"SURELY, S E?OR SHAKESPEARE, you know that his holiness Pope Sixtus promised King Philip a million ducats when the first Spanish soldier set foot on English soil, and that he very handsomely paid all he had promised," Lope de Vega said. "A million gold ducats, mind you."

"Yes, I understand," Shakespeare replied. "A kingly sum, in sooth."

They sat with their heads together in the tiring room at the Theatre. De Vega puffed on a pipe of tobacco.

The smoke rising from it fought with that from torches, lamps, and braziers. "I am glad you follow, sir," he said. "This needs must appear in the play on his Most Catholic Majesty's life."

Shakespeare had been scribbling notes in a character Lope could not have deciphered had his life depended on it. Now he looked up sharply. "Wherefore?" he asked. "It doth little to advance the action, the more so as Pope and King never met to seal this bargain, it being made by underlings."

"But it shows how beloved of his Holiness was the King," Lope replied."By the King's own deeds shall I show that," Shakespeare said, "deeds worth the showing on a stage.

Here, he doth--or rather, his men do--naught but chaffer like tradesmen at the market over the sum to be paid. Were this your play, Master de Vega, would you such a scene include?"

After some thought, Lope spread his hands. "I yield me," he said. He sucked at the clay pipe, hoping the smoke would calm him. Working with Shakespeare was proving harder than he'd expected. The Englishman knew what was required of him: a play celebrating and memorializing Philip II's life and victories. But he had his own ideas of what belonged in such a play and how the pieces should fit together.

Having won his point, he could be gracious. "My thanks, sir," he said. "Sith the play'll bear my name, I want it to be a match for the best of my other work."

"For your pride's sake," Lope said.

"For my honor's sake," Shakespeare said.

Lope sprang from his stool and bowed low, sweeping off his hat so that the plume brushed the floor.

"Say no more, sir. Your fellow poets and players would think less of you, did you write below your best.

This I understand to the bottom of my soul, and I, in my turn, honor you for it. I am your servant.

Command me."

"Sit, sit," Shakespeare urged him. "I own I stand in need of your counsel on the incidents of your King's life and on how to show 'em, the which is made more harder by his seldom leaving Madrid, those in his command working for him all through the Spanish Empire."

"Even so." Lope returned to his seat. He eyed the English poet with considerable respect. "You have more experience bringing history to the stage than I."

Shakespeare's smile somehow didn't quite reach his eyes. "When I put words into the mouths of Romans, I may do't without fear the Master of the Revels will think my ghosts and shadows speak of matters political."

Lope nodded. "Certes. This is one of the uses of the distant past." He leaned forward. "Here, though, not so distant is the past of which we speak. How thought you to portray the King's conquest of the heretic Dutchmen?"

"Why, through his kinsman, the Duke of Parma."

"Excellent," Lope said. "Most excellent. Parma being dead, no unsightly jealousies will to him accrue."

They kept at it till the prompter summoned Shakespeare to sort out something or other in the new play he'd offered the company. A harried look on his face, the English poet returned a couple of minutes later to say, "Your pardon, Master de Vega, but this bids fair to eat up some little while. He hath set upon my pride a blot, catching me with my characters doing now one thing, now another quite different. Having marred it, I now needs must mend it."

"Qu? l?stima," Lope said, and then, in English, "What a pity." He got to his feet. "I am wanted elsewhere anon. Shall we take up again on the morrow?"

" 'Twere better the day following," Shakespeare answered.

Lope nodded. "Until the day. Hasta luego, se?or ." Shakespeare dipped his head, then hurried off. De Vega left the Theatre. He'd come on horseback today. One of the tireman's helpers had kept an eye onthe beast to make sure it would still be there when he came out. Lope gave the Englishman a halfpenny for his trouble. By the fellow's frown, he'd hoped for more, but every man's hopes miscarried now and again.

Riding through the tenements that huddled outside the city wall, Lope felt something of a conquering caballero. He'd seldom had that feeling afoot. Now, though, he looked down on the English. From literally looking down on them, I do so metaphorically as well, he thought. A man's mind is a strange thing.

