"And you," Shakespeare said absently. His head full of plots, he had to remind himself to turn off Bishopsgate Street and make for his lodging. Then he'd be off to the ordinary, to write as long as he could, and then back to the lodging once more, this time to sleep. "G.o.d save me," he muttered. "May Day pa.s.sed by, and I knew it not." He wondered what else he'd missed, and decided he didn't want to know.

"COME ON, DIEGO," Lope de Vega said impatiently from horseback. "You have only a donkey to mount. The two of you must be close cousins."

"Se?or , I would never mount my cousin. The Good Book forbids it--and besides, she's ugly," his servant answered. As Lope blinked at such unexpected wit, Diego swung up into the saddle. The a.s.s brayed pitifully at his weight.

"You have your costume?" Lope demanded. Diego set a hand on a saddlebag. De Vega nodded. "Good.

To Westminster, then. They say England's Isabella may come to watch the play, to see Castile's performed on stage. She could make your fortune, Diego." She could make mine, he thought.

Diego said, "A servant playing a servant won't make much of a mark. You should have cast me as Ferdinand."

They rode away from the Spanish barracks at the heart of London and west toward the court center.Lope had to rein in to keep his horse, a high-spirited mare, from leaving Diego's donkey behind.

"Ferdinand!" Lope said. "What mad dream is that? You're not asleep now, not so I can tell."

"But am I not the perfect figure of a king?" Diego said.

Surveying his rotund servant, de Vega answered, "You are the perfect figure of two kings--at least."

Diego sent him a venomous glare.

Lope paid no attention. On such a day, he was happy enough to be outdoors. As always, spring had, to a Spaniard's reckoning, come late to England, but it was here at last. The sun shone brightly. The only clouds in the sky were small white ones, drifting slowly from west to east on a mild breeze. It had rained a couple of days before--not hard, just enough to lay the dust without turning the road into a bog.

Everything was green. New gra.s.s grew exuberantly: more so than it ever did in drier, hotter Castile.

Trees and bushes were in new leaf. The earliest spring flowers had begun to brighten the landscape.

Birdsong filled the moist air. Robins and chaffinches, cuckoos and larks, waxwings and t.i.ts all made music. They left England sooner and came back later than they did in Spain. Each spring, when they returned, Lope discovered anew how much he'd missed them and how especially empty and barren the winter had seemed without them.

Diego smiled to hear those songs, too. "Mesh nets," he murmured. "Birdlime. By all the saints, there's nothing can match a big plate of songbirds, all nicely roasted on spits or maybe baked in a pie. I don't think much of English cookery, but they make some savory pies. Beefsteak and kidney's mighty tasty, too, and you can get that any season of the year."

"Yes, that is a good one," Lope agreed. "And the song of the cow is much less melodious than that of the linnet or greenfinch."

"The song of the cow, se?or ?" Diego asked. Before de Vega could answer, his servant shook his head.

"No, don't tell me. I don't think I want to know. It must be something only poets can hear."

"Not at all, Diego." Lope smiled sweetly. "For example, whenever you open your mouth, everyone around you is treated to the song of the jacka.s.s."

"Oh, I am wounded," Diego moaned. He clutched at his heart. "I have taken a mortal thrust. Send for the physician. No, send for the priest to shrive me, for I am surely slain."

"You are surely a nuisance, is what you are," Lope said, but he couldn't help laughing.

No more than a mile or so separated Westminster from London, with the s.p.a.ce between the two cities only a bit less crowded than either one of them. De Vega never had the sensation of truly being out in the country, as he would have while traveling between a couple of towns in Spain. Whenever he looked to the left, a forest of sails on the Thames reminded him how brash and busy this part of the world was.

"Fancy houses," Diego remarked as they rode into Westminster. "You can tell this is a place for rich people. All the poor men--all the honest men--are back in London."

Lope couldn't help laughing at that, either, but for a rather different reason. London drew the ambitious, the hungry, the desperate from all over England. A lot of them discovered that, no matter how ambitious and desperate they were, they stayed hungry. The hungrier they got, the less likely they were to stay honest. London had more thieves and robbers than any other three cities Lope could imagine.

Those fancy houses drew his eye, too--again, for a different reason. "This is Drury Lane," he said. "Lord Burghley lives here, who was Elizabeth's chief minister. Anthony Bacon lived here, too, till the accursedsodomite fled the kingdom."

"Sounds like a good street for a fire," Diego said. "Just by accident, of course." He winked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lope answered, deadpan. The two of them exchanged knowing looks.

