Ruled Britannia (34 page)

“Them you'll meet when I fetch you thither.” From everything Shakespeare had seen, Nick Skeres delighted in being uninformative. He also delighted in the power he held over Shakespeare. When he said, “Come,” the snap of command filled his voice.

And Shakespeare had to go with him. He knew as much. He hated it, but he knew it. He did say, “They'll miss me, up in Shoreditch.”

Nick Skeres shrugged. “Better that than they miss you whose man I am.” He turned away towards the southwest. Heart sinking, Shakespeare followed, however much he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

A horse trying to haul a wagon full of barrels through the muck blocked a narrow street. The wagon had bogged down. The driver
rained blows on the horse's back. With all its strength, the beast strained against the weight and the mud. Then, with a noise like a pistol shot, it broke a leg. Its scream was like that of a woman on the rack.

“Cut its throat,” Skeres said with a laugh. “It's knacker's meat now.”

So it is
, Shakespeare thought grimly.
And you'd cut my throat as heartlessly, you bloody, bawdy villain, did I likewise break down in your employ
. Nick Skeres laughed again, as if to say he knew what was going through Shakespeare's mind—knew and didn't care. And that was all too likely true.

“We've not far to go,” Skeres said after a while.

“What? Hereabouts?” Shakespeare pointed. “There's the London Stone, the which signifies the Spaniards' barracks cannot lie a stone's throw distant. Beard we the dons in their den?”

Skeres laughed again, which did nothing to reassure Shakespeare. “They think the same: that none'd be so fond as to plot under their very noses.” Even as he spoke, a squad of unhappy-looking Spaniards tramped past on patrol. One man glanced towards the two Englishmen and kept walking. The rest paid them no attention at all.

“Madness,” Shakespeare muttered. Nick Skeres grinned at the Spanish soldiers, who disappeared round a corner one after another. Reluctantly—most reluctantly—Shakespeare nodded. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.”

“E'en so,” Skeres said. “Here. Come you with me. This is the house we seek.”

The building in question was large and well made. “Whose it it?” Shakespeare asked.

“It belongs to Sir John Hart, the alderman,” Skeres answered. “But that's nor here nor there.”

Instead of going to the door and knocking, as he had at the Bacons' house in Drury Lane a few months before, he led Shakespeare to a side gate that opened onto an enclosed garden: one surely splendid in spring and summer, but sad now, with scarcely any green to be seen. “Who'd meet us here?” Shakespeare said, pulling his hat down lower to keep his face dry.

“Why, the men who're fain to see you. Who else?” Nick Skeres replied. Shakespeare glared. The other man looked back, unperturbed and resolutely close-mouthed. He took Shakespeare towards a rose arbor that no doubt perfumed the air and gave welcome shade when the sun shone high and hot, but that seemed as badly out of season as the
rest of the garden now. As Shakespeare drew closer to it, he saw through the rain that two men sat in that poor shelter—waiting for him?

“ 'Sblood, Master Skeres, they'll take their deaths,” he exclaimed.

Shrugging, Skeres answered, “An they fret not, why should you?” He sounded altogether indifferent. The milk of human kindness ran thin in him, if it ran at all.

When Shakespeare ducked his way into the arbor, both waiting men slowly got to their feet. “God give you good morrow,” Sir William Cecil rumbled.

Shakespeare bowed low. “And you, your Grace,” he said. “But . . . should you not go inside, where . . . where it's warm and dry?”
Where I may hope you'll die not on the instant
, was what he meant. Lord Burghley was paler and puffier than he had been the previous autumn; he wheezed with every breath he took, and shivered despite being swaddled in furs.

But he shook his head even so. “Who knows what ears lurk within? As the matter advanceth, so advanceth also the need to keep't secret. And here, in sooth, we speak under the rose.” He chuckled rheumily. Despite the laugh and his bold words, though, his lips had a bluish cast that alarmed Shakespeare. He gathered strength and went on, “When last we met, I told you my son would take this matter forward. Allow me to present you to him now. Robert, here is Master Shakespeare, the poet.”

