VI.

SMOKE FROM THE fireplace, smoke from the flames under a roasting capon, and smoke from half a dozen pipes of tobacco filled the Boar's Head in East Cheap. Shakespeare's eyes stung and watered."What's the utility of tobacco?" he asked the player beside him, who'd been drinking sack with singleminded dedication for some little while now. "What pleasure takes one from the smoking of it, besides the pleasure of setting fire to one's purse?" The stuff was, among other things, devilishly expensive.

The player blinked at him in owlish solemnity. "Why, to pa.s.s current, of course," he answered. After a soft belch, he buried his nose in the mug of sack once more.

"It suffices not," Shakespeare murmured.

"Pay him no heed," Christopher Marlowe said from across the table. Marlowe had a pipe. He paused to draw in smoke, then blew a perfect smoke ring. Shakespeare goggled. He'd never seen that before. It almost answered his question by itself. Laughing at his flabbergasted expression, Marlowe went on, "He is sensible in nothing but blows, and so is an a.s.s."

"Is that so?" the player said. "Well, sirrah, you can kiss mine a.r.s.e."

Marlowe rose from his stool in one smooth motion. "Right gladly will I." He came around the table, kissed the fellow on the mouth, and returned to his place. The drunken player gaped and then, too late, cursed and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his doublet. Loud, raucous laughter filled the Boar's Head.

Under it, Marlowe nodded to Shakespeare. "You were saying, Will?"

"What good's tobacco?" Shakespeare asked.

"What good is't?" Now Marlowe was the one who stared. "Why, let Aristotle and all your philosophers say what they will, there is nothing to be compared with tobacco. Have you tried it, at the least?"

"I have, four or five years gone by. I paid my shilling for the d.a.m.ned little clay pipe, and two shillings more for the noxious weed to charge it with, and I smoked and I smoked till I might have been a chimneytop. And . . ."

"And?" Marlowe echoed.

"And I cast up the good threepenny supper I'd had not long before--as featly as you please, mind, missing my shoes altogether--and sithence have had naught to do with tobacco, nor wanted to."

"Liked you the leek when first you ate of it? Or the bitter taste of beer?"

"Better than that horrid plant from unknown clime." Shakespeare shuddered at the memory of how his guts had knotted.

"By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you," Marlowe said. "You have not so much brain as ear-wax; in sooth, there will be little learning die then that day you are hanged." He leered at Shakespeare. "And who knows which day that will be, eh, my chuck?"

"Go to," Shakespeare snarled. Marlowe would not keep his mouth shut. "More of your conversation would infect my brain. You draw out the thread of your verbosity finer than the style of your argument, you scambling, outfacing, fashion-mongering peevish lown."

"Well shot, Will," Thomas Dekker called. The young poet whooped and clapped his hands. Lord Westmorland's Men had put on his first play only a few weeks before. He lifted up his mug of wine in salute. "Reload and give him another barrel!" He drained the mug and slammed it down.

Shakespeare caught a barmaid's eye and pointed to Dekker. When she filled the youngster's mug again,Shakespeare paid her. Dekker was chronically short of funds; till Shakespeare's company bought his comedy, he'd been one step from debtor's prison--and now, rumor had it, was again.

Marlowe clucked reproachfully. "Buying a claque? I reckoned it beneath you. The Devil will not have you d.a.m.ned, lest the oil that's in you should set h.e.l.l on fire." He emptied his mug, and gave the barmaid a halfpenny to refresh it. "I pay mine own way," he declared, drinking again.

"I am sure, Kit, though you know what temperance should be, you know not what it is," Shakespeare answered sweetly.

"Me? Me?" Marlowe's indignation was convincing. Whether it was also genuine, Shakespeare had no idea. "What of you, eh? I am too well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way."

As Shakespeare had with Dekker, so Marlowe also had a partisan: a boy actor of about fourteen, as pretty as one of the girls he played. He laughed and banged his fist down on the tabletop. Marlowe bought him more of whatever he was drinking--beer, Shakespeare saw when the serving woman poured his mug full again. He'd already had quite a lot; hectic color glowed on his cheeks, as if he were coming down with a fever.

