Harry Turtledove - Ruled Britannia

RULED BRITANNIA

Harry Turtledove

I

TWO SPANISH SOLDIERS swaggered up Tower Street toward William Shakespeare. Their boots

squelched in the mud. One wore a rusty corselet with his high-crowned morion, the other a similar helmet

with a jacket of quilted cotton. Rapiers swung at their hips. The fellow with the corselet carried a pike

longer than he was tall; the other shouldered an arquebus. Their lean, swarthy faces wore what looked

like permanent sneers.

People scrambled out of their way: apprentices without ruffs and in plain wool caps; a pipe-smoking

sailor wearing white trousers with spiral stripes of blue; a merchant's wife in a red wool doublet spotted

with white--almost a man's style--who lifted her long black skirt to keep it out of puddles; a ragged

farmer in from the countryside with a donkey weighted down with sacks of beans.

Shakespeare flattened himself against the rough, weather-faded timbers of a shop along with everybody

else. The Spaniards had held London--held it down for Queen Isabella, daughter of Philip of Spain, and

her husband, Albert of Austria--for more than nine years now. Everyone knew what happened to men

rash enough to show them disrespect to their faces.

A cold, nasty autumn drizzle began sifting down from the gray sky. Shakespeare tugged his hat down

lower on his forehead to keep the rain out of his eyes--and to keep the world from seeing how thin his

hair was getting in front, though he was only thirty-three. He scratched at the little chin beard he wore.

Where was the justice in that?

On went the Spaniards. One of them kicked at a skinny, ginger-colored dog gnawing a dead rat. The

dog skittered away. The soldier almost measured himself full length in the sloppy street. His friend

grabbed his arm to steady him.

Behind them, the Englishmen and -women got back to their business. A pockmarked tavern tout took

Shakespeare's hand. "Try the Red Bear, friend," the fellow said, breathing beer fumes and the stink of

rotting teeth into his face. "The drink is good, the wenches friendly--"

"Away with you." Shakespeare twisted free. The man's dirty hand, he noted with annoyance, had

smudged the sleeve of his lime-green doublet.

"Away with me? Away with me?" the tout squeaked. "Am I a black-beetle, for you to squash?"

"Black-beetle or no, I'll spurn you with my foot if you trouble me more," Shakespeare said. He was a tall

man, on the lean side but solidly made and well fed. The tout's skin stretched drumhead tight over

cheekbones and jaw. He slunk off to earn his pennies--his farthings, more likely--somewhere else.

A few doors down stood the tailor's shop to which Shakespeare had been going. The man working

inside peered at him through spectacles that magnified his red-tracked eyes. "Good morrow to you,

Master Will," he said. "By God, I am glad to see you in health."

"And I you, Master Jenkins," Shakespeare replied. "Your good wife is well, I hope, and your son?"

"Very well, the both of them," the tailor said. "I thank you for asking. Peter would be here to greet you as

well, but he is taking to the head of the fishmongers a cloak I but now finished: to their hall in Thames

Street, in Bridge Ward."

"May the fishmongers' chief have joy in it," Shakespeare said. "And have you also finished the kingly robe

you promised for the players?"

Behind those thick lenses, Jenkins' eyes grew bigger and wider yet. "Was that to be done today?"

Shakespeare clapped a hand to his forehead, almost knocking off his hat. As he grabbed for it, he said, "

'Sblood, Master Jenkins, how many times did I tell you it was wanted on All Saints' Day, and is that not

today?"

"It is. It is. And I can only cry your pardon," Jenkins said mournfully.

"That doth me no good, nor my fellow players," Shakespeare said. "Shall Burbage swagger forth in his

shirt tomorrow? He'll kill me when he hears this, and I you afterwards." He shook his head at that--fury

outrunning sense.

To the tailor, fury counted for more. "It's near done," he said. "If you'll but bide, I can finish it within an

hour, or may my head answer for it." He made a placating gesture and, even more to the point, shoved

aside the doublet on which he'd been sewing.

"An hour?" Shakespeare sighed heavily, while Jenkins gave an eager nod. Drumming his fingers on his

arm, Shakespeare nodded, too. "Let it be as you say, then. Were it not that the royal robe in our tiring

room looks more like a vagabond's rags and tatters, I'd show you less patience."

"Truly, Master Will, you are a great gentleman," Jenkins quavered as he took the robe of scarlet velvet

from under the counter.

