A tornado was raging in Gresham's head. He of all people should know the cost of loving another person. As the dying screams of someone he had loved had torn into his soul, just as the red-hot metal had torn into his friend's body, he had vowed never again to expose himself to this terrible pain. Jane, his ward, he could live without. Yet life without Mannion or George…
'So,' said Gresham, in the quietest possible voice, 'it's actually come to this, has it? No politics, no manoeuvring for position, no wheels within wheels. A simple, straightforward threat. Serve me, and work against a lesser friend, or be the agent of the destruction of those who are my real friends.' There was almost pity in Gresham's voice, behind the hatred. 'You must be truly desperate.'
Cecil said nothing. This time Gresham chose to fill the gap.
'George. It must be George,' he said. 'I don't care a rat's arse for the girl, and knowing how and where Mannion spends his spare time it's always a gamble whether he'll ever come home.'
Cecil remained silent.
'George told me someone was buying up the bills he had taken out on some of his land to feed his peasants through the famine years. Would that person be you, my Lord? And would it perhaps be the case that poor, soft old George over-extended himself to keep his miserable tenants alive, and mortgaged nearly all his estate, rather than the small portion he has always owned up to?'
'Lord Willoughby inherited an estate that was already two-thirds promised to the moneylenders,' said Cecil, in a calm, passionless voice. 'His father was a pleasant man, and wholly incompetent at managing his estates.' There was a shout from beyond the thick wooden door, a servant calling. Cecil's eyes flickered briefly towards it, as if expecting to see the door burst open and reveal a rampant Mannion. Gresham's eyes never left Cecil's.
'So you could ruin my friend at a moment's notice? Cast him, and his wife, and their screaming brood out onto the streets?'
Gresham hunched forward a little, the academic starting to study the question in depth. It was as if he was playing a game. 'But surely that's not threat enough? You know I've enough money for the both of us, if needs be. No, there must be something else.'
'There is,' said Cecil smugly. 'I needed evidence to show that Willoughby was so desperate for money he would do anything to get it. As for you, it is known, has been known for thirteen years, that you sailed aboard the Armada, were actually seen on its flag-ship, standing alongside its commander. Since then, you have been tainted by Spain. Indeed, many saw your military involvement in the Low Countries simply as a way to wash from your reputation your link with Spain. I will be clear with you, Henry Gresham.'
'Well,' said Gresham, 'that would be novel.' Cecil ignored the flippancy.
'I have prepared papers over many months past to incriminate you, your ward, your idiot servant and your clumsy friend in a plot to place the Spanish Infanta on the throne of England. I have also arranged for various equally incriminating items to be placed in the household of three people, each of them on the fringe of every shady business in London, each regular travellers to the continent, and each foreign. One is a Jew, which will, of course, help greatly in any accusations of guilt against him.'
Gresham remembered the pathetic figure of Dr Lopez, the Queen's physician, who when an old and harmless man had been hung, drawn and quartered on a trumped-up treason charge. The Earl of Essex had led the prosecution, and the fact that Lopez was a Jew had helped Essex greatly in securing the conviction. It had not been Essex's finest hour. Gresham had no doubt that if Essex were forced to choose between his own profit and the death or mutilation of someone else, selfishness would win. That was how blue blood stayed blue. It also made Essex, if anything, just a little more exciting. Like a warming fire that could at the same time burn a man alive.
'I have also bribed a minor official of the Court of Spain to testify that you have indeed been acting on behalf of the Infanta for these six months past.'
'And why should such a man put his own life at threat?' asked Gresham.
'Because he is dying, and he cares little if he dies a few months early if my money supports his family,' answered Cecil, as if betrayal, lies and perjury were the bread of his daily life. Which, come to think of it, Gresham pondered, they probably were.
'So you are telling me, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'that if I do not agree to be your messenger you will destroy me and my few friends by implicating us in a Spanish plot against the Queen.'
'Precisely,' said Cecil. 'And it will work, because of your past history and the cloud of suspicion that hovers around you in the Court and beyond.'
'A cloud of suspicion no doubt fostered greatly by you in recent weeks and months?' asked Gresham.
