Ruled Britannia (38 page)

“ 'Sblood,” he muttered in weary amazement. “Never thought I to finish't.” Even now, he half expected the Spaniards or the English Inquisition to burst in and drag him away in irons.

But all that happened was that Kate asked, “What said you, Master Will?”

“Naught worth hearing, believe you me.” Shakespeare folded his papers so no untoward eye might fall on them. “I did but now set down the ending for a tragedy o'er which I've labored long.”

“Good for you, then,” the serving woman answered. “What's it called, and when will your company perform it?”

“I know not,” he told her.

“You know not what it's called?”

“Nay,” Shakespeare said impatiently. Too late, he realized she was teasing, and made a face at her. “I know not when we'll give it.” He avoided telling her the title. She wouldn't know what it meant—no one without Latin would—but she might remember it, and an inquisitor might be able to tear it out of her. Shakespeare hadn't steeped himself in conspiracy his whole life long, as men like Robert Cecil and Nick Skeres had done, but he could see the advantages to keeping to himself anything that might prove dangerous if anyone else knew it.

Kate, unfortunately, saw he was holding back. “You're telling me less than you might,” she said, more in sorrow than in accusation.

“Telling you aught is more than I should,” Shakespeare said, and then, “Telling you
that
is more than I should.”

He paused, hoping she would take the point. She did. She was ignorant, but far from stupid. “I'll ask no more, then,” she said. “Go on. Curfew draws nigh.” She lowered her voice to add, “God keep thee.”

“And thee,” Shakespeare answered. He rose from the stool where he'd perched most of the evening, bowed over her hand and kissed it, and left the ordinary for his lodging.

The night was foggy and dank. The moon, not quite two weeks after what the Catholic Church called Easter Sunday, was nearly new. It wouldn't rise till just before sunrise, and wouldn't pierce the mist once it did. A stranger abroad in the London night would get hopelessly lost
in moments. Shakespeare intended to go back to the Widow Kendall's house more by the way the street felt under the soles of his feet and by smell than by sight.

His intention collapsed about a dozen paces outside the ordinary. Somebody came hurrying up from the direction of his lodging house. The fog muffled sound, too, so Shakespeare heard only the last few footfalls before the fellow bumped into him. “Oof!” he said, and then, “Have a care, an't please you!”

“Will! Is that you?” The other man's voice came out of darkness impenetrable.

Shakespeare knew it all the same. He wished he didn't. “Kit?” he replied, apprehension making him squeak like a youth. “Why come you hither?”

“Oh, God be praised!” Christopher Marlowe exclaimed—a sure danger sign, for when all went well he was likelier to take the Lord's name in vain than to petition Him with prayer. “Help me, Will! Sweet Jesu, help you me! They bay at my heels, closer every minute.”

Ice ran through Shakespeare. “Who dogs you? And for what?”
Is it peculiar to you alone, or hath ruin o'erwhelmed all?

“Who?” Marlowe's voice fluttered like a candle flame in a breeze. “The dons, that's who!”

“Mother Mary!” Shakespeare said, an oath he never would have chosen had the Spaniards not landed on English soil. He realized that later; at the moment, panic tried to rise up and choke him, so that he almost turned and fled at random through the shrouded streets of London. Something, though, made him repeat, “Why seek they you?”

“You know I fancy boys,” Marlowe began, and some of Shakespeare's panic fell from his shoulders like a discarded cloak.

“Belike half of London knows you fancy boys,” Shakespeare answered; the other poet had never figured out the virtues inherent in simply keeping his mouth shut. But if the dons wanted him
because
he fancied boys . . .

They did. Marlowe said, “Anthony Bacon was but the first. They'd fain rid the realm of all sodomites and ingles, and so they'll put me on the gallows if I into their hands do fall. But how could I be otherwise? Nature that framed us of our elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, did shape me so.”

