"IdiA?quez. " Lope began. IdiA?quez glimmered in the glitter of glass and was gone. "No need to seek.
All will be well."
"All will be well," Cicely Sellis repeated. She led him through her catechism twice more. Then, as she stopped swinging the pendant and tucked it back into place, she said, "In token thou hast heard me well, when I bring my hands together thou'lt blow yon candle"-she pointed-"and then become again thine own accustomed self. Hearest thou me?"
"Ay, blow out that candle," Lope said. Cicely Sellis clapped her hands. He blinked and laughed, feeling as refreshed as if he'd just got out of bed after a good night's sleep. Then, laughing still, he sprang off the stool and blew out one of the candles by the head of the bed.
"Why didst thou so?" she asked.
"Its light shone in mine eyes," he answered. One quick step brought him to her. "And now, my sweet, my love, my life-" He took her in his arms.
She laughed, down deep in her throat. "Thine own accustomed self," she said, and it seemed to Lope for a heartbeat that he'd heard those words before. But then his lips came down on hers, and hers rose up to his, and he cared not a fig for anything he might have heard.
XIII
"Where's De Vega?" "Where's the poxy Spaniard?" "Where's the don?" Inside the Theatre, the questions tore at Shakespeare, again and again.
"I know not. Before God, I know not!" Trying to escape them, he fled from the stage back into the tiring room.
Richard Burbage pursued him, relentless as fate personified. "See you not, Will, we needs must know?"
Burbage said. "Had he come hither, we'd have seized and bound him, knocked him over the head, and gone forward with good heart. But where is he? Will he burst in the instant we are begun, soldiers at his back, crying, Hold! What foul treason is this?' Will he, Will?"
"I know not," Shakespeare said again. Desperate for the escape he knew he could not have, he perched on a stool and hid his face in his hands. He pressed the fleshy bases of his thumbs against his closed eyes till swirling flashes and sparkles of color lit the blackness that he saw.
Better he should have covered his ears, for Burbage persisted: "Were we not wiser, were we not safer, to give King Philip and not. the other play?" Even now, he would not name it. "We still can, and right well you know it."
"Dick, I know naught-naught, hear you?" Shakespeare wanted to scream it. Instead it came out as not much more than a whisper. "There is no wisdom in me, only a most plentiful lack of wit. And I say further, e'en with Lope seized and bound, I should not have gone forward with good heart, for sure safety lurks nowhere in this tangled coil."
Burbage grunted as if taking a blow in the belly. Shakespeare wondered why. As far as he could tell, he'd spoken simple truth, the only truth he knew. Voice a pain-filled groan, the player asked, "What to do, then, Will? What are we to do?"
Reluctantly, Shakespeare lowered his hands and looked up at him. "An you must think on somewhat, think on this: when they hang you for a traitor, would you liefer hang as traitor to the King of Spain or 'gainst old England?"
"I'd liefer not hang," Burbage said.
Shakespeare laughed bitterly. "Too late, for already your complexion is most perfect gallows-as is mine own."
Burbage glared at him. "Damn you."
"Ay." Shakespeare nodded. "And so?"
"Come then, cullion." Burbage reached out and, with frightening effortless strength, hauled him off the stool and to his feet. The player let him go then, but he followed Burbage back onto the stage. "Hear me, friends," Burbage boomed, and his big voice filled the Theatre. From all over the building, heads turned his way. "Hear me," he said again. "We give Boudicca-and God help us every one."
He had better, Shakespeare thought.
Will Kemp gave Burbage a mocking bow. "Thou speakest well, as always. And how the hangman and the worms do love thee."
With a shrug, Burbage answered, "Be it so, then. Had I ordered King Philip shown this day, you might have said the same."
"Would you not sooner hang for an Englishman?" Shakespeare added, his spirits beginning to revive now that the die was cast.
By way of reply, Kemp tugged at his codpiece. " 'Tis better far to be well hung than well hanged."
"Go to!" Shakespeare exclaimed as the company erupted in bawdy laughter. After that, the players went about their business with better hearts. Shakespeare had no doubt they still knew fear-he certainly did himself-but they seemed more able to put it aside. In a quiet moment, he made a leg at Will Kemp. The clown grabbed his crotch again.
Groundlings began strolling into the open space surrounding the stage on three sides. Some of them waved to the players, others to friends they recognized or to vendors already selling sausages and wine and roasted chestnuts. Folk more richly dressed took their places on benches in the galleries. More vendors circulated there.
A gentleman in silk and velvet and lace, his snowy ruff enormous and elaborately pleated, passed through the growing crowd of groundlings to call to Richard Burbage: "How now? I'm told you sell no places at the side of the stage?"
Bowing, Burbage nodded. "I cry your pardon, sir, but you're told true. The spectacle we shall offer needs must be fully seen by all. Those places interfering with the view of the general, we dispense with 'em today. They shall again be sold come the morrow."
The gentleman still looked unhappy, but Burbage's answer left him nothing upon which to seize. He turned and went back towards the galleries. Burbage and Shakespeare exchanged a look. The player's answer had been polite, plausible, and false. The real reason the company was selling no seats on the stage was to keep aristocrats of Spanish sentiment from drawing their swords and attacking the actors when Boudicca went on in place of King Philip-which the signboards outside the Theatre still announced.
Shakespeare spied plenty of aristocrats in the galleries. Some few he knew to be of Spanish sentiment.
About others, who could say? But even those Englishmen who served the dons most heartily might do it for the sake of their own advantage rather than conviction. If they saw the wind blowing in a new direction, might they not shift with it? They might, the poet thought. That had a corollary he wished he could ignore: they might not, too.
Burbage waved the last few players out on stage strutting before the groundlings or chatting with them back into the tiring room. Shakespeare could smell the sharp stink of fright rising from many of them. No doubt it rose from him as well. Burbage said, "Be of good cheers, lads. Speak the speech, I pray you, as you have learnt it; let it come trippingly off the tongue. And as you play, bear one thought ever in your minds: if all go well this day, we are made men forevermore. Not one of us will lack for aught the rest of the days of his life."
He wanted the company to see the wind blowing in a new direction, too. By the way the players nodded, they did. But then Will Kemp stirred. Shakespeare could guess what he was going to say-if all went not so well, the rest of the days of their lives would be few, and filled with pain. Shakespeare caught the clown's eye and shook his head. Not now, he mouthed. Kemp laughed and stuck out his tongue, but he kept quiet.
Somewhere in the distance, hardly audible through the buzz of the crowd in the Theatre, a church bell chimed the hour: two o'clock. Richard Burbage pointed to Shakespeare. "Will, you'll give the prologue?"
No! So much of Shakespeare wanted to scream it. But he couldn't, not now. He wondered what part of courage was no more than the urge not to look ridiculous in front of one's friends. No small part, if he was any judge. He licked dry lips and nodded. "I will."