Ruled Britannia (51 page)

“Never did I that, nor she neither,” Kemp said. But he seemed less afraid than Shakespeare would have been, having insulted a man who'd proved himself sword in hand. “Put up,” he told de Vega. “Know you not, an you blood your blade in a fool, 'twill surely rust?”

The absurdity of that stopped the Spaniard where nothing else might have. “But what then becomes of the fool?” he asked.

Kemp let out a horrible scream, clutched his belly, and thrashed and writhed on the stage in well-feigned agony. As abruptly as he'd begun, he left off. “Thus, belike,” he answered, getting to his feet once more.

Lope laughed and shook his head. “Truly God must love fools,” he said. “How may I do less?”

“How should you find it hard, where most men find it easy?” Kemp returned. “But then, did you not find it hard—”

“Enough!” Shakespeare and Burbage spoke the same word at the same time. Kemp flew to disaster like a moth to flame.

After that afternoon's performance, Shakespeare left the Theatre as soon as he scrubbed off his makeup. Usually, he would have stayed in the tiring room to share gossip and gibes, or else repair to a tavern to hash over the play with players and friends. Not today, not least because Lope de Vega came back there. Sometimes, keeping company with the Spanish officer was too much for him to bear.

But leaving brought him scant relief. As he hurried out of the Theatre, Constable Walter Strawberry marched in, a grim expression on his face. Shakespeare wondered if Strawberry were after him for more questions, but the constable, after giving him a somber nod, kept on going. So did Shakespeare, in the other direction.

He hadn't got far when a medium-sized, homely man of about his own age sidled up alongside him and said, “A good day to you, Master Shakespeare.” His voice suggested he knew all manner of interesting things, some of them perhaps even licit.

“Master Skeres.” Shakespeare hoped he sounded less dismayed than
he felt. “And to you a good day as well, sir. I've not had the pleasure of your company for some little while.”
Nor wanted it, neither
, he thought. “What would you?”

“I'd tell you somewhat I'd liefer not have to speak, but e'en so somewhat you should know,” Nick Skeres answered.

When he didn't go on, Shakespeare asked, “And that is?”

“Lord Burghley's on his deathbed,” Skeres said bluntly. “He'll not rise from it again, save to go in's coffin.”

For Shakespeare, the news was like a blow in the belly. “God give him peace,” he said. “He and Philip die together, as he said they would when first we met.”

“Ay.” Skeres' chuckle showed uneven teeth. “His mind's still hale, and he jests of't yet.”

“What of . . . the enterprise?” Shakespeare would say no more than that, not in the open in Shoreditch High Street. Later, he remembered he should have spoken with Nicholas Skeres about raising the English mob against Spain's hated Irish soldiers. At the moment, with Skeres' news, the thought never entered his mind.

The other man replied without hesitation: “It goes forward as before, under Lord Burghley his son. And mark me, 'twill go as well under Robert Cecil as ever it could under his sire. Crookback though he be, his wit and will run straight.”

“May you prove a true prophet.” But Shakespeare couldn't help worrying—worrying even more than he had before. Sir William Cecil had been a power in the land longer than he'd been alive. He'd been in eclipse since the coming of the Armada, yes, but Robert, his son, seemed always to have dwelt and dealt in the shadows. Could he come out into the light now, at greatest need?
He must essay it
, Shakespeare thought, and kicked at the dirt. The timing couldn't have been worse.

 

W
HEN
L
OPE DE
V
EGA
visited the Theatre with Lucy Watkins, he didn't take her back to the tiring room after the performance. Will Kemp or another would-be wit was too likely to ask him why he hadn't brought his Spanish lady instead. He didn't want Lucy finding out about Catalina Ibañez. Bad things happened when one of his ladies learned of another: so he'd painfully discovered.

But here, it seemed, he was bound to have trouble. He and Lucy had just left the Theatre on their way back into London when she said, “Is it true you killed a man?”

Unease prickled through de Vega. He tried his best to misunderstand her, saying, “My love, I am a soldier. This chances in the soldier's trade.”

She shook her head. “No. Of late. A Spanish gentleman, they say.”

“A nobleman, but by my troth no gentleman,” he said. Then he stopped and sighed. He'd told her what she needed to know, or most of it.

And she'd already heard, or heard of, the rest, too. “They say you fought him over a lady.”

As he'd called Don Alejandro de Recalde no gentleman, so he
wanted to call Catalina Ibañez no lady. But that wouldn't help. He sighed again. “Yes, that is so.”