Even on the brink of dreadful death, he struggled to justify himself.
That constance left Shakespeare half saddened, half amused—and altogether frightened. “What would you of me?” he asked.

“Why, to help me fly, of course,” the other poet answered.

“And how, prithee, might I do that?” Shakespeare demanded. “Am I Daedalus, to give thee wings?” He didn't know himself whether he used
thee
with Marlowe for the sake of intimacy or insult. Exasperated, he went on, “E'en had I wings to give thee, belike thou'dst fly too near the sun, another Icarus, and plummet into the briny sea.”

“Twit me, rate me, as thou wouldst, so that thou help me,” Marlowe said. “For in sooth, dear Will”—he laughed a ragged laugh—“where's the harm in loving boys? Quoth Jove, dandling his favorite upon his knee,

 

‘Come, gentle Ganymede and play with me;

I love thee well, say Juno what she will.' ”

 

Shakespeare burst out laughing. He couldn't help himself. Only Marlowe could be vain enough to recite the opening lines from one of his own plays in such an extremity. With pleasure more than a little malicious, Shakespeare used a high, thin, piping voice to give back Ganymede's reply from
Dido, Queen of Carthage
:

 

“ ‘I would have a jewel for mine ear,

And a fine brooch to put in my hat,

And
then
I'll hug with you an hundred times.' ”

 

Marlowe hissed like a man trying to bear a wound bravely. “And here, Will, I thought you never paid my verses proper heed. Would I had been wrong.”

“Would you had . . .” Shakespeare shook his head. “No, never mind. 'Tis of no moment now. You must get hence, if they dog you for this. Want you money?”

“Nay. What I have sufficeth me,” Marlowe answered.

“Then what think you I might do that you cannot for yourself?” Shakespeare asked. “Hie yourself down to the river. Take ship, if any ship there be that sails on the instant. If there be none such, take a boat away from London, and the first ship you may. So that you outspeed the hue and cry at your heels, all may yet be well, or well enough.”

“Or well enough,” Marlowe echoed gloomily. “But hark you, Will: ‘well enough' is not. Even ‘well' is scarce well enough.”

Nothing ever satisfied him. Shakespeare had known that as long as he'd known the other poet. Marlowe had a jackdaw's curiosity, and a jackdaw's inability to hold a course when something—or someone—new and bright and shiny caught his eye. Shakespeare stepped forward and reached out in the fog. One groping hand grazed Marlowe's face. He dropped it to Marlowe's shoulder. “God speed you, Kit. Get safe away, and come home again when . . . when times are better.”

Marlowe snorted. “I hope I must not wait so long as
that
.” He hugged the breath out of Shakespeare, and kissed him half on the mouth, half on the cheek. “You give good counsel. I'll take it, an I may.”

“I'll pray for you,” Shakespeare said.

“Belike 'twill do me no lasting harm,” Marlowe answered. Having got the last word, he hurried away. The fog muffled his footsteps, and soon swallowed them. Shakespeare sighed. He'd done what he could. If nothing else, he'd talked Marlowe out of his blind panic. That mattered. It might matter a great deal.

“It might,” Shakespeare muttered, trying to convince himself.

He made his way through the thick, swirling mist to the Widow Kendall's house. His landlady sat in the parlor, poking up the fire. “I wondered if we'd lost you, Master Will,” she said as he closed the door behind him. “Thick as clotted cream out there.”

“So it is,” Shakespeare agreed. Beads of fog dotted his face and trickled from his beard, as sweat would have on a hot day.

“Will you waste my wood, to give you light wherewith to write?” his landlady asked.

“An it serve my purpose, madam, I reckon it no waste,” Shakespeare said with dignity.

“Nay, and why should you?” the Widow Kendall replied. “ 'Tis not you buying the wood you burn.”

