Ruled Britannia (66 page)

Till then, Lope had been too busy to be frightened for anyone but himself. He called quick curses down on Guzmán's head. If the captain hadn't taken them to the Tower the most obvious way . . .
It might not have mattered at all
, de Vega thought. He couldn't change routes now.
He couldn't split his force, either, not when it was beset from all sides. He saw only one thing he
could
do.

“Forward!” he said. “We have to go forward. Tell off a rear guard to hold back the Englishmen behind us. Come what may, we
must
reach the Tower.” Captain Guzmán had been right about that.

Forward they went, half a bloody step at a time. Every soldier they lost was gone for good. Fresh Englishmen kept flooding into the fight.

Even through the din of his own battle, Lope heard a great racket of gunfire from ahead, from the direction of the Tower of London. He didn't know what it meant, not for certain, but he did know he misliked it mightily. Then an Englishman he never saw clouted him in the side of the head with a polearm—this one, unlike the fellow de Vega had killed, found room to swing his weapon even in the crowd. The world flared red, then black. Lope's rapier flew from his hand. He swayed, shuddered . . . fell.

 

R
AVENS
. T
HE GREAT
black birds had always roosted on, nested on, the Tower of London. Now, careless of the swarms of live Englishmen flooding into the Tower, the scavengers settled on the sprawled and twisted bodies on the battlements and in the courtyard. Most of the dead were Spaniards, but more than a few Englishmen lay among them. Every once in a while, the birds would flutter up again when someone pushed too close, but never for long. They hadn't enjoyed such a feast in years.

Shakespeare shivered to see the ravens. He'd been sure the carrion birds would peck out his eyes and tongue and other dainties after he was slain. And it might yet happen—he knew that, too. He had no idea how the uprising fared in the rest of London, in Westminster, elsewhere in England. Here by the Tower, though, all went well, so his fears receded for the moment.

“The Bell Tower!” people shouted. “She's in the Bell Tower!” They streamed towards it. No need to ask who
she
was. Hardly any need even to call out her name, not now. Were it not for her, this throng never would have come to the Tower.

Beside Shakespeare, a graybeard said, “She was in the Bell Tower aforetimes, too. Bloody Mary mewed her up there, forty years gone and more.”

Bloody Mary
. Amazement prickled through Shakespeare. Who, since
the Armada landed, had dared use that name for Elizabeth's half sister? No one the poet had heard, not in all these years. Truly a new wind was blowing.
May it rise to a gale, a mighty tempest
, he thought.

Soldiers in armor—dented, battered, blood-splashed armor—stood guard at the base of the Bell Tower. Their spears and swords and arquebuses—and their formidable presence—kept people from rushing up into the Tower to the rooms where Elizabeth had passed the last ten years. Ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, beards of light brown and yellow and fiery red proclaimed them Englishmen. Shakespeare wondered if any Spaniards were left alive here. He hoped not.

“Back! Keep back!” an officer yelled. Half the plume had been hacked off his high helm, but his voice and his swagger radiated authority. The crowd didn't actually move back—impossible, with more folk flooding into the courtyard every minute. But it did stop trying to push for ward. In those circumstances, that was miracle enough. A peephole in the door behind the officer opened. Someone spoke to him through it. He nodded. The peephole closed. The officer shouted again: “Hear ye! Hear ye me! Her Majesty'll bespeak you anon from yon window.” He pointed upwards. “But bide in patience, and all will be well.”

Her Majesty
. Again, Shakespeare felt the world turning, changing, around him. Since 1588, Philip II's daughter Isabella had been Queen of England. Maybe Isabella still thought she was. But this swarm of Englishmen thought otherwise.
God grant we be right
.

“Elizabeth!” Sir Robert Devereux's voice boomed out, even more full of command, more full of itself, than the officer's. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Come forth, Elizabeth!”

At once, the crowd took up the chant: “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Come forth, Elizabeth!” It echoed from the gray stone walls of the Tower. Shakespeare shouted with the rest. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Come forth, Elizabeth!” The rhythm thudded in him, as impossible to escape as his own heartbeat.

The shutters of that window swung open. The chanting stopped.