The English knew him for a conqueror, too. That made his pa.s.sage harder, not easier. They got in his way, and feigned deafness when he shouted at them. They flung curses and catcalls from every other window. They flung other things, too: stones to make his horse shy and rear, lumps of filth to foul the beast and him. He never saw his tormentors. The ones not safe inside buildings melted into the crowds on Sh.o.r.editch High Street whenever he whirled in the saddle to try to get a glimpse of them.

By the time he got back down to Bishopsgate, he was in a perfect transport of temper. One of the Irish gallowgla.s.ses at the gate, seeing his fury, asked, "Would your honor have joy of us breaking some heads for you, now?"

"No. Let it go. You cannot hope to punish the guilty," Lope said, once he'd made sense of the heavily armed foot soldier's brogue.

With a laugh, the Irishman said, "And what difference might that make? 'Sdeath, sir, not a groat's worth.

A broken head'll make you shy of tormenting a gentleman afterwards, be you guilty or no."

But Lope repeated, "Let it go." The gallowgla.s.ses and kerns brought over from the western island looked for excuses to fall upon the English. Considering what the English had done in Ireland over the years, they had reason for wanting revenge. But the outrage their atrocities sp.a.w.ned made them almost as much liability as a.s.set for the Spaniards and for Isabella and Albert.

Lope rode into London. He still drew catcalls and curses. Inside the wall, though, Spaniards were more common, as were Englishmen who favored the Spanish cause. A man who flung, say, a ball of dung ran some real risk of being seen and noted. Catcalls Lope took in stride.

When he got back to the barracks, the stable boys clucked at the horse's sorry state. "And what of me?"

Lope said indignantly. "Am I a plant in a pot?"

"It could be so, se?or ," one of them answered. "And if it is, you're a well manured plant, by G.o.d and St. James." He held his nose. His friends laughed. Had the misfortune befallen someone else, Lope might have laughed, too. Since it was his own, laughter only enraged him. He stormed off to his chamber.

There he found his servant, sleeping the sleep of the innocent and just. "Diego!" he shouted. Diego's snores changed timbre, but not rhythm. "Diego!" Lope screamed. The servant muttered something vaguely placating and rolled from his back to his belly. Lope shook him like a man trying to shake fleas out of a doublet.

Diego's eyes opened. "Oh, buenos d?-as, se?or ," he said. "Is it an earthquake?"

"If there were an earthquake, it would swallow you as the whale swallowed Jonah," Lope said furiously.

"And do you know what? Do you know what, you son of a debauched sloth?"

His servant didn't want to answer, but saw he had no choice. "What, se?or ?" he quavered.

"If there were an earthquake, it would swallow you as the whale swallowed Jonah, and you wouldn'teven know it!" Lope bellowed. "Scotland--"

That got Diego's attention, where nothing up till then really had. "Not Scotland, se?or , I beg you," he broke in. "The Scots are even worse than the Irish, from all I hear. May the holy Mother of G.o.d turn her back on me if I lie. They cook blood in a sheep's stomach and call it supper, and some say it is the blood of men."

"Scotland, I was going to say, is too good for you," de Vega snarled. He had the satisfaction of watching Diego quail, a satisfaction marred when his servant yawned in the midst of cringing. "By G.o.d, Diego, if you fall asleep now I'll murder you in your bed. Do you think I'm lying? Do you want to find out if I'm lying?"

"No, se?or . All I want to do is . . ." Diego stopped, looking even more miserable than he had. He'd undoubtedly been about to say, All I want to do is go back to sleep. He wasn't very bright, but he could see that that would land him in even more trouble than he'd already found. A querulous whine crept into his voice as he went on, "I thought you'd stay at that d.a.m.ned Theatre a lot longer than you did."

"And so?" Lope said. "And so? Because I'm not here, does that mean you get to lie there like a salt cod?

Why weren't you blacking my boots? Why weren't you mending my shirts? Why weren't you keeping your ears open for anything that might be to my advantage, the way Captain Guzm?n's Enrique does?"

Why does that vain little thrip of a Baltasar Guzm?n get a prince among servants, while I'm stuck with a donkey, and a dead donkey at that?

Diego said something inflammatory and scandalous about exactly how intimate Enrique and Captain Guzm?n were. "How would you know that?" Lope jeered. "When have you been awake to see them?"

"It's true, se?or ," Diego answered. "Everybody says so."

