"I hope to finish it before spring ends," Shakespeare replied in the same language. "I am certain sure, my lord, you will already know I am also ordered to write a play upon the life of King Philip."

"Yes, I do know that." Lord Burghley nodded. "I also know the Spaniards are paying you more than I gave you at our last meeting. Robert, be so good as to make amends for that."

"Certes, Father." Robert Cecil reached under his cloak. His hands were long and thin and pale, too--hands a musician might have wished he had. He gave Shakespeare a small but nicely heavy leather sack. "We cannot let ourselves be outbid."

"By G.o.d, sir--" Shakespeare began, alarmed back into English.The younger Cecil waved him to silence. "Did we fear betrayal from you, we'd work with another. This is for our pride's sake, not suffering our foes to outdo us."

"Gramercy." Shakespeare bowed once more.

"Your thanks are welcome but not needed, for doing this likes us well," Robert Cecil said. His father nodded. Shakespeare did not answer. No doubt the younger Cecil meant what he said. But Shakespeare knew he might have met with Ingram Frizer and his knife had he displeased the two powerful Englishmen.

In aid of which . . . "Constable Strawberry knows Ingram Frizer's name," the poet warned.

"We know of Constable Strawberry," Lord Burghley said with another wet chuckle. "Fear not on that score."

Robert Cecil nodded. "If he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse."

"His wits are not so blunt as, G.o.d help us, I would desire them," Shakespeare said.

"Comparisons are odorous," the younger Cecil observed, proving he had indeed marked Walter Strawberry's style, "but not Hercules could have knocked out his brains, for he had none."

"Belike," Shakespeare said, "yet some of what your wisdoms would not have discovered, that shallow fool hath brought to light."

"He'll find no more," Robert Cecil said. With that Shakespeare had to be content--or rather, less than content.

"Nick!" Sir William Cecil said sharply.

"Your Grace?" Nicholas Skeres replied.

"Go walk the garden, Nick," the old man told him. "Bring back report of its beauties in, oh, a quarter hour's time."

Shakespeare would have resented such a peremptory dismissal. Skeres took it in stride. He dipped his head in what was more than a nod but less than a bow. "Just as you say, my lord," he murmured, and withdrew from the arbor.

Both Cecils stared at Shakespeare, who suddenly felt very much alone. "What--what would ye?" he asked, and felt blood rush to his face in embarra.s.sment at hearing his voice quaver.

Lord Burghley said, "Here's what, Master Shakespeare: I'd fain hear some of your verses. The play advanceth, ay, but my course on earth doth likewise. The horses of the night of which Marlowe writ will not run slow for me. Give me some foretaste, then, of the dish I ordered but shall not eat."

"My lord, may you glut yourself with it," Shakespeare said. Lord Burghley only shrugged and gestured for him to go on. After a moment's thought, he did: "You are to understand, this is Boudicca, urging her stalwarts to war against the Romans."

"Ah, very good." That was Robert Cecil, not his father. "Give it us."

"I shall, as best I recall it," Shakespeare replied. "Here, then: 'Had we a difference with a petty isle, Or with our neighbours, good sirs, for our land-marks, The taking in of some rebellious lord, Or making a head against commotions, After a day of blood, peace might be argued; But where we grapple for the ground we live on, The liberty we hold as dear as life, The G.o.ds we worship and, next these, our honours, And with these swords that know no end of battle, These men, besides themselves, allow no neighbour, Those minds that where the day is claim inheritance, And where the sun makes ripe the fruits, their harvest, And where they march, but measure out more ground To add to Rome, and here i'the bowels on us; It must not be. No, as they are our foes, And those that must be so until we tire 'em, Let's use the peace of honour, that's fair dealing, But in the end our swords. That hardy Roman, That hopes to graft himself into my stock, Must first begin his kindred underground, and be allied in ashes.' "

He waited. The two Cecils looked at each other. Slowly, magisterially, Lord Burghley nodded. So did his son, who despite his briskness deferred to the old man's opinion. Shakespeare felt as if he'd just received the accolade. Robert Cecil said, " 'Twill serve. Beyond doubt, 'twill serve. Have you more?"

