Shakespeare's like that, too, Lope reminded himself. He was no Catholic when Elizabeth ruled this land. Which was one more reason to reckon him an unlikely traitor. He'd made his compromises with the way things were. The ones you had to worry about were those who refused to change, no matter what refusing cost them.
Geoffrey Martin, Lope thought. He'd paid no special attention to the prompter while Martin lived. Now that Martin was dead, it was too late. Sir Edmund Tilney-or, if not the Master of the Revels, someone in his office-could tell me more about him.
"Seek you Master Will?" Richard Burbage called.
"An you do, you've found him." But that was Will Kemp, not Shakespeare. The clown went from making a leg at Lope to collapsing in a heap before him: one of the better pratfalls he'd seen.
De Vega shook his head. "Many thanks, but nay. I have that for which I came." He bowed to Burbage (who looked surprised at his saying no) and to Kemp, resisting the impulse to try to match the fool's loose-jointed toppling sprawl. Then he hurried out of the Theatre.
Captain Guzman didn't think of this. Maybe I'll learn something important. Even if I don't, I'll look busy. If I have my own ideas and follow them up, how can Guzman complain about me? He can't-and if I'm busy on another play of my own, well, by God, he'll have a hard time complaining about that, too.
"Have you a moment, Master Hungerford?" Shakespeare hated asking the question, and the ones that would follow. He hated it even more than he had when he'd spoken with Geoffrey Martin. When Martin gave the wrong answers, the inconvenient answers, Shakespeare hadn't known what would happen next. Now he did. If blood flowed, it would drip from his hands.
But the tireman only nodded. "Certes, Master Will. What would you?" He flicked a speck of lint from a velvet robe.
"What costumes have we for a Roman play?" Shakespeare asked.
"A Roman play?" The tireman frowned. "Meseems we could mount one at need." In most dramas, no matter when or where they were set, players wore clothes of current fashion. Audiences expected nothing else. But Roman plays were different. People had a notion that the Romans had dressed differently. And so actors strode the boards in knee-length white tunics and in gilded helms with nodding crests mounted (often insecurely) above them. Despite his answer, Hungerford's frown didn't go away.
"Why ask you that, though? I know for a certainty we offer no Roman plays any time soon, nor Grecian ones, neither."
Shakespeare nodded nervously. "You speak sooth. But I am writing a Roman play, one that may be shown soon after it's done."
"Ah?" Hungerford quirked a gingery eyebrow; they'd held their color better than his hair or his beard.
"This alongside your King Philip?"
"Yes," Shakespeare said: one syllable covering a lot of ground.
"You've much to do, then, and scant time wherein to do't," Hungerford said. Shakespeare nodded; that was a manifest truth. The tireman asked, "And what title hath this latest?"
" Boudicca," Shakespeare answered, and waited to see what would come of that. If Jack Hungerford knew Latin and remembered his Roman history, the title would be plenty to alarm him-and to hang Shakespeare, if he mentioned it to the wrong people.
But the name was only a nonsense word to Hungerford; Shakespeare saw as much in his eyes. "Scarce sounds Roman at all," the tireman said.
"It is, though," Shakespeare said, and summarized the plot in a few sentences.
Even before he finished, Hungerford held up a hand. "Are you daft, Master Shakespeare? Never would Sir Edmund let that be seen. No more would the dons. Our lives'd answer for the tenth part of't-no, for the hundredth."
"I know't," Shakespeare said. Marry, how I know't! "And yet I purpose going forward even so. What say you?"
Jack Hungerford didn't say anything for some little while. He stroked his chin, studying the poet. "You sought to sound me once before on this matter, eh?"
"I did," Shakespeare agreed.
The tireman shook his head. "No, sir. You did not. You fought shy of 't then."
"And if I did?" Shakespeare threw that back as a challenge. "You hold my life in the hollow of your hand.
Close it and I perish."
"I wonder," Hungerford murmured. "Tell me, an you wilclass="underline" did you discover yourself to Geoff Martin?"
Shakespeare said not a word. He hoped his face gave no answer, either. Hungerford grunted softly. "If I say you nay, will Constable Strawberry, that good and honest man, sniff after my slayer like a dog too old to take a scent after a bone that never was there?"
"I devised not poor Geoff's death, nor compassed it," Shakespeare said.
"The which is not what I asked," the tireman observed. Shakespeare only waited. Jack Hungerford grunted again. "I'm with you," he said. "I have not so much life left, and mislike living on my knees what remains."
"Praise God!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "I know not how we could have gone on without you."
"With a new tireman, belike, as we have a new prompter," Hungerford said. "Will you tell me I'm mistook?" Shakespeare wished he could and knew he couldn't. Hungerford nodded to himself. "A Roman play, is't? But tell me what you require, Master Will, and you shall have't presently."
"My thanks." My thanks if you cozen me not, if you fly not to the Spaniards soon as I turn my back.
"Which of the boys thought you to play the part wherefrom the piece takes its name?" Hungerford asked.
"Why, Tom, of course," Shakespeare answered. "No woman, I'll swear, could better a woman personate."
But the tireman shook his head. "He will not serve."
"What? 'Swounds, why not?"
"Item: his elder brother is a priest. Item: his uncle is a sergeant amongst Queen Isabella's guards." Jack Hungerford ticked off points on his fingers as he made them. "Item: his father gave the rood screen at their parish church, such adornments having been ordained once more on our being returned to Romish ways. Item: the lad himself more than once in my hearing hath said he's fain on becoming a man to follow his brother into the priesthood." He glanced over at Shakespeare. "Shall I go on?"
"By my troth, no. Would you had not gone so long!" Shakespeare made an unhappy hissing noise. "Why knew I so little of the lad his leanings?"
"Why? I'll tell you why, Master Will." Hungerford chuckled. "To you, he's but a boy playing parts writ or by you or by some other poet. You think on him more than you think on a fancy robe some player wears, ay, but not much more. Did you think on him as a boy, now. " His voice trailed away, then picked up again: "I warrant you, I'd need to instruct Master Kit in none o' this."
"Belike that's so. Indeed, I'm sure Kit hath made it a point to learn all worth knowing of the boy, from top to bottom."
"Just so. Your bent being otherwise, you-" The tireman broke off. The look he sent Shakespeare was somewhere between reproachful and horrified. "You said that of a purpose."
"I?" Shakespeare looked as innocent as he could. His own worries helped keep glee from his face as he went on, "If the part be for another, as meseems it needs must, what of him? How keep we him in ignorance of this our design?"
"Haply his voice will break, or his beard sprout. He's rising fifteen," Hungerford said. "Some troubles themselves resolve."
"Haply." Shakespeare made the word into a curse. " a€?Haply' suffices not. You spoke of Geoff Martin.
Are you fain to have his fate befall a boy, for no cause but that he's of Romish faith? He will die the death, I tell you, unless he be eased from this company ere we give our Boudicca." If ever we give't, he thought unhappily.
The tireman frowned, too. "Sits the wind in that corner?"