Baltasar GuzmA?n shook his head. "They call it treason first and blasphemy only afterwards. They have washed their hands of the fellow."
"As Pilate did with our Lord," de Vega said bitterly.
"Senior Lieutenant. " GuzmA?n drummed his fingers on the desk. "Senior Lieutenant, I bear you no ill will. You should thank God and the Virgin and the saints that I bear you no ill will. Were it otherwise, the Inquisition would hear of that remark, and then, in short order, you would hear from the Inquisition. You have your pen, and some freedom in how you use it. You would be wise to guard your tongue."
He was right. That hurt worse than anything else. "I thank you, your Excellency," Lope mumbled, hating to have to thank the man at whom he was furious. He sighed. "Well, if there's no help for it, I'd best get the business over with as fast as I can. Who is this soothsayer, and where can I find him?"
"He is called John. Walsh." Captain GuzmA?n made heavy going of the English surname. "He dwells in"-the officer checked his notes-"in the ward called Billingsgate, in Pudding Lane. He is by trade a butcher of hogs, but he is to be found more often in a tavern than anywhere else."
"May I find him in a tavern!" Lope exclaimed. "I know Pudding Lane too well, and know its stinks. They make so much offal there, it goes in dung boats down to the Thames."
"Wherever you find him, seize him and clap him in gaol. We'll try him and put him to death and be rid of him once for all," GuzmA?n said. As de Vega turned to go, his superior held up a hand. "Wait. Don't hunt this, ah, Walsh yourself. Take a squad of soldiers. Better, take two. When you catch him, the Englishmen he has fooled are liable to try a rescue. You will want swords and pikes and guns at your back."
"Very well, sir." De Vega wasn't sure whether it was very well or not. Alone, he might slip in and get away with John Walsh with no one else the wiser. With a couple of squads at his back, he had no hope of that. But Captain GuzmA?n had a point. If he went after Walsh by himself and got into trouble, he wouldn't come out of Billingsgate Ward again. How had Shakespeare put it in Alcibiades? The better part of valor is discretion-that was the line that had stuck in Lope's memory.
He had no trouble getting soldiers to come with him. When he told the men eating in the refectory what his mission was, they clamored to come along. "By St. James, sir," one of them said, crossing himself,
"the sooner we get rid of troublemakers like that, the better. They stir the Englishmen up against us, and that gives us no end of grief."
"Let's go, then," Lope said. Some of the Spaniards paused to gulp down wine or beer or stuff a last bite or two into their mouths, but for no more than that. They buckled on swords, picked up spears and arquebuses and back-and-breasts, set high-crowned morions on their heads, and followed de Vega south and east from the barracks towards noisome Pudding Lane.
London had been occupied long enough and grown peaceful enough to make a couple of dozen Spaniards tramping through the streets-obviously on some business, not merely patrolling-something less than ordinary. " 'Ware! 'Ware!" The cry rang out again and again. So much for surprise, Lope thought.
From farther away, he heard another cry: "Clubs!" That was the shout London apprentices raised when they went into a brawl. Before long, a pack of them-some armed with clubs, others carrying daggers or stones-came up the street towards the men he led.
"Give way," he shouted in English. "Give way, or you will be sorry for it!" He nodded to his own men.
They were better armed than the apprentices, and armored to boot. They also looked eager to take on the youngsters who'd come up against them. The 'prentices stopped, wavered. broke.
One of the soldiers laughed. "They haven't got the cojones to stand up to real men," he said. "We beat them when we first got ashore, and we can beat them again if we have to."
"That's right," another soldier said. But then he added, "I'd sooner not fight, so long as we can hold 'em down without it." That perfectly summed up Lope's view of things.
He had wondered if his nose could guide him to Pudding Lane. But London was a city of such multifarious stinks, he had to ask his way. He had to ask his way twice, in fact; the first Englishman who gave him directions told him a lie and got him lost. No, they don't all love us, he thought.
But he made a better choice with the second man he asked. The fellow was sleek and prosperous, with fur trim on his doublet. He made a leg at Lope, and fawned on him like a dog hoping to be patted. "Ay, good my lord, certes; 'tis no small honor to enjoy the privilege of directing you thither." He pointed south.
"Do you go to the church of St. George in Botolph Lane, and then one street the further, and you have it.
God grant you catch whatever villain you seek, too."
"God grant it indeed." Lope crossed himself, and was not surprised to see the Englishman follow his lead.
Folk who had clung to the Roman faith before the Armada came were likeliest to uphold the new Queen and King-and the Spaniards who kept them on their throne.
This man said, "We have seen too much of wars and strife. Let there be peace, of whatever kind."
"Amen," Lope replied. Privately, he thought that a craven's counsel. But it worked to keep the kingdom quiet. He would have had all the English so craven.
After more bows and a ceremonious leavetaking, Lope translated for his men what the sleek fellow had said. "Let's find the church, let's find the street, let's find the son of a whore we're after, and then, by God, let's find something to drink," one of them said. Several others nodded approval.
So did Lope. "We may find this Walsh and something to drink together," he said, "for I hear he prophesies in taverns."
The soldier who'd spoken before guffawed. "And after he's drunk enough, he's one of these piss-prophets," he said, which got a laugh from everyone else. Plenty of people made a living divining the future-or saying they did-by examining their clients' urine.
Someone emptied a chamber pot from a second-story window. No way to be sure if the stinking contents were aimed at the Spaniards. A couple of men-including the fellow who'd made the joke-got splashed, but most of the stuff just went into the mud of the street, which already held more than its fair share of ordure and piss. "Eh, Sancho, now you're a piss-prophet," one of the other troopers said.
Sancho's reply was almost as pungent as the air.
Pudding Lane was only a couple of blocks long, but made up in stench what it lacked in length. De Vega marveled that he hadn't found it by scent. Along with all the usual London miasmas, he smelled pig shit, pig piss, rotting swine's flesh, pig fear. "Any man from this street must be a false prophet," he said, "for not even God Himself could stand getting close enough to him to tell him anything."
He started asking after John Walsh. "I don't ken the man," one hog butcher said. "Never heard of him,"
said a second. "An he be who I think he is, he died o' the French pox summer afore last," a third said. "A went home to Wales, a did, whence a came," a fourth offered. "Seek him in Southwark. He dwelleth there these days, with a punk from a pick-hatch," a fifth declared.
Patiently, Lope kept asking. Sooner or later, he was bound to come on someone who either favored Isabella and Albert or simply craved peace and quiet. And he did. A lean man in a pigskin apron looked up from his work and said, "Belike you'll find him in the Blue Fox, half a block toward the Tower in East Cheap."
Again, Lope translated for his men. "A good thing we have you with us, seA±or," irrepressible Sancho said. "If we had to look for interpreters, everything would take three times as long, and like as not they'd tell us more lies than truth."