Ruled Britannia

by Harry Turtledove

  Captain Guzman laughed. "I will mention it to the priest the next time I confess. I think my penance will be light."

  "I hope you're right. You order me to go to the Theatre, sir?" de Vega asked. His superior nodded.

  Lope wondered how much liberty he'd just received. "This will be the whole of my duty till the play goes before an audience?"

  GuzmA?n nodded again. The pleasure that shot through Lope was so intense, he thought he would have to add it to his next confession. But then the nobleman said, "This is for the time being. It may change later. And if any emergency or uprising should occur-"

  "God forbid it!"

  "God forbid it, indeed. But if it should, you will help meet it as I think best."

  "Of course, your Excellency. This goes without saying. I am, first of all, a servant of his Most Catholic Majesty, as is every Spanish man in this dark, miserable land."

  " Muy bien. I did want to make sure we had everything clear." Something flickered in Baltasar GuzmA?n's eyes. Amusement? Malice? Perhaps a bit of both: "And with you, Senior Lieutenant, I was not sure anything went without saying. Buenos dias."

  " Buenos dias, " Lope echoed. He rose, bowed himself almost double, and left the captain's chamber without showing he'd felt, or even noticed, the gibe. It was either that or draw his rapier and have at GuzmA?n. He didn't want to fight. For one thing, the man was his superior, and entitled to such jests. For another, although de Vega did not despise his own skill with a sword, Captain GuzmA?n was something of a prodigy with a blade in his hand. Set against the requirements of honor, that shouldn't have mattered.

  The world being as it was, it did.

  When Lope got back to his own chamber, he found Diego snoring away. He'd expected nothing less. He didn't bother shaking his servant. He booted him instead, taking out some of the anger he couldn't spend on Captain Guzman.

  Shaking Diego was often a waste of time anyway. Kicking him worked better. " A Madre de Dios! " he exclaimed, and sat bolt upright. He blinked at Lope, his eyes tracked with red veins.

  "Get up, you dormouse, before I seethe you in honey," de Vega snarled. "You can't sleep away the whole day."

  Diego groaned. "Not more playacting," he said. In face, under Lope's merciless direction, he had performed well as Turan, the servant in La dama boba. And why not? He was a servant. All he had to do was play himself, remember his lines-and stay awake.

  But Lope shook his head. "No, not more playacting for you." Ignoring Diego's sigh of relief, de Vega went on, "But I may be doing more of it-and in English, no less."

  "Why has this got anything to do with me?" Diego asked around a yawn.

  "I can read your mind, you rascal." Lope glared at him. "You're thinking, My master will be off acting. I can lie here and sleep till the day of Resurrection. You had better think again, wretch, or you'll sleep the sleep of a dead man. I'm going to need you more than ever."

  "For what?"

  "Perhaps for more acting," Lope said, and his lackey groaned again. He took no notice of that. "Perhaps to carry messages for me. And perhaps for who knows what? You are my servant, Diego. You can work for me and do as I say, or you can find out how you like things on the Scottish border."

  " Madre de Dios," Diego said once more, sadly this time. "Being a servant is a hard life. Who would say otherwise? I have to obey another man's orders, my time is not my own-"

  "Oh, what a pity," de Vega broke in. "You cannot sleep every blessed hour of every blessed day. Every so often, you have to stand up and earn your bread instead of having it handed to you already dipped in olive oil."

  "And where have you seen olive oil in England, senor, save in what we bring here from Spain for ourselves?" Diego said. "The English, they hate it. If that doesn't prove they're savages, what does it prove?"

  "It proves you're trying to change the subject," Lope answered. "That won't work, though. That won't work, and you, by God, will."

  "Life is hard for a servant with a cruel master." Diego sighed. "Life is hard for any servant, but especially for one so unlucky."

  "If I were a cruel master, you would already be up on the Scottish border, or sent to Ireland, or else tied to the whipping post on account of your laziness," Lope said. "Maybe that would wake you up. Nothing else seems to."

  "I do what I have to do, senor," Diego said with dignity.

  "You do half of what you have to do, and none of what a good servant ought to do," de Vega retorted.

  "Maybe you should fall in love. You'd stay awake for your lady, and you just might stay awake for me, too."