The Thames bent towards the south. The road followed it. De Vega and Diego rode past a tilt-yard and several new tenements before coming to a large area on their left enclosed by a brick wall. Over the top of the wall loomed the upper stories of some impressive buildings. "What's that?" Diego asked, pointing to the enclosure.

"That? That is Scotland," Lope said.

Diego scornfully tossed his head. "You can't fool me, boss. You've been scaring me with Scotland for a while now. I know what it is--that kingdom up north of here, the one where the wild men live."

"Some of the wild men," Lope amended. "But that yard, that too is Scotland." He crossed himself to show he was telling the truth. "When the King of the wild men comes to visit England, he is housed there, and so it took its name." He wished the present King of Scotland would come to visit England. But, despite honeyed invitations, Protestant James VI was too canny to thrust his head into the Catholic lion's mouth. Lope continued, "And there beyond lies Whitehall, where the company shall perform."

"Oh, joy," Diego said.

Whitehall had formerly been a n.o.ble's residence. Henry VIII, having taken it for his own, had enlarged it, adding tennis courts, bowling alleys, and another tilt-yard, with a second-story gallery from which he and his companions might observe the sport. Elizabeth had also watched jousts from that gallery, but neither Isabella nor her consort Albert much favored them. A wooden stage, not much different from that of the Theatre, had gone up on the tilt-yard, in front of the gallery. The highest-ranking English and Spanish grandees would view El mejor mozo de Espa?a from the comfort of the gallery. The rest, prominent enough to be invited but not enough to keep company with the Queen and King, would impersonate the groundlings who packed the theatres out beyond London's walls. They didn't have to pay a penny for the privilege, though.

In the makeshift tiring room behind the stage, players donned costumes, put on makeup, and mumbled their lines, trying to hold them in their memory. When Lope came in, Catalina Iba?ez rushed up to him.

"Oh, Se?or de Vega, G.o.d help me, I'm so nervous!" she cried. "I want to explode!"

He glanced around to make sure Don Alejandro was out in the audience and not hovering backstage here, then leaned forward and gave her a kiss that might have seemed careless. "Don't you worry about a thing, sweetheart. You'll be wonderful!" he told her, and sent up a quick, silent prayer that he'd prove right.

A lackey rushed into the tiring room. "The Queen and King have taken their places in the gallery," he said.

"Then we'd better perform for them, hadn't we?" Lope said. "Come on, my friends, show them what you can do." He looked around again, to make sure everyone was ready. "Diego, in the name of G.o.d, don't fall asleep now!"

"I wasn't falling asleep," Diego said. "I was only--"

"Resting my eyes," Lope finished for him. "You've used that one before. Don't use it again, unless youwant to get to know the real Scotland, not the yard here." One last quick, worried look. Then he nodded to Catalina Iba?ez and one of her maidservants, who would open the play as Isabella and Do?a Juana, her lady-in-waiting.

Catalina crossed herself. Her maidservant giggled. They went out onto the stage. The audience, which had been mumbling and buzzing, gave them its ears. As soon as Catalina Iba?ez got on stage, she was fine--better than fine. Lope breathed a sigh of relief.

Everything went as well as he'd hoped. Everything, in fact, went better than he'd dared hope. The actors remembered their lines. Even the most wooden ones delivered them with some feeling. Diego made a better servant on stage than he ever had for real. An hour and a half flew by as if in a dream. The applause for the players was thunderous.

From the tiring room, Lope heard Catalina Iba?ez call, "And here is the man who gave us these golden words to say: Senior Lieutenant Lope F?lix de Vega Carpio!"

More applause as Lope, who felt as if he were dreaming himself, came out onto the stage and bowed to the audience--especially to the central gallery, where Isabella and Albert of England sat. How had Catalina learned his full name? No time to wonder about that now; Queen Isabella was calling, "Well done, Se?or de Vega. You are a very clever fellow." Lope bowed again. Isabella tossed him a small leather purse. He caught it out of the air. It was heavy, heavy enough to be stuffed with gold. He bowed once more, this time almost double. Dazedly, he followed the company offstage.

Back in the tiring room, he went over to Catalina Iba?ez and said, "How can I thank you for calling me out there?"

Her eyes were as warm with promise as an early summer morning. "If you're as clever as Queen Isabella says, Se?or de Vega, I'm sure you'll think of something," she purred. Only later did he wonder whether she was really looking at him or at the purse he'd just got.

SAM KING CAME up to Shakespeare in the parlor of the lodgings they shared. A little shyly, he said, "I have somewhat for you, Master Will." He held out his hand and gave Shakespeare three pennies--two stamped with the visages of Isabella and Albert, the third an older coin of Elizabeth's.

