"See you here, though. Only two of these ladies speak: the one Rosaline, the other Katharine. What point to the third one, the one you style Maria?"
"Why, for to balance the third lord, of course," Shakespeare answered.
Geoffrey Martin shook his head. "It sufficeth not. Give her somewhat to do, or else take her out."
"Oh, very well," Shakespeare said testily. "Lend me your pen, then." He scratched out a name and substituted another. "Now hath she this passage, once Katharine's."
"Good enough." Martin read on. After a bit, he looked up and said, "I am much taken with your Signor Adriano di Armato, your fantastical Venetian. Some poets I need not name might have sought instead to make of him a Spaniard, the which the Master of the Revels would never countenance."
Shakespeare's first thought had been to make him a Spaniard, to get the extra laughs mocking the invaders would bring. But he too had concluded Sir Edmund would never let him get away with it. Again, though, he had the chance to ask the question he wanted, or one leading towards it: "What think you, Master Martin, of having to take such care to keep from rousing the Spaniards' ire?"
"Working with the Master would be simpler without such worries, no doubt of't," the prompter replied.
"But you'll not deny, I trust, that heresy's strong grip'd yet constrain us had they not come hither. I have now the hope of heaven. Things being different, hellfire'd surely hold me after I cast my mortal slough."
"Ay, belike," Shakespeare said, none too happily. Without a doubt, Geoffrey Martin had given him an honest answer, but he hadn't said what Shakespeare wanted to hear.
"Why? Believe you otherwise?" Martin asked-he'd heard how half-hearted Shakespeare's answer sounded, which the poet hadn't wanted at all.
"By my troth, no," Shakespeare said, this time using his experience on the stage to sound as he thought Geoffrey Martin would want him to.
"I should hope not, sir," the prompter said. "King Philip, God keep him, is a great man, a very great man.
He hath from ourselves saved us, and in our own despite. Of whom else might one say the like, save only our Lord Himself?"
"Even so," Shakespeare said, and got away from Martin as fast as he could. The players he'd sounded had all been willing, even eager, to help try to expel the Spaniards from England. The tireman had been noncommittal. The prompter, plainly, took the Spaniards' part. And if Geoffrey Martin suspected treason, he knew important ears into which to whisper-or shout-his suspicions.
"Why the long face, Will?" Burbage called when Shakespeare wandered out onto the stage again.
"Mislikes he the mouse your mountain at last delivered?"
"Nay, the jests seemed to please him well enough," Shakespeare answered. "But he hath.
misgivings. in aid of. certain other matters."
Someone clapped him on the shoulder. He jumped; he hadn't heard anybody come up behind him. Will Kemp's elastic features leered at him. Cackling with mad glee, the clown said, "What better time than the new year for a drawing and quartering? Or would you liefer rout out winter's chill with a burning? I'll stake you would."
"Go to!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "Get hence!"
"And wherefore should I?" Kemp replied. "I know as much as doth Dick here." Before Shakespeare could deny that, the clown continued, "I know enough to hang us all, than the which what could be more?"
Put so, he had a point. Burbage said, "The object is not to let others know enough to hang us all- others now including a certain gentleman (marry, a very certain gentleman he is, too) who all too easily can confound us."
"Knew you not that Geoff Martin hath his nose in the Pope of Rome's arsehole?" Kemp said with another mocking smile.
" 'Steeth, Will-soft, soft!" Shakespeare hissed, the ice outside having nothing to do with the chill that ran through him. "He need but cock his head hither and he'll hear you."
"He's right, man," Burbage said. "D'you want your neck stretched or your bowels cut out or the flesh roasted from your bones? Talk too free and you'll win your heart's desire."
"O ye of little faith!" Kemp jeered. "Dear Geoff's prompter and book-keeper. He hath before him a new play-so new, belike the ink's still damp. What'll he do? Plunge his beak into its liver, like the vulture with Prometheus. A cannon could sound beside him without his hearing't."
Burbage looked thoughtful. "He may have reason," he said to Shakespeare.
"He may be right," Shakespeare said. "Right or wrong, reason hath he none. Where's the reason in a man who will hazard his life for nothing but to hear his own chatter? God deliver me from being subject to the breath of every fool, whose sense no more can feel but his own fancies."
"Doth thy other mouth call me?" Will Kemp retorted. He strode away, then stopped, bent, and spoke loudly with his other mouth.
"Whoreson beetle-headed, flap-eared knave," Shakespeare burst out-but quietly. He remembered all too well that, if he angered Kemp, the clown could betray him, too.
"A bacon-fed knave, very voluble," Burbage agreed, "but when have you known a clown who was otherwise?" He too spoke in a low voice. After a moment, he went on, "And what, think you, may we do about Martin?"
"In sooth, I know not," Shakespeare said miserably. "Would we could just sack him, but the company'd rise in revolt-and with reason (that word again!), did we try it without good cause."
Burbage nodded. "True. Every word of't true."
"But this business cannot go forward without him, nor with him in opposition," Shakespeare said.
"Look you to your part of't," Burbage told him. "Write the words that needs must be writ. Think on that, for none else can do't. As for the other-haply you misread Martin's mind and purpose."
"That I did not," Shakespeare declared.
"Well, as may be," Burbage said with a shrug. "But I say this further: we are embarked here on no small enterprise, is't not so?" After waiting for Shakespeare to nod, he went on, "We may be sure, then, we are not alone embarked. We need not, unaided, solve all conundrums attached hereto."
"It could be," Shakespeare said after some thought. "Ay, it could be. But, an we solve them not, who shall?"
"That is hidden from mine eyes, and so should it be, for what I know not, no inquisitor can tear from me,"
Burbage said. Shakespeare nodded again, a little more heartily; he'd had the same thought. Smiling, Burbage continued, "But to say it is hidden from mine eyes is not to say it hath no existence. Others, knowing little of the parts we play, will be charged with shifting such burthens as an o'erstubborn prompter. Is that not so?"
"It is," Shakespeare said. "Or rather, it must be. But would I knew it for a truth, not for an article of faith."
"As what priest or preacher hath not said?" Burbage answered with a laugh. "Write the words, Will.
When the time comes, I'll say 'em. And what follows from thence. 'tis in God's hands, not ours."
He was right. He was bound to be right-which went some way towards setting Shakespeare's mind at ease, but not so far as he would have liked. It did let him get through the day at the Theatre without making a fool of himself, which he might not have managed had Burbage not calmed him.
A couple of evenings later, as the poet was making his way down Shoreditch High Street towards Bishopsgate after a performance, a man stepped out of the evening shadows and said, "You're Master Shakespeare, are you not?"
"I am," Shakespeare said cautiously. "And who, sir, are you?"
He used that sir from caution; had he felt more cheerful about the world and the people in it, he would have said sirrah. The fellow who'd asked his name looked like a mechanical, a laborer, in leather jerkin and laddered hose. When he smiled, he showed a couple of missing teeth. "Oh, you need not know my name, sir," he said.