"Buggers?" De Vega scratched his head. "Surely you are mistook, Christopher Marlowe being dead."
The constable looked as bewildered as Lope felt. "Marlowe? Who said aught of Marlowe? I speak of buggers with palms for alms outstretched, amongst the which is a little dancing crookbacked wight who bears a passing verisimilitude unto Master Robert Cecil."
Cecil's was perhaps the only name that could have gained Lope's complete and immediate attention. "Say you so?" he murmured, leaning towards Strawberry. "Say you so indeed? Be you certain of this?"
"I am." Walter Strawberry nodded. "It hath been witnessed by witnesses thereto, and likewise by those who have seen the same. An it be not the same Robert Cecil, he hath a twin unrecked, though himself but the wreck of a man."
"Have you any other evidence past this which your witnesses, er, witnessed?" Lope asked. "Shakespeare denies all treasonous associations, and assuredly in the favor of Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s stands high. With reason, he having writ a splendid, yes, a most splendid, play on the life of his late Most Catholic Majesty, in which I shall have the honor of performing later this day. All this being so, you see, I am not fain to seize him without strongest proofs of's guilt."
"What I have, sir, I have given you," Constable Strawberry said. " 'Tis my bounding duty, and I have bounded hither for to do it."
"Damnation," de Vega muttered. Strawberry had brought him just enough to alarm him, but not enough to let him act, especially not after Shakespeare had wriggled free of trouble after Christopher Marlowe's return to London. Lope stroked his little chin beard as he thought. Suddenly, he pointed at the constable.
"Have you searched his lodging? If he have done treason, he will have done't with his pen. Why else engage a poet, a maker of plays, in the enterprise? Have you, then?"
"Not having a warrant?" Strawberry seemed genuinely shocked. "No, sir, I have not. That were beyond my bounds altogether, and beyond the bounds of any honest Englishman."
"A plague take all bounds, you-you bounder!" Lope burst out. He stabbed a thumb at his own chest. " I am no Englishman, for which I thank God. If I desire to search, I may search. I may-and, by the Blessed Virgin, I shall." Secure in the power the occupiers held, he had no doubt of that whatever.
Neither did Constable Strawberry. "You will do as you shall do. I have not the right nor the writ." He turned to go. "Adieu; be vigitant, I beseech you."
Vigitant or not, Lope hurried up to Shakespeare's lodging-house. The hour was still early enough to leave him content with the world and the way it shaped. What do I do if I find proof here? he asked himself.
The answer seemed clear enough. I play in King Philip, then arrange for Shakespeare's arrest. He sighed. Arresting the poet after he'd written such a play seemed a pity, but what choice was there? None de Vega could see.
He hoped Shakespeare was already off to the Theatre. He would have a fight on his hands if he tried to search while the Englishman was still there. He touched the hilt of his sword. He didn't want a reputation for killing playwrights, but he would take that reputation if he had to.
When he got to the lodging-house, he found Cicely Sellis in the parlor saying farewell to an early client.
The man showered her with blessings as he left. The cunning woman dropped de Vega a curtsy. "God give you good day, Master Lope," she said. "Why are you come here at such an hour?"
"In search of treason against his Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain," Lope said harshly. Mommet had sprawled by the hearth. At Lope's tone, the cat sprang to its feet, its fur on end, its tail puffed out like a bottle brush. He ignored it, asking, "Is Master Shakespeare here, or is he gone up to the Theatre?"
"Why, he is more than an hour gone," Cicely Sellis answered. She cocked her head to one side and gave Lope a slow, half sad smile. Catalina IbaA±ez would have laid down her life to own a smile like that; it left the Spaniard weak in the knees. The cunning woman added, "And here I hoped thou wert come to see me."
"Truly?" Lope said. Cicely Sellis didn't even nod. Just by standing there, she let him know it was and could be nothing but the truth. His pulse thudded. Whatever he did now, no one would take anything of Shakespeare's from this place while he did it. He had the time. He was sure he had the time. He made a low leg at her. "My lady, I stand ever at thy service." And he did stand, too, or part of him did.
"Come, then," she said, and went back into her room, Mommet trotting at her heels. Lope followed, eager as a green boy his first time. He closed and barred the door behind him.
As at his last visit, fat candles lit the closed room almost as bright as day. Mommet curled up in a corner, yawned once, and went to sleep. Cicely Sellis sat down on the bed. When Lope would have joined her there, she smiled again and, saying, "Anon, anon," waved him once more to the stool in front of it.
More than a bit sulkily, he perched there. "Thou'dst not tease, I trust?" he said. The intimate pronoun was sweet in his mouth.
"Marry, no," she replied. "And yet never would a woman be ta'en for granted thus."
De Vega was no green boy. Much experience told him she spoke the truth. He dipped his head to her.
"As thou'dst have it, so shall it be, though I needs must say in delay there lies no plenty."
"Prithee, bear with me," she said. "We that are lovers run into strange capers."
Before he could answer, she reached up and drew something out from under her dress: that sparkling glass pendant he'd seen once before, dangling on the end of its long chain. She swung it back and forth, back and forth. Lope thought it might have been a nervous habit, for she hardly seemed to know she was doing it. The pendant caught the candlelight and drew his eye to it as it swung. He looked away now and again, but his gaze kept coming back.
"Nay, a woman mislikes ever being hurried, ever being rushed, ever being told to give, and give forthwith." For all that her words might have shown annoyance, Cicely Sellis spoke in a soft, calm, smooth voice. "Is't not sweeter when freely offered, when tendered with full heart, with glad heart, with heart brimful of love, than when rudely seized ere the time be ripe, ere she be fully ready, ere she would do that which, in the fullness of time, she assuredly will do?"
"Assuredly," Lope echoed, his voice abstracted. He'd only half noted her words. His eyes kept following that sparkling pendant, back and forth, back and forth. After a little while, he wasn't sure he could have taken them away from it. But he didn't want to, so what difference did that make?
The cunning woman talked on, as smoothly and quietly as before. De Vega could not have told what she said; he noted her voice mostly as soothing background to the endless motion of the pendant. Back and forth, back and forth. Watching it, he felt almost as if he were falling asleep.
Before too very long, she asked, "Dear Lope, hearest thou me?"
"Ay." The sound of his own voice left him dully surprised; it might have come from far, far away.
"Hearken well, then, for I speak truth," she said. He nodded; in that moment, he could not possibly have doubted it. Even as he nodded, his eyes swung back and forth, back and. She went on, "Master Shakespeare hath done no treason. Hearest thou me?"
"I hear. Master Shakespeare hath done no treason." When she said it, when he affirmed it, it might have been carved in stone inside his mind.
"He hath no papers treasonous here: hence, no need to search. Hearest thou me, dear Lope?"
"No papers treasonous. No need to search." When she said it, when he said it, it was so. Holy Scripture could have been no truer for him.
"Nor hast thou need to seek him this day in the Theatre, for all will be well there," the cunning woman murmured.