December, 1599 to January, 1601 London
London was in uproar. Huge, exaggerated versions of Essex's ride from Ireland, of his meeting with a naked Queen circulated and grew even more outrageous in the telling. Essex was banished, imprisoned in the Lord Keeper's house on the Strand, allowed only a handful of servants. No visitors were permitted. But the strain of keeping a tight rein on a man such as Essex defeated Sir Thomas Egerton, the kindly old Lord Keeper. Passers-by hurled abuse against the Queen, cries of support for Essex, then ran on, their faces hidden.
'Yet there's a strange load o' people still goin' in there,' said Mannion. 'All 'is old cronies, the ones with no money and even less sense.'
Gresham tried to visit. He was turned away. He resisted the urge to break the guard's head for him. The last thing Essex needed was a brawl on his doorstep. He smuggled a letter in. The reply was depressing.
'He's got religion again.' In courteous yet formal terms Essex's letter rejected Gresham's request for a visit. It suggested that in their wilder days they had forgotten God and Jesus, and that Gresham would need to refer to both before they could properly meet again. Even more worryingly, it was in the Earl's own hand, and sermonised Gresham for two close-written sides. It was as if the child had never existed. Perhaps Essex had made himself forget that it had.
The inns were rife with rebel talk. Essex could do no wrong. Hundreds of men from Ireland had returned to London, were swaggering and fighting in its streets and taverns, all the time professing their loyalty for the Earl, whipping up the already frothing sense of resentment and fear. Gresham had known nothing like it before, this unreasoning sense of anger centred on Essex and the perceived wrong done to him.
No call from Cecil. No call from the Queen. No ghosts from his past rising up to haunt him. Nothing to do, except try to stop Granville College, Cambridge, from self-destructing, manage his finances and do the minimum to keep in at Court. The Christmas festivities were dire, the light gone from them, the Queen surly and flat. Gresham was haunted by the image of the gilded Earl, once the life and soul of these celebrations, banished with a handful of servants to a cold house on the Strand. So near and yet so very far away. What must it be like for the life and soul of the party suddenly to find himself banned from it, reduced to imagining the pleasures of others more privileged, left with only the anger and resentment of his servants and so-called friends?
Gresham felt the black waves of depression starting to advance again on the shifting sands of his brain.
'You're too used to being at the centre of things, my Lord,' said Jane at supper. 'You only know how to run at full speed, and you falter if you're asked to walk.'
He had invited Jane to their first supper together in The House on his return from Ireland. She had asked for the story of the Ride from Ireland, and for some reason he had not finished it until long after the food was cold. It had only been courteous to ask her to attend the next evening, to finish his story. She had asked him to elaborate on some of the opinions he had voiced, and so she had been asked back a third time. So it had gone on, and now she was a regular attender at supper, voicing an opinion occasionally, but for the most part just listening. He was becoming accustomed to her and he was alone in failing to notice how, in the face of his goodwill, more and more power over the running of The House passed to her. And she was very beautiful.
'She's at her worst with Essex,' said Gresham, talking about the Queen. 'You stick the knife in, or you take it out. You don't leave it half in and half out unless you want to enrage the victim.'
'What's she done, my Lord?' asked Jane.
'Dismissed all his servants from Essex House — including those who served him and his father all their lives — and let him go back there with a handful of new servants. He's a prisoner in his old house, reminded every time he opens his eyes of past glories. And she won't try him, just keeps holding these inconclusive hearings.'
'They was 'avin' fun down the road this morning,' said Mannion, helping himself to a third plate of meat and fish.
There had been a near-riot in Cheapside, when an Irish adventurer had sought to stir up the apprentice boys on Essex's behalf. The man had been whipped soundly enough to make him regret his rashness, but the populace took note.
Essex still refused to receive Gresham although he wrote once a week.
Gresham was deeply in need of a visit from George. Letters to him had received an altogether warmer response than their equivalent to Essex, but the answer was the same. Lord Willoughby, for whatever reason, was keeping to his country estates.
Cecil, on the other hand, was charming to him. It worried Gresham more than anything else. A charming Cecil was a Cecil who thought Gresham no longer mattered. And had Cecil been behind the attempt to kill him in Ireland?
Though Gresham would have fiercely denied it, campaigning in Ireland had wakened instincts in him that he was finding it hard to douse down. He had left parts of both his soul and his body in the
Low Countries, had grown up there, received his real education in life there despite everything St Paul's and Cambridge could offer. The bleak risks of soldiering, the stark simplicity and the simple pleasures of a fighting man and above all the comradeship, the sense of a clear and shared danger, were a heady mix that once inserted into a man's brain never left him. It was a restless, almost hunted figure that attended the minimum of Court functions, and joined high table at Cambridge. He was made even more restless by the news of success in Ireland. Forced to be parsimonious in their use of men, the English commanders had reinforced their strongholds, made Tyrone come to them. There had been no more defeats and growing signs of fatigue among those who supplied Tyrone with troops.
And then the world changed disastrously for the Earl of Essex, and also for Henry Gresham.
In June there was a hearing by the Privy Council, of which Essex had once been so proud a member, confirming that he had offended the Queen and failed in Ireland despite every possible advantage. In August Essex was banished from Court. The highest nobleman in the land was now little more than a country squire, permanently separated from the gold mine that was the Court, savagely separated from all patronage.
In October the Queen dealt the most crushing blow of all, deciding not to renew the ten-year lease the Earl of Essex held on the import of sweet wines, but rather to reserve the income to herself. It was one of the richest monopolies in her power. It had funded all Essex's ambition, most of his excesses and the lifestyle of an aristocrat whose parents had left him so little. Its withdrawal did not mean only that he was now yesterday's man. It meant he was bankrupt. The creditors for the thousands of pounds he owed who had held off for fear of offending someone in the Queen's favour or because the grand Earl had a guarantee to fund his debts, all those would now descend on him like vultures determined to be the first to pick the flesh off his bones.
