Ruled Britannia (9 page)

Cautiously, he put weight on the foot he'd hurt. It wasn't too bad; he didn't think he'd broken anything.

“I'd like to break their thick, stupid heads,” he muttered. He was an officer. They were only soldiers. He could order them to perform. But he couldn't order them to be good, not and make it stick. For one thing, they weren't very good to begin with. For another, they were only too likely to be bad out of spite. Had he been a common soldier ordered to do something he didn't really want to do, he would have tried his best to pour grit in the gears. Oh, he understood the impulse, all right.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers in delight. He hurried off to Captain Baltasar Guzmán's office. Guzmán was sanding something he'd just written to soak up the extra ink. “
Buenos días
, Lieutenant de Vega,” he said in some surprise. “I didn't expect to see you this morning; I
thought you'd be busy with your theatricals. Does this mean a brand new devotion to duty?”

“Your Excellency, I am always devoted to duty,” Lope said. It wasn't strictly true, but it sounded good. He added, “And the powers that be have been kind enough to encourage my plays. They say they keep the men happy by giving them a taste of what they might have at home.”

“Yes, so they say.” Captain Guzmán seemed unconvinced. But he went on, “Since they say so, I can hardly disagree. What do you require, then?”

“Your servant, Enrique,” Lope answered. Guzmán blinked. Lope explained how he'd just lost two actors, finishing, “God must have put the idea into my head, your Excellency. Enrique loves the theatre; he's bright; he would perform well—and, since he's a servant and not a soldier, he wouldn't get huffy, the way Pablo and Francisco did. If you can spare him long enough to let him learn Liseo's part, I'm sure he'd do you credit when he performs.”

One of Captain Guzmán's expressive eyebrows rose. “Did he bribe you to suggest this to me?”

“No, sir. He did not. I only wish I would have thought of using him sooner.”

“Very well, Senior Lieutenant. You may have him, and I will pray I ever get him back again,” Guzmán said. “Now, whom did you have in mind for the other vacant part—Liseo's servant, is it not?”

“I was going to use my own man, Diego.”

Guzmán's eyebrow rose again, this time to convey an altogether different expression. “Are you sure? Can you make him bestir himself?”

“If he doesn't do as I need, I can make his life a hell on earth, and I will,” Lope said. “As a matter of fact, I rather look forward to getting some real work out of him. However much he tries to sleep through everything, he
is
my servant, after all. I may not own him so absolutely as I would a black from Guinea, but I'm entitled to more than he's ever given me.”

“You're certainly entitled to it. Whether you can get it may prove a different question. Still, that's your worry and none of mine.” Guzmán's chuckle sounded more as if he were laughing at Lope than with him. “I wish you good fortune. I also tell you I think you will need more than I can wish you.”

“We'll see,” de Vega said, though he feared his superior was right. “He's supposed to be blacking my boots right now. He hates that.
Maybe he'd rather act than do something he hates.” He sighed. “Of course, what he wants to do most of all is nothing.”

When he strode into his chamber in the Spanish barracks, Diego wasn't blacking his boots. That wasn't because he'd already finished the job, either; the boots stood by the side of the bed, scuffed and dirty. And Diego lay in the bed, blissfully unconscious and snoring.

Lope shook him. His eyes flew open. “Mother of God!” he exclaimed around a yawn. “What's going on?” Then intelligence—or as much as he had—returned to his face. “Oh.
Buenos días, señor
. I thought you were gone for the day.”

“So you could spend the rest of it asleep, eh?” de Vega said. “No such luck. Congratulations, Diego. You are about to become a star of the stage.”

“What? Me? An actor?” Diego shook his head. “I'd rather die.” He made as if to disappear under the blankets.

The
wheep!
of Lope's blade sliding out of its scabbard arrested the motion before it was well begun. “Believe me, you lazy good-for-nothing, that can be arranged,” he said. “If you think I am joking, you are welcome to try me.”

He didn't know that he would run his servant through. But he didn't know that he wouldn't, either. Nor did Diego seem quite sure. Eyeing Lope with sleepy resentment, he said, “What do you want . . .
señor
?” His gaze kept flicking nervously to the rapier.

