He was right. That hurt worse than anything else. "I thank you, your Excellency," Lope mumbled, hating to have to thank the man at whom he was furious. He sighed. "Well, if there's no help for it, I'd best get the business over with as fast as I can. Who is this soothsayer, and where can I find him?"

"He is called John . . . Walsh." Captain Guzm?n made heavy going of the English surname. "He dwells in"--the officer checked his notes--"in the ward called Billingsgate, in Pudding Lane. He is by trade a butcher of hogs, but he is to be found more often in a tavern than anywhere else."

"May I find him in a tavern!" Lope exclaimed. "I know Pudding Lane too well, and know its stinks. They make so much offal there, it goes in dung boats down to the Thames."

"Wherever you find him, seize him and clap him in gaol. We'll try him and put him to death and be rid of him once for all," Guzm?n said. As de Vega turned to go, his superior held up a hand. "Wait. Don't hunt this, ah, Walsh yourself. Take a squad of soldiers. Better, take two. When you catch him, the Englishmen he has fooled are liable to try a rescue. You will want swords and pikes and guns at your back."

"Very well, sir." De Vega wasn't sure whether it was very well or not. Alone, he might slip in and get away with John Walsh with no one else the wiser. With a couple of squads at his back, he had no hope of that. But Captain Guzm?n had a point. If he went after Walsh by himself and got into trouble, he wouldn't come out of Billingsgate Ward again. How had Shakespeare put it in Alcibiades? The better part of valor is discretion--that was the line that had stuck in Lope's memory.He had no trouble getting soldiers to come with him. When he told the men eating in the refectory what his mission was, they clamored to come along. "By St. James, sir," one of them said, crossing himself, "the sooner we get rid of troublemakers like that, the better. They stir the Englishmen up against us, and that gives us no end of grief."

"Let's go, then," Lope said. Some of the Spaniards paused to gulp down wine or beer or stuff a last bite or two into their mouths, but for no more than that. They buckled on swords, picked up spears and arquebuses and back-and-b.r.e.a.s.t.s, set high-crowned morions on their heads, and followed de Vega south and east from the barracks towards noisome Pudding Lane.

London had been occupied long enough and grown peaceful enough to make a couple of dozen Spaniards tramping through the streets--obviously on some business, not merely patrolling--something less than ordinary. " 'Ware! 'Ware!" The cry rang out again and again. So much for surprise, Lope thought.

From farther away, he heard another cry: "Clubs!" That was the shout London apprentices raised when they went into a brawl. Before long, a pack of them--some armed with clubs, others carrying daggers or stones--came up the street towards the men he led.

"Give way," he shouted in English. "Give way, or you will be sorry for it!" He nodded to his own men.

They were better armed than the apprentices, and armored to boot. They also looked eager to take on the youngsters who'd come up against them. The 'prentices stopped, wavered . . . broke.

One of the soldiers laughed. "They haven't got the cojones to stand up to real men," he said. "We beat them when we first got ash.o.r.e, and we can beat them again if we have to."

"That's right," another soldier said. But then he added, "I'd sooner not fight, so long as we can hold 'em down without it." That perfectly summed up Lope's view of things.

He had wondered if his nose could guide him to Pudding Lane. But London was a city of such multifarious stinks, he had to ask his way. He had to ask his way twice, in fact; the first Englishman who gave him directions told him a lie and got him lost. No, they don't all love us, he thought.

But he made a better choice with the second man he asked. The fellow was sleek and prosperous, with fur trim on his doublet. He made a leg at Lope, and fawned on him like a dog hoping to be patted. "Ay, good my lord, certes; 'tis no small honor to enjoy the privilege of directing you thither." He pointed south.

"Do you go to the church of St. George in Botolph Lane, and then one street the further, and you have it.

G.o.d grant you catch whatever villain you seek, too."

"G.o.d grant it indeed." Lope crossed himself, and was not surprised to see the Englishman follow his lead.

Folk who had clung to the Roman faith before the Armada came were likeliest to uphold the new Queen and King--and the Spaniards who kept them on their throne.

This man said, "We have seen too much of wars and strife. Let there be peace, of whatever kind."

