Ruled Britannia (15 page)

“Yes, your Eminence. Thank you, your Eminence.” Lope kissed Cardinal Parsons' ring once more. He left the cardinal's study, left St. Paul's, as fast as his legs would take him. No doubt Parsons had intended a compliment in comparing him to an inquisitor. But what he'd intended and what Lope felt were very different things.

The Inquisition was necessary. Of that de Vega had no doubt. But there was also a difference between what was necessary and what was to be admired.
Vultures and flies are necessary. Without them, the ground would be littered with dead beasts
, he thought.
No one invites them to dinner, though, and no one ever will
.

 

S
HAKESPEARE KNELT IN
the confessional. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said. The priest in the other side of the booth murmured a question he hardly heard. He confessed his adultery with the serving woman at the ordinary, his rage at Will Kemp (though not all his reasons for it), his jealousy over Christopher Marlowe's latest tragedy, and such other sins as came to mind . . . and as could safely be told to a Catholic priest.

As Shakespeare had conformed to Protestant worship during Elizabeth's reign, so he conformed to Romish ritual now that Isabella and Albert sat on the English throne and Philip of Spain stood behind them. More often than not, conforming came easy. The Catholic Church's rituals had a grandeur, a glamour, missing from Protestantism. Had Shakespeare been able to choose faiths on his own, he might well have chosen Rome's. His father had quietly stayed Catholic all through Elizabeth's reign. But having invaders impose his creed on him galled Shakespeare, as it galled many Englishmen.

The priest gave him his penance, and then, with a low-voiced, “Go, and sin no more,” sent him on his way. He went up toward the altar in the small parish church of St. Ethelberge the Virgin—the church closest to his lodgings—knelt in a pew, and began to say off the
Ave Maria
s and
Pater Noster
s the priest had assigned him. By the time he finished, he
did
feel cleansed of sin, although, being a man, he knew he would soon stumble into it again.

Nine years of conforming to Catholic ways was also long enough to
leave him full of guilt about what he hadn't confessed. Despite the sanctity of the confessional, any mention of his meeting with Lord Burghley would have gone straight to the English Inquisition, and no doubt to the secular authorities as well. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name. Even so, he raised his eyes to the heavens as he finished his last
Ave Maria
. The priest wouldn't know what he kept to himself, but God would.

Crossing himself—another gesture that had grown close to automatic since the coming of the Armada—he got to his feet to leave St. Ethelberge's. As he walked down the aisle toward the door, Kate came out of the confessional and started up toward the altar. Dull embarrassment made Shakespeare look down at the stone floor. She'd probably confessed to the same passage of lovemaking as he had. For her, of course, it was only fornication, not adultery.

He forced himself to look her in the face. “God give you good day,” he said, as if he knew her, but not in the Biblical sense.

“And you, Master Will,” she answered quietly. “Shall we see you again at the ordinary this even?”

“Belike,” he said. She walked on by him. Her small, secret smile said she might have confessed, but hadn't fully repented.

He started back to the Widow Kendall's. He wanted to get in what writing he could while some daylight lingered, and before most of the other lodgers came home and made the place too noisy for him to think in the rhythms of blank verse. He wished he were a rich man, like the Bacons in whose home he'd met Lord Burghley. Being able to sit down in a room without half a dozen other people chattering in his ear . . .
is beyond your means, so what point fretting yourself over it?

He hadn't gone far before an apprentice—easy enough to recognize by his clothes, for he wore a plain, flat cap and only a small ruff at his throat—pointed to him and said, “There goes Master Shakespeare.”

Being a man whose face many saw, Shakespeare had that happen fairly often. He almost made a leg to the 'prentice, to acknowledge he was who the young man thought he was. But something in the fellow's tone made him hold back. The apprentice hadn't just recognized him; by the way he sounded, others were looking for Shakespeare, too. He didn't care for that at all.

