He was lying, at least in part. Not about the north of England--it did have an evil reputation, and Scotland a worse one. But servants sacked by their masters didn't automatically become cannon fodder. Diego, of course, didn't know that. And Lope sounded convincing. He wasn't a Burbage or an Edward Alleyn, but he could act.

"Put that silly sword away, se?or, " Diego said. "I am your man. If I have to be your actor, I will be your actor." As if to prove it, he got out of bed.

"Ah, many thanks, Diego," Lope said sweetly, and sheathed the rapier. "I knew you would see reason."

The servant, still in his nightshirt, muttered something pungent under his breath. As anyone with a servant needed to do, Lope had learned when not to hear. This seemed one of those times.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE CAME out of a poulterer's on Gra.s.s Street with a couple of fine new goose quills to shape into pens. "Come again, sir, any time," the poulterer called after him. "As often as not, the feathers go to waste, and I'm glad to make a couple of pennies for 'em. 'Tis not as it was in my great-grandsire's day, when the fletchers bought 'em for arrows by the bale."

"The pen's mightier than the sword, 'tis said," Shakespeare answered, "but I know not whether that be true for the arrow as well. Certes, the pen hath lasted longer."Pleased with himself, he started back towards his Bishopsgate lodgings. He'd just turned a corner when a man coming his way stopped in the middle of the narrow, muddy street, pointed at him, and said, "Your pardon, sir, but are you not Master Shakespeare, the player and poet?"

He did get recognized away from the Theatre every so often. Usually, that pleased him. Today . . .

Today, he wished he were wearing a rapier as Peter Foster had suggested, even if it were one made for the stage, without proper edge or temper. Instead of nodding, he asked, "Who seeks him?" as if he might be someone else.

"I'm Nicholas Skeres, sir." The other man made a leg. He lived up to--or down to--Widow Kendall's unflattering description of him, but spoke politely enough. And his next words riveted Shakespeare's attention to him: "Master Phelippes hath sent me forth for to find you."

"Indeed?" Shakespeare said. Skeres nodded. Shakespeare asked, "And what would you? What would he?"

"Why, only that you come to a certain house with me, and meet a certain man," Nick Skeres replied.

"What could be easier? What could be safer?" His smile showed crooked teeth, one of them black. By the glint in his eye, he'd sold a lot of worthless horses for high prices in his day.

"Show me some token of Master Phelippes, that I may know you speak sooth," Shakespeare said.

"I'll not only show it, I'll give it you." Skeres took something from a pouch at his belt and handed it to Shakespeare. "Keep it, sir, in the hope that its like, new minted, may again be seen in the land."

It was a broad copper penny, with Elizabeth looking up from it at Shakespeare. Plenty of the old coins still circulated, so it was no sure token, but Skeres had also said the right things, and so. . . . Abruptly, Shakespeare nodded. "Lead on, sir. I'll follow."

"I am your servant," Skeres said, which Shakespeare doubted with all his heart: he seemed a man out for himself first, last, and always. He hurried away at a brisk pace, Shakespeare a step behind.

He'd expected to go up into the tenements north of the wall, or perhaps to Southwark on the far bank of the Thames: to some mean house, surely, there to meet a cozener or a ruffian, a man who dared not show his face in polite company. And Nicholas Skeres did lead him out of London, but to the west, all the way to Westminster. At the Somerset House and the church of St.-Mary-le-Strand, Skeres turned north, up into Drury Lane.

Grandees dwelt in these great homes, half of brick, half of timber. One of them could have housed a couple of tenements' worth of poor folk. Shakespeare felt certain Skeres would go on to, and past, St.

Giles in the Field, which lay ahead. But he stopped and walked up to one of the houses. Nor did he go round to the servants' entrance, but boldly knocked at the front door.

"Lives your man here?" Shakespeare said in something close to disbelief.

Skeres shook his head. "Nay--that were too dangerous. But he dwells not far off. He--" He broke off, for the door opened. The man who stood there was plainly a servant, but better dressed than Shakespeare. Nick Skeres said, "We are expected," and murmured something too low for the poet to catch.

Whatever it was, it served its purpose. The servant bowed and said, "Come with me, then. He waits. I'll lead ye to him."

Carpets were soft under Shakespeare's feet as he went up one corridor and down another. He was moreused to the crunch of rushes underfoot indoors. The house was very large. He wondered if he could find his way out again without help. Like Theseus of Athens in the Labyrinth, I should play out thread behind me.

"Here we are, good sirs," the servant said at last, opening a door. "And now I'll leave ye to't. G.o.d keep ye." Smooth and silent as a snake, he withdrew.

