Catalina Iba?ez accept the t.i.tle as nothing less than her due. "Buenos d?-as," she replied with truly queenly condescension. Her black eyes snapped. "Is everyone ready? Is everything ready?" Everyone and everything had better be, her tone warned. When Lope didn't say no, she nodded grudging approval. "Let's get on with the rehearsal, then. I have plenty of other things to do once I'm finished here." She tossed her head.

Be careful, or you'll be sorry. Lope hadn't lived his life being careful. He found it wildly unlikely he'd start now. Yes, Catalina Iba?ez was a n.o.bleman's plaything. Yes, she was trouble in a beautiful wrapping. Yes, she had no more pity and no more regard for anyone else than a cat did. Lope knew all that. Every bit of it was obvious at first glance. None of it stopped him from falling in love. Nothing had ever stopped him from falling in love.

He hadn't fallen out of love with Lucy Watkins. He didn't fall out of love with one woman when he fell in love with another. No, his way was to pile one love on another, adding delight to delight . . . till the whole rickety structure came crashing down on top of him, as it had outside the bear-baiting arena down in Southwark.

He gazed at Catalina Iba?ez--and found her looking back, those midnight eyes full of old, cold wisdom. She knew. Oh yes, she knew. He hadn't said a word yet, but she knew everything there was to know. He didn't think she could read or write, but some things, plainly, she'd been born knowing.

Be careful, or you'll be sorry. Lope sighed. He saw no way this could possibly end well. He intended to go on with it, go through with it, anyhow.Later. Not yet. El mejor mozo de Espa?a came first. Even set beside his love affairs, the words, the rhymes, the verses in his head counted for more. What had Shakespeare said in Prince of Denmark?

The play's the thing--that was the line. "Take your places, then, ladies and gentlemen," Lope said. "First act, first scene. We'll start from where Rodrigo the page enters with his guitar and speaks to Isabella."

Rodrigo was played by the strapping Spanish corporal named Joaquin Fernandez. He was tall as a tree, blond as an Englishman, handsome as an angel--and wooden as a block. He stumbled through his lines.

Catalina Iba?ez replied,

"Tres cosas parecen bien: el religioso rezando, el gallardo caballero ejercitando el acero, y la dama honesta silando."

She wasn't just pretty. She could act. Unlike poor Fernandez (whose good looks still worried Lope), when she spoke, you believed three things seemed good to her--a monk praying, a gallant knight going to war sword in hand, and an honest woman spinning.

That had to be acting. De Vega couldn't imagine Catalina Iba?ez caring about monks or honest women spinning--gallant knights were liable to be a different story. But, listening to her, you believed she cared, and that was the mystery of acting. If the audience believed, nothing else mattered.

On they went. Joaquin Fernandez had at least learned his lines. He might get better--a little. Catalina sparkled without much help. Lope knew how hard that was. No matter who surrounded her, this play would work as long as she was in it. De Vega felt that in his bones.

I wish Shakespeare had Spanish enough to follow this, he thought as the scene ended. I wish he could see the difference using actresses makes, too. He shrugged. The Englishman would just have to b.u.mble along in his own little arena with its own foolish conventions. If that meant his work never got the attention it deserved in the wider world, well, such was life.

"Bravo, Corporal Fernandez!" Lope said. Fernandez blinked. He wasn't used to getting praise from the playwright. Lope went on, "And brava, Do?a Catalina, your Majesty! Truly Spain will come into its own with you on the throne."

"Thank you, Senior Lieutenant," Catalina Iba?ez purred. She dropped him a curtsy. Their eyes locked.

Oh, yes, she'd noticed him watching her. Or rather, she'd noticed the way he watched her--not just as an author and director watched an actress, which he had every right to do, but as a man watched a woman he desired. If she wanted him, too, then in some sense he had every right to do that as well--though Don Alejandro de Recalde, her keeper, would have a different opinion.

"All right," Lope said. "Let's go on." He might have been speaking to the a.s.sembled players. People shifted, getting ready for the next scene.

Or he might have been speaking to Catalina Iba?ez alone, all the rest of them forgotten. By the way herred, full lips curved into the smallest of smiles, she thought he was. Her eyes met his again, just for a moment. Yes, let's, they said.

