Ruled Britannia (43 page)

“You're a bloody kern today,” Kemp said.

“Nay.” Shakespeare shook his head. “I thirst for no blood, nor want none spilled—most especially not mine own.”

“Master Quinn
will
attend henceforth,” Burbage promised. “He stakes his life upon't.”

“The game hath higher stakes than that,” Shakespeare said, “for his I reckon worthless, but I crave mine own to keep.”

“And they style
me
fool and clown,” Will Kemp repeated. Shakespeare left—all but fled—the tiring room a moment later. He knew this plot was all too likely to miscarry, but wished Kemp hadn't reminded him of it quite like that.

 

“A
H, MY LOVE,
I must go,” Lope de Vega murmured regretfully.

Lucy Watkins clung to him. “Stay with me,” she said. “Stay with me forever. Till I met thee, I knew not what love was.”

“Thy lips are sweet,” he said, and kissed her. But then he got out of the narrow bed and began to dress. “Still, I must away. Duty calls.” Duty would consist of more rehearsals for
El mejor mozo de España
. Lope knew he would go back to his games with Catalina Ibañez. The more he saw of Don Alejandro de Recalde's mistress, the more games he wanted to play with her. That didn't mean he despised Lucy, but the thrill of the chase was gone.

Softly, Lucy began to weep. “Would thou gavest me all thy duty.”

“I may not. What I may give thee, I do.”
What I don't give to Catalina
, Lope thought. Lucy knew nothing of the other woman. Lope dabbed at
her face with the coverlet. “Here, dry thine eyes. We'll meet again, and soon. And when we do meet, let it be with gladness.”

“I always come to thee with gladness,” the Englishwoman said. “But when thou goest . . .” She shook her head and snuffled. At last, though, she too sat up and reached for the clothes she'd so carelessly let fall to the floor a little while earlier.

By then, Lope was pulling on his boots. He'd had plenty of practice dressing in a hurry. He didn't urge Lucy to move faster. Better—more discreet—if they weren't seen coming down the stairs together from the rooms above this alehouse. He kissed her again. “Think of me whilst we are parted, that the time until we meet again might seem the shorter.”

Even as he tasted her tears on his lips, she shook her head. “Always it is an age, an eternity. Never knew I time crawled so slow.”

He had no answer for that, or none that would make her happy. That being so, he slipped out of the cramped little room without another word. Before long, Lucy would come forth, too. What else could she do, after all? The stairs were uneven and rickety. He stepped carefully on them, and used care of a different sort going out through the throng of Englishmen drinking below. He walked very erect, hand on the hilt of his rapier, as if eager for one of them to challenge him. Because he looked so ready, none did.

Behind him, one of them asked, “What doth the don here?”

“What doth he? Why, his doxy,” a drawer answered, and masculine laughter rose from the crowd. De Vega ignored it. The server wasn't even wrong, or not very wrong, though Lucy Watkins was no whore. She'd fallen in love with Lope as he'd fallen in love with her. If she hadn't, he would have lost interest in her right away. Getting to a woman's secret place was easy. Getting to her heart was harder, and mattered more.

His own heart leaped when he began directing Catalina Ibañez, explaining to her just exactly how she as Isabella was falling in love with the soldier playing Ferdinand of Aragon.
And if you as yourself happen to fall in love with me as I think I'm falling in love with you . . .
Lope thought. He intended to give Catalina all the help he could along those lines.

No matter what he intended, though, he had to restrain himself for the time being. “Don Alejandro, darling!” Catalina Ibañez squealed when a handsome, tawny-bearded fellow strutted into the courtyard
where Lope was putting his mostly ragtag company through its paces. “You
did
come to see me rehearse!”

“I told you I would,” Don Alejandro de Recalde replied, bowing to her. “I keep my word.” He nodded to Lope. “You are the playwright,
señor
?”

“At your service, your Excellency,” Lope said, with a bow of his own.
At your mistress' service. Especially at your mistress' service
.