Lucy nodded. “I was fain to hear it from your lips first. I owed you so much, before saying farewell.”

“Say no such thing!” Lope exclaimed. “I love thee!”

“And the other lady?”

“And her,” Lope agreed.

“You may not love more than one,” Lucy said sadly.

“Wherefore may I not?” he asked. “I have had this stricture laid against me ere now, but never have I grasped it.”

“That I credit. But if you love two”—she'd stopped using
thou
, a bad sign—“then two will love you, each to herself wanting all you have to give, as she hath given all she hath. Can you in equal measure return the love of two? Give me leave to doubt. Loving more than one, you love not wisely, but too well.”

“How can one love too well? A fond notion, a notion not possible.”

“Love two women at but a single time—say you love two women at but a single time—and you love too well,” Lucy insisted.

“Do but let me show thee thou art mistook, that—” Lope began.

“How? Wouldst thou put us twain, this Spanish hussy and me, in but a single bed?” Now Lucy used
thou
again, but in insult, not intimacy. “Whether she'd go or no, I would not, nor I will not. Where I shall go is far from thee, now and forever.” Her voice held tears. “So we loved, as love in twain had the essence but in one. We were two distincts, division none: number there in love was slain. So between us love did shine, that one lover saw her right flaming in her lover's sigh. Either was the other's mine. But for us, lovers, now sigh a prayer.” She walked away.

Love, to Lope, was like a child that longed for everything it could come by. Telling that to Lucy seemed unlikely to change her mind. “We that are true lovers run into strange capers,” he called after her. “Alas that love, gentle in his view, should be tyrannous and rough in proof.”

“In proof? Thou canst give no proof of love, not loving another besides myself.” Lucy kept walking. A few paces farther on, she stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it at Lope with unladylike dexterity. If he hadn't ducked, it would have hit him in the face. She bent down for another stone.

“Fie! Give over!” Lope exclaimed. “I'll trouble thee—you—no more.”

Lucy let the stone fall. “Would thou'dst never asked my name. Would thou'dst never spoke me fair. Would thou'dst never found thy
Spanish popsy fair, for thou canst not have her and me together. Mary, pity women!” She rounded a corner and was gone.

“Fret not, friend,” said an Englishman who'd listened with amusement to the quarrel. “Women are like fish: another'll come along soon enough, to nibble the end o' your pole.” He laughed.

So did Lope, when he got the joke a moment later. He didn't go after Lucy; that, plainly, was a lost cause. Instead, he trudged back towards Bishopsgate. He still had Catalina Ibañez's fiery affections, but he found he didn't want them right now. He wanted Lucy, whom he'd just lost. Had he lost Catalina and kept Lucy, he had no doubt he would have pined for the Spanish woman's caresses instead.
I know what I am, by God
, he thought.
What to do about it? That's a different question
.

The Irish soldiers at the gate recognized Lope for a Spaniard. They swept off their hats and bowed to him as he went by. He nodded in return. Once inside Bishopsgate, he slowed down and looked around. If he was lucky . . .

And he was. Cicely Sellis came out of a ribbonmaker's shop, a couple of yards of green ribbon wrapped around the left sleeve of the mannish doublet she wore, her cat following at her heel like a dog. Lope made a leg. “Mistress Sellis. So good to see you. Give you good day.”

She curtsied as if he were a duke, not a junior officer. “And good day to you, Master Lope. How wags your world?”

“I have known it better,” he replied.

“Why, surely those set over you have agreed you fought Don Alejandro only for to save your own life,” she said. “How could it be otherwise, with Mistress Ibañez telling a tale like unto yours?”

“The difficulty lies elsewhere,” de Vega said, before blinking and wondering how she knew of that. He started to ask, but found he lacked the nerve. He started to cross himself, but found he also lacked the nerve for that.
Bruja
, he thought, and shivered in the warm—for England, at any rate—July sun.

“Where?” Cicely Sellis asked. She didn't let him answer, but showed more of what might have been witchery by softly singing,

 

“On a day, alack the day!

Love, whose month is ever May,

Spied a blossom passing fair

Playing in the wanton air:

Through the velvet leaves the wind,

All unseen, can passage find;

That the lover, sick to death,

Wished himself the heaven's breath.

Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;

Air, would I might triumph so!

But alack! my hand is sworn

Ne'er to pluck from thee thy thorn;

Vow, alack! for youth unmeet,

Youth so apt to pick a sweet.

