Ruled Britannia

by Harry Turtledove

  Marry, I'd best bathe, to wash the taint away. A constable!" She muttered something else, which Shakespeare, perhaps fortunately, could not make out.

  He had intended going back to his lodging and working on Boudicca there. He'd just sat down in front of the fire, though, when Cicely Sellis came out of her room with a swarthy fellow who lifted his hat to her, said, " Muchas gracias," and then vanished into the night.

  As casually as he could, Shakespeare said, "That was a Spaniard." He hoped his words covered the pounding of his heart.

  The cunning woman nodded. "He is. friend to a woman who hath oft come hither, and so thought to ask of me a question of his own."

  "I hope he paid well," Shakespeare said.

  Cicely Sellis nodded again, and smiled. "He did indeed. The dons are fools with their money, nothing less. Whether I gave him full. satisfaction I know not, though I dare hope."

  "Ah." Shakespeare had been about to ask what the Spaniard had wanted, and had been afraid she wouldn't tell him. Now he thought he knew, especially as the fellow was well into his middle years. "He hath a difficulty in rising to the occasion?"

  "E'en so." Amusement glinted in Cicely Sellis' eye.

  "And have you a physic for the infirmity in's firmity?" Shakespeare coughed. "I do but inquire from curiosity, mind."

  "Certes." That amused glint got brighter. "How shall I say't? Often-times, if a man believe I have this physic, why then I do."

  Shakespeare found himself amused, too. "Strong reasons make strong actions, then?" he asked.

  "Betimes they do, Master Shakespeare," the cunning woman said. "Ay, betimes they do. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie."

  "A truth. Without doubt, a truth. Would more knew it."

  Now Cicely Sellis shook her head. "Nay, say not so. Were it other than a secret close kept, who would visit cunning women? Do you publish it, and I starve." She clasped her hands together in mock distress.

  "No." Shakespeare laughed out loud as he too shook his head.

  "How not? How could it be otherwise?"

  "How? I'll tell you straight. What's the common curse of mankind? Folly and ignorance. To wisdom man's a fool that will not yield. I do now mind me of a saying, a€?The fool doth think he is wise'-and you may as well forbid the sea for to obey the moon, as or by oath remove or counsel shake the fabric of man's folly. That is truth, or there be liars."

  "You think not much of them God made."

  "I think God made them-fools," Shakespeare said. "Or will you quarrel?"

  "Not I," Cicely Sellis said. "Never let it be said I could do such an unchristian thing as that. And I'll leave you to your work now, good sir, lest you find reason to quarrel with me." She dropped him a curtsy that might have come from a noblewoman-not that he'd ever had a noblewoman drop him a curtsy-and drew back into her room. "God give you good even," she said, closing the door behind her.

  "And you," Shakespeare answered, though he wasn't sure she heard. He perched on the stool in front of the table, then nervously got up and put more wood on the fire. The Widow Kendall would complain in the morning when she found it gone, but she wasn't here now, and Shakespeare needed the light. He also needed to take a deep breath and calm himself before setting pen to paper on Boudicca. First Constable Strawberry, then that whoreson Spaniard. 'Swounds, an I die not of an apoplexy, 'twill be the hand of God on my shoulder, holding me safe from harm.

  It was, perhaps, not by accident that his mind and his pen turned to the revolt Britain, under the queen of the Iceni, raised against the Romans, and to the Romans' horrified response. How would they feel, seeing a province they thought subdued rise and smite 'em? he wondered.

  His pen began to move. Poenius Postumus, a Roman officer, began to speak on the page:

  "Nor can Rome task us with impossibilities,

  Or bid us fight against a flood; we serve her,

  That she may proudly say she hath good soldiers,

  Not slaves to choke all hazards. Who but fools,

  That make no difference betwixt certain dying

  And dying well, would fling their fames and fortunes

  Into this Britain-gulf, this quicksand-ruin,

  That, sinking, swallows us! what noble hand

  Can find a subject fit for blood there? or what sword

  Room for his execution? what air to cool us,

  But poison'd with their blasting breaths and curses,

  Where we lie buried quick above the ground,

  And are, with labouring sweat and breathless pain,

  Kill'd like slaves, and cannot kill again?"

