Ruled Britannia (60 page)

“Have a care,” Cicely Sellis said. “The game is not played out.” She sounded almost oracular, as she had that one time in the parlor when she didn't recall what she'd said after saying it.

“I am but a player and somewhat of a poet,” Shakespeare said. “I'd not play at subtle games.” He wondered if she'd remark on the difference between
would
and
will
. Instead, and to his relief, she only nodded.

He ducked into his bedchamber, got his writing tools and the new play—his own play!—he was working on, and went off to the ordinary for supper. “Will!” Kate cried when he came through the door. “Dear-beloved Will!” The serving woman threw herself into his arms and kissed him.

“Did I know it roused such affections in thee, I'd have the Spaniards seize me every day,” Shakespeare said. That made a couple of men who were already eating chuckle. It made Kate pretend to box his ears.

After he'd supped, after he'd written, after the last of the other customers had left the ordinary, she took him up to her cramped little room. They both made love with something like desperation. “Oh, fond Will, what's to become of thee?” she said. “What's to become of us?”

Wanting to give her some soothing lie, he found he couldn't. “I know not,” he said. After a moment, he added, “Ere long, though, I shall. We shall.”
One way or another
, he thought, but did not say that. He caressed her instead.

“I fear for thee,” she whispered.

“I fear for me,” he answered. “But I needs must go on; this road hath no turning, the which I could not use e'en an it had.”

“What mean'st thou?” Kate asked.

“I will not tell thee, lest I harm thee in the telling. Soon enough, thou'lt know.” Shakespeare got up and quickly dressed. As he opened the door to go, he added another handful of words: “Come what may, remember me.” He closed the door behind him.

When he got back to the lodging-house, he put a couple of chunks of wood on the fire to fight the night chill. The Widow Kendall had gone to bed, and couldn't scold him. From the room where Shakespeare would eventually sleep, Jack Street's snores reverberated. The poet waited till the fresh wood was burning brightly, then sat down in front of the fire and got to work.

He wasn't unduly surprised to hear a door open a few minutes later, or to see Cicely Sellis—and Mommet—come out into the parlor. “Give you good even,” he said, nodding to the cunning woman.

“Good den to you,” she answered, and sat on a stool while the cat prowled the room. “Do I disturb you?”

“By your being, now and again. By your being
here
”—Shakespeare gave her a wry smile and shook his head—“nay. I am enough bemoiled in toils and coils to . . .” His voice trailed away. He'd already said as much as he could say—probably too much.

Cicely Sellis gave him a grave nod, as if she knew exactly what he was talking about. Perhaps she did, for she said, “The matter of the dons, and of Master Marlowe cut down like a dog in the street.” It did not sound like a question.

Shakespeare eyed her. How much had she heard from Lope de Vega? Whatever she'd heard, what did she think about it? He desperately needed to know, and dared not ask. Instead, he sat silent, waiting to hear what she said next.

Her shrug was small and sad. “You misdoubt me. So many on small acquaintance gladly entrust me with their all, yet you misdoubt me. Alack the heavy day.”

“I may do only as I do,” Shakespeare answered. “Did I say more—” Now he broke off sharply, shaking his head. That was too much, too.

“Peradventure you are wiser than the many,” the cunning woman said. And yet, from her expression, she'd found out most of what she wanted to know. Shakespeare wondered how much his stumbles and sudden silences had told her. She went on, “Think what you will, I mean you no harm, nor England, neither.” Before he could find any sort of answer to that, she clucked to Mommet. The cat came like a
well-trained dog. With a murmured, “Good night,” she went back into her room.

Shakespeare got very little work done after that.

When he walked into the Theatre the next morning, he found Lieutenant de Vega already there, in earnest conversation with Richard Burbage. Burbage was bowing and nodding. Seeing Shakespeare, de Vega bowed, too. “Be there proclamation made throughout the city,” he said, “that Lord Westmorland's Men shall offer
King Philip
on Tuesday of the week following this now present, the thirteenth day of October, marking a month to the day of his Most Catholic Majesty's departure from this life for a better place.” The Spaniard crossed himself; Shakespeare and Burbage made haste to imitate him. He went on, “So saith Don Diego Flores de Valdés, commander of our Spanish soldiers in England. Shall all be in readiness for the said performance?”

