Ruled Britannia (16 page)

“My lord?” Shakespeare still felt at sea. “As I told you, I am a poet, a player, not a stonecutter.”

The Spanish grandee snorted. One unruly eyebrow rose for a moment. He forced it down, but still looked exasperated; plainly, Shakespeare struck him as something of a dullard. That suited Shakespeare well enough; he wished he struck Flores as a mumbling, drooling simpleton. The officer gathered himself. “May the memorial, the monument, you make prove immortal as cut stone. I would have from you,
señor
, a drama on the subject of his Most Catholic Majesty's magnificence, to be presented by your company of actors when word of the King's mortality comes to this northern land: a show of his greatness for to awe the English people, to make known to them they were conquered by the greatest and most Christian prince who ever drew breath, and to awe them thereby. Can you do this thing? I promise you, you shall be furnished with a great plenty
of histories and chronicles wherefrom to draw your scenes and characters. What say you?”

Do I laugh in his face, he'll hold me lunatic—and stray not far from truth. How can I do't?
Another thought immediately followed that one:
how can I say him nay?
Shakespeare did his best: “May't please your Excellency, I find myself much engaged in press of business, and—”

Don Diego Flores de Valdés waved that aside with a dry chuckle. “For his Most Catholic Majesty, himself the best, none save the best will serve. We bind not the mouths of the kine who tread the grain. Your fee is an hundred pound. I pay it now, and desire you to set to work at once, none of us knowing what God's plan for King Philip may be.” He took from a drawer a fat leather sack and tossed it to Shakespeare. Chuckling again, he added, “And what say you now of this
business
of yours?”

Dizzily, Shakespeare caught the sack. Gold clinked sweetly. Nothing else could be so heavy in so small a space, for Flores would scarcely try to trick him with lead.
An I live, I am rich. But how
can
I live, with Burghley and the Spaniard both desiring plays of me?
He had no answer to that. “I am your servant,” he murmured once more.

“
Sí, es verdad
.” Don Diego didn't bother translating that. He pointed to the door. “You may go. I look for the play in good time.”

Shakespeare rose. He left—almost staggered from—the commandant's chamber. The big Englishman with the deep voice waited outside to take charge of him. As they walked down the hall, Shakespeare saw Thomas Phelippes writing in a nearby room. Did Phelippes have anything to do with this? If so, did that make it better or worse? Again, Shakespeare had no answer.

 

“S
HAKESPEARE WILL WRITE
a play on the life of his most Catholic Majesty?” Lope de Vega dug a finger in his ear, as if to make sure he'd heard correctly. “Shakespeare?”

Captain Baltasar Guzmán nodded. “Yes, that is correct. You seem surprised, Senior Lieutenant.”

“No, your Excellency. I seem astonished. With the Archbishop of Canterbury and, it appears to me, everyone else in the world suspecting him of treason, why give him such a plum? He is, without a doubt, a fine writer—”

“And you are, without a doubt, naive.” Guzmán smiled. Lope made himself smile back, in lieu of picking up his stool and braining his arrogant little superior with it. That supercilious smile still on his face, Captain Guzmán continued, “If Shakespeare is well paid, he may be less inclined to treason. This has been known to happen before. If he writes a play praising King Philip, he may be too busy to get into mischief.” He ticked off points on his fingers as he made them.

“But what sort of play will he write?” Lope asked. “If he
is
a traitor—I don't believe it, mind you, but
if
he is—won't he slander the King instead of praising him?”

“Not with the Master of the Revels looking over his shoulder every moment,” Guzmán replied. “If the Master finds even a speck of slander in the play, it will not go on the stage—and
Señor
Shakespeare will answer a great many pointed questions from the English Inquisition, from Queen Isabella and King Albert's intelligencers, and from Don Diego Flores de Valdés. Shakespeare may be a poet, but I do not think him a fool. He will know this, and give us what we require.”

Lope didn't care for the way Captain Guzmán eyed him.
You are a poet, and I do think you a fool
, the nobleman might have said. But what he
had
said made more than a little sense. “It could be,” de Vega admitted reluctantly.

“Generous of you to agree. I am sure Don Diego will be relieved,” Guzmán said. Lope stiffened. He was more used to giving out sarcasm than to taking it. Guzmán pointed at him. “And one more thing will help keep us safe against any danger from
Señor
Shakespeare.”

“What's that, your Excellency?”

