Ruled Britannia (61 page)

More than a bit sulkily, he perched there. “Thou'dst not tease, I trust?” he said. The intimate pronoun was sweet in his mouth.

“Marry, no,” she replied. “And yet never would a woman be ta'en for granted thus.”

De Vega was no green boy. Much experience told him she spoke the
truth. He dipped his head to her. “As thou'dst have it, so shall it be, though I needs must say in delay there lies no plenty.”

“Prithee, bear with me,” she said. “We that are lovers run into strange capers.”

Before he could answer, she reached up and drew something out from under her dress: that sparkling glass pendant he'd seen once before, dangling on the end of its long chain. She swung it back and forth, back and forth. Lope thought it might have been a nervous habit, for she hardly seemed to know she was doing it. The pendant caught the candlelight and drew his eye to it as it swung. He looked away now and again, but his gaze kept coming back.

“Nay, a woman mislikes ever being hurried, ever being rushed, ever being told to give, and give forthwith.” For all that her words might have shown annoyance, Cicely Sellis spoke in a soft, calm, smooth voice. “Is't not sweeter when freely offered, when tendered with full heart, with glad heart, with heart brimful of love, than when rudely seized ere the time be ripe, ere she be fully ready, ere she would do that which, in the fullness of time, she assuredly
will
do?”

“Assuredly,” Lope echoed, his voice abstracted. He'd only half noted her words. His eyes kept following that sparkling pendant, back and forth, back and forth. After a little while, he wasn't sure he could have taken them away from it. But he didn't want to, so what difference did that make?

The cunning woman talked on, as smoothly and quietly as before. De Vega could not have told what she said; he noted her voice mostly as soothing background to the endless motion of the pendant. Back and forth, back and forth . . . Watching it, he felt almost as if he were falling asleep.

Before too very long, she asked, “Dear Lope, hearest thou me?”

“Ay.” The sound of his own voice left him dully surprised; it might have come from far, far away.

“Hearken well, then, for I speak truth,” she said. He nodded; in that moment, he could not possibly have doubted it. Even as he nodded, his eyes swung back and forth, back and. . . . She went on, “Master Shakespeare hath done no treason. Hearest thou me?”

“I hear. Master Shakespeare hath done no treason.” When she said it, when he affirmed it, it might have been carved in stone inside his mind.

“He hath no papers treasonous here: hence, no need to search. Hearest thou me, dear Lope?”

“No papers treasonous. No need to search.” When she said it, when
he
said it, it was
so
. Holy Scripture could have been no truer for him.

“Nor hast thou need to seek him this day in the Theatre, for all will be well there,” the cunning woman murmured.

“Idiáquez . . .” Lope began. Idiáquez glimmered in the glitter of glass and was gone. “No need to seek. All will be well.”

“All will be well,” Cicely Sellis repeated. She led him through her catechism twice more. Then, as she stopped swinging the pendant and tucked it back into place, she said, “In token thou hast heard me well, when I bring my hands together thou'lt blow yon candle”—she pointed—“and then become again thine own accustomed self. Hearest thou me?”

“Ay, blow out that candle,” Lope said. Cicely Sellis clapped her hands. He blinked and laughed, feeling as refreshed as if he'd just got out of bed after a good night's sleep. Then, laughing still, he sprang off the stool and blew out one of the candles by the head of the bed.

“Why didst thou so?” she asked.

“Its light shone in mine eyes,” he answered. One quick step brought him to her. “And now, my sweet, my love, my life—” He took her in his arms.

She laughed, down deep in her throat. “Thine own accustomed self,” she said, and it seemed to Lope for a heartbeat that he'd heard those words before. But then his lips came down on hers, and hers rose up to his, and he cared not a fig for anything he might have heard.

 

“W
HERE'S DE
V
EGA
?” “Where's the poxy Spaniard?” “Where's the don?” Inside the Theatre, the questions tore at Shakespeare, again and again.

“I know not. Before God, I know not!” Trying to escape them, he fled from the stage back into the tiring room.

Richard Burbage pursued him, relentless as fate personified. “See you not, Will, we needs must
know
?” Burbage said. “Had he come hither, we'd have seized and bound him, knocked him over the head, and gone forward with good heart. But
where is he?
Will he burst in the instant we are begun, soldiers at his back, crying, ‘Hold! What foul treason is this?'
Will
he, Will?”

“I know not,” Shakespeare said again. Desperate for the escape he knew he could not have, he perched on a stool and hid his face in his hands. He pressed the fleshy bases of his thumbs against his closed eyes till swirling flashes and sparkles of color lit the blackness that he saw.

