He wouldn't be burned alive, not for treason, or most of him wouldn't. They would haul him to Tower Hillon a hurdle, and hang him till he was almost dead. Then they'd cut him down and draw him as if he were a sheep in a shambles. They'd throw his guts into the fire while he watched, if he was unlucky enough to keep life in him yet. That done, they would quarter him and display his head and severed limbs on London Bridge and elsewhere around the city to dissuade others from such thoughts and deeds.

He shuddered. That was English law; Elizabeth had used Catholics who plotted against her thus. For all he knew, the Spaniards had worse punishments for traitors.

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped and almost screamed. "I humbly do beseech you of your pardon, Master Shakespeare," Jack Hungerford said. "I meant not to startle you."

"My thoughts were . . . elsewhere," Shakespeare said shakily, and the tireman nodded. Shakespeare gathered himself. "What would you?"

"Why, I'd ready you for your turn on stage, of course," Hungerford replied, his eyes plainly asking, How far off were your wits? "The hour draws nigh, you know."

"I'll come with you." Shakespeare followed him as he'd lately followed too many men from whom he sooner would have fled.

Back in the tiring room, Hungerford was all brisk efficiency. He powdered Shakespeare's face and hands with ground chalk, then smeared black grease under his eyes for a skull-like effect. "Here, see yourself,"

he said, and pressed a gla.s.s into Shakespeare's hand.

Shakespeare studied the streaky image the mirror gave back. "Am I more haggard than I was before?"

he murmured.

Hungerford, perhaps fortunately, paid him no attention. The tireman was rummaging through the company's robes to find a smoke-gray one shot through with silver thread. "You'll have a care with this down under stage," he said severely. " 'Tis the sole habiliment we have fit for a royal spook. s.m.u.tch it, and the cleaning costs us dear."

"I'll mind me of't."

"Good. Good. You'd better." Like any tireman worth his salt, Jack Hungerford cared more for his clothes and other properties than for the players who wore them. He thrust a polished pewter crown at Shakespeare. "See how't glisters like silver? There's not a ghost in all the world can match the Prince's father for finery."

"I've no doubt you're right, Master Hungerford." Shakespeare set the crown on his head. It was too small. He'd been playing the ghost ever since he wrote the tragedy, and had yet to persuade the tireman to get a crown that fit him.

Hungerford handed him a bowl full of shredded, crumpled paper. "Do you remember to set this alight just afore the trap door opens. 'Twill make a fine smoke wherewith to amaze the groundlings."

"I shall remember," Shakespeare promised gravely. "Do you recall in turn, I have played the role before.

Do you further recall, I am he who devised it."

The tireman only sniffed, as a mother might when her son insisted he was a grown man. However much he insisted, she would never believe it, not in her heart. Hungerford never believed players knew anything. The more they said they did, the less he believed it, too.

A rising buzz came from out front: the day's audience, hurrying into the Theatre. When Shakespearestood to go to his place under the stage and await his cue to rise through the trap door, Jack Hungerford grabbed the bowl full of paper sc.r.a.ps and set it in his hand before he could reach for it. "See you? You would have forgotten it," Hungerford said, triumph in his voice.

What point to quarreling with him? Shakespeare had bigger worries, swarms of them. "If you'd have it so, so it is for you," he said wearily. The tireman stirred, about to speak again. Shakespeare spoke first: "By my halidom, Master Jack, I'll not forget me the candle to light it with."

Hungerford nodded. By his expression, he couldn't decide whether Shakespeare had merely called him by his Christian name or had called him a Jack, a saucy, paltry, silly fellow. Since Shakespeare had intended that he wonder, the poet was well enough pleased.

He did make a point of remembering the candle. Hungerford would never have let him live it down had he forgotten after their skirmish. He also made a point of carrying it carefully, so he didn't have to come back and start it burning again. Not out, brief candle, he thought. Light this fool the way through dusty gloom.