"Come on," Nick Skeres said. As soon as Shakespeare entered the room, Skeres shut the door behind them. Then he bowed low to the old man sitting in an upholstered chair close by the hearth in the far wall; a book rested on the arm of the chair. "G.o.d give you good day, Lord Burghley. I present Master Shakespeare, the poet, whom I was bidden to bring hither to you."

Shakespeare made haste to bow, too. "Your--Your Grace," he stammered. Had Skeres told him he would meet Queen Elizabeth's longtime lord high treasurer, he would have called the man a liar to his face and gone about his business. But there, without a doubt, sat Sir William Cecil, first Baron Burghley. After the Duke of Parma's soldiers conquered England, most of Elizabeth's Privy Councilors had either fled to Protestant princ.i.p.alities on the Continent or met the headsman's axe. But Burghley, at King Philip's specific order, had been spared.

He had to be closer to fourscore than the Bible's threescore and ten. His beard was white as milk, whiter than his ruff, and growing thin and scanty. His flesh was pale, too, and looked softer and puffier than it should have--almost dropsical. Dark, sagging pouches lay under his eyes. But those blue eyes were still alert and clever, though a cataract had begun to cloud one of them. The Order of the Garter, with St.

George slaying a dragon, hung from a ma.s.sy gold chain around his shoulders.

"Well met, Master Shakespeare," he said, his voice a deep rumble without much force behind it. "I have for some while now thought well of your plays and poems."

"You are generous beyond my deserts, your Grace," Shakespeare said, still bemused. Surely he hadn't been summoned for pretty compliments alone. He shook his head, annoyed at himself for being so foolish as even to think such a thing. Thomas Phelippes' hand lay somewhere behind this. Phelippes, whatever else he was, was not one to waste time on inessentials.

"Sit. Sit." Lord Burghley waved Shakespeare and Nicholas Skeres to a pair of plain wooden stools in front of his chair. He coughed wetly a couple of times as they perched--Shakespeare nervously--then went on, "Now is the winter of our discontent." Shakespeare stirred. Burghley's smile showed several missing teeth, and another one broken. "Ay, I heard Burbage, as Richard, mouth your words. They hold here truer than they did for the Plantagenet. Know you that King Philip fails?"

"I've heard somewhat of't," Shakespeare answered cautiously, thinking Sir William Cecil himself did likewise.

No sooner had that crossed his mind than the n.o.bleman let out a rheumy chuckle. "We race each other into the grave, he and I. But when the worms take us, mine the victory, for my son is greater than his sire, his far less. Belike you'll treat with Robert ere this business end--but, for now, with me."

"I am your servant, my lord," Shakespeare said, as Nick Skeres had before him. But Skeres had only been greasily polite. Shakespeare could not imagine disobeying Lord Burghley--and did not want to imagine what would happen to him if he did.

"My servant?" Sir William Cecil shook his head. The flesh of his cheeks wobbled like gelatin, as no healthy man's would have done. "Nay. You shall be my good right arm and the sword in the hand thereof, to strike a blow for England no other man might match."Shakespeare thought of Christopher Marlowe, and of Kit's fury at being excluded from this plot. He also thought he would gladly have given Marlowe his role. But if it were to be done, the best man had to do it.

Shakespeare and Marlowe both knew who that was. "By your leave, sir," Shakespeare said, "I tell you the chance of all going as we would desire. . . ." His voice trailed off. He could not make himself tell Burghley how bad he thought the odds were.

The gesture served well enough. Lord Burghley chuckled again--and then coughed again, and had trouble stopping. When at last he did, he said, "Think you not that, on hearing of Philip the tyrant's pa.s.sing, our bold Englishmen will recall they are free, and brave? Think you not they will do't, if someone remind them of what they were, and of what they are, and of what they may be?"

Shakespeare bared his teeth in a grimace that was anything but a smile. "Am I Atlas, your Grace, to bear upon my shoulders the burthen of the whole world his weight?"

"I'll lighten somewhat the said burthen, an I may." Lord Burghley picked up the book. Even though he set a pair of spectacles on his nose, he still had to hold the volume at arm's length to read. He flipped through it rapidly, then more slowly, till at last he grunted in satisfaction. Then, to Shakespeare's surprise, he switched from English to Latin: "Know you the tongue of the Romans, Magister Guglielmus?"

Remembering Thomas Jenkins, the schoolmaster who'd made sure with a switch that his Latin lessons stuck in his mind, Shakespeare nodded. "Yes, sir, though it is some while since I used it aloud. You would do me a courtesy by speaking slowly."

Nicholas Skeres looked from one of them to the other. A slow flush rose in his cheeks. Sir William Cecil said, "He understands us not, having no Latin of his own."

