Ruled Britannia

by Harry Turtledove

  She startled him by laughing, and startled him again by kissing him on the cheek. "Perhaps thou art truly honest, Will. Most men'd lie for the sake of their sweetheart's feelings."

  "I'll give thee what I can, Kate, and cherish all thou givest me. And now I had best be gone."

  Shakespeare got out of bed and began to dress.

  "God keep thee, Will," she said, a yawn blurring her words. "Hurry to thy lodging. Surely curfew's past."

  "God keep thee," he said, and opened the door to her room. He went out, closing the door behind him.

  Lope De Vega came up to the priest. The Englishman marked his forehead with the ashes of the "palm" (usually, in this northern clime, willow or box or yew) branches used the previous Palm Sunday. In Latin, the priest said, "Remember, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return."

  Crossing himself, Lope murmured, "Amen," and made his way out of St. Swithin's church. Most of the people he saw on the streets, English and Spaniards alike, already had their foreheads marked with the sign of repentance that opened the Lenten season. Anyone who didn't, especially in a year when Catholics and heretics celebrated Easter more than a month apart, would get some hard looks from those whose duty was to examine such things.

  Though it was still the first week of February, the day was springlike: mild, almost warm, the sky a hazy blue with fluffy white clouds drifting slowly across it from west to east. The sun shone brightly. A few more such days and flowers would begin to open, seeds to bring forth new plants, leaves to bud on trees.

  Once, Lope had seen this weather hold long enough for nature to be fooled-which made the following blizzard all the crueler by comparison. He didn't expect this stretch to last so long. Usually, they were like a deceitful girl who promised much more than she intended to give. Knowing as much, he didn't feel himself cheated, as he had when he'd first come to England.

  "I am sure you are brokenhearted that Lord Westmorland's Men have got a dispensation to let them perform through Lent," Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n said outside the church.

  "Oh, of course, your Excellency," de Vega replied. He was damned if he'd let this little pipsqueak, still wet behind the ears, outdo him in irony. He touched his forehead, as if to say the ashes there symbolized his mourning. But then he went on, "Most of the acting companies gain these dispensations. They would have a hard time staying in business if they didn't." Acting companies were by the nature of things shoestring operations (Lord Westmorland's Men a bit less than most); they could ill afford losing more than a tenth of their revenue by shutting down between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

  "Well, go on up to the Theatre, then," GuzmA?n said. "See if anyone is bold enough to flaunt his heresy to the world at large. Whoever he is, he will pay."

  "Yes, sir," Lope said. "Sir, is there any further word of his Most Catholic Majesty? Shakespeare has asked after him. Not unreasonably, he wants some notion of how much time he has to compose the drama Don Diego Flores de Valdas set him."

  "I have news, yes, but none of it good," Captain Guzman replied. "The gout has attacked his neck, which makes both eating and sleeping very difficult for him. And the sores on his hands and feet show no sign of healing. If anything, they begin to ulcerate and spread. Also, his dropsy is no better-if anything, is worse."

  Tears stung Lope's eyes. He touched the ashes on his forehead again. "The priest in the church spoke truly: to dust we shall return. But this is bitter, a man who was-who is-so great, having an end so hard and slow. Better if he simply went to sleep one night and never woke up."

  "God will do as He pleases, Senior Lieutenant, not as you please. Would you set your judgment against His?"

  "No, sir-not that it would do any good if I did, for He can act and all I can do is talk."

  GuzmA?n relaxed. "So long as you understand that. With a man who makes plays. Forgive me, but I wondered if you arrogated some of the Lord's powers to yourself, since you make your characters and move them about as if you were the Almighty for them."

  Lope looked at him in astonishment. "I have had those blasphemous thoughts, yes, sir. My confessor has given me heavy penance on account of them. How could you guess?"

  "It seemed logical," Guzman said. "You have a world inside your head, an imaginary world filled with imaginary people. Who could blame you for believing, now and again, that that imaginary world is real?

  You make it seem real to others in your plays-why not to yourself as well?"

  "Do you know, your Excellency, I am going to have to pay serious attention to you, whether I want to or not," de Vega said slowly.

