Ruled Britannia (35 page)

“Yes, do, Nick.” Robert Cecil spoke the same way, which set Shakespeare's teeth on edge. But then the crookback added, “He hath our full favor. Let all your friends know as much.”

“I'll do't, sir. You can depend on Nick Skeres.” Shakespeare could imagine no one on whom he less wanted to depend. But nobody in this mad game cared a farthing for what he wanted. Skeres turned to him with a half mocking grin. “You may not know't, Master Shakespeare, but I reckon you the safest man in London these days.”

“What mean you?” Shakespeare asked.

That grin got wider. “There's not a ferret, not a flick, not a foist, not a high lawyer in the city but knows your name and visage—and knows you're to be let alone. God help him who sets upon you in Lord Burghley's despite.”

“And my son's,” Sir William Cecil said. “He will outdo me, as any man should pray his son will do.”

Shakespeare wondered about that on several counts. He'd known plenty of men, his own father among them, who wanted to see their sons as less than themselves, not greater. More than a few of that type, far from advancing their sons, did everything they could to hold them back. And Robert Cecil, though surely a man of formidable wit, lacked his father's indomitable will. Maybe his slight frame and twisted back accounted for that. Or maybe the younger man would have been the lesser even had he been born straight. In the end, who but God could know such things?

And what is a playwright but a man who seeks to make a god of himself and creatures of his characters?
Shakespeare shoved the blasphemous thought aside, though surely it had crossed the mind of everyone who'd
ever touched pen to paper in hopes of writing something worth going up on stage.

Enough
, he told himself, and bowed to the two Cecils. “My lords, again I say gramercy for the favor you show me.”

“We do but give you your deserts,” Robert Cecil answered. Shakespeare wondered whether that had an edge to it or he himself was seeing shadows where nothing cast them. He feared he wasn't. If a word from the Cecils—a word delivered through Nick Skeres, and perhaps through Ingram Frizer as well—could ward him against cheats and thieves and pickpockets and highwaymen, what could a different word do? He pleased the Cecils now. If ever he didn't . . .
An I please them not, 'twill be a mayfly's life for me
.

Skeres stirred. “We'd best away.”

“Go you, gentles.” Robert Cecil's smile was strange, bloodless, almost fey. “As for my father and me, why, how can we get hence, when never were we here at all?”

A bit of a ballad lately popular in London ran through Shakespeare's mind:

 

With an host of furious fancies

Whereof I am commander,

With a burning spear, and a horse of air,

To the wilderness I wander.

By a knight of ghosts and shadows

I summoned am to tourney

Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end.

Methinks it is no journey.

 

As Nick Skeres led him out of Sir John Hart's garden, he slowly nodded. Yes, “Tom o' Bedlam” fit well. He'd just given the Cecils some small taste of the furious fancies whereof he was commander. And if they both weren't knights of ghosts and shadows, who deserved the name?

Skeres peered over the gate before opening it. “Safe as can be,” he said, sounding as if he wanted to reassure himself as much as Shakespeare. “Now go your way, sir, and I'll go mine, and I'll see you again when next there's need. Give you good morrow.” Off he went, at a skulking half trot. He quickly disappeared in the rain.

Shakespeare started off towards the Theatre. A squad of Spaniards coming back to their barracks tramped right past him, their boots
splashing in unison. Since they wore armor that they would have to grease and polish to hold rust at bay, and that kept trying to pull them down into the mud, they were likely even more miserable than he. None of them looked at him.

He hurried up towards Bishopsgate. Not far from the house where he lodged, a tall, thin, ragged man with a stout staff in his hand and a sword on his hip stepped into the middle of the street, as if to block his path. Heart pounding, Shakespeare boldly strode toward the fellow—who stepped aside to let him pass. Had the ragged man been a high lawyer who recognized him and let him go? Had the man decided he looked like someone who might put up a fight, and let him go on account of that? Or had he not been a robber at all? Shakespeare realized he would never know. Life offered fewer certainties than the stage.

