Mommet suddenly stopped purring. His fur puffed out till he looked twice his proper size. He hissed like a snake. A freezing draught blew under the door, making the hair on Shakespeare's arms p.r.i.c.kle up, too, and sending a swarm of bright sparks up the chimney as the flames flared.

In a deep, slow voice not quite her own, Cicely Sellis said, "Beware the man who brings good news, and he who knows less than he seems."

"What?" Shakespeare said.

The one word might have broken the spell, if spell there was. The cat's fur smoothed down on his back.

He sprawled on his side, licked his belly and privates, and began to purr once more. The fire eased. And the cunning woman, her eyes merely human eyes again, frowned a little and asked, "Said you somewhat to me?"

"I did." Shakespeare went on to repeat, as best he could, what she'd told him.

Her frown deepened. "I said that?" she asked.

"On my oath, Mistress Sellis, you did." Shakespeare crossed himself to show he meant it.

Witches were supposed to fear the sign of the cross. Cicely Sellis showed no such fear. She only shrugged her shoulders and laughed a nervous-sounding laugh. "I will believe you, sir, for that you have no cause to lie to me thus. But as for the words . . ." She shook her head. "I recollect 'em not."

"No?" Shakespeare pressed it a little. Cicely Sellis shook her head again and pressed a hand to one temple, as if she knew pain there. Being a player himself, Shakespeare knew acting. As best he could judge, the cunning woman was sincere in her denial. Bemused, he tugged at his little chin beard. " 'Tis pa.s.sing strange, that."

"So it is." Mistress Sellis rubbed the side of her head once more. She yawned. "Your pardon, but I'm fordone. Mommet, come." The cat followed her into the room she'd hired from Widow Kendall as obediently as if it were a dog.

Was it a cat? Or was it the cunning woman's--the witch's--familiar spirit? Shakespeare had trouble imagining a familiar spirit, a demon surely reeking of brimstone, purring with such content as it lay on the floor. But then, what know you of demons? the poet asked himself. As little as may be, and wish it were less.

He tried to write a bit more. That bothered him less than it would have the day before. He yawned, too.

He could go to bed with a clear conscience now. He knew where Love's Labour's Won was going, and knew he would finish it in a day or two. Then on to King Philip, and to . . . the other play.

His bedroom was dark when he went in. Jack Street's snores made the chamber hideous. Shakespeare knew he himself would have no trouble sleeping despite the racket; he'd had time to get used to it.How--indeed, whether--Sam King could manage was a different question.

Shakespeare didn't bother with a candle when he stowed his writing tools in the chest by his bed. He'd dealt with the lock so often in darkness, he might almost have been a blind craftsman whose fingers saw as well as most men's eyes. The click of the key in the lock made Street the snoring glazier mumble and turn over, though how he heard that click through his own thunderstorm was beyond Shakespeare. The poet sighed--quietly--and yawned again.

As he slipped the bottle of ink back into the chest, his fingers brushed a new and hence unfamiliar bulk: the translation of the Annals he'd picked up in front of St. Paul's. " 'Sdeath," he whispered: a curse that was at the same time at least half a prayer. The translation itself was innocent. But if anyone thought to search for it, his death was likely whether it were found or not. That would mean Lord Burghley's plot was betrayed.

He shut the chest, locked it, and pulled off his boots. The wooden bed frame and its leather straps creaked as he lay down and burrowed under the covers. Despite yet another yawn, sleep would not come. His mind spun faster than the spinning hand of a clock. How can Burghley's plan hope to escape betrayal? There's surely far more to't than one poor poet and a play that may never been seen.

Can he do so much with so many under the Spaniards' very noses without their suspecting? 'Tis false we English breed no traitors. Would 'twere true, but these past nine years have proved otherwise.

What did Burghley purpose? Shakespeare shook his head. Ignorance, here, is bliss. What I know not, no Spaniard can rip from me. He wished he didn't know it was tied to word of Philip's death. But the English n.o.bleman had had to tell him that. He needed some notion of how long he had to write the play and to train the actors of his company to perform it.

That thought made him shake his head. He still didn't know whether all of Lord Westmorland's Men would appear in a play that, if Lord Burghley's rising failed, could only be judged treason. If he sounded a player and the man refused, what could he do? Could he do anything? Would not the very act of doing something make a disaffected player more likely to go to the Spaniards, or to the lickspittle English who followed Isabella and Albert?

Questions, questions. When questions come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. All the questions were out in the open. Answers skulked and hid and would not show themselves, either by light of day or in these miserable, useless, pointless nighttime reflections.

Shakespeare shook his head again. His bed let out another creak. Jack Street grunted, shifted, and, for a wonder, stopped snoring. In the third bed in the room, Sam King sighed softly. Had he been awake all this while, poor devil? Shakespeare wouldn't have been surprised. Street's cacophony took getting used to.