"Are you certain?" Shakespeare asked. "He seems a man who shows less than he knows."

Burghley nodded heavily. "In that you are not deceived. Beware of him in a brawl, for he will always have a knife up a sleeve or in a boot. But you must believe me when I say Latin is not among the things he conceals."

"Very well, sir." It wasn't very well; Shakespeare trusted Nick Skeres not at all. But he'd taken his protest as far as he could. "What would you say to me that you will not say in his understanding?"

"If you were a scholar of Latin, you must surely have gone through the Annals of Tacitus?"

"So I did." Shakespeare nodded, too. "I made heavy going of it, I confess, for he is a difficult author."

"Recall you the pa.s.sage beginning with the twenty-ninth chapter of the fourteenth book of the said work?"

"Your pardon, sir, but I recollect it not. Did you tell me to what it pertains, my memory might be stirred."

"I shall do better than that. Attend." Peering down at the book now on his lap, Burghley began to read the sonorous Latin text. After a couple of sentences, he glanced at Shakespeare over the tops of his spectacles. "Do you follow?"

"I take the meaning, yes, though I should not care to have to construe the text."

"Meaning suffices," Lord Burghley told him. "You are a scholar no longer, and I am not your master. I will not whip you if you mistake an ablative for a dative. Shall I continue?"

"If you please, sir."Sir William Cecil read on to the end of the pa.s.sage. To Shakespeare's relief, he went more slowly after the poet admitted having some trouble following the grammar. When he'd finished, he eyed Shakespeare once more. "See you the dramatic possibilities inhering to that section?"

"I do indeed." Shakespeare had to pause and go slowly and put his thoughts into Latin. The possibilities Burghley had mentioned boiled inside his head. He wanted to talk about them in the plain English in which he wrote. Even more than that, he wanted to flee this fancy house in Drury Lane, get paper and pen and ink, and sit down in his ordinary or some other tolerably quiet place and get to work.

Maybe Lord Burghley saw as much, for he smiled. "And see you how I would have the drama springing from this pa.s.sage be shaped?"

"Yes." Shakespeare nodded. "You would have the audience construe the Romans here as . . . shall we say, some more recent folk speaking a tongue sprung from Latin. From this, it would follow--"

Burghley held up a hand. "You need say no more, Magister Guglielmus. I see you have nicely divined my purpose. Therefore, to my next question: can you do it?"

Shakespeare fell back into English, for he wanted to be sure he made himself clear: "My lord, I can do't; of that, there's no doubt. But may I do't? There lies the difficulty, for even the first scratch of pen on paper were treason, let alone any performance based thereon."

"You can say that in English, sure enough, for I already know it," Nick Skeres said.

William Cecil also returned to his native tongue, saying, "One performance is all I expect or hope for."

"By Jesu Christ, G.o.d His Son, I do hope so!" Shakespeare said. "For after the first, never would there be--never could there be--a second."

But Burghley shook his head. "Not so. If the first shape events as we hope, think you not that your works will endure not of an age, but for all time?"

"There's a weighty thought!" Nick Skeres' bright little eyes glittered. "I'd give a ballock to be famed forever, beshrew me if I wouldn't."

That such fame might be his had never crossed Shakespeare's mind. Any player who dreamt of such things had to be mad. By the nature of things, his turns on stage were written in the wind. The youngest boy who saw him would grow old and die, and then what was he? A ghost. Worse--a forgotten ghost.

He dared hope his plays would last longer than memories of his performances, but hope was only hope.

The one playwright he knew who expected to be famous was Marlowe, and Kit owned arrogance for an army, and to spare.

Lord Burghley had a point, though; no doubt about it. If he could bring this off, or help to bring it off . . .

His own eyes must have gleamed, as Skeres' had a moment before, for Burghley said, "You'll do't, then?

You'll bring it to the stage at the appointed time?"

"My lord"--Shakespeare spread his hands helplessly--"you will, I trust, be persuaded I bear you naught but good will. And, bearing you good will, I needs must tell you this presentation you so earnestly desire is less easy to bring to fruition in the proper season than your Grace supposes."

Sir William Cecil's frown put Shakespeare in mind of black clouds piling up before a storm. Here, plainly, was a man unused to hearing qualms or doubts. But, after a long exhalation, the n.o.bleman's only words were, "Say on.""Gramercy, my lord. Hear me, then." Shakespeare took a long breath of his own before continuing. "I can write the play. With what you have given me, I can shape it into the weapon you desire. I can put the groundlings to choler straight. Being once chafed, they shall not be reined again to temperance."

"Well, then?" Burghley folded his velvet-sleeved arms across his chest, covering the Order of the Garter he wore. "What more is wanted?"

