February, 1601 London
The scenes at Essex House were ugly. Half an army was camped in the yard, but there were no orderly lines, no bread and cheese. Instead, there was vomit over the cobbles, half-drunk men shouting and cheering, at least two men lying unconscious in a corner, heeded by no one.
It was harder to get in to see Essex. There were guards at the entrance to the house, and armed men outside the room he was in. A group of men emerged from it as Gresham and Mannion mounted the stairs, including Gelli Meyrick and the small, wiry figure of John Davies. Both men drew back, hands on their swords. Before either of them could get their swords more than half out of their scabbards Gresham's blade was in the air between them. Mannion had turned round instantly and was back to back with him, having drawn from somewhere on his person a strange, flat, heavy blade like a Roman sword.
Gresham appeared entirely calm, his sword blade rock steady at eye height.
'I'm rather tired of people trying to stop me seeing my friend,' he said, and despite the quietness of his tone, his voice carried down the stairwell. 'And I do so tend to lose control when I'm tired. Now let me through.'
Suddenly his blade was resting on the side of Davies's neck, right where the vein pulsed.
'What if your friend doesn't want to see you?' asked Davies, tense but not cowed.
'Well, let's find out, shall we? If you and the rest of the crew back into the hallway there, you can let us through, can't you?' Essex's room was at the top of the stairs, with a small corridor outside, a corridor that led to a hallway with a view over the yard.
'You've drawn your sword on me,' hissed Davies, motioning the others behind him to move back. Southampton was there, Gresham could now see, standing on tip-toe to peer over the shoulders of those in front.
'I had noticed,' said Gresham mildly.
'You'll pay!' said Davies.
'One of us might,' said Gresham. His reputation as a swordsman was fearsome. Davies dropped his gaze for a moment.
Essex was agitated, the quasi-religious calm of their previous meeting gone. He was sweating, in his shirt despite the cold weather, tugging at the fine lace on his sleeves. His beard was straggly, untrimmed, his eyes red-rimmed and his pupils pin-points. An awful thought crossed Gresham's mind. Had Essex drunk human blood more than once?
'Has Cecil sent you to attack me? He seems willing enough to-order one of his closest allies to attack my friend, in public, in full view of the world?'
'If Cecil is the biggest shit in the land, then Grey is certainly a major and steaming turd. In that sense at least I'm smelling rather clean at present.'
'Who sent you this time? Which of my enemies?'
'Your biggest enemy is yourself,' said Gresham brutally. 'You're being set up, you idiot, and you can't see it. And as for who I'm working for, I've just uncovered a spy who has tried to have me killed, all because I try to keep an eye on you. If you want to kill yourself, go ahead. You always were a pig-headed fool who listened either to himself or to the wrong people. But this is personal. You're in danger of getting me killed, and that takes friendship too far.'
'You spin a fine tale, but what value is there in friendship that comes out of a glass?' Essex was speaking fast, as if he had somewhere else to go in a hurry. 'Do you think I don't know how much I'm being pushed into a situation I don't want! It's like Ireland all over again, in case you hadn't noticed. I had to go over to that God-forsaken country because my reputation and my honour gave me no option. The worst mistake of my life! I've lost access to the Court, I'm ruined — a passive victim for the next time Cecil wants to set me up in some invented plot against the Queen. Do you think I don't know what happens to disgraced nobles? Even if they don't plot themselves, they become a centre for everyone who does. Look in that yard if you want to know how many unhappy sword-bearers there are in England!'
'Are you really telling me you've no option but to rebel?' asked Gresham, incredulous. 'Or is that what that bunch of brainless hotheads I just met coming out of your room tell you?'
Essex looked Gresham full in the face for the first time since they had met.
'I have friends other than you. Other advisers. Men who have contact with my future, not my past.' As if on cue, the door opened.
Cameron Johnstone had dyed his hair black, grown a full beard and a moustache of similar colour, and must have eaten himself silly to put on two or more stone. The coal-black hair clashed with the wrinkled face and neck of a man nearing forty, but the combination of appearance change would have been enough to fool most onlookers who had never met or spent time with him. He had also changed his clothing. Gone was the sober attire of the Scottish advocate, to be replaced by double- and treble-slashed doublet and hose, in emerald green, pinched in at the waist, ballooning out until captured again just below the knee. The whole array was just this side of fashionable.
Cameron came unsuspecting into the room without knocking, Gresham noted, saw Gresham and turned to run, only to meet the vast bulk of Mannion who had stepped out from behind the door and closed it. He stood four-square in front of it, short sword clutched firmly in his hand. Cameron flicked a glance towards the window, sized Gresham up.
'We're on the second storey,' said Gresham quietly, 'and there's no balcony, no other door. Quite a fire risk, actually. And if you attack me I'll have my sword through your traitorous, stinking heart before you can even reach your dagger.'
'Kill him,' said Essex, 'and you'll have to kill me. And you'll never leave this house alive.'