KATE POURED BEER into Shakespeare's mug. "I thank you," he said absently. He'd eaten more than half of his kidney pie before noticing how good it was--or, indeed, paying much attention to what it was.

Most of him focused on King Philip. He'd stormed ahead the night before, and he couldn't wait to get to work tonight. The candle at his table was tall and thick and bright. It would surely burn till curfew, or maybe even a little longer.

The door to the ordinary opened. Shakespeare didn't look up in alarm, as he'd had to whenever it opened while he was working on Boudicca. He'd seldom dared write any of that play here, but even having it at the forefront of his thoughts left him nervous--left him, to be honest, terrified. If Spaniards or priests from the English Inquisition burst in now, he could show them this ma.n.u.script with a clear conscience.

But the man who came in was neither don nor inquisitor. He was pale, slight, pockmarked, bespectacled: a man who'd blend into any company in which he found himself. The poet hardly heeded him till he pulled up a stool and sat down, saying, "Give you good den, Master Shakespeare."

"Oh!" Shakespeare stared in surprise--and yes, alarm came flooding back. He tried to hide it behind a nod that was almost a seated bow. "G.o.d give you good even, Master Phelippes."

"I am your servant, sir," Thomas Phelippes said, a great thumping lie: the dusty little man was surely someone's servant, but not Shakespeare's. Did he rank above Nick Skeres or under him? Above, Shakespeare thought. Phelippes, after all, was the one who'd brought him into this business in the first place.

Kate came up to the table. "Good even, sir," she said to Phelippes. "The threepenny supper is kidney pie, an't please you."

"Monstrous fine, too," Shakespeare added, spooning up some more of his.

Phelippes shook his head. "I have eat, mistress," he said. "A stoup of Rhenish wine'd please me, though."

"I'll fetch it presently." Kate hurried away and, as she'd promised, returned with the wine at once.

Phelippes set a penny on the table. She took it and withdrew.

"What would you?" Shakespeare asked. "Or is't, what would you of me?"

"Seek you a scribe?" Phelippes inquired in return. "So I am given to understand."

Shakespeare frowned. "I grow out of patience with others knowing my affairs ere I learn of them myself."

"I know all manner of strange things," the dusty little man answered, not without pride.

He would never be a hero on the battlefield, nor, Shakespeare judged, with the ladies, and so had to make do with what he knew. Twitting him about it would only make an enemy. "Ken you a scribe, then?"

Shakespeare asked. "A scribe who can read what's set before him, write out a fair copy, and speak never a word of't thereafter?"

"I ken such a man, but not well," Phelippes said with a small smile."That will not serve," Shakespeare said. "If you cannot swear he be trusty--"

Phelippes held up a hand. That small smile grew bigger. "You mistake me, sir. I but repeat a Grecian's jest when asked by someone who knew him not if he knew himself. I am the man."

"Ah?" Shakespeare was not at all convinced Phelippes was trusty. After all, he worked at the right hand of Don Diego Flores de Vald?s. And yet, plainly, Don Diego's was not the only right hand at which he worked. Wanting very much to ask him about that, Shakespeare knew he couldn't: he would get back either no answer or whatever lie seemed most useful to Phelippes. But he could say, "I'd fain see your character or ever I commend you to Master Vincent."

"Think you my claim by some great degree outdoth performance?" Thomas Phelippes sounded dryly amused. His mirth convinced Shakespeare he likely could do as he claimed. Even as Shakespeare started to say he needed no proof after all, the pockmarked little man cut him off: "Have you pen and paper here?"

"Ay." Shakespeare left them on the floor by his feet while he ate, to keep from spilling gravy on them. He bent now, picked them up, and set them on the table.

"Good. Give them me, I pray you," Phelippes said. "I shall see what I make of your hand, and you will see what you make of mine." He looked at some of what Shakespeare had written, then up at the poet himself. "This is Philip, sending forth the Armada?"

"It is," Shakespeare answered. "But for myself, you are the first to see't."

"A privilege indeed," Phelippes murmured, and then began to read:

" 'Rough rigor looks outright, and still prevails: Let sword, let fire, let torments be their end.

Severity upholds both realm and rule.