Here a wise man shows himself a fool. Shakespeare reminded himself the theatre was not Burghley's trade. "Look you, my lord, you must bethink yourself: a play is more than words set down on paper. It's men and boys up on the stage, making the words and scenes seem true to those that see 'em."

"And so?" Burghley remained at sea.

But Nick Skeres stirred on his stool. "I know his meaning, my lord!" he exclaimed. "We can trust him--we think we can trust him, anyway." He spoke quickly, confidently; he was at ease in the world of plots and counterplots, as Shakespeare was while treading the boards of the Theatre. "But the play engrosses the whole company. Any one man, learning what's afoot, can discover it to the Spaniards, at which--" He drew his finger across his throat.

"Ah." Now William Cecil nodded. Swinging back toward Shakespeare, he asked, "Think you your troupe of players holds such proditors, as Eden held the serpent?"

"I know not. I would not--I could not--say ay nor nay or ever I sounded them . . . and, in the sounding, I might myself betray."

"A point," Baron Burghley admitted. "A distinct point." He seemed anything but happy, yet did not reject Shakespeare's words because they weren't what he wanted to hear. Shakespeare admired him for that.

He asked, "What's to be done, then?"

"A moment, first, an't please you," Shakespeare said, "for I had not rehea.r.s.ed all the troubles hereto pertaining." He waited for Burghley to nod again before continuing, "This secret, as Master Skeres hath said, must be held by the several men of the company. That alone were no easy matter."

"True enough." Another nod from Burghley. "What else?"

"Not only must they keep it close, sir, they must keep it close over some long stretch of time, wherein they learn their parts and learn to play 'em: all this, of course, in secret. And we shall have to contrive costumes for the Romans and the--"

"Wait." Lord Burghley held up a hand. "How much of this might you scant?"

"Why, as much as you like, my lord," Shakespeare answered. The n.o.bleman looked pleased, till he went on, "If it suit you to have presented a clumsy, aborted botch of a show, we'll dispense with rehearsal altogether. But such a play, wherein we're hissed and pelted from the stage, meseems would serve your ends less well than you desire."

A wordless rumble came from deep within Lord Burghley's chest. "You show me a sea of troubles, Master Shakespeare. How arm we against them? Here you must be my guide: you, not I, are the votary of this mystery."

"I see no sure way," Shakespeare told him, wishing he could say something different. "What seems best is this: to sound the players one by one, in such wise that I give not the game away should a man prefer the Spaniards--or even simple quiet--to daring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.""And if one of them be a cozener or an intelligencer?" Nick Skeres asked. Sure enough, he took conspiracy and betrayal for granted. "How shall you hinder him from sending the lot of you to the block or the gallows or such delightsome toys as only a Spaniard would think to devise?"

"Such is the risk inherent in the exercise," Lord Burghley remarked.

You can say that, Shakespeare thought resentfully. You'll likely be dead ere we're well begun. And the n.o.bleman would die in his own time, having lived a long life. But if the players were found out . . . Skeres had the right of it. Such delightsome toys . . . He shuddered. He was not a particularly brave man.

Counterfeiting courage on the stage, he'd seldom needed it in humdrum everyday life.

"Would you see England free again?" Burghley asked softly.

Ay, there's the rub, Shakespeare thought. Every hamlet in the land dreamt of England free again. He found himself nodding. He could do nothing else.

"Then we'll find ways and means, find them or make them." The baron sounded perfectly confident.

Again, Shakespeare silently fumed. But what can I do save go forward? He'd already heard enough to make him a dead man if he didn't sing to the Spaniards--and if things miscarry, he reminded himself. If all go well, they'll make of you a hero.

He had trouble believing it.

Sir William Cecil briskly rubbed his hands together. "We are in accord, then--is't not so?" Shakespeare nodded, still rather less than happily. The n.o.bleman smiled at him. "Commence as quickly as may be. The sooner the play is done, the sooner the players have their parts by heart, the better. Only G.o.d knows how long Philip--and Elizabeth--will live. We must be ready."

Shakespeare didn't scream, but he came close. "My lord," he said carefully, "I am now engaged upon preparing a new play for the company, and--"

"This hath greater weight behind it," Burghley said.

Again, screams bubbled just below the surface. "Your Grace, if I cease work upon a play half done, who will not wonder why? Were it not best that I draw no questions to myself?"

"You quibble," Burghley said ominously.

"By G.o.d, sir, I do not," Shakespeare answered. "And here's the rest of't: Lord Westmorland's Men will pay me for Love's Labour's Won, and pay me well. Who'll pay me for this Roman tragedy? A poet lives not upon sweet breezes and moonbeams; he needs must eat and drink like any man."