Gresham weighed up the odds. Essex was lying. Mannion could kill Cameron in the blink of an eye, and Essex, good as he was, was no match for Gresham. If both jobs were done quickly enough, the noise in the house would cover them. They could probably make it down the stairs and out through the yard.
But he didn't want to kill Essex! And was Cameron worth it?
'You're wrong,' Gresham said easily. 'As you usually have been these past two years or so. If we killed you both, the odds are on our side. Which is more than can be said for you if you're listening to this turncoat little animal.'
'You think he works for Cecil,' said Essex. 'I know. There are others who think he works for the Pope, for France and even for Spain. But I know the truth. I know that he works for King James the First of England, or the man who will become so soon enough; he has done so all along.'
'And therefore is your only hope,' said Gresham, sadly.
Essex looked up sharply. Cameron simply stood there, half crouching, eyes darting from one speaker to the other.
'How say you?' asked Essex.
'You've lost the favour of the Queen, Cecil controls the Court and Raleigh will kill you if you ever get back into favour. You hate the Spanish and they hate you, Henry of France distrusts you and you're too proud to contemplate divorcing your wife, even if you could, and too honourable simply to push her down some stairs, so you can't marry the dreaded Arbella Stuart. King James is your only hope of getting back into royal favour. Oh, I can write this little toad's speech for you,' said Gresham motioning towards Cameron who jumped slightly, as if worried there might be a knife in Gresham's fingers. 'And of course,' he continued, 'James doesn't want you to rebel as such, just keep the Queen in your custody for a while, so you can talk sense to her, perhaps even arrange an abdication. Or at least a sworn document in front of every bloody Bishop in the country stating that James will be the next King.'
Gresham could see he had got it right from the expression in Essex's eyes.
'Get out of here, please,' said Essex, after a long pause. 'I can no longer trust you. I'm sorry. I acknowledge the friendship we've had in happier times, but it must end now. It was a different friendship, for different, more innocent times. We won't see each other again.'
What Essex was saying was so extraordinarily similar to what Gresham had said to George a short time earlier that he had a fit of deja vu.
'That choice is yours. But if these are to be my last words to you as a friend, they're the most important I've ever said to you in my whole life. Don't trust this man. Like the Devil who seems to speak true, he'll only lead to your destruction. There's nothing good for you in this man. Nothing.'
He did not say goodbye. He motioned to Cameron to move aside, waiting for the rush with the dagger that did not come. They made it out to the yard and into the street without incident, slightly to Gresham's surprise.
'Now I am confused,' said Mannion.
'You're always confused,' said Gresham absent-mindedly. 'It's not your fault. It comes from not having a brain.'
'This is serious,' said Mannion. 'George thought Cameron was working direct for Cecil, which means it was Cecil who tried to kill you. Essex thinks Cameron's working for James, which means it's James 'oo tried to knock you off. Can't both be right, can they?'
'No,' said Gresham, 'but they can both be wrong. Horribly wrong.'
All the time he was thinking how extraordinarily clever someone had been. George was an ideal recruit. Right under Gresham's nose and beyond suspicion of spying on him. Out of the London circle of spies, informers, cut-purses, rogues and rascals, and as far distant from the roistering drunkards who made up Essex's crowd, George could be seen near them without arousing the least suspicion. Another country bumpkin on the edge of the charismatic leader's life, looking on in wonder and innocent admiration, probably never going to exchange even a word with the Earl in his life.
'You goin' to tell me?' said Mannion. 'I mean, tell me who Cameron is actually working for?' There was little sign of hope in his voice. He had met Gresham in this mood before, when he closed up like a castle with portcullis and drawbridge firmly shut, and not a light on in any of the towers.
‘No,' said Gresham, 'not yet. Not until I'm certain. But I want you to do something. I want all those men we've had working for us given new instructions. I want to know who George's been seeing. Everyone. I said I could read him like a book. There's a page he hasn't shown me. He's keeping something from me. I must know what it is.'
'Then fer Christ's sake tell the girl she was right about George. It's bad enough she's shopped your best mate to you. The thought she might have got it wrong'll be driving her mad.'
It was as reasonable a request as it was unpalatable. Gresham wanted to banish the thought of George from his mind for twenty-four hours, to come to terms with what had happened, not raise the scab on the new wound so shortly after it had been inflicted.
Jane's room was up in the attic, sparsely furnished, he noted, her books neatly stacked on rough planks resting on house bricks. She had not stopped crying, the red rims round her eyes burning and fierce, her expression lost. Red eyes, but very different from Essex. Mannion had refused to go with him.
'You go to 'er,' he had said firmly. 'She's got a tongue in 'er 'ead, and an 'alf, and so 'ave you. Time you started goin' at each other direct, this workin' through me on the important things, it just won't do any more. We've all grown out of it.'
'But why do I have to go and see her in her room? And alone? Won't the servants talk?'
