On they went. Joaquin Fernandez had at least learned his lines. He might get better-a little. Catalina sparkled without much help. Lope knew how hard that was. No matter who surrounded her, this play would work as long as she was in it. De Vega felt that in his bones.
I wish Shakespeare had Spanish enough to follow this, he thought as the scene ended. I wish he could see the difference using actresses makes, too. He shrugged. The Englishman would just have to bumble along in his own little arena with its own foolish conventions. If that meant his work never got the attention it deserved in the wider world, well, such was life.
"Bravo, Corporal Fernandez!" Lope said. Fernandez blinked. He wasn't used to getting praise from the playwright. Lope went on, "And brava, DoA±a Catalina, your Majesty! Truly Spain will come into its own with you on the throne."
"Thank you, Senior Lieutenant," Catalina IbaA±ez purred. She dropped him a curtsy. Their eyes locked.
Oh, yes, she'd noticed him watching her. Or rather, she'd noticed the way he watched her-not just as an author and director watched an actress, which he had every right to do, but as a man watched a woman he desired. If she wanted him, too, then in some sense he had every right to do that as well-though Don Alejandro de Recalde, her keeper, would have a different opinion.
"All right," Lope said. "Let's go on." He might have been speaking to the assembled players. People shifted, getting ready for the next scene.
Or he might have been speaking to Catalina IbaA±ez alone, all the rest of them forgotten. By the way her red, full lips curved into the smallest of smiles, she thought he was. Her eyes met his again, just for a moment. Yes, let's, they said.
Kate poured beer into Shakespeare's mug. "I thank you," he said absently. He'd eaten more than half of his kidney pie before noticing how good it was-or, indeed, paying much attention to what it was.
Most of him focused on King Philip. He'd stormed ahead the night before, and he couldn't wait to get to work tonight. The candle at his table was tall and thick and bright. It would surely burn till curfew, or maybe even a little longer.
The door to the ordinary opened. Shakespeare didn't look up in alarm, as he'd had to whenever it opened while he was working on Boudicca. He'd seldom dared write any of that play here, but even having it at the forefront of his thoughts left him nervous-left him, to be honest, terrified. If Spaniards or priests from the English Inquisition burst in now, he could show them this manuscript with a clear conscience.
But the man who came in was neither don nor inquisitor. He was pale, slight, pockmarked, bespectacled: a man who'd blend into any company in which he found himself. The poet hardly heeded him till he pulled up a stool and sat down, saying, "Give you good den, Master Shakespeare."
"Oh!" Shakespeare stared in surprise-and yes, alarm came flooding back. He tried to hide it behind a nod that was almost a seated bow. "God give you good even, Master Phelippes."
"I am your servant, sir," Thomas Phelippes said, a great thumping lie: the dusty little man was surely someone's servant, but not Shakespeare's. Did he rank above Nick Skeres or under him? Above, Shakespeare thought. Phelippes, after all, was the one who'd brought him into this business in the first place.
Kate came up to the table. "Good even, sir," she said to Phelippes. "The threepenny supper is kidney pie, an't please you."
"Monstrous fine, too," Shakespeare added, spooning up some more of his.
Phelippes shook his head. "I have eat, mistress," he said. "A stoup of Rhenish wine'd please me, though."
"I'll fetch it presently." Kate hurried away and, as she'd promised, returned with the wine at once.
Phelippes set a penny on the table. She took it and withdrew.
"What would you?" Shakespeare asked. "Or is't, what would you of me?"
"Seek you a scribe?" Phelippes inquired in return. "So I am given to understand."
Shakespeare frowned. "I grow out of patience with others knowing my affairs ere I learn of them myself."
"I know all manner of strange things," the dusty little man answered, not without pride.
He would never be a hero on the battlefield, nor, Shakespeare judged, with the ladies, and so had to make do with what he knew. Twitting him about it would only make an enemy. "Ken you a scribe, then?"
Shakespeare asked. "A scribe who can read what's set before him, write out a fair copy, and speak never a word of't thereafter?"
"I ken such a man, but not well," Phelippes said with a small smile.
"That will not serve," Shakespeare said. "If you cannot swear he be trusty-"
Phelippes held up a hand. That small smile grew bigger. "You mistake me, sir. I but repeat a Grecian's jest when asked by someone who knew him not if he knew himself. I am the man."
"Ah?" Shakespeare was not at all convinced Phelippes was trusty. After all, he worked at the right hand of Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s. And yet, plainly, Don Diego's was not the only right hand at which he worked. Wanting very much to ask him about that, Shakespeare knew he couldn't: he would get back either no answer or whatever lie seemed most useful to Phelippes. But he could say, "I'd fain see your character or ever I commend you to Master Vincent."
"Think you my claim by some great degree outdoth performance?" Thomas Phelippes sounded dryly amused. His mirth convinced Shakespeare he likely could do as he claimed. Even as Shakespeare started to say he needed no proof after all, the pockmarked little man cut him off: "Have you pen and paper here?"
"Ay." Shakespeare left them on the floor by his feet while he ate, to keep from spilling gravy on them. He bent now, picked them up, and set them on the table.
"Good. Give them me, I pray you," Phelippes said. "I shall see what I make of your hand, and you will see what you make of mine." He looked at some of what Shakespeare had written, then up at the poet himself. "This is Philip, sending forth the Armada?"
"It is," Shakespeare answered. "But for myself, you are the first to see't."
"A privilege indeed," Phelippes murmured, and then began to read:
" a€?Rough rigor looks outright, and still prevails:
Let sword, let fire, let torments be their end.
Severity upholds both realm and rule.
What then for minds, which have revenging moods,
And ne'er forget the cross they boldly bear?
And as for England's desperate and disloyal plots
Spaniards, remember, write it on your walls,
That rebels, traitors and conspirators
Shall feel the flames of ever-flaming fire
Which are not quenched with a sea of tears.' "
Looking up again, he nodded. " 'Twill serve-'twill serve very well. And a pretty contrast you draw 'twixt his Most Catholic Majesty's just fury here and the mercy of her life he grants Elizabeth conquered."
"Gramercy," Shakespeare said automatically, and then, staring, "How know you of that?"
Phelippes clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Your business is to write, the which you do most excellent well. Mine, I told you, is to know. Think you. "-the pause was a name he did not say aloud-"would choose me, would use me, did I not know passing well?"
Had he named that name, would it have been Sir William Cecil's or that of Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s? Or might he have chosen one as readily as the other? Shakespeare wished the question hadn't occurred to him. Phelippes openly avowed being a tool. Might not any man take up a tool and cut with it?