'Of course,' said Cecil, as if surprised by the question. 'Hanging, drawing and quartering is the preferred punishment for traitors. You will not be offered the axe — you are not sufficiently noble. Nor will Lord Willoughby, nor your lesser friends. A pity to see the beautiful body of your ward so treated.'
There were two sources of anger eating at Gresham's soul. The first was at himself. He had let himself be manoeuvred by his old enemy into this position of extreme vulnerability. The second was not useful now. It was a mere distraction to survival: it was anger against Cecil. It would have its day. But not now. Not yet.
'You must need me very much as your messenger,' said Gresham, 'to go to all this trouble.' The only way he could unsettle Cecil was to appear unnaturally calm.
'I need you as my messenger,' said Cecil, 'not merely because if you are caught with my message you will be disbelieved. I need you because my enemies will seek to find and kill my messenger. For that reason he must go alone or with a small party. I do not need a puffed-up servant paying lip service to loyalty until the first sight of an implement of torture; or a minor noble desperate for advancement and caving in to the highest bidder. I need someone skilled enough not to be caught in the first place, someone ruthless enough to fight off opposition and, in the final count, someone with enough to lose to keep his mouth shut if the worst happens. I need a killer who will kill riot to protect me but to survive.'
Gresham gave a mock bow. 'I'm flattered you rate my skills so highly. But all you do is raise my curiosity about the nature of this message. It doesn't startle me that you'll ruin me or anyone else to ensure your survival. It startles me that something so threatening to your existence has happened as to make you take the risk of employing me, and by so doing revealing your desperation,' He sat back in his chair and smiled at Cecil. 'You see, I won't accept your mission unless I know exactly what the threat is to you, and what the message I carry actually says.'
Cecil smiled a thin, victorious smile.
'You have no threat to bring against me,' he said, with the slightest trace of smugness.
'Do I not?' said Gresham with the same infuriating smile.
There was a blur of movement, and Cecil found his neck being rammed forcibly against the carved wood of his chair, an arm choking the breath out of him and the blade of a dagger actually piercing the loose, wrinkled skin around his scrawny neck.
'You never were a spy, my Lord!' whispered Gresham in Cecil's ear. 'With one brief tightening of my arm here you are dead, or with one brief stab of this dagger up through your warped back.' As if to emphasise the point, Gresham tightened the grip of his arm for a moment. A single strand of dribble left the corner of Cecil's mouth, ran over his chin and landed on the fine velvet of Gresham's dark doublet. 'I leave you here, seated, stiffening in your chair. I have at least five minutes to make my exit, time enough for a poor spy such as me. You see, your message was so damning to us both that you could not afford a servant to listen to it. And your followers, when you are discovered? There is the shock of finding you dead, the confusion, the chaos. I've no doubt you will have left instructions for the revelation of the plot I am meant to have sponsored. Men such as you seek their revenge even in death.'
Cecil appeared to be suffocating. Gresham allowed a tiny relax-ation in his grip, w
hispering close in the man's ear as he might to a lover. 'Yet a dead man is never obeyed as rapidly as one who is living, a man whose patronage is at an end is never obeyed as is a man who still has favours to hand out. And me? One hour. One single hour. That's all I need to vanish, to disappear where you and yours will never find me. I've money put aside to satisfy ten men's wildest dreams. I've horses for me, my servant and anyone eke I care to take, even a trunk packed for just this very moment. I've a ship whose only job is to wait for me, to take me overseas if my world collapses around me. And every horse, every sailor has been planned for a time when there's no time, when speed means the difference between life or death.'
This time it was Gresham who paused for effect. He was surprised by the thinness of Cecil's body as he grasped it. The man was all skin and bone.
'So tell me your message. Or face my putting my plan into action, not yours.'
Cecil vomited. A pity, thought Gresham, allowing Cecil's head to crane forward so that no sick lodged in his throat and suffocated him. You lost respect if you wet or filled your pants, or threw up the contents of your stomach in front of another man. And you hated the man who saw or caused it even more. Or perhaps Cecil could not hate Gresham any more than he did?