"I trust you'll note this unseemly delay in your price," Shakespeare said. By the tailor's expression, he

found that not in the least gentlemanly. While Shakespeare kept on drumming his fingers, Jenkins sewed

in the last gaudy bits of golden thread and hemmed the robe.

"You could wear it in the street, Master Will, and have the commonality bow and scrape before you as if

in sooth you were a great lord," he said, chuckling.

"I could wear it in the street and be seized and flung in the Counter for dressing above my station,"

Shakespeare retorted. " 'Tis a thing forbidden actors, save when on the stage." Jenkins only chuckled

again; he knew that perfectly well.

He was finished almost as soon as he'd promised, and held up the robe to Shakespeare as if he were the

tireman about to dress him in it. "You did but jest as to the scot, I am sure," he said.

" 'Steeth, Master Jenkins, I did not. Is mine own time a worthless thing, that I should spend it freely for

the sake of your broken promise?"

"Broken it was not, for I promised the robe today, and here it is."

"And had I come at eventide, and not of the morning? You had been forsworn then. You may have

mended your promise, but that means not it was unbroken."

They argued a while longer, more or less good-naturedly. At last, the tailor took five shillings off the price

he'd set before. "More than you deserve, but for the sake of your future custom I shall do't," he told

Shakespeare. "Which still leaves you owing fourteen pounds, five shillings, sixpence."

"The stuffs you use are dear indeed," Shakespeare grumbled as he gave Jenkins the money. Some of the

silver and copper coins he set on the counter bore the images of Isabella and Albert, others--the older,

more worn, ones--that of the deposed Elizabeth, who still languished in the Tower of London, only a

furlong or so from where Shakespeare stood. He looked outside. It was still drizzling. "Can you give me

somewhat wherewith to cover this robe, Master Jenkins? I am not fain to have the weeping heavens

smirch it."

"I believe I may. Let me see." Jenkins rummaged under the counter and came up with a piece of coarse

canvas that had seen better days. "Here, will this serve?" At Shakespeare's brusque nod, the tailor

wrapped the cloth around the robe and tied it with some twine. He bobbed his head to Shakespeare as

he passed him the bundle. "Here you are, Master Will, and I am sorry for the inconvenience I put you

to."

Shakespeare sighed. "No help for it. Now I needs must--" Horns blared and drums thudded out in the

street. He jumped. "What's that?"

"Did you not recall?" The tailor's face twisted. "By decree of the Spaniards, 'tis the day of the great auto

de fe."

"Oh, a pox! You are right, and it had gone out of my head altogether." Shakespeare looked out into the

street as horn calls and drums came again. In response to that music, people swarmed from all directions

to gape at the spectacle.

"A lucky man, who can forget the inquisitors," Jenkins said. "A month gone by, as is their custom, they

came down Tower Street making proclamation that this . . . ceremony would be held." He might have

been about to offer some comment on the auto de fe, but he didn't. Shakespeare couldn't blame him for

watching his tongue. In London these days, a word that reached the wrong ears could mean disaster for

a man.

He felt disaster of a different, smaller, sort brushing against him. "In this swarm of mankind, I shall be an

age making my way back to my lodgings."

"Why not go with the parade to Tower Hill and see what's to be seen?" Jenkins said. "After all, when in

Rome . . . and we are all Romans now, is't not so?" He chuckled once more.

So did Shakespeare, sourly. "How could it be otherwise?" he returned. In Elizabeth's day, Catholic

recusants had had to pay a fine for refusing to attend Protestant services. Now, with their Catholic

Majesties ruling England, with the Inquisition and the Jesuits zealously bringing the country back under the

dominion of the Pope, not going to Mass could and often did mean worse than fines. Like most people,

Shakespeare conformed, as he'd conformed under Elizabeth. Some folk went to church simply because it

was the safe thing to do; some, after nine years and more of Catholic rule, because they'd come to

believe. But almost everyone did go.

"Why not what?" Jenkins repeated. "Think what you will of the dons and the monks, but they do make a

brave show. Mayhap you'll spy some bit of business you can filch for one of your dramas."

Shakespeare had thought nothing could make him want to watch an auto de fe. Now he discovered he

was wrong. He nodded to the tailor. "I thank you, Master Jenkins. I had not thought of that. Perhaps I

shall." He tucked the robe under his arm, settled his hat more firmly on his head, and went out into Tower

Street.