“Ay, Master Lope, so long as you show forth Juan de Idiáquez as he should be seen,” Shakespeare answered.

“I already told you ay, Master de Vega,” Burbage said heavily. “That being so, you need not seek the scribbler's assurances besides mine own.”

As head of the company, he was, of course, quite right. All the same, the bold way he said it might have offended Shakespeare. Not today. His heart pounded. At last, the date was set. Without a word, he bowed to Burbage and to Lope de Vega.

For his life, Shakespeare could not have said which play Lord Westmorland's Men put on that afternoon, though he had a role in it. He came back to himself on his way home from the Theatre, when a little hunchbacked beggar, filthy and clad in rags, came up to him and whined, “Alms, gentle sir? God's mercy upon you for your grace to a poor, hungry man.”

Instead of walking past him or sending him on his way with a curse, Shakespeare stopped and stared. Where he had not known the visage, he recognized the voice: there before him, ingeniously disguised, stood Robert Cecil. Lord Burghley's son grinned—grinned a little maniacally, in fact—at the look on Shakespeare's face. Gathering himself, the poet whispered, “What would you, sir?”

“Why a penny, of your kindness,” Robert Cecil said, and Shakespeare
did
give him a coin. Under cover of capering with delight, Cecil went on, also in a low voice, “You shall not give
King Philip
come Tuesday next, but your
Boudicca
. If all follow well from that and other
matters now in train, England her liberty shall regain. Till the day, be of good cheer and dread naught.”

Off he went, begging from others in Shoreditch High Street. Shakespeare walked on towards the Widow Kendall's, and his dread grew with every step he took.

 

S
EEING THE BRIGHT
sun that shone down on London on the appointed day, Lope de Vega couldn't have been more delighted. When his servant came into his inner chamber, he beamed sunnily himself. “What a grand day, Diego! It might be spring, not autumn,” he said. “The heavens do all they can to make
King Philip
well received.”

“
Sí, señor
.” Diego sounded altogether indifferent. “That English constable, that Strawberry, is waiting outside. He wants to talk with you about something.”

“Today? Now? Oh, for the love of God!” Lope felt like tearing his hair. “I have no time to deal with him. I need to go to the Theatre to rehearse. What can he want?”

Diego shrugged. “I don't know. I don't speak English.”

“By all the saints, neither does he!” Lope calmed himself. “I can't escape him, I see. Bring him in. I'll deal with him as fast as I can.”

Walter Strawberry's solid bulk seemed to fill the little chamber to overflowing. “God give you good morrow, sir,” he rumbled.

“And to you as well, Constable,” de Vega answered. “What's toward? Be quick, if you can; I must away to the Theatre anon.”

“Ay, sir. Quick I am, and quick I'll be. And, being quick, I'll tell you somewhat or ever I die.”

Whenever Lope listened to Strawberry, he felt himself going round in dizzying circles. Keeping a tight grip on his patience, he nodded. “Say on.”

“Know you, sir, that Master Shakespeare hath ta'en to talking to buggers in the street?”

“Buggers?” De Vega scratched his head. “Surely you are mistook, Christopher Marlowe being dead.”

The constable looked as bewildered as Lope felt. “Marlowe? Who said aught of Marlowe? I speak of buggers with palms for alms outstretched, amongst the which is a little dancing crookbacked wight who bears a passing verisimilitude unto Master Robert Cecil.”

Cecil's was perhaps the only name that could have gained Lope's
complete and immediate attention. “Say you so?” he murmured, leaning towards Strawberry. “Say you so indeed? Be you certain of this?”

