"Nowhere else," Shakespeare answered. "What's a mere boy, to those who'd dice for a kingdom?"
"An they think thus, should they win it?" Hungerford asked.
"Are their foes better?" Shakespeare returned. "Saw you the auto de fe this past autumn?"
"Nay, I saw't not, for which I give thanks to God. But I've seen others, and I take your point." Jack Hungerford bared his teeth in what was anything but a smile. "Would someone's hands were clean."
"Pilate's were. He washed 'em," Shakespeare said. Hungerford showed his teeth again. With a sigh, Shakespeare continued, "Would they'd tasked another with the deed, but, sith 'tis mine, how can I do't save with the best that's in me?"
Hungerford eyed him. "They might have chose worse. In many several ways, they might have."
"You do me o'ermuch honor," Shakespeare said. The tireman shook his head. Shakespeare refused to let himself be distracted: "What of Tom? We must separate him from ourselves."
"If he is to be driven hence, Dick Burbage is the man to do't," the tireman said.
"I'll speak to him," Shakespeare said at once. The more someone, anyone, else did, the less he would have to do himself, and the less guilty he would feel. He looked down at his hands. They already had Geoffrey Martin's blood on them. He didn't want Tom's there, too. He didn't even want the burden of pushing Tom from Lord Westmorland's Men. He already carried too many burdens.
Only when he went looking for Burbage did he stop and think about the burdens the other player carried.
Tom was without a doubt the best boy actor the company had. Once he was gone, which of the others would take his roles? Which of the others could take his roles? How much damage would his leaving cause to performances? On the other hand, how much damage would his staying cause to him?
Burbage listened with more patience than Shakespeare would have expected-with more patience, in fact, than the poet thought he could have mustered himself. At last, he let out a long sigh. "What of the company will be left once you have your way with it?" he asked somberly.
"Would you liefer see Tom dead?" Shakespeare asked.
"I'd liefer see him playing," Burbage said.
"Tell me he is not of the Romish persuasion, and have your wish."
With another sigh, Burbage shook his head. "I cannot, for he is." He set his meaty hand on Shakespeare's shoulder. "But hear me, Will. Hear me well."
"I am your servant," Shakespeare said.
"Buzz, buzz!" Burbage said scornfully. "Go to, Will. I dance to your piping now, and well we both know't."
"Would it were my piping, my friend, for my feet too tread its measures."
"The which brings me back to what I'd tell you. Mark my words, now; mark 'em well. The purpose you undertake is dangerous, the friends you have uncertain, the time itself unsorted, and your whole plot too light, for the counterpoise of so great an opposition."
"Say you so?" Shakespeare asked. "Say you so?"
"Marry, I do."
Shakespeare wished he could fly into a great temper. I say unto you, you are a shallow cowardly hind, and you lie, he wanted to shout. By the Lord our plot is as good a plot as ever was laid, our friends true and constant! A good plot, good friends, and full of expectation! A good plot, very good friends! What a frosty-spirited rogue are you!
He wanted to say all that, and more besides. He wanted to, but could not. "What of't?" he said, and did not try to hide his own bitterness. "We go forward e'en so-forward, or to the Spaniards. There's your choice, and none other."
Burbage's eyes had the look of a fox's as the hounds closed in. "Damn you, Will."
"Anon," Shakespeare said, understanding Burbage's hunted expression all too well-he'd felt hunted himself for months. "But, for now, you'll see to Tom?"
"I'll do't," Burbage said. Forward, Shakespeare thought
.
"Now here is an interesting bit of business." Captain Baltasar Guzman held up a sheet of paper.
Lope de Vega hated it when his superior did that. It was always for effect; GuzmA?n never let him actually read the papers he displayed. And Lope was in a testy mood anyhow, for his visit to Sir Edmund Tilney had yielded exactly nothing useful about Geoffrey Martin and whoever had slain him. With such patience as he could muster, de Vega said, "Please tell me more, sir."
"Well, Senior Lieutenant, you will know better than I how the pretty boy actors in these English theatrical companies draw sodomites as a bowl of honey draws flies," GuzmA?n said.
"Oh, yes, sir," Lope agreed. "It is a scandal, a shame, and a disgrace."
Captain Guzman waved the paper. "We now have leave to go after one of these wicked fellows, and an important one, too."
"Ah?" de Vega said. "Who?" If it turned out to be Christopher Marlowe, he would go after the English poet with a heavy heart. Marlowe didn't hide that he loved boys. Far from hiding it, in fact, he flaunted it.
He was so blatant about his leanings, Lope sometimes wondered if part of him wanted to be caught and punished. Whatever that part wanted, the rest of him would not care to be humiliated and then executed.
But GuzmA?n said, "A certain Anthony Bacon. Do you know the name?"
" Madre de Dios, I should hope so!" Lope exclaimed. "The older brother of Francis, the nephew of Lord Burghley. How did you learn that such a man favored this dreadful vice?" How is it that you can think of arresting such an important man, with such prominent connections, for sodomy? was what he really meant. The rich and the powerful often got away with what would ruin someone ordinary.
But not here?
Not here. Guzman answered, "Oh, this Bacon's habits are not in doubt. Even as long ago as 1586, when he was an English spy in France, he debauched one of his young servants. He was lucky the French court was full of perverts"-his lip curled-"or he would have suffered more than he did."
"We aren't arresting him for what happened in France while Elizabeth was still Queen of England, are we?" Lope asked. Even for a charge as heinous as sodomy, that might go too far.
But Baltasar GuzmA?n shook his head. "By no means, Senior Lieutenant. He has taken up with one of the boy actors in a company, and there can be no doubt he's stuck it in as far as it would go."
Do you know, do you have the faintest idea, what's being said of you and Enrique? Lope wondered. He shook his head. Guzman couldn't possibly. He couldn't speak with such disgusted relish about what Anthony Bacon had done if he'd done the like himself, or if he knew people thought he'd done the like. Lope had seen good acting in the Spanish theatre, and in the English, but nothing to compare to GuzmA?n's performance, if performance it were.
"A question, your Excellency?" de Vega asked. Captain GuzmA?n nodded. Lope went on, "How is it that this falls to us and not to the English Inquisition? Bacon has committed the sin of buggery, not treason against Isabella and Albert or rebellion against his Most Catholic Majesty."
"As it happens, Don Diego Flores de Valdas referred the matter to us," GuzmA?n replied. "It may yet come down to treason. Remember-not so long ago, your precious Shakespeare visited the house Anthony and Francis Bacon share. Why? We still don't know. We have no idea. But if we take Bacon and squeeze him till-"
"Squeeze him till the grease runs out of him," Lope broke in. Captain GuzmA?n looked blank. Lope explained: " Bacon, in English, means the same as tocino in Spanish."
"Does it?" Guzman's smile was forced. "Shall we stick to the business at hand? If we take Bacon and squeeze him, we may finally find out why Shakespeare was there-and from that, who knows where we might go? If it were up to me, Burghley would have lost his head with the rest of Elizabeth's chief officers."
"King Philip ordered otherwise," de Vega said. His superior grimaced, but that was an argument no one could oppose.