'Not if I 'ears 'em, they won't,' said Mannion grimly. 'And you gotta see 'er in 'er place because the minute you demands to see 'er, it's Lord and Master talks to servant. It ain't what this is about. She'll be shit-scared you'll 'ate 'er for tellin' you a truth you didn't want to 'ear. After all, it's what she's bin' doin' most of her life. Only difference is, the truths 'ave got a lot more important.'
'You were right,' said Gresham. He felt extremely awkward, standing with his head bowed under the sloping roof. The bed had a heavy cover on it. If he concentrated enough he could persuade himself it was not a bed, simply a large chest with a huge counterpane over it. 'About George. I can't say thank you, not without it sticking in my throat. What you said lost me a friend. And I happen to think friendship, true friendship, is the most precious commodity of all. Stronger than sex, stronger even than blood, and so very hard to find. And you can't replace a friend. It's a special place a friend lives in, and once they leave no one ever inhabits that same room again. So there'll be an empty room in my life for evermore.'
'I am so sorry,' she said. There was a sniffle in her voice. She was standing too, her head slightly bowed, and her nose was running. She desperately wanted to wipe it, but was afraid to do so in case it made her look ridiculous. Suddenly, against all his mood and feelings, he wanted to laugh. Laugh as he had laughed so often with Essex, and with George. Laugh at how ludicrous it all was. Muscles he had forgotten he had tugged at the corner of his lips, a smile desperate to break out.
He gave in.
'I think you'd better wipe your nose,' he said. 'I don't know what it's doing to you, but it's hell to watch.' He proffered a fine linen handkerchief, hanging fashionably loose from his wrist. 'It's a pity we can't stop bowing to each other as well. You must move to another room. One with a proper ceiling.'
You did not need to say it twice with Jane. The gratitude for forgiveness was as clear in her sparkling eyes as it was absent from her words.
'Another version of me,' she said, 'would point out that a fine handkerchief like this was never meant to be used at all, never mind on a snot-nosed girl.'
'How many versions of you are there?' asked Gresham.
'Rather too many for comfort,' Jane replied. 'But isn't that true of everyone?'
It was certainly true of Essex, and of George, now Gresham came to think of it. And perhaps of Gresham himself.
'Well,' he said after a moment, 'let that stupid piece of cloth be in place of my thanks, the words I can't speak.'
She smiled at him and held the handkerchief tight.
'One of the other versions — the one who fights and argues a lot — ought to point out that it isn't usually this way round,' she said, still feeling her way. He was seeing a vivacious, fun creature now, someone who could enjoy the fencing dalliance of witty conversation, someone whose brain moved as quickly as her words. 'The lady gives her knight her favour, which he then wears in his helmet.'
'I see what you mean,' said Gresham. 'It does bring it down to earth a bit if the knight gives his lady a soiled handkerchief to wear in her nose.'
'Which I shall treasure,' she said, and he found himself strangely touched. 'As well as use to wipe my nose on.' And, as elegantly as one can in the confines of a small room, she did so.
Suddenly he made his mind up. For the first time in months he felt a real certainty in his head. He took one of the rings off his finger, an exquisite ruby set in a cluster of small but perfect diamonds.
'Please take this,' he said. 'You risked your life to come to Scotland. You saved my life in Ireland, and may have saved it again by having the courage to tell me what I didn't want to hear, and still don't. I would like you to accept this, as my gift, in place of the words I can't find.' He held out his hand. The ring glittered in his fingers, catching the shaft of light that came in through the unshuttered window.
The girl became very still.
'It's too much,' she said finally. 'I'd feel a traitor myself if I took something so valuable in exchange for doing what I wanted to do, what I decided to do freely and of my own will.'
Gresham was not discomfited. 'It's a thing of rare beauty, isn't it?' he said. 'Let me tell you its history. It was given to me by a very great Court lady, a widow as it happens. We comforted each other after her husband died, and I was still recovering from wounds. In a stupid way I thought there was something real and true between us. She gave me that ring one night, and the next day wrote to say our relationship was ended. She used it to buy me off. It was her gesture to her own conscience. And before you ask,' he went on, 'I don't want you to have it because I wish to salve my own conscience, or because I'm hurling you out onto the street, or to buy you off. I want you to have it because it's a thing of rare beauty. Forgive me for a terrible cliche, but it deserves to be paired with another thing of rare beauty. And because I've kept it all these years as a reminder of human perfidy and betrayal, it needs to be cleansed by being given to someone who's stayed loyal, and instead of betraying me shown me the others who wished to do so. Please take it.'
Hesitantly she reached forward. He felt the momentary warm brush of her fingers against his.
'You know I won't wear it,' she said, 'but you won't be offended?'
'Not offended,' he said, 'but tell me why you won't wear it?'
'Emeralds are for sadness,' she said, 'pearls are for death, and sapphires are the lazy stones, the easy ones. Blue matches eyes and dresses. Diamonds are for show. But a ruby… a ruby is for confidence. A ruby is a great, red, warm glow that says here I am and this is what I am. It's alive. It's the blood, it's the heartbeat. You know someone's alive when they bleed. A ruby shows life. A ruby matches what people feel. You started wearing that ring soon after you took me in. It summed up your confidence to me. Will it mind being wrapped in a handkerchief and hidden under a floorboard?'
