Ruled Britannia

by Harry Turtledove

  Instead of walking past him or sending him on his way with a curse, Shakespeare stopped and stared.

  Where he had not known the visage, he recognized the voice: there before him, ingeniously disguised, stood Robert Cecil. Lord Burghley's son grinned-grinned a little maniacally, in fact-at the look on Shakespeare's face. Gathering himself, the poet whispered, "What would you, sir?"

  "Why a penny, of your kindness," Robert Cecil said, and Shakespeare did give him a coin. Under cover of capering with delight, Cecil went on, also in a low voice, "You shall not give King Philip come Tuesday next, but your Boudicca. If all follow well from that and other matters now in train, England her liberty shall regain. Till the day, be of good cheer and dread naught."

  Off he went, begging from others in Shoreditch High Street. Shakespeare walked on towards the Widow Kendall's, and his dread grew with every step he took.

  Seeing the bright sun that shone down on London on the appointed day, Lope de Vega couldn't have been more delighted. When his servant came into his inner chamber, he beamed sunnily himself.

  "What a grand day, Diego! It might be spring, not autumn," he said. "The heavens do all they can to make King Philip well received."

  " Si, senor." Diego sounded altogether indifferent. "That English constable, that Strawberry, is waiting outside. He wants to talk with you about something."

  "Today? Now? Oh, for the love of God!" Lope felt like tearing his hair. "I have no time to deal with him.

  I need to go to the Theatre to rehearse. What can he want?"

  Diego shrugged. "I don't know. I don't speak English."

  "By all the saints, neither does he!" Lope calmed himself. "I can't escape him, I see. Bring him in. I'll deal with him as fast as I can."

  Walter Strawberry's solid bulk seemed to fill the little chamber to overflowing. "God give you good morrow, sir," he rumbled.

  "And to you as well, Constable," de Vega answered. "What's toward? Be quick, if you can; I must away to the Theatre anon."

  "Ay, sir. Quick I am, and quick I'll be. And, being quick, I'll tell you somewhat or ever I die."

  Whenever Lope listened to Strawberry, he felt himself going round in dizzying circles. Keeping a tight grip on his patience, he nodded. "Say on."

  "Know you, sir, that Master Shakespeare hath ta'en to talking to buggers in the street?"

  "Buggers?" De Vega scratched his head. "Surely you are mistook, Christopher Marlowe being dead."

  The constable looked as bewildered as Lope felt. "Marlowe? Who said aught of Marlowe? I speak of buggers with palms for alms outstretched, amongst the which is a little dancing crookbacked wight who bears a passing verisimilitude unto Master Robert Cecil."

  Cecil's was perhaps the only name that could have gained Lope's complete and immediate attention. "Say you so?" he murmured, leaning towards Strawberry. "Say you so indeed? Be you certain of this?"

  "I am." Walter Strawberry nodded. "It hath been witnessed by witnesses thereto, and likewise by those who have seen the same. An it be not the same Robert Cecil, he hath a twin unrecked, though himself but the wreck of a man."

  "Have you any other evidence past this which your witnesses, er, witnessed?" Lope asked. "Shakespeare denies all treasonous associations, and assuredly in the favor of Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s stands high. With reason, he having writ a splendid, yes, a most splendid, play on the life of his late Most Catholic Majesty, in which I shall have the honor of performing later this day. All this being so, you see, I am not fain to seize him without strongest proofs of's guilt."

  "What I have, sir, I have given you," Constable Strawberry said. " 'Tis my bounding duty, and I have bounded hither for to do it."

  "Damnation," de Vega muttered. Strawberry had brought him just enough to alarm him, but not enough to let him act, especially not after Shakespeare had wriggled free of trouble after Christopher Marlowe's return to London. Lope stroked his little chin beard as he thought. Suddenly, he pointed at the constable.

  "Have you searched his lodging? If he have done treason, he will have done't with his pen. Why else engage a poet, a maker of plays, in the enterprise? Have you, then?"

  "Not having a warrant?" Strawberry seemed genuinely shocked. "No, sir, I have not. That were beyond my bounds altogether, and beyond the bounds of any honest Englishman."

