Ruled Britannia (32 page)

“Ah?” He looked around. Only a couple of other men sat in the ordinary, and they were quietly arguing over some business deal. Even so, he answered in a whisper of his own: “Your master hath fitted out a close room for such dealings?”

“So hath he done, upstairs. For a shilling . . .”

With a laugh, Shakespeare shook his head. “Stockfish it shall be.” Did its being forbidden make a threepenny beefsteak suddenly quadruple in worth? Not to him.
And you were wise to take no chances on betraying yourself in a small way, lest you discover your larger treason
, he thought.

Kate said, “I've heard this is not truly Lent at all, the which'd make the eating of meat at this season no sin.”

“I've heard the same,” Shakespeare admitted. “But the priests say otherwise, and theirs is the word of weight.” He was pleased she thought he refrained from fear of sin as well as because of cost. The more he had to hide, the less he wanted anyone thinking he had anything.

He'd almost finished his unsatisfying Lenten supper when someone who was not a regular strode into the ordinary and looked around. Shakespeare needed a moment to realize that, though he hadn't seen the fellow here before, he knew him even so. The newcomer recognized him at the same moment, and walked over towards his table. “Master Shakespeare, an I mistake not,” he said.

“Indeed, Constable Strawberry,” Shakespeare answered. “Give you good even.”

“And you.” The constable perched on a stool. He waved to Kate. “A cup of sherris-sack, and yarely.”

As the serving woman brought it, Shakespeare thanked heaven he hadn't brought
Boudicca
to the ordinary—although, he reminded himself uneasily, Walter Strawberry could also have come to the house where he lodged. Fighting that unease, he said, “What would you?”

“I'm turning up clods, you might say,” Strawberry replied gravely. He nodded, pleased with his own turn of phrase. “Aye, I'm turning up clods.”

See yourself in a glass, and you'll turn up a great one
. The thought flickered through Shakespeare's mind. He bit back the urge to fling it in Strawberry's face. Will Kemp wouldn't have hesitated, but Kemp had less to lose. Wearing his polite player's mask, Shakespeare asked, “And what have you turned up?”

“Somewhat of this, somewhat of that,” Strawberry answered. “For ensample, that you and the expired prompter, to wit one Geoffrey Martin, were prompt to quarrel not long before the time of his untimely demise. Forgive me for speaking prose, but there you have it.”

“I have worked with Master Martin since coming to London and joining Lord Westmorland's Men.” Shakespeare did his best to sound annoyed and not frightened. “We always quarrel when first I give him a play. Learned you that in your questioning?”

Constable Strawberry solemnly nodded. “I did, sir. Indeed I did. And what's the whyfore behind it?”

“That he would change what I would were left unchanged,” Shakespeare answered. “Every man who shapes a play will quarrel thus with a company's prompter. Learned you
that
in your questioning?”

“I did, sir,” Strawberry repeated.

“Then why”—Shakespeare almost said
whyfore
himself—“come you here?”

“Fear not, Master Shakespeare. I draw nearer the occasion of my occasion, so I do.” The constable took a scrap of paper from his wallet, peered down at it, and then put it back. “D'you ken a man named Frizer?”

“Frizer?” the poet echoed. Strawberry nodded. Shakespeare shook his head and shrugged. “No, sir. That name I wot not of.”

“Ingram Frizer, he calls himself,” Strawberry went on.

Ice ran through Shakespeare. He hoped his surprise and dismay didn't show. That loud-mouthed knifeman who'd asked if Geoff Martin was causing trouble . . . The poet made himself shrug again. “I am none the wiser, sir.”

“Ah, well. I've said the same thing, the very same thing, many a time, so I have.” The constable held up his mug and called to Kate: “Here, my dear, fetch me another, if you'd be so genderous.”

“So can she scarce help being,” Shakespeare remarked.

“Ah, in sooth? That likes me in a woman, genderosity, so it does. I thank you for learning me of it.” Strawberry laid a finger by the side of his nose and winked. When the serving woman refilled his mug, he patted her backside.

She poured wine in his lap. He let out a startled squawk. “Oh, your pardon, I pray you,” Kate said sweetly, and went back behind the counter.

Strawberry fumed. “Methought you said she was genderous of her person,” he grumbled, dabbing at himself. “I saw no hint of that—marry, none.” He sipped what was left of the wine, his expression still sour.

“A misunderstanding, belike,” Shakespeare said.

“Ay, truly, for I understood the miss to be of her person . . .” The constable took another pull at the mug, set it down, and looked at Shakespeare as if just realizing he was there. “Ingram Frizer,” he said again.

“I told you, sir, I know not the man.”

“You told me. Oh, yes, you told me.” Constable Strawberry nodded and then kept on nodding, as if he ran on clockwork. “But you ken a man who knows the aforespoken Frizer.”

“Not to my knowledge,” Shakespeare said.

“Ah, knowledge.” Strawberry was still nodding, perhaps wisely. “I
know all manner of things I have no knowledge of. But I say what I say, the which being so in dispect of the man.”

“
What
man?” Shakespeare demanded, hoping a show of temper would mask his growing fear. “I pray you, tell me who it is quickly and speak apace. One more inch of delay is a South Sea of discovery. Take the cork out of your mouth that I may drink your tidings. Pour this concealed man out of your mouth as wine comes out of a bottle.”

“As you like it, sir, I shall. His name is Nick Skeres. Will you tell me you ken him not? Eh? Will you?”

Shakespeare would have liked to, but dared not. Too many people had seen him with Skeres, and might give him the lie. “Yes, we've met,” he admitted. “We are not friends, he and I, but we've met.”

“Not friends, is it?” Walter Strawberry leaned forward, using his bulk to intimidate. “Be ye foes, then? Say you so?”