  Baltasar Guzman set a hand on his shoulder. "Now, now, Senior Lieutenant. You had better be careful what you say, or you'll embarrass both of us. Being your superior, I should do the embarrassing. Let me try: how is your latest lady friend?"

  Lope wasn't embarrassed. He flashed GuzmA?n a grin. "She's very well, thank you," he said, and heaved a sigh. "I do believe she is the sweetest creature I ever met."

  "And I do believe you've said that about every woman for whom you ever conceived an affection, which must be half the women in England, at the very least." Captain GuzmA?n grinned, too, a nasty, crooked grin. "How am I doing?"

  "Pretty well, thanks," Lope answered. "You make me glad I'm going to the Theatre." He wasn't sorry to hurry away from St. Swithin's, for Captain GuzmA?n's shot had hit in the white center of the target. Lope did passionately believe, at least for a while, that each new girl was the one upon whom God had most generously bestowed His gifts. What point to loving someone, after all, if she weren't special? Lucy Watkins, now.

  As he made his way through the teeming streets of London, he thought of her shy little smile, of her soft voice, of the pale little wisps of hair that came loose no matter how tightly plaited the rest was. and of the taste of her lips, of her uncommonly sweet smell, of the charms he hadn't sampled yet but soon hoped to.

  A constable and a tavern-keeper stood arguing outside the latter's door. The constable wagged his finger in the other fellow's face. "Marry, there is another indictment upon thee," he said severely, "for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which I think thou wilt howl."

  "All victuallers do so," the tavern-keeper protested. "What's a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?"

  "In a whole Lent?" the constable said. "A whole Lent, with Ash Wednesday scarce begun? Thou'lt go to the dock for this, beshrew me if thou dost not. Every soul is of a mind to crush out Protestantism like it was a black-beetle in amongst the sallat greens. Bad business, heresy, terrible bad."

  "Protestantism? Heresy? Art daft, George Trimble? What's that to do with a bit o' mutton? — for the which thou'st shown no small liking, Lents gone by."

  "Liar!" the constable exclaimed, in tones that couldn't mean anything but, In the name of God, keep your mouth shut! He went on, "Besides, Lents gone by have naught to do with now. It's all the calendar, it is, that has to do with heresy."

  "How?" the tavern-keeper demanded.

  "Why, for that it does, that's how," George Trimble said. Lope sighed and went on his way. He could have explained what the problem was, but he didn't think either of the quarreling Englishmen would have cared to listen to him.

  By now, the men who took money at the Theatre recognized Lope and waved him through as if he were one of the sharers among Lord Westmorland's Men. He wished he were. The life of a Spanish lieutenant was as nothing next to that which Burbage or Shakespeare or Will Kemp lived. De Vega was sure of it.

  Kemp threw back his head and howled like a wolf when Lope walked into the Theatre. De Vega gave back a courtier's bow, which at least disconcerted the clown for a moment. Kemp, he noticed, wore no ashes on his forehead. What did that mean? Did it mean anything? With Kemp, you could never be sure.

  Swords clashed as a couple of actors rehearsed a fight scene. One glance told de Vega neither of them had ever used a blade in earnest. Burbage, he'd seen, had some notion of what he was about. These fellows? The Spaniard sh
ook his head. They were even worse than Shakespeare, who'd never pretended to be a warrior.

  Burbage, now, boomed out the Scottish King's lines:

  " Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

  Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

  Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

  And with some sweet oblivious antidote

  Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

  Which weighs upon the heart?' "

  " Therein the patient must minister to himself,' " replied the hireling playing the doctor.

  Burbage frowned. Lope had seen the Scottish play a couple of times, and admired it. He knew, or thought he knew, what the actor was supposed to say next. And, sure enough, someone hissed from the tiring room: " a€?Throw physic to the dogs.' "

  " Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it,' " Burbage finished, and went on in his own voice: "My thanks, Master Vincent. The line would not come to me."

  "No need to praise my doing only that for which you took me into your company," replied Thomas Vincent, the new prompter and playbook-keeper. He came out to nod to Burbage. "You should reprove me if I keep silence." He was about Lope's age, lean, and seemed bright. Lope had learned he went to Mass every Sunday. Before the Armada came, he'd been as zealous in attending Protestant Sunday services.

