"Be this not treason?" Strawberry repeated. "If it be not treason, what name would you give it? Would you call it plum pudding?"

"Treason indeed. I'd not deny it," Shakespeare said. "Haply his end came at the hand of some bold soul whose overflowing choler would not suffer him to hear good King Philip reviled so." Again, he did his best to lead the constable away from the true trail.

And, again, he did not get so far as he would have wanted. Constable Strawberry said, "This Ingram Frizer I have aforementioned is villain enough and to spare for murther and felonious absconding with his periwig both. By my halidom, I do believe him to be the perpetuator against Matthew Quinn."

Since Shakespeare believed the same thing, he had to tread with the greatest of care. He said, "Your honor will know better than I, for I have not met the gentleman you name."

"No gentry cove he, but a high lawyer and rakeh.e.l.l," Strawberry said. Once more, Shakespeare agreed.

Once more, he dared not let Strawberry see as much. The constable went on, "Curious you twain should hold friends in common. Pa.s.sing curious, I call it. How say you?"

"I say Nick Skeres is no friend of mine. I have said the same again and again. Will you not heed me, sir?"

Shakespeare showed a little anger. Were he honest, he thought he would have done so. And it helped hide his fear.

Before Constable Strawberry could answer, another man came up to Shakespeare: an older man, jowly and leaning on a stick. Strawberry bowed to him. "Give you good day, Sir Edmund."

"And you, Constable," Sir Edmund Tilney answered. "Give me leave to speak to Master Shakespeare here, if you please."

"Certes, certes. Shall I gainsay the Master of the Revilements?" Walter Strawberry bowed again and withdrew.

Shakespeare too made a leg at Sir Edmund. "Good morrow, sir. What would you?"

The Master of the Revels looked around to make sure Strawberry was out of earshot before murmuring, "That man will trip to death on's own tongue."

"Nothing in his life'd become him like the leaving of it," Shakespeare said."He is an annoyance, but surely not so bad as that," Tilney said.

"His vexatiousness knows no bounds." With a sigh, Shakespeare added, "But it will be what it is, an I rail at it or no. I ask again, sir: how may I serve you?"

"In the matter o'er which I come hither, I am your servant, Master Shakespeare," the Master of the Revels replied. "I speak of your King Philip."

"Ah. Say on, sir. Whatsoe'er the play in your view wants, I shall supply. Direct me, that I may have the changes done in good time, his Most Catholic Majesty failing by the day." Shakespeare crossed himself.

So did Sir Edmund. His awkward motion told how full of years he'd been before the success of the Armada brought Catholicism and its rituals back to England. He said, "No need for change here, not by the standards of mine office. By the standards of dramaturgy . . . The purpose of playing was and is to hold, as 'twere, the gla.s.s up to nature. Methinks you have held it here most exceeding well."

"For the which you have my most sincerest thanks." Shakespeare meant every word of that. If all went as Robert Cecil hoped, King Philip would never be staged. Even so, the poet had worked as hard and as honestly on it as on Boudicca. He had no small pride in what he'd achieved. That the Master of the Revels--a man who'd likely seen the scripts for more plays than anyone else alive--should recognize its quality filled him with no small pride.

"You have earned your praises," Tilney said now. Shakespeare bowed. The Master returned the gesture.

Then he asked, "Wherefore doth Master Strawberry make inquiry of you?"

"He is Sir Oracle, and, when he opes his lips, let no dog bark!" Shakespeare said sourly. Sir Edmund chuckled. But Shakespeare realized his answer would not do. Tilney could ask the constable himself.

Better to lull him than to let Strawberry fan his suspicion to flame. The poet went on, "He seeks him who murthered Geoffrey Martin and Matt Quinn."

"He cannot believe you are the man?" Tilney said.

"No, sir, for which I thank G.o.d. But, quotha, the man he suspects and I both are known to the same man. From this I seem to lie under reflected suspicion, so to speak."

"Whom have you in common?" the Master of the Revels asked.

Shakespeare wished he would have picked a different question. "One Nicholas Skeres, sir," he said, again knowing Walter Strawberry could give the answer if he didn't.

