When he got up, Foster was gone. No one had come after the clever little man with the interesting tools.

Shakespeare went off to the Theatre in a thoughtful mood. His roommate knew crime as he himself knew poesy, and might well have made a better living at his chosen trade.

"BUENOS D?AS, YOUR EXCELLENCY," Lope de Vega said, sweeping off his hat and bowing to Captain Baltasar Guzm?n. "How may I serve you this morning?"

"Buenos d?-as, Lieutenant," Guzm?n replied. "First of all, let me compliment you on La dama boba.

Your lady was a most delightful b.o.o.b, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her antics yesterday."

Lope bowed again, this time almost double. "I am your servant, sir!" he exclaimed in delight. His superior had never before paid him such a compliment for his theatrical work--or, indeed, for work of any other kind.

Captain Guzm?n went on, "And my compliments especially for wringing such a fine performance from your Diego. I know that cannot have been easy."

"Had I known I would have to use him, I would have made the servant a sleepier man," de Vega said.

"As things were--" He mimed cracking a whip over Diego's back.

"Even so." Guzm?n nodded. Then he raised an elegant eyebrow and asked, "Tell me: after which of your mistresses was Lady Nisea modeled? Or should I say, which of your former mistresses? The story is, they had it in mind to throw you into the bear pit for the mastiffs' sport."

"Please believe me, your Excellency, it was not so bad as that." He asked Captain Guzm?n to believe him. He didn't tell his superior that what he said was true.

Guzm?n's eyebrows rose higher still. "No, eh? It certainly has been a mighty marvel hereabouts. I suppose I should admire your energy, if not your luck at the bear garden. Everyone who saw them says a man would be lucky to have one such woman, let one two."

How can I answer that? de Vega wondered. Deciding he couldn't, he didn't try. Instead, he repeated, "How may I serve you, sir?"

Rather than answering him directly, Baltasar Guzm?n said, "Your timing could have been better, Lieutenant. In fact, it could hardly have been worse."

"Sir?"

"Have you forgotten you are to meet with Cardinal Parsons this morning?" Guzm?n eyed him, then a.s.sumed a severe expression. "I see you have. What a pity. It could be that the Cardinal, being an Englishman and having just come from Canterbury, has not heard of your, ah, escapade. It could be. I hope it is. But I would not count on it. The man is devilishly well informed."

Lope sighed. "Yes, sir. I know he is," he said glumly. "I'll do the best I can.""Splendid. I'm sure you said the same to both your lady friends."

Ears burning, Lope beat a hasty retreat from Captain Guzm?n's office. As he'd feared, Enrique waylaid him in the hall. Guzm?n's servant also bubbled with enthusiasm for La dama boba. "I especially admired Nisea's transformation from a b.o.o.b to a woman with a mind--and a good mind--of her own," he said.

Since Lope had worked especially hard to bring off that transformation, Enrique's praise should have delighted him. And, in fact, it did leave him pleased, but he had no time for Enrique now. "You will excuse me, I hope," he said, "but I'm on my way to St. Paul's."

"Oh, yes, of course, for your meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury." Enrique nodded wisely.

Everyone knows my business better than I do, de Vega thought with a stab of resentment. Captain Guzm?n's servant continued, "He is a very wise man, and a very holy man, too, no doubt."

"I know," Lope said, desperate to be gone. "If you will excuse me--" Retreating still, he hurried out of the Spanish barracks and west to the greatest cathedral in London. The booksellers near the steps tempted him to linger, but he resisted temptation and went up the stairs and into the great church. If books came bound in skirts, though . . . Annoyed at himself, he shook his head to try to dislodge the vagrant thought.

A deacon came up to him as he stepped into the cool, dim quiet. "And you would be, sir . . . ?" the fellow asked in English.

Lope proudly replied in his own Castilian tongue: "I have the honor to call myself Senior Lieutenant Lope F?lix de Vega Carpio."

He was not surprised to find the deacon spoke Spanish, too. "Ah, yes. You will be here to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury. Come with me, se?or ."

Quiet evaporated as the deacon led de Vega through the cathedral. Masterless men d.i.c.kered with merchants and artisans who might have work for them. Lawyers in rich robes traded gossip. Smiling bonarobas, fragrant with sweet perfume and showing as much soft flesh as they dared, lingered near the lawyers. One of the women smiled at Lope. He ignored her, which turned the smile to a scowl. He didn't care to buy a tart's favors, no matter how fancy and lovely she was: he preferred to fall in love, or at least to imagine he'd fallen in love. And what's the difference? he wondered. Only how long the feeling lasts.

"Do have a care," the deacon warned him. "Picking pockets, or slitting them, is a sport here."

"This too, I suppose, is Christian charity," Lope said. The deacon gave him an odd look.