Marlowe blew another smoke ring, then pa.s.sed the pipe to the boy, who managed a couple of unskillful puffs before coughing piteously and turning even redder than he was. Marlowe took back the pipe. He kissed the stem where the boy's lips had touched it, then put it in his own mouth again.

Watching intently was a tall, thin, pale man who wore wore a rich doublet of slashed silk. His tongue played over his red lips as he watched Marlowe and the boy. "Who's that?" Shakespeare asked Dekker.

He pointed. "I have seen him aforetimes, but recall not his name."

"Why, 'tis Anthony Bacon," the other poet replied. "He hath a . . . liking for beardless boys." He laughed and drank again. Shakespeare nodded. Not only had he seen Bacon, he'd visited the house Anthony shared with his younger brother, Francis, to see Sir William Cecil. He suddenly wondered what Anthony knew of the plot. Wonder or not, he had no intention of trying to find out.

Marlowe and Shakespeare weren't the only poets and players and other theatre folk dueling with words in the Boar's Head. Will Kemp had got George Rowley, an actor notorious for his slow thinking, splutteringly furious at him. As Rowley cast about for some devastating comeback--and looked more and more unhappy as none occurred to him--Kemp gave him a mocking bow and sang out, "Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike."

"I'll strike you, you--you--you . . . fool!" Rowley shouted amidst general laughter, which only got louder at his sorry reply.

"Is his head worth a hat? Or his chin worth a beard?" Kemp demanded of the crowd, and got back shouts of, "No!" that pierced the smoke and came echoing back from the stout oak beams of the roof.

George Rowley surged up from his bench and did try to strike him then, but other actors held them apart.

Marlowe smiled across the table at Shakespeare. "Ah, the Boar's Head," he said fondly. "What things we have seen, done at the Boar's Head! Heard words that have been so nimble, so full of subtle flame--"

Shakespeare broke in, "As if that everyone from whence they came . . ." He paused in thought, then carried on: "Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, and had resolved to live a fool the rest of his dull life.""Not bad, Will," Marlowe said. "No, not bad, and all the better for the internal rhyme. . . . Purposed you that from when you began to speak?"

"An I say yes, you'll call me liar; an I say no, you'll call me lucky clot-poll," Shakespeare answered. The other poet grinned back at him, altogether unabashed. Shakespeare turned thoughtful. "Think you the like hath value in shaping dialogue?"

Marlowe leaned forward. "A thought of merit! It might lead mere leaden prose towards the suppleness of blank verse."

They batted the idea back and forth, nearly oblivious to the racket around them, till the pretty boy beside Marlowe, indignant at being ignored, got up to go. Shakespeare wondered if Marlowe would notice even that. Anthony Bacon did, he saw. Despite the lure of versification, the lure of the boy proved stronger for Marlowe. He spoke soothingly. When that failed to have the desired effect, he charged his pipe with tobacco, lit it with a splinter kindled from a nearby candle, and offered it to the boy. The youngster took another puff, made a horrible face, and coughed as if in the final stages of some dreadful tisick.

Shakespeare's sympathies were with him.

Regardless of Shakespeare's sympathies, the boy and Marlowe left the Boar's Head together. Marlowe's arm was around the boy's waist; the youngster's head nestled against his shoulder. Bacon watched them hungrily. Anyone looking at them would have guessed they were sweethearts. And so, Shakespeare supposed, they were. But Marlowe could not hide--indeed, took pride in not hiding--his appet.i.tes. The English Inquisition might burn him for sodomy. Secular authorities, if they caught him, would merely hang him.

Maybe the talk with Marlowe was what he needed to get his wits going, though. That night, at the ordinary, he began work on the play Lord Burghley had asked of him. He wished he were as wealthy as one of the Bacons, or as Burghley himself. Committing treason was bad enough. Committing it in public . . .