"Amen," Lope replied. Privately, he thought that a craven's counsel. But it worked to keep the kingdom quiet. He would have had all the English so craven.

After more bows and a ceremonious leavetaking, Lope translated for his men what the sleek fellow had said. "Let's find the church, let's find the street, let's find the son of a wh.o.r.e we're after, and then, by G.o.d, let's find something to drink," one of them said. Several others nodded approval.

So did Lope. "We may find this Walsh and something to drink together," he said, "for I hear heprophesies in taverns."

The soldier who'd spoken before guffawed. "And after he's drunk enough, he's one of these p.i.s.s-prophets," he said, which got a laugh from everyone else. Plenty of people made a living divining the future--or saying they did--by examining their clients' urine.

Someone emptied a chamber pot from a second-story window. No way to be sure if the stinking contents were aimed at the Spaniards. A couple of men--including the fellow who'd made the joke--got splashed, but most of the stuff just went into the mud of the street, which already held more than its fair share of ordure and p.i.s.s. "Eh, Sancho, now you're a p.i.s.s-prophet," one of the other troopers said.

Sancho's reply was almost as pungent as the air.

Pudding Lane was only a couple of blocks long, but made up in stench what it lacked in length. De Vega marveled that he hadn't found it by scent. Along with all the usual London miasmas, he smelled pig s.h.i.t, pig p.i.s.s, rotting swine's flesh, pig fear. "Any man from this street must be a false prophet," he said, "for not even G.o.d Himself could stand getting close enough to him to tell him anything."

He started asking after John Walsh. "I don't ken the man," one hog butcher said. "Never heard of him,"

said a second. "An he be who I think he is, he died o' the French pox summer afore last," a third said. "A went home to Wales, a did, whence a came," a fourth offered. "Seek him in Southwark. He dwelleth there these days, with a punk from a pick-hatch," a fifth declared.

Patiently, Lope kept asking. Sooner or later, he was bound to come on someone who either favored Isabella and Albert or simply craved peace and quiet. And he did. A lean man in a pigskin ap.r.o.n looked up from his work and said, "Belike you'll find him in the Blue Fox, half a block toward the Tower in East Cheap."

Again, Lope translated for his men. "A good thing we have you with us, se?or ," irrepressible Sancho said. "If we had to look for interpreters, everything would take three times as long, and like as not they'd tell us more lies than truth."

De Vega wasn't sure the lean man hadn't told a lie. But the tavern, to his relief, did prove easy to find. A signboard with the silhouette of a running fox, bright blue, hung above the door. "You men stay here in the street," Lope said. "I'll go in alone. If G.o.d is kind, I'll hear the man speaking treason from his own lips. Then I'll signal for you. "If not"--he shrugged--"again, it's G.o.d's will."

"Honor to your courage, Lieutenant," a soldier said.

"This for courage." Lope snapped his fingers. "I want to deal with this fellow as quickly as may be, for I have business of my own to attend to." Some of the men winked and sn.i.g.g.e.red and made lewd jokes he only half heard. Thanks to his reputation, they thought he meant business with a woman, or with more than one. But is not the Muse a woman, too? he thought.

He sat down at a table near the door in the Blue Fox. "Ale," he said when a barmaid came up to him: it was a word he could p.r.o.nounce without revealing himself as a foreigner. He set a penny on the table.

The woman s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and came back with a mug of nasty, sour stuff. He wished he'd taken a chance and asked for wine.

But he didn't have to drink much. He nursed the mug and looked around. He also wished someone had described John Walsh to him. The place was full of Englishmen, most of them--by their talk and by the smell--pig butchers. Was Walsh here? Could he ask without giving himself away? If that fellow in the pigskin ap.r.o.n had steered him away from the wanted man and not toward him . . . I'll make him sorry if he did. I'll make him worse than sorry."Hear me, friends," a squat, homely, pockmarked man said, and the folk in the tavern did hear him: something close to silence fell. Lope pretended to drink ale as the pockmarked man--who also had on a pigskin ap.r.o.n over his jerkin and hose--clambered up onto a table and went on, "You know G.o.d hath it in His mind for us to be free o' the Spaniard, for doth He not say, 'When you therefore shall see the abomination of the desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand)'? And understand we not all too well who is the aforesaid abomination of the desolation? And stand not his minions on the holy soil of England?"