Spanish soldiers--and some blond-bearded Englishmen loyal to Isabella and Albert--in helmets and

corselets held pikes horizontally in front of their bodies to keep back the crowd and let the procession

move toward Tower Hill. They looked as if they would use those spears, and the swords hanging from

their belts, at the slightest excuse. Perhaps because of that, no one gave them any such excuse.

Two or three rows of people stood in front of Shakespeare, but he had no trouble seeing over any of

them save one woman whose steeple-crowned hat came up to the level of his eyes. He looked east,

toward the church of St. Margaret in Pattens' Lane, from which the procession was coming. At its head

strode the trumpeters and drummers, who blasted out another fanfare even as he turned to look at them.

More grim-faced soldiers marched at their heels: again, Spaniards and Englishmen mixed. Some bore

pikes. Others carried arquebuses or longer, heavier muskets. Tiny wisps of smoke rose from the lengths

of slow match the men with firearms bore to discharge their pieces. The drizzle had almost stopped while

Shakespeare waited for the tailor to finish the robe. In wetter weather, the matchlocks would have been

useless as anything but clubs. As they marched, they talked with one another in an argot that had grown

up since the Armada's men came ashore, with Spanish lisps and trills mingling with the slow sonorities of

English.

Behind the soldiers tramped a hundred woodmongers in the gaudy livery of their company. One of those

robes would do as well to play the king in as that which I have here, Shakespeare thought. But the

woodmongers, whose goods would feed the fires that burned heretics today, seemed to be playing

soldiers themselves: like the armored men ahead of them, they too marched with arquebuses and pikes.

From a second-story window across the street from Shakespeare, a woman shouted, "Shame on you,

Jack Scrope!" One of the woodmongers carrying a pike whipped his head around to see who had cried

out, but no faces showed at that window. A dull flush stained the fellow's cheeks as he strode on.

Next came a party of black-robed Dominican friars--mostly Spaniards, by their looks--before whom a

white cross was carried. They chanted psalms in Latin as they paraded up Tower Street.

After them marched Charles Neville, the Earl of Westmorland, the Protector of the English Inquisition.

The northerner's face was hard and closed and proud. He had risen against Elizabeth a generation

before, spent years in exile in the Netherlands, and surely relished every chance he got for revenge

against the Protestants. The old man carried the standard of the Inquisition, and held it high.

For a moment, Shakespeare's gaze swung to the left, to the gray bulk of the Tower, though the church of

Allhallows Barking hid part of the fortress from view. He wondered if, from one of those towers,

Elizabeth were watching the auto de fe. What would the imprisoned Queen be thinking if she were? Did

she thank King Philip for sparing her life after the Duke of Parma's professional soldiers swept aside her

English levies? "Though she herself slew a queen, I shall not stoop to do likewise," Philip had said. Was

that generosity? Or did Elizabeth, with all she'd labored so long to build torn to pieces around her,

reckon her confinement more like hell on earth?

'Twould make a splendid tragedy, Shakespeare thought, were setting so little as a single line of't to

paper not worth my life--and a hard, cruel death I'd have, too. Written or not, though, those scenes

began to shape themselves in his mind. He shook his head like a fly-bedeviled horse, trying to clear it.

More than a little to his relief, a murmur in the crowd brought his attention back to the parade. Behind the

Protector of the Inquisition stalked Robert Parsons, the Archbishop of Canterbury. His cold, thin features

made Neville's look genial. He'd spent a generation in exile, struggling from afar against English

Protestantism.

After the prelate marched another company of guardsmen. These were wild Irishmen, brought over to

help the Spaniards hold England down. Most spoke only Irish; the few who used some English had

brogues so thick, it was hard to tell from the other tongue.

The crowd stirred and buzzed. A couple of men pointed. A woman exclaimed. After the sallet comes

the main course, Shakespeare thought. A couple of dozen men exhibited life-sized pasteboard images

of those convicted by the Inquisition who had either died in gaol or had escaped its clutches and were

being outlawed. More servitors carried trunks that bore the bones of the former. The sides and tops of

the trunks were painted with hellfire's flames.

Then came the prisoners themselves. First was a group of about a dozen men and women with conical

pasteboard caps fully a yard high on their heads. Most of the caps had HERETIC written on them in

large letters in English and Latin. One said ALCHEMIST, another SODOMITE. In the first years after

the triumph of the Duke of Parma's men, Shakespeare remembered, the words had been written in

Spanish as well. These days, though, the English Inquisition operated on its own, with little help from its

former teachers. Each of the condemned had a rope around his neck and carried a torch in his right hand.