Gresham smiled. 'I shouldn't think it'll mind. But not the floorboard in this room. The floorboard in the red room. I'd like you to move there.'
'But the red room is one of the grandest bedchambers in the house.' There was a challenge in her eyes. He felt slightly offended.
'I won't charge you for the room,' he said. 'It has a key and a lock. I'm not asking for — favours. You run this House. You're its mistress. It's only fitting I should recognise that fact and give you a room that's in keeping with what you do.'
'Why aren't you asking for favours?' she said, her chin up. He could see a pulse beating in the long sweep of her neck. It was a rather beautiful neck, he could not help but notice. Smooth, clean, clear skin. He began to wish Mannion was there. Damn the man for sending him alone! It was suddenly warm in the room. Didn't the window work?
'Because you're my ward!' he said. 'I took you in as a child. I'm like a parent! I have a duty towards you, a responsibility. What sort of man is it who has a power over a woman that has nothing to do with mutual attraction or consent, and uses — abuses — that power to lure her into bed? It'd be like a father bedding his daughter!'
'Parents realise when their child has grown up,' she answered vehemently. 'Do you think you're the only one with power? I've got power too, haven't I?. The power to decide who I love. What if instead of you taking, I choose to give? What if as a wild little girl I fell in love with you for all the wrong reasons, because you were so brave and so handsome and you came out of nowhere like the knight in shining armour in the fairy tale and took me off to a magic land? Then ignored me? Ignored me so I started to hate you, thought you hated me, but found after all that I still loved you? And fended off awful men with greasy hands and fat promises and leery eyes because I'd decided long ago that if I couldn't have you I didn't want anybody? That I had to give in to the inevitable?'
'The inevitable?' answered Gresham. He felt like a sailor surrounded by a storm that had come suddenly and with incredible violence, but which in some way was not sinking the ship.
'That I was in love with this irritating, distant, impossible, patronising, stupid, infuriating man, whether I liked it or not. You're not abusing your power! If you did what I want you to do, you'd be listening to me for the first time in your life!'
She moved forward, until there was less than an inch between them. He felt her breath on his face, warm, sweet-smelling.
'I'll take and treasure your ring. But will you give me something I need? Will you see me as a woman and not as a child?'
The world seemed to implode on him. They fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and he gave up any sense of control.
Afterwards, when all was quiet and even their breathing had returned to normal, she turned her head towards him.
'My Lord,' she said, 'please. No torturings or agonising. I gave to you and took from you nothing I didn't wish to give and to receive. Nothing will change. I'll move into any chamber you wish except your own. I'll visit you at night, but leave by morning, if you so wish, or not visit at all if that's your choice.'
She had been a virgin. How much had he hurt her? He did not wish to hurt her.
'Marriage,' he mumbled. 'I must marry you.'
'Nonsense,' she said. Deftly she climbed off the bed, rearranged her clothing, put on the items they had torn off so recently. 'No true friend of yours, no one who knows you at all, would imagine you were ready for that. Did you think I wanted to trap you?'
He recognised that at the back of his mind, even as he had fallen on the bed with her, there had been exactly that fear.
'My Lord,' she said, and was prim and courteous now, 'what's happened is between us. And only us. With your permission, I propose to make it both secret and private.'
He sat on the edge of the bed.
'Keep anything from the servants?' he said. He was not at his most articulate.
'My Lord,' she said almost pityingly. 'The servants have had us sharing a bed these two years past, whatever the truth might have been. And been loyal enough to keep the news to themselves. It would be better if you left first,' she said, matter-of-factly. 'And if the right buttons were in the right loops on your doublet.'
He started and, rather guiltily, buttoned up his doublet correctly.
'Look,' he said, 'I know where we've been, but I don't quite know where I am yet. One thing only: no more "My Lord". If you have to use something, make it… oh, I don't know… sir?'
'Why, yes, sir,' she said, bobbing a curtsy like a simpering little parlour maid, with a wicked smile lurking at the corner of her mouth.
What did it mean when you left a girl you had just slept with, and found her even more beautiful after the event than you had beforehand? He had not wanted this to happen, or at least had persuaded himself so, but like her something in him had recognised a strange inevitability about the whole thing.
He spent the rest of the day in a daze. Mannion kept an impassive face and said nothing. That night, when he had gone to bed and the embers of the fire were flickering, there was the merest whisper of a door opening, and she stood by the bed. Hesitant, confused as he had never been before in his life since the night he had lost his own virginity, he drew back the cover. Jane slipped in.
Next morning when he woke she was gone, leaving no trace of her presence except for the slightest indent in the pillow and a lingering perfume. When Mannion came, they started the ritual of dressing as first light was coming up over the rooftops. If Mannion smelt a slight fragrance in the air, he said nothing.