Away from the vast public s.p.a.ces of St. Paul's were the chambers the clergy used for their own. The deacon led de Vega to one of those. Then, like Enrique going in to see Captain Guzm?n, he said, "Wait here for a moment, please," and ducked into the room by himself. When he returned, he beckoned. "His Eminence awaits you with pleasure."

"He is too kind," Lope murmured.

Even in the rich regalia of a cardinal, Robert Parsons looked like a monk. His face was long and thin and pale; his close-cropped, graying beard did nothing to hide the hollows under his cheekbones. He held out his ring for de Vega to kiss. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Senior Lieutenant," he said in Latin."Thank you, your Eminence," Lope replied in the same language. He switched to English: "I speak your tongue, sir, an you have no Spanish."

"I prefer Latin. It is more precise," Parsons said. By his appearance, he was nothing if not a precise man.

"As you wish, of course." Lope hoped his own Latin would meet the test. He read it well, but he was no clergyman, and so did not often speak it. "I am at your service in every way."

"Good." Cardinal Parsons looked down at some notes on his desk and nodded to himself. "I am told you are the Spanish officer most concerned with sniffing out treason in the English theatre."

"Yes, your Eminence, I believe that to be true," Lope answered, pleased he'd remembered to use the infinitive.

"This is because"--the Archbishop of Canterbury checked his notes again--"you are yourself an aspiring dramatist?"

"Yes, your Eminence," de Vega repeated, wondering if the English churchman would take him to task for it.

But Parsons only said, "I am glad to hear it, Lieutenant. For treason is afoot in that sphere, and you, being familiar with its devices, are less likely to let yourself be cozened than would someone uninitiated in its mysteries."

Lope had to think before he answered. The cardinal's Latin was so fluent, so confident, he might have been whisked by a sorcerer from the days of Julius Caesar to this modern age. He made no concessions to Lope's weaker Latinity; Lope got the idea Parsons made few concessions to anyone, save possibly the Pope.

"Your Eminence, I go to the theatre more to watch the audience than to watch the actors," de Vega said.

"Many of them I know well, and they have not shown themselves disloyal to Queen Isabella and King Albert."

Robert Parsons snorted like a horse. Lope needed a moment to realize that was intended for laughter.

Parsons said, "And how likely is it that they would declare their treason before an officer of his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain?"

"You make me out to be a fool, a child," Lope said angrily.

"By no means, Lieutenant." The Archbishop of Canterbury's smile was cold as winter along the Scottish border. "With your own words, you make yourself out to be such."

Without his intending it, de Vega's hand moved a couple of inches toward the hilt of his rapier. He arrested the motion. Even if he was insulted, drawing sword on a prelate would certainly send him to gaol, and probably to h.e.l.l. He gave the cardinal a stiff bow. "If you will excuse me, your Eminence--"

"I will not." Parsons' voice came sharp as a whipcrack. "I tell you there is treason amongst these men, and you will be G.o.d's instrument in flensing it out."

"But, your Eminence"--Lope spread his hands--"if they do not show it to me, how can I find it? There is no treason in plays that are performed. The Master of the Revels sees and approves them before a play reaches the stage. Sir Edmund Tilney is the one who will know if the poets plan sedition--indeed, he has arrested some for trying to say what must not be said."Like Parsons' face, his fingers were long and thin and pale. When he drummed them on the desktop, they reminded de Vega of a spider's legs. "Again, you speak of overt treason," Parsons said. "The enemies of G.o.d and Spain, like Satan their patron, are more subtle than that. They skulk. They conspire. They--"

"With whom?" Lope broke in.

"I shall tell you with whom: with the English n.o.bles who still dream of setting at liberty that murderous heretic jade, Elizabeth their former Queen." Parsons' eyes flashed. "King Philip was too merciful by half in not burning her when first she was seized, and again in not slaying more of the men who served her and upheld her while she ruled."

He had, Lope remembered, spent more than twenty years in exile from his native land. When he spoke of skulking and conspiring, he spoke of what he knew. Cautiously, de Vega asked, "Have you anyone in particular in mind?"

He expected the Archbishop of Canterbury to name Christopher Marlowe--everyone seemed to put Marlowe at the head of his list of troublemakers--or George Chapman or Robert Greene (though Greene, he'd heard, was ill unto death after eating of a bad dish of pickled herring). But Parsons, after an abrupt nod, replied, "Yes. A slanderous villain by the name of William Shakespeare."

"Shakespeare?" Lope said in surprise. "I pray your Eminence to forgive me, but you must be mistaken. I know Shakespeare well. He is a man of good temper--of better temper than most poets, I would say."

"What of the friends of poets?" Cardinal Parsons asked.