He put a hand over his papers whenever Kate the serving woman came near. She found it funny instead of taking offense. "I'll not steal your words," she said. "Since when could I, having no letters of mine own?"

She'd said before she needed to make a mark instead of signing her name. Shakespeare relaxed--a very little. Whenever anyone but Kate walked past the table where he wrote, he kept on covering up the ma.n.u.script. That, of course, drew more attention to it than it would have got had he kept on writing. A plump burgess looked down at the sheet in front of him, shook his head, and said, "You need have no fear, sir. Nor G.o.d nor the Devil could make out your character."

Geoffrey Martin had voiced similar complaints. But poor Martin had been the company's book-keeper; he naturally had a low opinion of the hand of a mere poet. To hear someone with less exacting standards scorn Shakespeare's script was oddly rea.s.suring.

After a while, Shakespeare was the only customer left in the ordinary. His quill scratched across the paper so fast, the ink on one line scarcely had time to dry before his hand smudged it while writing the next. He started when Kate said, "Curfew's nigh, Master Will."

"So soon?" he said, amazed.

"Soon?" She shook her head. "You've sat there writing sith you finished supper, none of you but your right hand moving. Look--two whole leaves filled. Never saw I you write so fast."Little by little, Shakespeare came forward in time a millennium and a half, from bold, outraged Britons and swaggering Romans to London in the year of our Lord 1598. "I wrote two leaves? By G.o.d, I did."

He whistled in wonder. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done so much of a night, either. Not even when he was finishing Love's Labour's Won had his pen flown like this.

"Is't something new, then?" she asked.

"Yes." He nodded. He could safely say that much. And he could safely let her see the ma.n.u.script, as she'd reminded him earlier in the evening, for she couldn't read it. And . . . all of a sudden, he didn't feel like thinking about the play any more. "Might I bide a little longer?" he asked. Kate nodded. She didn't seem much surprised.

Later, when they lay side by side on the narrow little bed in her cramped little chamber, she set her palm on the left side of his chest, perhaps to feel his heartbeat slow towards normal from its pounding peak of a few minutes before. Shakespeare set his own hand on hers. "What's to become of us, Will?" she asked.

He sighed. He'd run into altogether too many questions lately for which he had no good answers. Here was another. Having no good answers, he responded with a question of his own: "What can become of us? I've a wife and two daughters in Stratford. I've never hid 'em from thee."

Kate nodded. "Yes, thou'rt honest, in thine own fashion." That neither sounded nor felt like praise. But here they lay together in her bed, warm and naked and sated. If that wasn't praise of the highest sort a woman could give a man, what was it?

"I do love thee," he said. Kate snuggled against him. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, hoping he was telling the truth. He sighed again. "Did I have a choice . . ."

But before Shakespeare was born, Henry VIII had wanted a choice, too. When the Pope wouldn't give him one, he'd pulled England away from Rome. Now, of course, the invading Spaniards had forcibly brought her back to the Catholic Church. But even if Elizabeth still reigned, even if England were still Protestant, divorce was for sovereigns and n.o.bles and those rich enough to pay for a private act of Parliament, not for the likes of a struggling poet and player who lived in a Bishopsgate lodging house, had a sour wife far away, and sometimes slept with the serving woman at the ordinary around the corner.

"Didst thou have a choice . . ." Kate echoed.

Before G.o.d, I know not what I'd do, Shakespeare thought. If he hadn't got Anne with child, he doubted he would have wed her. Years and years too late to worry about that now, though. What therefore G.o.d hath joined together, let not man put asunder. He'd heard that text in sermons more times than he could count since the Armada put Isabella and Albert on the English throne. Priests harped on it, to show that Protestants who countenanced divorce were heretics and sinners.

"Didst thou have a choice . . ." Kate repeated, a little more sharply this time.

