Ruled Britannia Read Online Free Page B

before. “Yes, the Devil take the cold, and the rain, and the fog—and he’s welcome to the Englishmen while he’s at it. They’re all heretics at heart, no matter how many of them we burn.” The rest of the patrol nodded yet again.
    â€œAmen,” de Vega said. “Well, now that I know where I’m going, I’ll be off. I thank you for your help.” He bowed once more.
    Returning the bow, the sergeant said, “Sir, I’m afraid you’ll only get lost again, and the streets aren’t safe for a lone gentleman. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” If anything does happen to you, I’ll get blamed for it —Lope knew how to translate what he said into what he meant. The underofficer turned to his men. “Rodrigo, Fernán, take the lieutenant back to the barracks.”
    â€œYes, Sergeant,” the troopers chorused. One of them made a splendid flourish with his torch. “You come along with us, sir. We’ll get you where you’re going.”
    â€œThat’s right,” the other agreed. “We know this miserable, fleabitten town. We’d better—we’ve tramped all through it, night and day.”
    â€œI throw myself on your mercy, then,” Lope said. They wouldn’t be sorry to take him back, not when it got them out of the rest of the patrol. He didn’t know how long that was; he’d lost track of time.
    They proved as good as their word, too, guiding him back to the big wooden building by the London Stone. Some Englishmen swore the great stone with its iron bars was magical; some Spaniards believed them. Lope de Vega didn’t care one way or the other. He was just glad to see it looming out of the mist.
    A sentry called out a challenge. The soldiers answered it. “What are you bastards doing back here?” the sentry demanded. “You only went out an hour ago.”
    â€œWe’ve got a lost gentleman, a lieutenant, with us,” the trooper named Fernán replied. “Sergeant Diaz sent us back with him—couldn’t very well leave him running around loose for some English cabrón to knock him over the head.”
    â€œI may be a lieutenant, but I am not a child,” Lope said as he advanced. Fernán and Rodrigo and the sentry all found that very funny. What sort of lieutenants have they dealt with? he wondered. Or am I better off not knowing?
    The sentry did salute him in proper fashion, and let him go in. A sergeant inside should have taken his name, but the fellow was dozing in front of a charcoal brazier. Lope slipped past him and into his room, where he pulled off his hat and boots and sword belt and went to bed. Diego, his servant, already lay there snoring. Diego, from everything Lope had seen, would sleep through the Last Judgment.
    I might as well have no servant at all , de Vega thought, drifting toward sleep. But a gentleman without a servant would be . . . Unimaginable was the word that should have formed in his mind. What did occur to him was better off . He yawned, stretched, and stopped worrying about it.
    When he woke, it was still dark outside. He felt rested enough, though. In fall and winter, English nights stretched ungodly long, and the hours of July sunshine never seemed enough to make up for them. Diego didn’t seemed to have moved; his snores certainly hadn’t changed rhythm. If he ever felt rested enough, he’d given no sign of it.
    Leaving him in his dormouse-like hibernation, Lope put on what he’d taken off the night before, adjusting the bright pheasant plume in his braided-leather hatband to the proper jaunty angle. He resisted the temptation to slam the door as he went out to get breakfast. My virtue surely piles up in heaven , he thought.
    He joined a line of soldiers who yawned and knuckled their red eyes. Breakfast was wine and a cruet of olive oil—both imported from Spain,as neither the grape nor the olive