  "Fall in love with an Englishwoman? Not me, senor." Diego shook his head so vigorously, his jowls wobbled back and forth. He didn't seem to have slept through any meals. With a sly smile, he added,

  "Look what Englishwomen have given you-nothing but trouble. And I don't need a woman to give me trouble, not when I've got a master."

  For a moment, Lope sympathized with his servant. His own superior, Captain GuzmA?n, had given him a good deal of trouble, too. But GuzmA?n had also just given him the freedom of the English theatre. That made up for all the trouble he'd ever had from the cocky little nobleman, and then some. And, no matter what fat, lumpish Diego said, women had their uses, too.

  Richard Burbage stared at Shakespeare. "Tell it me again," the big, burly player said. "The dons are fain to have you make a play on the life of Philip?"

  "Even so," Shakespeare said unhappily. The two stood alone on the outthrust stage of the Theatre. No apple-munching, beer-swilling, wench-pinching groundlings gaped at them from the open area around it; no richer folk peered from the galleries. It was still morning-rehearsal time. The afternoon's play would be Prince of Denmark. Burbage would play the Prince, Shakespeare his father's ghost. He'd just emerged through the trap door from the damp, chilly darkness under the stage. He'd written the lines they were practicing, but Burbage remembered them more readily than he did. On the stage, nothing fazed Burbage.

  He threw back his head and laughed now, both hands on his comfortable belly. A couple of the tireman's assistants and an early-arriving vendor turned their heads his way, hoping they might share the jest. He waved to them, as if to say it was none of their affair. Had Shakespeare done that, they would have ignored him. Burbage they took seriously, and went back to whatever they'd been doing. Shakespeare sighed. Not by accident was Burbage a leading man.

  Mirth still shining in his eyes, Burbage spoke for Shakespeare's ear alone: "Well, my duck, one thing it shows beyond doubt's shadow."

  "What's that?" the poet asked.

  "They suspect not your other commission."

  "But how am I to do both?" Shakespeare demanded in an impassioned whisper. "Marry, how? 'Tis the most unkindest cut of all, Dick. Two plays at once? That will drive me mad, and madder till I see which be fated to journey from pen and paper to-this." His wave encompassed the painted glory of the Theatre.

  "A pretty gesture," Burbage remarked. "Do you use it when appearing, thus." He crouched as if coming up through the trap door, then stood with a broader, more extravagant version of Shakespeare's wave. "

  'Twill help to draw the auditory into the business of the play."

  "I'll do't," Shakespeare said, but he refused to let the other man distract him. "I've not yet sounded the whole of the company on the other. After this, how can I? They'll take me for the Spaniards' dog, and think I purpose luring 'em to treason."

  "Another, haply, but not you, Will." Burbage set a hand on his shoulder. "You're an honest man, none honester, which everybody knows."

  "And for which I do thank you." Shakespeare's laugh rang wild enough to make curious eyes swing his way again. He wished he'd been able to hold it in, but felt as if he would burst if he tried. "But honest!

  Were I honest to all here embroiled, I'd die the death i'the next instant."

  "By no means." Burbage shook his head and looked somber. "In sooth, you'd die the death, but as slow as those who had you could in their ingeniousness make it."


  "The devil damn thee black, thou moon-calf scroyle!" Shakespeare said, which only made Richard Burbage laugh. Still furious, Shakespeare went on, "Will Kemp'd use me so. From you, I hoped for better."

  "Write your play on Philip," the actor told him. "Write it as well as ever you may, for who knows what God list? An we give't, we give't. An we put forth in its place some different spectacle-why, that too's God's will, and there's an end to it."

  He would play the one as gladly as the other, reckoning the company would profit from either, Shakespeare realized. That made him no happier than he had been. If Burbage didn't care whether he strode the boards as Philip of Spain or in toga and crested helm as Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, did he truly care who ruled England? Did he truly care about anything but his own role and how the playgoers would see him? That was a question with any actor: with one who enjoyed-no, reveled in-such general acclaim as Richard Burbage, a question all the more pointed.