Shakespeare beamed. "By my troth, you know how to please a poet!" William Cecil laughed; Robert allowed himself a thin chuckle. Shakespeare continued, "This is Caratach, Boudicca's brother-in-law and the great warlord of the Iceni--"

"We know our Tacitus, Master Shakespeare," Robert Cecil broke in.

"Your pardon, I pray," Shakespeare said. "The groundlings, however, will not: thus I needs must make it plain."

"Indeed. You know your craft best, and so 'tis I must ask your pardon," the younger Cecil said. "Carryon."

"So I shall. This is Caratach, I say, speaking to Hengo, who is his young nephew, and Boudicca's."

"And who is not in the text of the Annals," William Cecil declared in a voice that brooked no contradiction.

"In sooth, your Grace, he is not," Shakespeare agreed, "but I need him for the play, and so summoned him to being."

The two Cecils put their heads together. Sir William Cecil said, "Again, Master Shakespeare, we take your point. The play's the thing. Let us hear it."

"Gladly. Here is Caratach:

'And, little sir, when your young bones grow stiffer, And when I see you able in a morning To beat a dozen boys, and then to breakfast, I'll tie you to a sword.'

And Hengo replies"--Shakespeare did his best to change his voice to a boyish treble--" 'And what then, uncle?' " In his usual tones, he spoke for Caratach once more: " 'Then you must kill, sir, the next valiant Roman that calls you knave.' " Treble for Hengo: " 'And must I kill but one?' " His own voice for Caratach: " 'An hundred, boy, I hope.' " He tried to make the treble fierce, for Hengo's reply was, " 'I hope, five hundred.' " Through Shakespeare, Caratach said, " 'That's a n.o.ble boy!' "

Lord Burghley raised a hand. Shakespeare obediently fell silent. The old man said, "I chose wisely, to summon you. You make a fine fletcher for the shaft I purpose loosing at the dons. I--" He broke off and began to cough. He had trouble stopping. His face turned red and then began to turn blue. His son leaned towards him, raw fear on his face. William Cecil waved Robert back. At last, he mastered the coughing fit. Slowly--too slowly--his normal color, or rather pallor, returned. He went on, "Belike I'll loose it from beyond the grave, but may it fly no less straight for that."

"Amen, your Grace," Shakespeare said.

Rain dripping from the brim of his hat, Nicholas Skeres returned to the rose arbor. Nodding to Lord Burghley and Robert Cecil in turn, he said, "I'll take him away now." By the way he spoke, Shakespeare might have been a b.u.t.t of ale.

"Yes, do, Nick." Robert Cecil spoke the same way, which set Shakespeare's teeth on edge. But then the crookback added, "He hath our full favor. Let all your friends know as much."

"I'll do't, sir. You can depend on Nick Skeres." Shakespeare could imagine no one on whom he less wanted to depend. But n.o.body in this mad game cared a farthing for what he wanted. Skeres turned to him with a half mocking grin. "You may not know't, Master Shakespeare, but I reckon you the safest man in London these days."

"What mean you?" Shakespeare asked.That grin got wider. "There's not a ferret, not a flick, not a foist, not a high lawyer in the city but knows your name and visage--and knows you're to be let alone. G.o.d help him who sets upon you in Lord Burghley's despite."

"And my son's," Sir William Cecil said. "He will outdo me, as any man should pray his son will do."

Shakespeare wondered about that on several counts. He'd known plenty of men, his own father among them, who wanted to see their sons as less than themselves, not greater. More than a few of that type, far from advancing their sons, did everything they could to hold them back. And Robert Cecil, though surely a man of formidable wit, lacked his father's indomitable will. Maybe his slight frame and twisted back accounted for that. Or maybe the younger man would have been the lesser even had he been born straight. In the end, who but G.o.d could know such things?

And what is a playwright but a man who seeks to make a G.o.d of himself and creatures of his characters? Shakespeare shoved the blasphemous thought aside, though surely it had crossed the mind of everyone who'd ever touched pen to paper in hopes of writing something worth going up on stage.