If the nobleman knew what was in de Vega's mind, he gave no sign of it. With another friendly nod, he said, “I've been listening to Catalina practicing her lines these past few days, and I have to tell you I'm impressed. I heard a good many dreary comedies in Madrid that couldn't come close to what you're doing here in this godforsaken wilderness.”

Slightly dazed, Lope murmured, “You're far too kind, your Excellency.” He scratched his head. He wasn't impervious to guilt. Here was this fellow praising his work, and he wanted to sleep with the man's mistress? He took another look at Catalina Ibañez, at her sparking eyes, the delicate arch of her nose, her red lips and white teeth, the sweetly curved figure her brocaded dress displayed.
Well, as a matter of fact, yes
, Lope thought.
The game is worth the candle
.

“Do I hear you write plays in English as well as Spanish?” Don Alejandro asked.

“No, sir, that is not so. I speak English, but I have never tried to write it,” de Vega answered. “I am working with
Señor
Shakespeare, though, on his play about his Most Catholic Majesty. The Englishman has even written a small part for me into his
King Philip
. That may be what you heard.”

“Yes, it could be,” de Recalde agreed, still friendly and polite. “Would you do me the honor of letting me see what you have here so far?”

Lope didn't really want to do that. The production was still ragged, and no one knew it better than he. But he saw no way to refuse a nobleman's request: however polite it sounded, it was really more a nobleman's order. He did feel he could warn de Recalde: “It won't be the show you'd see in a few more days.”

“Of course. Of course.” Don Alejandro waved aside the objection. “But I do want to see how my sweetheart's lines fit in with everybody else's.”

He gazed fondly at Catalina Ibañez. Lope would have sold his soul for the look she sent the nobleman in return. But then she turned one equally warm on him, as she said, “He's given me such lovely words to use.”

“He certainly has,” Don Alejandro agreed. Because of his wealth and good looks, was he too complacent to believe Catalina might be interested in a man who had little to offer but words? If he was that complacent, did he have reason to be so?

I hope not
, Lope thought. Aloud, he said, “Take your places, everyone! We're going to start from the beginning for his Excellency. . . .
¡Madre de Dios!
Somebody kick Diego and wake him up.”

Diego rose with a yelp. “What was that for?” he demanded indignantly. “I wasn't asleep. I was only resting my eyes.”

Arguing with him was more trouble than it was worth. De Vega didn't try. He just said, “No time for rest now, lazybones. We're going to take it from the top for Don Alejandro, so he can see what we've been up to.”

“Ah,
señor
, since when have you wanted anybody knowing what you're up to?” Diego murmured, his eyes sliding towards Catalina Ibañez. Lope coughed and spluttered. Diego might make a miserable excuse for a servant, but that didn't mean he didn't know the man he served so badly. Instead of looking at Catalina himself, Lope glanced toward Alejandro de Recalde. The nobleman, fortunately, hadn't paid any attention to Diego.

“Places! Places!” Lope shouted, submerging would-be lover so playwright and director could come forth. Being all those people at once, he sometimes felt very crowded inside. Were other people also so complex? When he thought of Diego, he had his doubts. When he thought of Christopher Marlowe . . .
I won't think of Marlowe
, he told himself.
He's gone, and I don't have to worry about seizing him any more. But oh, by God, how I'll miss his poetry
.

De Vega's own poetry poured forth from his amateur company. He screamed, cajoled, prompted, and kept looking at Don Alejandro. Catalina's keeper plainly enjoyed
El mejor mozo de España
. He laughed in all the right places, and clapped loud enough to seem a bigger audience than he was. He didn't applaud only his mistress, either, which proved him a gentleman.

When the play ended, Catalina Ibañez curtsied to him. Then, deliberately, as if she really were Queen Isabella, she curtsied to Lope, too. He bowed in return, also as if she were the Queen. Don Alejandro de Recalde laughed and cheered for them both. Catalina's eyes lit up. She smiled out at the nobleman—but somehow managed to include Lope in that smile, too.

