He bumped into a woman-someone's wife, he couldn't remember whose. "So sorry, my lady," he said.

"With your permission?" He bowed over her hand and kissed it. She smiled back in a manner that might have been encouraging.

"Watch out for Master Lope," round-faced Will Kemp said behind him. "Lope the loup, Lope the lobo."

The company clown howled wolfishly. Raucous laughter rose. Lope joined it, the easiest way he knew to deflect suspicion. The woman turned to talk to an Englishman, so there was no suspicion to deflect, anyhow. Aes la vida, de Vega thought, and sighed.

He congratulated Burbage and the boy who'd played Rosalind. "I thank you kindly, sir," the youth replied. In his powder and paint, he still looked quite feminine-even tempting-but his natural voice, though not yet a man's, was deeper than the one he'd used on stage. He wouldn't be able to pretend to womanhood much longer.

At last, de Vega made his way to Shakespeare. The actor and playwright stood off in a corner, talking shop with darkly handsome Christopher Marlowe. Lope bowed in delight. "My two favorites of the English stage, here together!" he cried.

"Good day-or should I say good even, Master de Vega?" Shakespeare replied. "Have you met Master Marlowe here?" To Marlowe, he added, "Lieutenant de Vega writes plays in Spanish, and more than once hath trodden the boards with Lord Westmorland's Men as extra."

"Indeed?" Marlowe murmured. His cool, dark eyes measured Lope. "How. versatile of him." He nodded and bowed. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir."

"We have met once or twice, sir, but how can I be surprised if you recall it not?" de Vega said. By the way Marlowe eyed him, though, he wondered if the Englishman ever forgot anything. Enrique, Captain GuzmA?n's servant, had that same too-clever-by-half look, and he never did.