Ruled Britannia (67 page)

“I know that, and it likes me not,” Burbage answered. “They may yet rally dons and traitors to their side, do we not presently bring 'em to heel.” He yawned too, enormously.

Three Englishmen marched another, better dressed than they, up the street at sword's point. “I tell you, you do mistake me,” their captive said. “I have ever loved Elizabeth, ever reckoned her my rightful sovereign, ever—”

“Ever an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of not one good quality,” one of the men with a sword broke in. “Thou art a general offense, and every man should beat thee—and will have his chance. Get on!” He shoved the fellow forward.

“Now commenceth vengeance,” Shakespeare remarked.

“Now commenceth cleansing,” Burbage said. “For lo, the Augean stables were as sweet rainwater falling from heaven set beside the mire of iniquity that was our England these ten years gone by. Let the river of revenge flow free through it.” He struck a pose, as if declaiming on the stage.

Shakespeare didn't argue with him. If Elizabeth triumphed, anyone who argued against rooting out every last man who might have helped the Spaniards and Isabella and Albert would endanger himself no less than someone arguing in favor of Elizabeth and her backers after she went to the Tower. How many injustices had the dons and their English henchmen worked then?
A mort of 'em
, the poet thought. And how many would the folk loyal to good Queen Bess work in return? He sighed.
No fewer
.

That mournful thought had hardly crossed his mind before another couple of men led another protesting prisoner past him and Burbage. “I tell you, gentles, I am no Spaniard's hound, but an honest Englishman,” the fellow said, blinking nearsightedly back at his captors. He was thin and pockmarked, and carried a broken pair of spectacles in his left hand.

“Hold!” Shakespeare called to the rough-looking fellows who'd seized him. One of them held a pike, the other a pistol. Shakespeare was acutely aware of having no weapon but the dagger the player had given him at the end of
Boudicca
. But he went on, “I know Master Phelippes to be true and trusty.”

Thomas Phelippes leaned towards him, peering, peering. “Is't you, Master Shakespeare? God bless you, sir! Without my precious spectacles, all past my nose is but a blur.”

The man with the pistol swung it towards Shakespeare. The barrel suddenly seemed broad as a cannon's bore. “Go to, or own yourself likewise treacher, you detested parasitical thing,” the ruffian snarled. “This accursed wretch was secretary to the Spaniards' commander—the which he denies not, nor scarce can he, being caught in's own den hard by the don's. And you style him a proper man? You pedlar's excrement, you stretch-mouthed rascal, how dare you?”

Showing anger to a man with a gun did not strike Shakespeare as wise. Picking his words with care, he answered, “I dare for that I know him to be one of Lord Burghley's—now one of Robert Cecil's—surest and most faithfullest intelligencers.”

As he'd hoped, those were names to conjure with. The pistol wavered, ever so slightly. But the man holding it still sounded fierce as he demanded, “
How
know you this? And who are you, that you should know it? Answer quick, now! Waste no time devising lies.”

“Heard you not Master Phelippes?—whose loyalty I also avouch,” Richard Burbage boomed. “Here before you stands none other than the
famous Will Shakespeare, whose grand
Boudicca
yesterday helped light the fire 'gainst the dons.”

The man with the pike nudged the pistoleer. “ 'Tis he, Wilf, by my troth—'tis. Have I not seen him full many a time astrut upon the stage? He'll know whereof he speaks. It were the gibbet for us, did we harm one of Crookback Bob's men.”

Crookback Bob?
Shakespeare couldn't imagine presuming to call Robert Cecil any such thing. To his vast relief, though, the man with the pistol—Wilf—lowered it. “Well, who's this cove with him, then?” he demanded.

Raw scorn filled the pikeman's voice: “What? Know you not Will Kemp when you see him?”

Burbage turned the color of a ripe apple. But Wilf's eyes almost bugged out of his head. “Will Kemp?” he whispered. “If the two o'
them
give this rogue their attestation, belike he is no rogue after all.” He pushed Phelippes, not too hard, towards Shakespeare and Burbage. “Go with 'em, you, and praise God they knew you: else you were sped.”