A sharp-faced, gray-haired woman in a simple wool shift looked out from the window at the suddenly silent throng below. Staring up at her, Shakespeare at first guessed her a serving woman who would in a moment escort Elizabeth forward. When he thought of the Queen of England, he thought of her as she'd been portrayed throughout her reign. To be Elizabeth, she should have worn a magnificent gown. She should have sparkled with jewels. Her face should have been white and smooth
despite her years, her hair a red that likewise defied time. A glittering coronet should have topped her head.

But then she said, “I am here. My own dear people of England, you are come at last, and I . . . am . . . still . . . here.” Implacable determination blazed from her every word, even though most of her teeth were black.

“God save the Queen!” Robert Devereux shouted, waving his rapier. Again, the crowd took up the cry.

Elizabeth raised her hand. Once more, silence fell. Into it, she said, “God
hath
preserved me unto this hour, for the which I shall give praise to Him all the remaining days of my life.” Her voice seemed to strengthen from phrase to phrase. Shakespeare wondered how much she'd used it these past ten years. With whom had she spoken? Who would have dared speak to her?

She went on, “And I assure you, I do not desire to live even one day more to distrust my faithful and living people. Let tyrants and foul usurpers fear. I have always so behaved myself, even in my long time of hardship and sorrow, that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects. Thus I stand before you at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of this glorious uprising to live or die amongst you all, never being made separate from you again. . . .”

Her voice caught. Tears stung Shakespeare's eyes. What
had
the imprisoned Queen gone through, here in the Tower, here in the hands of her enemies? “Elizabeth!” the crowd shouted, over and over again. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” Shakespeare joined it, yelling till his throat was raw.

Elizabeth raised her hand once more. “Now we are begun anew,” she said. “I shall gladly lay down, for my God and for my kingdom and for my people, my honor and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too. And I think foul scorn that Spain or any prince of Europe should have dared invade the borders of my realm, or that Isabella and Albert falsely style themselves sovereigns thereof. Rather than any more dishonor shall fall on me, I myself will take up arms—”

This time, the roar of the crowd stopped her: a savage wordless roaring bellow that said she could have led them barehanded against all the hosts of Spain, and they would have torn the dons to pieces for her.
Even Shakespeare, not the boldest of men, looked about for a Spaniard to assail, though he was not sorry to discover none.

“I am not so base minded that fear of any living creature or prince should make me afraid to do that were just,” Elizabeth said when she could make herself heard again. “I am not of so low a lineage, nor carry so vile a wit. You may assure yourselves that, for my part, I doubt no whit but that all this tyrannical, proud, and brainsick invasion and occupation of my beloved England will yet prove the beginning, though not the end, of the ruin of that kingdom which, most treacherously, even in the midst of treating peace, began this wrongful war. Spain hath procured my greatest glory that meant my sorest wrack, and hath so dimmed that light of its sunshine, that who hath a will to obtain shame, let them keep its forces company. And contrariwise, who seeketh vengeance for great wrongs done, and requital for the burthens borne in our long captivity, let them go forward now, with me, and God defend the right!”

She stepped away from the window. For a moment, Shakespeare thought she cared nothing for the plaudits of the crowd. As a man of the theatre, he knew what a mistake that was. But then the door behind the English soldiers at the base of the Bell Tower opened. There stood Elizabeth, still in that simple, colorless shift.

How they all roared, there in the dying day that suddenly seemed a sunrise! Sir Robert Devereux dashed forward, past the armored guardsmen, to stand beside the Queen. Bowing low, he murmured something to her, something lost in the din to Shakespeare. Whatever it was, Elizabeth nodded. And then the poet saw, then everyone saw, what it meant. Devereux stooped, lifted her as lightly as if she were a toddling babe, and set her on his bull-broad shoulders. Cheers and shouts redoubled. Shakespeare had not dreamt they could.

From that unsteady perch, Elizabeth once more raised a hand. Slowly, quiet gained on chaos. The Queen said, “My loving people, I might take heed how I commit myself to armed multitudes. I might, but I shall not. I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field as we overthrow and utterly cast down the vile usurpation which hath oppressed this my kingdom these ten years past. I know already for your forwardness you deserve rewards and crowns; and I do assure you, in the words of a prince, they shall be paid you.”

Another roar, this time coalescing into a fresh shout of, “Elizabeth!
Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” From Devereux's shoulders, she waved again. Little by little, a new cry replaced her name: “Death—Death—Death to the dons!” And the smile stretching itself across Elizabeth's face when she heard that would have chilled the blood of any Spaniard every born.