He had to walk doubled over; had the stage been high enough to let him straighten up, it would have been too high to let the standing groundlings see the action on it. He peered out at the crowd through c.h.i.n.ks and knotholes. He couldn't see much--the men and women in front blocked his view of those farther back. His ears told him more than his eyes could. It sounded like a full house, or something close, and it sounded like an enthusiastic one.

"It'll like thee well, Lucy," said a man standing close enough to Shakespeare for his voice to be distinct among the mult.i.tude. "The Prince of Denmark, he feigns he's mad, so--"

"Go to, Hal!" Lucy broke in. "I've not seen it afore, and I shan't thank thee for spoiling the devisings."

G.o.d bless you, Lucy. You're a woman of sense, Shakespeare thought. He knew too many playwrights who were too fond of boasting of their machinations. He thought them fond in the other sense of the word, for their plays seemed insipid to him when he knew ahead of time everything that happened.

Footsteps on the boards above his head. Words heard dimly through thick wooden planks: the sentinels Bernardo and Francisco, talking of the night. Shakespeare hurried over to the little platform under the trap door. He lit the papers. They caught at once, and began filling the s.p.a.ce under the stage with smoke.

It tickled his nose and his throat. He fought against a cough.

Horatio and Marcellus came on. Francisco left, his boots thumping. Shakespeare c.o.c.ked his head to one side, listening for his cue. His chalky fingers closed on the trap-door latch. Bernardo raised his voice to make sure the waiting ghost heard: ". . . Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one--"

Shakespeare loosed the latch. Down swung the trap door. He'd made sure the hinges were well oiled, so they didn't squeal. Up he popped through the door, with a fine cloud of smoke around him. A woman shrieked, which made two more cry out in sympathy. If one screamed, others always followed. And he was good enough to make that first one scream.

He had no lines here, or in his next couple of appearances. He had but to stand, looking ominous and menacing, till his cue to stalk off, and then go below once more. One of the tireman's helpers crawled out to bring him another bowl full of bits of paper and a fresh candle. "You nigh gasted them out of their hose, Master Shakespeare," he whispered.

"Good," Shakespeare whispered back. "Get thee gone." The tireman's helper went back the way he'dcome. Shakespeare crouched in the smoke under the stage, fuming a little himself. I'd best know how to frighten them with the ghost, he thought. If not I, then who? He had failed once or twice: he'd been bad, or the audience had been bad, or who could say what had gone wrong? He didn't dwell on the failures. Every player had them, in every role. But he'd made the most of the part far more often. And so I shall again today.

He hadn't long to brood. The ghost appeared again in the first scene, and again vanished without a word.

Then he appeared once more in the fourth scene of the first act. He was once more silent, but he beckoned to Burbage as the astonished Prince of Denmark.

The fifth scene was his. He had to vanish once more at the end of the fourth, then come back up on stage through a trap door closer to the tiring room. And he had his lines, urging the Prince to action against his murderous uncle. Shakespeare spoke them in a rumbling, echoing voice that might indeed have come from beyond the grave. Gasps and a couple of m.u.f.fled squeals told him his words and looks were striking home. He remembered to use the gesture Burbage had liked during the rehearsal. The other player beamed. Shakespeare wasn't sure it really added anything, but it pleased Burbage and it didn't hurt.

"Adieu, adieu, adieu!" Shakespeare said. "Remember me." He stretched the words out into something close to a wail, then sank through the trap door. By that time, the s.p.a.ce under the stage was so full of smoke, it wasn't far from the sulphurous and tormenting flames to which the ghost said he must render himself up. He had a few lines from below later in the scene, and then an appearance in the third act, where the Prince could see him but his mother could not. After that, eyes stinging, he retreated to the tiring room. "Have a care with the robe, Master Will, do," Jack Hungerford said. "Here, sit you down. I'll get it off you." Once the robe was safe, he added, "Well played. I've rarely seen you better in the part."

"For which I thank you." Shakespeare rubbed his streaming eyes. " 'Swounds, give me a bowl of water, that I may wash away the smoke." He coughed. Now he could, without marring the play.