Sure enough, though, another man and a woman pointed him out to their friends on his way back to his lodgings. And, when he got there, Jane Kendall was in a swivet. “Oh, sweet Jesu!” she exclaimed. “First Master Foster, now you! Whatever shall I do?”

“What mean you, Madam?” he asked, thinking,
What will you do? Find more lodgers; what else? But if they pursue me as they pursue Peter Foster, whatever shall
I
do?
He doubted whether running to Stratford would help him. They'd track him down there. Could he get over the border to Scotland?
Have they got theatres in Scotland? Might a player live there, or would he slowly starve?

“Why, Master Shakespeare, the fellow asking after you, he looked a right catchpole, he did,” his landlady answered. “Had a great gruff deep voice, too, enough to make anybody afeard. Oh, Master Shakespeare, what
have
you done?”

“Naught,” Shakespeare answered. And that was true, or something close to true. He'd set down not a word on paper. The closest thing to evidence anyone might find among his possessions was the translation of Tacitus'
Annals
. But it wasn't the only work of history in his trunk, and he hadn't so much as dogeared the relevant page. As far as proof went, they'd be on thin ice.

But how much would that matter? The bastinado, the rack, thumbscrews, the water torture the English Inquisition favored . . . If they hauled him away and began tormenting him, how long could he hold out? He shuddered. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. He was no hero, and knew it too well. If they tortured him, he would tell all he knew, and quickly, too.

Doing his best not to think of such things, he went to the ordinary for supper and for work. All he knew about what he ate was that it cost threepence. He did notice Kate's smile, and absentmindedly gave it back. After she took away his wooden trencher, he got to work on
Love's Labour's Won
. Tonight, the writing went well: better than it had for a fortnight, at least. He dipped his quill in the bottle of ink again and again; it raced across the page.

Kate knew better than to talk to him when the words tumbled forth like the Thames at flood. When at last she came over to his table, it was only to warn him: “Curfew's nigh.”

“Oh.” He didn't want to stop, but he didn't want to be caught out, either, not if they were looking for him anyway. As he gathered up his pens and papers and ink, he came back to the real world. Now the smile he gave the serving woman was sheepish. “Another time, I fear me.”

She nodded, not much put out. “When I saw you writing so, I knew that would be the way of't.” Her voice softened. “God keep thee.”

“And thee.” Shakespeare pushed his stool back from the table. He
couldn't have gone on much longer, anyhow; the candle was burnt almost to the end. With an awkward nod—almost the nod a youth might have given a pretty maid he was too shy to court—he hurried out of the ordinary.

He rose the next morning in darkness; in December, the sun stayed long abed. Porridge from the pot on the hearth and a mug of the Widow Kendall's ale broke his fast. And he wasn't the first lodger up; Jack Street went out the door while he was still eating.

When Shakespeare followed the glazier out of the lodging house, a big man stepped from the shadows and said, “You are Master William Shakespeare.” He had to be the fellow who'd spoken to Jane Kendall; his voice came rumbling forth from deep in his chest.

“And if I be he?” Shakespeare asked. “Who are you, and what business have you with me?”

“You are to come with me to Westminster,” the man replied. “Forthwith.”

“But I'm wanted at the Theatre,” Shakespeare said.

“You're wanted in Westminster, and thither shall you go,” the big man said implacably. “The wind lies in the east. Come—let's to the river for a wherry. 'Twill be quicker thus.” He made the sign of the cross. “God be my witness, Master Shakespeare, you are not arrested. Nor shall you be, so that you do as you are bid. Now come. Soonest there, soonest gone.”

“I am your servant,” Shakespeare said, ever so glad he was not—or apparently was not—the other man's captive.

Morning twilight had begun to chase the dark from the eastern sky when they got down to the Thames. Even so early, half a dozen boatmen shouted at them, eager for a fare. “Whither would you go, my lord?” one of them asked after the fellow sent to fetch Shakespeare set a silver groat in his hand.