More prisoners, also carrying torches, followed the first lot. They wore sanbenitos--coarse yellow

penitential tunics without sleeves--with the cross of St. Andrew painted on the back in red. Some of

them, after their condemnation at the ceremony, would return to imprisonment. Others would be

released, but sentenced to wear the sanbenito forever as a mark of their crimes. "More ignoble and more

humiliating than death itself," a fat man near Shakespeare said. Two familiars of the Inquisition

accompanied each of them.

And after them tramped the dozen or so who had been condemned to the flames. They wore not only

sanbenitos but also pasteboard caps, all of which were painted with flames and devils. Along with the

familiars of the Inquisition, four or five monks accompanied them to prepare their souls for death.

One prisoner, a big, burly man, shook off all attempts at consolation. "I go gladly to my death," he

declared, "knowing I shall soon see God face to face and rejoice in His glory for ever and ever."

"You are wrong, Philip Stubbes," a monk said urgently. "If you confess your sins, you may yet win free of

hell to Purgatory."

"Purgatory's a dream, a lie, one of the myriad lies the Pope farts forth from his mouth," the Puritan said.

The monk crossed himself. "You will also win an easier death for yourself, for the executioner will throttle

you ere the flames bite."

Stubbes shook his head. "Elizabeth cut off my brother's hand for speaking the truth. Torment me as you

will, as the Romans tormented the martyrs of old. The flames will have me for but a little while, but you

and all your villainous kind for an eternity."

Another man, a red-bearded fellow with a clever, frightened face and cropped ears, spoke urgently to a

somber monk: "I'll say anything you want. I'll do anything you want. Only spare me from the fire."

A vagrant drop of rain landed on the monk's tonsured pate. He wiped it away with his hand before

answering, "Kelley, your confessions, your renunciations, are worthless, as you have proved time and

again. You will return to your alchemy, as a dog returneth to its vomit. Did not the heretic Queen's men

petition you for gold wherewith to oppose the cleansing Armada?"

"I gave them none," Kelley said quickly.

"And did you not die for this," the monk went on, inexorable as an avalanche, "you surely would for

coining counterfeit money in base metal."

"I did no such thing," Kelley insisted.

"Each lie you tell but makes the flames of hell hotter. Compose your spirit now, and pray for mercy from

a just God Whose judgments are true and righteous altogether."

And then, to Shakespeare's horror, Kelley's eyes--green as a cat's, and showing white all around the

iris--found his in the crowd and locked on them. "Will! Will! For the love of God, Will, tell 'em I'm true

and trusty!"

Shakespeare wondered if he turned white or red. He felt dipped in ice and dire, both together. He'd met

Edward Kelley perhaps half a dozen times over as many years, enough to know he'd lost his ears for

making and passing false coins. The alchemist moved in some of the same circles as Christopher

Marlowe, and some of Marlowe's circles were also Shakespeare's. Wheels within wheels, as in the

epicycles of Master Ptolemy. But for Kelley to point him out to the Inquisition . . .

Before he could speak, either to curse Kelley--which was what he wanted to do--or to praise him, the

monk said, "Where your own words will not save you, why think you any other man's might? Go on,

wretch, and die as well as you may."

But he looked in the same direction the alchemist had. And his eyes, too, met Shakespeare's. He nodded

thoughtfully to himself. He knows my face, Shakespeare thought with something not far from despair.

Other people saw as much, too, and moved away from him, so that he stood on a little island of open

space in the ocean of the crowd. He'd come down with a disease as deadly as smallpox or the black

plague: suspicion. Devils roast you black, Kelley, and use your guts for garters.

On went the procession. Other voices drowned out Edward Kelley's whining claims of innocence.

Behind the condemned prisoners rode the Grand Inquisitor, somber in a purple habit, and several

members of the House of Commons, their faces smug and fat and self-satisfied. Another company of

soldiers--Spaniards and Englishmen mixed again--and the parade was done.

As it went past, the pikemen who'd been holding back the crowd shouldered their weapons. Some folk

went on about their business. More streamed after the procession to Tower Hill, to watch the burnings

that would follow. Shakespeare stepped out into the muddy street. Along with the rest of the somber

spectacle, he wanted to see Edward Kelley die.

