Then such thoughts left him, for two actors appeared on stage, and the play began. Lope had to give all his attention to it. His English was good, but not so good that he could follow the language when quickly spoken without listening hard. And Shakespeare, as was his habit, had cooked up a more complicated plot than any Spanish playwright would have thought of using: squabbling n.o.ble brothers, the younger having usurped the elder's place as duke; the quarreling sons of a knight loyal to the exiled rightful duke, and the daughters of the rightful duke and his brother.

Those "daughters," Rosalind and Celia, almost took Lope out of the play for a moment. As was the English practice, they were played by beardless boys with unbroken voices. Women didn't act on stage here, as they'd begun to do in Spain. One of the boys playing the daughters was noticeably better at giving the impression of femininity than the other. Had the company had real actresses to work with, theproblem wouldn't have arisen.

But Shakespeare, as de Vega had seen him do in other plays, used English conventions to advantage.

Rosalind disguised herself as a boy to escape the court of her wicked uncle: a boy playing a girl playing a boy. And then a minor character playing a feminine role fell for "him": a boy playing a girl in love with a boy playing a girl playing a boy. Lope couldn't help howling laughter. He was tempted to count on his fingers to keep track of who was who, or of who was supposed to be who.

Spanish plays ran to three acts. Shakespeare, following English custom, had five acts--about two hours--in which to wrap up all the loose ends he'd introduced and all the hares he'd started. He did it, too, getting the daughters of the two n.o.blemen married to the sons of the knight and having the usurping duke retire to a monastery so his older brother could reclaim the throne.

How would the Englishman have managed that if his kingdom were still Protestant? Lope wondered as the boy playing Rosalind, the better actor, delivered an epilogue asking the audience for applause. That struck Lope as almost as unnatural as not employing actresses. He'd used the last couple of lines in his plays to say farewell, but he never would have written in a whole speech.

But it didn't bother the people around him. They clapped their hands and stamped their feet and shouted till his ears rang. The actors came out to take their bows. Richard Burbage, who'd played the usurping duke, made a leg in a robe King Philip wouldn't have been ashamed to wear. His crown was surely polished bra.s.s, not gold, but it gleamed brightly. Shakespeare, who'd played his older brother, also had on a royal robe, but one that was much less splendid, as befit his forest exile--a nice touch, Lope thought. When Shakespeare doffed his bra.s.s crown, his own crown gleamed brightly, too. Lope, who had all his hair, noted that with smug amus.e.m.e.nt.

One further advantage of a stage--from the company's point of view--was that they could sell a few seats right up on the edge of it, and charge more for those than for any others in the house. The men and women who rose from those seats to applaud showed more velvet and lace and threadwork of gold and silver than all the groundlings put together. Pearls and precious stones glittered in the women's hair. Gold gleamed on the men's belts, and on their scabbards, and on the hilts of their rapiers.

Despite those visible signs of wealth and power, the groundlings behind the rich folk weren't shy about making their views known. "Sit you down!" they shouted, and "We came to see the players, not your a.r.s.es!" and "G.o.d sees through you, but we can't!"

One of the grandees half turned and set a beringed hand on the fancy hilt of his sword. A flying chunk of sausage smirched his orange doublet with grease. Safe in the anonymity of the crowd, another groundling threw something else, which flew past the n.o.bleman and bounced halfway across the stage. The poor folk in their frowzy wool raised a cheer.

Just as a Spanish n.o.ble would have done, the Englishman purpled with fury. But the woman beside him, whose neckline was even more striking than her pile of blond curls, set a hand on his sleeve and said something in a low voice. His reply was anything but low, and thoroughly sulfurous. She spoke again, as if to say, What can you do? You can't kill them all. Grudgingly, he turned away from the groundlings, though his back still radiated fury. They jeered louder than ever.

After the last bow, the players went back into the tiring room behind the stage to change into their everyday clothes once more. Most of the crowd filed out through the narrow doorways by which they'd entered. Friends and sweethearts of the company pressed forward to join the actors backstage. So did the stagestruck: would-be actors, would-be writers, would-be friends and sweethearts.

The tireman's a.s.sistants--a couple of big, burly men who kept cudgels close by--stood in front of thedoors leading to the tiring room. Lope de Vega, though, had no trouble; he went backstage after every performance he attended. "G.o.d give you good day, Master Lope," one of the a.s.sistants said, doffing his cap and standing aside to let the Spaniard pa.s.s.