"That's right, John!" someone called.

"Tell us more!" someone else added.

"Right gladly will I," said the pig butcher, who had to be John Walsh. "Again, in the selfsame book of Matthew, saith not the Lord, 'Then they shall deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations, for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another'? Saith He not that very thing? And are we not afflicted, yea, sore afflicted, and slain? And betray we not one another, and hate we not likewise one another? But hark ye to what He saith next. Hark ye, now: 'And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.' "

He switched from Matthew to Revelations, but Lope had heard enough. Setting down his mug, he ducked out of the Blue Fox and beckoned to the soldiers. With them behind him, he stormed back into the tavern and shouted out a verse from Matthew that John Walsh had skipped: " 'And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many.' " Then he switched to Spanish, shouting, "Arrest that man there on the table. Santiago and forward!"

"Santiago!" the soldiers roared. They rushed toward the preaching pig butcher.

"Limb of Satan!" an Englishman cried. He hurled his mug at Lope, who ducked. The mug shattered on the morion of the man behind him. Another flying mug hit a Spaniard in the face. He fell with a groan, his nose smashed and b.l.o.o.d.y.

A moment later, a Spanish sword bit into the pig butcher who'd thrown the mug that hurt the soldier. The Englishman shrieked. More blood spurted, improbably red. "Let it begin here, as St. John the Divine saith it shall begin at the end of days!" John Walsh bellowed. "The star called Wormwood and the smiting of the sun! Ay, let it begin here!"

"Wormwood!" the Englishmen yelled.

Lope wondered if they knew what the word meant. Not likely, he judged, but it made a fine rallying cry even so. As for him, he shouted, "We must take the false preacher now, or London goes up in riot!" It had happened before, though not for four or five years. If it happened again, the blame would land on him. Where would they send him then? The Scottish border? The Welsh mountains? Ireland, which was supposed to be worse than either? Was any place worse than Ireland? If any was, they'd send him there.

An arquebus bellowed, deafeningly loud in the close tavern. The lead ball buried itself in the wall. After that, the firearm was good for nothing but a clumsy club. In a tavern brawl, bludgeons and knives and swords counted for more than guns. De Vega wished for a firearm that shot more than one ball, or at least for one that could be reloaded quickly. Wishing didn't help.

The Spaniards' armor did. So did the extra distance at which they could do harm, thanks to their swords.

But then an Englishman, an enormous fellow, picked up a bench and swung it like a club. The weapon was clumsy but potent. The Englishman felled two soldiers in quick succession.Another swing almost caved in Lope's skull. But he ducked, stepped close, and stabbed the big man in the stomach with his rapier. The bench fell from the man's hands as he wailed and clutched at himself.

"Come on!" Lope shouted. Only a small knot of stubborn defenders still protected John Walsh.

"Let's away out the back door!" one of them said. De Vega cursed in sonorous Spanish. He hadn't known the Blue Fox had a back door. He hurled himself at the Englishmen, doing his best to forestall their escape.

A couple of them tried to hustle Walsh toward the back of the tavern. They might have pulled him to safety, but he didn't seem to want to go. "Nay, nay!" he cried, struggling in their grasp as if they were arresting him. "Let it begin here! It must begin here!"

Sancho tackled him. When he went down, half a dozen Spaniards leaped on him, while the rest drove back or knocked down the Englishmen still on their feet. "Is he still alive?" Lope asked.

"Yes, Senior Lieutenant. He'll live to hang," one of his troopers answered.

"After this, I think hanging's too good for him," Lope said. "But tie him up and gag him. Gag him well, by G.o.d, or the filth he shouts out will bring the English down on us before we can get him to safety."

Even as things were, stones flew when they emerged from the Blue Fox. But another arquebusier brought his match to the touch-hole of his weapon. It roared and belched forth a great cloud of pungent smoke.

And the ball, as much by luck as anything else, knocked an Englishman kicking. The others drew back, naive enough to believe the Spaniards likely to hit twice in a row. Knowing better than they what arquebuses could do, Lope silently thanked them for their caution.