'Is she trying to force him to rebellion?' whispered Gresham, almost to himself. 'Is this her final challenge to him?'
He wrote again to Essex. The rejection came by return.
So Gresham did what he should probably have done in the first place, and went with Mannion and knocked at the door of Essex House. The surly servant seemed willing enough to let him or anyone else in, and after that it took only a very little money indeed to be admitted into Essex's presence.
Gresham's alarm bells sounded from the moment he stood at the door. The yard was full of carousing men, the worst type of soldier, and there was no shortage of beer, though precious little bread and cheese. The story was repeated as Gresham mounted to Essex's private rooms: drunken men, filthy corridors, Essex House stinking of piss, vomit and worse.
'Stay out here and guard me,' said Gresham to Mannion, as a man with a raddled whore in tow ran past them in the narrow corridor, the woman shrieking in mock terror.
'From the whores or from the dirt?' asked Mannion.
Essex was still gloriously good-looking, thin, but not disastrously so. He did not seem at all surprised to see Gresham, and ignored all formal greetings, his face strangely vacant and empty.
'You represent my past,' said Essex, rudely, in high aristocratic mood. It clashed awkwardly with the bare floor and lack of furnishings. The sombre, unadorned black of his dress. 'It is a past I truly repent of. All of it.' He did not mention the child. Perhaps he was regretting his confession.
There was a Bible on the small desk, and a crucifix on the wall. This was a darker person now, one whom Gresham had only ever half known.
'Yet in my prayers I heard a voice telling me that if you came, despite my refusals, it would be a sign. A sign that God has chosen even a weak vessel such as you. To know the truth and to prove it.'
Gresham was deeply regretting coming. Was Essex about to tell him some great religious truth? The man who had sold his soul to Satan?
'If the truth concerns God, I doubt I'm the right person to tell about it,' said Gresham.
There was no hint of humour in Essex's eyes.
'The truth concerns Robert Cecil. And the clear proof I have of his plot to place the Spanish Infanta on the throne of England.'
Gresham's brain reeled for a moment. Was he going to believe the Earl, fascinating drinking companion that he had been, but also a man blessed with the worst judgement of anyone Gresham had known?
'Are you sure confinement and recent disappointments haven't turned your head?' asked Gresham.
'Quite possibly,' said Essex. 'Or possibly God's taken the time to talk to me at last. You concede that the Infanta has a blood link with the Tudors that goes back to John of Gaunt? I have it on direct evidence that Cecil was heard saying to William Knollys that the Infanta of Spain had the best claim to the throne of England.'
'Evidence?' asked Gresham. There was a stark certainty in Essex's voice.
'Categorical evidence,' said Essex. 'The conversation was overheard. And you know, as does any member of the Court, how persistent the rumours have been that Cecil was taking Spanish money.'
Well, that was true. As were the rumours about half the Court taking Spanish money.
'I have done many things,' said the Earl, 'many evil and selfish things. But I have never sold my country to a foreign power.'
'Apart from one overheard conversation, what other evidence do you have?'
'The evidence that stares you and everyone eke in the face. I am ruined because I allowed Cecil the ear of the Queen. And now he is so firmly in command, Elizabeth asks for leniency towards Jesuits and Catholics.'
'That in itself proves nothing. She's never liked burning people.' 'No? But how is it that Raleigh is appointed Governor of Jersey? I detest Raleigh as much as you admire him. How convenient to rid the Court of a hothead and put a professed member of the Spanish faction in charge of England's western defences? One of Cecil's cronies is appointed Warden of the Cinque ports. Nottingham and Buckhurst control the Treasury and the navy between them — two more of Cecil's sycophants. Cecil has made sure his men control the access to England, and its gold. Lord Burghley, Cecil's brother, is now Lord President of the North, suitably poised to cut off any intervention from Scotland. My friend Mountjoy is to be called back from Ireland, and Carew put there in charge of the largest group of armed men in the country's control.' The Earl paused for breath. Despite an outwardly healthy appearance, Gresham saw the weakness and weariness underneath it.
'And the only man with the standing among the people to resist Cecil is ruined and locked up in his own house!'
'My Lord, I'm deeply sorry to see you reduced to your present state.'
You have no money, no prospects, and the Queen who was your sun has put impenetrable clouds between you and her, he thought. What an appalling end for such a man, like locking him in a deep, dark hole but allowing him just enough dried bread and stale water to survive.
'But all that you list can be denied. Witnesses can change their stories, depending on what the listener wishes to hear. Raleigh is a hothead indeed, but many see his new post as banishment from a Queen who tires of him. The other appointments are all in the way of patronage, not abnormal. When men are in the ascendant at Court, it is their friends who gain promotion.'
What Gresham could not say was that Mountjoy had made the success of taming the rebels in Ireland that Essex should have achieved, and being replaced was widely seen as reward for a job well done.
But what if Essex was right? Who would be easier for Cecil to control? The Infanta? Or an older, male King of Scotland who had already proved himself a consummate survivor? And what power and wealth would come to Cecil from Spain if it was he who set up its heir as Queen of England?
Cecil's smell had hung over London for months. What if Cecil had set up Essex for his fall, for no other reason than to divert attention away from his plan to get the Spanish Infanta on the throne of England? Not only had he rid himself of Essex for the summer Essex was in Ireland, and allowed his poison to seep into the heart of the Queen, but he had also rid himself of Gresham, the one man who might have seen through his plottings. Had Gresham allowed himself to be out-manoeuvred again? He made a sudden resolution.
'I'll research your fears,' said Gresham. 'I'll do it as loyally and as committedly as I would if tasked by the Queen — or by Cecil. If there's truth in what you allege, I'll find it out. It's all I can promise.'
'God tells me to give you something in exchange. A measure of my trust in you. You see this, round my neck?'
