Shakespeare made a noise down deep in his throat, nothing close to a word: "Urrr." Skeres might call it a game, but games didn't kill. Some do, Shakespeare corrected himself: baiting the bear or the bull. He could almost feel fangs tearing into him.
Still shaking his head, he left the house in Drury Lane. He was halfway home before realizing no one had said anything about how Nick Skeres would return to London. He shrugged. Skeres, he was sure, would prove as slippery and evasive as a black-beetle or a rat. He wished he could say the same for himself.
III
Lope De Vega waved to a tall, scrawny Englishman in ragged clothes who stood, as hopefully as he could, by a rowboat. "You there, sirrah!" he said sharply. "How much to row us across to Southwark?"
He pointed to the far bank of the Thames.
"Tuppence, sir," the fellow answered, making a clumsy botch of his bow. "A penny each for you and your lady."
"Here, then." Lope gave him two bronze coins. "Put us ashore as near to the bear-baiting garden as you may."
"To the old one, or the new?" the boatman asked.
"To the new," de Vega replied.
"Yes, sir. I'll do't." The Englishman smiled at his companion. "Mind your step as you get in, my lady."
"Have no fear, my dear, my sweet," Lope said grandly, and gave Nell Lumley his arm. She smiled as she took it. She was as tall as he, blond and buxom, and called herself a widow for politeness' sake, though de Vega doubted she'd ever wed. But she was fond of him, and he always enjoyed squiring a pretty woman around. He expected to enjoy lying with her afterwards, too. Cold country, hot blood, he thought; Englishwomen had pleasantly surprised him.
And he enjoyed the feeling of being half, or a little more than half, in love. It heated his own blood, as a cup of wine would. As often as not, he discarded one mistress and chose another for no more reason-
but also, he told himself, for no less reason-than to have that sweet intoxication singing through his veins.
So now: he swept off his cloak, folded it a couple of times, and set it on the bench for Nell. She wagged a finger at him. "Ah, Lope, my sweetheart, thou needst not do that."
"I do't not for that I need to," he answered. "I do't for that I want to. Sit, sit, sit, sit." He clucked like a mother hen. Laughing, she sat.
The boatman pushed the rowboat into the Thames, then scrambled aboard himself, his boots dripping.
He knew how to handle the oars, feathering them so next to no water dripped from the blades. They hadn't gone far when Nell Lumley wrinkled her short, pert nose. "By Jesu, the river stinks." A dead dog, all puffy and bloated, chose that moment to float past them, heading downstream.
"How can it help stinking?" Lope replied. "It is London's sewer. And London stinks. What city stinks not? The city of heaven, mayhap, proving angels dwell therein."
Of course, folk downstream drank the water into which folk farther upstream poured their shit and piss and offal. Lope knew that. He'd always known it. How could he, how could anyone, help knowing it?
But it wasn't anything he usually thought about. He took it for granted, as anyone did. Now, bobbing on the stinking stream, he couldn't. He gulped.
" 'Steeth, lean over the side or ever you cast!" the boatman exclaimed.
And put more filth in the river, de Vega thought. He clamped his teeth together. In a little while, the sick spell passed. Nell said, "If passage over the Thames makes thee like to sick up thy dinner, what of coming here in the Invincible Armada?"
Remembering the passage from Lisbon to Dover almost did make him lose his last meal. He patted his mistress' hand and gave her the prettiest lie he could come up with: "The company I keep here makes me forget all that chanced before I set foot on England's shore."
Nell Lumley blushed and stammered. The boatman, sweat starting out under his arms despite the chilly weather, made a distinct retching noise. Lope shot him a hard look. He stared back, only effort on his face. Nell didn't seem to have noticed. Lope let it pass-for the moment. Englishmen were rude by nature.
The boat's keel grated on mud less than a furlong west of London Bridge. "Southwark, sir," the boatman said, as smoothly as if he hadn't been insolent a moment before. He pointed. "There's the new bear-baiting garden-you can see it past the roofs of the stews."
"Yes. Thank you." De Vega handed Nell out of the boat. He tipped the boatman only a farthing. True, the fellow had rowed well, but he didn't intend to forget the way the man had mocked his compliment.
Without a word, the boatman pocketed the small coin. Without a word, he shoved his boat into the Thames and started rowing back toward London. And then, out of range of Lope's rapier, he let fly:
"Leather-jerkin, crystal-button, knot-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue Spanish pouch!"
No matter how useless it was, Lope's hand flew to the hilt of his sword. Nell giggled, which did nothing to improve his temper. She said, "Fret not. He's jealous, nothing more."
"And so he hath good reason to be," Lope answered, mollified, "for am I not the luckiest man alive in Christendom?"
"Ah," Nell said softly, and dropped her eyes.
They had to walk down a street of stews to get to the bear-baiting. Even though de Vega went arm in arm with his companion, the lewd women called out invitations that made his ears burn. Pretending he didn't hear, he kept walking.
"He wants you not," one of the women called to another, "for see you? He hath already a whore of his own."
Where Lope had been angry at the boatman, Nell was furious at the prostitute. "Stinking, poxy callet!"
she yelled. "I bite the thumb at thee!" That was the thee of insult, not of intimacy.
The contents of a chamber pot came flying out of a third-story window and splashed in the street just in front of them. Fortunately, most of the splash went the other way; Lope and Nell weren't badly fouled.
Nell was still fuming. "Henry VIII closed the stews," she said, "nor did they open again until the coming of. Queen Isabella and King Albert."
In different company, she might have said something hot about the Spaniards, Lope thought. But he said only, "King Henry may have closed these stews, but surely, in a town the size of London, others flourished."
"That they dared cast whoredom in my face. " But Nell didn't directly answer Lope's comment, from which he concluded she couldn't very well disagree with him.
They hurried on toward the bear garden. A long queue of Englishmen and — women of all estates, leavened by a sprinkling of Spaniards, advanced toward the entry. The building was an oval that put de Vega in mind of a Roman amphitheater, though built of wood and not enduring stone. Inside, dogs were already barking and growling furiously.
At the entryway, Lope gave the fellow taking money a pair of pennies. The Englishman waved him forward. At the stairs farther on, most people went up. He handed fourpence to the man waiting there with another cash box. The man gave him a professionally courteous nod. "Want to be in at the death, eh?" he said. "Go on down, then, and find places for yourselves as close to the pit as ye may."
"There!" Nell pointed. A few spaces remained in the very lowest row of benches. "If we hurry-" Now she led Lope, not the other way round. She went so fast, she tripped on the hem of her skirt as she hurried down the stairs. She might have fallen had he not held her up. "Gramercy," she said, and kissed him on the cheek.
An Englishman and his wife and their young son were making for the same seats. They gave Lope and Nell sour looks when they found themselves edged out. The man, a big, burly fellow, muttered something into his beard. "Nay, hush," said his wife, whose pinched face bore what looked to be a perpetually worried expression. "Beshrew me if he be not a don."