whereas that gross and miserable ignorance just gone. . . ." He shook his head. "By Jesu! That G.o.d should go before such villains!" He muttered more unpleasantries, these too low to make out.

"How fell you into the hands of such brabblesome coves?" Shakespeare asked Thomas Phelippes.

"How, sir? As you might think," Phelippes answered. "I came hither yesterday knowing the die was cast and purposing, if I might, to make it into a langret for Don Diego Flores de Vald?s." Shakespeare bobbed his head, appreciating the figure; if one were to cast a die in such straits as these, a die not perfectly square would be the proper sort to cast. Phelippes let out a wry chuckle. "In the event, confusion proved well enough compounded even absent mine aid."

"What befell Don Diego?" Shakespeare asked. "A formidable wight, though he be a foe."

Phelippes nodded. "Formidable indeed. When report reached him the fighting waxed hot, he sprang to his feet, buckled on's sword, and fared forth to join it. 'A general's place is in the van,' quotha. I know not if he breathe yet."

"Haply he had been wiser to stay behind, so that the Spaniards might have some single hand fully apprised of all that chanced throughout London and its surround," Burbage said.

"Haply so," Phelippes agreed. "But the dons--and English soldiers, too, I'll not deny--call such a clerkly wisdom, and do otherwise dispraise it. When the blood's up in 'em, they would spill it from their foes, knowing they were reckoned white-livered cravens for hanging back. Fear of ill fame's worse cowardice yet, though they see that not."

"If Don Diego needs must away to the wars, might he not have left some other to be the head and central wit of the Spanish enterprise?" Shakespeare said."Why, so he did." Even without his spectacles, Thomas Phelippes managed a sly, sharp-toothed smile.

The pockmarked little man bowed slightly. "Your servant, sir."

"Ho, ho!" Burbage thundered Jovian laughter. "And how many dons went astray on that account?"

"Perhaps a few." Phelippes' chuckle, meant to be self-deprecating, somehow seemed boastful instead.

"Ay, perhaps a few."

"You are an army in one man," Shakespeare said, wondering how many other Englishmen had aided this rebellion more. Few. Very few. But would the chroniclers remember a man like Phelippes? Would anyone write a play about the way he'd helped the uprising? Shakespeare thought about that, then shook his head. Phelippes' role had been important, yes, but not dramatic in any ordinary sense of the word.

Burbage asked, "Know you where Isabella and Albert might be?"

Phelippes shook his head. "No, and would I did, for they might rally not only the dons but also Englishmen of stout Romish faith." He looked about, as if searching for the Queen and King, then laughed at himself. "They might stand beside me and I'd ken 'em not, so sorry are mine eyne without a.s.sisting lenses."

"What befell your spectacles?" Shakespeare asked.

Thomas Phelippes laughed again, this time in embarra.s.sment. A blush brought blood to his sallow cheeks. "The most prodigious bit of bungling any man might manage, forsooth--the undone laces of mine own shoon tripped me up, whereupon I did measure my length upon the floor, and the spectacles, flying off. . . ." He sighed. "I felt a proper fool, but no help for't, not until G.o.d grant me the leisure to seek replacement for my loss."

"May that time come soon," Burbage said, "the which would signify our final victory o'er the Spaniards and all who'd oppress us."

Shakespeare's stomach growled. He'd been running on nerves and little else since the afternoon before, and was starting to feel the lack. "Simple hunger doth oppress me," he said. "I shall famish, a dog's death."

Burbage nodded, resting both hands on his protuberant belly. "Ay, e'en so," he said. "Bread and meat and wine--food fit for heroes. Or say rather, none can long the hero play without 'em."

"I pray you'll lead me to 'em, gentles, for I am not fit to find 'em on my own," Phelippes said.

"Let's seek nourishment, then," Shakespeare said, "and with good fortune we'll soon find ourselves in our aliment."