Gresham was getting rather tired of God telling them what to do. A. small, black bag lay almost invisible against the black velvet of Essex's doublet.
'I have been in communication with King James of Scotland,' said Essex. Is there anyone in this forsaken country who has not been in touch with the King of Scotland, thought Gresham? 'He has written to me. He believes that Cecil is intriguing against him. He will send an embassy to the Queen to ask her intentions regarding her heir, but the real reason for that embassy will be to meet me and hear the truth of who England has allowed to rule it in reality. The letter is here. Around my neck.'
'Precisely where the axe will fall if you let anyone else know what's in that purse!' said Gresham. 'You never did believe in prudence as a virtue, did you?' He sighed. He not only hated it when people claimed that God was speaking to them. He hated when he felt incomparably older and wiser than one of his friends. Gresham much preferred being the young and foolish one.
A number of suspicious glances were directed at them by the men carousing in Essex House as they left, the wild groups in stark contrast to the saintly manner being adopted by Essex.
'They're forcing him to rebellion,' Gresham said to Mannion. 'I'm told that he's been incited more and more by his closest friends. I believe him when he says he's communicating with James. James and Elizabeth are a real match for each other — they juggle people like balls in the air.' They were walking in the bitter winter air away from Essex House, their boots crunching through frozen puddles. Two more pamphlets had been pinned on the wall since they had come, Gresham saw. 'They tried it once before in Ireland, and they failed. Now they're doing it again. But who are they?'
' 'E could be right,' muttered Mannion, eyeing two figures who slunk away to the other side of the road under his gaze. 'Typical o' Cecil to put all the attention on someone like Essex, while 'e's doin' the dirty work all the time in the background.'
'I must know what Essex is doing,' said Gresham. 'I need to know if he's actually got the strength to mount a rebellion and make it succeed.'
No one living in London could be ignorant of the popular discontent running through the streets like storm water.
'But I need to know what others are doing as well. I want letters to Spain, to France and to Rome, and the best men to take them. Every contact we have. We must ferret out if Cecil is doing as Essex says. But there's so little time!'
It was winter now, slowing travel down appallingly. It could take many weeks for letters to return from Spain and Rome, even France. It would be January or February before Gresham could be certain of having contacted all his sources. 'Perhaps he's left enough trace of himself here in England, if the worst is true. Let's hope England can give us an answer.'
Gresham could not know in how terrible a manner his prayer would be answered.
Gresham could burn with impatience, but when he had decided on a course of action Mannion noted that he acquired an almost frightening patience. Half the rogues in London were activated to dig and dig and dig until they hit bedrock, but the results of their enquiries, and a staggering expenditure of cash, crept in with agonising slowness. Now that he was doing something, Gresham's inertia left him, and he flung himself into festivities at Court with all his old enthusiasm, moving easily between the world of Court and the even wilder world of London's writers and artists.
He and Mannion were holding weekly reviews of the information they had gathered. It was late in January that Mannion made his most surprising suggestion.
'You ever thought about bringing that girl in on these chats we 'as?'
'The girl?' Gresham was more startled than offended. 'Why? She's seemed a lot happier recently, she's out of my hair at least. Why should I want to bring her back into it? We're bound to argue again if we talk business. And why her? She just a country girl with an untrained brain and looks to die for — and a personality that can kill.'
'She's got brains, all right,' said Mannion, 'and it's the untrained bit that's good. Means she don't think in channels. And she's a woman. Women see these thing different from men. Witches, they are. Got this intuition about people. And we knows we can trust 'er. She's bin to Scotland, ain't she? And she made her own way over to Ireland — could've been that she saved your life.'
Gresham eyed Mannion with malice.
'Has she put you up to this? I know you're thick as thieves.' *No, she ain't,' said Mannion firmly. 'If she'd been pressin' me for it, that'd be best reason for not lettin' 'er in on any secrets. She ain't pressin'. I am.'
'Will you talk to her first? Tell her she might hear stuff that could get her hung? Tell her she could get all of us hung if she tells anyone else?'
'I'll do more than that,' said Mannion. Til tell 'er not to be impertinent.'
Gresham was far more nervous when he held his first Council of War with Jane present than was usual, until he realised that Jane was even more nervous than he was. He caught sight of her hand trembling an instant before she drew it into her sleeve. In some way it made things easier for Gresham. The girl was strangely withdrawn, tense, holding back.
'Right,' he said firmly, 'let's go through what we've got.'
'Well,' said Mannion, 'the bad news is that the Earl might 'ave got a real little army, if he wants to use it. Word is that 'e's fallen out with Mountjoy, who won't bring the Irish army back to fight for tm.
'So who has he got on his side?' asked Gresham.
'Well, five Earls and three Lords for starters — Southampton, Rutland, Sussex and Bedford, wi' Mounteagle, Cromwell and Sandys just behind.'
'Rutland, Southampton and Bedford… weren't they all wards of old Lord Burghley, like Essex?' asked Gresham.
'True enough,' said Mannion. 'And most of 'em are thousands in debt. An' I mean thousands.'
'Which means on the one hand they can't muster many men, but at the same time they're desperate,' said Gresham.
'And that's the picture with a real ol’ wild bunch he's got with 'im as well. You want the names? You knows most of them.' Gresham nodded, including Jane in the gesture. She would not necessarily know who Essex's lesser supporters were, and there was no point in her joining them unless she was fully briefed.
'Blount, o' course. Then there's that Sir John Davies: bad 'un, that one — acts like a sort of chief of staff, wily bugger. He and that Gelli Meyrick are thick as thieves. Both Essex's creatures: ain't got nothing if they ain't got 'im. Sir William Constable; Sir George Devereux, Essex's uncle; Sir Ferdinando Gorges; Sir Tom Heydon; Sir Robert Cross; Sir Griffin Markham; Richard Chomley; Tom West; Robert Catesby; Francis Tresham… there's about ten or twenty more of 'em — gentry.'