  "A plague take all bounds, you-you bounder!" Lope burst out. He stabbed a thumb at his own chest. " I am no Englishman, for which I thank God. If I desire to search, I may search. I may-and, by the Blessed Virgin, I shall." Secure in the power the occupiers held, he had no doubt of that whatever.

  Neither did Constable Strawberry. "You will do as you shall do. I have not the right nor the writ." He turned to go. "Adieu; be vigitant, I beseech you."

  Vigitant or not, Lope hurried up to Shakespeare's lodging-house. The hour was still early enough to leave him content with the world and the way it shaped. What do I do if I find proof here? he asked himself.

  The answer seemed clear enough. I play in King Philip, then arrange for Shakespeare's arrest. He sighed. Arresting the poet after he'd written such a play seemed a pity, but what choice was there? None de Vega could see.

  He hoped Shakespeare was already off to the Theatre. He would have a fight on his hands if he tried to search while the Englishman was still there. He touched the hilt of his sword. He didn't want a reputation for killing playwrights, but he would take that reputation if he had to.

  When he got to the lodging-house, he found Cicely Sellis in the parlor saying farewell to an early client.

  The man showered her with blessings as he left. The cunning woman dropped de Vega a curtsy. "God give you good day, Master Lope," she said. "Why are you come here at such an hour?"

  "In search of treason against his Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain," Lope said harshly. Mommet had sprawled by the hearth. At Lope's tone, the cat sprang to its feet, its fur on end, its tail puffed out like a bottle brush. He ignored it, asking, "Is Master Shakespeare here, or is he gone up to the Theatre?"

  "Why, he is more than an hour gone," Cicely Sellis answered. She cocked her head to one side and gave Lope a slow, half sad smile. Catalina IbaA±ez would have laid down her life to own a smile like that; it left the Spaniard weak in the knees. The cunning woman added, "And here I hoped thou wert come to see me."

  "Truly?" Lope said. Cicely Sellis didn't even nod. Just by standing there, she let him know it was and could be nothing but the truth. His pulse thudded. Whatever he did now, no one would take anything of Shakespeare's from this place while he did it. He had the time. He was sure he had the time. He made a low leg at her. "My lady, I stand ever at thy service." And he did stand, too, or part of him did.

  "Come, then," she said, and went back into her room, Mommet trotting at her heels. Lope followed, eager as a green boy his first time. He closed and barred the door behind him.

  As at his last visit, fat candles lit the closed room almost as bright as day. Mommet curled up in a corner, yawned once, and went to sleep. Cicely Sellis sat down on the bed. When Lope would have joined her there, she smiled again and, saying, "Anon, anon," waved him once more to the stool in front of it.

  More than a bit sulkily, he perched there. "Thou'dst not tease, I trust?" he said. The intimate pronoun was sweet in his mouth.

  "Marry, no," she replied. "And yet never would a woman be ta'en for granted thus."

  De Vega was no green boy. Much experience told him she spoke the truth. He dipped his head to her.

  "As thou'dst have it, so shall it be, though I needs must say in delay there lies no plenty."

  "Prithee, bear with me," she said. "We that are lovers run into strange capers."

  Before he could answer, she reached up and drew something out from under her dress: that sparkling glass pendant he'd seen once before, dangling on the end of its long chain. She swung it back and forth, back and forth. Lope thought it might have been a nervous habit, for she hardly seemed to know she was doing it. The pendant caught th
e candlelight and drew his eye to it as it swung. He looked away now and again, but his gaze kept coming back.

  "Nay, a woman mislikes ever being hurried, ever being rushed, ever being told to give, and give forthwith." For all that her words might have shown annoyance, Cicely Sellis spoke in a soft, calm, smooth voice. "Is't not sweeter when freely offered, when tendered with full heart, with glad heart, with heart brimful of love, than when rudely seized ere the time be ripe, ere she be fully ready, ere she would do that which, in the fullness of time, she assuredly will do?"

  "Assuredly," Lope echoed, his voice abstracted. He'd only half noted her words. His eyes kept following that sparkling pendant, back and forth, back and forth. After a little while, he wasn't sure he could have taken them away from it. But he didn't want to, so what difference did that make?