"Gramercy," Shakespeare said in surprise. Up till now, King hadn't had enough money for himself, let alone to pay back anyone else. Shakespeare had almost forgotten the threepence he'd given the younger man for a supper, and certainly hadn't expected to see it again.

But, a touch of pride in his voice, King said, "I pay what I owe, I do."

"Right glad am I to hear't," Shakespeare answered. "You've found work, then?"

"You might say so." But King's nod seemed intended to convince himself at least as much as to convince Shakespeare. "Ay, sir, you might say so."

"And what manner of work is't, pray tell?"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Shakespeare wished he had them back. Had Sam King landed an apprenticeship with a carpenter or a bricklayer, he would have shouted the news to the skies, and would have deserved to. As things were . . . As things were, he turned red. "I am . . . stalled to the rogue," he replied at last."Are you?" Shakespeare tried to sound happy for the man who slept in the same room as he did. For someone on his own and hungry in London, even being formally initiated as a beggar had to seem a step up. Carefully, the poet went on, "G.o.d grant men be generous to you."

He wondered how long they would stay generous. King was young and healthy, even if on the scrawny side. A beggar with one leg or a missing eye or some other injury or ailment that inspired pity might have a better chance at pennies and ha'pennies and farthings. But King smiled and said, "There are all manner of cheats to pry the bite from a gentry cove, or from your plain cuffin, too. I've a cleym, now, fit to make a man spew an he see it."

"Have you indeed?" Shakespeare wasn't surprised to hear that. He'd known other beggars who used false sores to get money from those who saw them.

"Ay, sir," Sam King said. "And the moe I learn the art, the better the living I shall have of it." Yes, he might almost have been speaking of carpentry or bricklaying.

"May it be so," Shakespeare said, as politely as he could. He wished the other man would go away. He gave beggars coins now and again, and did not care to think of them as frauds.

King, though, bubbled with enthusiasm for his new trade. "I take crowfoot, spearwort, and salt, and, bruising these together, I lay them upon the place of the body I wish to make sore," he said, grinning.

"The skin by this means being fretted, I first clap a linen cloth, till it stick fast, which plucked off, the raw flesh hath ratsbane thrown upon it, to make it look ugly; and then cast over that a cloth, which is always b.l.o.o.d.y and filthy."

Shakespeare's stomach lurched, as it might have in a small boat on rough water. Fascinated in spite of himself, he asked, "But doth your flesh not from such rude usage take true hurt?"

"Nay, nay." Sam King shook his head. "I do't so often, that in the end I feel no pain, neither desire I to have it healed, but I will travel with my great cleym from market to market, being able by my maunding to get quite five shillings in a week, in money and in corn."

"No wonder you could repay me, then," Shakespeare remarked. Five shillings a week wouldn't make a man rich, but he wouldn't starve on such earnings, either.

"No wonder at all," King agreed happily. "I company with two or three other artificial palliards, and we sing out boldly, thus. . . ." His voice rose to a shrill, piercing whine: "Ah, the worship of G.o.d look out with your merciful eyne! One pitiful look upon sore, lame, grieved, impotent people, sore troubled with the grievous disease, and we have no rest day nor night by the canker and worm, that continually eateth the flesh from the bone! For the worship of G.o.d, one cross of your small silver, to buy us salve and ointment, to ease the poor wretched body, that never taketh rest; and G.o.d reward you for it in heaven!"

Jane Kendall hurried into the parlor. "Begone! We want no beggars here," she began, and then checked herself. "Oh, 'tis you, Master King. Methought you some other tricksy wretch seeking to beguile silver by cleyms and other frauds. I'll not have such doings in this house. I know better."

She didn't mind if King begged elsewhere. She simply didn't want her lodgers tricked out of money that might otherwise a.s.sure her of her rent. Having dwelt in her house some little while, Shakespeare was certain of that. He said, "Fear not. He did but learn me his law, the which is indeed most quaint and bene."

"We'll say no more about it, then." The Widow Kendall heaved a sigh. "This place is not what it was--by my halidom, it is not. That I should have lodging here, all at the same time, a beggar and a witch and apoet . . ." She shook her head.

Shakespeare resented being lumped together with Sam King and Cicely Sellis. A moment's reflection, though, told him they might resent being lumped together with him. He said, "So that we pay what you require on the appointed day, where's your worry, Mistress Kendall?"

"So that you do, all's well," she answered. "But with such trades . . . Sweet Jesu, who ever heard of a rich poet?"

She could imagine a rich beggar. She could imagine a cunning woman with money. A poet? No.