"And to you also, Edward," de Vega replied. "What thought you of the show today?"

"We had us a good house," Edward said--the first worry of any man in an acting company. Then he blinked. "Oh, d'you mean the play?"

"Indeed yes, the play," Lope said. "So much going on there, almost all at once."

"Master Will don't write 'em simple," the tireman's a.s.sistant agreed. "But he hath the knack of helping folk recall who's who, and meseems the crowd followed tolerably well." Nodding, de Vega pa.s.sed by.

Edward glowered at the Englishman behind him. "And who are you, friend?"

Chaos reigned in the tiring room. Some of the players were still in costume; some had already returned to the drabber wear normal to men and boys of their cla.s.s; and some, between the one stage and the other, wore very little. They took near nudity in stride, as Spanish actors would have done. The room was close with the reek of sweat and perfume and torch smoke.

Lope moved through as best he could, shaking hands, bowing when he had the s.p.a.ce, and congratulating the players. Someone--he didn't see who--handed him a leather drinking jack. Sipping, he found it full of sweet, strong Spanish wine. The English were even fonder of it than his own folk, perhaps because they had to import it and couldn't take it for granted.

He b.u.mped into a woman--someone's wife, he couldn't remember whose. "So sorry, my lady," he said.

"With your permission?" He bowed over her hand and kissed it. She smiled back in a manner that might have been encouraging.

"Watch out for Master Lope," round-faced Will Kemp said behind him. "Lope the loup, Lope the lobo."

The company clown howled wolfishly. Raucous laughter rose. Lope joined it, the easiest way he knew to deflect suspicion. The woman turned to talk to an Englishman, so there was no suspicion to deflect, anyhow. As?- es la vida, de Vega thought, and sighed.

He congratulated Burbage and the boy who'd played Rosalind. "I thank you kindly, sir," the youth replied. In his powder and paint, he still looked quite feminine--even tempting--but his natural voice, though not yet a man's, was deeper than the one he'd used on stage. He wouldn't be able to pretend to womanhood much longer.

At last, de Vega made his way to Shakespeare. The actor and playwright stood off in a corner, talking shop with darkly handsome Christopher Marlowe. Lope bowed in delight. "My two favorites of the English stage, here together!" he cried.

"Good day--or should I say good even, Master de Vega?" Shakespeare replied. "Have you met Master Marlowe here?" To Marlowe, he added, "Lieutenant de Vega writes plays in Spanish, and more than once hath trodden the boards with Lord Westmorland's Men as extra."

"Indeed?" Marlowe murmured. His cool, dark eyes measured Lope. "How . . . versatile of him." He nodded and bowed. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir."

"We have met once or twice, sir, but how can I be surprised if you recall it not?" de Vega said. By the way Marlowe eyed him, though, he wondered if the Englishman ever forgot anything. Enrique, Captain Guzm?n's servant, had that same too-clever-by-half look, and he never did.But then Lope started talking shop with the English playwrights, and forgot everything else for a while. He didn't worry about spying. He didn't even worry about the pretty women in the room. What did any of that matter, next to the pa.s.sion for the word, for the play, the three men shared?

A TORCH GUTTERED out, sending shadows swooping through the tiring room, filling a quarter of it with darkness, and adding the reek of hot fat to the crowded air. Christopher Marlowe clapped a hand to his forehead in one of the melodramatic gestures he used so naturally. " 'Struth!" he burst out. "Would the poxy Spaniard never leave?"

Shakespeare stood several inches taller. He set a hand on the other playwright's shoulder. "However long he lingered, he's gone now, Kit. He's harmless, or as harmless as a man of his kingdom can be. Mad for the stage, as you heard."

"Think you so?" Marlowe said, and Shakespeare nodded. Marlowe rolled his eyes. "And think you babes are hid 'neath cabbage leaves for their mothers to find?"

The tireman coughed. He wanted the room empty so he could lock up the precious costumes and go home. Only a few people were left now, still hashing over what they'd done, what they might have done, what they would do the next time they put on If You Like It. Even Will Kemp, a law unto himself, took the tireman seriously. With a mocking bow to those who remained, he swept out the door.

