"And to you, Sir Thomas, so that you get him away," Shakespeare said. Skeres started singing again.

Phelippes pushed him out the door and into the street.

Kate came over to Shakespeare. "That Sir Nicholas is truly a knight?" she asked.

"Methinks he is a knight indeed," Shakespeare answered. "I trust not his word alone, but Master Phelippes--Sir Thomas--I do credit. Whate'er Skeres might do, he'd not lie about such business."

The serving woman shook her head in bemus.e.m.e.nt. "A strange new world, that hath such people in't."

"Ay, belike." But after that careless agreement pa.s.sed Shakespeare's lips, he realized Kate's remark held more truth than he'd first seen. Newly free after ten years under Spanish dominion, England could hardly help being a strange place. Those who'd served the dons were paying for it; those who'd suffered under them were raised high. Few had dared trust very far under Isabella and Albert, and a good many might not dare trust very far under Elizabeth, either.

Kate's thoughts stayed on the personal. "He had no call to sing of me so," she said, "nor of you, neither."

"He's a cunning cove, Nick Skeres, but not so cunning as not to think himself more cunning than he is,"

Shakespeare said.

He watched Kate work through that and smile when she got to the bottom of it. She went off to bring supper to a couple of men at another table. He waited patiently, sipping wine, till the last of the other customers went home. Then, Kate carrying a candle, they walked up the stairs to her room. As she began to undress by that dim, flickering light, she turned away from him, all at once shy. Her voice low and troubled, she said, "A player may love a serving woman, but shall a knight?"

In that cramped chamber, one step took him to her. He caught her in his arms. Under his hands, her flesh was soft and smooth and warm. He bent close to her ear to answer, "a.s.suredly he shall, an't please her that he do."

She twisted around towards him. Her kiss was fierce. "What thinkest thou?" she said.

His mouth trailed down the side of her neck to her bared b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He lingered there some little while. She murmured and pressed him to her. "Ah, sweet, there's beggary in the love that can be reckoned," he said.

He couldn't have told which of them drew the other to her narrow bed.

Afterwards, though, she fought tears while he dressed. When he tried to soothe her, she shook her head.

"Thou'rt grown a great man," she said. "Wilt not find a grand lady to match thee?"

"Why, so have I done," he replied, and kissed her once more.

"Go to!" She laughed, though the tears hadn't gone away. "Thou'rt the lyingest knave in Christendom, and I love thee for't." She got out of bed to put on her own warm woolen nightgown. "Now begone, and may thou soon come hither again, sweet Sir William.""Alas that I go," he said, and took the candle stub to light his way downstairs.

He was almost back to his lodging-house before pausing to wonder how his wife would greet the news of his knighthood. When he did, he wished he hadn't. Anne's first worry, without a doubt, would be over how much money it was worth. He shrugged. What with one thing and another, she wouldn't need to fret about that. He had plenty to send back to Stratford. She and his daughters would not want. Past that . . .

Past that, Anne wouldn't care, and neither did he.

His head did ache when he got up in the morning. A mug of the Widow Kendall's good ale with his breakfast porridge helped ease the pounding. The reticent sun of late autumn was just rising when he started for the door. Sir William he might be, but he had a play to put on at the Theatre.

Or so he thought, till the door opened when he was still a couple of strides from it. A tough-looking fellow with a rapier on his belt came in. "Sir William Shakespeare," he said. It wasn't a question.

Even so, Shakespeare wondered if he ought to admit who he was. After a couple of heartbeats'

hesitation, he nodded, asking, "What would you?"

"You are ordered to come with me."

"Ordered, say you? By whom? Whither?"

"By her Majesty, the Queen; to Westminster," the man snapped. "Will you come, or do you presume to say her nay?"

"I come," Shakespeare said meekly. The Theatre would have to do without him for the morning.

He got another surprise when he went outside: a horse waited there to take him to Westminster, yet another armed man holding its head. The beast looked enormous. Shakespeare mounted so awkwardly, the bravo who'd gone in to get him let out a scornful snort. He didn't care. He hadn't ridden a horse since hurrying back to Stratford to say farewell to his son Hamnet, and he couldn't remember his last time on horseback before that. He nodded to the tough-looking man. "Lay on, good sir, and I'll essay to follow."

"Be it so, then," the man said, doubt in his voice.

He urged his horse forward with reins, voice, and the pressure of his knees against its sides. Shakespeare did the same. His mount, a good-natured and well-trained mare, obeyed him with so little fuss that, by the time he'd gone a couple of blocks, he felt as much centaur as man. The man who'd held the poet's horse brought up the rear on his own beast.