  News of the play on King Philip's life raced through the company like wildfire. Who will stop the vent of hearing when loud rumor speaks? Shakespeare thought with sour amusement. He, from the orient to the drooping west, doth unfold the acts commenced on this ball of earth, stuffing the ears with false reports. He wished this report were false.

  Will Kemp sidled up to him, still carrying the skull he'd use while playing the gravedigger come the afternoon performance. "You'll give me some words wherewith to make 'em laugh, is't not so?" he said, working the jawbone wired to the skull so that it seemed to do the talking.

  "Be still, old bones," Shakespeare said.

  Kemp tossed the skull in the air and caught it upside down. That only made its empty-eyed leer more appalling. "Philip's such a pompous, praying, prating pig, any play which hath him in't will need somewhat of leavening, lest it prove too heavy for digestion." The clown's voice became a high, wheedling whine.

  "Here is the first I've heard you care a fig for the words I do give you," Shakespeare said tartly. "It were better that those who play own clowns speak no more than is set down for them."

  Kemp's flexible face twisted into an expression so preposterous, even Shakespeare couldn't help smiling.

  "But Master William, my dove, my pet, my chick, my poppet," the clown cooed, "the pith of't it is, as I've said aforetimes, the groundlings laugh louder for my words than for yours."

  "I pith on you and the groundlings both." Shakespeare stood with his legs spraddled wide, as if easing himself. Will Kemp gaped at him. Forestalled, by God! Shakespeare thought. You were about to make your own pissy quibble, and looked not for the like from me. He added, "The Devil take your laughs when they flaw the shape of my play, as I've said before. Hear you me now?"

  "I hear." Kemp looked angry, angry and ugly. He started to say something more, then spun on his heel instead-for a big, bulky man, he moved, when he chose, with astounding grace-and stalked away.

  Another caring more for himself than aught else. Shakespeare sighed. It was either sigh or weep from despair. Someone will sell us to the Spaniards. Sure as Pilate's men nailed Jesu to the rood, someone will think first of thirty pieces of silver and not of all of England. Someone-but who?

  He wouldn't be burned alive, not for treason, or most of him wouldn't. They would haul him to Tower Hill on a hurdle, and hang him till he was almost dead. Then they'd cut him down and draw him as if he were a sheep in a shambles. They'd throw his guts into the fire while he watched, if he was unlucky enough to keep life in him yet. That done, they would quarter him and display his head and severed limbs on London Bridge and elsewhere around the city to dissuade others from such thoughts and deeds.

  He shuddered. That was English law; Elizabeth had used Catholics who plotted against her thus. For all he knew, the Spaniards had worse punishments for traitors.

  Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped and almost screamed. "I humbly do beseech you of your pardon, Master Shakespeare," Jack Hungerford said. "I meant not to startle you."

  "My thoughts were. elsewhere," Shakespeare said shakily, and the tireman nodded. Shakespeare gathered himself. "What would you?"

  "Why, I'd ready you for your turn on stage, of course," Hungerford replied, his eyes plainly asking, How far off were your wits? "The hour draws nigh, you know."

  "I'll come with you." Shakespeare followed him as he'd lately followed too many men from whom he sooner would have fled.

  Back in the tiring room, Hungerford was all brisk efficiency. He powdered Shakespeare's face and hands with ground chalk, then smeared black grease under his eyes for a skull-like effect. "Here, see yourself,"

  he said, and pressed a glass into Shakespeare's hand.

  Shakespeare studied the streaky image the mirror gave back. "Am I more haggard than I was before?"

  he murmured.

  Hungerford, perhaps fortunately, paid him no attention. The tireman was rummaging through the company's robes to find a smoke-gray one shot through with silver thread. "You'll have a care with this down under stage," he said severely. " 'Tis the sole habiliment we have fit for a royal spook. Smutch it, and the cleaning costs us dear."

  "I'll mind me of't."

  "Good. Good. You'd better." Like any tireman worth his salt, Jack Hungerford cared more for his clothes and other properties than for the players who wore them. He thrust a polished pewter crown at Shakespeare. "See how't glisters like silver? There's not a ghost in all the world can match the Prince's father for finery."

  "I've no doubt you're right, Master Hungerford." Shakespeare set the crown on his head. It was too small. He'd been playing the ghost ever since he wrote the tragedy, and had yet to persuade the tireman to get a crown that fit him.