“I am your servant, sir,” Shakespeare murmured, bowing to the younger man as he had to the elder.

Robert Cecil gave back a bow of his own. He was about Shakespeare's age, with a long, thin, pale face made longer still by the pointed chin beard he wore and by his combing his seal-brown hair back from his forehead. He would not have been a tall man even had he stood straight; a crooked back robbed him of several more inches. But when he said, “I take no small pleasure at making your acquaintance, Master Shakespeare, being an admirer of your dramas,” Shakespeare bowed again, knowing he'd got praise worth having. The younger Cecil's voice was higher and lighter than his father's, but no less full of sharp, even prickly, intelligence.

Sir William Cecil sank back to the bench from which he'd risen. To Shakespeare's relief, his color improved slightly when he sat down. Switching to Latin, he asked, “How fares your play upon the rebellion of Boudicca?”

“I hope to finish it before spring ends,” Shakespeare replied in the same language. “I am certain sure, my lord, you will already know I am also ordered to write a play upon the life of King Philip.”

“Yes, I do know that.” Lord Burghley nodded. “I also know the Spaniards are paying you more than I gave you at our last meeting. Robert, be so good as to make amends for that.”

“Certes, Father.” Robert Cecil reached under his cloak. His hands were long and thin and pale, too—hands a musician might have wished he had. He gave Shakespeare a small but nicely heavy leather sack. “We cannot let ourselves be outbid.”

“By God, sir—” Shakespeare began, alarmed back into English.

The younger Cecil waved him to silence. “Did we fear betrayal from you, we'd work with another. This is for our pride's sake, not suffering our foes to outdo us.”

“Gramercy.” Shakespeare bowed once more.

“Your thanks are welcome but not needed, for doing this likes us well,” Robert Cecil said. His father nodded. Shakespeare did not answer. No doubt the younger Cecil meant what he said. But Shakespeare knew he might have met with Ingram Frizer and his knife had he displeased the two powerful Englishmen.

In aid of which . . . “Constable Strawberry knows Ingram Frizer's name,” the poet warned.

“We know of Constable Strawberry,” Lord Burghley said with another wet chuckle. “Fear not on that score.”

Robert Cecil nodded. “If he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse.”

“His wits are not so blunt as, God help us, I would desire them,” Shakespeare said.

“Comparisons are odorous,” the younger Cecil observed, proving he had indeed marked Walter Strawberry's style, “but not Hercules could have knocked out his brains, for he had none.”

“Belike,” Shakespeare said, “yet some of what your wisdoms would not have discovered, that shallow fool hath brought to light.”

“He'll find no more,” Robert Cecil said. With that Shakespeare had to be content—or rather, less than content.

“Nick!” Sir William Cecil said sharply.

“Your Grace?” Nicholas Skeres replied.

“Go walk the garden, Nick,” the old man told him. “Bring back report of its beauties in, oh, a quarter hour's time.”

Shakespeare would have resented such a peremptory dismissal. Skeres took it in stride. He dipped his head in what was more than a nod but less than a bow. “Just as you say, my lord,” he murmured, and withdrew from the arbor.

Both Cecils stared at Shakespeare, who suddenly felt very much alone. “What—what would ye?” he asked, and felt blood rush to his face in embarrassment at hearing his voice quaver.

Lord Burghley said, “Here's what, Master Shakespeare: I'd fain hear some of your verses. The play advanceth, ay, but my course on earth doth likewise. The horses of the night of which Marlowe writ will not run slow for me. Give me some foretaste, then, of the dish I ordered but shall not eat.”

“My lord, may you glut yourself with it,” Shakespeare said. Lord Burghley only shrugged and gestured for him to go on. After a moment's thought, he did: “You are to understand, this is Boudicca, urging her stalwarts to war against the Romans.”