What then for minds, which have revenging moods, And ne'er forget the cross they boldly bear?

And as for England's desperate and disloyal plots Spaniards, remember, write it on your walls, That rebels, traitors and conspirators Shall feel the flames of ever-flaming fire Which are not quenched with a sea of tears.' "

Looking up again, he nodded. " 'Twill serve--'twill serve very well. And a pretty contrast you draw 'twixt his Most Catholic Majesty's just fury here and the mercy of her life he grants Elizabeth conquered."

"Gramercy," Shakespeare said automatically, and then, staring, "How know you of that?"Phelippes clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Your business is to write, the which you do most excellent well. Mine, I told you, is to know. Think you . . ."--the pause was a name he did not say aloud--"would choose me, would use me, did I not know pa.s.sing well?"

Had he named that name, would it have been Sir William Cecil's or that of Don Diego Flores de Vald?s? Or might he have chosen one as readily as the other? Shakespeare wished the question hadn't occurred to him. Phelippes openly avowed being a tool. Might not any man take up a tool and cut with it?

Phelippes tore off the bottom part of the sheet of paper on which Shakespeare had been writing.

Shakespeare stifled a sigh. The other man surely would not pay him for the paper. Phelippes inked a pen.

He began to write. Shakespeare's own hand was quick and a.s.sured, if not a thing of beauty. But his eyes widened as he watched Phelippes. The bespectacled little man's talents weren't showy, but talents he unquestionably had. The goose quill raced over the paper at a speed that put Shakespeare's best to shame.

"Here." Phelippes handed him the sc.r.a.p he'd torn off. "Will it serve, think you?"

He'd copied out the bit of King Philip's speech he'd read before. Shakespeare stared. He himself used the native English hand he'd learned in school back in Stratford; his writing had grown more fluid over the years because he did so much of it, but had never changed its essential nature. Phelippes' studied Italian script, by contrast, was so very perfect, an automaton might have turned it out. And he'd written in haste here, not at leisure.

"You know full well 'twill serve, ay, and more than serve," Shakespeare answered. "I yield you the palm, Master Phelippes, and own I have not seen so fine a character writ so swift in all my days. The writing masters who show their art before the general could not outdo you."

He'd meant it for praise, but Thomas Phelippes only sniffed and looked at him over the tops of his spectacles. "Those disguised cheaters and prating mountebanks," he said scornfully. "Thread-bare jugglers, the lot of them. They write to be writing. I write to be read, and need no great show towards that end."

He prides himself in his very obscurity, Shakespeare realized. He'd liefer be a greyhen, unseen against the heather, than a strutting peac.o.c.k flashing his feathers for all to admire. That struck the poet as a perverse pride. Most Englishmen--and Spaniards, too--gloried in display, so much so as to make deliberate self-effacement seem unnatural.

But that was wide of the mark. "I shall give Master Vincent your name," Shakespeare said. Phelippes nodded complacently. The poet asked, "How shall he inquire after you?"

"Never mind," Phelippes said. "So that he hath my name, it sufficeth me. Come the time, we shall know each the other." He rose from his stool. "Farewell." With no more flourish than when he'd come in, he slipped out of the ordinary.

"What a strange little man," Kate said a few minutes later--she seemed to need so long to realize Phelippes had gone.

"Strange?" Shakespeare considered that. After a moment, he shook his head. "He is far stranger than simply strange."

The serving woman frowned. "Will you speak in riddles?""How not, speaking of one?" He didn't explain himself. He wasn't sure he could have explained himself, poet though he was. But he knew what he meant.

When he went to the Theatre the next day, he told Thomas Vincent of Phelippes. The prompter nodded, but asked, "Hath he the required discretion?"

"Of discretion he hath a surplusage," Shakespeare answered. "He wants some of the goodly qualities framing a man of parts, but discretion? Never."

"I rely on your judgment, as I needs must here," Vincent said. "An you be mistook--" He broke off, as if he didn't even want to think about that.

Neither did Shakespeare, but he said, "Therein, I am not."

"G.o.d grant it be so," Vincent said. "And when may I look for King Philip?"

He was as pushy as a prompter should be. "Anon," Shakespeare told him. "Anon."

