"I bring his Excellency the news, of course," Enrique said. "After that, I suppose he sends out an order for Shakespeare's arrest. Do I need to go to him?"
"No." Lope shook his head, then jabbed his chest with his thumb. "I myself saw Shakespeare leaving the church of St. Ethelberge"-he could pronounce it (better than most Spaniards, anyway), and didn't miss a chance to show off-"not an hour ago, so there's no need to disturb Captain GuzmA?n at his revels."
"I'm glad," Enrique said. De Vega wondered how he meant that. Glad he didn't have to go looking for GuzmA?n? But then the servant went on, "From everything I can tell, the Englishman is too fine a poet for me to want him to burn in hell for opposing the true and holy Catholic faith."
" Tienes razan, Enrique," Lope said. "I had the same thought myself." And if Enrique agrees with me, he must be right.
"Do you have any other business with my master, Lieutenant?" the servant asked.
Yes, but not the sort you mean-this shabby treatment he's shown me comes close to touching my honor, Lope thought. But he wouldn't tell that to Guzman's lackey. He would either take it up with the officer himself or, more likely, decide it wasn't a deliberate insult and stop worrying about it. All he said to Enrique was, "A happy Christmas to you."
"And to you, senor." As Lope turned to go, Enrique picked up the play once more. He read aloud:
" O lente, lente currite noctis equi:
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?'
This is very fine poetry, I think."
"And I," de Vega agreed, "even if he borrowed the slowly running horses of the night from Ovid."
"Well, yes, of course," said Enrique, who, despite being a servant, somewhere had acquired a formidable education. "But he uses the line in a way that makes it his own. He doesn't just trot it out to show how learned he is."
"A point," Lope said. "Marlowe is a very clever man-and if you don't believe me, ask him."
Guzman's servant grinned. "Meaning no offense to you, senor, but conceit is a vice not unknown amongst poets."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Enrique," de Vega replied, deadpan. They both laughed. Lope closed the door behind him and headed for his own quarters.
He expected to discover Diego there, snoring up a storm. Christmas was a holy day, too holy for almost all work (not that Diego felt like working on the most ordinary day of the year, either). But the servant's bed was empty. Lope crossed himself. "Truly this is a day of miracles," he murmured.
In his own little inner room, he found paper and pen and ink. He opened the shutters, to take such advantage of England's fleeting December daylight as he could, and began to write. Maybe Christmas was too holy for that, too. De Vega had no intention of asking a priest's opinion about it.
A ragged man on a street corner thrust a bowl of spiced wine at a pretty woman walking by.
"Wassail!" he called.
She looked him over, smiled, and nodded at him. "Drinkhail!" she replied. He handed her the bowl and kissed her on the cheek. She drank, then gave him back the bowl.
"A happy New Year to you, sweetheart!" the ragged man called after her as she went on her way. He sang in a surprisingly sweet, surprisingly true baritone:
"Wassail, wassail, as white as my name,
Wassail, wassail, in snow, frost, and hail,
Wassail, wassail, that much doth avail,
Wassail, wassail, that never will fail."
William Shakespeare tossed the fellow a penny. "A happy New Year to you as well, sirrah."
The ragged man doffed his cap. "God bless you on the day, sir!" He held the bowl out to Shakespeare.
"Wassail!"
"Drinkhail!" Shakespeare replied, and drank. Returning the bowl, he added, "I'd as lief go without the kiss." Some Grecian, he couldn't remember who, had said the like to Alexander, and paid for it.
Marlowe would know the name.
With a chuckle, the ragged man said, "And I'd as lief not give it you. But by my troth, sir, full many a fair lady have I bussed, and thanks to the wassail bowl I owe." He lifted the cap from his head again. "Give you joy of the coming year."
"And you." Shakespeare walked past him. A couple of blocks farther on, another man used a wassail bowl to gather coins and kisses. Shakespeare gave him a penny, too. He got in return a different song, one he hadn't heard before, and did his best to remember it. Bits of it might show up in a play years from now.
All along the crowded street, men and women wished one another happy New Year. They'd done that even back before the coming of the Armada, for the Roman tradition of beginning the year in wintertime had lingered even though, before the Spaniards came, it had formally started on March 25. As with the calendar, Isabella and Albert had changed that to conform to Spanish practice. People called 1589 the Short Year, for it had begun on March 25 and ended on December 31.
Snow crunched under Shakespeare's shoes. Soot and dirt streaked it. Back in Stratford, snow stayed white some little while after it fell. Not here. Stratford was a little market town; he would have been surprised had it held two thousand souls. London had at least a hundred times as many, and more than a hundred times as many fires belching smoke into the sky to smirch the snow sometimes even before it fell.
A snowball whizzed past his head from behind. He whirled. The urchin who'd thrown it stuck out his tongue and scurried away. With a shrug, Shakespeare went on walking. He'd thrown snowballs when he was a boy, too. And my aim was better, he thought, though that might have been the man's view of the boy he'd been.
He strode past a cutler's shop, then stopped, turned, and went back. The Widow Kendall had broken the wooden handle on her best carving knife not so long before, and had complained about it ever since.
She kept talking about taking the knife to a tinker for a new handle, but she hadn't done it. Like as not, she never would get around to doing it, but would grumble about what a fine knife it had been for the rest of her days. A replacement, now, a replacement would make her a fine New Year's present.
"Good morrow, sir, and a joyous New Year to you," the cutler said when Shakespeare stepped inside.
"What seek you? An it have an edge, you'll find it here." Shakespeare explained what he wanted, and why. The cutler nodded. "I have the very thing." He offered Shakespeare a knife of about the same size as the one Jane Kendall had used.
"Certes, 'tis a knife." Shakespeare tried the edge with his thumb. "It now seems sharp enough. But will't stay so?"
"The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge," the cutler replied, "but it hath a better blade than most, and will serve for all ordinary work. And surely she for whom you buy't hath a whetstone?"
"Surely." Shakespeare had no idea whether Jane Kendall owned a whetstone. He supposed she must; how could she keep a kitchen in good order without one? Setting the knife down on the counter, he asked the next important question: "What's your price?" When the cutler told him, he flinched. "So much?
Half that were robbery, let alone the whole of't. 'Tis for a tallowchandler's widow, not silver clad in parcel gilt for the kitchen of a duke."
They haggled amiably enough. Not for all his poet's eloquence could Shakespeare beat the cutler down very far. At last, still muttering under his breath, he paid. The cutler did give him a leather sheath for the knife. "The better your widow cares for't, the better 'twill serve her. Dirt and wet breed rust as filth breeds maggots."
"I understand." Shakespeare didn't intend to lecture his landlady on housewifery. What the Widow Kendall would say to him if he showed such cheek did not bear thinking about.