After some more squirming, Shakespeare felt sleep at last draw near. But then he thought of his curious meeting with Cicely Sellis, and rest retreated once more. She was a cunning woman indeed. Whoever called on her would get his money's worth, however much he paid. She was probably even cunning enough to keep from falling foul of the Church, which took Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live ever more seriously these days.

What had she meant when her voice changed there for a little while? Some sort of warning, without a doubt. But did it come from her alone, from G.o.d, or from Satan? Shakespeare ground his teeth. How could he know? Come to that, did Cicely Sellis herself know?

One more yawn, and sleep finally overmastered him. He woke in darkness the next morning. With thewinter solstice at hand, the sun wouldn't rise till after eight of the clock, and would set before four in the afternoon. In the kitchen, porridge bubbled above the fire. Shakespeare filled a bowl with it. It was bland and uninteresting: barley and peas boiled to mush together, with hardly even any salt to add savor. He didn't care. It filled the empty place in his belly for a while.

Most of the lodgers were already gone before Shakespeare rose. Regardless of whether it was light or dark, they had their trades to follow. Cicely Sellis, by contrast, came into the kitchen just as the poet was finishing. The cunning woman nodded but said nothing. She too had her own trade to follow, but could follow it here at the lodging house. By the way Widow Kendall beamed at her, she was paying a pretty penny for that room of hers. Enough to make the widow raise the scot for the rest of us?

Shakespeare wondered worriedly. He doubted he could stand even one more vexation on top of so many.

When he went out into the street, he found he would have no accurate notion of when the sun came up, anyhow. Cold, clammy fog clung everywhere. It likely wouldn't lift till noon, if then. Shakespeare sucked in a long, damp breath. When he exhaled, he added fog of his own to that which had drifted up to Bishopsgate from the Thames.

He should have gone straight to the Theatre. He might have found some quiet time to write before the rest of the company came in and began rehearsing for the day's play.

Instead, though, he wandered south and east, away from the suburbs beyond the wall and down towards the river. He didn't know--or rather, didn't care to admit to himself--where he was going till he got there.

By the time he neared the lowland by the Thames, the fog hung a little above the ground.

But even the thickest fog would have had a hard time concealing the Tower of London. Its formidable gray stone wall and towers shouldered their way into the air. People said Julius Caesar had first raised the Tower. Shakespeare didn't know whether that was true or not, though he'd used the conceit in a couple of plays. The Tower surely seemed strong and indomitable enough to have stood since Roman days.

However strong it seemed, it hadn't kept the Spaniards out of London. And now, somewhere in there, Queen Elizabeth sat and brooded and waited for--deliverance? Can I help to give it her? Or give I but myself to death?

V.

AFTER CHRISTMAS Ma.s.s, Lope de Vega and Baltasar Guzm?n happened to come out of the church of St. Swithin together. Lope bowed to his superior. "Feliz Navidad, your Excellency," he said.

Guzm?n, polite as a cat, returned the bow. "And a happy Christmas to you as well, Senior Lieutenant,"

he replied. "I have a duty for you."

De Vega wished he'd ignored courtesy. "On the holy day?" he asked, dismayed.

"Yes, on the holy day." Captain Guzm?n nodded. "I am sorry, but it is necessary, and necessary that you do it today." He didn't sound sorry. He never sounded sorry. He was stubborn as a cat, too; he went on, "I want you to take yourself to the church of St. Ethelberge"--another English name hema.s.sacred--"and ask the priest there if this poet friend of yours, this Shakespeare, has come to partake of our Lord's body and blood on the anniversary of His birth."

"Ah." However much Lope wished otherwise, Captain Guzm?n was right here, as he had been with going after John Walsh--this was a necessary duty. "I shall attend to it directly. And if he has not?"

"If he has not, make note of it, but do no more now," Guzm?n replied. "Then we watch him closely ten days from now. If he celebrates Christmas by the old calendar, the forbidden calendar, we shall know him for a Protestant heretic."

"Yes, sir." Lope sighed. "Heretic or not, we surely know him for a splendid poet."

"And if his splendid poetry serves Satan and the foes of Spain, isn't he all the more dangerous for being splendid?" Guzm?n said.

And he was right about that, too. Again, Lope wished otherwise. Again, he sighed. But, because Captain Guzm?n was right, de Vega asked, "How do I find this church of St. Ethelberge?" He had almost as much trouble with the name as his superior had done, and added, "Where do the English find such people to canonize? Swithin here, Ethelberge there, and I hear there is also a St. Erkenwald in this kingdom.

Truly I wonder if Rome has ever heard of these so-called saints."

