Ruled Britannia (68 page)

“Gramercy,” Shakespeare said. Not far away was a lawn on whose yellowing grass several Englishmen already sprawled in slumber. Shakespeare and Burbage lay down among them. The poet twisted a couple of times. He reached up to brush away a blade of grass tickling his nose, then yawned once more and forgot the world.

 

L
OPE DE
V
EGA
stirred, muttered, and sat up. His head still ached abominably, but he was closer to having his wits about him. Glancing up at the sun, he blinked in surprise. It was close to noon. He'd slept—or lain senseless—the clock around. He shook his head, and managed to do it without hurting himself too much more. This felt restorative, not merely . . . blank, like his previous round of unconsciousness.

An old woman coming along the riverbank towards him let out a startled cackle. “I thought you dead till you stirred,” she said, her voice mushy and hard to understand because of missing front teeth.

“Not I,” Lope answered. “What news?” He was glad he spoke English. If she realized he was a Spaniard, she might try to make sure he was dead—and, in his present feeble state, she might manage it, too.

“Well, you'll know Elizabeth's enlarged?” she asked. De Vega nodded. The old woman hadn't sounded certain he would know even that. Looking down at his blood-drenched clothes, Lope supposed she'd had her reasons. Seeing him with some working wits, though, she went on, “And belike you'll also know Isabella and Albert are fled, one jump in front of the headsman.”

“No!” Lope said, but then, a moment later, softly, “Yes.” That boat on the Thames the night before, when he was washing his face . . .

“I'll miss the dons not, an they be truly routed,” the old Englishwoman said. “Vile, swaggering coxcombs, the lot of 'em.”

“Yes,” Lope said again, meaning anything but. The old woman nodded and went on her way. De Vega cocked his poor, battered head to one
side, listening. He heard very little: no gunfire, no shouts of,
Death to the dons!
That had to mean London lay in English hands.

What do I do now?
he wondered. He couldn't hire a wherry to take him out of the city, following Isabella and Albert's example. Maybe they'd fled to gather strength elsewhere and try to return. But maybe also—and more likely, he judged—they'd got away just ahead of a baying pack of Englishmen who would have killed them if they'd caught them. The old woman seemed likely to be right about that.

The first thing Lope did was drink again. He was thirsty as could be. He was hungry, too, but food would have to wait. He splashed more water on his head. The cold did a little, at least, to ease his pain.

Staying upright was easier than it had been during the night. Deciding where to go was harder, especially with his head still cloudy. He let his feet take him where they would.
They may be the smartest part of me now
, he thought.

They carried him in the direction of the barracks from which Spanish soldiers had dominated London for the past ten years. Before long, he stumbled past a pile of bodies like the one from which he'd emerged when he came back to his senses. He shuddered, crossed himself, and went on. No, his countrymen didn't dominate this city any more.

Just around the corner from that dreadful pile, he almost stumbled over the corpse of a gray-haired Englishman. The fellow had been knocked in the head. He hadn't bled much, and what blood had spilled ran away from his body instead of puddling under it. He wasn't far from Lope's size. A scavenger had already stolen his shoes and his belt pouch, but he still wore doublet and hose.

Lope stripped him—an awkward business, since he'd begun to stiffen—then got out of his own bloody clothes. The dead man's hose were a little too short, but the doublet fit well. Not only was the outfit far cleaner than what de Vega had worn, it also helped make him look more like an Englishman himself.

He wished he had a weapon of some sort, even if only an eating knife. Then he shrugged, which made his battered head hurt. There would be more bodies in the street, of that he was sure. Not all of them would have been thoroughly plundered, not yet.

He soon acquired a dagger a good deal more formidable than an eating knife. A few coins also jingled in his pouch—not so many as he'd had before he was robbed while lying senseless, but a few. The Englishman from whom he took them would never need to worry about money again.