"You'll take off the chalk with water, but not the black," the tireman warned. "I have a cake of soap for that."

"Give it me, but plain water first."

Shakespeare was drying his face on a grimy towel when Burbage took advantage of a scene where he wasn't on stage to go back and clasp his hand. Pointing to Shakespeare, he started to laugh. "With your paint half off and all besmeared, your aspect is more fearful now than ever before the groundlings."

"I believe't." Shakespeare turned to the tireman. "Where's that soap, Master Hungerford?"

He washed again, then dried himself once more. "Better," Burbage said. "And the specter was as fine as you've ever given him." He imitated the gesture he'd urged Shakespeare to use. "Saw you how the audience clung to your every word thereafter, you having drawn them into the action thus?"

Shakespeare had seen no such thing, but he didn't feel like arguing. Things had gone well, no matter why.

That would do. "They did seem pleased," he said.

"As they had reason to be. And now I needs must dash--I'm before 'em again in a moment." Burbage clapped Shakespeare on the shoulder, then hurried back toward the stage.

In his shirt and hose, Shakespeare watched the rest of The Prince of Denmark from the wings. In his present mood, a scene just past pleased him most: the one where the Prince admonished the players to speak trippingly and warned the clowns against making up their own lines. He stood for every poet everborn.

After the play ended, Shakespeare came out in his own person to take his bows. He used the gesture he'd made while playing opposite the Prince to show the audience who he was. And Richard Burbage, always generous, waved to him and called out to the crowd, "Behold the man whose play you saw!" That got him more applause. He bowed deeply.

The groundlings streamed out of the Theatre. By their buzz, they liked what they'd seen. Shakespeare retreated to the tiring room to don shoes and doublet and hat and talk things over with the company and with the players and poets and other folk who got past the glower of the tireman's burly helpers.

In came Christopher Marlowe, a pipe of tobacco in his mouth. As soon as Shakespeare caught the first whiff of smoke, he started to cough. "Marry, Kit, put it by, I prithee," he said.

"I will not, by G.o.d," Marlowe said, and took another puff. His eye swung to the beardless youth who'd played Ophelia, and who was now getting back into the clothes proper to his s.e.x. "All they who love not tobacco and boys are fools. Why, holy communion would have been much better being administered in a tobacco pipe."

He reveled in scandal and blasphemy. Knowing as much, Shakespeare didn't react with the horror his fellow poet tried to rouse. Instead, he said, "Put it by, or I'll break it, and that gladly. Having spent the whole of the first act beneath the stage, I'm smoked and to spare, smoked as a Warwickshire sausage."

"Ah. Then you have reason for asking. I'll do't." And Marlowe did, knocking the pipe against the sole of his shoe and grinding out the coals with his foot. He gave Shakespeare a mocking bow. "Your servant, sir."

"Gramercy." Shakespeare returned the bow as if he hadn't noticed the mockery. Nothing could be better calculated to annoy Marlowe.

Or so he thought, especially when Marlowe gave him a shark's smile and said, "d.a.m.n you again, Will."

"What, for speaking you soft? An I huff and fume, will't like you better?"

"No, no, no." Marlowe made as if to push him away. "I know the difference 'twixt small and great. De minibus non curat lex. No, d.a.m.n you for your Prince of Denmark."

This time, Shakespeare bowed in earnest. "Praise from the master's praise indeed."

"In this play, you are my master. And, since I fancy not being mastered, I aim t'overcome you. There are Grecian pots, 'tis said, with figures limned in contortions wild, and with the painter's brag writ above 'em: 'As Thus-and-So, my rival, never did.' After first seeing The Prince of Denmark last year, I set to work on Yseult and Tristan, afore which I shall not write, 'As Shakespeare never did,' but, when you watch it, you may take the thought as there."

"And then my turn will come round again, to see how I may outmatch you." Shakespeare's early tragedies owed a good deal to Marlowe, who'd led the theatre when Shakespeare came to London from his provincial home. Since then, Marlowe had chased him more often than the reverse. "We do spur each other on."