"I have plenty of worries, but not that one," Baltasar Guzm?n said. "If the Inquisition and the Society of Jesus found these saints were fraudulent, the churches dedicated to their memories would not stay open."

He's right yet again, Lope thought, surprised and a little resentful. Three times in a row, all of a Christmas morning. He'd better be careful. If he keeps that up, I may have to start taking him seriously. He wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't, either. Since Guzm?n hadn't answered him the first time, he tried again: "How do I find St. Ethelberge's church, Captain?"

"It's Shakespeare's parish church, s?-? Shakespeare lives in Bishopsgate, s?-? Go to Bishopsgate. You know the way there, s?-?" Guzm?n waited for Lope to respond. He had to nod, for he did know the way to and through that district: it led out of London proper to the Theatre. "All right, then," the captain told him. "Go to Bishopsgate. If you find the church yourself, fine. If you don't, ask someone. Who wouldn't tell a man how to get to a church on Christmas morning?"

He was, of course, right yet again. "I go," Lope said, and hurried off toward Bishopsgate as much to escape Captain Guzm?n and his alarmingly sharp wits as to find out whether Shakespeare had been to Ma.s.s. Even though the day was gloomy, London's houses and public buildings made a brave show, being decorated with wreaths and strands of holly and ivy, now and then wound up with broom. Many of the ornaments had candles burning in them, too. In the first couple of years after the coming of the Armada, such signs of the season had been rare. Elizabeth and her heretic advisors discouraged them, as they'd discouraged so many observances from the ritual year. But, with the return of Catholicism, the customs that had flourished before Henry VIII broke with Rome were also coming back to life.

Many doors stood open, the rich odors of cookery wafting out warring with those of garbage and sewage. From Advent, the fourth Sunday before the Nativity, to Christmas Eve, people restricted their diets. On Christmas Eve itself, meat, cheese, and eggs were all forbidden. But Christmas . . . Christmas was a day of release, and also of sharing. Only skinflints closed their doors against visitors on Christmas Day.

A man in what looked like a beggar's rags with a roast goose leg in one hand and a mug of wine in the other came up the street toward Lope. By the way he wobbled as he walked, he'd already downed several mugs. But he gave Lope an extravagant bow all the same. "G.o.d bless you on the day, sir," hesaid.

"And you, sir," de Vega replied, returning the bow as if to an equal. On Christmas, as on Easter, were not all men equal in Christ?

Lope did have to ask after St. Ethelberge's church. But people indeed proved eager to help him find it.

He got there just when a Ma.s.s was ending. And he got his answer without having to ask the priest, for with his own eyes he saw Shakespeare coming out of the church in a slashed doublet of black and crimson as fancy as anything Christopher Marlowe might wear.

Lope thought about waving and calling out a greeting. He thought about it for a heartbeat, and then thought better of it. He ducked around a corner instead, before Shakespeare spotted him. What excuse could he offer for being in Bishopsgate on Christmas morning, save that he was spying on the English poet? None, and he knew it.

He got back to the barracks in the center of town without asking anyone for directions. That left him proud of himself; he was strutting as he made his way to Captain Guzm?n's office. And he'd been right, and Guzm?n, for once, wrong. That added to the strut. He looked forward to rubbing his superior's nose in it.

Whatever he looked for, he didn't get it. When he opened the door, Guzm?n wasn't there. His servant, Enrique, sat behind his desk, frowning in concentration over a quarto edition of one of Marlowe's plays.

He read English better than he spoke it, though still none too well.

He didn't notice the door opening. Lope had to cough. "Oh!" Enrique said in surprise, blinking behind his spectacles. "Good day, Senior Lieutenant."

"Good day," Lope replied politely. "Where's your princ.i.p.al?"

"He was bidden to a feast, sir," Guzm?n's servant replied. "He left me behind here to take your report.

Did the priest at this church with the name no sane man could p.r.o.nounce see Se?or Shakespeare at Ma.s.s today?"

"What do you do if I tell you no?" de Vega asked, trying not to show how angry he was. Guzm?n could send him off to Bishopsgate on Christmas morning, but did the n.o.ble stay around to hear what he'd found? Not likely! He went off to have a good time. And if I'd been here, maybe someone would have invited me to this feast, too.

"I bring his Excellency the news, of course," Enrique said. "After that, I suppose he sends out an order for Shakespeare's arrest. Do I need to go to him?"

"No." Lope shook his head, then jabbed his chest with his thumb. "I myself saw Shakespeare leaving the church of St. Ethelberge"--he could p.r.o.nounce it (better than most Spaniards, anyway), and didn't miss a chance to show off--"not an hour ago, so there's no need to disturb Captain Guzm?n at his revels."