Lope used a couple of pennies to buy a loaf and a cup of ale. The man who sold them to him gave him a hard look. “Your way of speaking's passing strange, friend,” he remarked.

Are you a Spaniard?
was what he meant. Lope answered, “It wonders me I can speak at all. Some caitiff rogue did rudely yerk me on the knob, wherefrom my wits yet wander.”

“Ah.” The tavernkeeper relaxed and nodded. “Ay, belike a filchman to the nab'll leave you crank for a spell. Well, give you good day, then.”

“E'en so.” De Vega drained the ale and walked on, tearing chunks from the loaf as he went. A club to the head could indeed make a man act like an epileptic for a while—as he knew only too well.

Half a block later, he turned up St. Swithin's Lane. As he walked past the London Stone and spied the Spanish barracks, hope suddenly soared in him: soldiers stood guard outside the entrance. But, when he drew nearer, that hope crashed to earth as quickly as it had taken flight. Those big, fair-haired, grinning troopers were Englishmen, not Spaniards. “God bless good Queen Bess!” a passerby called to one of them.

The man nodded. His grin got even wider. “Bless her indeed,” he said. “You'll have seen, good sir, we've made a proper start at clearing the rats from their nest here.”

With a wave and a grin of his own, the passerby kept on his way. He walked past Lope without recognizing him for what he was, as so many had already done. The English sentries likewise paid no attention to him. When he saw the corpses piled against the northern wall of the barracks, he discovered what the soldier had meant by
clearing the rats
. Most of the bodies there belonged to servants, for the Spanish soldiers who'd been in the barracks when the uprising broke out had gone off to try to hold the Tower of London—and, as Lope knew, had never got there. Their remains lay farther east.

But there was Pedro, the wounded soldier from the patrol Lope had led back here. And there lay Enrique, his clever head smashed in. He too had come back here at de Vega's orders. And . . . was that . . . ? Lope took a couple of steps towards the corpses to be sure. He had to fight his right hand down when it started to rise of its own accord—he couldn't cross himself here, not without giving himself away. But that
was
Diego, poor, fat, lazy Diego, who'd always been too indolent to threaten anyone or anything except his master's temper. The Englishmen hadn't cared. They'd murdered him along with the rest of his countrymen they'd caught.

“
Requiescat in pace
,” Lope murmured. Tears stung his eyes. How
anyone could have imagined sleepy Diego needed killing . . . Well, he would sleep forever now. “God have mercy on his soul.” That was a murmur, too, a murmur in English, for safety's sake.

“See you one there who galled you in especial?” an Englishman asked. Lope had to nod. Again, any other response would have betrayed him. Hating himself, he went on. Behind him, the Englishman let out a gloating laugh. He admired the corpses Lope mourned.

Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen?
Unbidden, the words from Shakespeare's
Prince of Denmark
rose in Lope's mind. He cursed under his breath. He'd been near here—oh, farther up St. Swithin's Lane, but only a stone's throw—when Enrique, smart as a whip Enrique now dead as Diego, made him realize Shakespeare was a traitor and Cicely Sellis. . . . When he thought of Cicely Sellis and what she'd done with him, to him, he wished the blow he'd taken had robbed him of even more of his memory. He recalled that all too well. Shame blazed in him, a self-devouring flame.

“But I can still have my vengeance,” he whispered. He'd been on his way for vengeance the day before, when London erupted around him. He might even have got it, had he not chosen to bring the chance-met patrol with him. Who would have tried to stop one lone man? No one, most likely. Who would try to stop one lone man today? No one, or so he hoped.

Up St. Swithin's Lane again, then. Right into Lombard Street, as he'd done before. Past the church of St. Mary Woolnoth. He hadn't been far past it when church bells rang two o' clock and hell broke loose. He wasn't far past it today when they rang the same hour.