  Shakespeare paused to read what he'd just written, and nodded in satisfaction. He started to add something to Poenius' speech, but his pen chose that moment to run dry. Muttering, hoping he wouldn't lose his inspiration, he inked it and resumed:

  "Set me to lead a handful of my men

  Against an hundred thousand barbarous slaves,

  That have march'd name by name with Rome's best doers?

  Serve 'em up some other meat; I'll bring no food

  To stop the jaws of all those hungry wolves;

  My regiment's mine own."

  He nodded again. Yes, that would do nicely. Poenius would later kill himself for shame at not having joined Suetonius' victorious army. Meanwhile, his anguished despair would move the play forward-and make the groundlings cheer his British, female foe.

  After the Romans first conquered Britain, Tacitus said, they'd flogged Boudicca and violated her daughters. Rumor said the Spaniards had raped England's Virgin Queen after capturing her. Shakespeare didn't know whether rumor was true, but he intended to use it in the play.

  But not tonight, he thought, yawning. He began to rest his head on his arms, then jerked upright with alarm tingling through him. If he fell asleep in front of the hearth and someone else got a look at what he was writing. If that happened, he was a dead man, and Lord Burghley's plan dead with him. He made himself get up and put away the deadly dangerous manuscript before he went to bed. His last thought as slumber seized him was, I may not make this business easier, but I will not make it harder.

  When Lope De Vega walked into his chamber, he expected to find Diego asleep. He wouldn't even have been angry if he had; it couldn't have been far from midnight. The dice had rolled Lope's way, and he'd stayed in the game longer than he'd expected. Gambling during Lent was probably a sin. Whether it was or not, it was certainly profitable.

  A lamp burned in the outer room where Diego dwelt. The servant wasn't even in bed, but sitting on a stool. Lope grinned at him. "If you sleep all day, will you stay awake all night? Why aren't you.?"

  He'd intended to say snoring, but his voice trailed away. He stared at Diego in astonished dismay. His servant stared back, more appalled still. Diego had just cut a bite from a big chunk of roast beef, and now stopped with that bite halfway to his mouth. The dim, flickering lamplight was more than enough to show how pale he went.

  "Madre de Dios," Lope whispered. "Diego, you idiot, have you turned Protestant now?"

  Diego's fleshy jowls wobbled as he shook his head. "Protestant? God save me, no, sir!"

  "How is God supposed to save you if you eat meat during Lent? Don't you know we're hunting Englishmen who do the very same thing? Are you out of your mind?"

  "No, sir. I'm just hungry," his servant answered. "Bread and cheese, bread and cheese. To the Devil with bread and cheese!"

  "No, no, no." Now de Vega was the one who shook his head. "To the Devil with eating meat at this season of the year. Or, I should say, the idea of eating meat at this season of the year has come straight from Satan."

  "No such thing, sir," Diego said indignantly. "No such thing. I got hungry, that's all. It's nothing else."

  "Nothing, eh? Suppose I call Captain Guzman? Suppose I call a priest? Suppose I call a priest from the Spanish Inquisition, or the English? Will they think it's nothing? Would you have turned the color of whey if you thought it was nothing?"

  Diego shot
him a resentful stare. "What are you doing here, anyway? When you didn't come back and you didn't come back, I thought you were off screwing your new Englishwoman. If you hadn't walked in when you weren't supposed to, you never would have seen me."

  "And you still would have sinned," Lope said.

  "And so what?" his servant replied. "God would have known, and maybe my confessor, but nobody else.

  I'm not doing any harm."

  Lope pointed to the chunk of beef. "Get rid of that. Wrap a rag around it so nobody can see what it is and get rid of it. You didn't think anyone would catch you, but now somebody has. And do you know what that means? Do you, Diego?"

  "What?" Diego asked apprehensively.

  "It means you are mine," de Vega answered. "Mine, do you hear me? I hold your life in my hand, and if I choose to squeeze. " He held out his right hand, palm up, and slowly folded it into a fist. He made the fist as tight as he could, to make sure Diego got the idea.

  His servant shuddered. "You wouldn't do such a thing, senor. would you?"