“I am.” Walter Strawberry nodded. “It hath been witnessed by witnesses thereto, and likewise by those who have seen the same. An it be not the same Robert Cecil, he hath a twin unrecked, though himself but the wreck of a man.”

“Have you any other evidence past this which your witnesses, er, witnessed?” Lope asked. “Shakespeare denies all treasonous associations, and assuredly in the favor of Don Diego Flores de Valdés stands high. With reason, he having writ a splendid, yes, a most splendid, play on the life of his late Most Catholic Majesty, in which I shall have the honor of performing later this day. All this being so, you see, I am not fain to seize him without strongest proofs of's guilt.”

“What I have, sir, I have given you,” Constable Strawberry said. “ 'Tis my bounding duty, and I have bounded hither for to do it.”

“Damnation,” de Vega muttered. Strawberry had brought him just enough to alarm him, but not enough to let him act, especially not after Shakespeare had wriggled free of trouble after Christopher Marlowe's return to London. Lope stroked his little chin beard as he thought. Suddenly, he pointed at the constable. “Have you searched his lodging? If he have done treason, he will have done't with his pen. Why else engage a poet, a maker of plays, in the enterprise? Have you, then?”

“Not having a warrant?” Strawberry seemed genuinely shocked. “No, sir, I have not. That were beyond my bounds altogether, and beyond the bounds of any honest Englishman.”

“A plague take all bounds, you—you bounder!” Lope burst out. He stabbed a thumb at his own chest. “
I
am no Englishman, for which I thank God. If I desire to search, I may search. I may—and, by the Blessed Virgin, I shall.” Secure in the power the occupiers held, he had no doubt of that whatever.

Neither did Constable Strawberry. “You will do as you shall do. I have not the right nor the writ.” He turned to go. “Adieu; be vigitant, I beseech you.”

Vigitant or not, Lope hurried up to Shakespeare's lodging-house. The hour was still early enough to leave him content with the world and the way it shaped.
What do I do if I find proof here?
he asked himself. The answer seemed clear enough.
I play in
King Philip
, then arrange for Shakespeare's arrest
. He sighed. Arresting the poet after he'd written such a play seemed a pity, but what choice was there? None de Vega could see.

He hoped Shakespeare was already off to the Theatre. He would have a fight on his hands if he tried to search while the Englishman was still there. He touched the hilt of his sword. He didn't want a reputation for killing playwrights, but he would take that reputation if he had to.

When he got to the lodging-house, he found Cicely Sellis in the parlor saying farewell to an early client. The man showered her with blessings as he left. The cunning woman dropped de Vega a curtsy. “God give you good day, Master Lope,” she said. “Why are you come here at such an hour?”

“In search of treason against his Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain,” Lope said harshly. Mommet had sprawled by the hearth. At Lope's tone, the cat sprang to its feet, its fur on end, its tail puffed out like a bottle brush. He ignored it, asking, “Is Master Shakespeare here, or is he gone up to the Theatre?”

“Why, he is more than an hour gone,” Cicely Sellis answered. She cocked her head to one side and gave Lope a slow, half sad smile. Catalina Ibañez would have laid down her life to own a smile like that; it left the Spaniard weak in the knees. The cunning woman added, “And here I hoped thou wert come to see me.”

“Truly?” Lope said. Cicely Sellis didn't even nod. Just by standing there, she let him know it was and could be nothing but the truth. His pulse thudded. Whatever he did now, no one would take anything of Shakespeare's from this place while he did it. He had the time. He was sure he had the time. He made a low leg at her. “My lady, I stand ever at thy service.” And he
did
stand, too, or part of him did.

“Come, then,” she said, and went back into her room, Mommet trotting at her heels. Lope followed, eager as a green boy his first time. He closed and barred the door behind him.

As at his last visit, fat candles lit the closed room almost as bright as day. Mommet curled up in a corner, yawned once, and went to sleep. Cicely Sellis sat down on the bed. When Lope would have joined her there, she smiled again and, saying, “Anon, anon,” waved him once more to the stool in front of it.