  The cunning woman talked on, as smoothly and quietly as before. De Vega could not have told what she said; he noted her voice mostly as soothing background to the endless motion of the pendant. Back and forth, back and forth. Watching it, he felt almost as if he were falling asleep.

  Before too very long, she asked, "Dear Lope, hearest thou me?"

  "Ay." The sound of his own voice left him dully surprised; it might have come from far, far away.

  "Hearken well, then, for I speak truth," she said. He nodded; in that moment, he could not possibly have doubted it. Even as he nodded, his eyes swung back and forth, back and. She went on, "Master Shakespeare hath done no treason. Hearest thou me?"

  "I hear. Master Shakespeare hath done no treason." When she said it, when he affirmed it, it might have been carved in stone inside his mind.

  "He hath no papers treasonous here: hence, no need to search. Hearest thou me, dear Lope?"

  "No papers treasonous. No need to search." When she said it, when he said it, it was so. Holy Scripture could have been no truer for him.

  "Nor hast thou need to seek him this day in the Theatre, for all will be well there," the cunning woman murmured.

  "IdiA?quez. " Lope began. IdiA?quez glimmered in the glitter of glass and was gone. "No need to seek.

  All will be well."

  "All will be well," Cicely Sellis repeated. She led him through her catechism twice more. Then, as she stopped swinging the pendant and tucked it back into place, she said, "In token thou hast heard me well, when I bring my hands together thou'lt blow yon candle"-she pointed-"and then become again thine own accustomed self. Hearest thou me?"

  "Ay, blow out that candle," Lope said. Cicely Sellis clapped her hands. He blinked and laughed, feeling as refreshed as if he'd just got out of bed after a good night's sleep. Then, laughing still, he sprang off the stool and blew out one of the candles by the head of the bed.

  "Why didst thou so?" she asked.

  "Its light shone in mine eyes," he answered. One quick step brought him to her. "And now, my sweet, my love, my life-" He took her in his arms.

  She laughed, down deep in her throat. "Thine own accustomed self," she said, and it seemed to Lope for a heartbeat that he'd heard those words before. But then his lips came down on hers, and hers rose up to his, and he cared not a fig for anything he might have heard.

  XIII

  "Where's De Vega?" "Where's the poxy Spaniard?" "Where's the don?" Inside the Theatre, the questions tore at Shakespeare, again and again.

  "I know not. Before God, I know not!" Trying to escape them, he fled from the stage back into the tiring room.

  Richard Burbage pursued him, relentless as fate personified. "See you not, Will, we needs must know?"

  Burbage said. "Had he come hither, we'd have seized and bound him, knocked him over the head, and gone forward with good heart. But where is he? Will he burst in the instant we are begun, soldiers at his back, crying, Hold! What foul treason is this?' Will he, Will?"

  "I know not," Shakespeare said again. Desperate for the escape he knew he could not have, he perched on a stool and hid his face in his hands. He pressed the fleshy bases of his thumbs against his closed eyes till swirling flashes and sparkles of color lit the blackness that he saw.

  Better he should have covered his ears, for Burbage persisted: "Were we not wiser, were we not safer, to give King Philip and not. the other play?" Even now, he would not name it. "We still can, and right well you know it."

  "Dick, I know naught-naught, hear you?" Shakespeare wanted to scream it. Instead it came out as not much more than a whisper. "There is no wisdom in me, only a most plentiful lack of wit. And I say further, e'en with Lope seized and bound, I should not have gone forward with good heart, for sure safety lurks nowhere in this tangled coil."

  Burbage grunted as if taking a blow in the belly. Shakespeare wondered why. As far as he could tell, he'd spoken simple truth, the only truth he knew. Voice a pain-filled groan, the player asked, "What to do, then, Will? What are we to do?"

  Reluctantly, Shakespeare lowered his hands and looked up at him. "An you must think on somewhat, think on this: when they hang you for a traitor, would you liefer hang as traitor to the King of Spain or 'gainst old England?"

  "I'd liefer not hang," Burbage said.

  Shakespeare laughed bitterly. "Too late, for already your complexion is most perfect gallows-as is mine own."