Shakespeare was tempted to brag of the gold he'd got from Lord Burghley and Don Diego. He was tempted, for a good half a heartbeat. Then common sense prevailed. The best way to keep from being robbed or having his throat slit was not to let on he had anything worth stealing.

Mommet stalked into the parlor. The cat rubbed the side of its head against Shakespeare's ankle and began to purr. A little uncomfortably, Shakespeare stroked it. The cunning woman's cat--her familiar?--had seemed to like him from their first meeting. What would an inquisitor on the trail of witchcraft make of that? Nothing good, Shakespeare was sure.

Sam King said, "Mistress Kendall, may I take a mug of your fine ale?" At her nod, King hurried into the kitchen. When he came back with the mug, mischief lit his face. He squatted by Mommet and poured out a little puddle on the floor.

The Widow Kendall's voice rose in sharp indignation: "Here, now! What do you do? Would you waste it?"

"By no means." King crooned, "Here, puss, puss, puss," to the animal. "Come on your ways--open your mouth--here is that which will give language to you, cat. Open your mouth!"

Mommet sniffed at the ale slowly soaking into the rammed-earth floor. The cat's head bent. Ever so delicately, it lapped at the puddle. Then it looked up. It eyes caught the firelight from the hearth and glowed green.

"What game play you at?"

Sam King started violently and made the sign of the cross. Shakespeare jerked in surprise, too. But it wasn't the cat that had spoken. It was Cicely Sellis, standing in the doorway to her room, hands on hips, her face furious.

"What play you at?" she asked again. "Tell me straight out, else I'll make you sorry for your silence."

"N-N-N-Naught, Mistress Sellis," King stammered, his face going gray with fear. "I was but, ah, giving your cat, ah, somewhat to drink."

"You play the palliard," the cunning woman said. "Play not the fool, sirrah, or you'll find more in the way of foolery than ever was in your reckoning. Hear you me?"

"I--I do," King answered in a very small voice.

"See to't, then," Cicely Sellis snapped. She made a small, clucking sound. "Come you here, Mommet."

Cats didn't come when called. Shakespeare had known that since he was a little boy in Stratford. Cats did as they pleased, not as anyone else pleased. But Mommet trotted over to Cicely Sellis like a lapdog.

The cat's contented buzz filled the parlor.That frightened Sam King all over again. "G.o.d be my judge, mistress, I meant no harm," he whispered.

The look the cunning woman gave him said she would judge him, and that G.o.d would have nothing to do with it. "Some men there are that love not a gaping pig," she said, "some, that are mad if they behold a cat. As there is no firm reason to be rendered why he cannot abide a harmless necessary cat, so he were wiser to show mercy, and pity, than to sport with a poor dumb beast that knoweth naught of sport. Or think you otherwise?"

"No." King's lips shaped the word, but without sound. He vanished into the bedchamber he shared with Shakespeare. Jane Kendall disappeared almost as quickly.

That left Shakespeare all alone with Cicely Sellis--and with Mommet. He could have done without the honor, if that was what it was. As she stroked the cat's brindled coat, he asked, "Go you to the arena to see bears baited, or bulls, or to the c.o.c.kfights?"

To his relief, she didn't take offense, and did take the point of the question. Shaking her head, she answered, "I go not to any such so-called sports. I cannot abide them. I am of one piece in mine affections and opinions, Master Shakespeare. Can you say the same?"

"Me, lady? Nay, nor would I essay it, for my wits are all in motley, now of one shade, now another. And which of us is better for't?" Shakespeare asked. Cicely Sellis thought, then shrugged, which struck him as basically honest.

X.

A SHARP COUGH BROUGHT Lope de Vega up short. He looked back towards Shakespeare, who advanced across the stage of the Theatre. "You attend not, Master de Vega," Shakespeare said severely.

"That was your cue to say forth your lines, and it pa.s.sed you by. I had not known you as such an unperfect actor on the stage, who with his fear is put besides his part."

"Nor am I such." Lope bowed apology. "You pardon, sir, I pray you. 'Twas not fear put me out."

"What then?" Shakespeare asked, still frowning. "Whate'er the reason, you must improve, else you'll appear not. Would you have the groundlings pelt you with marrows and beetroots and apples gone all wormy? Would you have them outshout the action, crying, 'O Jesu, he does it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see'?" The Englishman's voice climbed to a mocking falsetto.

"No and no and no." Lope shook his head. That harlotry struck too close to the mark. "I fear me I find myself distracted--a matter having naught to do with yourself or with your most excellent King Philip."