“Oh, I do praise Him,” Phelippes said. “Rest assured, good sir, I do.” He groped for Shakespeare's hand and squeezed it.

“Come,” Wilf said to the pikeman. “Plenty of traitors undoubted yet to be smoked out.” They hurried up the street.

Thomas Phelippes blinked towards Burbage, then bowed low. “And gramercy to you as well, Master Kemp,” he said. “I would not seem ungrate—”

A grinding noise came from Burbage's throat. His voice a strange sort of strangled scream, he said, “I am not Will Kemp, nor fain to be he, neither.” Plainly, he wanted to shout with all the force of his mighty frame. Just as plainly, he knew he must not, for fear of bringing the armed ruffians back at the run.

In a low voice, Shakespeare said, “Master Phelippes, I present you to my good friend and fellow player, Richard Burbage.”

After clasping Burbage's hand, Phelippes said, “I cry your pardon, for I should have known you by your voice, be your face and form never so indistinct to mine eyne.”

“Let it go, sir; let it go,” Burbage said gruffly. “There's reason you mistook me, whereas that gross and miserable ignorance just gone. . . .” He shook his head. “By Jesu! That God should go before such villains!” He muttered more unpleasantries, these too low to make out.

“How fell you into the hands of such brabblesome coves?” Shakespeare asked Thomas Phelippes.

“How, sir? As you might think,” Phelippes answered. “I came hither yesterday knowing the die was cast and purposing, if I might, to make it into a langret for Don Diego Flores de Valdés.” Shakespeare bobbed his head, appreciating the figure; if one were to cast a die in such straits as these, a die not perfectly square would be the proper sort to cast. Phelippes let out a wry chuckle. “In the event, confusion proved well enough compounded even absent mine aid.”

“What befell Don Diego?” Shakespeare asked. “A formidable wight, though he be a foe.”

Phelippes nodded. “Formidable indeed. When report reached him the fighting waxed hot, he sprang to his feet, buckled on's sword, and fared forth to join it. ‘A general's place is in the van,' quotha. I know not if he breathe yet.”

“Haply he had been wiser to stay behind, so that the Spaniards might have some single hand fully apprised of all that chanced throughout London and its surround,” Burbage said.

“Haply so,” Phelippes agreed. “But the dons—and English soldiers, too, I'll not deny—call such a clerkly wisdom, and do otherwise dispraise it. When the blood's up in 'em, they would spill it from their foes, knowing they were reckoned white-livered cravens for hanging back. Fear of ill fame's worse cowardice yet, though they see that not.”

“If Don Diego needs must away to the wars, might he not have left some other to be the head and central wit of the Spanish enterprise?” Shakespeare said.

“Why, so he did.” Even without his spectacles, Thomas Phelippes managed a sly, sharp-toothed smile. The pockmarked little man bowed slightly. “Your servant, sir.”

“Ho, ho!” Burbage thundered Jovian laughter. “And how many dons went astray on that account?”

“Perhaps a few.” Phelippes' chuckle, meant to be self-deprecating, somehow seemed boastful instead. “Ay, perhaps a few.”

“You are an army in one man,” Shakespeare said, wondering how many other Englishmen had aided this rebellion more. Few. Very few. But would the chroniclers remember a man like Phelippes? Would anyone write a play about the way he'd helped the uprising? Shakespeare thought about that, then shook his head. Phelippes' role had been important, yes, but not dramatic in any ordinary sense of the word.

Burbage asked, “Know you where Isabella and Albert might be?”

Phelippes shook his head. “No, and would I did, for they might rally not only the dons but also Englishmen of stout Romish faith.” He looked about, as if searching for the Queen and King, then laughed at himself. “They might stand beside me and I'd ken 'em not, so sorry are mine eyne without assisting lenses.”

“What befell your spectacles?” Shakespeare asked.

Thomas Phelippes laughed again, this time in embarrassment. A blush brought blood to his sallow cheeks. “The most prodigious bit of bungling any man might manage, forsooth—the undone laces of mine own shoon tripped me up, whereupon I did measure my length upon the floor, and the spectacles, flying off. . . .” He sighed. “I felt a proper fool, but no help for't, not until God grant me the leisure to seek replacement for my loss.”