When Shakespeare got to the Theatre, one of Jack Hungerford's helpers pointed to him and let out a delighted whoop: “God be praised, he's here!”

“In sooth, God be praised!” Richard Burbage boomed from center stage—his usual haunt. “We'd begun to fear you'd gone poor Geoff Martin's way, and the great and wise Constable Strawberry would summon one of us for to identify your moral remainders.” Like most players worth their hire, Burbage had a knack for mimicking anyone he chanced to meet. He made no worse hash of the language than the constable himself, though.

“Some of us were less afeard than others,” Will Kemp said. Shakespeare wondered—as he was no doubt intended to wonder—how the clown meant that. Had he meant to say some people remained confident nothing had happened to Shakespeare? Or did he mean some people wouldn't have cared had something happened? Better not to know.

“I pray your pardon, friends,” Shakespeare said. “I was summoned to see someone, and had no choice but compliance.”

He hoped the company would take that to mean he'd been called before Don Diego Flores de Valdés. Kemp, as was his way, drew a different meaning from it. His hands shaped an hourglass in the air. Several players laughed. So did Shakespeare.

His laughter abruptly curdled when Burbage said, “Your spaniel of a Spaniard came sniffing after you earlier today, and made away in some haste on hearing you'd come not.”

“Said he what he wished of me?” Shakespeare asked, cursing under his breath. Lope de Vega, of course, would have no trouble learning he
hadn't
gone to Don Diego.
I did well, not using the lie direct
, Shakespeare thought.

“He'd fain hear moe
King Philip
, else I'm a Dutchman,” Burbage answered, at which Will Kemp began staggering around as if in the last stages of drunkenness and mumbling guttural nonsense that might have been Dutch. Shakespeare laughed again. He couldn't help it. When Kemp let himself go, no man who saw him could help laughing.

He lurched up to Burbage and made as if to piss on his shoes. Burbage sprang back as if he'd really done it—and, had Burbage held still a moment longer, he might have. When he let himself go, he let himself go altogether. He stumbled after Burbage, who said, “Give over, Will.”

Kemp spouted more guttural pseudo-Dutch gibberish and gave him a big, wet kiss on the cheek. Burbage exclaimed in disgust. He shoved Kemp away. The clown looked at him out of eyes suddenly huge and round with grief. “Thou lovest me not!” he wailed, and tears began sliding down his cheeks.

“Madman,” Burbage said, half in annoyance, half in affection. Now Kemp bowed like a don. Burbage returned it. Kemp skittered up to him—and kissed him again. “Madman!” Burbage cried again—this time, a full-throated roar of rage.

“Not I.” The clown let out a mourning lover's sigh. “With pretty Tom gone, I seek beauty where I find it.” He puckered up once more.

“You'll find my boot in your backside, sure as Tom found Bacon's yard in his,” Burbage said. Kemp's sigh wordlessly claimed he wanted nothing more.

Shakespeare asked, “Know you where de Vega went on leaving this place? Will he descend on me with a company of pikemen at his back, fearing me murthered?”

Nobody answered. Shakespeare made as if to tear his hair.

That only got him a scornful snort from Kemp, who said, “Leave clowning to clowns, foolery to fools. You have not the art of't.”

“Wherefore should that hinder me?” Shakespeare replied. “You leave not sense to sensible men.”

The players laughed and clapped their hands. Will Kemp's glower, this time, was perfectly genuine. He enjoyed making others the butt of his japes. When he had to play the role, though, it suited him less well.

Before he and Shakespeare could start another round of insults,
Richard Burbage asked the poet, “Doth the work thus far done suit the principal?”

Was he speaking of Don Diego or of Lord Burghley, of
King Philip
or of
Boudicca
? Shakespeare wasn't sure. He wondered if Burbage were sure. Either way, though, he could safely nod. “So I am given to understand.”

