Ruled Britannia (3 page)

“Well, I would be, if he were dead,” she answered, her tone absurdly reasonable.

In a play, a line like that would have got a laugh. Lope de Vega mentally filed it away. He'd tried his hand at a few comedies, to entertain his fellows on occupation duty in London, and he went to the English theatres whenever he found the chance. But what was funny in a play could prove fatal in real life. He sprang from the bed and threw on his clothes by the dim light those embers gave.

Drawers. Upperstocks. Netherstocks. Shirt. Doublet with slops. He didn't bother fastening it—that could wait. Hat. Cloak. Boots. Too cursed many clothes, when he was in a hurry. Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy footsteps—these beefeating Englishmen were ridiculously large men. A quick kiss for Maude, not that she deserved it, not when she'd tried to get him killed.

Lope threw open the shutters. Cold, damp air streamed into the bedchamber. “
Adiós
,” he whispered. “
Hasta la vista
.” He scrambled out the window, hung by his hands from the sill for a moment, and then let go and dropped to the street below.

He landed lightly and didn't get hurt, but his left foot came down with a splash in a puddle of something that stank to high heaven. A rough male voice floated out the window he'd just vacated: “What the Devil was that? And why are these shutters open, Maude? Art mad? Thou'lt catch thy death.”

Much as Lope would have liked to, he didn't stay to listen to Maude's excuses. He didn't fear fighting her husband, but an adulterer had no honor, win or lose. Instead of using the rapier at his hip, he hurried round a corner.

Behind him, the Englishman said, “What's that?” again, and then, “ 'Swounds, woman, play you the strumpet with me?”

“Oh, no, Ned.” Maude's voice dripped honey.
Oh, yes, Ned
, de Vega thought. He didn't hear whatever else she said, but he would have bet she talked her way out of it. By all the signs, she had practice.

Whatever Lope had landed in, it still clung to his boot. He wrinkled his nose. Had the Englishwoman's husband chosen to come after him, the man could have tracked him by scent, as if he were a polecat. When he stepped on a stone in the roadway, he scraped his heel and sole against it. That helped a little, but only a little.

He looked around. He'd gone only a couple of blocks from Maude's house, but in the fog and the darkness he'd got turned around.
How am I supposed to find my way back to the London barracks, let alone to Westminster, when I don't think I could find my way back to the bedroom I just left?
Madrid boasted far more torches of nights.

Lope shrugged and laughed softly. He had a long, bony face that seemed ill-suited to humor, but his sparkling eyes gave those bones the lie.
One way or another, I expect I'll manage
.

To make sure he
did
manage, he drew his rapier. London had a curfew, and he was out well after it. That wouldn't matter if he came across a squad of Spanish soldiers patrolling the streets. The only Englishmen likely to be out and about, though, were curbers and flicks and nips and high lawyers: thieves and robbers who might have a professional interest, as it were, in making his acquaintance. If they also made the acquaintance of his blade, they wouldn't bother him.

Down an alley, a dog growled and then started to bark. The rapier would also keep him safe against animals that went on four legs. But a chain clanked, and the dog yelped in frustration. Lope nodded to himself. He wouldn't have to worry about that, anyhow.

He picked his way westward, or hoped he did. If he was going in the right direction, he was heading toward the barracks, which lay not far from St. Swithin's church. Who St. Swithin was, he had no idea. He wondered if Rome did.

He heard footsteps from a side street. His right hand tightened on the leather-wrapped hilt of the rapier. Whoever was going along that street must have heard him, too, for those other footsteps stopped. Lope paused, listened, muttered, “The Devil take him, whoever he is,” and went on. After a few strides, he paused to listen again. A woman's sigh of relief came to his ear. He smiled, tempted to go back and see who she
was, and of what quality. After a moment, he shook his head.
Another time
, he thought.

A few blocks farther west—he thought it was west, anyhow—he heard noise he couldn't ignore. Half a dozen men, maybe more, came toward him without bothering in the least about stealth. He shrank back into a doorway. Maybe that was a patrol. On the other hand, maybe the men were English bandits, numerous and bold enough to take on a patrol if they ran into one.

They turned a corner. The fog couldn't hide their torches, though it tried. Lope tensed as those pale beams cast a shadow across his boot. Then he recognized the sweet, lisping sounds of Castilian.

“
¡Gracias a Dios!
” he exclaimed, and stepped out into the roadway.

The soldiers had had no notion he was there. They jerked in surprise and alarm. One of them swung an arquebus his way; another pointed a pistol at him. “Who are you, and what are you doing out after curfew?” their leader growled. “Advance and be recognized—slowly, if you know what's good for you.”

Before advancing, before becoming plainly visible, de Vega slid the rapier back into its sheath. He didn't want anyone to start shooting or do anything else he might regret out of surprise or fear. When he drew near, he bowed low, as if the sergeant leading the patrol were a duke rather than—probably—a pigkeeper's son. “Good evening,” he said. “I have the honor to be Senior Lieutenant Lope Félix de Vega Carpio.”

“Christ on His cross,” one of the troopers muttered. “Another stinking officer who thinks the rules don't matter for him.”

Lope pretended not to hear that. He couldn't ignore the reproach in the sergeant's voice: “Sir, we might have taken you for an Englishman and blown your head off.”

“I'm very glad you didn't,” Lope de Vega replied.

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “You still haven't said, sir, what you're doing out so long after curfew. We have the authority to arrest officers, sir.” He might have had it, but he didn't sound delighted at the prospect of using it. An officer with connections and a bad temper could make him sorry he'd been born, no matter how right he was. Lope didn't have such connections, but how could the sergeant know that?

“What was I doing out so late?” he echoed. “Well, she had red hair and blue eyes and—” His hands described what else Maude had. He went on, “While I was with her, I didn't care what time it was.”