“You, Senior Lieutenant.”

“Your Excellency?”

“You,” Baltasar Guzmán repeated. “Shakespeare is writing about King Philip of Spain. You are a Spaniard. You are also mad for the English theatre. What could be more natural than that you tell the Englishman what he needs to know of his Most Catholic Majesty, and that you stay with his troupe to make sure all goes well? He will be grateful for it, don't you think?”

“What I think,” Lope said, “is that you may be committing a sin under the eyes of God by making me enjoy myself so much.”

Captain Guzmán laughed. “I will mention it to the priest the next time I confess. I think my penance will be light.”

“I hope you're right. . . . You
order
me to go to the Theatre, sir?” de Vega asked. His superior nodded. Lope wondered how much liberty he'd just received. “This will be the whole of my duty till the play goes before an audience?”

Guzmán nodded again. The pleasure that shot through Lope was so intense, he thought he would have to add it to
his
next confession. But then the nobleman said, “This is for the time being. It may change later. And if any emergency or uprising should occur—”

“God forbid it!”

“God forbid it, indeed. But if it should, you will help meet it as I think best.”

“Of course, your Excellency. This goes without saying. I am, first of all, a servant of his Most Catholic Majesty, as is every Spanish man in this dark, miserable land.”

“
Muy bien
. I did want to make sure we had everything clear.” Something flickered in Baltasar Guzmán's eyes. Amusement? Malice? Perhaps a bit of both: “And with you, Senior Lieutenant, I was not sure
anything
went without saying.
Buenos días
.”

“
Buenos días,
” Lope echoed. He rose, bowed himself almost double, and left the captain's chamber without showing he'd felt, or even noticed, the gibe. It was either that or draw his rapier and have at Guzmán. He didn't want to fight. For one thing, the man
was
his superior, and entitled to such jests. For another, although de Vega did not despise his own skill with a sword, Captain Guzmán was something of a prodigy with a blade in his hand. Set against the requirements of honor, that shouldn't have mattered. The world being as it was, it did.

When Lope got back to his own chamber, he found Diego snoring away. He'd expected nothing less. He didn't bother shaking his servant. He booted him instead, taking out some of the anger he couldn't spend on Captain Guzmán.

Shaking Diego was often a waste of time anyway. Kicking him worked better. “
¡Madre de Dios!
” he exclaimed, and sat bolt upright. He blinked at Lope, his eyes tracked with red veins.

“Get up, you dormouse, before I seethe you in honey,” de Vega snarled. “You can't sleep away the whole day.”

Diego groaned. “Not more playacting,” he said. In face, under Lope's merciless direction, he had performed well as Turín, the servant in
La dama boba
. And why not? He
was
a servant. All he had to do was play himself, remember his lines—and stay awake.

But Lope shook his head. “No, not more playacting for you.” Ignoring Diego's sigh of relief, de Vega went on, “But
I
may be doing more of it—and in English, no less.”

“Why has this got anything to do with me?” Diego asked around a yawn.

“I can read your mind, you rascal.” Lope glared at him. “You're thinking,
My master will be off acting. I can lie here and sleep till the day of Resurrection
. You had better think again, wretch, or you'll sleep the sleep of a dead man. I'm going to need you more than ever.”

“For what?”

“Perhaps for more acting,” Lope said, and his lackey groaned again.
He took no notice of that. “Perhaps to carry messages for me. And perhaps for who knows what? You are my servant, Diego. You can work for me and do as I say, or you can find out how you like things on the Scottish border.”

“
Madre de Dios
,” Diego said once more, sadly this time. “Being a servant is a hard life. Who would say otherwise? I have to obey another man's orders, my time is not my own—”

“Oh, what a pity,” de Vega broke in. “You cannot sleep every blessed hour of every blessed day. Every so often, you have to stand up and earn your bread instead of having it handed to you already dipped in olive oil.”

“And where have you seen olive oil in England,
señor
, save in what we bring here from Spain for ourselves?” Diego said. “The English, they hate it. If that doesn't prove they're savages, what does it prove?”

“It proves you're trying to change the subject,” Lope answered. “That won't work, though. That won't work, and you, by God,
will
.”

“Life is hard for a servant with a cruel master.” Diego sighed. “Life is hard for any servant, but especially for one so unlucky.”

“If I were a cruel master, you would already be up on the Scottish border, or sent to Ireland, or else tied to the whipping post on account of your laziness,” Lope said. “Maybe that would wake you up. Nothing else seems to.”

