Ruled Britannia (14 page)

“As you reckon best,” Shakespeare said with a shrug. “Me, I'd not care to sleep here in my own bed before fleeing the sheriffs.”

“You fret more than I,” Foster said, not unkindly; perhaps he was doing his best not to call Shakespeare a coward. “May I turn Turk if they're here or ever I'm gone. You've seen naught of me, mind.”

“Think what you will of me, but I'm no delator,” Shakespeare said.
And if they pull off my boots and give me the bastinado till I can bear no more?
He did his best not to think about that. He was glad when Peter Foster nodded, apparently satisfied, and went off to bed. But, by the way
Love's Labour's Won
foundered, it might have been aboard Sir Patrick Spens' ship on the luckless voyage to Norway. Shakespeare went to bed himself. Jack Street did indeed make the night hideous, but his snores were the least of what kept Shakespeare awake so long.

When he got up, Foster was gone. No one had come after the clever little man with the interesting tools. Shakespeare went off to the Theatre in a thoughtful mood. His roommate knew crime as he himself knew poesy, and might well have made a better living at his chosen trade.

 

“
B
UENOS DÍAS
,
YOUR
E
XCELLENCY
,” Lope de Vega said, sweeping off his hat and bowing to Captain Baltasar Guzmán. “How may I serve you this morning?”

“
Buenos días
, Lieutenant,” Guzmán replied. “First of all, let me compliment you on
La dama boba
. Your lady was a most delightful boob, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her antics yesterday.”

Lope bowed again, this time almost double. “I am your servant, sir!” he exclaimed in delight. His superior had never before paid him such a compliment for his theatrical work—or, indeed, for work of any other kind.

Captain Guzmán went on, “And my compliments especially for wringing such a fine performance from your Diego. I know that cannot have been easy.”

“Had I known I would have to use him, I would have made the servant a sleepier man,” de Vega said. “As things were—” He mimed cracking a whip over Diego's back.

“Even so.” Guzmán nodded. Then he raised an elegant eyebrow and asked, “Tell me: after which of your mistresses was Lady Nisea modeled? Or should I say, which of your former mistresses? The story is, they had it in mind to throw you into the bear pit for the mastiffs' sport.”

“Please believe me, your Excellency, it was not so bad as that.” He asked Captain Guzmán to believe him. He didn't tell his superior that what he said was true.

Guzmán's eyebrows rose higher still. “No, eh? It certainly has been a mighty marvel hereabouts. I suppose I should admire your energy, if not your luck at the bear garden. Everyone who saw them says a man would be lucky to have one such woman, let one two.”

How can I answer that?
de Vega wondered. Deciding he couldn't, he didn't try. Instead, he repeated, “How may I serve you, sir?”

Rather than answering him directly, Baltasar Guzmán said, “Your timing could have been better, Lieutenant. In fact, it could hardly have been worse.”

“Sir?”

“Have you forgotten you are to meet with Cardinal Parsons this morning?” Guzmán eyed him, then assumed a severe expression. “I see you have. What a pity. It could be that the Cardinal, being an Englishman and having just come from Canterbury, has not heard of your, ah, escapade. It could be. I hope it is. But I would not count on it. The man is devilishly well informed.”

Lope sighed. “Yes, sir. I know he is,” he said glumly. “I'll do the best I can.”

“Splendid. I'm sure you said the same to both your lady friends.”

Ears burning, Lope beat a hasty retreat from Captain Guzmán's office. As he'd feared, Enrique waylaid him in the hall. Guzmán's servant also bubbled with enthusiasm for
La dama boba
. “I especially admired Nisea's transformation from a boob to a woman with a mind—and a good mind—of her own,” he said.

Since Lope had worked especially hard to bring off that transformation, Enrique's praise should have delighted him. And, in fact, it did leave him pleased, but he had no time for Enrique now. “You will excuse me, I hope,” he said, “but I'm on my way to St. Paul's.”

