She looked harassed. 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."
" Aii, thou'lt tear out my heart like the savage men of New Spain!" Lope cried. She only waited. He thought about the risks of breaking a bargain with a bruja-thought about them and found them formidable. Though his lips still glowed from the touch of hers, he bowed stiffly. "Farewell," he echoed, and, spinning on his heel, strode out of her room and out of the lodging-house.
Storming away, he almost ran into-almost ran over-another man heading for the Widow Kendall's house: a broad-shouldered fellow with a smooth face and with hair cut short. Lope took a step past the man, then froze, remembering what Walter Strawberry had told him. "Marlowe!" he said, and his sword seemed to leap from its sheath into his hand.
Christopher Marlowe whirled. He too wore a rapier. It flashed free. "The fig of Spain!" he shouted. His obscene gesture matched the words.
"Put up!" Lope said. "Put up and give over. You're caught. Even an you beat me, you're known to be in London. How can you hope to win free? Yield you now."
"I will not." Marlowe sighed and shook his head. "Base fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel there is a point, to which when men aspire they tumble headlong down." He seemed to speak more to himself than to de Vega. "That point I touched, and seeing there was no point to mount up higher, why should I grieve at my declining fall?" With no more warning than that, he thrust at Lope's heart.
Lope beat the blade aside. His hand had more to do with his answering stroke than did his brain, though perhaps he remembered his fight with Don Alejandro de Recalde. His point took Marlowe not in the right eye but above it. The English poet let out a shriek that faded almost at once to a rattling gurgle. He fell down in the street, dead as a stone.
A big, rough-looking blond man wearing a disreputable cap smiled at Lope, showing a couple of missing teeth. "Gramercy, your honor," he said, and touched the brim of that cap. "You just saved me a bit o' work, that you did." Before the Spaniard could ask him what he meant, he hurried away.
Another man said, "I shall fetch a constable hither." He too hurried off.
"Yes, do, and yarely," Lope called after him. "An you come on a Spanish patrol, fetch them likewise." He looked down at his rapier. The last couple of inches of the blade had blood on them, blood and Christopher Marlowe's brains. He stabbed the sword into the ground to clean it, as he had after slaying Don Alejandro.
Lope was still waiting by Marlowe's body for the constable and for his own countrymen when bells began to chime, first at one church far away, then at another and another and another, till after no more than a minute or two the bronzen clangor filled all the streets of London. "What signifies that?" someone asked. Someone else shrugged. But Lope knew what it meant, what it had to mean, and ice and fire ran through him.
His Most Catholic Majesty, King Philip II of Spain, after so long dying, at last was dead. And Lope de Vega, standing there bare blade in hand, burst into tears like a little boy.
A dapper little gamecock of an officer rapped out a question in Spanish. Shakespeare looked to Lope de Vega, who translated it into English: "Captain GuzmA?n would know why Christopher Marlowe was bound for your lodging when we chanced each upon the other. I own, I too am fain to know the same."
"As am I," Shakespeare said. If his voice trembled, who could blame him? The dons had come for him at dawn, as he was about to leave the Widow Kendall's for the Theatre, and marched him here to their barracks instead. If they misliked the answers he gave them, he was assuredly a dead man-nor was he all that would die. He went on, "Methought Kit was fled abroad."
Had anybody who could recognize Marlowe seen him and Shakespeare together? If someone gave him the lie. He refused to dwell on that. If someone gave him the lie there, the Spaniards wouldn't merely question him. They would put him to the question, an altogether different and more painful business.
But all de Vega said was, "Plainly not."
You fool's zany, you stood close by him at Cambyses and knew him not, Shakespeare thought.
Captain Guzman flung more Spanish at him. Again, Lope de Vega did the honors: "He asks, how is't Constable Strawberry knew Marlowe was returned to London whilst you remained deep-sunk in ignorance?"
Damn Constable Strawberry. But Shakespeare knew he had to have a better answer than that. He said, "Belike the constable will have ears 'mongst the masculine whores of's bailiwick. Knowing Kit's pleasures, they'd learn he was in these parts or ever the generality heard it."
De Vega spoke in excited Spanish to his superior. Captain Guzman's reply sounded anything but convinced. Lope spoke again, even more passionately. GuzmA?n answered with a shrug.
To Shakespeare, de Vega said, " 'Twas even so Strawberry got wind of't-thus he told me when I inquired of him."
"Well, then." Shakespeare dared risk indignation. "This being so, wherefore tax you me o'er that which I wist not of?"
After de Vega rendered that into his own language, Baltasar GuzmA?n growled something that sounded angry. "Thus saith my captain," Lope replied: "You standing on the edge of so many swamps of treason, how do your feet stay dry?"
"I am no traitor," Shakespeare said, as he had to. "Were I such a caitiff rogue, could I have writ King Philip?"
Once more, Lope translated his words into Spanish. Once more, he did not presume to answer himself, but waited for his superior to respond. Captain Guzman spoke a curt sentence in Spanish. "That is what we seek to learn-if the worm of treason still begnaw your soul," was how de Vega put it in English.
" Still,' is't?" Shakespeare knew he was fighting for his life, and could concede his foes nothing. "My duty to your captain, Master Lope, and say this most precisely: by this word he assumes me treacherous, and proves himself no honest judge. He must forthwith retract it, as slanderous to my honor."
And how would Captain Guzman respond to that? By letting him defend his honor with a sword? If so, he was a dead man. He had no skill at swordplay, whereas a Spanish officer was all too likely to be a deadly man of his hands. Lope de Vega had certainly shown himself to be such a man, at any rate.
But Guzman nodded and then bowed low. He spoke in Spanish. "You have reason, quotha," Lope said. "Naught against you is proved, nor should he have spake as if it were. He cries your pardon therefor." Shakespeare bowed in return; he hadn't expected even so much. The Spaniard spoke again, this time harshly. "Naught against you is proved, saith he, but much suspected. We will have answers from you."
"I have given all I can," Shakespeare said, "and so shall I do. Ask what you would."
They pounded him with questions about Marlowe, about Nick Skeres, about Ingram Frizer, and about the late Sir William Cecil. They had most of the pieces to the puzzle, but did not know how-or even if-they fit together. Shakespeare told them as little as he could. He admitted having heard Marlowe and Nicholas Skeres knew each other. That wouldn't hurt Marlowe now, and Skeres remained safely out of the dons' hands.
When Shakespeare said he was thirsty, they gave him strong sack to drink. He wished he'd kept his mouth shut; the wine was liable to make him trip over his own tongue and fall to his doom. But he could not refuse it, not after he'd complained. He sipped carefully, never taking too much.