“Not so,” Shakespeare said. “I buy it with the rent you have of me each month.” She sent him a stony stare. Not wanting her angry at him, he added, “Be that as it may, I need no wood tonight. I finished a play at my ordinary, by the fine, clear light of the candles therein.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Jane Kendall said, “both for the sake of my wood and for the sake of your rent. So long as you keep writing, so long as your company buys your plays, you'll pay me month by month, eh?”

“Just so,” Shakespeare agreed. Where Marlowe was pure, self-centered will, the Widow Kendall was equally pure, self-centered greed.

“And what call you this one?” she asked. “Will't fetch you a fine, fat fee?”

“Very fine, God willing,” he said. As he had with Kate, he fought shy of naming
Boudicca
for her.

“Good, good,” she said, smiling. His money, or some of it, was destined to become her money. “Is this the play on the life of good King Philip, then? That surely deserveth more than a common fee, its subject also being more than common.”

He shook his head. “No, that will be a history—a pageant, almost a masque. The play I just now finished is a tragedy.” That much, he thought he could safely say.

“I'll tell you what's a tragedy, Master Shakespeare,” the Widow Kendall said. “What I needs must pay for firewood—marry, 'tis the bleeding of mine own life's blood . . .”

She went on complaining till Shakespeare took advantage of a brief lull to slip away to his bedroom. Jack Street lay on his back, his mouth wide open, making the night hideous.
Me? I snore not
, the glazier had insisted. Shakespeare laughed quietly. Street might not be able to hear himself, but everyone else could.

After a moment, the poet's laughter faltered. So far as he could tell, Street recalled nothing of the argument they'd had at Easter. Whatever Cicely Sellis had done to him, its effect lingered. Maybe it wasn't witchcraft. Shakespeare had yet to find another name that fit half so well, though.

He put his papers and pens and ink in his chest, and made sure the lock clicked shut. Then he pulled off his shoes, shed his ruff, and lay down on the bed in doublet and hose. His eyes slid shut. Maybe he snored, too. If he did, he never knew it.

When he woke the next morning, Jack Street's bed was empty. Sam King was dressing for another day of pounding London's unforgiving streets looking for work. “God give you good morrow, Master Will,” he said as Shakespeare sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“And a good morrow to you as well,” Shakespeare answered around a yawn.

“I'm for a bowl of the widow's porridge, and then whatever I can find,” King said. The porridge was liable to be the only food he got all day. He had to know as much, but didn't fuss about it.

Shakespeare couldn't help admiring that bleak courage. “Good fortune go before you,” he said.

King laughed. “Good fortune hath ever gone before me: so far before me, I see it not. An I run fast enough, though, peradventure I'll catch it up.” He bobbed his head in a shy nod, then hurried out to the Widow Kendall's kitchen for whatever bubbled in her pot this morning.

Shakespeare broke his fast on porridge, too. Having eaten, he went up to the Theatre for the day's rehearsal. He worried all the way there. If inquisitors came after Cicely Sellis, would they search everywhere in the house? If they opened his chest and saw the manuscript of
Boudicca
, he was doomed. And another question, one that had been in the back of his mind, now came forward: even with
Boudicca
finished, how could the company rehearse it without being betrayed? The players would have to rehearse. He could see that. When word of Philip's death reached England, they would—they might—give the play on the shortest of notice. They would have to be ready. But how? Yes, he saw the question clearly. The answer? He shook his head.

He was among the first of the company to get to the Theatre. Richard Burbage paced across the stage like a caged wolf—back and forth, back and forth. He nodded to Shakespeare as the poet came in through the groundlings' entrance. “God give you good day, Will,” he boomed. “How wags your world?” Even with only a handful of people in the house, he pitched his voice so folk in the upper gallery—of whom there were at the moment none—could hear him with ease.

“I fare well enough,” Shakespeare answered. “And you? Wherefore this prowling?”

“I am to be Alexander today,” Burbage reminded him. “As he pursues Darius, he is said to be relentless.” He waved a sheet of paper with his part and stage directions written out. “Seemed I to you relentless?”