"Say what you will about the Spaniards, but they've brought us a fine show," said a man at his elbow.

The fellow's friend nodded. "Better than a bear-baiting or a cockfight, and I never thought I'd say that of

any sport."

Tower Hill, north and west of the Tower itself, had been an execution ground since the days of Edward

IV, more than a hundred years before. Things were more elaborate now than they had been. Stakes with

oil-soaked wood piled high around them waited for the condemned prisoners. Iron cages waited for

them, too, in which they would listen to the charges that had brought them here. More iron cages, small

ones, awaited the pasteboard effigies of the folk who had died in gaol or escaped the Inquisition's

clutches.

At a safe distance from the stakes stood a wooden grandstand. Queen Isabella and King Albert sat on

upholstered thrones, surrounded by grandees both English and Spanish on benches. The Archbishop of

Canterbury, the Grand Inquisitor, and the other dignitaries from the procession joined them. The first

group of soldiers fanned out to protect the grandstand along with the men already there. The rest kept

back the crowd.

After Philip Stubbes was locked in his cage, he began singing hymns and shouting, "Vanity and lies!

Beware of Popish vanity and lies!" A monk spoke to him. He defiantly shook his head and kept on

shouting. The monk unlocked the cage. He and several of his fellows went in. They bound Stubbes'

hands and gagged him to keep him from disrupting the last part of the ceremony.

That worked less well than they must have hoped. When the charge of heresy was read out against him,

he made a leg like a courtier, as if it were praise. More than a few people in the crowd laughed and

clapped their hands.

Shakespeare didn't. No way to know whose eyes may be upon me, and all the more so after that

Kelley--damnation take him!--called out my name. He nervously fingered his little chin beard. A hard

business, living in a kingdom where the rulers sit uneasy on the throne and their minions course

after foes as hounds course after stags.

He plucked out a hair. The small, brief pain turned his thoughts to a new channel. In a play, could I

place a man of Stubbes' courage? he wondered. Or would the groundlings find him impossible to

credit?

One by one, the captives sentenced to more imprisonment or to wear the sanbenito were led away. Only

those who would die remained. They were led out of their cages and chained to the stakes. As monks

made the sign of the cross, executioners strangled a couple of them: men who had repented of their

errors, whether sincerely or to gain an easier death.

Edward Kelley cried, "Me! Me! In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, me!" But his Latin, his

learning, did him no good at all.

The inquisitors looked toward the Queen. Isabella was in her early thirties, a couple of years younger

than Shakespeare, and swarthy even for a Spaniard--to English eyes, she seemed not far from a Moor.

The enormous, snowy-white ruff she wore only accented her dark skin. Swarthy or not, though, she was

the Queen; Albert held the throne through his marriage to her. She raised her hand, then let it fall.

And, as it fell, the executioners hurled torches into the waiting fagots. They caught at once. The roar of

the flames almost drowned out the screams from the burning men. The roar of the crowd came closer

still. That baying had a heavy, almost lustful, undertone to it. Watching others die while one still lived . . .

Better him than me, Shakespeare thought as fire swallowed Edward Kelley. The mixture of shame and

relief churning inside him made him want to spew. Oh, dear God, better him than me. He turned away

from the stakes, from the reek of charred flesh, and hurried back into the city.

LOPE FÃ‰LIX DE VEGA Carpio had been in London for more than nine years, and in all that time he

didn't think he'd been warm outdoors even once. The English boasted of their springtime. It came two

months later here than in Madrid, where it would have been reckoned a mild winter. As for summer . . .

He rolled his eyes. As best he could tell, there was no such thing as an English summer.

Still and all, there were compensations. He snuggled down deeper under the feather-filled comforter and

kissed the woman he kept company there. "Ah, Maude," he said, "I understand why you English women

are so fair." He had a gift for language and languages; his English, though accented, was fluent.

"What's that, love?" Maude Fuller asked, lazy and sleepy after love. She was in her middle twenties,

around ten years younger than he, and not merely a blonde--blondes were known in Spain--but with hair

the color of fire and a skin paler than milk. Even her nipples held barely a tinge of color.

Idly, Lope teased one between his thumb and forefinger. "I know why thou art so fair," he repeated.

"How couldst thou be otherwise, when the sun never touches thee?"