Lecturing his servant on what "everybody said" was worth struck de Vega as a waste of breath. But his pause was thoughtful for more reasons than that. If Guzm?n really did prove a maric?n, a sodomite, he might lose his position. He would, in fact, if he brought scandal to himself or to the Spanish occupiers as a group. And who would benefit if Baltasar Guzm?n fell? I would, Lope thought. People can call me a great many things, but a sodomite? Never!

Diego's narrow little eyes glittered nastily. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"No," Lope said, not without well-concealed regret. "I am thinking that maybe you would do better asleep after all. When you're awake, your mind goes from the chamber pot to the sewage ditch. For I happen to know Captain Guzm?n had a mistress till they quarreled a few months ago."

"And why would they quarrel?" Diego asked. "If he'd sooner--"

"Basta!" Lope said. "And not just enough but too much. Get up. Get out of here. Do what you're supposed to do. Then, once you've done that--which will include cleaning the clothes I have on, for the English threw filth at me and my horse today--once you've done that, I say, you'll have earned your rest, and you'll enjoy it more."

His servant looked highly dubious. De Vega supposed he had some reason. The only way he could enjoy his rest more would be to make love without waking up. Diego also thought about making some remark on the state of Lope's clothes. Again, he was wise to think twice. Grumbling under his breath, he did at last get out of bed.

Lope pulled off his boots, shed his stinking netherstocks and hose, and got out of his befouled doublet.He changed quickly; the room was cold. And then he went off to make the day's report to Captain Guzm?n. "d.a.m.n you, Diego," he muttered under his breath as he went. No matter what everybody said about Guzm?n--if everybody said anything about him--Lope still had to deal with him. That was hard enough already, and would be harder still if de Vega watched his superior out of the corner of his eye, looking for signs he might be a sodomite.

Before he got to Guzm?n's office, he ran into Enrique. Or had Enrique contrived to run into him? Eyes wide with excitement behind the lenses of his spectacles, Captain Guzm?n's servant said, "Tell me at once, Senior Lieutenant--what is it like, shaping a play with Se?or Shakespeare?"

"I don't shape here," Lope said, remembering he might have to watch Enrique out of the corner of his eye, too. "I only have some lumber to sell. Shakespeare is the carpenter. He cuts and carves and nails things together. He'll do it very well, too, I think."

"He has a mind of his own?" Enrique asked.

"Por Dios, s?-!" Lope exclaimed, and the clever young servant laughed. "You can think it's funny," de Vega told him. "You don't have to work with the Englishman."

Enrique sighed. "Oh, but I wish I did!"

"Is your master in?" Lope asked.

"Yes, I think so," Enrique said. "He was at a . . . friend's house last night, but he said before he left that he'd try to return in good time."

He said amiga, not amigo: the "friend" was of the feminine persuasion. So much for what everybody says, Lope thought. "Have you seen her?" he asked. "Is she pretty?"

"I should hope so, se?or !" Enrique said enthusiastically. "A face like an angel's, and t.i.ts out to here." He held a hand an improbable distance in front of his chest.

So much indeed for what everybody says, de Vega thought. When he walked into Baltasar Guzm?n's office, the young captain looked like a cat that had just fallen into a bowl of cream. And when Guzm?n asked, "What's the latest, Senior Lieutenant?" he didn't sound as if he'd bite Lope's head off if he didn't like the answer. He must have had a night to remember.

I wish I were in love again. I probably will be soon, but I'm not now, and I miss it. Sighing, de Vega summarized his session with Shakespeare. He also summarized the English att.i.tude toward lone Spaniards on horseback: "Only my good luck they chose to throw more dung than stones. I might not have made it back if they'd gone the other way."

Captain Guzm?n said, "I'm glad you're safe, de Vega. You're a valuable man." While Lope was still gaping, wondering if he'd heard straight, his superior added, "And I'm glad things are going so well with the English poet. Keep up the good work."

Lope left his office in something of a daze. Maybe Guzm?n's amiga really did have the face of an angel and t.i.ts out to there. Lope couldn't imagine what else would have made the sardonic n.o.bleman seem so much like a human being.

"WHERE'S MASTER MARTIN?" Shakespeare asked in the tiring room at the Theatre. "He was to have the different several parts from Love's Labour's Won ready to go to the scribes, that they mightmake for the players fair copies."

"Good luck to 'em," Will Kemp said. "There's not a rooster living could read your hen scratchings."