Irked, Shakespeare stayed where he was. He snapped, "I know whence babes come--I know better than you, by G.o.d." Even in the dim, uncertain light left in the tiring room, he saw Marlowe flush. The other poet chased boys as avidly as p.r.i.c.kproud Lope went after other men's wives.

"All right, Will." Marlowe visibly held in his anger. "You're no blushing maid--be it so stipulated. But he loves us not for ourselves alone. Were we wenches, then yes, mayhap. Things being as they are . . ." He shook his head.

"What, you reckon Lope Stagestruck an intelligencer?" Shakespeare almost laughed in his face. "Where's the reason behind that?"

"Imprimis, he's a Spaniard. Secundus, he's a man. Tertius, an you suspect a man not, he'll ever prove the viper who ups and stings you."

He meant every word. Shakespeare saw as much. He let out a sigh as exasperated as the tireman's cough. "A pretty world wherein you must live, Kit, there within the fortress of your skull."

"I do live," Marlowe said, "and I purpose living some while longer, too. Were I so careless as you, I had died ten times over ere now. Quarrels are easy enough to frame: a swaggering bravo imagining an insult in the street, peradventure, or over the reckoning in a little room. You're a better man than I am. See to it your goodness harms you not."

"Gentlemen, please," the tireman said, something close to despair in his voice.

Shakespeare walked out of the Theatre, Marlowe in his wake. Autumn twilight came early, and was falling fast. Before long, the gray clouds overhead would turn black. With the play over, the streets around the Theatre were almost empty. As he started back toward London and his lodgings, Shakespeare said, "Well, the Spaniard's not about. What would you say to me you could not say within the spying rascal's hearing?"

"You make a mock of it," Marlowe said. "One day you'll be sorry--G.o.d grant it be not soon. Whatwould I say? I've said already more than I would say."

"Then say no more, and have done." Shakespeare lengthened his stride; Marlowe had to half trot to try to keep up. Over his shoulder, Shakespeare added, "Enough real worries in the world--aye, enough and to spare--without the hobgoblins bubbling from the too fertile cauldron of your fears."

"d.a.m.n you, will you listen to me?" Marlowe shouted. A limping old woman carrying a pail of water stared at him.

"Listen? How, when you will not speak, save only in riddles?" But Shakespeare stopped.

Marlowe took a deep breath. Slowly, deliberately, he let it out. "Hear me plain, then," he said, and gave Shakespeare a mocking bow. "I should like you to meet a friend of mine."

"A friend?" Shakespeare said in surprise. As far as he knew--as far as anyone in London knew--Christopher Marlowe neither had nor particularly wanted friends. He did have a great many acquaintances of one degree of intimacy or another, that being defined by how useful they proved to him.

He was almost as aware of the lack as were other folk. He hesitated before nodding, and added, "A man with whom I've been yoked in harness some little while."

"Yoked in harness of what sort?" Shakespeare asked.

"Side by side, vile-minded lecher, not fore and aft," Marlowe said. " 'Tis a matter of business on which he's fain to make your acquaintance." His shoulders hunched. He glared down at the ground. He was furious, and not trying hard at all to hide it.

Shakespeare judged he would burst like the h.e.l.lburner of Antwerp if not humored. Marlowe in a temper was nothing to take lightly, so Shakespeare said, "I'll meet him, and right gladly, too, whosoever he may be. Bring him to my ordinary while I dine or sup, an't please you."

"I'll do't," Marlowe said, though he sounded far from pleased. If anything, he seemed angrier than ever.

In G.o.d's name, what now? Shakespeare wondered. Now, instead of hastening on toward Bishopsgate, he stopped in his tracks. Marlowe was the one who kept striding on before also halting a few paces farther on. "I have said I will do as you would have me do, Kit," Shakespeare said. "Wherefore, then, wax you wroth with me still?"

"I do not." Marlowe flung the three words at him and started on again.

"What then?" Now Shakespeare had to hurry after him--either that or shout after him and make their talk a public matter for any who cared to hear it. He asked the only question that occurred to him: "If not for me, is your anger for your 'friend'?"

"It is." Two more words, bitten off short.

"Here's a tangled coil!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "Why such fury for him?"

"Because he's fain to see you in this business," Marlowe said sullenly.