She's trying to see how close to the wind she can sail
, he realized,
playing games with me right under Don Alejandro's nose. He'll kill her—and likely me, too—if he notices. But if he doesn't—oh, if he doesn't . . .

Lope slid closer to her. As softly as he could, he murmured, “When can I see you? Alone?”

Had she shown surprise then, surprise or offense, he would have been a dead man. But she, unlike most of her companions here, really was an actress; Lope had had that thought before. “Soon,” she whispered back. “Very soon.” Her expression never changed, not a bit.

She's going to betray Don Alejandro
, Lope thought.
How long before she betrays me, too?
His eyes traveled the length of her again. For the life of him—and he knew it might
be
for the life of him—he couldn't make himself worry about that.

 

T
HOMAS
V
INCENT HELD
sheets of paper under Shakespeare's nose. “ 'Steeth, Master Vincent, mind what you do,” Shakespeare said. “None should look on those who hath not strongest need.”

“Be you not amongst that number?” the prompter returned. “Methought you'd fain see our scribe his work.”

“I have seen his work,” Shakespeare said. “Had I not, I had given you the name of another.”

But he took a sheet from Vincent even so. Thomas Phelippes had had to work like a man possessed to copy out all the parts of
Boudicca
so quickly. However fast he'd written, though, his script hadn't suffered. It remained as clear as it had been when he'd demonstrated it in Shakespeare's ordinary.

“You could get no better,” Shakespeare said, and Thomas Vincent nodded. The poet gave back the part. “Now then—make this disappear. Place it not where any sneaking spy nor prowling Spaniard might come upon't.”

“I am not so fond as you hold me,” the prompter said. “None shall see it but he whose part it is—and him I shall not suffer to take it from the Theatre.”

“Marry, I hope you do not,” Shakespeare said. “Yet will even that suffice us? For know you, we may also be done to death by slanderous tongues.”

“I know't well, sir: too well, by Jesu,” Vincent replied. “Here I am come unto a fear of death, a terrible and unavoided danger.”

“Let only the fear thereof be unavoided, the thing itself passing over us like the Angel of Death o'er the children of Israel in Egypt. From this nettle, danger, may we pluck the flower, safety.”

Before Thomas Vincent could answer, one of the tireman's helpers who stood at the entrance to the Theatre began to whistle the tune to a particular bawdy song. The players on the stage, who'd begun learning their parts for
Boudicca
, switched on the instant to rehearsing the piece they would put on that afternoon. The prompter said, “Mark you, now—in sooth, they do vanish.” He vanished himself, disappearing into the tiring room.

Shakespeare wished he too could disappear. No such luck. Instead, he walked out to greet Lieutenant de Vega, of whose arrival that bawdy song had warned. “God give you good morrow,” he called, and made a leg at the Spaniard.

“And you, sir.” Lope swept off his hat and bowed in return. “You are well, I hope?”

“Passing well, I thank you.” Shakespeare didn't mind exchanging courtesies with de Vega. As long as they talked in commonplaces, peril seemed far away. It wasn't; he knew that full well. But it seemed so, and even the semblance of tranquility was precious.

“How fares
King Philip
?” Lope asked.

“Passing well,” Shakespeare repeated, adding, “or so I hope.” The commission he had from Don Diego Flores de Valdés was far safer than the one Lord Burghley had given him. Part of him hoped Lord Westmorland's Men would offer their auditors
King Philip
, not
Boudicca
. That would pluck safety from the nettle of danger. It would be a craven's safety, but safety nonetheless. Let
Boudicca
once see the light of day, and. . .

Let
Boudicca
once see the light of day, and God grant I get free of England, as Kit hath done
, Shakespeare thought. England had lain under the Spaniards' boots for almost ten years now.
Could
she rise up and cast them out? If she could, why hadn't she long since?