"We do," Marlowe agreed. "But you have in your flanks for now different spurs, of one sort . . . and another." He gave Shakespeare a sly look. "You're to make the Spaniards a King Philip?"

"I am." Shakespeare wasn't surprised Marlowe had heard about that. He didn't need to keep it secret, ashe did the other piece. Of course, Marlowe knew about that, or something about that, too. Shakespeare wished he didn't. The other poet did not know how to keep his mouth shut.

Marlowe proved as much now, saying, "But will they see it? Or will the players strut the stage in other parts?"

Shakespeare had been pondering the same question. He didn't care to discuss it with anyone else, especially in the crowded tiring room, and most especially. . . . "Have a care," he hissed. "The Spaniard comes. Would you have had him hear you prattle of boys and tobacco and communion?"

"Danger is my meat and drink," Marlowe answered blithely, and Shakespeare feared that was true.

Making a leg like a courtier, the other poet gave Lope de Vega his most charming smile. Even Shakespeare, for whom it was not intended, felt its force. "Master Lope!" Marlowe exclaimed. "Always a pleasure, and an honor."

"No, no--the pleasure is mine." De Vega returned the bow. He looked dapper and dangerous, the rapier on his hip seeming a part of him.

"I hear your comedy on the foolish woman was a great success," Marlowe said. Shakespeare had heard nothing of the sort. The less he heard of the Spaniards' doings, the happier he was. Marlowe went on, "

'Tis pity I have not Spanish enough to follow comfortably, else I had come to see how you wrought."

Lope de Vega bowed again. "You are too kind."

"By no means, sir." Yes, when Marlowe chose, he could charm the birds from the trees--as can any serpent, Shakespeare thought uneasily.

The Spaniard turned to him. "You will tell me at once, Master Shakespeare: is the Prince of Denmark mad, or doth he but feign his affliction?"

Marlowe's eyes gleamed. "I have asked myself that very question. So would any man of sense, on seeing the play. But here we have a man of better sense, for he asks not himself but the poet!"

"He is but mad north-northwest," Shakespeare answered. "When the wind is southerly he knows a hawk from a handsaw."

"Fie on you!" de Vega said, as Marlowe burst out laughing. Lope went on, "You give back the Prince's words, not your own."

"But, good my sir, if the Prince's words be not my own, whose then are they?" Shakespeare said, his voice as innocent as he could make it. "Certes, I purpose the question being asked. And I purpose each hearer to answer in himself, for himself."

"Men seek G.o.d and, seeking, find Him--so saith the Grecian poet," Marlowe observed. "Who'd have thought the like held for madness?"

He and Shakespeare could, if they chose, hash it out over pint after pint of bitter beer. If Lope de Vega reckoned himself insulted, or trifled with, that was a more serious matter. But the Spaniard seemed willing to let it pa.s.s. He changed the subject: "You are to write a play on the life of his Most Catholic Majesty, I hear."

"I have been given that privilege, yes," Shakespeare said, privilege striking him as a better word than cross."You are fortunate in your subject, his Majesty in his poet," de Vega said--he made no mean courtier himself. Marlowe's glance was half rueful, half scornful. Lope continued, "It will please me very much to help you in your enterprise however I may."

"Truly, sir, you are too kind." The last thing Shakespeare wanted was Lope's help. "But there's no need for--"

"No, no." Lope waved his protest aside. "I insist." He grinned disarmingly. "For, by helping you, I help myself to coming to the Theatre whenever I please. Should you desire a veritable hombre de Espa?a to play a Spaniard, nothing would like me better."

Shakespeare wanted to shriek. He couldn't tell de Vega everything he wanted to, or even a fraction of it.

But . . . "Tacite, Will," Marlowe said quickly.

In Latin, that meant be quiet. In English, it would have been good advice. Even in Latin, it was good advice. But was it also something more? Was it an allusion to Tacitus and to the Annals? How much did Marlowe know? How much did he want to show that he knew? And how much did Lope know, and how much was Marlowe liable to reveal to him for no more reason than that he could not take the good advice he so casually gave?