'Christ Almighty!' said Gresham, and Jane recoiled slightly at the blasphemy. 'What a list of… of incompetent, ne'er do wells! It's about everyone who ever missed out on favour at Court.'
'Well, that's it, isn't it?' said Mannion. "Is supporters are the ones 'o got pushed aside at the feeding trough. They're 'ungry, they feels left out, and they're mad.'
'They're also stupid!' said Gresham. 'There's hardly a brain to share between them.'
'Wait till you 'ear the list of the military men,' said Mannion. He reeled off a list of adventurers, many of whom had sailed with Essex to Cadiz on the Azores expedition and gone with him to Ireland.
'Firebrands,' said Gresham, 'drunkards, braggards and loud mouths. Out of work soldiers whose only hope for preferment — or employment — is Essex. What a mixture!'
'Well,' said Mannion, 'mixture they might be, but there's a fair number of them. And all of 'em with a real capacity to raise 'ell. But that's not the worst of it.'
'Go on,' said Gresham. 'Make me happy.'
'The people we sent out into the Marches. They all report one thing. That Gelli Meyrick's been riding round all summer like a lunatic on Essex's lands. Loads o' people there promised 'orsemen, support. Apparently half the borders is willin' to march to London for Essex.'
Jane spoke, softly and obviously nervous.
'Bolingbroke landed in Wales and gathered his army there when he usurped Richard II, didn't he? He took over the Crown with Welsh peasants.'
'Yes, he did,' said Gresham. 'And the link between them's been noticed in a score of pamphlets. Both Welshmen. Both men who seem to have been wronged by the reigning monarch. Both men with massive public support; both men who ended up King when they swore all they wanted was justice, because the King himself was so unpopular.'
There was silence. Mannion had a list in his hand of those who might be presumed to support Essex in a rebellion, a very long list. It seemed as if every bankrupt, every wastrel in the country, almost every man who had fallen foul of Court patronage was there.
'So can he do it?' Jane ventured. Her voice cracked as she spoke. How nervous was the girl? Surely by now she should be getting used to being there? 'The Earl, I mean? Do you think he could overthrow the Queen?'
Gresham thought for a long minute.
'Yes,' he said. 'If he planned it, if the wind was in the right direction, if luck was on his side — rebellions never go according to plan. But the Queen's in decline, Cecil's unpopular, Essex still has hero status with the people — yes, he could do it. Perhaps.'
'Would it be the right thing?' asked Jane. 'For England? For the people?'
Maybe that was why Mannion had asked her to join them. Who else could ask such a treasonable question with such genuine innocence?
Gresham had to think about that one too.
'No. Probably not.' He thought for a moment longer. 'Definitely not. Essex is unstable. He's a spoilt child really, someone who's never grown up. Elizabeth is a mother figure for him. He craves her authority as much as he resents and fights against it. All he really wants is for people to accept him, to see him as the hero he would desperately love to be. He's also got a death wish. He's like the child who wants to attend his own funeral, to see how sorry people will be when he dies. He's got many virtues, actually. But if he became King, his supporters would call in their debts. They'd descend on this country like vultures denied food for years. Good government would stop.'
And he has drunk a child's blood, thought Gresham, a fact he had sworn never to reveal.
'So is Cecil provoking Essex to rebel? Why would he do that? Particularly if Essex might win.'
Gresham was finding this more interesting than he had imagined; Jane's questions were forcing him to put his thoughts in order.
'It's as if the Queen is taunting Essex as well as punishing him — not killing him, but denying him the contact, the favour and the money he needs. That's her instinct — has been all her life — defer the decision until the last moment, change your mind all the time, never put in the killer blow. It's what she did with Mary of Scots. Yet it's wrong with Essex, as it was wrong with Mary. All you do is provoke rebellion. Cecil must know that, and if Cecil told her either to take Essex back into the fold or get rid of him for good on a treason charge, I think she'd do it. So, logically, we've got to deduce that Cecil's holding back, letting the Queen go her own, sweet and thoroughly misguided way. That means he sees profit for himself in Essex rebelling.'
'But how could he profit?'
'He's always seen Essex as a playboy. He's always underestimated the power and strength of popularity. He's always opposed Essex.'
'Why didn't Cecil 'ave Essex killed in Ireland?'
'Perhaps he tried,' said Gresham. 'Perhaps Essex jumped the gun by running home.'
A sudden thought crossed Gresham's mind, a new and blazing insight.
'What if Essex has made a friend and an ally of James? What if he's won with James?' he asked excitedly. 'What if James really does believe Essex is his man, and that Cecil is a sodomite and a creation of black magic? What if the letter I carried up to Scotland failed to do its job? Perhaps Essex was more persuasive and won James round? My God! Essex can be persuasive right enough, and he can write like an angel when he's in the mood. He knows how to flatter as well — he's had a lifetime of practice with the Queen. If he's actually won with James, that would mean Cecil would have to produce an absolute thunderbolt to dislodge Essex from James's favour. James is a devout believer in the divine right of Kings — that monarchs hold their power from God, not man. If Essex rises up against Elizabeth, he damns himself in James's eyes!
It's about the only thing that would wipe Essex out of James's favour! James will never support someone who rises up against their lawful ruler. If Essex rebels, it proves Cecil right all along. It gifts him power with the King-elect, clears his greatest rival out of the way so he can get on with cosying up to James and securing his accession when the time comes. So perhaps Cecil is provoking a rebellion by Essex because he believes it'll fail and deliver final power to him?'
Mannion interrupted. 'But half the Court and even some of our men, and our two contacts in Spain reckon Cecil's been takin' money from Spain for years, to get the Infanta on the throne.'