Do not call it sin in me,

That I am forsworn for thee;

Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear

Juno but an Ethiop were;

And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love.”

 

This time, Lope did cross himself, and violently. “How knew you of my affections?” he demanded, his voice harsh. “Tell it me this instant, else others holier than I shall ask it of you.”

Her cat bristled at him, but she remained smiling, unconcerned. “This needs not the cunning woman's arts, Master Lope. You came towards me all cast down. When late you fought Don Alejandro, you kept company with his mistress, but is it not so you had also another sweetheart? An I mistake me not, she hath given you her farewell.”

Bruja
, Lope thought again. But maybe not. What she said made good logical sense—as much as anything to do with women ever made good logical sense. Slowly, grudgingly, he said, “You are a cunning woman indeed.”

Cicely Sellis curtsied again. “For the which I thank you. And you have my sympathy—the which, like all such, is worth its weight in gold—for her who was too blind to see your true worth.”

He stared at her, open-mouthed. It wasn't for her looks, though she was fair enough, and would have been lovely at eighteen. But he had never known a woman who used words as a bravo used a rapier—and was as deadly with them as any bravo ever born. “Before God,” he breathed, hardly knowing he spoke aloud, “I must know thee better.”

“And will you turn your back on Mistress Ibañez, cleaving only to me?” she asked.

With any other woman, he would have babbled promises, knowing
they were lies. With Cicely Sellis, that seemed less than wise. What would she do if she caught him out? What could she do?
Do you really want to find out?
Lope asked himself, and knew he didn't. He sighed and shook his head. “Nay, I doubt I shall,” he answered. His smile was crooked. “I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is a young man, and no honester than I.”

The cunning woman smiled, too. “Every man hath his fault, and honesty is yours?” she suggested.

Yes, she had a dangerous tongue. And if it was dangerous in one sense, what might it do in another? Lope made himself stop his lewd imaginings while he tried to figure out how to reply to that. At last, he said, “Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”

“What? Me?” Now Cicely Sellis paused. After a moment, she wagged a finger at him. “Nay, you said that not. You are clever, sir—haply, too clever by half.”

“I could love thee. I would love thee,” de Vega said.

“But not me alone,” she said. It wasn't a question. She waited to see if Lope would deny it. When he didn't, she smiled once more and shook her head. “I'd not give all of my love for the part of another's—would not nor will not. Gladly would I be your friend, and as gladly be no more.”

“Shall I beg thee?” Lope made as if to go to one knee in the muddy street. Laughing, Cicely Sellis gestured that he should stay on his feet. “Shall I serenade thee?” He strummed an imaginary lute and began to sing in Spanish.

“Give over!” she said with another laugh. “Shall the tiger change his stripes? I think not. Were I myself a different jade, I'd say, come, woo me, woo me, for I am in a holiday humor, and like enough to consent. But, being all of mine own, I'll not be but part of someone else's liking.”

She sounded annoyingly like Lucy Watkins. “I am your friend, then,” Lope said, knowing he'd get no more this day. “Those you make friends, and give your heart to, keep their friendship under their own life's key.”

“Betimes,” the cunning woman said. “Betimes, but not so oft as we'd fain have't.” She offered up what at first sounded like a prayer:

 

“Grant I may never prove so fond,

To trust man on his oath or bond;

Or a keeper with my freedom,

Or my friends, if I should need 'em. Amen.”

 

“
Aii!
” he said, wincing. Few men saw the world so sardonically, and even fewer women.

“I must away.” Cicely Sellis scooped up her cat—Mommet, that was the beast's name—and set it on her shoulder, where it had perched when Lope first met her. As she started up Bishopsgate—towards the gate itself, the direction opposite to his—she added, “God give you good . . . friends.”

“And you, lady,” he called after her. “And you.” He wanted to turn around and follow her. Only the certainty that that, right now, would cost him even her tenuous friendship kept him walking on into London, his feet dragging reluctantly through the dirt at every step.

 

W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE WATCHED
from the side of the stage as Lieutenant de Vega, as Juan de Idiáquez, declaimed what amounted to his epitaph for Philip II:

 

“ ‘Fair Spain ne'er had a king until his time.

Virtue he had, deserving to command:

His brandish'd sword did blind men with his beams;

His arms spread wider than a dragon's wings;

His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,

More dazzled and drove back his enemies

Than mid-day sun bent against their faces.

What should I say? his deeds exceed all speech:

He ne'er lift up his hand but conquered.' ”