Ruled Britannia (30 page)

“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 God
, 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 God 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 scrap 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 scrap 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.”

“God damn 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, Dick. 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 piss. 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.

But her smile disappeared when Shakespeare put a fresh chunk of wood on the fire. He'd known it would, and had hoped to sweeten her beforehand. No such luck. “Master Will!” she said, her voice sharp with annoyance. “With the winter so hard, have you any notion how dear wood's got?”

“In sooth, my lady, you'd have set it there yourself ere long,” Shakespeare said, as soothingly as he could. “You'd be wood to spare wood, would you not?” He smiled, both to sweeten her further and because his wordplay pleased him.

It failed to please her, for she failed to notice it. “Daft, he calls me,” she said to no one in particular—perhaps she was letting God know of his sins. “Bought he the wood he spares not? Marry, he did not. Cared he what it cost? Marry, not that, either. But called he me wood? Marry, he did. He'll drive me to frenzy thus, to frenzy and to bed.” On that anticlimactic note, she left the parlor.

Shakespeare pushed a table and a stool up close to the fire. He took out the latest sheet of paper for
Boudicca
—no others—and set to work. A couple of minutes later, he yawned. Over the years, he'd got used to writing plays in odd moments snatched from other work and sleep.

Something brushed against his ankle. Before he could start, the cat said, “Meow.”

“Good den, Mommet.” Shakespeare scratched the gray tabby behind the ears and stroked its back. Mommet purred ecstatically. When Shakespeare stopped stroking the cat so he could write, it sat up on its hind legs and tapped his shin with a front paw, as if to say,
Why don't you go on?

He glanced down at it, a trifle uneasily.
Would a common cat sit so?
he wondered.
Or hath this beast more wit than a common cat?
Still
purring, the animal twisted into an improbable pose and began licking its private parts and anus. Shakespeare laughed. Would a familiar do anything so undignified?

Cicely Sellis appeared in the doorway. “God give you good even, Master Shakespeare,” she said—she certainly had no trouble pronouncing the name of the Lord, as witches were said to do. “Have you seen—? Ah, there he is. Mommet!”

The cat went on licking itself as Shakespeare answered, “And you, Mistress Sellis?”

She snapped her fingers and cooed. Mommet kept ignoring her. With a small, rueful shrug, she smiled at Shakespeare. “He does as he would, not as I would.”

“Care killed a cat, or so they say,” the poet replied.

Laughing, the cunning woman said, “If he die of care, he'll live forever. But how is it with you? Did he disturb you from your work? Do I?”

“No, and no,” Shakespeare said, the first
no
truthful, the second polite. “I am well enough. How is't with yourself?”

“Well enough, as you say,” Cicely Sellis answered. “Truly, I have been pleased to make your acquaintance, for your name I hear on everyone's lips.”

“You ken my creditors, then?” Shakespeare said. “Better they should come to you for their fortunes than to me.”

“A thing I had not heard was that you were in debt.” She paused, then sent him a severe look. “Oh. You quibble on ‘fortune.' ”

“Had I one, my lady, I should not quibble on't.”

She snorted. That made the cat look up from grooming itself. She snapped her fingers again. The cat rose to its feet, stretched, purred—and rubbed up against Shakespeare once more. “Vile, fickle beast!” Cicely Sellis said in mock fury.

Shakespeare reached down and stroked the cat. It began to purr even louder. “Ay, there's treason in 'em, in their very blood,” he said.

“How, then, differ they from men?” she asked.

That put him back on uncomfortable ground—all the more so, considering what he was writing. He stopped petting the gray tabby. It looked up at him and meowed. When he didn't start again, it walked over to its mistress. “And now you think I'll make much of you, eh?” she said as she picked it up. It purred. She laughed. “Belike you're right.” She glanced over to Shakespeare. “Shall I bid you good night?”

“By no means,” he answered, polite once more: polite and curious. “You'll think me vain, Mistress Sellis, but from whose lips hear you of me?”