Lope needed a heartbeat to notice he'd put the feminine ending on friends. Well, Baltasar Guzm?n had warned not much got past the cardinal, and he was right. "Your Eminence!" Lope said reproachfully.

"Let it go. Let it go. Forget I said it," Parsons told him. "But I warn you, Lieutenant, there is more to that man than meets the eye. He has been seen in homes where a man of his station has no fit occasion to call, and he keeps company no honest man would keep, or want to keep."

"He knows Marlowe well," Lope said. "Knowing Marlowe, he will also know Marlowe's acquaintances.

Many of them, I fear, are men such as you describe."

"There is more to it than that," Cardinal Parsons insisted. "I do not know how much more. That, I charge you to uncover. But I tell you, Lieutenant, there is more to find." His nostrils quivered, like those of a hunting hound straining to take a scent.

Captain Guzm?n had dark suspicions about Shakespeare, too. Lope had dismissed those: who ever thinks his immediate superior knows anything? But if Robert Parsons and Guzm?n had the same idea, perhaps there was something to it. "I shall do everything I can to aid the cause of Spain, your Eminence,"

de Vega said.

Chill disapproval in his voice, Parsons answered, "It is not merely the cause of Spain. It is the cause of G.o.d." But then he softened: "I do take your point, Lieutenant. Work hard. And work quickly. My latest news is that his Most Catholic Majesty does not improve, but draws closer day by day to his eternal reward. With his crisis, very likely, will come the crisis of our holy Catholic faith here in England. No less than the inquisitors, you defend against heresy. Go forth, knowing G.o.d is with you."

"Yes, your Eminence. Thank you, your Eminence." Lope kissed Cardinal Parsons' ring once more. He left the cardinal's study, left St. Paul's, as fast as his legs would take him. No doubt Parsons had intended a compliment in comparing him to an inquisitor. But what he'd intended and what Lope felt were verydifferent things.

The Inquisition was necessary. Of that de Vega had no doubt. But there was also a difference between what was necessary and what was to be admired. Vultures and flies are necessary. Without them, the ground would be littered with dead beasts, he thought. No one invites them to dinner, though, and no one ever will.

SHAKESPEARE KNELT IN the confessional. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he said. The priest in the other side of the booth murmured a question he hardly heard. He confessed his adultery with the serving woman at the ordinary, his rage at Will Kemp (though not all his reasons for it), his jealousy over Christopher Marlowe's latest tragedy, and such other sins as came to mind . . . and as could safely be told to a Catholic priest.

As Shakespeare had conformed to Protestant worship during Elizabeth's reign, so he conformed to Romish ritual now that Isabella and Albert sat on the English throne and Philip of Spain stood behind them. More often than not, conforming came easy. The Catholic Church's rituals had a grandeur, a glamour, missing from Protestantism. Had Shakespeare been able to choose faiths on his own, he might well have chosen Rome's. His father had quietly stayed Catholic all through Elizabeth's reign. But having invaders impose his creed on him galled Shakespeare, as it galled many Englishmen.

The priest gave him his penance, and then, with a low-voiced, "Go, and sin no more," sent him on his way. He went up toward the altar in the small parish church of St. Ethelberge the Virgin--the church closest to his lodgings--knelt in a pew, and began to say off the Ave Marias and Pater Nosters the priest had a.s.signed him. By the time he finished, he did feel cleansed of sin, although, being a man, he knew he would soon stumble into it again.

Nine years of conforming to Catholic ways was also long enough to leave him full of guilt about what he hadn't confessed. Despite the sanct.i.ty of the confessional, any mention of his meeting with Lord Burghley would have gone straight to the English Inquisition, and no doubt to the secular authorities as well. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name. Even so, he raised his eyes to the heavens as he finished his last Ave Maria. The priest wouldn't know what he kept to himself, but G.o.d would.

Crossing himself--another gesture that had grown close to automatic since the coming of the Armada--he got to his feet to leave St. Ethelberge's. As he walked down the aisle toward the door, Kate came out of the confessional and started up toward the altar. Dull embarra.s.sment made Shakespeare look down at the stone floor. She'd probably confessed to the same pa.s.sage of lovemaking as he had. For her, of course, it was only fornication, not adultery.

He forced himself to look her in the face. "G.o.d give you good day," he said, as if he knew her, but not in the Biblical sense.

"And you, Master Will," she answered quietly. "Shall we see you again at the ordinary this even?"

"Belike," he said. She walked on by him. Her small, secret smile said she might have confessed, but hadn't fully repented.

He started back to the Widow Kendall's. He wanted to get in what writing he could while some daylight lingered, and before most of the other lodgers came home and made the place too noisy for him to think in the rhythms of blank verse. He wished he were a rich man, like the Bacons in whose home he'd met Lord Burghley. Being able to sit down in a room without half a dozen other people chattering in his ear . . . is beyond your means, so what point fretting yourself over it?He hadn't gone far before an apprentice--easy enough to recognize by his clothes, for he wore a plain, flat cap and only a small ruff at his throat--pointed to him and said, "There goes Master Shakespeare."