"Nick Skeres?" Tilney said. Shakespeare nodded. " 'Sblood, I've known Nick Skeres these past ten years, near enough," Sir Edmund told him. "A friend of Marlowe's, Nick Skeres is. I'd not dice with him, I'll say that: he hath no small skill in the cheating law, and he'd not stick at sliding high men or low men or fullams into the game to gull a cousin. But a murtherer? I find that hard to credit, and I'd say as much to the constable's face."

"Gramercy, if you'd be so kind," Shakespeare said. He too thought Skeres would use dice with only high numbers or only low ones or weighted dice whenever he thought he could get away with it. "Master Strawberry's importunings do leave me distracted from seeing King Philip forward. Could you ease them . . ."

"I hope I may," the Master of the Revels said. "Zeal without sense is like a mast without stays--the man having the one without the other will soon fall into misfortune. Ay, Master Shakespeare, I'll bespeak Strawberry for you.""For the which many thanks, sir. I'd be most disgraceful to you on account of't," Shakespeare said, deadpan.

Sir Edmund Tilney started to nod and turn away. Then he heard what Shakespeare had really said. After one of the better double takes the poet had seen, Sir Edmund guffawed. "You are a most dangerous vile wicked fellow," he said, "and you know your quarry as a cony-catcher knows his cony."

"Why, whatever can you mean?" Shakespeare said. This time, they both laughed. Tilney clapped him on the shoulder and went off to chat with Thomas Vincent. By the way the prompter smiled and nodded, Sir Edmund was also telling him Lord Westmorland's Men could legitimately perform King Philip.

Shakespeare peered into a looking-gla.s.s. He muttered under his breath--he'd missed some greasepaint below one eye, so he looked as if he had a shiner. He scrubbed at the makeup with a rough cloth, then examined himself again. This time, he nodded in satisfaction.

The sun hung low in the west when he left the Theatre. The equinox had come the day before. Soon, all too soon, days would dwindle down to the brief hours of late autumn and winter. A chill breeze that smelled of rain made him glad of his thick wool doublet.

He hadn't gone far towards London before he saw Marlowe perched on a boulder by the side of Sh.o.r.editch High Street. The other poet, plainly, was waiting for him. "Begone, you carrion crow, you croaker, you slovenly unhandsome corse," Shakespeare said.

"Your servant, sir." Marlowe descended from the rock and made a leg at him. "You can play the ghost: I deny it not. Henceforth, I'll hear in your voice dead Darius' words."

"I may play the ghost, but, do you not get hence, you'll have the role in good earnest," Shakespeare answered. "Robert Cecil knows you are returned to London. An his men find you, you are sped." He didn't tell Marlowe he was the one who'd given Cecil that news.

"Wherefore should he seek to jugulate me?" Marlowe asked.

"Play not the innocent with me, thou false virgin," Shakespeare said, wondering whether Marlowe were virgin anywhere upon his person. "You know o'ermuch of . . . this and that." He named no names, not with other people walking in Sh.o.r.editch High Street. "You know o'ermuch, and your tongue flaps like drying linen i'the wind. Cause aplenty to see you silent--is't not so?"

"Like drying linen i'the wind? Thou most lying slave!"

"Nay." Shakespeare shook his head. "By G.o.d, Kit, hear me: I tell you the truth." He clicked his tongue between his teeth in annoyance. He'd automatically come out with a line of blank verse, and not a very good one.

Marlowe noticed the same thing. "And ten low words oft creep in one dull line," he jeered--more blank verse, with a nasty barb.

"Mock an you would. Mock--but go. Stay and you die the death, if not from the likes of Ingram Frizer, then from the dons. What Cecil knows, belike they'll learn anon. Can you tell me I am mistook?"

They walked along, arguing. "I can tell you I'm fain to stay to see the hand played out," Marlowe said stubbornly.

"When first you learned the Spaniards dogged you, you nigh wet yourself for fear of 'em," Shakespeare said. "Then you were wise. This you show forth now, 'tis but a madman's courage. 'Steeth, did you notsee you all but trod on de Vega's toes, there amongst the groundlings?"

"I saw him, ay, with yet another trull," Marlowe said, scorn in his voice. "What of it? He knew me not."

First the Widow Kendall had doubted Cicely Sellis' chast.i.ty. Now Marlowe did the same. Shakespeare hadn't argued with his landlady. He saw little point to correcting Kit, either. Instead, he tried once more to make the other poet see sense: "You are no player here. Being none, lie low, lest you bring yourself to the notice of them who'd lay you low. An you would--an you must--see how the hand plays out, but suffer it not to be played upon your person."