'He probably has,' said Gresham, 'but he's bound to smarmy up to all contenders while there's any doubt over the issue. He's like the Queen in that. Keep everyone happy until the last minute. I admit Iwas tempted to see him favouring Spain and the Infanta for a while. She'll be putty in his hands, after all, while James is a tried and tested monarch, and no one's fool. Then I thought again. James would come to England as the King of a terribly poor nation, someone thanking God and anyone who had got him the throne for what he was about to inherit. Far better that than have King Philip of Spain pulling all the strings, and having to keep the Queen in control and her father as well.'
'So you're saying that all this trouble with Essex,' said Jane, her eyes wide, 'is because Cecil thinks he will self-destruct. And if he does, Cecil has rid himself of one of his greatest enemies, and built up his reputation for prudence and for being right with both the Queen and James.'
'Then it must 'ave been that bastard Cecil who tried so 'ard to get you killed, first on the Channel and then by that other bastard Cameron fuckin' Johnstone — beggin' your pardon,' said Mannion with a nod to Jane. 'He knew you were a friend o' Essex, knew you'd probably put 'im off rebellion. Must 'ave bin eatin' nails when you stopped him from bringing an army back from Ireland.'
'I suppose so,' said Gresham, 'but somehow it doesn't seem right. Cecil really wanted me to take that letter to James. And hiring twenty men to kill us before the letter was delivered — it doesn't make sense for Cecil, and it's just not his style to kill someone so… so lavishly. Cecil's a back-of-an-alley man if ever there was one.'
'Well, me, I'm stickin' with Cecil trying to set up Essex and stick you one while 'e's at it,' said Mannion, with the strong sense of a man whose journey had ended.
'I'm sticking with something else,' said Gresham. 'I'm sticking with the fact that whoever's been trying to kill me is doing it because I'm one of the few people who might, just might, talk sense into Essex and stop him from rebelling. So someone wants Essex to rebel. But the style of the murder attempts — they haven't been Cecil's style.'
Jane looked at Gresham, and said in a very small voice. 'I think there's something else you ought to know.'
'What's that?' said Gresham, mildly. His mind was on Essex and Cecil. Was it really that simple?
'Lord Willoughby. George,' said Jane.
'What about him?' Dammit! Why, when things were going so well, did the girl have to bring in one of his oldest friends! Willoughby was off territory for her, off limits.
'I know George — he's said I can call him that — is one of your oldest friends, and I know I've no business commenting on him. And I like him a lot. He was always so nice to me when I first came here, when I was an orphan in this terrifying house and seemed to belong to no one. And when I grew up he never dribbled over me or made a pass at me or thought it was clever to be lewd and suggestive.'
'So?' Gresham's tone was cold.
'So Mannion said women were like witches and had intuition. And George — Lord Willoughby — he's changed so much this past eighteen months, ever since the Essex affair started. Changed when we saw him, and now changed because he won't see you.'
'So?' said Gresham again. 'People change. People have moods.' He had decency enough not to refer to the several hundred changes of personality her adolescence had inflicted on him.
'But down at St Paul's’ said Jane, more nervous by the second, 'they talk of all sorts of things. Not just books. Not books at all most of the time. And they've mentioned all the people you've mentioned — Southampton, Rutland and all the lesser people. And — and — and they've talked of George. Lord Willoughby.'
Gresham gave a caustic laugh.
'George has never been at the centre of any events, now or ever. What are they saying of George at St Paul's? That he watched an ear of wheat turn ripe in the country? That he yawned in his dreadful wife's face?'
'No,' said Jane, raising her eyes to look into his. 'They say he's in the pay of Spain. They say he's working for the downfall of Essex.'
Gresham burst out laughing this time, genuine laughter. 'George! You must be joking! George couldn't conspire to swat a fly. Oh, certainly, he hates Essex, always has. But dear, clumsy old George as a spy! It's simply a joke. St Paul's gossip.'
Jane was holding back tears. 'I'm sorry, truly sorry. I knew you'd hate me for saying this. I've tried so hard not to. But you see, the gossip was that he was in London at times when I was sure if he'd been here he'd have come to see you. Except he hadn't. So I didn't believe the gossip. And then I saw him.'
'You saw him?' asked an incredulous Gresham.
'After I've been to see the booksellers, I like to walk through the cathedral. With Mary, of course, and my escort. You know how many people gather there, people who have nothing to do with religion.'
The fact that the nave of St Paul's was used by every criminal in London had given numerous poets the chance to play upon the difference between 'nave' and 'knave'.
'I saw him — George, that is — talking to a man in a corner. They looked like they were arguing, and then George threw up his hands, like this' — she imitated a gesture of mixed anger and frustration — 'looked round and stalked off, pulling his hat low down over his face. He didn't see me, I'm sure.'
'That proves nothing,' said Gresham. 'Even if it was him he could have been talking to anyone.'
'It was him,' said Jane more firmly. 'And I spent the next two or three days waiting for him to visit, because I couldn't conceive of his being in London and not coming to see you. But there was nothing. No visit. No letter, even.'
'And that,' said Gresham, 'was enough to make you believe that George Willoughby — my oldest and beyond any shadow of doubt my most naive friend — was spying for Spain?'
'No,' said Jane; and there was a terrible finality in her voice. 'Like you, I thought life would be much easier if it hadn't been George, if it was someone else who looked and walked like him. And I think I'd half persuaded myself that I'd been mistaken, that it wasn't really him, until that dreadful night on the boat. The Anna.'
Why did it cut him to hear her speak the name of the one woman he had loved with all his heart as well as with his body? Jane waited for Gresham to comment. Something in her voice had stayed him, hooked him onto her story. He remained silent.
'I heard the other boat coming alongside!' she said, the memory clear as if it were happening now. 'I don't know how and I don't know why, but locked down in that dreadful cabin I heard the waves in a different way, and I heard a change. I just knew it was another boat. You'd warned us things might happen, but not shared your plans. I expected shouting, alarms. There was just silence. So I worried that no one else had seen this other boat, that you hadn't spotted it, so I tried to come on deck to warn you. I had my hand on the latch of the door when you fired the cannons. The light was like little, red-hot iron bars showing through where the caulking had gone between the planks of the door.'