  That last frightened question, one Diego surely didn't want to ask but also one he couldn't hold back, told Lope just how worried he was. "Maybe I wouldn't," Lope said. "But, on the other hand, maybe I would, too. That depends on you, don't you think?"

  "On me?" Diego didn't like the sound of that.

  "On you," Lope said again. "Maybe you were just hungry this once, as you say. If you were, maybe we can forget about it. If you keep your nose clean from now on-if you stay awake, by God, and if you do all the things you're supposed to do-then nobody needs to know about it. But if you think you can go on being lazy and useless, well, even if I can't wake you up, I'd bet the inquisitors damned well can."

  Diego looked sullen. "That's blackmail."

  "Yes, it is, isn't it?" de Vega agreed cheerfully. "A shame I need to blackmail you into doing what you ought to be doing anyhow, but if that's what it takes, that's what I'll do. You will stay awake from now on, won't you?"

  " Si, senor," Diego said, sounding more sullen still.

  He sounded sullen enough, in fact, to make Lope wonder whether he might prove dangerous. Best to forestall that, Lope judged. "Don't even think about poisoning me or knocking out my brains while I'm asleep," he warned. "I'm going to write down just what I've seen, and I'm going to seal the letter and give it to someone I trust. If anything happens to me, you know what will happen to you, don't you?"

  " Si-, senor," his servant repeated, his voice gloomy.

  Lope smiled. "Very good. Now, while I'm writing suppose you take that roast beef away. Then come back and go to bed. You won't mind doing that, will you?"

  "No, sir." Diego heaved an enormous sigh. He wrapped the offending meat in a rag, as de Vega had suggested, and carried it out. Lope went into his own chamber, using the lamp in the anteroom to light the one inside. Because he worked on plays in odd moments, he always had paper and pens and ink handy.

  He sat down on the stool and started to write.

  Diego came back very quietly. As if by magic, the pen vanished from de Vega's hand and his rapier replaced it. "You don't want to try anything foolish, do you, Diego?" he said softly.

  " No, senor." The servant didn't even bother pretending he hadn't been thinking about it. "I guess I don't. Good night."

  "Good night," Lope said. "When I finish what I'm working on here, I'm going to take off my boots and leave them out there for you to black. I'll expect them to be ready when I get up in the morning. You'll do a good job, won't you?"

  "I'll take care of them, yes." Diego sounded like a man utterly without hope. Lope used the rapier to wave him out of the room. Once his man was gone, Lope did finish the letter- better safe went through his mind. He sealed the letter then got out of his boots and put them in the anteroom. When he went back into his bedchamber, he barred the door from the inside. As soon as the letter was in someone else's hands, he'd be reasonably safe. Till then- better safe, he told himself again.

  Out beyond the barred door, Diego cursed quietly. His blasphemies were music to Lope's ears. Then Diego picked up the boots; their heels thumped together. Lope hugged himself with glee as he got into bed. Not even the threat of the Scottish border had turned Diego into a tolerable servant. The threat of the Inquisition, though, seemed to have turned the trick.

  And when Lope woke the next morning, he found Diego already up and waiting for him. "Here are your boots, seA±or," the servant said tonelessly. All the mud and scuff marks were gone from them; the leather gleamed with grease. Still with no expression in his voice, Diego went on, "What else do you require?"

  "Do I hear rain outside?" Lope asked. Diego nodded. De Vega said, "Well, in that case, you can fetch me my good wool cloak, and get me a hat with an extra wide brim."

  "Just as you say," Diego answered, and went to do it. He didn't grumble. He didn't even yawn. It was like a miracle. Lope had no idea how long it would last, but aimed to enjoy it while it did. Taking the letter he'd written with him, he went off to get his breakfast. Even the porridge the barracks kitchen served up tasted better than usual this morning.

  With a bowl of barley mush and a cup of wine inside him, he went to see his superior. As usual, Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n's servant intercepted him before he got through the door. "You're looking cheerful this morning, Senior Lieutenant," Enrique remarked.

  "I feel cheerful," de Vega replied.

  "Shakespeare's play goes well?"

  "Yes, I think so," Lope said. If Enrique wanted to think that was why he felt happy, the servant was welcome to do so. De Vega added, "As a matter of fact, I'm going up to the Theatre as soon as I see Captain GuzmA?n. Is his Excellency in?"