  A trimmer, de Vega thought scornfully. Whichever way the wind blows, that's the way he'll go. But a lot of men, likely a majority, were like that. It made things easier for those who would rule them.

  Shakespeare's like that, too, Lope reminded himself. He was no Catholic when Elizabeth ruled this land. Which was one more reason to reckon him an unlikely traitor. He'd made his compromises with the way things were. The ones you had to worry about were those who refused to change, no matter what refusing cost them.

  Geoffrey Martin, Lope thought. He'd paid no special attention to the prompter while Martin lived. Now that Martin was dead, it was too late. Sir Edmund Tilney-or, if not the Master of the Revels, someone in his office-could tell me more about him.

  "Seek you Master Will?" Richard Burbage called.

  "An you do, you've found him." But that was Will Kemp, not Shakespeare. The clown went from making a leg at Lope to collapsing in a heap before him: one of the better pratfalls he'd seen.

  De Vega shook his head. "Many thanks, but nay. I have that for which I came." He bowed to Burbage (who looked surprised at his saying no) and to Kemp, resisting the impulse to try to match the fool's loose-jointed toppling sprawl. Then he hurried out of the Theatre.

  Captain Guzman didn't think of this. Maybe I'll learn something important. Even if I don't, I'll look busy. If I have my own ideas and follow them up, how can Guzman complain about me? He can't-and if I'm busy on another play of my own, well, by God, he'll have a hard time complaining about that, too.

  "Have you a moment, Master Hungerford?" Shakespeare hated asking the question, and the ones that would follow. He hated it even more than he had when he'd spoken with Geoffrey Martin. When Martin gave the wrong answers, the inconvenient answers, Shakespeare hadn't known what would happen next. Now he did. If blood flowed, it would drip from his hands.

  But the tireman only nodded. "Certes, Master Will. What would you?" He flicked a speck of lint from a velvet robe.

  "What costumes have we for a Roman play?" Shakespeare asked.

  "A Roman play?" The tireman frowned. "Meseems we could mount one at need." In most dramas, no matter when or where they were set, players wore clothes of current fashion. Audiences expected nothing else. But Roman plays were different. People had a notion that the Romans had dressed differently. And so actors strode the boards in knee-length white tunics and in gilded helms with nodding crests mounted (often insecurely) above them. Despite his answer, Hungerford's frown didn't go away.

  "Why ask you that, though? I know for a certainty we offer no Roman plays any time soon, nor Grecian ones, neither."

  Shakespeare nodded nervously. "You speak sooth. But I am writing a Roman play, one that may be shown soon after it's done."

  "Ah?" Hungerford quirked a gingery eyebrow; they'd held their color better than his hair or his beard.

  "This alongside your King Philip?"

  "Yes," Shakespeare said: one syllable covering a lot of ground.

  "You've much to do, then, and scant time wherein to do't," Hungerford said. Shakespeare nodded; that was a manifest truth. The tireman asked, "And what title hath this latest?"

  " Boudicca," Shakespeare answered, and waited to see what would come of that. If Jack Hungerford knew Latin and remembered his Roman history, the title would be plenty to alarm him-and to hang Shakespeare, if he mentioned it to the wrong people.

  But the name was only a nonsense word to Hungerford; Shakespeare saw as much in his eyes. "Scarce sounds Roman at all," the tireman said.

  "It is, though," Shakespeare said, and summarized the plot in a few sentences.

  Even before he finished, Hungerford held up a hand. "Are you daft, Master Shakespeare? Never would Sir Edmund let that be seen. No more would the dons. Our lives'd answer for the tenth part of't-no, for the hundredth."

  "I know't," Shakespeare said. Marry, how I know't! "And yet I purpose going forward even so. What say you?"

  Jack Hungerford didn't say anything for some little while. He stroked his chin, studying the poet. "You sought to sound me once before on this matter, eh?"

  "I did," Shakespeare agreed.

  The tireman shook his head. "No, sir. You did not. You fought shy of 't then."

  "And if I did?" Shakespeare threw that back as a challenge. "You hold my life in the hollow of your hand.

  Close it and I perish."