"The counsel of a craven," Marlowe said. "I looked for better from you, Will."

"You will throw your life away, you mad-headed ape. 'Tis pikestaff plain you care not a fig therefor: well, be it so. But in your lunacy will you throw old England away with it?"

"What's old England to me or I to old England, that I should weep for her?" Marlowe seemed genuinely curious.

"Say you so?" Shakespeare clapped a hand to his forehead. "You brought me to this game, marble-pated fiend, and now it likes you not? Fie on you!"

Marlowe laughed. "As though I were a Latin verb, you misconstrue me. For the game I care greatly; 'tis the game lured me back from Margate. I will see it played. An I may, I will play it. Ay, the game's the thing. But for England?" He snapped his fingers. "That for old England." With a nod, he ducked into the doorway of a tenement and disappeared.

Shakespeare started to go after him, then stopped, muttering a curse. What good would it do? None.

Less than none, probably. Shakespeare didn't believe Marlowe despised his country, as he said he did.

He was all pose, all outrageousness, all shock. But force him to it and he might decide he had to act on his pose. Better to leave him alone and hope he came to his senses on his own.

Better he had not left them, Shakespeare thought, but then, Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? That cheery notion uppermost in his mind, he trudged on down towards Bishopsgate.

ENRIQUE STRETCHED OUT an imploring hand to Lope de Vega. "Senior Lieutenant, you must let me know when you are to play Juan de Idi?quez on the English stage," Baltasar Guzm?n's man said. "I will come to see you, though I still know less of the language than I should."

"I'll be glad to see you," de Vega said. "I fear it won't be long."

"I fear the same. Every ship from Spain brings worse word of his Most Catholic Majesty." Enrique crossed himself.

So did Lope. For all he knew, King Philip might already have died. Strange to think he would be in his grave back in Spain while here in England, till news of his death arrived, he still ruled. A play could make something of those twists of time and knowledge, Lope thought. He wondered how he might shape it.

"G.o.d protect the new King when his day comes," Enrique said.

Lope nodded. "Yes. G.o.d protect him indeed."He and Enrique shared a glance. They both knew Philip III was not half, was not a quarter, of the man Philip II had been. Neither of them could say such a thing, but saying and knowing were far from the same. Lope feared for Spain in the reign of Philip II's son. He couldn't say that, either. He could pray.

He'd done a lot of praying lately.

Or he could try to put his worries out of his mind. He bowed to Enrique almost as respectfully as he would have to Captain Guzm?n, then said, "Hasta luego. I'm off to Bishopsgate."

Enrique smiled. "Good luck with your new lady friend, Senior Lieutenant."

What a pity she is only a friend, Lope thought, and then, Well, if G.o.d is on my side, I may yet make her more. To Enrique, he said only, "Thank you very much," and hurried out of the barracks in the heart of London.

But his little chat with Captain Guzm?n's servant delayed him just enough so that, as he was coming out, he nearly b.u.mped into Walter Strawberry, who was coming in. He couldn't escape the man, no matter how much he wanted to. With such grace as he could muster, he smiled and said, "Give you good day, Constable Strawberry."

"G.o.d give you good morrow as well, Lieutenant," Strawberry replied. "I have heard a thing pa.s.sing strange, strange as any I have seen, the which, methought, I should bring to your honor's orifice."

"Say on," de Vega urged, hoping the Englishman would come to the point--if he had a point--and let him get on his way up to see Cicely Sellis.

In his own fashion, Walter Strawberry did: "Dame Tumor hath it, sir, that Christopher Marlowe, otherwise styling himself one Karl Tuesday, is returned to London and making himself unbeknownst hereabouts."

Lope stared. That was news--if true. "How know you this? Have you seen him?"

"As I told you, not with mine own ears," the constable answered. "But I have much attestation thereto, from certain of them that share his advice."

"His advice?" De Vega frowned, wondering what Strawberry was trying to say. Suddenly, a light dawned. "Mean you--?"

"I mean what I say, and not a word of it," Strawberry declared. "He hath the advice of Gomorrah, wherefrom is he also tumorously said to suffer from the malediction which hight gomorrhea, or peradventure from the French pox."