Back at the Spanish barracks, Captain Guzm?n asked, "You have the prisoner?"

"Yes, your Excellency," Lope replied.

Guzm?n ignored his draggled state and the wounds his men had taken. He'd given the right answer. "

Muy bien, Lieutenant," Guzm?n said. "You may now return to the Theatre." Weariness fell from Lope.

Guzm?n had given the right answer, too.

SAM KING STEPPED on William Shakespeare's foot. "Ow!" Shakespeare yelped; the young man still wore muddy boots. A little more calmly, the poet added, " 'Ware wheat, Master King; 'ware wheat."

"I pray pardon, sir," King said. "I'm yet unused to the confines of this room." He spoke with a broad Midlands accent. Shakespeare had sounded much the same when he first came to London, but, wanting to take the stage, had had to learn in a hurry to sound like a Londoner born.

"By G.o.d, you're used to the confines of my toe, and to flatten it to flatter your fancy," Shakespeare grumbled. But then he sighed. "I own there's no help for't. And had the Widow Kendall taken in another lodger male in place of this Cicely Sellis, he'd trample me in your place."

"Ay, belike," Sam King said. " 'Tis monstrous strange Mistress Cicely should hire a whole room to herself of the old hag. 'Tis monstrous dear, too." His belly rumbled. "Marry, but I'm hungry," he muttered, more to himself than to Shakespeare. Whatever he did in the city--some of this and a little of that, Shakespeare gathered--it got him little money. His face had a pinched, pale look, and his clothes hung loosely on him.

The take at the Theatre had been good. As Christmas neared, people wanted to be gay. Shakespeare had gold not only from Lord Burghley but from the Spaniards as well. He took out three pennies andhanded them to Sam King. "Here. Get yourself to an ordinary and eat your fill tonight."

To his amazement, King began to blubber. "G.o.d bless you, sir. Oh, G.o.d bless you," he said. "I tread on you, and then you give me good for evil, as our Lord says a man ought to do." His scrawny fingers closed over the coins. "I'll pay you back, sir. Marry, I will."

"An't please you. An you can without pinching," Shakespeare said. "An it be otherwise . . ." He shrugged.

Threepence meant less to him than to Sam King. The skinny young man blew his nose on the fingers of the hand that wasn't holding the money, wiped them on his shabby doublet, and hurried out of the lodging house.

Shakespeare got out his writing tools and took them to the ordinary he favored. He was relieved not to find his fellow lodger there; King would have insisted on chattering at him when he wanted to work.

Love's Labour's Won was almost done. He needed to finish it as fast as he could, too. For one thing, the company's patience was wearing thin. For another, he didn't know how long he had till Philip of Spain died. He would need to have both his special commissions ready by then, whichever one actually saw the light of day.

Kate the serving woman came up to him. "G.o.d give you good even, Master Will," she said. "The threepenny is barley porridge with boiled beef." He nodded. She went on, "There's lambswool, if you'd liefer have it than the common brewing."

"I would, and I thank you for't," Shakespeare answered. On a chilly December evening, warm spiced beer would go down well.

Maybe the lambswool helped his thoughts flow freely. Whatever the cause, he sat and wrote till he was the last man left in the ordinary. Only when his candle flame began to leap and gutter as the candle neared extinction did he reluctantly pick up his papers and quills and ink and go back to the lodging house.

"It's long past curfew, Master Shakespeare," Jane Kendall said severely when he came in. "I was afeard for you."

"Here I am." Shakespeare didn't want to talk to her. He threw a pine log on the hearth. Before long, it flared up hot and bright. The Widow Kendall sent him a reproachful stare. He never noticed it. He sat down at the table in front of the fire to write a little more while the log gave such fine light. His landlady threw her hands in the air and stalked off to bed.

He hardly noticed her go. It was one of those magical evenings where nothing stood between his mind and the sheet of paper in front of him. He'd been writing for some time--how long by the clock, he couldn't have said, but twenty-five or thirty lines' worth, with scarcely a blotted word--before realizing he wasn't alone in the room. The new lodger, Cicely Sellis, stood in the doorway watching him work.