He remembered these days as a strange interlude in his life. Outwardly, nothing changed with Jane, except they rarely argued. Once, when she had complained that the cook was paying too much for fish and she suspected the relationship between her and the fishmonger was not entirely restricted to fish he had responded by saying that as far as he was concerned the fishmonger could be going to bed with a school of whales. She had said that he ought to care more where his money went, and he had said it was his money… all like the old times. Just when they were about to start going at each other she giggled, and he stopped in his tracks. ‘What is it?' he said.
'It's your image,' she had said. 'Cook does look very like a whale! And she puts her lips together and blows out with a sort of — "Harumph!" noise. Just like the books say a whale does. And,' she said, getting carried away, 'the books also say that the breath the whale expels smells awful, and cook can smell awful at times.' Looking at her for the first time with the scales pulled from his eyes, he saw her life force, her exuberant energy. Ruby was the right jewel for her.
At night she came to his bed, and it was strange and new and unlike anything he had ever experienced. Sometimes it was gentle, sometimes almost violent and at other times they did nothing except talk to each other, in stage whispers as if Mannion who slept outside the door did not know what was going on inside. And for the first time in his life he talked to someone other than Mannion about his childhood.
London was convinced that rebellion was imminent the day after Grey assaulted Southampton. As it so often was, London was wrong. The apprentice boys, so frequently the source of riot in the crowded streets, slowly stopped working with half an ear cocked for disturbances, ready to down tools at a moment's notice and start to break some heads. The guards at Whitehall went back to normal manning levels, and it was rumoured that late one night cartloads of muskets and small arms rumbled and rattled their way back into the armoury in the Tower of London, whence they had been summoned to reinforce the guards at Whitehall.
And then the storm broke, one Saturday after what George would undoubtedly have described as Gresham's revelation in an attic.
Gresham was in deep thought when Jane came to see him. There was a purse on the table in front of him, open where he had just taken money out to give to an informer who had skulked in through the back door of The House. It was early morning, and the man had given Gresham much food for thought.
'Sir!' she said, breathless and flushed, 'there's something very strange happening at the Globe. One of the delivery boys was full of it this morning, and I've checked and it's true. Something I think you ought to know.'
'Tell me,' he said, only half interested, his mind churning over what he had just heard. News from a delivery boy did not seem likely to change the world.
'A group of Lord Essex's men were at the Globe yesterday. They saw the play, and then apparently one of them, Lord Mounteagle I think, offered the players forty shillings — forty shillings'. — to put on a performance of Richard the Second. You know — the old play by Shakespeare!'
'I should think the players'll have forgotten the lines by now,' said Gresham. 'It hasn't been performed for years now, has it? It's hardly the height of fashion.'
'That's what the players said, apparently. But the money was too good, and they've agreed to stage it. Tonight. You know what it means, don't you? The play, I mean.'
'It's the story of the rebellion by the Welshman Bolingbroke, who's shown as a loyal and good servant to a fickle monarch. He's banished, returns to England and, with the help of Welsh support, overthrows and imprisons Richard, eventually becoming King himself,'said Gresham.
An incitement to rebellion? A signal to London of what was going to happen? He jumped up to his feet.
'Are we going to the play?' Jane wanted to be in the action.
'Yes. Perhaps. Why not? But first I have to see someone.'
Plays were performed in the early afternoon, after the main meal of the day which, for most people, was at noon. There was time for Gresham to do what he had to do and see the play. 'Who?' asked Jane.
'I have to see a man called Smith,' answered Gresham grimly. He took Mannion and four men with him and returned in time for their dinner. There was a sense of suppressed tension in him. 'Are we going to the play?' asked Jane.
'Yes,' said Gresham. 'But I warn you it could be dangerous. I'm gambling that Essex will be there, so that I can talk to him. I must talk to him! If he is there, you'll be safe. He won't attack me if there's a woman in the party, I know it. If he's not, it could get nasty. Very much so. So if you come it's as our insurance, but at great risk.'
He could see the fear in her eyes, but also the excitement. 'Will I need a pistol?' she asked. 'Can you stuff one in your dress?' 'I'd rather you carried it for me.'
They ordered the boat. Unusually, Gresham chose the crew.
The playhouses were on the south side of the river, outside the strict boundaries of the City of London and thereby granted a little more freedom to do what the City Fathers so hated them for doing. Plays were seditious, evil things in the opinion of many, inflaming the popular imagination and corrupting it, hotbeds of riot, breeding centres for plagues of the body and plagues of the mind. It was a damp, cold day, though not wet enough to cancel the performance. The actors had an awning over the stage, and those who could pay sat in the tiered ranks and boxes of the wooden 'O' that was the Globe theatre. Only the groundling stood and caroused in the open area of the pit, and they were used to being soused.
