Ruled Britannia (74 page)

“What?” Queen Elizabeth's eyebrows came down and together in a fierce frown. He'd startled her, and angered her, too. “This play you writ for the dons, for the invaders and despoilers and occupiers”—she plainly used the word in its half-obscene sense—“of our beloved homeland, praying—I do hope—it would ne'er be given, you'd now see performed? How have you the effrontery to presume this of me?”

Licking his lips, Shakespeare answered, “I ask it for but one reason: that in
King Philip
lieth some of my best work, the which I'd not have go for naught.”

Would she understand? All he had to make his mark on the world
were the words he set on paper. He marshaled no armies, no fleets. He issued no decrees. He didn't so much as make gloves, as his father had. Without words, he was nothing, not even wind and air.

Instead of answering directly, Elizabeth turned to Sir Robert. “You have read the play whereof he speaketh?”

Cecil nodded. “I have, your Majesty. Sir Thomas Phelippes, whilst in the employ of Don Diego, made shift to acquaint my father and me therewith.”

“And what think you on it?” the Queen inquired.

“Your Majesty, my opinion marches with Sir William's: though Philip be dead, this play deserves to live. It is most artificial, and full of clever conceits.”

The Queen's eyes narrowed in thought. “Philip did spare me where he might have slain,” she said musingly, at least half to herself, “e'en if, as may well be, he reckoned the same no great mercy, I being mured up behind Tower walls. And I pledged my faith to you, Sir William, you should have that which your heart desireth, wherefore let it be as you say, and let
King Philip
be acted without my hindrance—indeed, with my good countenance. 'Tis noble to salute the foe, the same pricking against my honor not but conducing thereto.”

“Again, your Majesty, many thanks,” Shakespeare said. “By your gracious leave here, you show the world your nobleness of mind.”

Judging from her self-satisfied smile, that touched Elizabeth's vanity. “Be there aught else you would have of me?” she asked him.

He nodded. “One thing more, an it please you, also touching somewhat upon
King Philip
.”

“Go on,” she said.

“A Spanish officer, a Lieutenant de Vega, was to play Juan de Idiáquez, the King's secretary. He being now a captive, I'd beg of you his freedom and return to his own land.”

“De Vega . . . Methinks I have heard this name aforetimes.” Elizabeth frowned, as if trying to remember where. A tiny shrug suggested she couldn't. “Why seek you this? Is he your particular friend?”

“My particular friend? Nay, I'd say not so, though we liked each the other as well as we might, each being loyal to his own country. But he is a poet and a maker of plays in the Spanish tongue. If poets come not to other poets' aid, who shall? No one, not in all the world.”

“De Vega . . .
Lope
de Vega.” Queen Elizabeth's gaze sharpened. “I have heard the name indeed: a maker of comedies, not so? The guards
at the Tower did with much approbation speak of some play of his offered before the usurpers this summer gone by. Following Italian, I could betimes make out their Spanish.”

“Your Majesty, I have found the same,” Shakespeare said.

“You are certain he is captive and not slain?”

“I am, having ta'en him myself,” Shakespeare said.

“Very well: let him go back to Spain and make comedies for the dons, provided he first take oath never again to bear arms against England. Absent that oath, captive he shall remain.” Elizabeth turned to Robert Cecil. “See you to it, Sir Robert.”

“Assuredly, your Majesty,” Cecil said. “This de Vega is known to me: not the worst of men.” Coming from him, that sounded like high praise. “A kind thought, Sir William, to set him at liberty.”

“I thank your honor,” Shakespeare said. “It were remiss of me also to say no word for Mistress Sellis, a widow dwelling at my lodging-house. Her quick wit”—
amongst other things
, the poet thought—“balked Lieutenant de Vega of learning we purposed presenting
Boudicca
in place of
King Philip
, and haply of thwarting us in the said enterprise.”

“Let her be rewarded therefor,” Elizabeth said. She asked Sir Robert Cecil, “Think you ten pound sufficeth?”

