Ruled Britannia Read Free Page B

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.
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    L OPE F ÉLIX DE V EGA 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.
    â€œWhat’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.
    â€œWhat, 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!”
    â€œThine husband?” Despite his horror, de Vega had the sense to keep his voice to a whisper. “Lying minx, thou saidst thou wert a widow!”
    â€œWell, 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