" Buenos dias, your Excellency," Lope said as he walked in. He swept off his hat and bowed.

"Good day," Captain Baltasar Guzman replied, nodding without rising from his seat. He was a dapper little man whose mustaches and chin beard remained wispy with youth: though Lope's superior, he was a good fifteen years younger. He had some sort of connection with the great noble house of GuzmA?n-the house of, among others, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander of the Armada-which explained his rank. He wasn't a bad officer, though, in spite of that. Enrique wouldn't let him be a bad officer, Lope thought.

"And how may I serve you today, your Excellency?" he asked.

Captain Guzman wagged a forefinger at him. "I hear you were out late last night."

"She was very pretty," de Vega replied with dignity. "Very friendly, too."

"No doubt," Guzman said dryly. "Our job, though, is to hunt down the English who are not friendly to King Philip, God bless him, not to seek out those who are."

"I wasn't on duty then." Lope tried to change the subject: "Is there any new word on his Majesty's health?"

"He's dying," Baltasar Guzman said, and crossed himself. "The gout, the sores. Last I heard, those are getting worse. He may go before the Lord tomorrow, he may last a year, he may even last two. But dying he is."

Lope crossed himself, too. "Surely his son will prove as illustrious as he has himself."

"Surely," GuzmA?n said, and would not meet his eyes. Philip II was no great captain, no warrior whom men would follow into battle with a song on their lips and in their hearts. But such captains did his bidding. In his more than forty years of gray, competent rule, he had beaten back the Turks in the Mediterranean and brought England and Holland out of heresy and back into the embrace of the Catholic Church. More flamboyant men had accomplished far less.