Along the street towards him came a long column of dejected men, their hands in the air: captive Spanish soldiers and officers. Their eyes, dark and dismal in long, sad faces, flicked over Lope. He recognized some of them. Some of them, no doubt, recognized him. No one said a word or gave a sign. The laughing, mocking English guards hustling them along took no notice of him.

As the last prisoners in the column tramped past, de Vega turned to look back at them. What would happen to them? He hoped they would be ransomed or exchanged, not killed out of hand. The Spaniards hadn't murdered captives after their victories in 1588. Could he dare hope Elizabeth's ragtag followers would remember?

He wouldn't know, not for a while, maybe not ever. “Step lively, you rump-fed ronyons!” an Englishman called. Few of the captured men would have understood him, but gestures and the occasional buffet steered them down St. Swithin's Lane.

Lope's business lay in the other direction. His right hand fell to the hilt of the dagger he'd found. He was too battered to step lively, but nobody required it of him. At the best pace he could manage, he made his way east along Lombard Street, towards Bishopsgate, towards his revenge.

 

S
HAKESPEARE WOKE TO
someone shaking him. He yawned and looked around, trying to remember where he was and what he was doing here. Beside him, Richard Burbage was sitting up, also yawning and trying to knuckle sleep from his eyes. Thomas Phelippes spoke anxiously: “Your pardon, gentles, for it still lacks somewhat of two o' the clock, but I must away, and thought you better roused than left to sleep past the hour you set me.”

“You must away?” Shakespeare paused to yawn again. He wouldn't have minded sleeping longer, not at all. “Wherefore?”

Phelippes didn't answer. Nicholas Skeres, who stood next to him, did: “For that he is summoned presently to Robert Cecil's side.”

“Ah.” Shakespeare nodded. No, Phelippes couldn't very well refuse that summons to keep standing over a couple of players. “Would Master Cecil see me as well?”

Skeres shook his head. “In due course, belike, but not yet.”

That stung. Shakespeare had just reminded himself that he and Burbage didn't stand so high in the scheme of things. Having scornful Nick Skeres remind him of the same thing—having Robert Cecil remind him of the same thing through Skeres—made him wish this Westminster lawn would cover him up.

Phelippes said, “Mind you, Master Shakespeare, this signifies no want of respect for you, or for all you have wrought for England. But I stand—stood, I had better say—high in the Spaniards' councils; haply what I know o' their secrets will aid in our casting 'em forth.”

“You do soothe me, sir, and in most gracious wise,” Shakespeare said.

“Tom speaks sooth,” Skeres said. “My principal's men have been abroad seeking him since yesterday, but in the garboil we found him
not. He saith we (I myself, as't chanced) should not have found him, neither—should not have found him living, rather—were it not for you twain. In the kingdom's name, gramercy.” By his tone, by his manner, he had every right to speak for England. Shakespeare found that as absurd as anything that had happened these past two mad days.

From Phelippes' tone, he didn't. “Lead. Guide. I follow as best I may,” he told Skeres. “By your mustard doublet shall I know you—that I make out plain, spectacles or no.” The two of them hurried off together.

Burbage heaved himself to his feet. “I'm away, too, Will. I must learn if Winifred be hale and safe, and the children.” His face clouded at the last word. He and his wife had lost two sons in the past three years, and of their surviving son and daughter the girl was sickly.

“I'm with you as far as your house, an you'd have my company,” Shakespeare said. Burbage nodded and gave him a hand to help him up. Brushing dry grass from himself, the poet went on, “Then to my lodging, that the Widow Kendall may know I live yet, and shall pay her rent—and that I may sleep in mine own bed.”

“Onward, then,” Burbage said. As they started east from Westminster, the player shook his head and laughed ruefully. “I'd give much to know how this our uprising fares beyond London. Isabella and Albert be fled, ay—but whither? Will they return anon, an army at their backs? Or do they purpose taking ship for Holland or Spain, there to preserve themselves?”

“I know not. Would I did,” Shakespeare answered. “The inaudible and noiseless foot of time shall tell the tale.”