That held enough tangles to hide a swarm of foxes from the hounds, but Lope ruthlessly cut through them: "You have it from catamites and sodomites that Marlowe is returned to London?" He didn't know whether Marlowe was diseased, nor much care. That wasn't his worry, not now.

And Walter Strawberry nodded. "Said I not so?"

"One never knows," Lope murmured. He clapped the English constable on the shoulder. "You have done me a service to bring this word hither. Believe you me, sir, if Marlowe be in this city, we shall run him to earth. And now, I pray you, forgive, for I must away." He pushed past Strawberry and out into St.

Swithin's Lane.

"But--" Strawberry called after him. He heard no more, for he was hurrying up the street, on his way to Bishopsgate at last. His rapier slapped against his thigh at every step.His thoughts whirled. How could Marlowe have come back to London when he'd gone to sea? Why would he have come back? Knowing Marlowe fairly well, Lope made his own guess about that.

Something was stirring, and the Englishman wanted to see it, whatever it was. Marlowe could no more stay away from trouble than bees from flowering clover. What sort of trouble? de Vega wondered. One thing immediately sprang to mind: treason.

This means more questions for Shakespeare, Lope thought unhappily. If I find him at the lodging-house, I'll ask them now.

But the old woman who ran the place shook her head when he asked if Shakespeare was there. "Surely you must know, sir, he is gone up to the Theatre, for to earn the bite wherewith his rent--my rent--to pay," she said nervously.

Lope thought about going up to Sh.o.r.editch straightaway, but decided it would keep. He had no proof Shakespeare knew anything of Marlowe's return. For that matter, he had no proof Marlowe had returned. De Vega hoped Walter Strawberry was wrong, both for Marlowe's sake and because that would mean less trouble lay ahead.

When he knocked on Cicely Sellis' door, she opened it at once. But when she saw him standing there, she started a little, or more than a little. "Oh. Master Lope. I looked for . . . another."

"For Christopher Marlowe?" de Vega rapped out, suddenly suspicious of everyone around him.

But the cunning woman shook her head. "I know him not," she said. If she was acting, she proved how fond and foolish England's ban on actresses was. "Why are you come here?"

"To speak with thee," Lope said, seizing the opportunity.

Her mouth narrowed in exasperation. "Come you in, then," she said, "but only for a moment, mind."

Though she must have heard him use the intimate p.r.o.noun, she didn't follow suit.

As soon as Lope stepped inside, he realized she'd been waiting for a client. Astrological symbols were scrawled on the wall in charcoal, a circle inscribed on the rammed-earth floor. Tall candles burned to either side of the circle. Within it, Mommet scratched behind one ear to rout out a flea, then yawned at the Spaniard, showing needle teeth. It was de Vega's turn to say, "Oh," as light dawned, and then, "You'd tell a fortune." He dropped thou himself.

"Ay, and for a good price, too, of the which stand I in need," Cicely Sellis said. "Say what you would and then, I pray you, away. The bird comes anon."

And you don't want a Spaniard about to frighten him off, whoever he is, de Vega thought. Well, fair enough. Better trusting her intentions, he sighed dramatically and tried again: "I'd speak to thee of love."

Her smile showed more annoyance than amus.e.m.e.nt. "I tell you, sir, I've no time for't now. Speak me fair another day, an't please you, and who knows? Haply I will hear you."

"Haply?" he said, less than delighted at the hedge.

But Cicely Sellis nodded. "Haply," she repeated, her voice firm. "Would you have me promise more than I may give?"

"By my troth, I'd kiss thee with a most constant heart," Lope said.She looked hara.s.sed. The cat, eerily reflecting her mood as it often did, bared its teeth again. After a moment, though, she said, "A bargain: one kiss, and then you go? If there be more between us, let it wait its proper occasion, which this is not."

"One kiss, then, lady, and I am hence," Lope promised. She nodded once more, and stepped forward.

He took her in his arms. Having but the one chance, he made the most of it, clasping her to him so their bodies molded to each other. Her mouth was sweet and knowing against his.

The kiss went on and on. At last, though, it had to end. Lope's arms still around her, Cicely Sellis stroked his cheek. But she said only one word: "Farewell."