"Your Excellency, with a life on the line, one does what one must do," Lope said.

"Yes. And that is why I am sending you back to your duty at the Theatre," Don Diego said. His long face was made to show sorrow, and it did now. "We will need you, we will need the play, before long. Word just here from Spain is that it is doubtful his Most Catholic Majesty shall leave his bed again. His doctors dare not move him, even to change the linen on his mattress. The end approaches." He crossed himself.

So did Lope de Vega. "I shall do all I can to ensure that he has his monument here," Lope said. "You may rely on me, sir."

"I do, Senior Lieutenant," Don Diego Flores de Vald?s told him. "That is why you are returning. For I still fear treason from the Theatre. I want you there to stop it."

"I've seen no sign of it," Lope said. "But if it rears its ugly head, I'll tear it out, root and branch."

IN THE UPPER gallery of the Theatre, the tireman's helper who did duty as a lookout started whistling "A Man's Yard." At once, the players who had been Romans and Britons hacking away at one another shifted positions and became Spaniards and Englishmen hacking away at one another. "By G.o.d!"

Richard Burbage snarled at Shakespeare. "Is he here again?" He glared at the poet as if it were his fault.

Shakespeare spread his hands. "I did not bid him come."

"Unbidden guests are often welcomest when they are gone," Burbage said. "But of late he is never gone.

How can we rehea.r.s.e Boudicca under the eyes of a don? He bleeds us of time like a leech of blood, save that a leech may heal, whilst he doth only harm."

"I cannot mend it--and say not the name, never no moe," Shakespeare added. "He hath the Latin to know whence it comes and what it portends." In strode Lope. He wasn't very tall, but swaggered like a giant. Shakespeare smiled and waved to him. "Welcome!" he lied. "Give you good day."

"And a good morrow to you," de Vega answered, advancing towards the stage. He surveyed the struggling players with a critical eye. "Many of these would die quickly, did they take the field in earnest."

"They are not soldiers. They but personate them," Shakespeare said.

"But their personation wants persuasion," Lope said. Shakespeare glanced towards Burbage. Ever so slightly, the player nodded. He'd been a soldier, and knew whereof Lope spoke.

"A soldier's eye may discern the flaws, but will the generality?" Shakespeare asked."Those of them have fought in war will know they see no war upon the stage," Lope told him.

"We shall do what we can." Shakespeare did his best to hide a sigh. He didn't think de Vega noticed.

Burbage did, and smiled. Shakespeare asked the question uppermost in his, uppermost in everyone's, mind: "How fares his Most Catholic Majesty?"

"He fares not well at all." De Vega's handsome face looked old and worn, as if he were speaking of his own dying father. "As I have said before, he is bedridden. The least movement pains him to the marrow.

His sores advance apace. When the surgeons cut them to loose the pus, it hath a vile stench. He is dropsical--more so by the day, they say. And yet his heart is strong. He fails, but fails by degrees."

All over the stage, players nodded. Most men had watched deaths like that, as well as the quicker, easier, more merciful kind. Signing himself with the cross, Shakespeare said, "G.o.d grant him ease from suffering."

"May it be so." Lope also crossed himself. "It likes me to watch the work here advance."

"I had liefer see King Philip go unproduced," Shakespeare said.

De Vega made a leg at him. "You are gracious, Master Shakespeare, to say so."

I am an ordinary ramping fool, with no more brain than a stone, Shakespeare thought. Lope de Vega had taken him to mean he wanted Philip II to live forever. That was how he'd meant to be taken.

But the Spaniard could have taken his words another way, as meaning he wanted to see some other play go on in place of King Philip. And he did. But to let Lieutenant de Vega know that would have meant nothing but catastrophe.

Burbage had noticed the same thing. With a growl that might have come from the throat of a bear chained to the pole in the baiting pit, he said, "You will make show of your wit, eh?"

"Wherefore should he not?" Lope asked. "Would you ask a poet to hide his wit? Would you ask a woman to hide her beauty?"

"A poet's wit may lead him into danger," Shakespeare said. "And a woman's beauty may likewise lead her--and him that sees her--into danger. Or would you say otherwise?"

Burbage suddenly brightened. Shakespeare couldn't resist preening a little, proud of his own cleverness.

If anything could make Lope turn away from untoward meanings, thinking of himself and his brush with death ought to do it. The Spaniard's hand fell to the hilt of his rapier. A few inches of the blade slid from the sheath as he struck a pose. "Danger knows full well that Lope is more dangerous than he."

His strutting would have seemed laughable had he not just killed a man. As things were, he'd earned the right to swagger. "Beauty itself doth of itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator," Shakespeare said. "Will you bring to the Theatre the beauty hath ensnared you, that we all may marvel and envy you for your conquest?"

"Alas, no, I fear me, for she speaks not your tongue," Lope replied.

Will Kemp chose that moment to come out of the tiring room. The clown gave Lope a courtier's bow exaggerated to absurdity. "Whether she speak or no, doth her tongue not please you?" he inquired.