He let his hand stray lower, sliding along the smooth, soft skin of her belly toward the joining of her legs.

The hair there was as astonishingly red as that on her head. Just thinking about it inflamed him. Since the

weather here will never warm me, as well the women do, he thought. Of course, the women back in

Spain had warmed him, too. Had he sailed off to America instead of joining the Armada and coming to

England aboard the San Juan, no doubt he would have become enamored of one, or two, or six, of the

copper-skinned, black-haired Indian women there. Loving women was in his blood.

"What, again, my sweet?" Maude said around a yawn. But his caresses heated her better than the embers

in the hearth could. Before long, they began once more. He wondered if he would manage the second

round so soon after the first, and knew no little pride when he did. Ten years ago, I'd have taken it for

granted, he thought as his thudding heart slowed. Ten years from now . . . He shook his head. He

didn't care to think about that. God and the Virgin, but time is cruel.

To hold such thoughts at bay, he kissed the Englishwoman again. "Ah, querida--beloved, seest thou

what thou dost to me?" he said. But lots of women did that to him. He had two other mistresses in

London, though Maude, a recent conquest, knew about neither of them.

And she had secrets from him, as he discovered the worst way possible. Downstairs, a door opened,

then slammed shut. "Oh, dear God!" she exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. "My husband!"

"Thine husband?" Despite his horror, de Vega had the sense to keep his voice to a whisper. "Lying minx,

thou saidst thou wert a widow!"

"Well, I would be, if he were dead," she answered, her tone absurdly reasonable.

In a play, a line like that would have got a laugh. Lope de Vega mentally filed it away. He'd tried his hand

at a few comedies, to entertain his fellows on occupation duty in London, and he went to the English

theatres whenever he found the chance. But what was funny in a play could prove fatal in real life. He

sprang from the bed and threw on his clothes by the dim light those embers gave.

Drawers. Upperstocks. Netherstocks. Shirt. Doublet with slops. He didn't bother fastening it--that could

wait. Hat. Cloak. Boots. Too cursed many clothes, when he was in a hurry. Footsteps on the stairs.

Heavy footsteps--these beefeating Englishmen were ridiculously large men. A quick kiss for Maude, not

that she deserved it, not when she'd tried to get him killed.

Lope threw open the shutters. Cold, damp air streamed into the bedchamber. "AdiÃ³s," he whispered. "

Hasta la vista." He scrambled out the window, hung by his hands from the sill for a moment, and then let

go and dropped to the street below.

He landed lightly and didn't get hurt, but his left foot came down with a splash in a puddle of something

that stank to high heaven. A rough male voice floated out the window he'd just vacated: "What the Devil

was that? And why are these shutters open, Maude? Art mad? Thou'lt catch thy death."

Much as Lope would have liked to, he didn't stay to listen to Maude's excuses. He didn't fear fighting her

husband, but an adulterer had no honor, win or lose. Instead of using the rapier at his hip, he hurried

round a corner.

Behind him, the Englishman said, "What's that?" again, and then, " 'Swounds, woman, play you the

strumpet with me?"

"Oh, no, Ned." Maude's voice dripped honey. Oh, yes, Ned, de Vega thought. He didn't hear whatever

else she said, but he would have bet she talked her way out of it. By all the signs, she had practice.

Whatever Lope had landed in, it still clung to his boot. He wrinkled his nose. Had the Englishwoman's

husband chosen to come after him, the man could have tracked him by scent, as if he were a polecat.

When he stepped on a stone in the roadway, he scraped his heel and sole against it. That helped a little,

but only a little.

He looked around. He'd gone only a couple of blocks from Maude's house, but in the fog and the

darkness he'd got turned around. How am I supposed to find my way back to the London barracks,

let alone to Westminster, when I don't think I could find my way back to the bedroom I just left?

Madrid boasted far more torches of nights.

Lope shrugged and laughed softly. He had a long, bony face that seemed ill-suited to humor, but his

sparkling eyes gave those bones the lie. One way or another, I expect I'll manage.

To make sure he did manage, he drew his rapier. London had a curfew, and he was out well after it.

That wouldn't matter if he came across a squad of Spanish soldiers patrolling the streets. The only

Englishmen likely to be out and about, though, were curbers and flicks and nips and high lawyers: thieves

and robbers who might have a professional interest, as it were, in making his acquaintance. If they also

made the acquaintance of his blade, they wouldn't bother him.