"Way! Make way!" the bravo in the lead bawled whenever they had to slow for foot traffic or other riders or wagons and carts. "Make way for the Queen's business!" Sometimes the offenders would move aside, sometimes they wouldn't. When they didn't, Shakespeare's escort bawled other, more pungent, things.

Outside the entrance to St. Paul's, the head and quartered members of a corpse were mounted on spears. They were all splashed with tar to slow rot and help hold scavengers at bay. Despite that, Shakespeare recognized the lean, even ascetic, features of Robert Parsons before he saw the placards announcing the demise of the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS! one of those placards declared.

Was't for this you so long ate the bitter bread of exile? Shakespeare wondered. Was't for this you at last came home? Parsons might have answered ay; he had the strength and courage of his belief no less than his foes of theirs. And much good he got from them, Shakespeare thought. A rook, the barebase of its beak pale against black feathers, fluttered down and landed on top of the dead churchman's head. Tar or no tar, it pecked at Parsons' cheek.

More bodies and parts of bodies lined the road from London to Winchester. Rooks and carrion crows and jackdaws and sooty ravens fluttered up from them as riders went past, then returned to their interrupted feasting. Looking back over his shoulder at Shakespeare, his escort said, "May those birds wax as fat on the flesh of traitors as Frenchmen's geese crammed full with figs and nuts."

Shakespeare managed a nod he feared feeble. He rejoiced that England was free. But revenge, no matter how sweet at first, grew harsh to him. He saw the need; he would have been blind not to see the need.

But he could not rejoice in it. Others, many others, felt otherwise.

As Isabella and Albert had before her--and, indeed, as she often had before them--Elizabeth stayed at Whitehall. Servitors who'd likely bowed and sc.r.a.ped before Philip II's daughter and her husband shot Shakespeare scornful glances for his plain doublet and hose. But their manner changed remarkably when they found out who he was.

Elizabeth's throne was off-center on the dais. Till a few weeks before, two thrones had stood there. At the Queen's right hand, on a lower chair, sat Sir Robert Cecil. Since he was small and crookbacked, he had to tilt his chin up to speak to his sovereign.

Making his lowest leg to Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare murmured, "Your Majesty."

"You may stand straight, Sir William. G.o.d give you good day." As Elizabeth had been at the Theatre, she was armored against time with wig and paint and splendid gown. Only her bad teeth still shouted out how old she'd grown.

"I am your servant, your Majesty," Shakespeare said. "But command me and, if it be in my poor power, it shall be yours. By my troth, I . . ."

The Queen's eyes remained sharp enough to pierce like swords. Under that stern gaze, his words stumbled to a stop. He hardly dared breathe. Then Elizabeth smiled, and it was as if spring routed winter.

"I called you here not to serve me, but that I might reward you according to my promise when I made you knight," she said. "That you shall not want, it pleaseth me that Sir Robert settle upon you the sum of . . ." She looked to Cecil.

"Three hundred fifty pound," he said.

"Gra--Gramercy," Shakespeare stammered, bowing deeply. Along with what he'd got from Sir Robert's father and from Don Diego for Boudicca and King Philip, he was suddenly a man of no small wealth. "I am ever in your debt."

"Not so, but rather the reverse," Elizabeth said. "How joyed I am that so good event hath followed so many troublesome endeavors, laborious cares, and heedful undertakings, you may guess, but I best can witness, and do protest that your success standeth equal to the most thereof. And so G.o.d ever bless you in all your actions. For myself, I can but acknowledge your diligence and dangerous adventure, and cherish and judge of you as your grateful sovereign. What you would have of me, ask, and I will spare no charge, but give with both hands. Honor here I love, for he who hateth honor hateth G.o.d above."

Shakespeare gaped. Did that, could that, mean what it seemed to? He could name whatever he wanted in all the world, and the Queen would give it to him? Before he could begin to speak, Sir Robert Cecil did, his voice dry as usual: "Sir William, I say this only--seek no more gold of her Majesty, for she hath it not to give, England yet being all moils and disorders.""I understand." Shakespeare hadn't intended to ask for more gold. That would have been like asking for a fourth wish from a fairy who had given three: a good way to lose all he might have gained. He paused to gather his thoughts, then spoke directly to Elizabeth: "Your Majesty, when a lad in Stratford I made a marriage I do repent me of. Romish doctrines being once more o'erthrown"--he saw in his mind's eye the rook landing on Robert Parsons' tarred head outside St. Paul's--"you may order it dissevered, an it please you."