'Let me go!' Cecil croaked. The arm relaxed, but as Cecil sucked in air and allowed his head to sink forward he saw the dagger poised in front of his eyeball. He started back, and the blade followed, its point almost touching his eye.
'Tell me now,' said Gresham, 'what your message is, or you lose an eye shortly before you lose your life.'
'The Earl of Essex has written to King James of Scotland,' said Cecil. Gresham sensed he had taken a decision. He relaxed his hold, moved the dagger and saw Cecil sag forward, retching.
Gresham was still by his side. Both men knew what would happen if Cecil cried out for help. 'Saying what?' said Gresham.
Cecil's breathing was returning now, and he was gaining control of himself.
'King James has heard the rumours associating Essex, Southampton and his crew with satanism and with sodomy. James loathes satanism before all other human evils. He prosecutes accused witches personally, testifies to the evil of Devil-worship. He is also a sodomite, and denies that sin with all the passion of a man who wants to throw the first stone.' The breathing was almost back to normal. 'Essex has told James that he, Essex, and the other ward, Southampton, were asked to bow to satanism and to sodomy in their youth. By me. And told him how they have denied it, and how I, the son of their guardian, is the anti-Christ.'
Gresham leant back, and the dagger went silently into its hidden sheath.
'And James will believe it?' he said.
'The King of Scotland is most likely to succeed our present Queen. I have told him for years past to beware of Raleigh. I warned him of the wrong man.'
Well! That was a message for Gresham to bear to the man who had saved his life, to Sir Walter Raleigh.
'I underestimated Essex, saw him as a popinjay, a plaything for the Queen. He has stolen a march on me, poisoned the likely heir to the throne against me. Unless I can reach James in time, the poison will bite. Instead of simply reading what he has been sent, the King of Scotland will start to believe it.'
'So you wish me to betray Essex?' asked Gresham.
'No,' said Cecil. 'I wish you to protect those you care for most, and put right a wrong. I also expect you to see that the greatest disaster that could befall this country would be to have the Earl of Essex as its King, or in a position of real power in its governance.'
'You're at your weakest with a man such as Essex. You are correct: he would make an appalling King. But Essex thinks with his heart. Much of the time he thinks wrongly. But at least his decisions are based on blood flowing through his veins.' 'Essex will not defeat me,' said Cecil.
'No?' said Gresham. 'Yet you don't see what Essex has. You are the cold intellect who is never wrong. You command through fear. Essex is the passionate fool, who is usually wrong — but who commands through love.'
'Love does not decide the fate of nations. Love creates scandals, not power. It is fear that rules.' Cecil was now fully back in control of himself.
'To a point, my Lord. Yet you forget one thing. Any prison only operates because the inmates cooperate with the jailers. There are always fewer jailers than there are prisoners. True, there are locked doors. But those doors have to be opened sometimes: food has to be given; access with lawyers has to be afforded. If every prisoner decides to rise up against his jailers, the jailers die. You rule by fear. The prisoners cooperate through fear. But give them a leader they love, and they have an antidote to their fear.'
'Sentimental nonsense!' spluttered Cecil.
'Is it?' said Gresham. 'This country is ruled by fear. London Bridge displays the heads of traitors on pikes over its main gateway. The people are invited to see traitors hung, drawn and quartered. But what if they find someone they love as they love Essex? At what stage does love conquer fear? They cheer Essex in the streets. They scrawl 'Toad" on your walls. You don't understand popularity, because you've never experienced it. Indeed, you scorn it because you don't understand it. But rebellion happens, and it happens in the moments when love and passion break through fear and repression.'
'So you tell me that you love the Earl of Essex?' Gresham heard the scorn and fear that Cecil put into the naming of his enemy and his title. 'That you will betray me and my message to Essex, and the power of love will triumph?' *No,' said Gresham, 'and your question reveals not only how little you understand men such as Essex, but how little you understand men such as myself. Essex can command the mob. He has the power of love — blind, unthinking, living only for the moment Yet he's a fool, for all his intelligence. A rather special fool. A brave, handsome, rather dashing and rather glorious and all-too-human fool, but a fool nevertheless. Essex is passion, romance and glamour. Essex is in love with himself. And he yearns for the simplicity, as he sees it, of a soldier's life. All this means he is bound for destruction, because nations do not run on passion, romance and glamour. I could love Essex as I hate you. That doesn't mean to say I could ever serve him.'