One of Lieutenant de Vega's eyebrows rose. In slow Latin of his own, he asked, "And why should Magister Guglielmus keep silent, I pray you?"

d.a.m.n you, Kit, Shakespeare thought. But Marlowe, a university man as fluent in Latin as in English, kept right on in the ancient tongue: "Why? To keep from offering you the role of Philip himself, of course.

I doubt his company would stand for it, and I am certain Master Burbage's fury at being balked of the hero's role would know no bounds." He talked himself out of trouble almost as readily as he talked himself into it.

Richard Burbage had little Latin, but he did have the player's ability to hear his name mentioned at a remarkable distance. He came up to Marlowe and asked, "What said you of me, sir?" By the way he leaned forward and set his right hand on his belt near his sword, he would make Marlowe regret it if the answer were not to his liking.

But Marlowe spoke in English as he had in Latin: "I said you would mislike it, did Lieutenant de Vega here take the part of King Philip in the play Will is to write. He hath graciously offered to attempt some role in the drama, but that, meseems, were a part too great."

Just for a heartbeat, Burbage's eyes flashed to Shakespeare. The poet gave back a bland, blank face. He knew he couldn't trust the Spaniard, and didn't know he could trust Christopher Marlowe. If Marlowe had hoped to learn more than he already knew from the actor, he got little, for Burbage laughed, slapped him on the back, and said, "Why, Kit, no man can have a part too great--thus say the ladies, any road."

Shakespeare's laugh was relieved, Marlowe's somewhat forced--he had scant interest in or experience of what the ladies said in such matters. Lope de Vega scratched his head. " 'Tis a jest," he said. "I know't must be, but I apprehend it not." After Shakespeare explained it, de Vega laughed, too, and bowed to Burbage. "You have a wit of your own, sir, and not just with another's words in your mouth."

Will Kemp reckons otherwise, Shakespeare thought. Burbage bowed back to the Spaniard. "You are too kind, sir," he purred, meaning nothing else but, I'm more clever than either of these two, and if I but wrote. . . . He had a player's vanity, too, in full measure. It sometimes irked Shakespeare. Today he gladly forgave it. He would have forgiven anything that put the Spaniard off the scent.But how, dear G.o.d, am I to write Lord Burghley's play with de Vega ever sniffing about? And even if Thou shouldst work a miracle, for that I may write it, how can we rehea.r.s.e it? How can we offer it forth? He waited hopefully. As he'd feared, though, G.o.d gave no answers.

LOPE DE VEGA couldn't have screamed louder or more painfully as a betrayed lover. He knew that for a fact; he'd screamed such screams before. This, however . . . "But, sir, you promised me!" he cried.

"I am sorry, Lieutenant," said Captain Guzm?n, who sounded not sorry in the least. "I warned that, in an emergency, I would shift your duty. Here we have an emergency, and so I shall shift you."

"A likely story." Lope was convinced his superior intended to drive him mad. Guzm?n knew how to make his intentions real, too. "What kind of emergency?"

"A soothsayer, prophesying against Spain and against King Philip," Guzm?n answered.

"Oh," Lope said in crestfallen tones. Unfortunately, that was an emergency. Soothsayers and witches and what the English called cunning men caused no end of trouble. But then he had a brighter, more hopeful thought. "Could not the holy inquisitors deal with this false prophet? Surely such a rogue breaks G.o.d's law before he breaks man's."

Baltasar Guzm?n shook his head. "They call it treason first and blasphemy only afterwards. They have washed their hands of the fellow."

"As Pilate did with our Lord," de Vega said bitterly.

"Senior Lieutenant . . ." Guzm?n drummed his fingers on the desk. "Senior Lieutenant, I bear you no ill will. You should thank G.o.d and the Virgin and the saints that I bear you no ill will. Were it otherwise, the Inquisition would hear of that remark, and then, in short order, you would hear from the Inquisition. You have your pen, and some freedom in how you use it. You would be wise to guard your tongue."