Being a man whose face many saw, Shakespeare had that happen fairly often. He almost made a leg to the 'prentice, to acknowledge he was who the young man thought he was. But something in the fellow's tone made him hold back. The apprentice hadn't just recognized him; by the way he sounded, others were looking for Shakespeare, too. He didn't care for that at all.

Sure enough, though, another man and a woman pointed him out to their friends on his way back to his lodgings. And, when he got there, Jane Kendall was in a swivet. "Oh, sweet Jesu!" she exclaimed. "First Master Foster, now you! Whatever shall I do?"

"What mean you, Madam?" he asked, thinking, What will you do? Find more lodgers; what else? But if they pursue me as they pursue Peter Foster, whatever shall I do? He doubted whether running to Stratford would help him. They'd track him down there. Could he get over the border to Scotland? Have they got theatres in Scotland? Might a player live there, or would he slowly starve?

"Why, Master Shakespeare, the fellow asking after you, he looked a right catchpole, he did," his landlady answered. "Had a great gruff deep voice, too, enough to make anybody afeard. Oh, Master Shakespeare, what have you done?"

"Naught," Shakespeare answered. And that was true, or something close to true. He'd set down not a word on paper. The closest thing to evidence anyone might find among his possessions was the translation of Tacitus' Annals. But it wasn't the only work of history in his trunk, and he hadn't so much as dogeared the relevant page. As far as proof went, they'd be on thin ice.

But how much would that matter? The bastinado, the rack, thumbscrews, the water torture the English Inquisition favored . . . If they hauled him away and began tormenting him, how long could he hold out?

He shuddered. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. He was no hero, and knew it too well. If they tortured him, he would tell all he knew, and quickly, too.

Doing his best not to think of such things, he went to the ordinary for supper and for work. All he knew about what he ate was that it cost threepence. He did notice Kate's smile, and absentmindedly gave it back. After she took away his wooden trencher, he got to work on Love's Labour's Won. Tonight, the writing went well: better than it had for a fortnight, at least. He dipped his quill in the bottle of ink again and again; it raced across the page.

Kate knew better than to talk to him when the words tumbled forth like the Thames at flood. When at last she came over to his table, it was only to warn him: "Curfew's nigh."

"Oh." He didn't want to stop, but he didn't want to be caught out, either, not if they were looking for him anyway. As he gathered up his pens and papers and ink, he came back to the real world. Now the smile he gave the serving woman was sheepish. "Another time, I fear me."

She nodded, not much put out. "When I saw you writing so, I knew that would be the way of't." Her voice softened. "G.o.d keep thee."

"And thee." Shakespeare pushed his stool back from the table. He couldn't have gone on much longer, anyhow; the candle was burnt almost to the end. With an awkward nod--almost the nod a youth might have given a pretty maid he was too shy to court--he hurried out of the ordinary.

He rose the next morning in darkness; in December, the sun stayed long abed. Porridge from the pot on the hearth and a mug of the Widow Kendall's ale broke his fast. And he wasn't the first lodger up; JackStreet went out the door while he was still eating.

When Shakespeare followed the glazier out of the lodging house, a big man stepped from the shadows and said, "You are Master William Shakespeare." He had to be the fellow who'd spoken to Jane Kendall; his voice came rumbling forth from deep in his chest.

"And if I be he?" Shakespeare asked. "Who are you, and what business have you with me?"

"You are to come with me to Westminster," the man replied. "Forthwith."

"But I'm wanted at the Theatre," Shakespeare said.

"You're wanted in Westminster, and thither shall you go," the big man said implacably. "The wind lies in the east. Come--let's to the river for a wherry. 'Twill be quicker thus." He made the sign of the cross.

"G.o.d be my witness, Master Shakespeare, you are not arrested. Nor shall you be, so that you do as you are bid. Now come. Soonest there, soonest gone."

"I am your servant," Shakespeare said, ever so glad he was not--or apparently was not--the other man's captive.

Morning twilight had begun to chase the dark from the eastern sky when they got down to the Thames.

Even so early, half a dozen boatmen shouted at them, eager for a fare. "Whither would you go, my lord?"

one of them asked after the fellow sent to fetch Shakespeare set a silver groat in his hand.

"Westminster," the big man answered.

"I'll hie you there right yarely, sir," the boatman said. He proved good as his word, using both sail and oars to fight his way west against the current. The wind did indeed blow briskly from the east, which helped speed the small boat to Westminster. They got there faster than Shakespeare would have cared to walk, especially when he still would have had trouble seeing where to put his feet.