"Have you issue from the said union?" Elizabeth asked.

"Two living daughters, your Majesty, and a son now two years dead," he answered. Hamnet, poor Hamnet. "I would settle on the girls' mother a hundred pound of your generous bounty, that they may know no want all the days of their lives."

"A hundred fifty pound," Elizabeth said sharply. Shakespeare blinked. He hadn't expected that kind of d.i.c.ker. But he nodded. So did the Queen. She turned to Sir Robert. "Let it be made known to clerks and clerics that this is my will, to which they are to offer no impediment."

"Just so, your Majesty," Cecil said.

The Queen gave her attention back to Shakespeare. "Here, then, is one thing settled. Be there more?"

Three wishes, he thought again, dizzily. "Your Majesty will know," he said, "that whilst I wrote Boudicca I wrote also another play, this latter one ent.i.tled King Philip."

Elizabeth nodded. "I do know it. Say on, Sir William. You pique my curiosity. What would you in aid of this King Philip?"

Shakespeare took a deep breath. "King Philip the man is dead, for which all England may thank a G.o.d kind and just. By your gracious leave, your Majesty, I'd fain have King Philip live upon the stage."

"What?" Queen Elizabeth's eyebrows came down and together in a fierce frown. He'd startled her, and angered her, too. "This play you writ for the dons, for the invaders and despoilers and occupiers"--she plainly used the word in its half-obscene sense--"of our beloved homeland, praying--I do hope--it would ne'er be given, you'd now see performed? How have you the effrontery to presume this of me?"

Licking his lips, Shakespeare answered, "I ask it for but one reason: that in King Philip lieth some of my best work, the which I'd not have go for naught."

Would she understand? All he had to make his mark on the world were the words he set on paper. He marshaled no armies, no fleets. He issued no decrees. He didn't so much as make gloves, as his father had. Without words, he was nothing, not even wind and air.

Instead of answering directly, Elizabeth turned to Sir Robert. "You have read the play whereof he speaketh?"

Cecil nodded. "I have, your Majesty. Sir Thomas Phelippes, whilst in the employ of Don Diego, made shift to acquaint my father and me therewith."

"And what think you on it?" the Queen inquired.

"Your Majesty, my opinion marches with Sir William's: though Philip be dead, this play deserves to live.

It is most artificial, and full of clever conceits."

The Queen's eyes narrowed in thought. "Philip did spare me where he might have slain," she saidmusingly, at least half to herself, "e'en if, as may well be, he reckoned the same no great mercy, I being mured up behind Tower walls. And I pledged my faith to you, Sir William, you should have that which your heart desireth, wherefore let it be as you say, and let King Philip be acted without my hindrance--indeed, with my good countenance. 'Tis n.o.ble to salute the foe, the same p.r.i.c.king against my honor not but conducing thereto."

"Again, your Majesty, many thanks," Shakespeare said. "By your gracious leave here, you show the world your n.o.bleness of mind."

Judging from her self-satisfied smile, that touched Elizabeth's vanity. "Be there aught else you would have of me?" she asked him.

He nodded. "One thing more, an it please you, also touching somewhat upon King Philip."

"Go on," she said.

"A Spanish officer, a Lieutenant de Vega, was to play Juan de Idi?quez, the King's secretary. He being now a captive, I'd beg of you his freedom and return to his own land."

"De Vega . . . Methinks I have heard this name aforetimes." Elizabeth frowned, as if trying to remember where. A tiny shrug suggested she couldn't. "Why seek you this? Is he your particular friend?"

"My particular friend? Nay, I'd say not so, though we liked each the other as well as we might, each being loyal to his own country. But he is a poet and a maker of plays in the Spanish tongue. If poets come not to other poets' aid, who shall? No one, not in all the world."

"De Vega . . . Lope de Vega." Queen Elizabeth's gaze sharpened. "I have heard the name indeed: a maker of comedies, not so? The guards at the Tower did with much approbation speak of some play of his offered before the usurpers this summer gone by. Following Italian, I could betimes make out their Spanish."

"Your Majesty, I have found the same," Shakespeare said.

"You are certain he is captive and not slain?"

"I am, having ta'en him myself," Shakespeare said.

"Very well: let him go back to Spain and make comedies for the dons, provided he first take oath never again to bear arms against England. Absent that oath, captive he shall remain." Elizabeth turned to Robert Cecil. "See you to it, Sir Robert."