“Westminster,” the big man answered.

“I'll hie you there right yarely, sir,” the boatman said. He proved good as his word, using both sail and oars to fight his way west against the current. The wind did indeed blow briskly from the east, which helped speed the small boat to Westminster. They got there faster than Shakespeare would have cared to walk, especially when he still would have had trouble seeing where to put his feet.

His—guide?—took him through the maze of palaces and other state buildings. He heard Spanish in the lanes and hallways almost as often as
English; Westminster was the beating heart of the Spanish occupation of his country. The mere word made him queasy—it was often used of a man's lying with a woman. And, indeed, through his soldiers King Philip had thrown down Queen Elizabeth, thrown down all of England, and. . . .

“Bide here a moment,” the Englishman with the deep voice said, and ducked into an office. He soon came back to the doorway and beckoned. “Come you in.” Turning to the man behind the large, ornate desk, he spoke in Spanish: “Don Diego, I present to you
Señor
Shakespeare, the poet.” Shakespeare had little Spanish, but followed him well enough to make sense of that. The Englishman gave his attention back to Shakespeare and returned to his native tongue: “Master Shakespeare, here is Don Diego Flores de Valdés.”

Shakespeare made a leg to the Spaniard. “I am honored beyond my deserts, your Excellency,” he said. In fact, he was more nearly appalled. Diego Flores commanded all of King Philip's soldiers in England.
What knows he?

Instead of translating, as Shakespeare had expected, his guide politely inclined his head to the Spanish grandee and withdrew. Flores proved to speak good if accented English, saying, “Please seat yourself,
Señor
Chakespeare.” He waved to a stool in front of the desk. Like most Spaniards, he made a hash of the
sh
sound at the start of Shakespeare's name and pronounced it as if it had three syllables.

“Thank you, my lord.” Shakespeare perched warily on the stool. He would sooner have fled. Even knowing flight would doom him made it no less tempting. He took a deep breath and forced some player's counterfeit of calm on himself. “How may I serve you today?”

Don Diego Flores studied him before answering. The Spanish commandant was in his fifties, his beard going gray, his hooked nose sharper in his thin face than it might have seemed when he was young. When he said, “I am told you are the best poet in England,” he sounded like a man not in the habit of believing what he was told.

“Again I say, your Excellency, you do me too much honor.”

“Who surpasseth you?” Flores asked sharply, the Spanish lisp making his English sound old-fashioned. When Shakespeare did not reply, the officer laughed. “There. You see? Honor pricks you on, more than you think. This I understand. This I admire. If it be a sin to covet honor, I myself am the most offending soul alive.” He jabbed a thumb at his
own chest. “And so—for this were you summoned hither. Because you are the best.”

“What would you of me? Whatever sort of poet I be, I am a poet of English. I know not the Spanish tongue.”

“
Claro que sí
,” Don Diego said, and then, seeing Shakespeare's puzzled expression, “But of course. You are desired
because
you write English so well.” Shakespeare was sure he looked more puzzled than ever. Flores continued, “Have you not heard that King Philip, God love him, fails in regard to his health?”

Was that a trap?
Ought I to claim ignorance?
Shakespeare wondered. After some thought, he rejected the idea: the King of Spain's decline was too widely known to make such knowledge dangerous. Cautiously, the poet said, “Ay, your Excellency, I have heard somewhat of't.”

“
Muy bien
. Very good.” The Spaniard again translated for himself, though this time Shakespeare followed him perfectly well. Crossing himself, Flores went on, “Soon the good Lord will summon to his bosom the great King.”

“May King Philip live and reign for many years.” Shakespeare saw no way to say anything else, not to Philip's commandant in England.

“May it be so,
sí
, but Philip is a mortal man, being in that like any other.” Flores sounded impatient; perhaps he knew more of the state of Philip's health than was common gossip in London. “To make for him a memorial, a monument: it is for this I summoned you hither.”