They're free. They've escaped, Lope thought vaguely, thoughhe had no idea who they were. He tried to get to his feet, tried and failed. Instead, he sank down into something perhaps a little closer to proper sleep than to the oblivion from which he'd emerged a little while before. As London boiled around him, he curled up on his side and snored.
Shakespeare felt drunk, though he'd had no more than a couple of mugs of ale hastily snatched up and even more hastily poured down. He'd been up all through the wild night, up and running and shouting and now and then throwing stones at Spaniards. Now he stood in Westminster, watching the sun rise bloody through the thick clouds of smoke above London and Southwark.
Cries of, "Death to the dons!" and, "Elizabeth!" and, "Good Queen Bess!" rang in his ears. Here and there, Spaniards still fought. Off in the distance, a shout of, " A?Santiago! " was followed by a ragged volley of gunfire and several screams.
Richard Burbage clapped Shakespeare on the back. Soot stained the player's face; sweat runneled pale tracks through it. Belike mine own seeming is the same, Shakespeare thought. Burbage's eyes were red-tracked, but glowed like lanterns. "Beshrew him if we've not broke 'em, Will!" he said.
"You may have the right of't," Shakespeare said in slow, weary wonder. "By God, you may." He yawned. "But where be Isabella and Albert? We've none of us set eyes on 'em here."
"I know that, and it likes me not," Burbage answered. "They may yet rally dons and traitors to their side, do we not presently bring 'em to heel." He yawned too, enormously.
Three Englishmen marched another, better dressed than they, up the street at sword's point. "I tell you, you do mistake me," their captive said. "I have ever loved Elizabeth, ever reckoned her my rightful sovereign, ever-"
"Ever an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of not one good quality," one of the men with a sword broke in. "Thou art a general offense, and every man should beat thee-and will have his chance. Get on!" He shoved the fellow forward.
"Now commenceth vengeance," Shakespeare remarked.
"Now commenceth cleansing," Burbage said. "For lo, the Augean stables were as sweet rainwater falling from heaven set beside the mire of iniquity that was our England these ten years gone by. Let the river of revenge flow free through it." He struck a pose, as if declaiming on the stage.
Shakespeare didn't argue with him. If Elizabeth triumphed, anyone who argued against rooting out every last man who might have helped the Spaniards and Isabella and Albert would endanger himself no less than someone arguing in favor of Elizabeth and her backers after she went to the Tower. How many injustices had the dons and their English henchmen worked then? A mort of 'em, the poet thought. And how many would the folk loyal to good Queen Bess work in return? He sighed. No fewer.
That mournful thought had hardly crossed his mind before another couple of men led another protesting prisoner past him and Burbage. "I tell you, gentles, I am no Spaniard's hound, but an honest Englishman,"
the fellow said, blinking nearsightedly back at his captors. He was thin and pockmarked, and carried a broken pair of spectacles in his left hand.
"Hold!" Shakespeare called to the rough-looking fellows who'd seized him. One of them held a pike, the other a pistol. Shakespeare was acutely aware of having no weapon but the dagger the player had given him at the end of Boudicca. But he went on, "I know Master Phelippes to be true and trusty."
Thomas Phelippes leaned towards him, peering, peering. "Is't you, Master Shakespeare? God bless you, sir! Without my precious spectacles, all past my nose is but a blur."
The man with the pistol swung it towards Shakespeare. The barrel suddenly seemed broad as a cannon's bore. "Go to, or own yourself likewise treacher, you detested parasitical thing," the ruffian snarled. "This accursed wretch was secretary to the Spaniards' commander-the which he denies not, nor scarce can he, being caught in's own den hard by the don's. And you style him a proper man? You pedlar's excrement, you stretch-mouthed rascal, how dare you?"
Showing anger to a man with a gun did not strike Shakespeare as wise. Picking his words with care, he answered, "I dare for that I know him to be one of Lord Burghley's-now one of Robert Cecil's-surest and most faithfullest intelligencers."
As he'd hoped, those were names to conjure with. The pistol wavered, ever so slightly. But the man holding it still sounded fierce as he demanded, " How know you this? And who are you, that you should know it? Answer quick, now! Waste no time devising lies."
"Heard you not Master Phelippes? — whose loyalty I also avouch," Richard Burbage boomed. "Here before you stands none other than the famous Will Shakespeare, whose grand Boudicca yesterday helped light the fire 'gainst the dons."
The man with the pike nudged the pistoleer. " 'Tis he, Wilf, by my troth-'tis. Have I not seen him full many a time astrut upon the stage? He'll know whereof he speaks. It were the gibbet for us, did we harm one of Crookback Bob's men."
Crookback Bob? Shakespeare couldn't imagine presuming to call Robert Cecil any such thing. To his vast relief, though, the man with the pistol-Wilf-lowered it. "Well, who's this cove with him, then?" he demanded.
Raw scorn filled the pikeman's voice: "What? Know you not Will Kemp when you see him?"
Burbage turned the color of a ripe apple. But Wilf's eyes almost bugged out of his head. "Will Kemp?" he whispered. "If the two o' them give this rogue their attestation, belike he is no rogue after all." He pushed Phelippes, not too hard, towards Shakespeare and Burbage. "Go with 'em, you, and praise God they knew you: else you were sped."
"Oh, I do praise Him," Phelippes said. "Rest assured, good sir, I do." He groped for Shakespeare's hand and squeezed it.
"Come," Wilf said to the pikeman. "Plenty of traitors undoubted yet to be smoked out." They hurried up the street.
Thomas Phelippes blinked towards Burbage, then bowed low. "And gramercy to you as well, Master Kemp," he said. "I would not seem ungrate-"
A grinding noise came from Burbage's throat. His voice a strange sort of strangled scream, he said, "I am not Will Kemp, nor fain to be he, neither." Plainly, he wanted to shout with all the force of his mighty frame. Just as plainly, he knew he must not, for fear of bringing the armed ruffians back at the run.
In a low voice, Shakespeare said, "Master Phelippes, I present you to my good friend and fellow player, Richard Burbage."
After clasping Burbage's hand, Phelippes said, "I cry your pardon, for I should have known you by your voice, be your face and form never so indistinct to mine eyne."
"Let it go, sir; let it go," Burbage said gruffly. "There's reason you mistook me, whereas that gross and miserable ignorance just gone. " He shook his head. "By Jesu! That God should go before such villains!" He muttered more unpleasantries, these too low to make out.
"How fell you into the hands of such brabblesome coves?" Shakespeare asked Thomas Phelippes.
"How, sir? As you might think," Phelippes answered. "I came hither yesterday knowing the die was cast and purposing, if I might, to make it into a langret for Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s." Shakespeare bobbed his head, appreciating the figure; if one were to cast a die in such straits as these, a die not perfectly square would be the proper sort to cast. Phelippes let out a wry chuckle. "In the event, confusion proved well enough compounded even absent mine aid."
"What befell Don Diego?" Shakespeare asked. "A formidable wight, though he be a foe."
Phelippes nodded. "Formidable indeed. When report reached him the fighting waxed hot, he sprang to his feet, buckled on's sword, and fared forth to join it. a€?A general's place is in the van,' quotha. I know not if he breathe yet."