“Peradventure twenty were better,” he said.

Elizabeth haggled like a housewife buying apples in springtime. “Fifteen,” she declared. “Fifteen, and not a farthing more.”

Sir Robert sighed. “Fifteen, then. Just as you say, your Majesty, so shall it be.”

“Ay, that well befits a Queen.” Elizabeth's face and voice hardened. “As who should know more clearly than I, having thrown away—upon my troth, cruelly thrown away!—in harshest confinement ten years of this life I shall have back never again, wherein not in the least respected was one single word from my lips.” For a moment, she seemed to imagine herself still in the Tower of London, to have forgotten Robert Cecil and Shakespeare and her guardsmen and the very throne on which she sat. Then she gathered herself. “Be there aught else required for your contentment, Sir William?”

“Your Majesty, an I may not live content by light of your kind favor, I make me but a poor figment of a man,” Shakespeare replied.

“A courtesy worthy of a courtier,” the Queen said, which might have been praise or might have been something else altogether. “Very well, then. You may go.”

“God bless your Majesty.” Shakespeare bowed one last time.

“He doth bless me indeed,” Elizabeth said. “For long and long I wondered, but . . . ay, He blesseth me greatly.” Shakespeare turned away so he wouldn't see tears in his sovereign's eyes.

 

R
AIN PATTERED DOWN
on Lope de Vega. It hadn't snowed yet, for which he thanked God. Next to him, another Spanish soldier coughed and coughed and coughed.
Consumption
, Lope thought gloomily. He was just glad the black plague hadn't broken out among his miserable countrymen. No snow. No plague. Such were the things for which he had to be grateful these days.

And his headaches came less often. He supposed he should have been grateful for that, too, but he would have been more grateful to have no headaches at all. On the other hand, if he hadn't been thwacked senseless and left for dead, he probably would have died in the savage fighting that had claimed so many Spaniards. He—cautiously—shook his head.
Damned if I'll be grateful for almost having my head smashed like a melon dropped on the cobbles
.

An Englishman—an officer, by his basket-hilted rapier and plumed hat—strutted into the bear-baiting arena. Lope paid him no special attention. Plenty of Englishmen and -women still came to the arena to look over the Spanish prisoners as if they were the animals that had formerly dwelt here. Lope had seen Catalina Ibañez on her Englishman's arm only that once. One more small, very small, thing for which to be grateful.

Then the officer took out a scrap of paper and peered down at it, shielding it from the rain with his left hand. “Lope de Vega!” he bawled. “Where's Lieutenant Lope de Vega? Lope de Vega, stand forth!”

“I am here.” De Vega got to his feet. “What would you, sir?”

“Come you with me, and straightaway,” the Englishman replied.

“God's good fortune go with you,
señor
,” the consumptive soldier said.

“
Gracias
,” Lope said, and then, louder and in English, “I obey.”

The officer led him out of the arena. Only a few feet from where Lope's two mistresses had discovered each other, the fellow said, “You are to be enlarged, Lieutenant, so that you give your holy oath nevermore to bear arms against England and presently to quit her soil. Be it your will to accept the said terms and swear your oath?”

“Before God, sir, you mean this? You seek not to make me your jest?” Lope asked, hardly daring to believe his ears.

“Before God, Lieutenant, no such wicked thing do I,” the English officer replied. “The order for your freedom—provided you swear the oath—comes from Sir Robert Cecil, by direction of her Majesty, the Queen. I ask again: will you swear it?”

“Right gladly will I,” de Vega said. “By God and the Virgin and all the saints, I vow that, if it be your pleasure to set me at liberty, I shall never again take up arms against this kingdom, and shall remove from it fast as ever I may. Doth it like you well enough, sir, or would you fain have me swear somewhat more?”

“ 'Twas a round Romish oath, but I looked for none other from a Spaniard,” the officer said. “I am satisfied indeed, Lieutenant, and declare you free. God go with you.”