  Hungerford handed him a bowl full of shredded, crumpled paper. "Do you remember to set this alight just afore the trap door opens. 'Twill make a fine smoke wherewith to amaze the groundlings."

  "I shall remember," Shakespeare promised gravely. "Do you recall in turn, I have played the role before.

  Do you further recall, I am he who devised it."

  The tireman only sniffed, as a mother might when her son insisted he was a grown man. However much he insisted, she would never believe it, not in her heart. Hungerford never believed players knew anything. The more they said they did, the less he believed it, too.

  A rising buzz came from out front: the day's audience, hurrying into the Theatre. When Shakespeare stood to go to his place under the stage and await his cue to rise through the trap door, Jack Hungerford grabbed the bowl full of paper scraps and set it in his hand before he could reach for it. "See you? You would have forgotten it," Hungerford said, triumph in his voice.

  What point to quarreling with him? Shakespeare had bigger worries, swarms of them. "If you'd have it so, so it is for you," he said wearily. The tireman stirred, about to speak again. Shakespeare spoke first:

  "By my halidom, Master Jack, I'll not forget me the candle to light it with."

  Hungerford nodded. By his expression, he couldn't decide whether Shakespeare had merely called him by his Christian name or had called him a Jack, a saucy, paltry, silly fellow. Since Shakespeare had intended that he wonder, the poet was well enough pleased.

  He did make a point of remembering the candle. Hungerford would never have let him live it down had he forgotten after their skirmish. He also made a point of carrying it carefully, so he didn't have to come back and start it burning again. Not out, brief candle, he thought. Light this fool the way through dusty gloom.

  He had to walk doubled over; had the stage been high enough to let him straighten up, it would have been too high to let the standing groundlings see the action on it. He peered out at the crowd through chinks and knotholes. He couldn't see much-the men and women in front blocked his view of those farther back. His ears told him more than his eyes could. It sounded like a full house, or something close, and it sounded like an enthusiastic one.

  "It'll like thee well, Lucy," said a man standing close enough to Shakespeare for his voice to be dist
inct among the multitude. "The Prince of Denmark, he feigns he's mad, so-"

  "Go to, Hal!" Lucy broke in. "I've not seen it afore, and I shan't thank thee for spoiling the devisings."

  God bless you, Lucy. You're a woman of sense, Shakespeare thought. He knew too many playwrights who were too fond of boasting of their machinations. He thought them fond in the other sense of the word, for their plays seemed insipid to him when he knew ahead of time everything that happened.

  Footsteps on the boards above his head. Words heard dimly through thick wooden planks: the sentinels Bernardo and Francisco, talking of the night. Shakespeare hurried over to the little platform under the trap door. He lit the papers. They caught at once, and began filling the space under the stage with smoke.

  It tickled his nose and his throat. He fought against a cough.

  Horatio and Marcellus came on. Francisco left, his boots thumping. Shakespeare cocked his head to one side, listening for his cue. His chalky fingers closed on the trap-door latch. Bernardo raised his voice to make sure the waiting ghost heard: ". Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one-"

  Shakespeare loosed the latch. Down swung the trap door. He'd made sure the hinges were well oiled, so they didn't squeal. Up he popped through the door, with a fine cloud of smoke around him. A woman shrieked, which made two more cry out in sympathy. If one screamed, others always followed. And he was good enough to make that first one scream.

  He had no lines here, or in his next couple of appearances. He had but to stand, looking ominous and menacing, till his cue to stalk off, and then go below once more. One of the tireman's helpers crawled out to bring him another bowl full of bits of paper and a fresh candle. "You nigh gasted them out of their hose, Master Shakespeare," he whispered.

  "Good," Shakespeare whispered back. "Get thee gone." The tireman's helper went back the way he'd come. Shakespeare crouched in the smoke under the stage, fuming a little himself. I'd best know how to frighten them with the ghost, he thought. If not I, then who? He had failed once or twice: he'd been bad, or the audience had been bad, or who could say what had gone wrong? He didn't dwell on the failures. Every player had them, in every role. But he'd made the most of the part far more often. And so I shall again today.