It was a smaller crowd than usual flitting across the river, and the Globe was only half full, some put off by the damp, some by the unfashionable play and others fearful of what this revival might mean. Some people came onto the streets when rebellion was in the air but more locked and bolted their doors. Yet it seemed as if every rabble-rouser, Welsh peasant and unemployed soldier who had ever walked London's streets was packed in the theatre. Half an hour before the play was due to begin the noise level was rattling the timbers and shaking dust out of the thatch.
'Is this safe?' asked Mannion, not usually prone to feeling nervous.
'For us? For London? Or for the Queen? I don't know,' answered Gresham. Southampton was there, he saw, Mounteagle and the vulture-like Gelli Meyrick, plus a host of the others Essex had gathered round him like a graveyard gathers corpses. And Davies, of course. Would Essex come? Surely he would. For months now he had refused to leave Essex House, citing the danger he believed he was in from his enemies. The attack on Southampton by Grey, when for once the odious little toad was apparently doing nothing more than riding about his own business, had confirmed Essex in his opinion, and produced a host more pamphlets. Even without their master, the mood of the assembly was dark, violent, poisonous.
They had been spotted by the Essex crowd — Gresham, Mannion and Jane, together with the eight men who had rowed them there. There was a strict order among them for who rowed to the play, and such trips were a zealously guarded perk of working for Gresham. Gresham had ordered the rota to be thrown out of the window this time, and had chosen the men himself. Jack, Dick and Edward were there, and five others whose qualifications for the trip seemed to be in the broadness of their backs rather than in their love of poetry. They were on open seats on the first tier, just to the side of the stage. Essex's major cronies were in the same tier, taking the middle seats as befitted the patrons of the performance. Meyrick nudged Davies, and both men looked up to gaze calmly at Gresham. He gazed back. The two men looked impassively at him for a moment, whispered a few more words and turned away.
'We could 'ave trouble gettin' out of 'ere,' said Mannion.
'We could,' said Gresham. 'Give the nod to Tom.'
Jane had not understood why three of the men were carrying bulky leather sacks on their backs, with a flap of leather over the top to protect their contents from the rain.
'It's to carry your pistol,' said Gresham.
Nor did she understand why a ninth man, the rather nondescript' looking Tom, very different from the man who had died on the Anna, had been parked as an extra in the boat, between the oarsmen, and confined to the pit, and banned from wearing the black and silver of Gresham's livery. Jane had heard him being told to lose himself, but to keep in touch. He kept turning round and staring up at the gallery with a fixed, white look, his hair plastered down on top of his head by the thin drizzle. Mannion waited until none of the Essex men seemed to be looking in their direction, stood up and snapped his fingers at a boy selling nuts and ale. As he bought them, he looked down at Tom, and gave a slight nod. Tom nodded back, and quietly and without fuss began to edge to the exit door nearest to him. No one paid any attention to him. Mannion's eyes followed him to the door. So far so good.
The cannon roared its blank shot from the roof, and the trumpet blast sounded for the last time to announce the start of the play.
They were rusty in the parts, the actors, but they were professionals and they warmed to their material. King Richard was a pathetic figure, a man more destined for a College than for a Court, while the powerful figure of Bolingbroke was shown reluctantly wresting a Crown he did not want. It did not take long to see why Essex's men had chosen the play. Bolingbroke talked of his, 'Eating the bitter bread of banishment.'
In Gresham's mind Essex kept recurring not in the figure of Bolingbroke, but in the doomed figure of Richard II. All the huge melancholia of the man, his vast capacity for self-pity, was there in Richard's lines:
'Of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth;
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills.'
Gresham felt a chill in his heart as the actor recited the words:
'A brittle glory shineth in this face:
As brittle as the glory is the face.'
It was Essex's face he saw, and Essex's voice as the actor intoned:
'I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.'
The stamping and cheering at the end seemed to last for ever, and while it was at its height Gresham gave the signal and he and his men, gathered protectively round Jane, made their way to the door and the thin, narrow wooden passageway that led downstairs. It smelt of piss and worse, where men and women had used it to answer nature's call. Two men brought up the rear, facing backwards, in case of a rush from behind. They emerged into the open, muddy courtyard, the sound and smell of the river just before them.
A line of men, in the tangerine livery of Essex, stood before them. How ironic. There were twenty of them, about the same number as had attacked them on the boat. They were armed with knives and clubs, were soaked through, had clearly been waiting for an hour or more. Meyrick and Davies must have sent for them before the play had even started. The startling Essex livery had not been seen since the Irish campaign, its appearance on the streets enough to cause a riot and have the fortunate man wearing it feted and taken to every tavern within sight. Well, well, well, thought Gresham. How interesting that on this Saturday night of all nights so many men in the Essex livery were armed and ready.
His own eight men had drawn into a protective circle. There was a rustle from behind him, and he sensed rather than saw Meyrick and Davies come out from the same exit and into the fading light.
Gresham's gamble had failed: Essex had not come. Now on the eve of rebellion his cronies had seen the man who had argued against them, the man whose influence on their master they most hated and resented, infiltrating their clarion call to rebellion. Now, with their master absent, was the time for them to wreak their revenge on Gresham.