Enough, he told himself, and bowed to the two Cecils. "My lords, again I say gramercy for the favor you show me."

"We do but give you your deserts," Robert Cecil answered. Shakespeare wondered whether that had an edge to it or he himself was seeing shadows where nothing cast them. He feared he wasn't. If a word from the Cecils--a word delivered through Nick Skeres, and perhaps through Ingram Frizer as well--could ward him against cheats and thieves and pickpockets and highwaymen, what could a different word do? He pleased the Cecils now. If ever he didn't . . . An I please them not, 'twill be a mayfly's life for me.

Skeres stirred. "We'd best away."

"Go you, gentles." Robert Cecil's smile was strange, bloodless, almost fey. "As for my father and me, why, how can we get hence, when never were we here at all?"

A bit of a ballad lately popular in London ran through Shakespeare's mind:

With an host of furious fancies Whereof I am commander, With a burning spear, and a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander.

By a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end.

Methinks it is no journey.

As Nick Skeres led him out of Sir John Hart's garden, he slowly nodded. Yes, "Tom o' Bedlam" fit well.He'd just given the Cecils some small taste of the furious fancies whereof he was commander. And if they both weren't knights of ghosts and shadows, who deserved the name?

Skeres peered over the gate before opening it. "Safe as can be," he said, sounding as if he wanted to rea.s.sure himself as much as Shakespeare. "Now go your way, sir, and I'll go mine, and I'll see you again when next there's need. Give you good morrow." Off he went, at a skulking half trot. He quickly disappeared in the rain.

Shakespeare started off towards the Theatre. A squad of Spaniards coming back to their barracks tramped right past him, their boots splashing in unison. Since they wore armor that they would have to grease and polish to hold rust at bay, and that kept trying to pull them down into the mud, they were likely even more miserable than he. None of them looked at him.

He hurried up towards Bishopsgate. Not far from the house where he lodged, a tall, thin, ragged man with a stout staff in his hand and a sword on his hip stepped into the middle of the street, as if to block his path. Heart pounding, Shakespeare boldly strode toward the fellow--who stepped aside to let him pa.s.s.

Had the ragged man been a high lawyer who recognized him and let him go? Had the man decided he looked like someone who might put up a fight, and let him go on account of that? Or had he not been a robber at all? Shakespeare realized he would never know. Life offered fewer certainties than the stage.

When Shakespeare got to the Theatre, one of Jack Hungerford's helpers pointed to him and let out a delighted whoop: "G.o.d be praised, he's here!"

"In sooth, G.o.d be praised!" Richard Burbage boomed from center stage--his usual haunt. "We'd begun to fear you'd gone poor Geoff Martin's way, and the great and wise Constable Strawberry would summon one of us for to identify your moral remainders." Like most players worth their hire, Burbage had a knack for mimicking anyone he chanced to meet. He made no worse hash of the language than the constable himself, though.

"Some of us were less afeard than others," Will Kemp said. Shakespeare wondered--as he was no doubt intended to wonder--how the clown meant that. Had he meant to say some people remained confident nothing had happened to Shakespeare? Or did he mean some people wouldn't have cared had something happened? Better not to know.

"I pray your pardon, friends," Shakespeare said. "I was summoned to see someone, and had no choice but compliance."

He hoped the company would take that to mean he'd been called before Don Diego Flores de Vald?s.

Kemp, as was his way, drew a different meaning from it. His hands shaped an hourgla.s.s in the air.

Several players laughed. So did Shakespeare.

His laughter abruptly curdled when Burbage said, "Your spaniel of a Spaniard came sniffing after you earlier today, and made away in some haste on hearing you'd come not."

"Said he what he wished of me?" Shakespeare asked, cursing under his breath. Lope de Vega, of course, would have no trouble learning he hadn't gone to Don Diego. I did well, not using the lie direct , Shakespeare thought.