'What did you do then?' asked Gresham.
'I pushed the door open,' said Jane. 'I don't know why. I've never been so scared in my life, but for some reason I wanted to see what was happening on deck. And I saw him.'
'Him?' asked Gresham, confused. 'You mean George?'
'No,' said Jane. 'Not George. Not Lord Willoughby. On the other boat. Directing the enemy men. The man he'd been talking to in St Paul's. The small man, with the goatee beard. I swear to you, it was the same person.'
A chasm opened up under Henry Gresham. And he felt himself falling, screaming, down into the abyss. It would be so easy not to believe her. So less hurtful.
'So why have you waited this long to tell me?' His outward manner continued urbane, controlled. Inside, every nerve ending had flames licking at it.
'Because my heart wanted it not to be true, not to acknowledge what my head told me I had seen.' Her tone was frantic now, pleading. 'If those men were the same, it must mean that George was a traitor to you, had conspired against his greatest, his oldest friend. And I was scared, of what it would do to you, and I suppose to me as well.'
Gresham turned to Mannion.
'Was this why you wanted her here, at our meeting? Did she tell you before she told me?'
'Just for once,' said Mannion, glaring at him as he had not done since Gresham was a youth, 'as you're the one who's meant to 'ave the brains, use 'em, will you? Of course she bloody well told me! Or rather, she didn't. She said she 'ad something to say about George that only you could hear, but she was frightened to tell you.' Mannion seemed to be having difficulty getting the words out. 'If you want to know the truth, I thought 'e'd made a pass at 'er. After all, all 'e gets from that wife of 'is is the sharp side of her tongue. Shows 'ow much I know.' Mannion paused. 'You know why this 'as 'appened, don't yer? Why we've had to wait so bloody long to hear somethin' we ought to 'ave 'eard ages ago? It's 'cos you're so pig 'eaded! Every time she's told you the truth you've told 'er she's bein' bloody impertinent, 'aven't you? It's a bloody wonderful recipe for getting someone to tell you what you needs to hear.'
An old Fellow of Granville College, a rather lovely man who had died a year after Gresham had joined as a poverty-stricken undergraduate, had once confided in him and said that friendship was like a loaf: the more thinly you carved it and handed it round, the less sustenance it gave and the less it was worth. You gave a part of yourself to a true friend. The smaller the part, the lesser the friendship. Gresham had only had three real friends in all his life: George, Mannion and, for a brief moment, Anna. And of course there was Jane. Not a friend, but someone whose life had become inextricably woven with his, by accident.
Anna he would never see again. Now the girl, who for all her irritating ways had become part of the fabric of his existence, had proved his greatest friend a traitor to him. And Mannion, who was friend and father, was agreeing with her, and telling him that it was his manner and attitude that was at fault for him not finding out the truth earlier.
At one stroke, Jane had cut through one of the certainties in Gresham's life. He felt sick, physically sick, as if at any moment his stomach would hurl out its contents, as his mind wished it could hurl out what it had been told.
'I must talk to George,' said Gresham flatly.
'He's in London now,' said Jane in a tiny voice, 'or at least, it's rumoured so very strongly in St Paul's.'
'Well,' said Gresham with an irony that would have cut through iron, 'if it's rumoured so in St Paul's, it has to be true.' Despair was a deadly sin, because by its nature it meant one gave up on the prospect of redemption
'You go to 'im?' asked Mannion. 'Or we bring 'im to you?'
'Bring him here!' said Gresham explosively. And in issuing the order for his old friend to be brought to him, Gresham knew that he had accepted the truth of what Jane said. Too many things, too many small gestures had fallen into place as she had spoken. The clinical part of Gresham's brain had seen the truth long before his heart would ever accept it.
'No!' he said suddenly, jumping to his feet, making Jane nearly fall off her stool. 'I'll not have my oldest friend dragged here like a felon, even if he is one! Does St Paul's say where George is to be found?'
Jane whispered something, looking down at the floor. She was crying. 'Speak up.'
'The Duck and Drake. In Cheapside.'
Gresham and Mannion looked at each other. It was a highly respectable inn, so respectable that very few of the informers on Gresham's payroll would ever dream of going there, and hence excellent cover. But why would any of those Gresham paid to spy on London deem it worth reporting to him that his best friend was in town?
'My Lord,' Jane was still looking down, great tears dropping to the floor, 'I am… I am sorry… I…'
There was an icy calm in his heart now. He touched her on her shoulder, and felt the flesh jump under his fingers.
'Look at me,' he said. Two huge, tear-rimmed eyes raised themselves up to his gaze. 'Whatever arguments we might have had, this isn't your fault.' There was no emotion in his voice, no sympathy, not the warmth of a guttering candle. 'It's his fault, and to a far lesser extent my fault for not seeing what should have been clear to me. You
… you're just the agent of tragedy. Not its cause.'
January was at its coldest, and the thin, fashionable gloves Gresham had donned did little to keep him feeling the ends of his fingers. What small warmth the sun had given died with the sunset. Decent people were hurrying home. London handed itself over to a different breed of citizens when darkness fell. The cold seemed to freeze Gresham and Mannion's cheeks, forced water into their eyes. A blast of hot, fetid air hit them as they pushed open the door to the Duck and Drake. The babble of noise dropped slightly as Gresham's saturnine, elegant figure and that of his bulky manservant entered, but only for a moment. This was a respectable inn. So what if one of the gentry had decided to come slumming, to take their drink undiluted before summoning up courage to cross the city to the stews of Shoreditch?
There was no sign of George.
'What we do now? Ask if he's staying?' said Mannion.