“Oh, yes, of course, for your meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury.” Enrique nodded wisely.
Everyone knows my business better than I do
, de Vega thought with a stab of resentment. Captain Guzmán's servant continued, “He is a very wise man, and a very holy man, too, no doubt.”

“I know,” Lope said, desperate to be gone. “If you will excuse me—” Retreating still, he hurried out of the Spanish barracks and west to the greatest cathedral in London. The booksellers near the steps tempted him to linger, but he resisted temptation and went up the stairs and into the great church.
If books came bound in skirts, though . . .
Annoyed at himself, he shook his head to try to dislodge the vagrant thought.

A deacon came up to him as he stepped into the cool, dim quiet. “And you would be, sir . . . ?” the fellow asked in English.

Lope proudly replied in his own Castilian tongue: “I have the honor to call myself Senior Lieutenant Lope Félix de Vega Carpio.”

He was not surprised to find the deacon spoke Spanish, too. “Ah, yes. You will be here to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury. Come with me,
señor
.”

Quiet evaporated as the deacon led de Vega through the cathedral. Masterless men dickered with merchants and artisans who might have work for them. Lawyers in rich robes traded gossip. Smiling bonarobas, fragrant with sweet perfume and showing as much soft flesh as they dared, lingered near the lawyers. One of the women smiled at Lope. He ignored her, which turned the smile to a scowl. He didn't care to buy a tart's favors, no matter how fancy and lovely she was: he preferred to fall in love, or at least to imagine he'd fallen in love.
And what's the difference?
he wondered.
Only how long the feeling lasts
.

“Do have a care,” the deacon warned him. “Picking pockets, or slitting them, is a sport here.”

“This too, I suppose, is Christian charity,” Lope said. The deacon gave him an odd look.

Away from the vast public spaces of St. Paul's were the chambers the clergy used for their own. The deacon led de Vega to one of those. Then, like Enrique going in to see Captain Guzmán, he said, “Wait here for a moment, please,” and ducked into the room by himself. When he returned, he beckoned. “His Eminence awaits you with pleasure.”

“He is too kind,” Lope murmured.

Even in the rich regalia of a cardinal, Robert Parsons looked like a monk. His face was long and thin and pale; his close-cropped, graying beard did nothing to hide the hollows under his cheekbones. He held out his ring for de Vega to kiss. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Senior Lieutenant,” he said in Latin.

“Thank you, your Eminence,” Lope replied in the same language. He switched to English: “I speak your tongue, sir, an you have no Spanish.”

“I prefer Latin. It is more precise,” Parsons said. By his appearance, he was nothing if not a precise man.

“As you wish, of course.” Lope hoped his own Latin would meet the test. He read it well, but he was no clergyman, and so did not often speak it. “I am at your service in every way.”

“Good.” Cardinal Parsons looked down at some notes on his desk and nodded to himself. “I am told you are the Spanish officer most concerned with sniffing out treason in the English theatre.”

“Yes, your Eminence, I believe that to be true,” Lope answered, pleased he'd remembered to use the infinitive.

“This is because”—the Archbishop of Canterbury checked his notes again—“you are yourself an aspiring dramatist?”

“Yes, your Eminence,” de Vega repeated, wondering if the English churchman would take him to task for it.

But Parsons only said, “I am glad to hear it, Lieutenant. For treason
is
afoot in that sphere, and you, being familiar with its devices, are less likely to let yourself be cozened than would someone uninitiated in its mysteries.”

Lope had to think before he answered. The cardinal's Latin was so fluent, so confident, he might have been whisked by a sorcerer from the days of Julius Caesar to this modern age. He made no concessions to
Lope's weaker Latinity; Lope got the idea Parsons made few concessions to anyone, save possibly the Pope.

“Your Eminence, I go to the theatre more to watch the audience than to watch the actors,” de Vega said. “Many of them I know well, and they have not shown themselves disloyal to Queen Isabella and King Albert.”

Robert Parsons snorted like a horse. Lope needed a moment to realize that was intended for laughter. Parsons said, “And how likely is it that they would declare their treason before an officer of his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain?”

