Free Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove

simper and blush. Shakespeare could tell which actor she’d come to see—one of the hired men who played small parts, not a sharer—by the fellow’s ever more unhappy expression. But the hired man had no weapon on his belt, while Lieutenant de Vega not only wore a rapier but, by the set of his body, knew what to do with it.
    Not my concern , Shakespeare thought. He felt a moment’s shame—surely the Levite who’d passed by on the other side of the road must have had some similar notion go through his mind—but strangled it in its cradle. Catching Burbage’s eye, he asked, “Shall we away?”
    â€œLet’s,” the other big man answered. With a theatrical swirl, Burbage wrapped his cloak around him: it had looked like rain all through the play, and, with day drawing to a close, the heavens were bound to start weeping soon.
    A drunken groundling snored against the inner wall of the Theatre. “They’ll need to drag him without ere closing for the night,” Shakespeare said as the two players walked past him.
    Richard Burbage shrugged. “He’s past reeling ripe—belike he’s pickled enough to sleep there till the morrow, and save himself his penny for the new day’s play.” But the idea of the man’s getting off without paying that penny was enough to make him tell one of the gatekeepers outside the Theatre about the drunk. The man nodded and went off to deal with him.
    Shakespeare skirted a puddle. Burbage, in stout boots, splashed through. It did begin to rain then, a hard, cold, nasty rain that made Shakespeare shiver. “This is the sort of weather that turns to sleet,” he said.
    â€œEarly in the year,” Burbage said, but then he shrugged again. “I shouldn’t wonder if you have reason.”
    They walked on. As the rain came down harder, more puddles formed in the mud of Shoreditch High Street. A woman lost her footing and, flailing her arms, fell on her backside. She screeched curses asshe struggled to her feet, dripping and filthy. “Would that Kemp had seen her there,” Shakespeare said. “He’d filch her fall for his own turns.”
    â€œClowns.” Burbage packed a world of scorn into the word. “The lackwits who watch ’em do laugh, wherefore they reckon themselves grander than the play they’re in.”
    Shakespeare nodded. Kemp in particular had a habit of extemporizing on stage. Sometimes his brand of wit drew more mirth than Shakespeare’s. That was galling enough. But whether he got his laughs or not, his stepping away from the written part never failed to pull the play out of shape. Shakespeare said, “Whether he know it or no, he’s not the Earth, with other players sun and moon and planets spinning round his weighty self.”
    â€œOr the Earth and all round the sun, as Copernicus doth assert,” Burbage said.
    â€œHe, being dead, may assert what pleases him.” Shakespeare looked around nervously to make sure no one had overheard. “His Holiness the Pope holding opinion contrary, we enjoy not the like privilege.”
    Burbage frowned. “If a thing be true, it is true with the Pope’s assent or in his despite.”
    â€œHere is a true thing, Dick,” Shakespeare said: “An you speak such words where the wrong ears hear, you’ll explicate ’em to the Inquisition.”
    â€œThis for the Inquisition.” Burbage hawked and spat.
    Easy for him to be brave , Shakespeare thought. He lies under no suspicion . . . yet . As Edward Kelley’s frantic plea had, the questions from Lieutenant de Vega reminded him of the sovereign power of fear. The Spaniard still seemed friendly enough and to spare, but Shakespeare knew he would never think of him as silly and harmless again. By the time this ends, I’ll see foes and spies everywhere, as Marlowe does . He’d had that thought before.
    But Burbage’s