"Give you good den," she said when he looked up. "I misliked troubling you, your pen scratching along so fast."

"I do thank you for the courtesy," Shakespeare answered. "There are those--too many of 'em, too--will break into a writing man's thoughts for no more reason than to see him stop and scuff the ground, wondering what he meant next to say."

"Some folk, able themselves to shape naught of beauty, are fain to mar another's work, for that they may not find themselves outdone. An you'd back to't, make as though I am not here. You'll offend me not."

Cicely Sellis was five or ten years older than Shakespeare. She'd probably been a striking woman till smallpox scarred her face; beneath the flawed skin, her bones were very fine. She wore no ring.Shakespeare didn't know whether she was spinster or widow.

"Again, my thanks," he said. When he stretched, something crunched in his back. It felt good. He twisted, hoping he could get more relief. He noticed his hand was cramped, and wondered how long he'd been writing all told. "I can pause here. I have the way now, and shall not wander from it when I resume."

"Right glad I am to hear you say so." A gray tabby wandered in after Cicely Sellis. It stropped itself against her ankles. She bent and scratched it behind the ears. It began to buzz. It wasn't a big cat, but purred very loudly. "There, Mommet, there," she murmured. When she looked up again, she asked, "You'll soon have finished the play, Master Shakespeare?"

"G.o.d willing, yes," he answered.

"I hope to see't," she told him. "I've seen some others of yours, and they liked me well. Can I get free, I'll pay my penny again."

"No poet can hope for higher praise," he said, which won a smile from her. He went on, "Have you a hard master, then, one who keeps you at it every minute?"

She nodded and pointed to her chest. "I do, sir, the hardest: mine own self." She stroked the cat again. It purred even louder. Its eyes were green. So were hers. She studied him. "If you would have . . .

questions answered, haply I could help you."

"Ah." He'd wondered what she did. No wonder she'd wanted a room all to herself. "You are a cunning woman, then?" He wouldn't say witch, even if they amounted to the same thing.

And Cicely Sellis, sensibly, wouldn't answer straight out. "Marry, Master Shakespeare, in this world of men a woman needs must be cunning, mustn't she, if she's to make her way? Now I hear something, now I say something, and the world turns round." She nodded almost defiantly, as if to say, Make of that what you will.

Shakespeare didn't know what to make of it. In London as elsewhere in England, elsewhere all through Christendom, witches, or people claiming to be witches, were a fact of life. They did at least as much good for the sick as fancy physicians, as far as he could tell. Did they take their power from Satan?

People said they did. Now here before him stood one of the breed. He could ask her himself, if he had the nerve.

He didn't.

"I am . . . content with my lot," he said. If she were truly a witch, she would see he was lying.

He couldn't tell whether she did or not. She gave him half a curtsy. Her eyes glinted, as the cat Mommet's might have done. "No small thing have you said there, nor no common thing, neither," she replied at last.

"The richest man in the world, be he never so healthy, be he wed to a young and beautiful wife who loveth him past all reason, hath he contentment? Not likely! He will hunger for more gold, or for more strength of body, or for some other wench besides the one he hath, or for all those things together. Is't not so, Master Shakespeare?"

"Before G.o.d, Mistress Sellis, I think you speak sooth," Shakespeare answered.

She stroked Mommet again. He was an uncommonly good-natured cat; as soon as she touched him, his purr boomed out, filling the room. She said, "I have once or twice before been styled soothsayer. I do not say I am such, mind, but I have been so styled."Shakespeare nodded. "I believe it. If it be so, belike you make a good one." He intended no flattery, but meant every word. What she'd said about a rich man's restless desire for more showed she could see a long way into the human heart. That had to be as important for a soothsayer as for a poet crafting plays.

She studied him again. He had rarely known such a measuring glance from a woman--or, indeed, from a man. Marlowe's gaze came close, but it always held an undercurrent of mockery absent from her expression. Her eyes did shine like a cat's. He wondered what trick of witchcraft made them do that. Of nights, a cat's eyes, or a dog's, gave back torchlight. A man's eyes, or a woman's, did not. But Cicely Sellis' did.