Maybe the Spaniard wouldn't understand just what Kemp meant. So Shakespeare hoped. Lope's English, while good, wasn't perfect. But it was good enough, and he did. "How dare you have her tongue in your mouth?" he snarled, and made as if to draw the rapier again."Never did I that, nor she neither," Kemp said. But he seemed less afraid than Shakespeare would have been, having insulted a man who'd proved himself sword in hand. "Put up," he told de Vega. "Know you not, an you blood your blade in a fool, 'twill surely rust?"

The absurdity of that stopped the Spaniard where nothing else might have. "But what then becomes of the fool?" he asked.

Kemp let out a horrible scream, clutched his belly, and thrashed and writhed on the stage in well-feigned agony. As abruptly as he'd begun, he left off. "Thus, belike," he answered, getting to his feet once more.

Lope laughed and shook his head. "Truly G.o.d must love fools," he said. "How may I do less?"

"How should you find it hard, where most men find it easy?" Kemp returned. "But then, did you not find it hard--"

"Enough!" Shakespeare and Burbage spoke the same word at the same time. Kemp flew to disaster like a moth to flame.

After that afternoon's performance, Shakespeare left the Theatre as soon as he scrubbed off his makeup.

Usually, he would have stayed in the tiring room to share gossip and gibes, or else repair to a tavern to hash over the play with players and friends. Not today, not least because Lope de Vega came back there. Sometimes, keeping company with the Spanish officer was too much for him to bear.

But leaving brought him scant relief. As he hurried out of the Theatre, Constable Walter Strawberry marched in, a grim expression on his face. Shakespeare wondered if Strawberry were after him for more questions, but the constable, after giving him a somber nod, kept on going. So did Shakespeare, in the other direction.

He hadn't got far when a medium-sized, homely man of about his own age sidled up alongside him and said, "A good day to you, Master Shakespeare." His voice suggested he knew all manner of interesting things, some of them perhaps even licit.

"Master Skeres." Shakespeare hoped he sounded less dismayed than he felt. "And to you a good day as well, sir. I've not had the pleasure of your company for some little while." Nor wanted it, neither, he thought. "What would you?"

"I'd tell you somewhat I'd liefer not have to speak, but e'en so somewhat you should know," Nick Skeres answered.

When he didn't go on, Shakespeare asked, "And that is?"

"Lord Burghley's on his deathbed," Skeres said bluntly. "He'll not rise from it again, save to go in's coffin."

For Shakespeare, the news was like a blow in the belly. "G.o.d give him peace," he said. "He and Philip die together, as he said they would when first we met."

"Ay." Skeres' chuckle showed uneven teeth. "His mind's still hale, and he jests of't yet."

"What of . . . the enterprise?" Shakespeare would say no more than that, not in the open in Sh.o.r.editch High Street. Later, he remembered he should have spoken with Nicholas Skeres about raising the English mob against Spain's hated Irish soldiers. At the moment, with Skeres' news, the thought never entered his mind.

The other man replied without hesitation: "It goes forward as before, under Lord Burghley his son. Andmark me, 'twill go as well under Robert Cecil as ever it could under his sire. Crookback though he be, his wit and will run straight."

"May you prove a true prophet." But Shakespeare couldn't help worrying--worrying even more than he had before. Sir William Cecil had been a power in the land longer than he'd been alive. He'd been in eclipse since the coming of the Armada, yes, but Robert, his son, seemed always to have dwelt and dealt in the shadows. Could he come out into the light now, at greatest need? He must essay it, Shakespeare thought, and kicked at the dirt. The timing couldn't have been worse.

XI.

WHEN LOPE DE VEGA visited the Theatre with Lucy Watkins, he didn't take her back to the tiring room after the performance. Will Kemp or another would-be wit was too likely to ask him why he hadn't brought his Spanish lady instead. He didn't want Lucy finding out about Catalina Iba?ez. Bad things happened when one of his ladies learned of another: so he'd painfully discovered.

But here, it seemed, he was bound to have trouble. He and Lucy had just left the Theatre on their way back into London when she said, "Is it true you killed a man?"

Unease p.r.i.c.kled through de Vega. He tried his best to misunderstand her, saying, "My love, I am a soldier. This chances in the soldier's trade."

She shook her head. "No. Of late. A Spanish gentleman, they say."

"A n.o.bleman, but by my troth no gentleman," he said. Then he stopped and sighed. He'd told her what she needed to know, or most of it.

And she'd already heard, or heard of, the rest, too. "They say you fought him over a lady."

As he'd called Don Alejandro de Recalde no gentleman, so he wanted to call Catalina Iba?ez no lady.

But that wouldn't help. He sighed again. "Yes, that is so."

Lucy nodded. "I was fain to hear it from your lips first. I owed you so much, before saying farewell."

"Say no such thing!" Lope exclaimed. "I love thee!"

"And the other lady?"