The clown exaggerated, but not by a great deal--not enough, at any rate, to make Shakespeare snap back at him. Richard Burbage looked around. "Ay, where is he?" Burbage said, as if Kemp hadn't spoken. "Geoff's steady as the tides, trusty as a hound--"

"Ah, d.i.c.k," Kemp murmured. "You shew again why you're so much better with another man's words in your mouth."

He'd made that crack before. It must have stung even so, for Burbage glared at him. A couple of players laughed, but they quickly fell silent. Not only was Burbage a large, powerful man, but he and his family owned the Theatre. Insulting him to his face took nerve--or a fool's foolishness, Shakespeare thought.

"Pray G.o.d he hath not absconded," Jack Hungerford said.

That drew a loud, raucous guffaw from Will Kemp. "Pray G.o.d indeed!" the clown said. "He's to the broggers with all our papers, for the which, they'll a.s.suredly pay him not a farthing under sixpence ha'penny--he's rich for life, belike."

He got a bigger laugh there than he had when he mocked Burbage. Shakespeare didn't find the crack funny. "Loose papers may not signify to thee, that hast not had pirates print 'em without thy let and without thy profit," he growled. "As ever, thou think'st naught for any of the company but thyself. Thou'rt not only fool, but a.s.s and dog as well."

"A dog, is it?" Kemp said. "Thy mother's of my generation; what's she, if I be a dog?"

Shakespeare sprang for him. They each landed a couple of punches before the others of the company pulled them apart. Smarting from a blow on the cheek, Shakespeare snarled, "A dog thou art, and for the sake of b.i.t.c.hery." He didn't know that Kemp sought wh.o.r.es more than any other man, but flung the insult anyhow, too furious to care about truth.

Before the clown could reply in like vein, someone with a loud, booming voice called out from the doorway to the tiring room: "Here, now! Here now, by G.o.d! What's the meaning of this? What's the meaning of't, by G.o.d?"

"Constable Strawberry!" Burbage said. "Good day, sir."

"Good day," Walter Strawberry said. He was a jowly, middle-aged man who looked like a bulldog and had little more wit.

"I hope you are well?" Burbage said. The Theatre belonging to his family, he dealt with the constable. "I have not seen you long; how goes the world?"

"It wears, sir, as it grows," the constable replied.

"Ay, that's well known." Burbage's tone grew sharper: "Why come you here?" He quietly paid the constable and his helpers to stay away from the Theatre except when the players needed aid.

"First tell you me, what's this garboil here in aid of? What's it about, eh?" He pointed to the men holding Shakespeare and the others with a grip on Kemp.

"Words, words, words," Shakespeare answered, twisting free. "Good words are better than badstrokes, and the strokes Will and I gave each other were poor as any ever given. We are, meseems, friends again." He looked toward the clown.

Kemp had also got loose. "Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly," he said. Shakespeare stiffened. With a nasty smile, Kemp added, "But not ours." He came over to Shakespeare and planted a large, wet, smacking kiss on his cheek, whispering, "Scurvy, dotard, thin-faced knave," as he did so.

His acting wouldn't have convinced many, but it sufficed for Constable Strawberry. "Good, good," he boomed. "High spirits, animal spirits, eh?"

"Why come you here?" Richard Burbage repeated, as Shakespeare and Kemp, both cued by animal spirits, mouthed, a.s.s, at each other.

"Why come I here?" the constable echoed, as if he himself might have forgotten. He coughed portentously, then went on, "Know you a certain wight named Geoffrey Martin?"

"We do," Burbage answered.

Will Kemp said, "A more certain wight never was born, by G.o.d." Strawberry ignored that, which probably meant he didn't understand it.

"Why come you here?" Burbage asked for the third time. "Hath aught amiss befallen him?"

"Amiss? Amiss?" Walter Strawberry said. "You might say so. You just might--an you reckon murther aught amiss, you might."

"Murther?" The dreadful word came from half the company, Shakespeare among them. Horror and astonishment filled most voices. Shakespeare's held horror alone. He realized he was not surprised, and wished to heaven he were.

"Murther, yes, murther most foul," Constable Strawberry said. "Master Martin, a were found besides an ordinary, stabbed above an eye--the dexterous one, it were--the said wound causing his deceasing to be.