“No,” Shakespeare answered. “I say we are not friends. I ken the man not well enough to call him friend—nor he me, I'd venture.”

“I see.” Strawberry gave no sign as to whether he believed what the poet told him. “Know you where this Nick Skeres' locution is to be located?”

“Where he dwells, mean you?”

“Said I not that very thing?”

“I dare say. Your pardon, Constable, but I know not. As I told you, we are but acquaintances, not friends.”

He waited tensely for the next question Strawberry would send his way. The constable was not bright, but he was diligent. He might—he plainly did—need longer than a more clever man would have to find his answers, but he had a chance of finding them in the end. Not tonight, though. Finishing his wine, he got to his feet. “I thank you for passing the time of day with me, Master Shakespeare, I do. Haply 'twill prove in your regard much ado about nothing. I hope it may so. Give you good den.” He lumbered out of the ordinary.

“Who was that man?” Kate asked after Strawberry closed the door behind him. “Tell me he is your friend, and you shall no more be mine.”

“God save me, no!” Shakespeare exclaimed. “He is a constable from Shoreditch, inquiring after the death of poor Geoff Martin, of which I believe I have spoke somewhat.”

“A constable? I might have known,” Kate said darkly. “With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and prove himself an ass.”

“At bottom, he is nothing else—but an officious ass, mind.”

“I would have more to say of him than that . . . but let it go, let it go.
Put his hands on me, would he? Marry, I'd best bathe, to wash the taint away. A constable!” She muttered something else, which Shakespeare, perhaps fortunately, could not make out.

He had intended going back to his lodging and working on
Boudicca
there. He'd just sat down in front of the fire, though, when Cicely Sellis came out of her room with a swarthy fellow who lifted his hat to her, said, “
Muchas gracias
,” and then vanished into the night.

As casually as he could, Shakespeare said, “That was a Spaniard.” He hoped his words covered the pounding of his heart.

The cunning woman nodded. “He is . . . friend to a woman who hath oft come hither, and so thought to ask of me a question of his own.”

“I hope he paid well,” Shakespeare said.

Cicely Sellis nodded again, and smiled. “He did indeed. The dons are fools with their money, nothing less. Whether I gave him full . . . satisfaction I know not, though I dare hope.”

“Ah.” Shakespeare had been about to ask what the Spaniard had wanted, and had been afraid she wouldn't tell him. Now he thought he knew, especially as the fellow was well into his middle years. “He hath a difficulty in rising to the occasion?”

“E'en so.” Amusement glinted in Cicely Sellis' eye.

“And have you a physic for the infirmity in's firmity?” Shakespeare coughed. “I do but inquire from curiosity, mind.”

“Certes.” That amused glint got brighter. “How shall I say't? Often-times, if a man believe I have this physic, why then I do.”

Shakespeare found himself amused, too. “Strong reasons make strong actions, then?” he asked.

“Betimes they do, Master Shakespeare,” the cunning woman said. “Ay, betimes they do. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.”

“A truth. Without doubt, a truth. Would more knew it.”

Now Cicely Sellis shook her head. “Nay, say not so. Were it other than a secret close kept, who would visit cunning women? Do you publish it, and I starve.” She clasped her hands together in mock distress.

“No.” Shakespeare laughed out loud as he too shook his head.

“How not? How could it be otherwise?”

“How? I'll tell you straight. What's the common curse of mankind? Folly and ignorance. To wisdom man's a fool that will not yield. I do now mind me of a saying, ‘The fool doth think he is wise'—and you may as well forbid the sea for to obey the moon, as or by oath remove or counsel shake the fabric of man's folly. That is truth, or there be liars.”

“You think not much of them God made.”

“I think God made them—fools,” Shakespeare said. “Or will you quarrel?”

“Not I,” Cicely Sellis said. “Never let it be said I could do such an unchristian thing as that. And I'll leave you to your work now, good sir, lest you find reason to quarrel with me.” She dropped him a curtsy that might have come from a noblewoman—not that he'd ever had a noblewoman drop him a curtsy—and drew back into her room. “God give you good even,” she said, closing the door behind her.

“And you,” Shakespeare answered, though he wasn't sure she heard. He perched on the stool in front of the table, then nervously got up and put more wood on the fire. The Widow Kendall would complain in the morning when she found it gone, but she wasn't here now, and Shakespeare needed the light. He also needed to take a deep breath and calm himself before setting pen to paper on
Boudicca. First Constable Strawberry, then that whoreson Spaniard . . . 'Swounds, an I die not of an apoplexy, 'twill be the hand of God on my shoulder, holding me safe from harm
.

It was, perhaps, not by accident that his mind and his pen turned to the revolt Britain, under the queen of the Iceni, raised against the Romans, and to the Romans' horrified response.
How would they feel, seeing a province they thought subdued rise and smite 'em?
he wondered.

His pen began to move. Poenius Postumus, a Roman officer, began to speak on the page:

 

“Nor can Rome task us with impossibilities,

Or bid us fight against a flood; we serve her,

That she may proudly say she hath good soldiers,

Not slaves to choke all hazards. Who but fools,

That make no difference betwixt certain dying

And dying well, would fling their fames and fortunes

Into this Britain-gulf, this quicksand-ruin,

That, sinking, swallows us! what noble hand

Can find a subject fit for blood there? or what sword

Room for his execution? what air to cool us,

But poison'd with their blasting breaths and curses,

Where we lie buried quick above the ground,

And are, with labouring sweat and breathless pain,

Kill'd like slaves, and cannot kill again?”

 

Shakespeare paused to read what he'd just written, and nodded in satisfaction. He started to add something to Poenius' speech, but his pen chose that moment to run dry. Muttering, hoping he wouldn't lose his inspiration, he inked it and resumed: