Ruled Britannia (69 page)

Bodies lay here and there along the Strand and Fleet Street. Carrion birds rose from them in skrawking clouds as Shakespeare and Burbage walked past, then settled again to renew their feast. Most of the bodies were already naked, garments stolen by human scavengers there ahead of the birds.

“Holla, what scene is this?” Burbage said, pointing at the long column of men emerging from Ludgate and trudging towards him and Shakespeare.

Shakespeare shaded his eyes to peer through the cloud of dust the men kicked up. “Why, Spanish prisoners, an I mistake me not,” he said a moment later. “So many swarthy souls cannot be of English race.”

“You have the right of it,” Burbage agreed when the head of the column came a little closer. “Those guardsmen—see you?—they're surely Englishmen.”

“E'en so,” Shakespeare said. One of the guards at the head of the column, a huge fellow with butter-yellow hair and beard who bore an old-fashioned cut-and-thrust broadsword—no fancy rapier for him!—waved cheerfully at the two men from the Theatre. Shakespeare and Burbage returned the salute. They left the road and stood on the verge as the prisoners shambled past.

Shakespeare stared at the stream of sad, dark faces. “Seek you de Vega?” Burbage asked.

“I do,” the poet answered. “I'd fain know what befell him. Why came he not to the Theatre yesterday?”

“Whatever the reason, I'll shed no tears o'er him,” Burbage said. “And in especial I'll shed no tears o'er the said absence, nor o'er its long continuance. I trembled lest he burst in halfway through Act Three at the head of a company of dons, crying, ‘Give over! All's up!' ”

“I had me the selfsame thought.” Shakespeare knew he would never remember that first production of
Boudicca
without remembering the raw fear that went with it, the fear he could smell in the tiring room. He kept peering at the Spaniards. “Here, though, I see him not . . . nor any other.”

“Eh?” Burbage said. “What's that?” Shakespeare didn't answer. He'd been eyeing not only the captives but also their guards, wondering if he'd find Ingram Frizer among the latter. Having already encountered Nick Skeres, he found the prospect of meeting another of Robert Cecil's men not at all unlikely. And the chances for robbery—and perhaps for murder as well—shepherding a column of prisoners offered seemed right up Frizer's alley. But Shakespeare saw no more of him than of Lope de Vega.

He and Burbage came into London through Ludgate. Not far inside the gate, on the north side of Bowyer Row, stood a church dedicated to St. Martin. Two priests, still in their cassocks, had been hanged from the branches of a chestnut beside the church.
I SERVED ROME
, said a placard tied to one of them. The placard tied to the other lewdly suggested just how he'd served the Pope.

Burbage stared, unmoved, at the dangling bodies. “May all the inquisitors suffer the same fate,” he said in a voice like iron.

“May it be so indeed.” Shakespeare knew he sounded fiercely eager. Fostered by the dons, the English Inquisition had had ten years to force the faith of Rome down its countrymen's throats. “They played the tyrant over us; let all their misdeeds come down on their own heads to haunt 'em.”

He and Burbage walked on for a few paces. Then the player said, “If Elizabeth triumph here—which God grant—how many Papist priests'll be left alive in a year's time?”

“But a few, and those all desperate lest the hounds take them,” Shakespeare said. Burbage nodded, plainly liking the prospect. Shakespeare sighed. Part of him would miss the grandeur of Catholic ritual. He knew better than to say any such thing: he had not the stuff of martyrs in him. He'd likewise meekly accepted the Romish rite after Isabella and Albert drove Elizabeth from her throne.

Old men here, men of Lord Burghley's age, would have seen their kingdom's faith change—Shakespeare had to pause to count on his fingers—five different times, from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant to Catholic and now back to Protestant again. How could a man have any real faith left after so many swings? Better not to say that, either. Better not even to think it.

More dead priests either swung or lay in front of every church Shakespeare and Burbage passed. After a while, the corpses lost their power to shock.
Custom hath made it in me a property of easiness
: Shakespeare's own words sounded inside his head. Then he and Burbage came to St. Paul's. What the rampaging English had done to the priests there . . . Any man who could have stayed easy after seeing that had to be dead of soul.

“Oh, sweet Jesu,” Burbage mumbled. He turned his head away. Shakespeare did the same. Too late, too late. He would spend years trying to forget, and knew he would spend them in vain.

Burbage dwelt in Cordwainer Street Ward, east of the great church. His house stood not far from the Red Lion, a wooden beast that marked a courtyard whose shops sold broadcloths and other draperies. As he and Shakespeare came up to the front door, it flew open. His wife dashed out and threw herself into his arms.

“God be praised, thou'rt hale!” Winifred Burbage cried, politely adding, “and you as well, Master Shakespeare.” She gave her attention back to her husband. “This past day a thousand deaths I've died, knowing what thou'dst essay, dreading for that you came not hither. . . .” She was a well-made woman in her late twenties, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, worry now robbing her of much of her beauty.

Burbage kissed her, then struck a pose. “I
am
hale, as thou seest. What of thyself, and of William and Isabel?”

“We are well.” His wife seemed to be fighting to convince herself as
well as him. “The broil commencing, we kept within doors. A don was slain yonder, in front of Master Goodpasture's.” She pointed across the street. No sign of the body remained. Gathering herself, she went on, “But for that, all might have seemed to pass in some far country, but 'twas real, 'twas real.” She shivered.

So did Shakespeare, who'd seen more than she of how very real it was. He set a hand on Burbage's arm. “I praise the Lord all's well with you, and now I must away.”

“God keep you safe, Will,” the player said. Winifred Burbage nodded. In times like these, that was no idle phrase, but a real and urgent wish.

Church bells chimed two as Shakespeare started away from Burbage's house. He shivered again. Had it been but a day since Lord Westmorland's Men gave
Boudicca
instead of
King Philip
? That seemed impossible, but had to be true. He'd never known twenty-four more crowded hours. On a normal day, the company would be offering another play even now. Not today. He hoped the Theatre still stood. If not, how would he make his living? Like any player, he worried about that despite the money he'd got from Lord Burghley and from the dons for his two plays.

A man swaggered up the street with a featherbed over his shoulder, a cage with several small, frantically chirping birds in one hand, and a pistol in the other. How many Englishmen had used the uprising as an excuse for rapine against their own folk? That had hardly crossed Shakespeare's mind before a woman several blocks away screamed. How many Englishmen were using the uprising as an excuse for rape, too?
They revel the night, rob, murder, and commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways
, he thought sadly.

Here and there, fires still smoldered. Had the wind been stronger, much of London might have burned. He started to cross himself to thank God that hadn't happened, but arrested the gesture before it was well begun. Up till yesterday, not signing himself could have marked him as a Protestant heretic. Now, using the sign of the cross might make him out to be a stubborn Papist. Men of fixed habit, men who could not quickly and easily adapt to changing times, would surely die because others judged them to be of the wrong opinion. It had happened before, the last time ten years ago.

He turned up Bishopsgate Street and hurried north towards his lodging-house. Less than a day earlier, he'd roared south down the same
street towards the Tower of London, shouting, “Death—Death—Death to the dons!” And death had come to a great many of them since, and to a great many Englishmen as well. Yes, death had had his day, and Shakespeare feared him not yet glutted.

Turning left off Bishopsgate Street, the poet made his way through the maze of side streets and stinking alleys to the Widow Kendall's house. When he passed the ordinary where he often supped, he murmured, “Oh, praise God,” to see it unharmed. That likely meant Kate was all right. He almost stopped to let her know he was safe, but, yawning, kept on instead. Tonight would do. He desperately craved more sleep.

The front door to the Widow Kendall's house stood open. Shakespeare frowned. That was unusual. His landlady habitually kept it closed, fearing—with some reason—thievery. Then a shriek rang from within the house. Shakespeare broke into a run.

Jane Kendall screamed again as he dashed through the front door and into the parlor. Cicely Sellis held a stool in front of her as if she were a lion-tamer, doing her best to keep at bay a man who menaced her with a dagger that almost made a smallsword.

Altogether without thinking, Shakespeare tackled the man from behind. The fellow let out a startled grunt. The knife flew from his hand. The Widow Kendall let out another shriek. Shakespeare noticed it only absently. He bore the man to the ground as Cicely Sellis grabbed the dagger. His foe tried to twist and strike at him, but all his movements were slow and clumsy. Though anything but a fighting man, Shakespeare had no trouble subduing him.

And when he did . . . “De Vega!” he exclaimed.

A great swollen livid bruise covered the left half of Lope's forehead. Shakespeare marveled that anyone could take such a hurt without having his skull completely smashed. No wonder the Spaniard was slower and less formidable than he might have been.

Almost as an afterthought, Shakespeare remembered he too had a knife. He pulled it free and held it to Lope's throat. “Give over!” he panted. “Cease your struggles, else you perish on the instant.”

De Vega tensed for a final heave, but then went limp instead. “I yield me,” he said sullenly. When he stared up at Shakespeare, one pupil was bigger than the other.

“Wherefore came you hither?” the poet asked him. “And why your menace 'gainst Mistress Sellis?”

“Wherefore?” Lope echoed. “For to kill this
bruja
, this witch, this whore—”

“I am no man's whore,” Cicely Sellis said. Shakespeare noted she did not deny the other.

“Heaven be praised you came when you did, Master Will,” the Widow Kendall said. “Methought there'd be foul, bloody murther done in mine own parlor.”

“Haply not, had you helped more and wailed less,” the cunning woman told her, voice tart.

Jane Kendall glared. She looked as if she wanted to answer sharply but did not have the nerve. Shakespeare would have thought twice before angering Cicely Sellis, too.

He pulled his attention back to Lope de Vega. “Say on. What mean you?”

De Vega hesitated, then shrugged. “Well, why not? What boots it now? Having heard you were seen consorting with Robert Cecil in the street, I hastened hither yesterday, to learn if you purposed treason despite your fine verses on his Most Catholic Majesty.”

Shakespeare shivered. So some spy had recognized Robert Cecil even with his beggar's disguise! By what flimsy threads the uprising had hung! But they hadn't broken, not quite. Shakespeare asked, “How hath this aught to do with Mistress Sellis?”

“Why, we chanced to meet in this very parlor,” Lope answered, as if Shakespeare should already have known that. “We chanced to meet and, she asking why I was come, I spake the truth, thinking her honest—”

“And so I am,” Cicely Sellis said. By the Widow Kendall's expression, her opinion differed, but she held her tongue.

“She bade me enter her chamber,” Lope continued. Jane Kendall stirred yet again. Yet again, she dared do no more than stir. “She bade me enter her chamber,” the Spaniard repeated, “and there she bewitched me. By some foul sorcery, she cast oblivion upon me, made me to forget why I'd come hither, made me to forget I was for the Theatre bound, there to play Don Juan de Idiáquez. . . .”

At that, the Widow Kendall did cross herself. Her lips moved in a silent paternoster. Cicely Sellis only shrugged. Mommet came out of her chamber and wove around her ankles. Bending to scratch behind the cat's ears, she said, “ 'Twas but the same sleight I used to calm Master Street this Easter past.” Mommet purred. He pushed his face against the cunning woman's hand.

“Ah,” Shakespeare said: the most noncommittal noise he could make. He'd thought what she did to Jack Street then was witchcraft, and no mere sleight. His landlady's fear-filled eyes said she thought the same.

“And then,” Lope went on, “and then . . .” He shot a furiously burning glare at the cunning woman. “And then she did lie with me in love, to maze me further and lead me astray from my purpose in coming hither. Nor did she fail of hers.” Reproach filled his voice.
For himself or for her?
Shakespeare wondered.
Belike both
. His own gaze flicked from de Vega to Cicely Sellis and back again. He hadn't expected to be so jealous of the Spaniard.