"He'd fain hear moe King Philip, else I'm a Dutchman," Burbage answered, at which Will Kemp began staggering around as if in the last stages of drunkenness and mumbling guttural nonsense that might have been Dutch. Shakespeare laughed again. He couldn't help it. When Kemp let himself go, no man who saw him could help laughing.He lurched up to Burbage and made as if to p.i.s.s on his shoes. Burbage sprang back as if he'd really done it--and, had Burbage held still a moment longer, he might have. When he let himself go, he let himself go altogether. He stumbled after Burbage, who said, "Give over, Will."

Kemp spouted more guttural pseudo-Dutch gibberish and gave him a big, wet kiss on the cheek.

Burbage exclaimed in disgust. He shoved Kemp away. The clown looked at him out of eyes suddenly huge and round with grief. "Thou lovest me not!" he wailed, and tears began sliding down his cheeks.

"Madman," Burbage said, half in annoyance, half in affection. Now Kemp bowed like a don. Burbage returned it. Kemp skittered up to him--and kissed him again. "Madman!" Burbage cried again--this time, a full-throated roar of rage.

"Not I." The clown let out a mourning lover's sigh. "With pretty Tom gone, I seek beauty where I find it."

He puckered up once more.

"You'll find my boot in your backside, sure as Tom found Bacon's yard in his," Burbage said. Kemp's sigh wordlessly claimed he wanted nothing more.

Shakespeare asked, "Know you where de Vega went on leaving this place? Will he descend on me with a company of pikemen at his back, fearing me murthered?"

n.o.body answered. Shakespeare made as if to tear his hair.

That only got him a scornful snort from Kemp, who said, "Leave clowning to clowns, foolery to fools.

You have not the art of't."

"Wherefore should that hinder me?" Shakespeare replied. "You leave not sense to sensible men."

The players laughed and clapped their hands. Will Kemp's glower, this time, was perfectly genuine. He enjoyed making others the b.u.t.t of his j.a.pes. When he had to play the role, though, it suited him less well.

Before he and Shakespeare could start another round of insults, Richard Burbage asked the poet, "Doth the work thus far done suit the princ.i.p.al?"

Was he speaking of Don Diego or of Lord Burghley, of King Philip or of Boudicca? Shakespeare wasn't sure. He wondered if Burbage were sure. Either way, though, he could safely nod. "So I am given to understand."

"Good, then. Beside that, naught else hath great import." Burbage set his hands on his hips and raised his voice till it filled the Theatre: "Now that Will's back amongst us, and back with good news, let's think on what we do this afternoon, eh? The wives of Windsor shall not be merry unless we make them so."

Kemp fell to with more spirit than he often showed at rehearsals--but then, of course, he played Sir John Falstaff, around whom the comedy revolved. Even though the play ended with Falstaff's humiliation, the part was too juicy to leave him room for complaint. Indeed, after the rehearsal ended, he came up to Shakespeare and said, "Would you'd writ more for the great larded tun." He put both hands on his belly.

He was not a thin man, but would play Falstaff well padded.

"More? Of what sort?" Shakespeare asked. He knew Kemp spoke because he wanted the role, but was curious even so. The clown might give him an idea worth setting down on paper.

But Kemp said, "He is too straitened in a town of no account. Let him come to London! Let him meet with princes. No, by G.o.d--he deserveth to meet with kings!"Shakespeare shook his head. "I fear me not. I got leave to write of the third Richard, he being villain black. But, did I bring other Kings of England into my plays, and in especial did I speak them fair, 'twould be reckoned treason, no less than the . . . other matter we pursue. Can you tell me I am mistook?"

Will Kemp scowled. "d.a.m.n me, but I cannot. Devil take the dons, then! A bargain, Master Shakespeare--do we cast them down, give me Falstaff and a king."

If he had a reason to throw off the Spaniards' yoke, he would be less likely to go to them in a fit of temper or simply a fit of folly. "A bargain," Shakespeare said solemnly. They clasped hands.

LOPE DEVEGA and Lucy Watkins stood among the other groundlings at the Theatre. The boy playing Mistress Page said,

"Good husband, let us every one go home, And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire; Sir John and all."

Richard Burbage, who played Ford, replied,

"Let it be so. Sir John, To Master Brook you shall hold your word; For he to-night shall lie with Mistress Ford."