Shakespeare shouted with everybody else. As he shouted, rewards and crowns ran through his mind. He hadn't undertaken
Boudicca
in hope of reward. Looking back, he couldn't recall just why he
had
undertaken it, save from fear of being slain should he refuse. But he'd already been handsomely paid (and paid by the Spaniards, too, for the play that never was). If now Elizabeth herself should look on him with favor . . .

If now this uprising triumphed, which was as yet anything but assured. Sir Robert Devereux strode into the crowd, crying, “Forward now! Forward, for St. George and for good Queen Bess!”

People swarmed forward, not against the Spaniards but towards him and Elizabeth, to call out to her, to touch her, simply to see her at close quarters. Devereux pushed on, irresistible as if powered by a millrace, to take Elizabeth from the Tower where she'd languished so long and into her kingdom once more.

Someone bumped Shakespeare: Will Kemp. The clown made a leg—a cramped leg, in the crush—at him. “Give you good den, gallowsbait,” he said cheerfully.

“Go to!” Shakespeare said. “Meseems we are well begun here.”

“Well begun, ay. And belike, soon enough, we shall be well ended, too.” Kemp jerked his head to one side, made his eyes bulge, and stuck out his tongue as if newly hanged.

With a shudder, Shakespeare said, “If the wind of your wit sit in that quarter, why stand you here and not with the Spaniards?”

“Why?” Kemp kissed him on the cheek. “Think you you're the only mother's son born a fool in England?” He slipped away, wriggling through the crowd like an eel, making for the Queen. Shakespeare didn't follow. He simply stood where he was. Too much had happened too fast.

As things chanced, Elizabeth passed within a couple of feet of him. Their eyes met for a moment. She had no idea who he was, of course. How could she, when he'd come to London only months before she was locked away? But she nodded to him as if they'd been close for years. Anyone might have done the same. But only a few, only the greatest players, could do it and make the people at whom they nodded feel
they'd been close for years. Shakespeare was sadly aware he didn't quite have the gift. Richard Burbage did. So too, in his twisted way, did Will Kemp. And so did Elizabeth.

“Death to the dons!” Shakespeare shouted, and followed the little old woman who was his Queen out of the Tower, out into London.

 

W
HEN
L
OPE DE
V
EGA
first came to himself, he didn't think he was awake at all. He thought he had died, and found himself in some stygian pit of hell. Slowly, so slowly, he realized he lived and breathed, but he feared he was blind. Then he saw that the blackness all around lay in front of his eyes, not behind them. Such blackness had a name. He groped for it and, groping, found it. Night. This was night.

He groaned and tried to sit up. That was a mistake. Motion fanned the throbbing agony in his head. His guts churned. He heaved up whatever his stomach held. Only little by little did he also notice sharper pain from his left arm, as from a cut. Had he been wounded there? He couldn't remember, not at first.

At first, he had trouble remembering his name, let alone anything else. He had no idea why he lay in the middle of some London street—yes, this was London; that much he knew—covered in blood and, now, puke. He had no idea who the corpses under him and around him and sprawling across his legs were, either. But that they were corpses he did not doubt; no living man's flesh could be so cold.

More cautiously this time, he tried again to sit. The pain forced
another moan from him, but he succeeded. Crossing himself, he wriggled away from the dead body on him. But he could not escape them all. They were too many, and he too weak to move far yet.

Why such slaughter? Who were these slain? The why he could not recall, not with bells of torment clanging in his head. The who? There not far away, face pale and still in the moonlight, lay the sergeant who'd told him Captain Guzmán was down. He remembered that. How Guzmán had come to fall, though, remained beyond him.

And not just Guzmán. “
Madre de Dios,
” Lope whispered softly, and crossed himself again. The corpses piled around him were all Spaniards, scores of Spaniards. He shuddered. His guts knotted anew, though now he had nothing left in him to give back.

Even as the spasm wracked him, what had to be cold truth slid into his clouded wits.
They threw me here because they thought I was dead, too
. At the moment, he rather wished he were. But then he saw a body with a slit throat gaping wide like a second mouth, and another, and another. They'd made sure of a lot of men. They hadn't bothered with him. He breathed. His heart beat—his temples thudded each time his heart beat. His eyes fell on another cut throat. No, he didn't—quite—feel like dying yet.

