The rebel heart hg-4

by Martin Stephen

  There were worse places to be unhappy in. The early morning sun streamed in through the latticed windows, which stretched almost from floor to ceiling, giving a sweeping view out across the Thames. The blustery wind creamed the occasional white blur on top of the wrinkled surface of the water. Any boat that had one was under sail, the wind ideal for pushing up against the tide. Blue sky, blue water and white sails. It was so pretty. Yet the blue water held the filth of the thousands who crowded London, the seething mass of humanity that filled its streets with noise, discord and the rank sweat of assembled humanity. If God had not decided to make the River Thames tidal, sweeping the filth out to sea every day, London would have died of its own stench in a week.

  That bloody girl, Jane, had got her claws into the Library, though God knew what business it was of hers, thought Gresham. Or when she found the time, given the amount of that precious commodity she spent in self-imposed exile locked in her room. She had spent the past two days there, the result of some perceived insult from her guardian. He was damned if he could remember what it had been. The Library held one of the largest collections of books in London, and the girl's interfering meant that some half of the books were now free from their coating of dust. Well, at least it kept her out of his way.

  Mannion stood by the door, his huge bulk silent, watchful. Gresham was toying with a paper Jane had handed him, in silence for once. She had found it in a book she had been cleaning. It was a half-written letter from Sir Thomas Gresham to a business acquaintance, a Jew working from Paris. It was meaningless in itself, a business communication that presumably had put even more money into Thomas Gresham's vast pockets. Gresham was surprised at the shock he felt on seeing the handwriting after so many years, as cold and crabbed as the writer.

  Father. What a strange, evocative word. A word with so many different meanings.

  A great clattering in the courtyard and a great noise announced the arrival of Gresham's closest friend, and a promise that the edge of his loneliness at least might be dulled. George Willoughby — now Lord George Willoughby since the death of his father — had been out of sorts himself recently, worn down by the cares of the badly run estate his father had left him, but he was still a welcome diversion. Or had been, until Cecil had made it clear that George's friendship with Gresham might leave him surveying his own guts on a scaffold. There was always a great noise, wherever George went, and things to be bumped into. George never saw doors, and walked into them before opening them. The Library door decided to resist him — it was of stout English oak and had been there far longer than George — with the result that there was much bashing at handles and bad language before it swung open.

  'Bloody door!' said George. 'Surprised a man of your wealth can't have a decent handle fitted!'

  In more cheerful and youthful days this would have been said with a booming laugh. Now it was said with a rather morose glum-ness, perhaps even a tinge of jealousy. George's pride had refused Gresham's offers of money, however tactfully they had been presented. Still, there was enough good cheer left in the man for him to smile at Gresham. 'How very good to see you!'

  George was married to Alice; this had been a condition set by George's father for his inheriting the estate. She was the daughter of his father's favourite hunting companion and had supplied him rather joylessly with two children, conceived on a thoroughly businesslike basis. His increasingly frequent visits to London from his vast inherited estate and its debts were an escape for him. Like so many people, he was drawn to the Court in the hope of picking up some crumbs of patronage. Unfortunately, his scrabbling for patronage left him less and less time to see Gresham.

  The two men embraced fondly, the one tall, muscled and lithe, the other bulky and running now ever so slightly to fat, one eyebrow pulled permanently down in a droop. George's craggy face had been marked by the smallpox, and his nose looked as if a fat priest had knelt on it at his christening. It had not rained for a week in the country, and every movement that George made seemed to prompt a fine spurt of dust from his clothes. His boots were grey, as if he had just walked through the cold ashes of a fire. George turned to Mannion.

  'He won't tell you to fetch the wine. I will. And an extra flagon for you. He won't order that, either.'

  Mannion, who was standing at the back of the room, grinned. George was drinking too much, Gresham reflected, on the increasingly infrequent times he visited him.

  'It's wasted on him,' grumbled Gresham. 'You might as well pour decent wine into a cesspit. Feed the great lump Thames water with some alcohol in it and he wouldn't notice.' Grudgingly he nodded to Mannion. Baiting him by keeping him waiting for a drink was one of the few things to lighten Gresham's dreary life at present. Mannion nodded to George, and left to get the wine. He moved surprisingly lightly for someone so thick set and visibly muscled. He was older than Gresham, that much was clear, but by how much? Difficult to tell. Mannion's craggy face gave away few secrets, least of all his real age.

  George seemed incapable of being jolly for long.

  'I know you delight in ignoring all my warnings,' he said as soon as he had his fist closed comfortably round his goblet, 'but will you take one now?'

  ‘I know,' said Gresham, 'Mannion drinks too much and any minute he's likely to run amuck and rape all the women in London. I've tried to warn as many as possible myself, but there are just too many of them.'

  'Will you be serious?' said George, annoyed.

  'I am,' said Gresham in a serious voice. 'I found out the truth. He's already done it. There isn't a woman in London he hasn't bedded.'

  'Ain't raped none, though,' said Mannion. His speed of return suggested the wine was stored nearby. His preferred drinking vessel was a tankard. A large tankard. 'Wouldn't do that, would I? No need. They keeps running at me.'

  'Look,' said George, and this time something in his tone made even Gresham look at him, 'the both of you. This is serious. I keep my ear to the ground at Court, you know, though I doubt any of them know my name.'

  No fortune could be made and no fortune sustained unless it fed at regular intervals from the Court, the trough from which all sustenance was sucked. All patronage and wealth had as its source the monarch. George had devoted a lifetime to who was in and who was out, who rising and who falling, loving to chart the extraordinarily treacherous shoals of Court fashion and favour.