'Can you turn to look at me?' shouted Davies. 'Or are you too much of a coward?'
'I'll stay facing the greater threat, thank you,' shouted Gresham over his shoulder. Other playgoers had melted into the gathering gloom, sensing that something terrible and dangerous might happen any moment. 'But I've something I want to show you.' He clicked his finger.
Effortlessly, and as they had been trained, the men on either side of those with the strange leather bags took a step back, flipped a brass catch, lifted up the leather flap and drew heavy items out. One was tossed to Mannion, the others handed to the eight men.
Blunderbusses: a short-barrelled musket, its end opening out like a trumpet. Usually a cheap weapon, these had hardwood stocks and glinting muzzles, their firing mechanism a state of the art combination of flint and matchlock, the cover over the mechanism, waiting to be torn off in an instant by the men. Loaded with old nails and bits of scrap metal, it was a lethal short-range weapon. A weapon for when a body of men were rushing at you.
There was a mutter from the men in front of the Essex mob, and two or three took a step back. Mannion took advantage to reach into one of the bags, and draw out three pistols. He kept one and handed two to Gresham, who took one and stuck one in his belt, and, grinning, handed the other to Jane. She did not grin back but, pointing the gun up into the air, pulled back the hammer to half cock and checked the firing mechanism. Something in the cold, calculated professional way she did this seemed to unsettle the men facing them even more. They muttered among themselves.
Davies and Meyrick walked round the circle of men. Gresham risked a brief look behind him. Another thirty or forty men, the so-called gentlemen, had tanned out from the door. All were armed with swords and daggers. One or two even had pistols in their hands, though to walk through London armed with such was to risk attack rather than prevent it.
'There are fifty men here!' barked Davies, 'and for all your farmer's guns, we will overwhelm you.'
'Fifty-four, to be precise,' shouted Gresham. ‘Not including yourself and jelly brain there with you.'
There was a rustle from the men, and a roar from Gelli Meyrick, 'You bastard, Gresham!'
Gresham had achieved his reputation as a swordsman by answering insults such as that. He smiled. 'True,' he said, managing to sound almost cheerful. 'But that means this ball is for your stomach and not your head.' There was a moment's silence. Gresham knew these moments. Any second a man would leap forward, or one tiny imagined shout or movement would start the action. He spoke again. 'I reckon on two of your men taken out as a minimum by each blunderbuss. My men are trained to aim alternately. One fires at the eyes, the other at the balls. It'll be those in the front rank who get it, of course. Then there's three pistol balls before you can reach us. That's you in the stomach, Hay Rick and Davies there in the head. And whoever my ward chooses. That's nineteen at least on the ground, dead or screaming, and maybe more.'
'It's worth it to rid the world of one of Cecil's spawn!' said Meyrick, almost out of control.
Gresham didn't bother to deny it. He had something else to say, 'Your men might not think so. The ones who get killed or have their balls blown off, at any rate. But there is one other thing.'
'What other thing?' asked Davies. Gresham could sense that at any moment the man would make a rush forward. Davies did not lack courage, merely charm or any sense of humanity.
'The rather large number of men just emerging from the shadows behind you,' said Gresham. 'My men, actually.'
Davies turned. The houses round the Globe were mean things, low drinking houses or brothels with mud-filled jennels between them. Like ghosts or Irish soldiers emerging from the woods, thirty or so men had drifted out. Ten of them had been in Gresham's squad in Ireland, men who had come back and asked if they could serve him. Some instinct had told Gresham that in these of all times such men at his disposal in London might be useful. They stood a yard in front of the other men, the porters, grooms and servants, in a straight line, with the muskets Gresham had bought them held across their chests. They were impassive, staring ahead. Gresham had taught them to never see their enemy as human. As a result, they looked like statues, staring through the ranks of Essex's men. It had a chilling effect.
Essex's men began to shuffle, look to one side. Davies glanced at them scornfully, and moved towards Gresham. There was a click of a pistol being pulled back to full cock. It was Jane's. He stopped, spat on the ground, and whirled around. Grumbling and muttering, his men started to move away to the left, in the gap between the theatre and the ranks of Gresham's men.
The Gresham crowd burst out cheering, rushed forward and clapped the boat crew on the shoulders. The ten soldiers, still grim-faced, walked in and faced outwards, guarding against a surprise attack.
'Silence!' shouted Gresham, and there was a sudden hush. 'For God's sake, uncock those blunderbusses before we blow down the Globe or our own backsides off!' There was a ribald cheer. 'But keep them on half cock. We've got to get home.'
'Tom,' said Gresham to the man he had sent for the reinforcements. 'Well done. Any troubles?'
'Nearly fuckin' messed it up, sir, beggin' your pardon. First time I've 'ad unlimited money to get a ferry across, and the first bloody time there's not been a boat in sight. Got one in the end, though. Thank God. And 'e 'ardly charged. 'Ere's your money, sir.'