"a.s.suredly, your Majesty," Cecil said. "This de Vega is known to me: not the worst of men." Coming from him, that sounded like high praise. "A kind thought, Sir William, to set him at liberty."

"I thank your honor," Shakespeare said. "It were remiss of me also to say no word for Mistress Sellis, a widow dwelling at my lodging-house. Her quick wit"--amongst other things, the poet thought--"balked Lieutenant de Vega of learning we purposed presenting Boudicca in place of King Philip, and haply of thwarting us in the said enterprise."

"Let her be rewarded therefor," Elizabeth said. She asked Sir Robert Cecil, "Think you ten pound sufficeth?"

"Peradventure twenty were better," he said.Elizabeth haggled like a housewife buying apples in springtime. "Fifteen," she declared. "Fifteen, and not a farthing more."

Sir Robert sighed. "Fifteen, then. Just as you say, your Majesty, so shall it be."

"Ay, that well befits a Queen." Elizabeth's face and voice hardened. "As who should know more clearly than I, having thrown away--upon my troth, cruelly thrown away!--in harshest confinement ten years of this life I shall have back never again, wherein not in the least respected was one single word from my lips." For a moment, she seemed to imagine herself still in the Tower of London, to have forgotten Robert Cecil and Shakespeare and her guardsmen and the very throne on which she sat. Then she gathered herself. "Be there aught else required for your contentment, Sir William?"

"Your Majesty, an I may not live content by light of your kind favor, I make me but a poor figment of a man," Shakespeare replied.

"A courtesy worthy of a courtier," the Queen said, which might have been praise or might have been something else altogether. "Very well, then. You may go."

"G.o.d bless your Majesty." Shakespeare bowed one last time.

"He doth bless me indeed," Elizabeth said. "For long and long I wondered, but . . . ay, He blesseth me greatly." Shakespeare turned away so he wouldn't see tears in his sovereign's eyes.

RAIN PATTERED DOWN on Lope de Vega. It hadn't snowed yet, for which he thanked G.o.d. Next to him, another Spanish soldier coughed and coughed and coughed. Consumption, Lope thought gloomily. He was just glad the black plague hadn't broken out among his miserable countrymen. No snow. No plague. Such were the things for which he had to be grateful these days.

And his headaches came less often. He supposed he should have been grateful for that, too, but he would have been more grateful to have no headaches at all. On the other hand, if he hadn't been thwacked senseless and left for dead, he probably would have died in the savage fighting that had claimed so many Spaniards. He--cautiously--shook his head. d.a.m.ned if I'll be grateful for almost having my head smashed like a melon dropped on the cobbles.

An Englishman--an officer, by his basket-hilted rapier and plumed hat--strutted into the bear-baiting arena. Lope paid him no special attention. Plenty of Englishmen and -women still came to the arena to look over the Spanish prisoners as if they were the animals that had formerly dwelt here. Lope had seen Catalina Iba?ez on her Englishman's arm only that once. One more small, very small, thing for which to be grateful.

Then the officer took out a sc.r.a.p of paper and peered down at it, shielding it from the rain with his left hand. "Lope de Vega!" he bawled. "Where's Lieutenant Lope de Vega? Lope de Vega, stand forth!"

"I am here." De Vega got to his feet. "What would you, sir?"

"Come you with me, and straightaway," the Englishman replied.

"G.o.d's good fortune go with you, se?or ," the consumptive soldier said.

"Gracias," Lope said, and then, louder and in English, "I obey."

The officer led him out of the arena. Only a few feet from where Lope's two mistresses had discoveredeach other, the fellow said, "You are to be enlarged, Lieutenant, so that you give your holy oath nevermore to bear arms against England and presently to quit her soil. Be it your will to accept the said terms and swear your oath?"

"Before G.o.d, sir, you mean this? You seek not to make me your jest?" Lope asked, hardly daring to believe his ears.

"Before G.o.d, Lieutenant, no such wicked thing do I," the English officer replied. "The order for your freedom--provided you swear the oath--comes from Sir Robert Cecil, by direction of her Majesty, the Queen. I ask again: will you swear it?"

"Right gladly will I," de Vega said. "By G.o.d and the Virgin and all the saints, I vow that, if it be your pleasure to set me at liberty, I shall never again take up arms against this kingdom, and shall remove from it fast as ever I may. Doth it like you well enough, sir, or would you fain have me swear somewhat more?"