They? The English. It had to be the English. They'd risen. They must have risen. But why still eluded him. Everything had been peaceful, as far as he could remember. He should have played Juan de Idiáquez in
King Philip
at the Theatre. Had he? He didn't think so.

Nothing was peaceful now. Along with the death stench of so many men, he smelled more smoke than he should have even in smoky London. The night was alive, hideously alive, with shouts and screams from far and near. Somewhere a block or two away, a pistol banged. The report made Lope's head want to explode.

King Philip
 . . . The Theatre . . . Shakespeare . . . Cicely Sellis . . . De Vega stiffened. The chain of associations took his thoughts down a road closed till then. “That
puta
!” he gasped. “That
bruja
!” She'd bewitched him, seduced him, made him forget all about the Theatre, so that he went back towards the barracks instead, went back towards the barracks and. . . . He cursed. He'd lost it, whatever it was.

He tried to stand. He needed three separate efforts before he could. Even then, he swayed like a scrawny sapling in a storm. A chorus of drunken English voices floated through the air: “Death—Death—Death to the dons!” The Englishmen howled out laughter and obscenities, then
took it up afresh. “Death—Death—Death to the dons!” More gloating laughter.

Lope's legs almost went out from under him. He staggered over to a wall and leaned against it. He'd heard that chorus before. He'd been fighting his way towards the Tower of London. He remembered that, and barricades in the streets, and every damned Englishman in the world running toward him and his comrades with whatever weapon he chanced to have. And . . .

“And we must have lost,” Lope said. Explaining things to himself seemed to help. “By God and St. James, we must have lost.” They'd shouted
Santiago!
He remembered that, too. His throat was still raw with it. But God and St. James hadn't heeded them.

The Tower of London . . . Even with his wits scrambled, he knew who was kept there. He'd known that as long as he'd been in England. And, just in case he hadn't, those roaring, drunken Englishmen started a new chorus: “God bless good Queen Bess!”

Elizabeth free? If she was, she'd draw rebels as the North Pole drew a compass needle. England had never been much more than sullenly acquiescent to the Spanish occupation. Given time, it might have become quieter. But a rising now . . . A rising now could be very bad, and he knew it.

He laughed, a small, crackbrained laugh.
Crackbrained indeed
, he thought through his pulsing, pounding headache. This rising, plainly, was already about as bad as it could get.

Quiet footfalls—three or four Englishmen coming up the street. De Vega froze into immobility. The wall that half held him up was shadowed. They didn't see him. The thought of a live Spaniard never entered their minds, anyhow. They intended plundering the dead.

They shoved bodies this way and that. “We are come too late,” one of them said sorrowfully. “Too many others here before us: we have but their leavings.”

“You will steal, James, an egg out of a cloister,” another replied; by the way he said it, he meant it as praise. “Think you not you'll find somewhat worth the having?”

“Haply so,” James replied, “yet where's the ironmongery they had about 'em? Gone, lost as a town woman's maidenhead. We could have got good coin for casques and corselets and swords, but see you any of the like? I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter or an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle than those others to have spared the Spaniards' cutlery.”

Soldiers and scavengers robbed the fallen after battle. They had
since the beginning of time. Lope had done it himself here in England. But never had he heard it so calmly, so cold-bloodedly, hashed over.

“Here's a crucifix—might be gold,” another robber said. Moonlight flashed from a knifeblade as he cut it free.

The one called James remained gloomy, saying, “Mind me, Henry: 'twill prove but brass when your glaziers gaze on't come daylight. Were't gold, it had been gone long since.” But then he stooped and let out a soft grunt of pleasure. “Or peradventure I'm mistook, for here's a fine fat purse yet unslit, the which I cannot say of this wight's weasand.”

Off to the west, a sharp volley of arquebus fire was followed a moment later by another, and then by the deep boom of a cannon. “Shall we cast down the dons and cast 'em out, think you?” the man called Henry asked.

“What boots it?” someone else replied. “Or the dogs tear the bear or the bear rend the dogs, the rats in the wainscoting thrive.” They all laughed, and then, self-proclaimed rats, stole away.