"And her," Lope agreed.

"You may not love more than one," Lucy said sadly.

"Wherefore may I not?" he asked. "I have had this stricture laid against me ere now, but never have I grasped it."

"That I credit. But if you love two"--she'd stopped using thou, a bad sign--"then two will love you, each to herself wanting all you have to give, as she hath given all she hath. Can you in equal measure return the love of two? Give me leave to doubt. Loving more than one, you love not wisely, but too well."

"How can one love too well? A fond notion, a notion not possible.""Love two women at but a single time--say you love two women at but a single time--and you love too well," Lucy insisted.

"Do but let me show thee thou art mistook, that--" Lope began.

"How? Wouldst thou put us twain, this Spanish hussy and me, in but a single bed?" Now Lucy used thou again, but in insult, not intimacy. "Whether she'd go or no, I would not, nor I will not. Where I shall go is far from thee, now and forever." Her voice held tears. "So we loved, as love in twain had the essence but in one. We were two distincts, division none: number there in love was slain. So between us love did shine, that one lover saw her right flaming in her lover's sigh. Either was the other's mine. But for us, lovers, now sigh a prayer." She walked away.

Love, to Lope, was like a child that longed for everything it could come by. Telling that to Lucy seemed unlikely to change her mind. "We that are true lovers run into strange capers," he called after her. "Alas that love, gentle in his view, should be tyrannous and rough in proof."

"In proof? Thou canst give no proof of love, not loving another besides myself." Lucy kept walking. A few paces farther on, she stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it at Lope with unladylike dexterity. If he hadn't ducked, it would have hit him in the face. She bent down for another stone.

"Fie! Give over!" Lope exclaimed. "I'll trouble thee--you--no more."

Lucy let the stone fall. "Would thou'dst never asked my name. Would thou'dst never spoke me fair.

Would thou'dst never found thy Spanish popsy fair, for thou canst not have her and me together. Mary, pity women!" She rounded a corner and was gone.

"Fret not, friend," said an Englishman who'd listened with amus.e.m.e.nt to the quarrel. "Women are like fish: another'll come along soon enough, to nibble the end o' your pole." He laughed.

So did Lope, when he got the joke a moment later. He didn't go after Lucy; that, plainly, was a lost cause. Instead, he trudged back towards Bishopsgate. He still had Catalina Iba?ez's fiery affections, but he found he didn't want them right now. He wanted Lucy, whom he'd just lost. Had he lost Catalina and kept Lucy, he had no doubt he would have pined for the Spanish woman's caresses instead. I know what I am, by G.o.d, he thought. What to do about it? That's a different question.

The Irish soldiers at the gate recognized Lope for a Spaniard. They swept off their hats and bowed to him as he went by. He nodded in return. Once inside Bishopsgate, he slowed down and looked around.

If he was lucky . . .

And he was. Cicely Sellis came out of a ribbonmaker's shop, a couple of yards of green ribbon wrapped around the left sleeve of the mannish doublet she wore, her cat following at her heel like a dog. Lope made a leg. "Mistress Sellis. So good to see you. Give you good day."

She curtsied as if he were a duke, not a junior officer. "And good day to you, Master Lope. How wags your world?"

"I have known it better," he replied.

"Why, surely those set over you have agreed you fought Don Alejandro only for to save your own life,"

she said. "How could it be otherwise, with Mistress Iba?ez telling a tale like unto yours?"

"The difficulty lies elsewhere," de Vega said, before blinking and wondering how she knew of that. He started to ask, but found he lacked the nerve. He started to cross himself, but found he also lacked the nerve for that. Bruja, he thought, and shivered in the warm--for England, at any rate--July sun."Where?" Cicely Sellis asked. She didn't let him answer, but showed more of what might have been witchery by softly singing,

"On a day, alack the day!

Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom pa.s.sing fair Playing in the wanton air: Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen, can pa.s.sage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wished himself the heaven's breath.

Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so!

But alack! my hand is sworn Ne'er to pluck from thee thy thorn; Vow, alack! for youth unmeet, Youth so apt to pick a sweet.

Do not call it sin in me, That I am forsworn for thee; Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiop were; And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love."

This time, Lope did cross himself, and violently. "How knew you of my affections?" he demanded, his voice harsh. "Tell it me this instant, else others holier than I shall ask it of you."

Her cat bristled at him, but she remained smiling, unconcerned. "This needs not the cunning woman's arts, Master Lope. You came towards me all cast down. When late you fought Don Alejandro, you kept company with his mistress, but is it not so you had also another sweetheart? An I mistake me not, she hath given you her farewell."

Bruja, Lope thought again. But maybe not. What she said made good logical sense--as much as anythingto do with women ever made good logical sense. Slowly, grudgingly, he said, "You are a cunning woman indeed."

Cicely Sellis curtsied again. "For the which I thank you. And you have my sympathy--the which, like all such, is worth its weight in gold--for her who was too blind to see your true worth."