When the play ended, Catalina Ibanez curtsied to him. Then, deliberately, as if she really were Queen Isabella, she curtsied to Lope, too. He bowed in return, also as if she were the Queen. Don Alejandro de Recalde laughed and cheered for them both. Catalina's eyes lit up. She smiled out at the nobleman-but somehow managed to include Lope in that smile, too.
She's trying to see how close to the wind she can sail, he realized, playing games with me right under Don Alejandro's nose. He'll kill her-and likely me, too-if he notices. But if he doesn't-oh, if he doesn't.
Lope slid closer to her. As softly as he could, he murmured, "When can I see you? Alone?"
Had she shown surprise then, surprise or offense, he would have been a dead man. But she, unlike most of her companions here, really was an actress; Lope had had that thought before. "Soon," she whispered back. "Very soon." Her expression never changed, not a bit.
She's going to betray Don Alejandro, Lope thought. How long before she betrays me, too? His eyes traveled the length of her again. For the life of him-and he knew it might be for the life of him-he couldn't make himself worry about that.
Thomas Vincent held sheets of paper under Shakespeare's nose. " 'Steeth, Master Vincent, mind what you do," Shakespeare said. "None should look on those who hath not strongest need."
"Be you not amongst that number?" the prompter returned. "Methought you'd fain see our scribe his work."
"I have seen his work," Shakespeare said. "Had I not, I had given you the name of another."
But he took a sheet from Vincent even so. Thomas Phelippes had had to work like a man possessed to copy out all the parts of Boudicca so quickly. However fast he'd written, though, his script hadn't suffered. It remained as clear as it had been when he'd demonstrated it in Shakespeare's ordinary.
"You could get no better," Shakespeare said, and Thomas Vincent nodded. The poet gave back the part.
"Now then-make this disappear. Place it not where any sneaking spy nor prowling Spaniard might come upon't."
"I am not so fond as you hold me," the prompter said. "None shall see it but he whose part it is-and him I shall not suffer to take it from the Theatre."
"Marry, I hope you do not," Shakespeare said. "Yet will even that suffice us? For know you, we may also be done to death by slanderous tongues."
"I know't well, sir: too well, by Jesu," Vincent replied. "Here I am come unto a fear of death, a terrible and unavoided danger."
"Let only the fear thereof be unavoided, the thing itself passing over us like the Angel of Death o'er the children of Israel in Egypt. From this nettle, danger, may we pluck the flower, safety."
Before Thomas Vincent could answer, one of the tireman's helpers who stood at the entrance to the Theatre began to whistle the tune to a particular bawdy song. The players on the stage, who'd begun learning their parts for Boudicca, switched on the instant to rehearsing the piece they would put on that afternoon. The prompter said, "Mark you, now-in sooth, they do vanish." He vanished himself, disappearing into the tiring room.
Shakespeare wished he too could disappear. No such luck. Instead, he walked out to greet Lieutenant de Vega, of whose arrival that bawdy song had warned. "God give you good morrow," he called, and made a leg at the Spaniard.
"And you, sir." Lope swept off his hat and bowed in return. "You are well, I hope?"
"Passing well, I thank you." Shakespeare didn't mind exchanging courtesies with de Vega. As long as they talked in commonplaces, peril seemed far away. It wasn't; he knew that full well. But it seemed so, and even the semblance of tranquility was precious.
"How fares King Philip?" Lope asked.
"Passing well," Shakespeare repeated, adding, "or so I hope." The commission he had from Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s was far safer than the one Lord Burghley had given him. Part of him hoped Lord Westmorland's Men would offer their auditors King Philip, not Boudicca. That would pluck safety from the nettle of danger. It would be a craven's safety, but safety nonetheless. Let Boudicca once see the light of day, and.
Let Boudicca once see the light of day, and God grant I get free of England, as Kit hath done, Shakespeare thought. England had lain under the Spaniards' boots for almost ten years now. Could she rise up and cast them out? If she could, why hadn't she long since?
"How fares King Philip himself?" he inquired
Lope de Vega frowned. "Not well, I fear me: not well at all. Late word from Spain hath it he waxeth dropsical, his belly and thighs now much distended whilst his other members waste away."
He crossed himself. Shakespeare did the same. He couldn't quite hide a shudder. He'd seen the horrid bloating of dropsy, seen it rob its victims of life an inch at a time. They'd had to press a board against one luckless player's belly to help him make water, as if they were squeezing the juice from grapes in a wine press. Next to that, the swift certainty of the gallows seemed a mercy. But you'd have no swift end, not now.
"Best you finish the play, quick as you might," de Vega told him. "Soon enough-all too soon-the company will show it forth."
"It lacks but little," Shakespeare said.
"Glad I am to hear you say so," the Spaniard said. "As soon as all the parts be finished, let your prompter give them to the scribes, that they might make fair copies of them for the players to learn by heart."
"Certes, your honor. Just as you say, so shall it be." Now Shakespeare bowed. "You know well the customary usages of a theatre not your own."
He put more sarcasm into that than perhaps he should have. De Vega, fortunately, did not seem to notice. He answered, "They are not so different from those of Spain. Your prompter is new to his work, not so?"
"Indeed, his predecessor having. died." Guilt stabbed at Shakespeare. He did his best not to show it.
De Vega here might one day talk to Constable Strawberry, and Strawberry, in his own plodding way, had already connected Shakespeare and Ingram Frizer, though he didn't quite know what connections he'd made.
But, for now, Lope de Vega's attention focused on King Philip and the problems involved in producing it. "An he have trouble finding scribes fit for the matter, I ken a man who'd suit it."
"Ah?" Shakespeare said: the most noncommittal noise he could make.
Lope nodded. "Ay, sir: an Englishman already in the employ of Don Diego, and thus acquainted with all you purpose here. I have seen his writing, and know him to have an excellent character, most legible. He is called Thomas. ah. Phelippes."
He pronounced the name in the Spanish manner, as if it had three syllables. That kept Shakespeare from recognizing it for a moment. When he did, he felt as if a thunderbolt had crashed to earth at his feet. Lope knew Phelippes well enough to know what sort of scribe he made? Did the Spanish officer have a fair copy of Boudicca? Had he got it before Thomas Vincent got his?
Whom may I trust? Shakespeare wondered dizzily. Vincent? Phelippes? Nick Skeres? Lord Burghley? Anyone in all the world? The deeper into the plot he sank, the closer he came to the moment when the company would offer one play or the other, the more certain he became that no one had any business ever trusting anyone else.
"What think you, senor?" Lope asked when Shakespeare didn't answer right away.
"Master Vincent, meseems, hath already scribes enough for the work," Shakespeare said, picking his words with the greatest of care. "You were wiser, though, to speak to him in this matter than to me. He is quite out of countenance with my character, reckoning it to show mine own bad character."