"Give over!" Burbage's groan had nothing to do with hunger. He rolled his eyes up to the heavens, muttering, "And they took me for clot-poll Kemp!" But no more than Shakespeare could he resist a quibble, for he wagged a finger at the poet and added, "Better fortune were to find our aliment in us."

They trudged through the streets of Westminster, past an Englishman pulling the boots off a dead Spaniard, past several dogs feeding at another corpse, past an Englishman hanged from the branch of an oak. A placard tied to the hanged man's body warned, LET THEM WHO SERVED SPAIN BEWARE. Thomas Phelippes was too shortsighted to see it, and Shakespeare didn't read it to him: that might too easily have been Phelippes dangling there.

Before long, they found an open tavern. Yesterday, the proprietor had probably bowed and sc.r.a.ped toSpaniards and to Englishmen in their pay. Now he served out beer and cheese and brown bread with a hearty, "G.o.d bless good Queen Bess!" The hanged man swung not far away. The taverner, plainly a flexible soul, did not care to join him.

And if, as may be, the dons cast us out again, 'twill be, "Buenos d?-as, se?ores" once more, Shakespeare thought with distaste. But that distaste extended only to the man himself; his provender was monstrous fine.

Running feet in the street outside. A cry of, "Fled! They're fled! By G.o.d, they're truly fled!" A voice cracking with excitement--then several voices, as more took up the shout.

Shakespeare and Burbage leaped up from their seats. Mugs and chunks of bread still in hand, they raced out to hear more. Thomas Phelippes stumbled after them, almost tripping over a stool. "Wait!" Burbage said in a great voice, a voice that brooked no argument. "Who's fled?"

"Is it . . . Elizabeth?" Shakespeare quavered. His heart leapt into his mouth. If the Queen, having escaped the Tower, had to escape England as well . . . Fear rose up in him like a choking cloud. Were grim Spanish soldiers marching on London by the tens of thousands, ready and able to smash this uprising into the dust? Can I get me to foreign parts ahead of 'em?

But the man who'd brought the news shook his head. "Elizabeth? No, Lord love her, she's here. 'Tis Isabella and Albert who're fled like thieves in the night. We came upon a servant who packed 'em into a boat yesternight and watched 'em fare forth down the Thames, out of Westminster, out of London, to save their reeky gore. They're fled!"--another exultant whoop.

Burbage and Shakespeare stared at each other. Slowly, solemnly, they embraced. Shakespeare reached out and put an arm around Phelippes, too. Tears stung his eyes. "Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course," he said. "Now are we graced with wreaths of victory?"

"I have great hope in that," Burbage said.

"And I," Thomas Phelippes agreed.

"And I. And even I," Shakespeare whispered. "Perfect love, saith John, casteth out fear. Now I find me hope will serve as well, or peradventure better." He yawned till the hinges of his jaw creaked. "And now, with hope in my heart, I dare rest." To Burbage, he said, "If thou canst wake me by two o' the clock, I prithee, call me. Sleep hath seized me wholly."

But the player shook his big head. He yawned, too. "Not I, Will. Being likewise fordone, I'd liefer lay me down beside thee."

"Sleep, the both of you, and fear not," Phelippes said. "I'll stand watch, and wake you at the hour appointed: a tiny recompense for the service you have done me, I know, but a first building stone in the edifice of grat.i.tude. Sleep dwell upon your eyes, my friends, peace in your b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"Gramercy," Shakespeare said. Not far away was a lawn on whose yellowing gra.s.s several Englishmen already sprawled in slumber. Shakespeare and Burbage lay down among them. The poet twisted a couple of times. He reached up to brush away a blade of gra.s.s tickling his nose, then yawned once more and forgot the world.

LOPE DE VEGA stirred, muttered, and sat up. His head still ached abominably, but he was closer to having his wits about him. Glancing up at the sun, he blinked in surprise. It was close to noon. He'dslept--or lain senseless--the clock around. He shook his head, and managed to do it without hurting himself too much more. This felt restorative, not merely . . . blank, like his previous round of unconsciousness.