'He'll have taken another name,' said Gresham. His calmness was more unsettling than a full-scale rage. A thought came to him. 'Go and ask the landlord if there's an Andrew Golightly staying.' Mannion raised an eyebrow, but did as he was bid. At school George and Gresham had fooled a young and permanently drunk usher that there was a boy called Andrew Golightly in the class, blaming everything they did on him. It had taken weeks for the deception to be revealed, to the huge amusement of the other boys; the whipping he and George received had been deemed well worth the fun.
Mannion returned. 'Sir Andrew Golightly is staying for two nights. He's booked supper for one in a private room. Up there. Servants took it to 'im ten minutes ago.'
They mounted the creaking stairs, ingrained with the smoke from lamps and candles and the cheap coal on the blazing fire, which periodically belched fume, smoke and sparks out into the main room as the wind started to get up outside.
Gresham lifted the simple latch on the door, and walked in. George was coming to the end of his meal, hacking at some hard cheese with his knife as the door opened. He hardly looked up.
'Ten minutes more,' he said, 'and bring me another flagon while-' He looked up. The colour drained instantly from his face, and he stood up.
'Henry! I was just about to come and see you… sudden call to London… business…'
He looked at Gresham, who gazed back expressionless. Slowly his words slowed, and stopped. The two men stood staring at each other in silence.
'When did you first start to spy for Cecil?' asked Gresham finally. 'And did you think that spying on me for him was all in the way of friendship? And how did it feel when you saw your contact on board another ship full of men trying to kill me?' ‘I–I never-I-'
'George,' said Gresham with intense pity, 'I can read you like a book. You've not only betrayed me and everything I thought we meant to each other, you've betrayed yourself, got yourself in way over your head, you poor, idiot booby.' Gresham shook his head, partly in disbelief, partly to rid himself of a terrible pain. George looked as if he was about to be sick. He made a sudden movement. Without anyone quite knowing how it got there, a dagger was cleaving into the wood inches in front of George's face, handle shaking gently with the force of impact.
'I won't kill you now, as I've killed everyone else who's betrayed me, simply for the sake of our friendship. But if you make even the slightest move for a weapon, or any sudden move, I will kill you. Do you understand?'
George cleared his throat, made a noise, cleared it again, swallowed and finally got words out, 'I understand. And I believe you.' *Now,' said Gresham, his voice cold as a frozen sea, 'you'll tell me everything. Mannion!' Even Gresham's tone to Mannion was grim, clipped, short. 'My old friend here's been turning to the bottle increasingly often. Fetch two flagons from the landlord to oil his tongue.'
Mannion left, and took five minutes to return clutching two black large jugs of wine. The two men were still staring silently at each other. Neither had said a word.
'Now, damn you!' and for the first time some of the intensity of Gresham*s feelings crept through into his voice. 'Tell me the truth!'
'Mortgaged,' said George.
'Speak up!'said Gresham.
'Mortgaged!' George nearly shouted. 'Mortgaged to the hilt! All my estate. Mortgaged by my worthless father. Debts everywhere, and the estate collapsing. Walls not mended, wells running foul, corrupt stewards, the wrong crops sown in the wrong fields — and then three bad years, what grain there was rotting in the fields. Men and their families — my men, people I'd grown up with, men and women I knew by name — facing starvation. And marriage to a wife whose fortune turned out to exist more in the imagination of my father than in any reality, and whose mother insists on living like a Queen.'
'So someone came…' prompted Gresham.
'I borrowed as much money as I could. Tried for positions at Court, was rejected all the time. No powerful relations, no contacts; just friendship with the wildest member of the Court, which did me no good at all. I was about to be bankrupted. Then a man came to me. Offered me enough money to bail me out, see off the most pressing debtors for six months or so.'
'And what did this man ask for in exchange for his money?'
'He wanted me to spy on Essex!' There was anger in George's voice. At least he had some spirit left. 'Not you! He said he was working for the government, and I assumed that meant Cecil, and that Cecil and Elizabeth feared Essex above all others as an enemy and future King of England. Well, I hated Essex — you've always known I hate Essex — so I didn't see that as a betrayal. You only came into it because I could use my friendship with you to get closer to Essex, get inside his social circle.'
'But it didn't stop there, did it?' said Gresham. 'And before he gave you the gold, he made you sign a paper, didn't he?'
'How did you know?' said George, shocked.
'Just tell me,' said Gresham.
'Well, yes, he did make me sign something. It was that or ruin, and everyone knows that half the Court's taking money from Spain! I thought it's what they made everyone do. I thought if everyone else at Court was getting their slice of the pie, why shouldn't I? And then-'
'And then,' said Gresham, 'your little tame man paid you even more money to spy on me. To tell him what I was saying to Essex. He said of course that he knew I was going to Scotland for Cecil, but that you had to tell him if I was about to be sent on any secret missions for anyone else, or carry any secret messages. And where I was to go.'
'Well, yes,' spluttered George, going a deep red, 'but he assured me-'
'That I wouldn't come to harm,' said Gresham. 'Indeed, you would be helping me. Your little man, who spoke perfect English and could so easily have been Cecil's man, who knew so much more about what was going on than you could ever hope to know, told you that if any mission you reported on was going to be dangerous for me he would warn you, and you could warn me. Knowledge, that was all he was after. Pure knowledge. And of course you told him, you poor fool, that I was carrying a message from Elizabeth as well, didn't you? And he thanked you and said that if you carried on simply watching and reporting, not only would no harm come to me but you would find yourself in receipt of a Court pension, or perhaps even a share in one of the lesser monopolies-'
'But how do you know all this? You've used almost his exact words-'
'Because it's how I would have played you, like a fish on a line, how any professional would play a poor, bumbling idiot who stumbled into their trap.’
The words were tumbling out of George now. 'And then you told me about the man. On the boat. With the goatee beard. You told me he was the leader of a brutal bunch of thugs who tried to kill all three of you.'