“I do what I have to do,
señor
,” Diego said with dignity.

“You do half of what you have to do, and none of what a good servant ought to do,” de Vega retorted. “Maybe you should fall in love. You'd stay awake for your lady, and you just might stay awake for me, too.”

“Fall in love with an Englishwoman? Not me,
señor
.” Diego shook his head so vigorously, his jowls wobbled back and forth. He didn't seem to have slept through any meals. With a sly smile, he added, “Look what Englishwomen have given
you
—nothing but trouble. And I don't need a woman to give me trouble, not when I've got a master.”

For a moment, Lope sympathized with his servant. His own superior, Captain Guzmán, had given him a good deal of trouble, too. But Guzmán had also just given him the freedom of the English theatre. That made up for all the trouble he'd ever had from the cocky little nobleman, and then some. And, no matter what fat, lumpish Diego said, women had their uses, too.

 

R
ICHARD
B
URBAGE STARED
at Shakespeare. “Tell it me again,” the big, burly player said. “The dons are fain to have you make a play on the life of Philip?”

“Even so,” Shakespeare said unhappily. The two stood alone on the outthrust stage of the Theatre. No apple-munching, beer-swilling, wench-pinching groundlings gaped at them from the open area around it; no richer folk peered from the galleries. It was still morning—rehearsal time. The afternoon's play would be
Prince of Denmark
. Burbage would play the Prince, Shakespeare his father's ghost. He'd just emerged through the trap door from the damp, chilly darkness under the stage. He'd written the lines they were practicing, but Burbage remembered them more readily than he did. On the stage, nothing fazed Burbage.

He threw back his head and laughed now, both hands on his comfortable belly. A couple of the tireman's assistants and an early-arriving vendor turned their heads his way, hoping they might share the jest. He waved to them, as if to say it was none of their affair. Had Shakespeare done that, they would have ignored him. Burbage they took seriously, and went back to whatever they'd been doing. Shakespeare sighed. Not by accident was Burbage a leading man.

Mirth still shining in his eyes, Burbage spoke for Shakespeare's ear alone: “Well, my duck, one thing it shows beyond doubt's shadow.”

“What's that?” the poet asked.

“They suspect not your other commission.”

“But how am I to do both?” Shakespeare demanded in an impassioned whisper. “Marry, how? 'Tis the most unkindest cut of all, Dick. Two plays at once? That will drive me mad, and madder till I see which be fated to journey from pen and paper to—this.” His wave encompassed the painted glory of the Theatre.

“A pretty gesture,” Burbage remarked. “Do you use it when appearing, thus.” He crouched as if coming up through the trap door, then stood with a broader, more extravagant version of Shakespeare's wave. “ 'Twill help to draw the auditory into the business of the play.”

“I'll do't,” Shakespeare said, but he refused to let the other man distract him. “I've not yet sounded the whole of the company on the other. After this, how can I? They'll take me for the Spaniards' dog, and think I purpose luring 'em to treason.”

“Another, haply, but not you, Will.” Burbage set a hand on his shoulder. “You're an honest man, none honester, which everybody knows.”

“And for which I do thank you.” Shakespeare's laugh rang wild
enough to make curious eyes swing his way again. He wished he'd been able to hold it in, but felt as if he would burst if he tried. “But honest! Were I honest to all here embroiled, I'd die the death i'the next instant.”

“By no means.” Burbage shook his head and looked somber. “In sooth, you'd die the death, but as slow as those who had you could in their ingeniousness make it.”

“The devil damn thee black, thou moon-calf scroyle!” Shakespeare said, which only made Richard Burbage laugh. Still furious, Shakespeare went on, “Will Kemp'd use me so. From you, I hoped for better.”

“Write your play on Philip,” the actor told him. “Write it as well as ever you may, for who knows what God list? An we give't, we give't. An we put forth in its place some different spectacle—why, that too's God's will, and there's an end to it.”

He would play the one as gladly as the other, reckoning the company would profit from either
, Shakespeare realized. That made him no happier than he had been. If Burbage didn't care whether he strode the boards as Philip of Spain or in toga and crested helm as Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, did he truly care who ruled England? Did he truly care about anything but his own role and how the playgoers would see him? That was a question with any actor: with one who enjoyed—no, reveled in—such general acclaim as Richard Burbage, a question all the more pointed.