By then, with the darkness coming on fast, with a few drops of drizzle falling cold on his hand, Shakespeare was beginning to lose his temper, too. "Enough of riddles, of puzzles, of conundrums," he said. "Do me the honor, do me the courtesy, of speaking plain."

"I could speak no plainer--because he's fain to see you in this business." But then, unwillingly, Marlowemade it a great deal plainer: "Because he's fain to see you, and not me. d.a.m.n you." He hurried off, leaning forward as if into a heavy wind.

"Oh, Kit!" Now Shakespeare knew exactly where the trouble lay. What he did not know was whether he could mend it. Marlowe had been a success in London before Shakespeare rose from performing in plays to trying to write them. Some of Shakespeare's early dramas bore Marlowe's stamp heavily upon them. If a man imitate, let him imitate the best, Shakespeare thought.

Marlowe remained popular even now. He made a living by his pen, as few could. But those who had given him first place now rated him second. For a proud man, as he surely was, that had to grate. If the "business" had to do with the theatre, if his "friend" wanted Shakespeare and not him . . . No wonder he was scowling.

"Wait!" Shakespeare called, and loped after him. "Shall I tell this cullion that, if he be your friend, the business should be yours?"

To his surprise, the other playwright shook his head. "Nay. He hath reason. For what he purposes, you were the better choice. I would 'twere otherwise, but the world is as it is, not as we would have it."

"You intrigue me mightily, and perplex me, too," Shakespeare said.

Marlowe's laugh held more bile than mirth. "And I might say the same of you, Will. Did you tender me this plum, I'd not offer it back again. You may be sure of that."

Shakespeare was. In a cutthroat business, Marlowe owned sharper knives than most. Unlike some, he seldom bothered pretending otherwise. After a moment's thought, Shakespeare said, "G.o.d be praised, I am not so hungry I needs must take bread from another man's mouth."

"Ah, dear Will. An there be a G.o.d, He might do worse than hear praises from such as you. You're a blockhead, but an honest blockhead." Marlowe stood up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "I'll bring the fellow to your ordinary at eventide tomorrow--I know the place you favor. Till then." He hurried toward Bishopsgate. This time, the set of his shoulders said Shakespeare would have been unwelcome had he tried to stay up with him.

With a sigh, Shakespeare trudged down Sh.o.r.editch High Street after him. Just when a man looked like understanding Marlowe, he would do something like that. He could not praise without putting a poison sting in amongst the honey, but the kiss had been, or at least had seemed, real.

"Hurry up, hurry up," guards at the gate called. "Get on in, the lot of you." They were a mixed lot, Englishmen and rawboned Irish mercenaries. The Irish soldiers looked achingly eager to kill someone, anyone. Rumor said they ate human flesh. Shakespeare didn't care to find out if rumor were true. Not meeting their fierce, falconlike gazes, he scuttled into the city.

His lodgings were in Bishopsgate Ward, not far from the wall, in a house owned by a widow who made her living by letting out most of the s.p.a.ce. He had his own bed, but two others crowded the room where he slept. One of the men who shared the chamber, a glazier named Jack Street, had a snore that sounded like a lion's roar. The other, a lively little fellow called Peter Foster, called himself a tinker. Shakespeare suspected he was a sneakthief. He didn't foul his own nest, though; nothing had ever gone missing at the lodging house.

"You're late today, Master William," said Jane Kendall, Shakespeare's landlady. "By Our Lady, I hope all went well at the Theatre." She made the sign of the cross. From things she'd said over the couple of years he'd lived there, she'd been a Catholic even before the Armada restored England's allegiance toRome.

"Well enough, I thank you," he replied. "Sometimes, when talking amongst ourselves after the play, we do lose track of time." With so many people living so close together, secrets were hard to keep. Telling a piece of the truth often proved the best way to keep all of it from coming out.

"And the house was full?" Widow Kendall persisted.

"Near enough." Shakespeare smiled and made a leg at her, as if she were a pretty young n.o.blewoman, not a frowzy, gray-haired tallowchandler's widow. "Never fear. I'll have no trouble with the month's rent."

She giggled and simpered like a young girl, too. But when she said, "That I'm glad to hear," her voice held nothing but truth. A lodger without his rent became in short order a former lodger out on the street.