  Burbage glared at him. "Damn you."

  "Ay." Shakespeare nodded. "And so?"

  "Come then, cullion." Burbage reached out and, with frightening effortless strength, hauled him off the stool and to his feet. The player let him go then, but he followed Burbage back onto the stage. "Hear me, friends," Burbage boomed, and his big voice filled the Theatre. From all over the building, heads turned his way. "Hear me," he said again. "We give Boudicca-and God help us every one."

  He had better, Shakespeare thought.

  Will Kemp gave Burbage a mocking bow. "Thou speakest well, as always. And how the hangman and the worms do love thee."

  With a shrug, Burbage answered, "Be it so, then. Had I ordered King Philip shown this day, you might have said the same."

  "Would you not sooner hang for an Englishman?" Shakespeare added, his spirits beginning to revive now that the die was cast.

  By way of reply, Kemp tugged at his codpiece. " 'Tis better far to be well hung than well hanged."

  "Go to!" Shakespeare exclaimed as the company erupted in bawdy laughter. After that, the players went about their business with better hearts. Shakespeare had no doubt they still knew fear-he certainly did himself-but they seemed more able to put it aside. In a quiet moment, he made a leg at Will Kemp. The clown grabbed his crotch again.

  Groundlings began strolling into the open space surrounding the stage on three sides. Some of them waved to the players, others to friends they recognized or to vendors already selling sausages and wine and roasted chestnuts. Folk more richly dressed took their places on benches in the galleries. More vendors circulated there.

  A gentleman in silk and velvet and lace, his snowy ruff enormous and elaborately pleated, passed through the growing crowd of groundlings to call to Richard Burbage: "How now? I'm told you sell no places at the side of the stage?"

  Bowing, Burbage nodded. "I cry your pardon, sir, but you're told true. The spectacle we shall offer needs must be fully seen by all. Those places interfering with the view of the general, we dispense with 'em today. They shall again be sold come the morrow."

  The gentleman still looked unhappy, but Burbage's answer left him nothing upon which to seize. He turned and went back towards the galleries. Burbage and Shakespeare exchanged a look. The player's answer had been polite, plausible, and false. The real reason the company was selling no seats on the stage was to keep aristocrats of Spanish sentiment from drawing their swords and attacking the actors when Boudicca went on in place of King Philip-which the signboards outside the Theatre still announced.

  Shakespeare spied plenty of aristocrats in the galleries. Some few he knew to be of Spanish sentiment.

  About others, who could say? But even those Englishmen who served the dons most heartily might d
o it for the sake of their own advantage rather than conviction. If they saw the wind blowing in a new direction, might they not shift with it? They might, the poet thought. That had a corollary he wished he could ignore: they might not, too.

  Burbage waved the last few players out on stage strutting before the groundlings or chatting with them back into the tiring room. Shakespeare could smell the sharp stink of fright rising from many of them. No doubt it rose from him as well. Burbage said, "Be of good cheers, lads. Speak the speech, I pray you, as you have learnt it; let it come trippingly off the tongue. And as you play, bear one thought ever in your minds: if all go well this day, we are made men forevermore. Not one of us will lack for aught the rest of the days of his life."

  He wanted the company to see the wind blowing in a new direction, too. By the way the players nodded, they did. But then Will Kemp stirred. Shakespeare could guess what he was going to say-if all went not so well, the rest of the days of their lives would be few, and filled with pain. Shakespeare caught the clown's eye and shook his head. Not now, he mouthed. Kemp laughed and stuck out his tongue, but he kept quiet.

  Somewhere in the distance, hardly audible through the buzz of the crowd in the Theatre, a church bell chimed the hour: two o'clock. Richard Burbage pointed to Shakespeare. "Will, you'll give the prologue?"

  No! So much of Shakespeare wanted to scream it. But he couldn't, not now. He wondered what part of courage was no more than the urge not to look ridiculous in front of one's friends. No small part, if he was any judge. He licked dry lips and nodded. "I will."

  "Go, then, and God go with you," Burbage said.

  Something like quiet fell in the Theatre as Shakespeare slowly strode out towards the center of the stage.