“You should have spent the night, sir,” the sergeant said.

“I would have liked that. She would have liked that, too. Her husband . . . alas, no.” Lope shook his head.

“Her husband, eh?” The sergeant's laugh showed a missing tooth. A couple of his men let out loud, bawdy guffaws. “An Englishman?” he asked, and answered his own question: “Yes, of course, a heretic dog of an Englishman. Well, good for you, by God.”

“And so she was,” de Vega said, which got him another laugh or two. With the easy charm that made women open their hearts—and their legs—to him, he went on, “And now, my friends, if you would be so kind as to point me back to the barracks, I would count myself forever in your debt.”

“Certainly, sir.” The sergeant gestured with his torch. “That way, not too far.”

“
That
way?” Lope said in surprise. “I thought that way led south, down toward the Thames.” The soldiers shook their heads as one man. He'd seen it done worse on stage. He gave them a melodramatic sigh. “Plainly, I am mistaken. I'm glad I ran into you men, then. I got lost in this fog.”

“The Devil take English weather,” the sergeant said, and his men nodded with as much unity as they'd shown before. “Yes, the Devil take the cold, and the rain, and the fog—and he's welcome to the Englishmen while he's at it. They're all heretics at heart, no matter how many of them we burn.” The rest of the patrol nodded yet again.

“Amen,” de Vega said. “Well, now that I know where I'm going, I'll be off. I thank you for your help.” He bowed once more.

Returning the bow, the sergeant said, “Sir, I'm afraid you'll only get lost again, and the streets aren't safe for a lone gentleman. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you.”
If anything does happen to you, I'll get blamed for it
—Lope knew how to translate what he said into what he meant. The underofficer turned to his men. “Rodrigo, Fernán, take the lieutenant back to the barracks.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” the troopers chorused. One of them made a splendid flourish with his torch. “You come along with us, sir. We'll get you where you're going.”

“That's right,” the other agreed. “We know this miserable, fleabitten town. We'd better—we've tramped all through it, night and day.”

“I throw myself on your mercy, then,” Lope said. They wouldn't be sorry to take him back, not when it got them out of the rest of the patrol. He didn't know how long that was; he'd lost track of time.

They proved as good as their word, too, guiding him back to the big wooden building by the London Stone. Some Englishmen swore the great stone with its iron bars was magical; some Spaniards believed them. Lope de Vega didn't care one way or the other. He was just glad to see it looming out of the mist.

A sentry called out a challenge. The soldiers answered it. “What are you bastards doing back here?” the sentry demanded. “You only went out an hour ago.”

“We've got a lost gentleman, a lieutenant, with us,” the trooper named Fernán replied. “Sergeant Diaz sent us back with him—couldn't very well leave him running around loose for some English
cabrón
to knock him over the head.”

“I may be a lieutenant, but I am not a child,” Lope said as he advanced. Fernán and Rodrigo and the sentry all found that very funny.
What sort of lieutenants have they dealt with?
he wondered.
Or am I better off not knowing?

The sentry did salute him in proper fashion, and let him go in. A sergeant inside should have taken his name, but the fellow was dozing in front of a charcoal brazier. Lope slipped past him and into his room, where he pulled off his hat and boots and sword belt and went to bed. Diego, his servant, already lay there snoring. Diego, from everything Lope had seen, would sleep through the Last Judgment.

I might as well have no servant at all
, de Vega thought, drifting toward sleep.
But a gentleman without a servant would be . . . Unimaginable
was the word that should have formed in his mind. What
did
occur to him was
better off
. He yawned, stretched, and stopped worrying about it.

When he woke, it was still dark outside. He felt rested enough, though. In fall and winter, English nights stretched ungodly long, and the hours of July sunshine never seemed enough to make up for them. Diego didn't seemed to have moved; his snores certainly hadn't changed rhythm. If he ever felt rested enough, he'd given no sign of it.

Leaving him in his dormouse-like hibernation, Lope put on what he'd taken off the night before, adjusting the bright pheasant plume in his braided-leather hatband to the proper jaunty angle. He resisted the temptation to slam the door as he went out to get breakfast.
My virtue surely piles up in heaven
, he thought.

He joined a line of soldiers who yawned and knuckled their red eyes. Breakfast was wine and a cruet of olive oil—both imported from Spain,
as neither the grape nor the olive flourished in this northern clime—and half a loaf of brown bread. The bread was local, and at least as good as he would have had back in Madrid.

He was just finishing when his superior's servant came up to him. Captain Guzmán's Enrique was the opposite of his own Diego in every way: tall, thin, smarter than a servant had any business being, and alarmingly diligent. “Good day, Lieutenant,” Enrique said. “My principal requests the honor of your company at your earliest convenience.”

Gulping down the last of the wine, Lope got to his feet. “I am at his Excellency's service, of course.” No matter how flowery a servant made an order, an order it remained.

No matter how much Lope hurried, Enrique got to Guzmán's office ahead of him. “Here's de Vega,” he told Guzmán in dismissive tones. As a captain's man, he naturally looked down his nose at a creature so lowly as a lieutenant, even a senior lieutenant.

“
Buenos días
, your Excellency,” Lope said as he walked in. He swept off his hat and bowed.

“Good day,” Captain Baltasar Guzmán replied, nodding without rising from his seat. He was a dapper little man whose mustaches and chin beard remained wispy with youth: though Lope's superior, he was a good fifteen years younger. He had some sort of connection with the great noble house of Guzmán—the house of, among others, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander of the Armada—which explained his rank. He wasn't a bad officer, though, in spite of that.
Enrique wouldn't let him be a bad officer
, Lope thought.

“And how may I serve you today, your Excellency?” he asked.

Captain Guzmán wagged a forefinger at him. “I hear you were out late last night.”