Better he should have covered his ears, for Burbage persisted: “Were we not wiser, were we not safer, to give
King Philip
and not . . . the other play?” Even now, he would not name it. “We still can, and right well you know it.”

“Dick, I know naught—naught, hear you?” Shakespeare wanted to scream it. Instead it came out as not much more than a whisper. “There is no wisdom in me, only a most plentiful lack of wit. And I say further, e'en with Lope seized and bound, I should not have gone forward with good heart, for sure safety lurks nowhere in this tangled coil.”

Burbage grunted as if taking a blow in the belly. Shakespeare wondered why. As far as he could tell, he'd spoken simple truth, the only truth he knew. Voice a pain-filled groan, the player asked, “What to do, then, Will? What are we to do?”

Reluctantly, Shakespeare lowered his hands and looked up at him. “An you must think on somewhat, think on this: when they hang you for a traitor, would you liefer hang as traitor to the King of Spain or 'gainst old England?”

“I'd liefer
not
hang,” Burbage said.

Shakespeare laughed bitterly. “Too late, for already your complexion is most perfect gallows—as is mine own.”

Burbage glared at him. “Damn you.”

“Ay.” Shakespeare nodded. “And so?”

“Come then, cullion.” Burbage reached out and, with frightening effortless strength, hauled him off the stool and to his feet. The player let him go then, but he followed Burbage back onto the stage. “Hear me, friends,” Burbage boomed, and his big voice filled the Theatre. From all over the building, heads turned his way. “Hear me,” he said again. “We give
Boudicca
—and God help us every one.”

He had better
, Shakespeare thought.

Will Kemp gave Burbage a mocking bow. “Thou speakest well, as always. And how the hangman and the worms do love thee.”

With a shrug, Burbage answered, “Be it so, then. Had I ordered
King Philip
shown this day, you might have said the same.”

“Would you not sooner hang for an Englishman?” Shakespeare added, his spirits beginning to revive now that the die was cast.

By way of reply, Kemp tugged at his codpiece. “ 'Tis better far to be well hung than well hanged.”

“Go to!” Shakespeare exclaimed as the company erupted in bawdy laughter. After that, the players went about their business with better hearts. Shakespeare had no doubt they still knew fear—he certainly did himself—but they seemed more able to put it aside. In a quiet moment, he made a leg at Will Kemp. The clown grabbed his crotch again.

Groundlings began strolling into the open space surrounding the
stage on three sides. Some of them waved to the players, others to friends they recognized or to vendors already selling sausages and wine and roasted chestnuts. Folk more richly dressed took their places on benches in the galleries. More vendors circulated there.

A gentleman in silk and velvet and lace, his snowy ruff enormous and elaborately pleated, passed through the growing crowd of groundlings to call to Richard Burbage: “How now? I'm told you sell no places at the side of the stage?”

Bowing, Burbage nodded. “I cry your pardon, sir, but you're told true. The spectacle we shall offer needs must be fully seen by all. Those places interfering with the view of the general, we dispense with 'em today. They shall again be sold come the morrow.”

The gentleman still looked unhappy, but Burbage's answer left him nothing upon which to seize. He turned and went back towards the galleries. Burbage and Shakespeare exchanged a look. The player's answer had been polite, plausible, and false. The real reason the company was selling no seats on the stage was to keep aristocrats of Spanish sentiment from drawing their swords and attacking the actors when
Boudicca
went on in place of
King Philip
—which the signboards outside the Theatre still announced.

Shakespeare spied plenty of aristocrats in the galleries. Some few he knew to be of Spanish sentiment. About others, who could say? But even those Englishmen who served the dons most heartily might do it for the sake of their own advantage rather than conviction. If they saw the wind blowing in a new direction, might they not shift with it?
They might
, the poet thought. That had a corollary he wished he could ignore: they might not, too.

Burbage waved the last few players out on stage strutting before the groundlings or chatting with them back into the tiring room. Shakespeare could smell the sharp stink of fright rising from many of them. No doubt it rose from him as well. Burbage said, “Be of good cheers, lads. Speak the speech, I pray you, as you have learnt it; let it come trippingly off the tongue. And as you play, bear one thought ever in your minds: if all go well this day, we are made men forevermore. Not one of us will lack for aught the rest of the days of his life.”

He wanted the company to see the wind blowing in a new direction, too. By the way the players nodded, they did. But then Will Kemp stirred. Shakespeare could guess what he was going to say—if all went not so well, the rest of the days of their lives would be few, and filled
with pain. Shakespeare caught the clown's eye and shook his head.
Not now
, he mouthed. Kemp laughed and stuck out his tongue, but he kept quiet.