“Get up. Get dressed. You will—by God, Diego, you
will
—learn the role of Turín. He's a servant and a bit of a sneak, so it ought to suit you well.”

Yawning again, Diego deigned to sit up. “And if I don't?” he asked.

Lope kept the rapier's point just in front of his servant's nose, so that Diego's eyes crossed as he watched it. “If you don't . . .” Lope said. “If you don't, the first thing that will happen is that you will be dismissed from my service.”

“I see.” Diego had no great guile; de Vega could read his face.
If I am dismissed, I will attach myself to some other Spaniard, and cling to him as a limpet clings to a rock. Whoever he is, he won't want me to act, either
.

Sadly, Lope shook his head. “I've already discussed this with Captain Guzmán. You know how short of men—good, strong, bold Spanish men—we are in England. Any servant dismissed by his master goes straight into the army as a pikeman, and off to the frontier with Scotland. The north of England is a nasty place. The weather is so bad, it
makes London seem like Andalusia—like Morocco—by comparison. The Scots are big and fierce and swing two-handed swords they call, I think, claymores. They take heads. They do not eat human flesh, as the Irish are said to do, but they take heads. I think you would make a poor trophy myself, but who knows how fussy a Scotsman would be?”

He was lying, at least in part. Not about the north of England—it did have an evil reputation, and Scotland a worse one. But servants sacked by their masters didn't automatically become cannon fodder. Diego, of course, didn't know that. And Lope sounded convincing. He wasn't a Burbage or an Edward Alleyn, but he could act.

“Put that silly sword away,
señor,
” Diego said. “I am your man. If I have to be your actor, I will be your actor.” As if to prove it, he got out of bed.

“Ah, many thanks, Diego,” Lope said sweetly, and sheathed the rapier. “I knew you would see reason.” The servant, still in his nightshirt, muttered something pungent under his breath. As anyone with a servant needed to do, Lope had learned when not to hear. This seemed one of those times.

 

W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE CAME
out of a poulterer's on Grass Street with a couple of fine new goose quills to shape into pens. “Come again, sir, any time,” the poulterer called after him. “As often as not, the feathers go to waste, and I'm glad to make a couple of pennies for 'em. 'Tis not as it was in my great-grandsire's day, when the fletchers bought 'em for arrows by the bale.”

“The pen's mightier than the sword, 'tis said,” Shakespeare answered, “but I know not whether that be true for the arrow as well. Certes, the pen hath lasted longer.”

Pleased with himself, he started back towards his Bishopsgate lodgings. He'd just turned a corner when a man coming his way stopped in the middle of the narrow, muddy street, pointed at him, and said, “Your pardon, sir, but are you not Master Shakespeare, the player and poet?”

He did get recognized away from the Theatre every so often. Usually, that pleased him. Today . . . Today, he wished he were wearing a rapier as Peter Foster had suggested, even if it were one made for the stage, without proper edge or temper. Instead of nodding, he asked, “Who seeks him?” as if he might be someone else.

“I'm Nicholas Skeres, sir.” The other man made a leg. He lived up
to—or down to—Widow Kendall's unflattering description of him, but spoke politely enough. And his next words riveted Shakespeare's attention to him: “Master Phelippes hath sent me forth for to find you.”

“Indeed?” Shakespeare said. Skeres nodded. Shakespeare asked, “And what would you? What would he?”

“Why, only that you come to a certain house with me, and meet a certain man,” Nick Skeres replied. “What could be easier? What could be safer?” His smile showed crooked teeth, one of them black. By the glint in his eye, he'd sold a lot of worthless horses for high prices in his day.

“Show me some token of Master Phelippes, that I may know you speak sooth,” Shakespeare said.

“I'll not only show it, I'll give it you.” Skeres took something from a pouch at his belt and handed it to Shakespeare. “Keep it, sir, in the hope that its like, new minted, may again be seen in the land.”

It was a broad copper penny, with Elizabeth looking up from it at Shakespeare. Plenty of the old coins still circulated, so it was no sure token, but Skeres had also said the right things, and so. . . . Abruptly, Shakespeare nodded. “Lead on, sir. I'll follow.”