'Keep it,' said Gresham.
They marched rather than walked to the jetty. Gresham was half expecting to see his boat and the others that had brought the extra men from The House holed and smashed, half sunk in the mud, but to his surprise they were in one piece.
'What do you think that proves?' he asked Mannion.
'They were wild. Up for anything,' said Mannion. 'It's Sunday tomorrow. Apprentice boys ain't at work, free to cause any trouble they wants. Nothin' on at Court tomorrow. Lots o' the good and grand gone 'ome for the weekend. Fine time for a rebellion, if you asks me. That play. It's got to be a signal, ain't it?'
'Great strategist, my friend the Earl,' said Gresham. 'Don't just mount a rebellion; tell everyone you're doing it beforehand.'
'Hang on,' said Mannion. 'It ain't that stupid. Town's full o' stories of wild Welshmen comin' in at every gate, sleeping in alleys and in attics. Not easy to get the word to that lot. But if you makes your signal Richard the Second on at the Globe — well, London only ever knows two things for sure: if the Queen's in town, and what's on at the Globe. And the other theatres, o' course.'
Jane had been silent until now. She was wrapped in a vast cloak, and had seemed wrapped in her own thoughts.
'There's been talk of a thousand men at Essex's command, for months now. In St Paul's, that is.'
Gresham looked at her, and for a moment his astonishment defeated his self-control.
'You've known about this rumour? Why didn't you tell me?'
'Because I assumed if a stupid girl hanging round the bookstalls heard it, you, who've made it your job to pick up these rumours, were bound to have heard it too. And I didn't want to look a fool.'
'What else have you heard?' There was real urgency in his tone. 'This could be really important. This isn't a time for dignity, yours or mine. London's going to blow up any minute, and we're on the edge of civil war. I do know about the rumours. But what else had you heard?'
She was frightened by the intensity in his voice, the tension in his body.
'Only that people keep mentioning a man called Smith. A sheriff", someone meant to be very friendly with Essex. Is it militia he's meant to control? Something like that?'
'Sheriff Smith,' said Gresham. 'In theory he can call out a thousand militia men, though it's doubtful if the real figure he can call on is more than five hundred. And, yes, he's been seen visiting Essex House by night, and so people assume secretly. Though how anyone can think anything taking place in that house is a secret is beyond me.'
'And Essex will make him call out these men?'
'I think Essex will think he can call out these men. It's not quite the same thing.'
'This makes my head ache,' said Jane rather pathetically. 'Is nothing as it seems in your world? Is nothing ever what it seems to be on the surface? Is there always a double or a treble meaning?'
'It's usually not that simple,' said Gresham, looking at her fondly. Welcome to the real world, he thought. A world where after a time you may well yearn for the safety, security and above all the predictability of making preserves that need to be stored for winter and the supply of sheets and linen.
'So why won't you tell us?' They were within sight of the private jetty at The House. One of the other boats would go in first to land men to act as a guard if The House had been infiltrated or taken over.
'Because I believe Essex is about to be forced into a rebellion. And I believe he thinks he may have an extra thousand men to call on. But I don't believe, never have believed it's as simple as that. Yet what I believe is so fantastical, so much in the face of any evidence, so much my own invention based simply on a feeling I have… Do you know,' he said in the tone of a man facing a sudden revelation, 'I think I can't tell you for the same reason you didn't tell me about the thousand men. For fear of being laughed at. For fear of being proven wrong. Now isn't that strange?'
'I'd call it normal,' muttered Mannion.' 'Bout the only normal thing there is with you, I 'ave to say. Ever considered bein' normal? Might make a change for all of us.'
'So,' said Jane, snuggling down rather fearfully into the depths of her cloak, like a mouse burrowing down in cut straw and hoping the hawk had not seen her, 'civil war's about to be unleashed from a house a few yards along our street. We're facing pandemonium, chaos, a collapse of all civil order, bloodshed on the streets and probably rape, loot and pillage for those stupid enough to be caught out in it, and some of those trying to hide from it. What are you going to do about it?'
'I'm going to get captured by Essex, probably,' said Gresham.
'No you fuckin' ain't — beggin' your pardon, miss!' exploded Mannion.
'Essex is like a lit fuse. I can't stop that. I've just got this sense that he's finally going to blow. If that fuse reaches the powder, the country could be blown apart. And if my theory is correct, some-thing even more shameful may happen. And it'll mean I'll have broken my word. I have to see Essex! Even if I can't stop him, I have to try and limit the damage. To him, and to everyone.'
'You can't do that!' said Jane aghast. 'They'll kill you before you get to Essex! You saw them tonight. They'd have cheerfully ripped the flesh from our bones and eaten it as talk to us if you hadn't out-thought them!'
'She's right,' said Mannion. 'Least they'll do is rough you up, mebbe bad. Might get to Essex and find you ain't got a mouth or a tongue to speak to him with.', 'I know,' said Gresham. 'But sometimes you don't get choices.'