An old woman coming along the riverbank towards him let out a startled cackle. "I thought you dead till you stirred," she said, her voice mushy and hard to understand because of missing front teeth.

"Not I," Lope answered. "What news?" He was glad he spoke English. If she realized he was a Spaniard, she might try to make sure he was dead--and, in his present feeble state, she might manage it, too.

"Well, you'll know Elizabeth's enlarged?" she asked. De Vega nodded. The old woman hadn't sounded certain he would know even that. Looking down at his blood-drenched clothes, Lope supposed she'd had her reasons. Seeing him with some working wits, though, she went on, "And belike you'll also know Isabella and Albert are fled, one jump in front of the headsman."

"No!" Lope said, but then, a moment later, softly, "Yes." That boat on the Thames the night before, when he was washing his face . . .

"I'll miss the dons not, an they be truly routed," the old Englishwoman said. "Vile, swaggering c.o.xcombs, the lot of 'em."

"Yes," Lope said again, meaning anything but. The old woman nodded and went on her way. De Vega c.o.c.ked his poor, battered head to one side, listening. He heard very little: no gunfire, no shouts of, Death to the dons! That had to mean London lay in English hands.

What do I do now? he wondered. He couldn't hire a wherry to take him out of the city, following Isabella and Albert's example. Maybe they'd fled to gather strength elsewhere and try to return. But maybe also--and more likely, he judged--they'd got away just ahead of a baying pack of Englishmen who would have killed them if they'd caught them. The old woman seemed likely to be right about that.

The first thing Lope did was drink again. He was thirsty as could be. He was hungry, too, but food would have to wait. He splashed more water on his head. The cold did a little, at least, to ease his pain.

Staying upright was easier than it had been during the night. Deciding where to go was harder, especially with his head still cloudy. He let his feet take him where they would. They may be the smartest part of me now, he thought.

They carried him in the direction of the barracks from which Spanish soldiers had dominated London for the past ten years. Before long, he stumbled past a pile of bodies like the one from which he'd emerged when he came back to his senses. He shuddered, crossed himself, and went on. No, his countrymen didn't dominate this city any more.

Just around the corner from that dreadful pile, he almost stumbled over the corpse of a gray-haired Englishman. The fellow had been knocked in the head. He hadn't bled much, and what blood had spilled ran away from his body instead of puddling under it. He wasn't far from Lope's size. A scavenger had already stolen his shoes and his belt pouch, but he still wore doublet and hose.

Lope stripped him--an awkward business, since he'd begun to stiffen--then got out of his own b.l.o.o.d.y clothes. The dead man's hose were a little too short, but the doublet fit well. Not only was the outfit far cleaner than what de Vega had worn, it also helped make him look more like an Englishman himself.

He wished he had a weapon of some sort, even if only an eating knife. Then he shrugged, which made hisbattered head hurt. There would be more bodies in the street, of that he was sure. Not all of them would have been thoroughly plundered, not yet.

He soon acquired a dagger a good deal more formidable than an eating knife. A few coins also jingled in his pouch--not so many as he'd had before he was robbed while lying senseless, but a few. The Englishman from whom he took them would never need to worry about money again.

Lope used a couple of pennies to buy a loaf and a cup of ale. The man who sold them to him gave him a hard look. "Your way of speaking's pa.s.sing strange, friend," he remarked.

Are you a Spaniard? was what he meant. Lope answered, "It wonders me I can speak at all. Some caitiff rogue did rudely yerk me on the k.n.o.b, wherefrom my wits yet wander."

"Ah." The tavernkeeper relaxed and nodded. "Ay, belike a filchman to the nab'll leave you crank for a spell. Well, give you good day, then."

"E'en so." De Vega drained the ale and walked on, tearing chunks from the loaf as he went. A club to the head could indeed make a man act like an epileptic for a while--as he knew only too well.

Half a block later, he turned up St. Swithin's Lane. As he walked past the London Stone and spied the Spanish barracks, hope suddenly soared in him: soldiers stood guard outside the entrance. But, when he drew nearer, that hope crashed to earth as quickly as it had taken flight. Those big, fair-haired, grinning troopers were Englishmen, not Spaniards. "G.o.d bless good Queen Bess!" a pa.s.serby called to one of them.