“Ah, very good.” That was Robert Cecil, not his father. “Give it us.”

“I shall, as best I recall it,” Shakespeare replied. “Here, then:

 

‘Had we a difference with a petty isle,

Or with our neighbours, good sirs, for our land-marks,

The taking in of some rebellious lord,

Or making a head against commotions,

After a day of blood, peace might be argued;

But where we grapple for the ground we live on,

The liberty we hold as dear as life,

The gods we worship and, next these, our honours,

And with these swords that know no end of battle,

These men, besides themselves, allow no neighbour,

Those minds that where the day is claim inheritance,

And where the sun makes ripe the fruits, their harvest,

And where they march, but measure out more ground

To add to Rome, and here i'the bowels on us;

It must not be. No, as they are our foes,

And those that must be so until we tire 'em,

Let's use the peace of honour, that's fair dealing,

But in the end our swords. That hardy Roman,

That hopes to graft himself into my stock,

Must first begin his kindred underground, and be allied in ashes.' ”

 

He waited. The two Cecils looked at each other. Slowly, magisterially, Lord Burghley nodded. So did his son, who despite his briskness deferred to the old man's opinion. Shakespeare felt as if he'd just received the accolade. Robert Cecil said, “ 'Twill serve. Beyond doubt, 'twill serve. Have you more?”

Shakespeare beamed. “By my troth, you know how to please a poet!” William Cecil laughed; Robert allowed himself a thin chuckle. Shakespeare continued, “This is Caratach, Boudicca's brother-in-law and the great warlord of the Iceni—”

“We know our Tacitus, Master Shakespeare,” Robert Cecil broke in.

“Your pardon, I pray,” Shakespeare said. “The groundlings, however, will not: thus I needs must make it plain.”

“Indeed. You know your craft best, and so 'tis I must ask your pardon,” the younger Cecil said. “Carry on.”

“So I shall. This is Caratach, I say, speaking to Hengo, who is his young nephew, and Boudicca's.”

“And who is
not
in the text of the
Annals
,” William Cecil declared in a voice that brooked no contradiction.

“In sooth, your Grace, he is not,” Shakespeare agreed, “but I need him for the play, and so summoned him to being.”

The two Cecils put their heads together. Sir William Cecil said, “Again, Master Shakespeare, we take your point. The play's the thing. Let us hear it.”

“Gladly. Here is Caratach:

 

‘And, little sir, when your young bones grow stiffer,

And when I see you able in a morning

To beat a dozen boys, and then to breakfast,

I'll tie you to a sword.'

 

And Hengo replies”—Shakespeare did his best to change his voice to a boyish treble—“ ‘And what then, uncle?' ” In his usual tones, he spoke for Caratach once more: “ ‘Then you must kill, sir, the next valiant Roman that calls you knave.' ” Treble for Hengo: “ ‘And must I kill but one?' ” His own voice for Caratach: “ ‘An hundred, boy, I hope.' ” He tried to make the treble fierce, for Hengo's reply was, “ ‘I hope, five hundred.' ” Through Shakespeare, Caratach said, “ ‘That's a noble boy!' ”

Lord Burghley raised a hand. Shakespeare obediently fell silent. The old man said, “I chose wisely, to summon you. You make a fine fletcher
for the shaft I purpose loosing at the dons. I—” He broke off and began to cough. He had trouble stopping. His face turned red and then began to turn blue. His son leaned towards him, raw fear on his face. William Cecil waved Robert back. At last, he mastered the coughing fit. Slowly—too slowly—his normal color, or rather pallor, returned. He went on, “Belike I'll loose it from beyond the grave, but may it fly no less straight for that.”

“Amen, your Grace,” Shakespeare said.

Rain dripping from the brim of his hat, Nicholas Skeres returned to the rose arbor. Nodding to Lord Burghley and Robert Cecil in turn, he said, “I'll take him away now.” By the way he spoke, Shakespeare might have been a butt of ale.