“May that time come soon,” Burbage said, “the which would signify our final victory o'er the Spaniards and all who'd oppress us.”

Shakespeare's stomach growled. He'd been running on nerves and little else since the afternoon before, and was starting to feel the lack. “Simple hunger doth oppress me,” he said. “I shall famish, a dog's death.”

Burbage nodded, resting both hands on his protuberant belly. “Ay, e'en so,” he said. “Bread and meat and wine—food fit for heroes. Or say rather, none can long the hero play without 'em.”

“I pray you'll lead me to 'em, gentles, for I am not fit to find 'em on my own,” Phelippes said.

“Let's seek nourishment, then,” Shakespeare said, “and with good fortune we'll soon find ourselves in our aliment.”

“Give over!” Burbage's groan had nothing to do with hunger. He rolled his eyes up to the heavens, muttering, “And they took
me
for clot-poll Kemp!” But no more than Shakespeare could he resist a quibble, for he wagged a finger at the poet and added, “Better fortune were to find our aliment in us.”

They trudged through the streets of Westminster, past an Englishman pulling the boots off a dead Spaniard, past several dogs feeding at another corpse, past an Englishman hanged from the branch of an oak. A placard tied to the hanged man's body warned,
LET THEM WHO SERVED SPAIN BEWARE
. Thomas Phelippes was too shortsighted to see it, and Shakespeare didn't read it to him: that might too easily have been Phelippes dangling there.

Before long, they found an open tavern. Yesterday, the proprietor had probably bowed and scraped to Spaniards and to Englishmen in their pay. Now he served out beer and cheese and brown bread with a hearty, “God bless good Queen Bess!” The hanged man swung not far away. The taverner, plainly a flexible soul, did not care to join him.

And if, as may be, the dons cast us out again, 'twill be, “
Buenos días, señores
” once more
, Shakespeare thought with distaste. But that distaste extended only to the man himself; his provender was monstrous fine.

Running feet in the street outside. A cry of, “Fled! They're fled! By God, they're truly fled!” A voice cracking with excitement—then several voices, as more took up the shout.

Shakespeare and Burbage leaped up from their seats. Mugs and chunks of bread still in hand, they raced out to hear more. Thomas Phelippes stumbled after them, almost tripping over a stool. “Wait!” Burbage said in a great voice, a voice that brooked no argument. “Who's fled?”

“Is it . . . Elizabeth?” Shakespeare quavered. His heart leapt into his mouth. If the Queen, having escaped the Tower, had to escape England as well . . . Fear rose up in him like a choking cloud. Were grim Spanish soldiers marching on London by the tens of thousands, ready and able to smash this uprising into the dust?
Can I get me to foreign parts ahead of 'em?

But the man who'd brought the news shook his head. “Elizabeth? No, Lord love her, she's here. 'Tis Isabella and Albert who're fled like thieves in the night. We came upon a servant who packed 'em into a boat yesternight and watched 'em fare forth down the Thames, out of Westminster, out of London, to save their reeky gore. They're
fled
!”—another exultant whoop.

Burbage and Shakespeare stared at each other. Slowly, solemnly, they embraced. Shakespeare reached out and put an arm around Phelippes, too. Tears stung his eyes. “Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course,” he said. “Now are we graced with wreaths of victory?”

“I have great hope in that,” Burbage said.

“And I,” Thomas Phelippes agreed.

“And I. And even I,” Shakespeare whispered. “Perfect love, saith John, casteth out fear. Now I find me hope will serve as well, or peradventure better.” He yawned till the hinges of his jaw creaked. “And now, with hope in my heart, I dare rest.” To Burbage, he said, “If thou canst wake me by two o' the clock, I prithee, call me. Sleep hath seized me wholly.”

But the player shook his big head. He yawned, too. “Not I, Will. Being likewise fordone, I'd liefer lay me down beside thee.”

“Sleep, the both of you, and fear not,” Phelippes said. “I'll stand watch, and wake you at the hour appointed: a tiny recompense for the service you have done me, I know, but a first building stone in the edifice of gratitude. Sleep dwell upon your eyes, my friends, peace in your breasts.”