Lope realized he had better leave, too. His comrades' bodies would draw more plunderers, and some might spy him. He could not have fought a mouse, let alone a rat. And he discovered he had nothing with which to fight. His rapier was gone. He hadn't even noticed till that moment. And, when his hand went to the sheath of his belt knife, sheath and knife had likewise vanished. Sure enough, plenty of robbers had already visited the Spaniards.

Where do I go?
he wondered.
What do I do?

More gunfire off to the west decided him. If there was still real fighting off in that direction, he would—he might—find his countrymen there. And if he found Englishmen before his countrymen, he would likely also find his death. He staggered up Thames Street, weaving from side to side like a sot. He made his way past two barricades, now mostly but not quite torn down, and past more bodies. He still remembered little of the fight, and nothing of the blow that had almost caved in his skull. He wondered if he ever would.

Little by little, his wits did seem to be coming back to life. Things like a raging thirst and the vile aftertaste of vomit in his mouth began to register, where before they'd been nothing but background to the thundering misery in his head. The river, he remembered, lay only a block away. He turned town an alley and made his way towards it at the best pace he could muster. He would have outsped any snail. A tortoise? Possibly not.

Across the Thames, a great fire—no, two—blazed in Southwark. The light hurt Lope's eyes, as it might have after too much wine. He looked down—looked down at himself for the first time since waking amongst the dead. His stomach lurched yet again. He was all over blood, from head to foot.

He needed several heartbeats to figure out it wasn't all his. It couldn't be. If it were, he'd have had none left inside him. How many others had bled on him while he lay senseless? Too many. Oh, far too many! He stumbled on towards the river. When at last he reached it, he sank to his knees, at least as much from weakness as from thirst, though he was very dry indeed. He cupped his hands and brought water to his mouth. It tasted of mud and—blood? He couldn't tell whether the blood was in the water or on his hands or on his face. He drank and drank, then splashed more water onto his cheeks and forehead. The cold hurt dreadfully for a moment, but then seemed to soothe.

He knew he should go looking for his countrymen again. He knew . . . but he was at the very end of his feeble strength. He lay by the Thames, panting like a dog, watching the fires on the far bank spread and spread.

“Death—Death—Death to the dons!” That hateful chant rose up once more, somewhere behind him. If the English found him here, they would give him the death he'd almost had before. He couldn't make himself care, or move.

Even in the midst of this madness, boats still made their way across the Thames, and up and down it. Shouts of, “Eastward ho!” and, “Westward ho!” and, “ 'Ware, you crusty botch of nature!” rang out, as they might have at any hour of any day or night.

A large boat, one with at least a dozen men at the oars, came out of the west, making for London Bridge. In the stern sat a man and a woman. He slumped to one side; she sat very straight and stiff. As the boat passed by Lope, the rowers all pulling flat out to speed it down the river, she said something in Spanish. De Vega couldn't make out her words, but the tongue was unmistakable. She sounded furious. The man answered in the same language, but with a guttural accent, more likely German than English. The boat slid down the Thames, under the bridge, and away to the east.

They're free. They've escaped
, Lope thought vaguely, though he had no idea who
they
were. He tried to get to his feet, tried and failed. Instead, he sank down into something perhaps a little closer to proper
sleep than to the oblivion from which he'd emerged a little while before. As London boiled around him, he curled up on his side and snored.

 

S
HAKESPEARE FELT DRUNK
, though he'd had no more than a couple of mugs of ale hastily snatched up and even more hastily poured down. He'd been up all through the wild night, up and running and shouting and now and then throwing stones at Spaniards. Now he stood in Westminster, watching the sun rise bloody through the thick clouds of smoke above London and Southwark.

Cries of, “Death to the dons!” and, “Elizabeth!” and, “Good Queen Bess!” rang in his ears. Here and there, Spaniards still fought. Off in the distance, a shout of, “
¡Santiago!
” was followed by a ragged volley of gunfire and several screams.

Richard Burbage clapped Shakespeare on the back. Soot stained the player's face; sweat runneled pale tracks through it.
Belike mine own seeming is the same
, Shakespeare thought. Burbage's eyes were red-tracked, but glowed like lanterns. “Beshrew him if we've not broke 'em, Will!” he said.

“You may have the right of't,” Shakespeare said in slow, weary wonder. “By God, you may.” He yawned. “But where be Isabella and Albert? We've none of us set eyes on 'em here.”