He was among the first of the company to get to the Theatre. Richard Burbage paced across the stage like a caged wolf-back and forth, back and forth. He nodded to Shakespeare as the poet came in through the groundlings' entrance. "God give you good day, Will," he boomed. "How wags your world?"
Even with only a handful of people in the house, he pitched his voice so folk in the upper gallery-of whom there were at the moment none-could hear him with ease.
"I fare well enough," Shakespeare answered. "And you? Wherefore this prowling?"
"I am to be Alexander today," Burbage reminded him. "As he pursues Darius, he is said to be relentless."
He waved a sheet of paper with his part and stage directions written out. "Seemed I to you relentless?"
"Always," Shakespeare said. Burbage pursued wealth and fame with a singlemindedness that left the poet half jealous, half appalled.
Laughing, Burbage said, "It is one of Kit's plays, mind. A relentless man of his is twice as relentless as any other poet's, as an angry man of his hath twice the choler and a frightened man twice the fear. With his mighty line, he is never one to leave the auditors wondering what sort of folk his phantoms be."
Shakespeare nodded. "Beyond doubt, you speak sooth. But come you down." He gestured. "I'd have a word with you."
"What's toward?" Burbage sat at the edge of the stage, then slid down into the groundlings' pit.
In a low voice, Shakespeare said, "Marlowe is fled. I pray he be fled. Anthony Bacon, belike, was but the first boy-lover the dons and the inquisitors sought. An Kit remain in England, I'd give not a groat for his life."
"A pox!" Burbage exclaimed, as loud as ever-loud enough to make half a dozen players and stagehands look toward him to see what had happened. He muttered to himself, then went on more quietly: "How know you this?"
"From Kit's own lips," Shakespeare answered. "He found me yesternight. I bade him get hence, quick as ever he could-else he'd not stay quick for long. God grant he hearkened to me."
"Ay, may it be so." Burbage made a horrible face. "May it be so indeed. But e'en Marlowe fled's a heavy blow strook against the theatre. For all his cravings sodomitical-and for all his fustian bombast, too-he's the one man I ken fit to measure himself alongside you."
"I thank you for your kindness, the which he would not do." Shakespeare sighed. "We are of an age, you know. But he came first to London, first to the theatre. I daresay he reckoned me but an upstart crow.
And when my name came to signify more than his, it gnawed at him as the vulture at Prometheus his liver." He remembered how very full of spleen Marlowe had been when Thomas Phelippes passed over him for this plot.
"Never could he dissemble," Burbage said, "not for any cause." In an occupied kingdom, he might have been reading Marlowe's epitaph.
"I know." Shakespeare sighed again. "I sent him down to the Thames. I hope he found a ship there, one bound for foreign parts. If not a ship, a boatman who'd bear him out of London to some part whence he might get himself gone."
"Boatmen there aplenty, regardless of the hour." Richard Burbage seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as Shakespeare. After a moment, he added, "What knows Kit of. your enterprise now in train?"
"That such an enterprise is in train, the which is more than likes me," Shakespeare answered. It was also less than the truth, he realized, remembering the copy of the Annals Marlowe had given him. But he said no more to Burbage. What point to worrying the player? If the Spaniards or the English Inquisition caught Marlowe, he knew enough to put paid to everyone and everything. And what he knew he would tell; he had not the stuff of martyrs in him.
"They seek him but for sodomy." Yes, Burbage was trying to reassure himself. Sodomy by itself was a fearsome crime, a capital crime. Next to treason, though, it was the moon next to the sun.
"The enterprise"-Shakespeare liked that bloodless word-"goes on apace. Last night, or ever I saw Marlowe, I wrote finis to Boudicca."
"Good. That's good, Will." Burbage set a hand on his shoulder. "Now God keep Boudicca from writing finis to us all."
A squad of Spanish soldiers at his back, Lope de Vega strode along the northern bank of the Thames, not far from London Bridge. Not so long ago, he'd taken a boat across the river with Nell Lumley to see the bear-baiting in Southwark. He kicked a pebble into the river. He'd crossed the Thames with his mistress-with one of his mistresses-but he'd come back alone.
He straightened, fighting against remembered humiliation. Hadn't he been getting tired of Nell anyway?
Now that he was in love with Lucy Watkins, what did the other Englishwoman matter?
One of the troopers with him pointed. "There's another boatman, seA±or."
" Gracias, Miguel. I see him, too," Lope answered. He shifted to English to call out to the fellow: "God give you good day."
"And to you, sir." The boatman swept off his ragged hat (which, in an earlier, a much earlier, life had probably belonged to a gentleman) and gave de Vega an awkward bow. "Can't carry you and all your friends, sir, I fear me." His gap-toothed smile showed that was meant for a jest.
Lope smiled back. Some wherrymen took their boats out into the Thames empty to keep from talking to him. He'd do what he could to keep this one happy. With a bow of his own-a bow he was careful not to make too smooth, lest it be seen as mockery-he said, "Might I ask you somewhat?"
"Say on, Master Don. I'll answer."
Better and better, de Vega thought. "Were you here on the river night before last?"
"That I was, your honor," the boatman replied. "Meseems I'm ever here. Times is hard. Needs must get what coin I can, eh?"
"Certes," Lope said. "Now, then-saw you a gentleman, an English gentleman, that evening? A man of my years, he would be, more or less, handsome, round-faced, with dark hair longer than mine own and a thin fringe of beard. He styles himself Christopher Marlowe, or sometimes Kit."
He looked for another pebble to kick, but didn't find one. He did not want to hunt Marlowe, not after spending so much time with him in tiring rooms and taverns. But if what he wanted and what his kingdom wanted came into conflict, how could he do anything but his duty?
The wherryman screwed up his face in badly acted thought. "I cannot rightly recollect, sir," he said at last.
"That surprises me not," Lope said sourly, and gave him a silver sixpence. He'd already spent several shillings, and got very little back for his money.
Nor did he this time. The boatman pocketed the coin and took off his hat again. "Gramercy, your honor.
God bless you for showing a poor man kindness. I needs must say, though, I saw me no such man." He spread his oar-callused hand in apology.
A couple of Lope's troopers knew some English. One of them said, "We ought to give that bastard a set of lumps for playing games with us."
Maybe the boatman understood some Spanish. He pointed to the next fellow with a rowboat, saying,
"Haply George there knows somewhat of him you seek."
"We shall see," Lope said in English. In Spanish, he added, "I wouldn't waste my time punishing this motherless lump of dung." If the boatman could follow that, too bad.
The trooper who'd suggested beating the fellow said, "This river smells like a motherless lump of dung."