Somewhere in the distance, hardly audible through the buzz of the crowd in the Theatre, a church bell chimed the hour: two o'clock. Richard Burbage pointed to Shakespeare. “Will, you'll give the prologue?”

No!
So much of Shakespeare wanted to scream it. But he couldn't, not now. He wondered what part of courage was no more than the urge not to look ridiculous in front of one's friends. No small part, if he was any judge. He licked dry lips and nodded. “I will.”

“Go, then, and God go with you,” Burbage said.

Something like quiet fell in the Theatre as Shakespeare slowly strode out towards the center of the stage. He had never felt so alone. He wished one of the trap doors through which ghosts appeared would open and swallow him up. But no. He was here. What could he do but go on?

He stood still for a moment, letting all eyes find him. Then, into that near-quiet, he said,

 

“His Most Catholic Majesty is dead;

Meet that we here gather to mark his end.

I come to praise Philip. His tomb's afar

But his strong hand lies on us even yet.

As I'm but a scribbler, this play's the thing

Wherewith to note the nature of the King.

Imagine this stage Britain, long ago;

Here comes Boudicca, to seek her vengeance

'Gainst the Romans, who harshly, cruelly whipp'd

The Queen of the Iceni and ravish'd

Both her young defenseless virgin daughters.

Beginning with this struggle, starting thence away

To what may be digested in a play.

Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are:

Now win or lose, 'tis but the chance of war.”

 

Shakespeare withdrew to mostly puzzled silence punctuated by spatters of applause—no, his prologue didn't match what the signboards outside promised. As he withdrew, he saw three or four men,
both from among the groundlings and in the galleries, rapidly starting thence away. No doubt they were off to Sir Edmund Tilney: of course the Master of the Revels had spies here to make sure the play presented matched the one advertised and approved.

But those spies wouldn't reach Sir Edmund, not this afternoon. Shakespeare devoutly hoped they wouldn't, anyhow. Jack Hungerford's helpers, the men who took the audience's money, and a double handful of ruffians hired for the day were charged with letting no one leave the Theatre till the play was done. By then, it would be too late.

For the dons
, Shakespeare wondered,
or for us?
Before he could fret any more, out went a wordlessly chanting Druid, the boy actors playing Boudicca and her daughters, and Richard Burbage, sword on his hip, as Caratach. For better or worse, it was begun; no stopping now, not till the end.

 

“Ye mighty gods of Britain, hear our prayers;

Hear us, you great revengers; and this day

Take pity from our swords, doubt from our valours,”

 

said Joe Boardman, who played Boudicca. He wasn't quite so good as Tom would have been, but he wasn't a Catholic, either. Excitement added life to his voice as he went on,

 

“Double the sad remembrance of our wrongs

In every breast; the vengeance due to Rome

Make infinite and endless! On our pikes

This day pale Terror sits, horrors and ruins

On our executions; claps of thunder

Hang upon our arm'd carts; and 'fore our troops

Despair and Death; Shame past these attend 'em!

Rise from the earth, ye relics of the dead,

Whose noble deeds our holy Druids sing;

Oh, rise, ye valiant bones! let not base earth

Oppress your honours, whilst the pride of Rome

Treads on your stock, and wipes out all your stories!”

 

With a great waving of arms, the hired man playing the Druid responded,

 

“Thou great Taranis, whom we sacred priests,

Armed with dreadful thunder, place on high

Above the rest of the immortal gods,

Send thy consuming fire and deadly bolts,

And shoot 'em home; stick in each Roman heart

A fear fit for confusion; blast their spirits,

Dwell in 'em to destruction; through their phalanx

Strike, as thou strik'st a tree; shake their bodies,

Make their strengths totter, and topless fortunes

Unroot, and reel to ruin!”

 

Epona, Boudicca's elder daughter, took up the cry of condemnation against the Roman occupiers:

 

“O, thou god

Thou fear'd god, if ever to thy justice

Insulting wrongs and ravishments of women

(Women sprung from thee), their shame, the sufferings

Of those that daily fill'd thy sacrifice

With virgin incense, have access, hear me!

Now snatch thy thunder up, 'gainst these Romans,

Despisers of thy power, of us defacers,

Revenge thyself; take to thy killing anger,

To make thy great work full, thy justice done,

An utter rooting from this blessed isle

Of what Rome is or has been!”

 

The first murmurs rose from the crowd as people began to realize what sort of praise for King Philip this was likely to be. Boudicca's younger daughter, Bonvica, continued in the same vein, saying,