Would she have me lie to her? Shakespeare wondered. He was just then and would keep on lying to practically everyone he knew. Why should a serving woman be different from anyone else? Because I do-- because I might--love her. Not a perfect answer, but the best he could do.

"Did I have a choice, my chuck . . ." Shakespeare sighed and shrugged, expecting her to throw him out of that narrow bed for not crying out that he would cleave to her come what might.

She startled him by laughing, and startled him again by kissing him on the cheek. "Perhaps thou art truly honest, Will. Most men'd lie for the sake of their sweetheart's feelings.""I'll give thee what I can, Kate, and cherish all thou givest me. And now I had best be gone."

Shakespeare got out of bed and began to dress.

"G.o.d keep thee, Will," she said, a yawn blurring her words. "Hurry to thy lodging. Surely curfew's past."

"G.o.d keep thee," he said, and opened the door to her room. He went out, closing the door behind him.

LOPE DE VEGA came up to the priest. The Englishman marked his forehead with the ashes of the "palm" (usually, in this northern clime, willow or box or yew) branches used the previous Palm Sunday. In Latin, the priest said, "Remember, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return."

Crossing himself, Lope murmured, "Amen," and made his way out of St. Swithin's church. Most of the people he saw on the streets, English and Spaniards alike, already had their foreheads marked with the sign of repentance that opened the Lenten season. Anyone who didn't, especially in a year when Catholics and heretics celebrated Easter more than a month apart, would get some hard looks from those whose duty was to examine such things.

Though it was still the first week of February, the day was springlike: mild, almost warm, the sky a hazy blue with fluffy white clouds drifting slowly across it from west to east. The sun shone brightly. A few more such days and flowers would begin to open, seeds to bring forth new plants, leaves to bud on trees.

Once, Lope had seen this weather hold long enough for nature to be fooled--which made the following blizzard all the crueler by comparison. He didn't expect this stretch to last so long. Usually, they were like a deceitful girl who promised much more than she intended to give. Knowing as much, he didn't feel himself cheated, as he had when he'd first come to England.

"I am sure you are brokenhearted that Lord Westmorland's Men have got a dispensation to let them perform through Lent," Captain Baltasar Guzm?n said outside the church.

"Oh, of course, your Excellency," de Vega replied. He was d.a.m.ned if he'd let this little pipsqueak, still wet behind the ears, outdo him in irony. He touched his forehead, as if to say the ashes there symbolized his mourning. But then he went on, "Most of the acting companies gain these dispensations. They would have a hard time staying in business if they didn't." Acting companies were by the nature of things shoestring operations (Lord Westmorland's Men a bit less than most); they could ill afford losing more than a tenth of their revenue by shutting down between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

"Well, go on up to the Theatre, then," Guzm?n said. "See if anyone is bold enough to flaunt his heresy to the world at large. Whoever he is, he will pay."

"Yes, sir," Lope said. "Sir, is there any further word of his Most Catholic Majesty? Shakespeare has asked after him. Not unreasonably, he wants some notion of how much time he has to compose the drama Don Diego Flores de Vald?s set him."

"I have news, yes, but none of it good," Captain Guzm?n replied. "The gout has attacked his neck, which makes both eating and sleeping very difficult for him. And the sores on his hands and feet show no sign of healing. If anything, they begin to ulcerate and spread. Also, his dropsy is no better--if anything, is worse."

Tears stung Lope's eyes. He touched the ashes on his forehead again. "The priest in the church spoke truly: to dust we shall return. But this is bitter, a man who was--who is--so great, having an end so hard and slow. Better if he simply went to sleep one night and never woke up.""G.o.d will do as He pleases, Senior Lieutenant, not as you please. Would you set your judgment against His?"

"No, sir--not that it would do any good if I did, for He can act and all I can do is talk."

Guzm?n relaxed. "So long as you understand that. With a man who makes plays . . . Forgive me, but I wondered if you arrogated some of the Lord's powers to yourself, since you make your characters and move them about as if you were the Almighty for them."

