Past that, Anne wouldn't care, and neither did he.
His head did ache when he got up in the morning. A mug of the Widow Kendall's good ale with his breakfast porridge helped ease the pounding. The reticent sun of late autumn was just rising when he started for the door. Sir William he might be, but he had a play to put on at the Theatre.
Or so he thought, till the door opened when he was still a couple of strides from it. A tough-looking fellow with a rapier on his belt came in. "Sir William Shakespeare," he said. It wasn't a question.
Even so, Shakespeare wondered if he ought to admit who he was. After a couple of heartbeats'
hesitation, he nodded, asking, "What would you?"
"You are ordered to come with me."
"Ordered, say you? By whom? Whither?"
"By her Majesty, the Queen; to Westminster," the man snapped. "Will you come, or do you presume to say her nay?"
"I come," Shakespeare said meekly. The Theatre would have to do without him for the morning.
He got another surprise when he went outside: a horse waited there to take him to Westminster, yet another armed man holding its head. The beast looked enormous. Shakespeare mounted so awkwardly, the bravo who'd gone in to get him let out a scornful snort. He didn't care. He hadn't ridden a horse since hurrying back to Stratford to say farewell to his son Hamnet, and he couldn't remember his last time on horseback before that. He nodded to the tough-looking man. "Lay on, good sir, and I'll essay to follow."
"Be it so, then," the man said, doubt in his voice.
He urged his horse forward with reins, voice, and the pressure of his knees against its sides. Shakespeare did the same. His mount, a good-natured and well-trained mare, obeyed him with so little fuss that, by the time he'd gone a couple of blocks, he felt as much centaur as man. The man who'd held the poet's horse brought up the rear on his own beast.
"Way! Make way!" the bravo in the lead bawled whenever they had to slow for foot traffic or other riders or wagons and carts. "Make way for the Queen's business!" Sometimes the offenders would move aside, sometimes they wouldn't. When they didn't, Shakespeare's escort bawled other, more pungent, things.
Outside the entrance to St. Paul's, the head and quartered members of a corpse were mounted on spears. They were all splashed with tar to slow rot and help hold scavengers at bay. Despite that, Shakespeare recognized the lean, even ascetic, features of Robert Parsons before he saw the placards announcing the demise of the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS! one of those placards declared.
Was't for this you so long ate the bitter bread of exile? Shakespeare wondered. Was't for this you at last came home? Parsons might have answered ay; he had the strength and courage of his belief no less than his foes of theirs. And much good he got from them, Shakespeare thought. A rook, the bare base of its beak pale against black feathers, fluttered down and landed on top of the dead churchman's head. Tar or no tar, it pecked at Parsons' cheek.
More bodies and parts of bodies lined the road from London to Winchester. Rooks and carrion crows and jackdaws and sooty ravens fluttered up from them as riders went past, then returned to their interrupted feasting. Looking back over his shoulder at Shakespeare, his escort said, "May those birds wax as fat on the flesh of traitors as Frenchmen's geese crammed full with figs and nuts."
Shakespeare managed a nod he feared feeble. He rejoiced that England was free. But revenge, no matter how sweet at first, grew harsh to him. He saw the need; he would have been blind not to see the need.
But he could not rejoice in it. Others, many others, felt otherwise.
As Isabella and Albert had before her-and, indeed, as she often had before them-Elizabeth stayed at Whitehall. Servitors who'd likely bowed and scraped before Philip II's daughter and her husband shot Shakespeare scornful glances for his plain doublet and hose. But their manner changed remarkably when they found out who he was.
Elizabeth's throne was off-center on the dais. Till a few weeks before, two thrones had stood there. At the Queen's right hand, on a lower chair, sat Sir Robert Cecil. Since he was small and crookbacked, he had to tilt his chin up to speak to his sovereign.
Making his lowest leg to Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare murmured, "Your Majesty."
"You may stand straight, Sir William. God give you good day." As Elizabeth had been at the Theatre, she was armored against time with wig and paint and splendid gown. Only her bad teeth still shouted out how old she'd grown.
"I am your servant, your Majesty," Shakespeare said. "But command me and, if it be in my poor power, it shall be yours. By my troth, I. "
The Queen's eyes remained sharp enough to pierce like swords. Under that stern gaze, his words stumbled to a stop. He hardly dared breathe. Then Elizabeth smiled, and it was as if spring routed winter.
"I called you here not to serve me, but that I might reward you according to my promise when I made you knight," she said. "That you shall not want, it pleaseth me that Sir Robert settle upon you the sum of. " She looked to Cecil.
"Three hundred fifty pound," he said.
"Gra-Gramercy," Shakespeare stammered, bowing deeply. Along with what he'd got from Sir Robert's father and from Don Diego for Boudicca and King Philip, he was suddenly a man of no small wealth. "I am ever in your debt." "Not so, but rather the reverse," Elizabeth said. "How joyed I am that so good event hath followed so many troublesome endeavors, laborious cares, and heedful undertakings, you may guess, but I best can witness, and do protest that your success standeth equal to the most thereof. And so God ever bless you in all your actions. For myself, I can but acknowledge your diligence and dangerous adventure, and cherish and judge of you as your grateful sovereign. What you would have of me, ask, and I will spare no charge, but give with both hands. Honor here I love, for he who hateth honor hateth God above."
Shakespeare gaped. Did that, could that, mean what it seemed to? He could name whatever he wanted in all the world, and the Queen would give it to him? Before he could begin to speak, Sir Robert Cecil did, his voice dry as usuaclass="underline" "Sir William, I say this only-seek no more gold of her Majesty, for she hath it not to give, England yet being all moils and disorders."
"I understand." Shakespeare hadn't intended to ask for more gold. That would have been like asking for a fourth wish from a fairy who had given three: a good way to lose all he might have gained. He paused to gather his thoughts, then spoke directly to Elizabeth: "Your Majesty, when a lad in Stratford I made a marriage I do repent me of. Romish doctrines being once more o'erthrown"-he saw in his mind's eye the rook landing on Robert Parsons' tarred head outside St. Paul's-"you may order it dissevered, an it please you."
"Have you issue from the said union?" Elizabeth asked.
"Two living daughters, your Majesty, and a son now two years dead," he answered. Hamnet, poor Hamnet. "I would settle on the girls' mother a hundred pound of your generous bounty, that they may know no want all the days of their lives."
"A hundred fifty pound," Elizabeth said sharply. Shakespeare blinked. He hadn't expected that kind of dicker. But he nodded. So did the Queen. She turned to Sir Robert. "Let it be made known to clerks and clerics that this is my will, to which they are to offer no impediment."
"Just so, your Majesty," Cecil said.
The Queen gave her attention back to Shakespeare. "Here, then, is one thing settled. Be there more?"
Three wishes, he thought again, dizzily. "Your Majesty will know," he said, "that whilst I wrote Boudicca I wrote also another play, this latter one entitled King Philip."
Elizabeth nodded. "I do know it. Say on, Sir William. You pique my curiosity. What would you in aid of this King Philip?"