'And your little world fell apart, didn't it?' said Gresham pityingly. Except there was a harsh undercurrent in his tone. 'All of a sudden you started to realise that you'd been betrayed, that your little man would as like kill me and you if it suited him, and that you'd been used. Used by Cecil. And you probably thought it was about the Queen's message, that in some way Cecil feared it and wanted it stopped, and me stopped in case she'd told me what it was. And you realised what you'd become Judas.'
'I never meant to-'
'It's the most pathetic excuse people like me hear all the time. If your panic over money hadn't totally clouded any judgement you might have had, you'd have seen that the only thing in the interests of Cecil and others is Essex's total destruction. Either by a rebellion that brings him down, or by his making a total fool of himself. And I'm one of the few people who every now and again has been known to talk sense into him, so I pose a threat to all those who want Essex dead.'
'But you've never faced the loss of everything you own and love!' It was almost a howl from George.
'I owned nothing for a large part of my life,' said Gresham witheringly. 'And I can assure you, I value my honour and my friends more than my possessions.'
In the silence that followed, the talk from the crowded inn filtered through the door. Someone walked heavily across the floor in the room above, and a few tiny particles of dust fell from the thick, dark beams on the ceiling.
'There's one other thing you haven't told me,' said Gresham.
'I can't think of anything-' George started to reply.
'Cameron Johnstone's taken over from your original contact. The little man on the boat.'
George's shoulders sagged even more.
'You know everything,' he said. 'I was a fool to think I could match you.'
'Match me?' said Gresham. It was his turn for confusion now.
'Oh,' said George with a harsh laugh, 'so there is something you don't know. Of course I wanted to match you. All my life you've moved effortlessly through plot after plot, intrigue after intrigue. You've gambled with kingdoms, walked through high and low life with equal ease, always seemed to be in charge whoever it was asking you for your favours. You made it all look so easy, and I was jealous. Jealous to the core of my being.'
'How dreadful for you,' said Gresham. 'Well, just to show my effortless ease, let me predict what Cameron said to you when he reintroduced himself to you in Ireland. I imagine he said that he was replacing Mr Little Beard of boating fame, and that you'd better damn well listen because what you'd signed in receipt of your first bribe and hadn't really read because you were so hungry for the money, wasn't a receipt but a contract with the Pope to take his money. A contract that could have you hung. And then he left you alone for a bit, but with quite a lot of money to soften the blow to show you the deal was still on. And I bet he's been to see you recently and come clean, and said that at all costs Essex must be made to rebel. If I looked as if I was going to do anything to stop it, you needn't kill me so long as you knocked me out or drugged me. And if you didn't, Cecil would have me killed.'
'Yes,' said George. 'You are right.' There was a dignity to him, despite all the odds. Stripped of his pathetic attempts at intrigue, caught out for what he was, he stood exposed and shivering. He appeared a simple but a genuine man. He was not trying to fight Gresham's rapier thrusts, had not sought to do so: it takes strength to face up to one's total foolishness.
'So what you said when I first made an appearance here was true,' said Gresham. 'You were coming to see me. You were going to stick to me like glue, and I bet you've wasted days and a lot of money buying powders to put in my drink from every quack in London.'
'What happens now?' asked George. 'To you and me, I mean.'
'What happens to you? That's your business. If you don't fulfil your obligation, Cameron will crawl out of some rotten woodwork and demand repayment. You'll have to explain to him that unfortunately you can't repay him, at least in terms of any contact with me. Because there won't be any contact. We no longer know each other. Don't bother to call, here or in Cambridge because you won't be let in. Ever again.'
Gresham stood up, yanked his dagger out from the table, and turned away. There was a chasm where his heart used to be, and an aching blackness.
'Henry.'
Gresham did not want to stop. He did so, for a moment, in the doorway, his back to George.
'I'm truly sorry, for the insignificance that's worth.' Gresham said nothing, but nodded briefly as if acknowledging a passing comment. The door closed behind him.
Mannion had always had the knack of knowing when to say nothing, and he exercised it now. He was the only silent person, apart from Gresham in the inn. Something had obviously excited the clientele, and groups of them were gathered in huddles of heated discussion. As they reached the door to the street, Mannion halted, and said to Gresham, 'I knows as you don't want to stay 'ere any longer than you 'as to. But 'ave you 'eard what they're talkin' about? I think we ought to get the story.'
Gresham turned and gave a nod to Mannion as brief as that he had given to George. Mannion looked for a moment round the room, and picked on an elderly man who looked as if his tankard might be permanently wedged to his face judging by the ferocity with which he was ramming it there to drain the last dregs. As the tankard finally dropped it was to reveal Mannion beckoning him, a coin held between his finger and thumb.
The man came over, and Mannion flipped him the coin.
'What's the'news then?' he asked, as the man raised the coin in the air and a tap boy came over to take the order.
'Ain't you 'eard?' said the old man. 'Southampton — Earl of Southampton, that is — were riding by Raleigh's house this afternoon, and Grey, Lord Grey, rode at him wi' 'is sword, tried to kill 'im, 'e did. One o' Southampton's pages, 'e 'ad 'is 'and lopped right ‘orf, he did. Cut off clean as a whistle.'
Grey and Southampton had a long-standing hatred for each other, and the Privy Council had been spending much of its time forbidding them to have a duel. Grey was Cecil's man.
'Well,' said Mannion, 'that'll put the cat among the pigeons.' There was no answer from Gresham. 'Look,' said Mannion, 'I don't want to intrude-'
'I wouldn't,' said Gresham, still locked in his own world. How could George have betrayed him? How could he have been so stupid?
'About all it needs,' said Mannion remorselessly, 'for your friend the Earl to go pop is for one of Cecil's cronies to ride full pelt at 'is closest friend. Which, 'as it 'appens, is exactly what 'as 'appened. I'm sorry about George, I really am. I thought 'e were a good man. But get your arse in order, will you? 'Cos if Essex takes off, we could 'ave your pal as King by mornin'!'