  "I wonder," Hungerford murmured. "Tell me, an you will: did you discover yourself to Geoff Martin?"

  Shakespeare said not a word. He hoped his face gave no answer, either. Hungerford grunted softly. "If I say you nay, will Constable Strawberry, that good and honest man, sniff after my slayer like a dog too old to take a scent after a bone that never was there?"

  "I devised not poor Geoff's death, nor compassed it," Shakespeare said.

  "The which is not what I asked," the tireman observed. Shakespeare only waited. Jack Hungerford grunted again. "I'm with you," he said. "I have not so much life left, and mislike living on my knees what remains."

  "Praise God!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "I know not how we could have gone on without you."

  "With a new tireman, belike, as we have a new prompter," Hungerford said. "Will you tell me I'm mistook?" Shakespeare wished he could and knew he couldn't. Hungerford nodded to himself. "A Roman play, is't? But tell me what you require, Master Will, and you shall have't presently."

  "My thanks." My thanks if you cozen me not, if you fly not to the Spaniards soon as I turn my back.

  "Which of the boys thought you to play the part wherefrom the piece takes its name?" Hungerford asked.

  "Why, Tom, of course," Shakespeare answered. "No woman, I'll swear, could better a woman personate."

  But the tireman shook his head. "He will not serve."

  "What? 'Swounds, why not?"

  "Item: his elder brother is a priest. Item: his uncle is a sergeant amongst Queen Isabella's guards." Jack Hungerford ticked off points on his fingers as he made them. "Item: his father gave the rood screen at their parish church, such adornments having been ordained once more on our being returned to Romish ways. Item: the lad himself more than once in my hearing hath said he's fain on becoming a man to follow his brother into the priesthood." He glanced over at Shakespeare. "Shall I go on?"

  "By my troth, no. Would you had not gone so long!" Shakespeare made an unhappy hissing noise. "Why knew I so little of the lad his leanings?"

  "Why? I'll tell you why, Master Will." Hungerford chuckled. "To you, he's but a boy playing parts writ or by you or by some other poet. You think on him more than you think on a fancy robe some player wears, ay, but not much more. Did you think on him as a boy, now. " His voice trailed
away, then picked up again: "I warrant you, I'd need to instruct Master Kit in none o' this."

  "Belike that's so. Indeed, I'm sure Kit hath made it a point to learn all worth knowing of the boy, from top to bottom."

  "Just so. Your bent being otherwise, you-" The tireman broke off. The look he sent Shakespeare was somewhere between reproachful and horrified. "You said that of a purpose."

  "I?" Shakespeare looked as innocent as he could. His own worries helped keep glee from his face as he went on, "If the part be for another, as meseems it needs must, what of him? How keep we him in ignorance of this our design?"

  "Haply his voice will break, or his beard sprout. He's rising fifteen," Hungerford said. "Some troubles themselves resolve."

  "Haply." Shakespeare made the word into a curse. " a€?Haply' suffices not. You spoke of Geoff Martin.

  Are you fain to have his fate befall a boy, for no cause but that he's of Romish faith? He will die the death, I tell you, unless he be eased from this company ere we give our Boudicca." If ever we give't, he thought unhappily.

  The tireman frowned, too. "Sits the wind in that corner?"

  "Nowhere else," Shakespeare answered. "What's a mere boy, to those who'd dice for a kingdom?"

  "An they think thus, should they win it?" Hungerford asked.

  "Are their foes better?" Shakespeare returned. "Saw you the auto de fe this past autumn?"

  "Nay, I saw't not, for which I give thanks to God. But I've seen others, and I take your point." Jack Hungerford bared his teeth in what was anything but a smile. "Would someone's hands were clean."

  "Pilate's were. He washed 'em," Shakespeare said. Hungerford showed his teeth again. With a sigh, Shakespeare continued, "Would they'd tasked another with the deed, but, sith 'tis mine, how can I do't save with the best that's in me?"

  Hungerford eyed him. "They might have chose worse. In many several ways, they might have."

  "You do me o'ermuch honor," Shakespeare said. The tireman shook his head. Shakespeare refused to let himself be distracted: "What of Tom? We must separate him from ourselves."