Down an alley, a dog growled and then started to bark. The rapier would also keep him safe against

animals that went on four legs. But a chain clanked, and the dog yelped in frustration. Lope nodded to

himself. He wouldn't have to worry about that, anyhow.

He picked his way westward, or hoped he did. If he was going in the right direction, he was heading

toward the barracks, which lay not far from St. Swithin's church. Who St. Swithin was, he had no idea.

He wondered if Rome did.

He heard footsteps from a side street. His right hand tightened on the leather-wrapped hilt of the rapier.

Whoever was going along that street must have heard him, too, for those other footsteps stopped. Lope

paused, listened, muttered, "The Devil take him, whoever he is," and went on. After a few strides, he

paused to listen again. A woman's sigh of relief came to his ear. He smiled, tempted to go back and see

who she was, and of what quality. After a moment, he shook his head. Another time, he thought.

A few blocks farther west--he thought it was west, anyhow--he heard noise he couldn't ignore. Half a

dozen men, maybe more, came toward him without bothering in the least about stealth. He shrank back

into a doorway. Maybe that was a patrol. On the other hand, maybe the men were English bandits,

numerous and bold enough to take on a patrol if they ran into one.

They turned a corner. The fog couldn't hide their torches, though it tried. Lope tensed as those pale

beams cast a shadow across his boot. Then he recognized the sweet, lisping sounds of Castilian.

"Â¡Gracias a Dios!" he exclaimed, and stepped out into the roadway.

The soldiers had had no notion he was there. They jerked in surprise and alarm. One of them swung an

arquebus his way; another pointed a pistol at him. "Who are you, and what are you doing out after

curfew?" their leader growled. "Advance and be recognized--slowly, if you know what's good for you."

Before advancing, before becoming plainly visible, de Vega slid the rapier back into its sheath. He didn't

want anyone to start shooting or do anything else he might regret out of surprise or fear. When he drew

near, he bowed low, as if the sergeant leading the patrol were a duke rather than--probably--a

Vega Carpio."

"Christ on His cross," one of the troopers muttered. "Another stinking officer who thinks the rules don't

matter for him."

Lope pretended not to hear that. He couldn't ignore the reproach in the sergeant's voice: "Sir, we might

have taken you for an Englishman and blown your head off."

"I'm very glad you didn't," Lope de Vega replied.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant said. "You still haven't said, sir, what you're doing out so long after curfew. We

have the authority to arrest officers, sir." He might have had it, but he didn't sound delighted at the

prospect of using it. An officer with connections and a bad temper could make him sorry he'd been born,

no matter how right he was. Lope didn't have such connections, but how could the sergeant know that?

"What was I doing out so late?" he echoed. "Well, she had red hair and blue eyes and--" His hands

described what else Maude had. He went on, "While I was with her, I didn't care what time it was."

"You should have spent the night, sir," the sergeant said.

"I would have liked that. She would have liked that, too. Her husband . . . alas, no." Lope shook his

head.

"Her husband, eh?" The sergeant's laugh showed a missing tooth. A couple of his men let out loud,

bawdy guffaws. "An Englishman?" he asked, and answered his own question: "Yes, of course, a heretic

dog of an Englishman. Well, good for you, by God."

"And so she was," de Vega said, which got him another laugh or two. With the easy charm that made

women open their hearts--and their legs--to him, he went on, "And now, my friends, if you would be so

kind as to point me back to the barracks, I would count myself forever in your debt."

"Certainly, sir." The sergeant gestured with his torch. "That way, not too far."

"That way?" Lope said in surprise. "I thought that way led south, down toward the Thames." The

soldiers shook their heads as one man. He'd seen it done worse on stage. He gave them a melodramatic

sigh. "Plainly, I am mistaken. I'm glad I ran into you men, then. I got lost in this fog."

"The Devil take English weather," the sergeant said, and his men nodded with as much unity as they'd

shown before. "Yes, the Devil take the cold, and the rain, and the fog--and he's welcome to the

Englishmen while he's at it. They're all heretics at heart, no matter how many of them we burn." The rest

of the patrol nodded yet again.

"Amen," de Vega said. "Well, now that I know where I'm going, I'll be off. I thank you for your help." He

bowed once more.

Returning the bow, the sergeant said, "Sir, I'm afraid you'll only get lost again, and the streets aren't safe

Harry Turtledove - Ruled Britannia

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