"Anon, anon," Thomas Vincent echoed mockingly. "Are you then metamorphosed into a drawer at the Boar's Head, ever vowing to cure ails with ale and never bringing the which is promised?"

"You'll have't, and in good time," the poet said, letting a little irritation show. "King Philip breathes yet, mind you. We stray close to treason, treating of his mortality ere it be proved."

"Don Diego hath given you his commission," Vincent said. "That being so, treason enters not into the question."

"The question, say you?" Shakespeare shivered, though the day was mild enough. When he thought of the question, he thought of endless hogsheads of water funneled down his throat, of thumbscrews, of iron boots thrust into the fire, of all the fiendish ingenuity Spaniards and home-grown English inquisitors could bring to bear in interrogating some luckless wretch who'd fallen into their clutches.

And he had no trouble at all seeing himself as a luckless wretch.

"How may I find this Master . . . Phillips, said you?"

"Phelippes," Shakespeare corrected. "He told me he would make himself known to you in good time."

"He told you that, did he?" Vincent turned his head a little to one side and brought a hand up to his ear, as if imagining he were listening to a conversation at which he hadn't been present. "Quotha, 'I shall make myself known to him in good time.' " He sounded preposterously pompous. "And then you would have nodded and said, 'Let it be so, Master Phelippes.' " Suddenly he stabbed a forefinger at Shakespeare. "But if he fail to make himself known to me?"

"Then we are betrayed, and G.o.d have mercy on our souls," Shakespeare said. Thomas Vincent asked him no more questions.

He wished the same would have been true of the players. He'd had to sound them out, one by one, knowing a wrong word in the wrong ear would bring catastrophe down upon them all. He felt as if he were defusing the h.e.l.lburner of Antwerp each time he spoke to one of them. At his nod, Richard Burbage had eased a couple of devout Papists from the company--both of them hired men, fortunately, and not sharers whom the other sharers would have had to buy out. Some of those who remained, and who knew what was toward, seemed to think it certain no one not of their persuasion was left in the Theatre. They were careless enough with what they said to make Shakespeare flinch several times aday--or, when things were bad, several times an hour.

It would have been even worse had they seen their parts for Boudicca and begun throwing around lines from the play. That would come soon enough--all too soon, Shakespeare feared. Even now, a robustious periwig-pated fellow named Matthew Quinn got a laugh and a cheer by shouting out that all Jesuits should be flung into the sea.

"Only chance, only luck, Lieutenant de Vega came not this morning, else he had been here to catch that,"

Shakespeare said to Burbage in the tiring room after the company gave the day's play.

"I have spoke to Master Quinn," Burbage answered grimly. "The rascally sheep-biter avouches he shall not be so spendthrift of tongue henceforward."

Will Kemp came up to the two of them puffing on a pipe of tobacco. Still nervous and irritable, Shakespeare spoke more petulantly than he might have: "How can you bear that stinking thing?"

"How?" Kemp, for a wonder, took no offense. "Why, naught simpler--it holds from my nostrils the reek of yon affectioned a.s.s." He pointed with his chin towards Matt Quinn. "And they style me fool and clown." He rolled his eyes.

"They call you by the names you have earned," Burbage said. "The names Master Quinn hath earned for this day's business needs must be named by Satan himself, none other having the tongue to withstand the flames therefrom engendered."

"Better Quinn were disgendered," Shakespeare said. "The fright he gave me, I'd not sorrow to see him lose both tongue and yard."

"You're a b.l.o.o.d.y kern today," Kemp said.

"Nay." Shakespeare shook his head. "I thirst for no blood, nor want none spilled--most especially not mine own."

"Master Quinn will attend henceforth," Burbage promised. "He stakes his life upon't."

"The game hath higher stakes than that," Shakespeare said, "for his I reckon worthless, but I crave mine own to keep."

"And they style me fool and clown," Will Kemp repeated. Shakespeare left--all but fled--the tiring room a moment later. He knew this plot was all too likely to miscarry, but wished Kemp hadn't reminded him of it quite like that.

"AH, MY LOVE, I must go," Lope de Vega murmured regretfully.

Lucy Watkins clung to him. "Stay with me," she said. "Stay with me forever. Till I met thee, I knew not what love was."