Ruled Britannia (73 page)

“Good.” Shakespeare and Skeres spoke together. They might fall out on many things. Concerning Irishmen, they were of one mind.

Kate brought more sack several times. Shakespeare knew his head would pound come morning. Morning would be time enough to worry about it, though. Meanwhile . . . Meanwhile, Nick Skeres emptied his goblet one last time, got to his feet, and burst into song:

 

“The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,

The gunner and his mate

Loved Moll, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,

But none of us cared for Kate.

For she had a tongue with a tang,

Would cry to a sailor, go hang!

She loved not the savor of tar nor of pitch,

Yet a . . . poet might scratch her wherere she did itch,

Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!”

 

Several people in the ordinary laughed. A couple of men clapped their hands. Shakespeare spoke to Thomas Phelippes: “Get this swabber hence forthwith, ere he swab the floor.” He clenched his fists. He'd had enough wine to be ready to brawl if Phelippes said no.

But Phelippes answered, “And so I shall, Sir William.” He turned to Skeres. “Come along, good Sir Nicholas. You've taken on too much water; your wit sinks fast.”

“Water?” Skeres shook his head. “No, by God. 'Twas finest Sherris-sack.”

“All the worse—wine'll sink what floats on water.” Phelippes steered him towards the door. He nodded once more to Shakespeare. “Give you good night, Sir William.”

“And to you, Sir Thomas, so that you get him away,” Shakespeare said. Skeres started singing again. Phelippes pushed him out the door and into the street.

Kate came over to Shakespeare. “That Sir Nicholas is truly a knight?” she asked.

“Methinks he is a knight indeed,” Shakespeare answered. “I trust not his word alone, but Master Phelippes—Sir Thomas—I do credit. Whate'er Skeres might do, he'd not lie about such business.”

The serving woman shook her head in bemusement. “A strange new world, that hath such people in't.”

“Ay, belike.” But after that careless agreement passed Shakespeare's lips, he realized Kate's remark held more truth than he'd first seen. Newly free after ten years under Spanish dominion, England could hardly help being a strange place. Those who'd served the dons were paying for it; those who'd suffered under them were raised high. Few had dared trust very far under Isabella and Albert, and a good many might not dare trust very far under Elizabeth, either.

Kate's thoughts stayed on the personal. “He had no call to sing of me so,” she said, “nor of you, neither.”

“He's a cunning cove, Nick Skeres, but not so cunning as not to think himself more cunning than he is,” Shakespeare said.

He watched Kate work through that and smile when she got to the bottom of it. She went off to bring supper to a couple of men at another table. He waited patiently, sipping wine, till the last of the other customers went home. Then, Kate carrying a candle, they walked up the stairs to her room. As she began to undress by that dim, flickering light, she turned away from him, all at once shy. Her voice low and troubled, she said, “A player may love a serving woman, but shall a knight?”

In that cramped chamber, one step took him to her. He caught her in his arms. Under his hands, her flesh was soft and smooth and warm. He bent close to her ear to answer, “Assuredly he shall, an't please her that he do.”

She twisted around towards him. Her kiss was fierce. “What thinkest thou?” she said.

His mouth trailed down the side of her neck to her bared breasts. He lingered there some little while. She murmured and pressed him to her. “Ah, sweet, there's beggary in the love that can be reckoned,” he said. He couldn't have told which of them drew the other to her narrow bed.

Afterwards, though, she fought tears while he dressed. When he tried to soothe her, she shook her head. “Thou'rt grown a great man,” she said. “Wilt not find a grand lady to match thee?”

“Why, so have I done,” he replied, and kissed her once more.

“Go to!” She laughed, though the tears hadn't gone away. “Thou'rt the lyingest knave in Christendom, and I love thee for't.” She got out of bed to put on her own warm woolen nightgown. “Now begone, and may thou soon come hither again, sweet Sir William.”