The man nodded. His grin got even wider. "Bless her indeed," he said. "You'll have seen, good sir, we've made a proper start at clearing the rats from their nest here."

With a wave and a grin of his own, the pa.s.serby kept on his way. He walked past Lope without recognizing him for what he was, as so many had already done. The English sentries likewise paid no attention to him. When he saw the corpses piled against the northern wall of the barracks, he discovered what the soldier had meant by clearing the rats. Most of the bodies there belonged to servants, for the Spanish soldiers who'd been in the barracks when the uprising broke out had gone off to try to hold the Tower of London--and, as Lope knew, had never got there. Their remains lay farther east.

But there was Pedro, the wounded soldier from the patrol Lope had led back here. And there lay Enrique, his clever head smashed in. He too had come back here at de Vega's orders. And . . . was that . . . ? Lope took a couple of steps towards the corpses to be sure. He had to fight his right hand down when it started to rise of its own accord--he couldn't cross himself here, not without giving himself away. But that was Diego, poor, fat, lazy Diego, who'd always been too indolent to threaten anyone or anything except his master's temper. The Englishmen hadn't cared. They'd murdered him along with the rest of his countrymen they'd caught.

"Requiescat in pace," Lope murmured. Tears stung his eyes. How anyone could have imagined sleepy Diego needed killing . . . Well, he would sleep forever now. "G.o.d have mercy on his soul." That was a murmur, too, a murmur in English, for safety's sake.

"See you one there who galled you in especial?" an Englishman asked. Lope had to nod. Again, any other response would have betrayed him. Hating himself, he went on. Behind him, the Englishman let out a gloating laugh. He admired the corpses Lope mourned.

Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen? Unbidden,the words from Shakespeare's Prince of Denmark rose in Lope's mind. He cursed under his breath.

He'd been near here--oh, farther up St. Swithin's Lane, but only a stone's throw--when Enrique, smart as a whip Enrique now dead as Diego, made him realize Shakespeare was a traitor and Cicely Sellis. . . .

When he thought of Cicely Sellis and what she'd done with him, to him, he wished the blow he'd taken had robbed him of even more of his memory. He recalled that all too well. Shame blazed in him, a self-devouring flame.

"But I can still have my vengeance," he whispered. He'd been on his way for vengeance the day before, when London erupted around him. He might even have got it, had he not chosen to bring the chance-met patrol with him. Who would have tried to stop one lone man? No one, most likely. Who would try to stop one lone man today? No one, or so he hoped.

Up St. Swithin's Lane again, then. Right into Lombard Street, as he'd done before. Past the church of St.

Mary Woolnoth. He hadn't been far past it when church bells rang two o' clock and h.e.l.l broke loose. He wasn't far past it today when they rang the same hour.

Along the street towards him came a long column of dejected men, their hands in the air: captive Spanish soldiers and officers. Their eyes, dark and dismal in long, sad faces, flicked over Lope. He recognized some of them. Some of them, no doubt, recognized him. No one said a word or gave a sign. The laughing, mocking English guards hustling them along took no notice of him.

As the last prisoners in the column tramped past, de Vega turned to look back at them. What would happen to them? He hoped they would be ransomed or exchanged, not killed out of hand. The Spaniards hadn't murdered captives after their victories in 1588. Could he dare hope Elizabeth's ragtag followers would remember?

He wouldn't know, not for a while, maybe not ever. "Step lively, you rump-fed ronyons!" an Englishman called. Few of the captured men would have understood him, but gestures and the occasional buffet steered them down St. Swithin's Lane.

Lope's business lay in the other direction. His right hand fell to the hilt of the dagger he'd found. He was too battered to step lively, but n.o.body required it of him. At the best pace he could manage, he made his way east along Lombard Street, towards Bishopsgate, towards his revenge.