4I do not care how you justify taking my message to King James. I care only that you do so.'
Gresham's mind was churning. Cecil's wife was probably the only person who had loved him, and she had died eighteen months earlier, leaving his two children motherless. It would be simplicity itself to have them killed. There were men in every tavern in Southwark who would jump at the chance. Should he threaten Cecil with this?
No!
He had been out-thought by his old enemy, and such a threat would be simple vainglory. He could have killed Cecil tonight and got away with it. He knew it and Cecil knew it. That was the important thing: Cecil knew it. The advantage Cecil had over Gresham had been ripped away from him for a moment, a moment that Cecil had not planned for. That was enough. The seed had been sown: the idea that Gresham could never be entirely controlled. No harm in leaving a seed of doubt, though. As for Gresham, those who struggled frantically in the net caught it even more firmly around them. The man who got out was the man who took his time, found his knife and ever so gently made his escape.
And Essex? Gresham had always refused to be drawn into Essex's political ambition. Affording Cecil a right of reply would not kill Essex.
'My best regards to your dear children,' said Gresham. 'I'm delighted you've two friends at least.'
No more. No less. It was enough. Was there a brief flicker of alarm in Cecil's eyes?
Gresham moved forward. How satisfying to note Cecil drawing back, as if in fear. Gresham drew out his handkerchief, a fashion' able linen flag so vast as to substitute for a tent on campaign. Carefully, he wiped Cecil's vomit from the table, and threw the cloth into the fire, where it sizzled and spat before turning to black ash.
'Send me your instructions,' said Gresham. 'You're right, of course. I'll do what I can to avoid hurting my friends, not least of all because of what happen
ed to another young man who claimed that dubious privilege of me. But pray I survive your mission. I'm also quite good at laying traps.'
And with that, he left.
Chapter 2
First Week of June, 1598 London
It was the simplest question of all, and for months it had been sounding like a death knell inside Henry Gresham's head.
Why create this wondrous piece of work, this extraordinary triumph of a creature called man, and bless it with sensitivity, creativity and imagination? Why go to all this trouble, and then allow that sensitivity to be corrupted and turn into a beast who could enjoy the screams of the man on the rack? Why plant creativity when all too often it soured into the creativity of murkier, ambition and politics? Why bless man with imagination and the capacity to learn so much when, in a few brief years, it all ended up as rotting matter — the flesh of the dead pig as indistinguishable on the spoil heap as the flesh of sensitive, creative and imaginative man?
Many less fortunate than Gresham might have commented, had they been privy to his thoughts, that to be one of the richest men in the kingdom, to be still young and handsome and to be acknowledged as one of the best swordsmen in the country, was not a bad position from which to be unhappy. Yet even that, the reprimand Gresham was honest enough to administer to himself, was having less and less effect on the black melancholia of his mood.
Cecil's summons had lifted his mood, but the sudden realisation that, through his own stupidity, he was now fighting for other lives than his own had plunged him even further down a black pit of depression. A strange melancholy, a sapping misery that rose like a fog over a fenland field, drained away all happiness, light and — colour. He fought it, as he had fought any threat to his survival all his life. Yet each day the grey mist advanced a little further into his soul, like a tide that would not be held back. And what would happen when it reached the core of his soul?
It was early morning in the Library of The House, the great mansion in the Strand erected by Sir Thomas Gresham and largely neglected by his bastard son. The day looked to be set fair, a brisk wind whipping up the Thames, but only the occasional, scudding white cloud marking the deep blue of the sky. Outside, most of London seemed to be thronging the street, wasps around the jam pot of the rich houses lying conveniently between the City and Whitehall, all with easy access to the river. With the return of the warm weather, the flies had returned. There seemed to be a plague of them this year, and their angry buzzing filled the houses of the great noblemen and the hovels of lesser men with impartial infestation.
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