"I'm glad," Enrique said. De Vega wondered how he meant that. Glad he didn't have to go looking for Guzm?n? But then the servant went on, "From everything I can tell, the Englishman is too fine a poet for me to want him to burn in h.e.l.l for opposing the true and holy Catholic faith."

"Tienes raz?n, Enrique," Lope said. "I had the same thought myself." And if Enrique agrees with me, he must be right.

"Do you have any other business with my master, Lieutenant?" the servant asked.Yes, but not the sort you mean--this shabby treatment he's shown me comes close to touching my honor, Lope thought. But he wouldn't tell that to Guzm?n's lackey. He would either take it up with the officer himself or, more likely, decide it wasn't a deliberate insult and stop worrying about it. All he said to Enrique was, "A happy Christmas to you."

"And to you, se?or ." As Lope turned to go, Enrique picked up the play once more. He read aloud:

" 'O lente, lente currite noctis equi: The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be d.a.m.ned.

O, I'll leap up to my G.o.d! Who pulls me down?'

This is very fine poetry, I think."

"And I," de Vega agreed, "even if he borrowed the slowly running horses of the night from Ovid."

"Well, yes, of course," said Enrique, who, despite being a servant, somewhere had acquired a formidable education. "But he uses the line in a way that makes it his own. He doesn't just trot it out to show how learned he is."

"A point," Lope said. "Marlowe is a very clever man--and if you don't believe me, ask him."

Guzm?n's servant grinned. "Meaning no offense to you, se?or , but conceit is a vice not unknown amongst poets."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Enrique," de Vega replied, deadpan. They both laughed. Lope closed the door behind him and headed for his own quarters.

He expected to discover Diego there, snoring up a storm. Christmas was a holy day, too holy for almost all work (not that Diego felt like working on the most ordinary day of the year, either). But the servant's bed was empty. Lope crossed himself. "Truly this is a day of miracles," he murmured.

In his own little inner room, he found paper and pen and ink. He opened the shutters, to take such advantage of England's fleeting December daylight as he could, and began to write. Maybe Christmas was too holy for that, too. De Vega had no intention of asking a priest's opinion about it.

A RAGGED MAN on a street corner thrust a bowl of spiced wine at a pretty woman walking by.

"Wa.s.sail!" he called.

She looked him over, smiled, and nodded at him. "Drinkhail!" she replied. He handed her the bowl and kissed her on the cheek. She drank, then gave him back the bowl.

"A happy New Year to you, sweetheart!" the ragged man called after her as she went on her way. He sang in a surprisingly sweet, surprisingly true baritone: "Wa.s.sail, wa.s.sail, as white as my name, Wa.s.sail, wa.s.sail, in snow, frost, and hail, Wa.s.sail, wa.s.sail, that much doth avail, Wa.s.sail, wa.s.sail, that never will fail."

William Shakespeare tossed the fellow a penny. "A happy New Year to you as well, sirrah."

The ragged man doffed his cap. "G.o.d bless you on the day, sir!" He held the bowl out to Shakespeare.

"Wa.s.sail!"

"Drinkhail!" Shakespeare replied, and drank. Returning the bowl, he added, "I'd as lief go without the kiss." Some Grecian, he couldn't remember who, had said the like to Alexander, and paid for it.

Marlowe would know the name.

With a chuckle, the ragged man said, "And I'd as lief not give it you. But by my troth, sir, full many a fair lady have I bussed, and thanks to the wa.s.sail bowl I owe." He lifted the cap from his head again. "Give you joy of the coming year."

"And you." Shakespeare walked past him. A couple of blocks farther on, another man used a wa.s.sail bowl to gather coins and kisses. Shakespeare gave him a penny, too. He got in return a different song, one he hadn't heard before, and did his best to remember it. Bits of it might show up in a play years from now.

All along the crowded street, men and women wished one another happy New Year. They'd done that even back before the coming of the Armada, for the Roman tradition of beginning the year in wintertime had lingered even though, before the Spaniards came, it had formally started on March 25. As with the calendar, Isabella and Albert had changed that to conform to Spanish practice. People called 1589 the Short Year, for it had begun on March 25 and ended on December 31.

Snow crunched under Shakespeare's shoes. Soot and dirt streaked it. Back in Stratford, snow stayed white some little while after it fell. Not here. Stratford was a little market town; he would have been surprised had it held two thousand souls. London had at least a hundred times as many, and more than a hundred times as many fires belching smoke into the sky to smirch the snow sometimes even before it fell.

A s...o...b..ll whizzed past his head from behind. He whirled. The urchin who'd thrown it stuck out his tongue and scurried away. With a shrug, Shakespeare went on walking. He'd thrown s...o...b..a.l.l.s when he was a boy, too. And my aim was better, he thought, though that might have been the man's view of the boy he'd been.