Lope bowed. “And with you, for your generous chivalry.” He hesitated, then let out an embarrassed chuckle. “I pray your pardon for a grateful man's foolish question, but how am I to get me hence without a ha'penny to my name?—for my purse was slit or ever I was ta'en.”

“Did you ask me this, I was told to give you these: two good gold angels, a pound in all.” After returning the bow, the Englishman set the coins in Lope's hand. “Sir William saith, Godspeed and and safe journey homeward.”

“Sir William?” Lope scratched his head. “I know none of that name and title but Lord Burghley, may he rest in peace.” He made the sign of the cross.

The English officer started to do the same, then abruptly caught himself and scowled.
He forgot he is a Catholic no more
, de Vega thought with amusement he dared not show. The Englishman said, “Whether you ken him or no, Lieutenant, he doth know you. Which beareth the greater weight?”

“Oh, that he know me, assuredly. And I do thank you for conveying to me his kind gift.”
For not stealing it
, he meant. The English officer had to think someone would check on him.

“You are welcome.” The officer pointed north, towards the wharves of Southwark and, across the Thames, London. “There, belike, you'll find a ship to hie you to France or the Netherlands.”

A man strode towards the bear-baiting arena: a tall fellow about Lope's own age, with neat chin whiskers and a high forehead made higher by a receding hairline. “There, belike, I'll find a friend.” De Vega
waved and raised his voice to call, “Will! Thought you to find me within? You're come too late, for they've set me free.”

“God give you good day, Master Lope,” Shakespeare answered. “And if you be new-enlarged, He hath given you a good day indeed. Will you dine with me?”

“I would, but I may not, for I am sworn to quit England instanter.”

“Who'd grudge your going with a full belly?” Shakespeare said. “To an ordinary first; and thence, the docks.”

Lope let himself be persuaded. After the prisoner's rations he'd endured, he couldn't resist the chance for a hearty meal. Half a roast capon, washed down with Rhenish wine, made a new man of him, though Shakespeare had to lend him a knife with which to eat. He stabbed the fowl's gizzard and popped it into his mouth. When he'd swallowed the chewy morsel, he said, “You do me a great kindness: the more so as I would have slain you when last we met.”

“That was in another country,” Shakespeare said—not quite literally true, as Isabella and Albert had fled the night before, but close enough. The English poet added, “And besides, the witch lives yet.”

“A great sorrowful pity she doth live,” Lope said.

“None take it amiss you served Spain as best you might,” Shakespeare said. “Mistress Sellis did likewise for England.”

“
Puta,
” Lope muttered, but let it go.

“At Broken Wharf in London lieth the
Oom Karl
,” Shakespeare remarked. “She takes on board woolen goods, bound for Ostend and sundry other Flanders ports. Might she serve your need?”

“Peradventure she might.” De Vega sighed. “A swag-bellied Hollander ship, by her name, with a swag-bellied Hollander captain at the con. I'd liefer not put my faith in such, but”—another sigh—“betimes we do as needs must, not as likes us.”

“There you speak sooth, as I well know,” Shakespeare said.

“Ah?” Lope said. “Sits the wind so? Which reckon you the play under compulsion, that which holp to free your heretic Queen, or that which would have praised a Catholic King?”

To his surprise, Shakespeare answered, “Both. Nor knew I which would play, nor which be reckoned treason, until the very day.”

“Truly?”

“Truly,” the English poet said, and Lope could not help believing him.

“That is a marvel, I'll not deny,” he said, and rose to his feet.
Shakespeare got up, too. “The
Oom Karl
, said you?” he asked. Shakespeare nodded. Lope had asked only for form's sake. He remembered the name of the ship. It might indeed serve him well. Ostend lay within the Spanish Netherlands. From there, he could easily find a ship bound for Spain and home.

Home! Even the word seemed strange. He'd spent almost a third of his life—and almost all his adult life—here in England. What would Madrid be like after ten years, under a new King? Would anyone there remember him? Would that printer Captain Guzmán knew have put his plays before the world? That might help ease his way back into the Spanish community of actors and poets. He dared hope.