“Good, then. Beside that, naught else hath great import.” Burbage set his hands on his hips and raised his voice till it filled the Theatre: “Now that Will's back amongst us, and back with good news, let's think on what we do this afternoon, eh? The wives of Windsor shall not be merry unless we make them so.”

Kemp fell to with more spirit than he often showed at rehearsals—but then, of course, he played Sir John Falstaff, around whom the comedy revolved. Even though the play ended with Falstaff's humiliation, the part was too juicy to leave him room for complaint. Indeed, after the rehearsal ended, he came up to Shakespeare and said, “Would you'd writ more for the great larded tun.” He put both hands on his belly. He was not a thin man, but would play Falstaff well padded.

“More? Of what sort?” Shakespeare asked. He knew Kemp spoke because he wanted the role, but was curious even so. The clown might give him an idea worth setting down on paper.

But Kemp said, “He is too straitened in a town of no account. Let him come to London! Let him meet with princes. No, by God—he deserveth to meet with kings!”

Shakespeare shook his head. “I fear me not. I got leave to write of the third Richard, he being villain black. But, did I bring other Kings of England into my plays, and in especial did I speak them fair, 'twould be reckoned treason, no less than the . . . other matter we pursue. Can you tell me I am mistook?”

Will Kemp scowled. “Damn me, but I cannot. Devil take the dons, then! A bargain, Master Shakespeare—do we cast them down, give me Falstaff and a king.”

If he had a reason to throw off the Spaniards' yoke, he would be less likely to go to them in a fit of temper or simply a fit of folly. “A bargain,” Shakespeare said solemnly. They clasped hands.

 

L
OPE DE
V
EGA
and Lucy Watkins stood among the other groundlings at the Theatre. The boy playing Mistress Page said,

 

“Good husband, let us every one go home,

And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;

Sir John and all.”

 

Richard Burbage, who played Ford, replied,

 

“Let it be so. Sir John,

To Master Brook you shall hold your word;

For he to-night shall lie with Mistress Ford.”

 

A flourish of horns announced the end of the play. The actors bowed. Despite the rain that had been coming down all day, the Theatre erupted in applause. Lope clapped his hands. Beside him, Lucy hopped up and down in the mud, squealing with delight. De Vega smiled. “I am glade it pleases thee,” he said. He had to repeat himself to make her hear him through the din.

She nodded, her eyes shining. “Ay, it likes me well. My thanks for bringing me hither.”

“
El gusto es mío
,” Lope replied. And the pleasure
was
his; through the way
The Merry Wives of Windsor
enchanted her, he enjoyed it as he couldn't have if he'd come alone. The whelk-seller didn't try to pick it to pieces to see how it worked. She just let it wash over her, taking it as it came. Lope couldn't do that by himself. With her, he could.

William Shakespeare came out on stage. “Behold the poet!” Will Kemp shouted. The applause got louder still. Shakespeare bowed. Lucy Watkins whooped and blew him kisses. She wasn't the only one in the crowd sending them to him or to one or another of the players. After another bow, Shakespeare withdrew. The rest of the company followed him, one or two at a time.

“Art fain to meet them?” Lope asked.

She stared at him. “
Could
I?” she said, as if expecting him to tell her no.

He bowed. “ 'Twould be my pleasure,” he said. “Pleasing thee is my pleasure.” Lucy leaned forward to peck him on the cheek. A man who smelled of onions standing behind them whooped and rocked his hips forward and back. Lope ignored the churl. He took Lucy's hand and led her towards the wings, towards one of the doors that opened onto the backstage tiring room. A delight of falling in love, as he'd said, was that which he took in making her happy.

Some small part of him knew that one day before too long he would spy another face, another form, that pleased him as much as Lucy's, or more. He would fall in love with the woman who had them, too. Maybe he would lose his love for the whelk-seller, maybe he wouldn't. He had no trouble staying in love with two or three women at once—till they found out about it.
Then
he had trouble. He tried to forget what had happened after the bear-baiting in Southwark.