“Alas that I go,” he said, and took the candle stub to light his way downstairs.

He was almost back to his lodging-house before pausing to wonder how his wife would greet the news of his knighthood. When he did, he wished he hadn't. Anne's first worry, without a doubt, would be over how much money it was worth. He shrugged. What with one thing and another, she wouldn't need to fret about that. He had plenty to send back to Stratford. She and his daughters would not want. Past that . . . Past that, Anne wouldn't care, and neither did he.

His head did ache when he got up in the morning. A mug of the Widow Kendall's good ale with his breakfast porridge helped ease the pounding. The reticent sun of late autumn was just rising when he started for the door. Sir William he might be, but he had a play to put on at the Theatre.

Or so he thought, till the door opened when he was still a couple of strides from it. A tough-looking fellow with a rapier on his belt came in. “Sir William Shakespeare,” he said. It wasn't a question.

Even so, Shakespeare wondered if he ought to admit who he was. After a couple of heartbeats' hesitation, he nodded, asking, “What would you?”

“You are ordered to come with me.”

“Ordered, say you? By whom? Whither?”

“By her Majesty, the Queen; to Westminster,” the man snapped. “Will you come, or do you presume to say her nay?”

“I come,” Shakespeare said meekly. The Theatre would have to do without him for the morning.

He got another surprise when he went outside: a horse waited there to take him to Westminster, yet another armed man holding its head. The beast looked enormous. Shakespeare mounted so awkwardly, the bravo who'd gone in to get him let out a scornful snort. He didn't care. He hadn't ridden a horse since hurrying back to Stratford to say farewell to his son Hamnet, and he couldn't remember his last time on horseback before that. He nodded to the tough-looking man. “Lay on, good sir, and I'll essay to follow.”

“Be it so, then,” the man said, doubt in his voice.

He urged his horse forward with reins, voice, and the pressure of his knees against its sides. Shakespeare did the same. His mount, a good-natured and well-trained mare, obeyed him with so little fuss that, by the time he'd gone a couple of blocks, he felt as much centaur as man. The man who'd held the poet's horse brought up the rear on his own beast.

“Way! Make way!” the bravo in the lead bawled whenever they had to slow for foot traffic or other riders or wagons and carts. “Make way for the Queen's business!” Sometimes the offenders would move aside, sometimes they wouldn't. When they didn't, Shakespeare's escort bawled other, more pungent, things.

Outside the entrance to St. Paul's, the head and quartered members of a corpse were mounted on spears. They were all splashed with tar to slow rot and help hold scavengers at bay. Despite that, Shakespeare recognized the lean, even ascetic, features of Robert Parsons before he saw the placards announcing the demise of the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.
SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS
! one of those placards declared.

Was't for this you so long ate the bitter bread of exile?
Shakespeare wondered.
Was't for this you at last came home?
Parsons might have answered ay; he had the strength and courage of his belief no less than his foes of theirs.
And much good he got from them
, Shakespeare thought. A rook, the bare base of its beak pale against black feathers, fluttered down and landed on top of the dead churchman's head. Tar or no tar, it pecked at Parsons' cheek.

More bodies and parts of bodies lined the road from London to Winchester. Rooks and carrion crows and jackdaws and sooty ravens fluttered up from them as riders went past, then returned to their interrupted feasting. Looking back over his shoulder at Shakespeare, his escort said, “May those birds wax as fat on the flesh of traitors as Frenchmen's geese crammed full with figs and nuts.”

Shakespeare managed a nod he feared feeble. He rejoiced that England was free. But revenge, no matter how sweet at first, grew harsh to him. He saw the need; he would have been blind not to see the need. But he could not rejoice in it. Others, many others, felt otherwise.

As Isabella and Albert had before her—and, indeed, as she often had before them—Elizabeth stayed at Whitehall. Servitors who'd likely bowed and scraped before Philip II's daughter and her husband shot Shakespeare scornful glances for his plain doublet and hose. But their manner changed remarkably when they found out who he was.