“I am your servant,” Skeres said, which Shakespeare doubted with all his heart: he seemed a man out for himself first, last, and always. He hurried away at a brisk pace, Shakespeare a step behind.

He'd expected to go up into the tenements north of the wall, or perhaps to Southwark on the far bank of the Thames: to some mean house, surely, there to meet a cozener or a ruffian, a man who dared not show his face in polite company. And Nicholas Skeres did lead him out of London, but to the west, all the way to Westminster. At the Somerset House and the church of St.-Mary-le-Strand, Skeres turned north, up into Drury Lane.

Grandees dwelt in these great homes, half of brick, half of timber. One of them could have housed a couple of tenements' worth of poor folk. Shakespeare felt certain Skeres would go on to, and past, St. Giles in the Field, which lay ahead. But he stopped and walked up to one of the houses. Nor did he go round to the servants' entrance, but boldly knocked at the front door.

“Lives your man
here?
” Shakespeare said in something close to disbelief.

Skeres shook his head. “Nay—that were too dangerous. But he dwells not far off. He—” He broke off, for the door opened. The man who stood there was plainly a servant, but better dressed than Shakespeare. Nick
Skeres said, “We are expected,” and murmured something too low for the poet to catch.

Whatever it was, it served its purpose. The servant bowed and said, “Come with me, then. He waits. I'll lead ye to him.”

Carpets were soft under Shakespeare's feet as he went up one corridor and down another. He was more used to the crunch of rushes underfoot indoors. The house was
very
large. He wondered if he could find his way out again without help.
Like Theseus of Athens in the Labyrinth, I should play out thread behind me
.

“Here we are, good sirs,” the servant said at last, opening a door. “And now I'll leave ye to't. God keep ye.” Smooth and silent as a snake, he withdrew.

“Come on,” Nick Skeres said. As soon as Shakespeare entered the room, Skeres shut the door behind them. Then he bowed low to the old man sitting in an upholstered chair close by the hearth in the far wall; a book rested on the arm of the chair. “God give you good day, Lord Burghley. I present Master Shakespeare, the poet, whom I was bidden to bring hither to you.”

Shakespeare made haste to bow, too. “Your—Your Grace,” he stammered. Had Skeres told him he would meet Queen Elizabeth's longtime lord high treasurer, he would have called the man a liar to his face and gone about his business. But there, without a doubt, sat Sir William Cecil, first Baron Burghley. After the Duke of Parma's soldiers conquered England, most of Elizabeth's Privy Councilors had either fled to Protestant principalities on the Continent or met the headsman's axe. But Burghley, at King Philip's specific order, had been spared.

He had to be closer to fourscore than the Bible's threescore and ten. His beard was white as milk, whiter than his ruff, and growing thin and scanty. His flesh was pale, too, and looked softer and puffier than it should have—almost dropsical. Dark, sagging pouches lay under his eyes. But those blue eyes were still alert and clever, though a cataract had begun to cloud one of them. The Order of the Garter, with St. George slaying a dragon, hung from a massy gold chain around his shoulders.

“Well met, Master Shakespeare,” he said, his voice a deep rumble without much force behind it. “I have for some while now thought well of your plays and poems.”

“You are generous beyond my deserts, your Grace,” Shakespeare said, still bemused. Surely he hadn't been summoned for pretty compliments alone. He shook his head, annoyed at himself for being so
foolish as even to think such a thing. Thomas Phelippes' hand lay somewhere behind this. Phelippes, whatever else he was, was not one to waste time on inessentials.

“Sit. Sit.” Lord Burghley waved Shakespeare and Nicholas Skeres to a pair of plain wooden stools in front of his chair. He coughed wetly a couple of times as they perched—Shakespeare nervously—then went on, “Now is the winter of our discontent.” Shakespeare stirred. Burghley's smile showed several missing teeth, and another one broken. “Ay, I heard Burbage, as Richard, mouth your words. They hold here truer than they did for the Plantagenet. Know you that King Philip fails?”