Lope looked at him in astonishment. "I have had those blasphemous thoughts, yes, sir. My confessor has given me heavy penance on account of them. How could you guess?"

"It seemed logical," Guzm?n said. "You have a world inside your head, an imaginary world filled with imaginary people. Who could blame you for believing, now and again, that that imaginary world is real?

You make it seem real to others in your plays--why not to yourself as well?"

"Do you know, your Excellency, I am going to have to pay serious attention to you, whether I want to or not," de Vega said slowly.

Baltasar Guzm?n set a hand on his shoulder. "Now, now, Senior Lieutenant. You had better be careful what you say, or you'll embarra.s.s both of us. Being your superior, I should do the embarra.s.sing. Let me try: how is your latest lady friend?"

Lope wasn't embarra.s.sed. He flashed Guzm?n a grin. "She's very well, thank you," he said, and heaved a sigh. "I do believe she is the sweetest creature I ever met."

"And I do believe you've said that about every woman for whom you ever conceived an affection, which must be half the women in England, at the very least." Captain Guzm?n grinned, too, a nasty, crooked grin. "How am I doing?"

"Pretty well, thanks," Lope answered. "You make me glad I'm going to the Theatre." He wasn't sorry to hurry away from St. Swithin's, for Captain Guzm?n's shot had hit in the white center of the target. Lope did pa.s.sionately believe, at least for a while, that each new girl was the one upon whom G.o.d had most generously bestowed His gifts. What point to loving someone, after all, if she weren't special? Lucy Watkins, now . . .

As he made his way through the teeming streets of London, he thought of her shy little smile, of her soft voice, of the pale little wisps of hair that came loose no matter how tightly plaited the rest was . . . and of the taste of her lips, of her uncommonly sweet smell, of the charms he hadn't sampled yet but soon hoped to.

A constable and a tavern-keeper stood arguing outside the latter's door. The constable wagged his finger in the other fellow's face. "Marry, there is another indictment upon thee," he said severely, "for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which I think thou wilt howl."

"All victuallers do so," the tavern-keeper protested. "What's a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?"

"In a whole Lent?" the constable said. "A whole Lent, with Ash Wednesday scarce begun? Thou'lt go to the dock for this, beshrew me if thou dost not. Every soul is of a mind to crush out Protestantism like it was a black-beetle in amongst the sallat greens. Bad business, heresy, terrible bad."

"Protestantism? Heresy? Art daft, George Trimble? What's that to do with a bit o' mutton?--for the which thou'st shown no small liking, Lents gone by.""Liar!" the constable exclaimed, in tones that couldn't mean anything but, In the name of G.o.d, keep your mouth shut! He went on, "Besides, Lents gone by have naught to do with now. It's all the calendar, it is, that has to do with heresy."

"How?" the tavern-keeper demanded.

"Why, for that it does, that's how," George Trimble said. Lope sighed and went on his way. He could have explained what the problem was, but he didn't think either of the quarreling Englishmen would have cared to listen to him.

By now, the men who took money at the Theatre recognized Lope and waved him through as if he were one of the sharers among Lord Westmorland's Men. He wished he were. The life of a Spanish lieutenant was as nothing next to that which Burbage or Shakespeare or Will Kemp lived. De Vega was sure of it.

Kemp threw back his head and howled like a wolf when Lope walked into the Theatre. De Vega gave back a courtier's bow, which at least disconcerted the clown for a moment. Kemp, he noticed, wore no ashes on his forehead. What did that mean? Did it mean anything? With Kemp, you could never be sure.

Swords clashed as a couple of actors rehea.r.s.ed a fight scene. One glance told de Vega neither of them had ever used a blade in earnest. Burbage, he'd seen, had some notion of what he was about. These fellows? The Spaniard shook his head. They were even worse than Shakespeare, who'd never pretended to be a warrior.

Burbage, now, boomed out the Scottish King's lines:

" 'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?' "

" 'Therein the patient must minister to himself,' " replied the hireling playing the doctor.