  " Un momento, por favor." Enrique ducked behind the door, as if to see whether Guzman was there, though he had to know perfectly well. But he was smiling when he came out again. "He says he is delighted to see you. Go right in."

  " Gracias." De Vega walked past Enrique and made a leg at Captain Guzman, who nodded in return from behind his desk. "I trust your Excellency is well?" Lope said.

  "I'll do," Guzman said dryly. As Enrique had, he went on, "You look pleased with yourself today, Senior Lieutenant."

  "And so I am, sir." Lope handed him the letter he'd written. "Would you do me the courtesy of holding this unread unless some misfortune befalls me?"

  Captain GuzmA?n raised an eyebrow as he took the sealed sheet of paper. "Just as you say, of course.

  May I ask whether it has to do with your theatrical connections or with your women?"

  "With neither," de Vega answered, and had the satisfaction of watching that eyebrow jump in surprise again. But GuzmA?n stowed the letter in his desk without another word. Lope bowed. "Many thanks, your Excellency. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for Shoreditch."

  "How alarmingly diligent," GuzmA?n murmured. He might almost have been Lope himself, talking to Diego. That comparison, perhaps fortunately, didn't occur to Lope till he'd got a horse from the stables and ridden out through Bishopsgate. When it did, the rain-a steady downpour-muffled his bad language so that only the couple of Englishmen closest to him turned their heads his way.

  Lope squelched through the mud around the Theatre. The space within the wooden O where the groundlings would stand was muddy, too. On stage, actors rehearsed under the protection of a painted canvas canopy-the heavens, they called it. "Where is Master Shakespeare?" Lope called in English to Richard Burbage. "I see him not."

  The big player's broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. "He should have come hither," Burbage answered. "He should have, but he did not do't. I know not where he is myself, Master de Vega, and wish to heaven 'twere otherwise."

  "Keep dry, now," the Widow Kendall called out as William Shakespeare left her house to go to the Theatre. With rain drumming down, the advice struck him as useless, but was no doubt kindly meant. He nodded and hurried away.

  His belly growled as he hurried through Bishopsgate. Lent wore on him. But he dared not break the fast, not in t
his year of all years. He was much more virtuous than he might have been, to make sure the Spaniards paid him no special notice.

  "Master Shakespeare?"

  The voice came out of the rain. Shakespeare jumped. "Who is it?" he asked sharply, peering through the dripping early-morning gloom.

  "Here I am, your honor."

  Shakespeare's heart sank. He'd heard that sly, whining voice before, seen that clever, ugly face. "What would you, Master Skeres?" he said. "Let it be brief, an you can. I must to the Theatre."

  Nicholas Skeres shook his head. "I fear me not, or not yet. You needs must come with me, and straightaway."

  "Wherefore?" Shakespeare demanded.

  Skeres' smile showed his bad teeth. It also made Shakespeare want to drive them down his throat. "The wherefore of't's not for me to say," Skeres answered. "Still and all, them as sent me, they'd not be happy did I come back to 'em solus."

  "And who did send you?"

  "Them you'll meet when I fetch you thither." From everything Shakespeare had seen, Nick Skeres delighted in being uninformative. He also delighted in the power he held over Shakespeare. When he said, "Come," the snap of command filled his voice.

  And Shakespeare had to go with him. He knew as much. He hated it, but he knew it. He did say, "They'll miss me, up in Shoreditch."

  Nick Skeres shrugged. "Better that than they miss you whose man I am." He turned away towards the southwest. Heart sinking, Shakespeare followed, however much he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

  A horse trying to haul a wagon full of barrels through the muck blocked a narrow street. The wagon had bogged down. The driver rained blows on the horse's back. With all its strength, the beast strained against the weight and the mud. Then, with a noise like a pistol shot, it broke a leg. Its scream was like that of a woman on the rack.

  "Cut its throat," Skeres said with a laugh. "It's knacker's meat now."

  So it is, Shakespeare thought grimly. And you'd cut my throat as heartlessly, you bloody, bawdy villain, did I likewise break down in your employ. Nick Skeres laughed again, as if to say he knew what was going through Shakespeare's mind-knew and didn't care. And that was all too likely true.