Still, he'd pleased her, for she went on, "There's new-brewed ale in the kitchen. Take a mug, if you care to."

"That I will, and right gladly." Shakespeare fitted action to word. The widow made good ale. Hopped beer, these days, was commoner than the older drink, for it soured much more slowly. He savored the mug, and, when his landlady continued to look benign, took another. Nicely warmed, he said, "Now I'm to the ordinary for supper."

She nodded. "Don't forget the hour and keep scribbling till past curfew," she warned.

"I shan't." I hope I shan't, Shakespeare thought. Or do I? The eatery made a better place to work than the lodging house. On nights when ideas seemed to flow straight from his mind onto the page, he could and sometimes did lose track of time. He'd ducked home past patrols more than once.

From the chest by his bed, he took his second-best spoon--pewter--a couple of quills, a knife to trim them, ink, and three sheets of paper. He sometimes wished he followed a less expensive calling; each sheet cost more than a loaf of bread. He locked the chest once more, then hurried off to the ordinary around the corner. He sat down at the table with the biggest, fattest candle on it: he wanted the best light he could find for writing.

A serving woman came up to him. "Good even, Master Will. What'll you have?"

"h.e.l.lo, Kate. What's the threepenny tonight?"

"Kidney pie, and monstrous good," she said. He nodded. She brought it to him, with a mug of beer. He dug in with the spoon, eating quickly. When he was through, he spread out his papers and got to work.

Love's Labour's Won wasn't going so well as he wished it would. He couldn't lose himself in it, and had no trouble recalling when curfew neared. After he went back to the lodging house, he got a candle of his own from his trunk--Jack Street was already snoring in the bed next to his--lit it at the hearth, and set it on a table. Then he started writing again, and kept at it till he could hold his eyes open no more. He had his story from Boccaccio, but this labor, won or lost, reminded him of the difference between a story and a finished play.

The next day, he performed again at the Theatre. He almost forgot he had a supper engagement that evening, and had to grab his best spoon--silver--and rush from his lodging house. To his relief, Christopher Marlowe and his mysterious friend hadn't got there yet. Shakespeare ordered a mug of beer and waited for them.

They came in perhaps a quarter of an hour later. The other man was no one Shakespeare had seen before: a skinny little fellow in his forties, with dark blond hair going gray and a lighter beard that didn'tcover all his pockmarks. He wore spectacles, but still squinted nearsightedly. Marlowe introduced him as Thomas Phelippes. Shakespeare got up from his stool and bowed. "Your servant, sir."

"No, yours." Phelippes had a high, thin, fussily precise voice.

They all shared a roast capon and bread and b.u.t.ter. Phelippes had little small talk. He seemed content to listen to Shakespeare and Marlowe's theatre gossip. After a while, once no one sat close enough to overhear, Shakespeare spoke directly to him: "Kit says you may have somewhat of business for me. Of what sort is't?"

"Why, the business of England's salvation, of course," Thomas Phelippes told him.

II.

"WELL, ENRIQUE, WHAT does Captain Guzm?n want to see me about today?" Lope de Vega asked.

"I think it has something to do with your report on If You Like It," Guzm?n's servant answered. "Just what, though, I cannot tell you. Lo siento mucho." He spread his hands in apology, adding, "Myself, I thought the report very interesting. This Shakespeare is a remarkable man, is he not?"

"No." Lope spoke with a writer's precision. "As a man, he is anything but remarkable. He drinks beer, he makes foolish jokes, he looks at pretty girls--he has a wife out in the provinces somewhere, and children, but I do not think it troubles him much here in London. Ordinary, as I say. But put a pen in his hand, and all at once it is as though G.o.d and half the saints were whispering in his ear. As a playwright, 'remarkable' is too small a word for him."

Guzm?n's door was open. Enrique went in first, to let him know de Vega had arrived. Lope waited in the hallway till Enrique called, "His Excellency will see you now, Lieutenant."

Lope strode into his superior's office. He and Baltasar Guzm?n exchanged bows and pleasantries. His report on his latest trip to the Theatre lay on his superior's desk. He saw that Guzm?n, in the style of King Philip, had written comments in the margins. He gave a small, silent sigh; he enjoyed being edited no more than most writers.

Presently, the captain nodded to Enrique and said, "You may go now. Shut the door on the way out, por favor."