Elizabeth's throne was off-center on the dais. Till a few weeks before, two thrones had stood there. At the Queen's right hand, on a lower chair, sat Sir Robert Cecil. Since he was small and crookbacked, he had to tilt his chin up to speak to his sovereign.

Making his lowest leg to Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare murmured, “Your Majesty.”

“You may stand straight, Sir William. God give you good day.” As Elizabeth had been at the Theatre, she was armored against time with wig and paint and splendid gown. Only her bad teeth still shouted out how old she'd grown.

“I am your servant, your Majesty,” Shakespeare said. “But command me and, if it be in my poor power, it shall be yours. By my troth, I . . .”

The Queen's eyes remained sharp enough to pierce like swords. Under that stern gaze, his words stumbled to a stop. He hardly dared breathe. Then Elizabeth smiled, and it was as if spring routed winter. “I called you here not to serve me, but that I might reward you according to my promise when I made you knight,” she said. “That you shall not want, it pleaseth me that Sir Robert settle upon you the sum of . . .” She looked to Cecil.

“Three hundred fifty pound,” he said.

“Gra—Gramercy,” Shakespeare stammered, bowing deeply. Along with what he'd got from Sir Robert's father and from Don Diego for
Boudicca
and
King Philip
, he was suddenly a man of no small wealth. “I am ever in your debt.”

“Not so, but rather the reverse,” Elizabeth said. “How joyed I am that so good event hath followed so many troublesome endeavors, laborious cares, and heedful undertakings, you may guess, but I best can witness, and do protest that your success standeth equal to the most thereof. And so God ever bless you in all your actions. For myself, I can but acknowledge your diligence and dangerous adventure, and cherish and judge of you as your grateful sovereign. What you would have of me, ask, and I will spare no charge, but give with both hands. Honor here I love, for he who hateth honor hateth God above.”

Shakespeare gaped. Did that, could that, mean what it seemed to? He could name whatever he wanted in all the world, and the Queen would give it to him? Before he could begin to speak, Sir Robert Cecil did, his voice dry as usual: “Sir William, I say this only—seek no more gold of her Majesty, for she hath it not to give, England yet being all moils and disorders.”

“I understand.” Shakespeare hadn't intended to ask for more gold. That would have been like asking for a fourth wish from a fairy who had given three: a good way to lose all he might have gained. He paused to gather his thoughts, then spoke directly to Elizabeth: “Your Majesty, when a lad in Stratford I made a marriage I do repent me of. Romish doctrines being once more o'erthrown”—he saw in his mind's eye the rook landing on Robert Parsons' tarred head outside St. Paul's—“you may order it dissevered, an it please you.”

“Have you issue from the said union?” Elizabeth asked.

“Two living daughters, your Majesty, and a son now two years dead,” he answered.
Hamnet, poor Hamnet
. “I would settle on the girls' mother a hundred pound of your generous bounty, that they may know no want all the days of their lives.”

“A hundred fifty pound,” Elizabeth said sharply. Shakespeare blinked. He hadn't expected that kind of dicker. But he nodded. So did the Queen. She turned to Sir Robert. “Let it be made known to clerks and clerics that this is my will, to which they are to offer no impediment.”

“Just so, your Majesty,” Cecil said.

The Queen gave her attention back to Shakespeare. “Here, then, is one thing settled. Be there more?”

Three wishes
, he thought again, dizzily. “Your Majesty will know,” he said, “that whilst I wrote
Boudicca
I wrote also another play, this latter one entitled
King Philip
.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I do know it. Say on, Sir William. You pique my curiosity. What would you in aid of this
King Philip
?”

Shakespeare took a deep breath. “King Philip the man is dead, for which all England may thank a God kind and just. By your gracious leave, your Majesty, I'd fain have
King Philip
live upon the stage.”