“You make me out to be a fool, a child,” Lope said angrily.

“By no means, Lieutenant.” The Archbishop of Canterbury's smile was cold as winter along the Scottish border. “With your own words, you make yourself out to be such.”

Without his intending it, de Vega's hand moved a couple of inches toward the hilt of his rapier. He arrested the motion. Even if he was insulted, drawing sword on a prelate would certainly send him to gaol, and probably to hell. He gave the cardinal a stiff bow. “If you will excuse me, your Eminence—”

“I will not.” Parsons' voice came sharp as a whipcrack. “I tell you there is treason amongst these men, and you will be God's instrument in flensing it out.”

“But, your Eminence”—Lope spread his hands—“if they do not show it to me, how can I find it? There is no treason in plays that are performed. The Master of the Revels sees and approves them before a play reaches the stage. Sir Edmund Tilney is the one who will know if the poets plan sedition—indeed, he has arrested some for trying to say what must not be said.”

Like Parsons' face, his fingers were long and thin and pale. When he drummed them on the desktop, they reminded de Vega of a spider's legs. “Again, you speak of overt treason,” Parsons said. “The enemies of God and Spain, like Satan their patron, are more subtle than that. They skulk. They conspire. They—”

“With whom?” Lope broke in.

“I shall tell you with whom: with the English nobles who still dream of setting at liberty that murderous heretic jade, Elizabeth their former Queen.” Parsons' eyes flashed. “King Philip was too merciful by half in not burning her when first she was seized, and again in not slaying more of the men who served her and upheld her while she ruled.”

He had, Lope remembered, spent more than twenty years in exile from his native land. When he spoke of skulking and conspiring, he spoke of what he knew. Cautiously, de Vega asked, “Have you anyone in particular in mind?”

He expected the Archbishop of Canterbury to name Christopher Marlowe—everyone seemed to put Marlowe at the head of his list of troublemakers—or George Chapman or Robert Greene (though Greene, he'd heard, was ill unto death after eating of a bad dish of pickled herring). But Parsons, after an abrupt nod, replied, “Yes. A slanderous villain by the name of William Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare?” Lope said in surprise. “I pray your Eminence to forgive me, but you must be mistaken. I know Shakespeare well. He is a man of good temper—of better temper than most poets, I would say.”

“What of the friends of poets?” Cardinal Parsons asked.

Lope needed a heartbeat to notice he'd put the feminine ending on
friends
. Well, Baltasar Guzmán had warned not much got past the cardinal, and he was right. “Your Eminence!” Lope said reproachfully.

“Let it go. Let it go. Forget I said it,” Parsons told him. “But I warn you, Lieutenant, there is more to that man than meets the eye. He has been seen in homes where a man of his station has no fit occasion to call, and he keeps company no honest man would keep, or want to keep.”

“He knows Marlowe well,” Lope said. “Knowing Marlowe, he will also know Marlowe's acquaintances. Many of them, I fear, are men such as you describe.”

“There is more to it than that,” Cardinal Parsons insisted. “I do not know how much more. That, I charge you to uncover. But I tell you, Lieutenant, there is more to find.” His nostrils quivered, like those of a hunting hound straining to take a scent.

Captain Guzmán had dark suspicions about Shakespeare, too. Lope had dismissed those: who ever thinks his immediate superior knows anything? But if Robert Parsons and Guzmán had the same idea, perhaps there was something to it. “I shall do everything I can to aid the cause of Spain, your Eminence,” de Vega said.

Chill disapproval in his voice, Parsons answered, “It is not merely the cause of Spain. It is the cause of God.” But then he softened: “I do take your point, Lieutenant. Work hard. And work quickly. My latest news is that his Most Catholic Majesty does not improve, but draws closer day by day to his eternal reward. With his crisis, very likely, will
come the crisis of our holy Catholic faith here in England. No less than the inquisitors, you defend against heresy. Go forth, knowing God is with you.”