  'And what do you hear?' Gresham's tone betrayed no interest whatsoever in the answer.

  'I hear the name of Henry Gresham,' said George, 'and rather too often — from people who hate you.'

  'And why should they talk about me?' said Gresham. 'I haven't had an affair with a Court lady for… weeks. Unlike the Earl of Southampton. I hear he's got Lizzie Vernon pregnant. Or Kissie Vernon, as some of her female friends call her.'

  'It's no joke!' said George sharply, taking a long pull at his goblet and motioning to Mannion to refill it. 'The vultures are gathering over the throne of England. It's a positive feeding frenzy. Old Burghley's been on his last legs for months. More important, the Queen can't be far off joining him. Forty years on the throne, for heaven's sake! Only a handful of people in England remember life without Elizabeth as Queen. There's no heir-'

  'But there's lots of choices!' said Gresham, with mock enthusiasm. 'Our dear Queen has merely sought to make life interesting for her loyal subjects by leaving the issue of her succession so open! Imagine how boring it would be if she had children and we knew who our next ruler was to be! This way, there's a huge variety for us to choose from.'

  George refused to be moved by humour.

  'Good God, man!' he snapped. 'You can joke about this? When one heir is the King of our oldest enemy, and the other the heir of our bitterest one?'

  King James of Scotland and the Infanta of Spain were two claimants to Elizabeth's crown.

  'I can joke about those two. I admit my sense of humour is stretched by the Lady Arbella. No, you're right. I can't joke about her. That face of hers! And those dresses!' He rai
sed his hands in mock horror.

  It was a measure of the chaos that threatened an England with no heir that such a milksop was even talked about as a possible successor. Lady Arbella Stuart was a drab girl whose only claim to fame was a massive injection of royal blood in her thin veins.

  'Look, I'm telling you,' said George, clearly angered by Gresham's. flippancy, 'I've had people name you in plots to put all three on the throne. And the same for plots to put Derby and Essex there as well! Not to mention the Kings of Spain and of France! You're everyone's favourite conspirator.'

  So Cecil had been doing his work.

  Gresham had been recruited to the vast network of spies paid for personally by Walsingham when he had been a penniless under-graduate at Cambridge. His deep involvement in the underworld of Elizabeth's England had not ceased when he had inherited a fortune, and it had survived even the death of Walsingham.

  All around them were the noises of a great household, cushioned by the thick oak doors and the sealed windows, but audible like a low, deep current of sound. The clattering of hooves out in the courtyard as the grooms exercised Gresham's fine stable of horses, the cheerful insults of the stable boys and occasional sound of water as they slopped out the vacated stables. Soft footfalls as maids went about their business; the creak of floorboards. A tide of humanity, each locked in their own world, each viewing themselves as the most important person within it And all the time The House talked to them, its brick and timber frame expanding with the heat of the day, as if it was taking in a great breath of summer.

  'And you're not doing yourself any good by being so friendly with the Earl of Essex!'

  'I know you hate Essex,' said Gresham. 'Fine. It's your privilege. I find him amusing and good company. You don't seem to mind being entertained by him, do you? You've been to Essex House with me often enough. And when he's dined here.' And you're jealous of his wealth, his looks and above all his friendship with me, thought Gresham.

  'I think the man's rotten to the core, corrupt even. The crowd he hangs around with-'

  'Now there you do have a point,' said Gresham. 'I concede he chooses his other friends very badly. When we go out together I'm usually spared his friends.'

  'Which makes them hate you for being his favourite,' said George, 'and gets you in even more bad odour. But the conspiracy theories — I'm telling you they're serious. And being seen with a playboy Earl who might well be a conspirator himself doesn't help.'

  'They must think I've a lot of time on my hands.' Gresham stood up, and stalked moodily to the great window overlooking the river. There was even more traffic on it now, since George's arrival. The river was a quick and clean way to move round London, avoiding the dust of summer and the clinging, lethal mud of winter. Always provided one did not fall in, or look too closely at the lumps that swept by on the tide, bobbing half in and half out of the water. 'George, I've hardly been at Court these past six months.'

  'That's part of what's inflamed the rumours. They talk about you behind their hands when you're there. They get even more nervous when you're not. And when has the truth ever mattered at Court? What matters is if the Queen gets to hear them: that you're involved in every plot against her? If she does, you're dead. She's ready to hang, draw and quarter any man or woman who even mentions death in front of her face, never mind anyone she thinks is plotting to put a successor on her throne.'

  Gresham turned to face George, and looked him calmly in the eyes. Should he tell his oldest friend the truth? The truth that George was every bit as much under threat as himself? And all because of him?

  'Black magic,' said Gresham, throwing himself down on a chair so hard that it squeaked on the floor. 'Worship of Lucifer. Ritual sacrifices. Of children. Have they mentioned that?'

  'What?' said George, caught out for once.

  'The latest story is that someone from the Very Top Circles is heavily into satanism.'

  'Is it true?' said George. He was part irritated at a story he had not heard and part fascinated. Witchcraft was still an active and all-present evil to all bar the most educated of the populace and, as George's interest showed, to large numbers of those who were educated.

  'God knows,' said Gresham. 'Or if he doesn't, presumably Satan does.' Clearly George knew nothing. Which could mean that the story had not spread widely. Or that it did not and had not ever existed except as a smokescreen to hide whatever Cecil's real message and intentions were. 'As for me, as I'm not at all sure that I believe in God it would be perverse of me to believe in Satan, wouldn't it? Northumberland's certainly been dabbling in all sorts of things, and Raleigh's been at some of the sessions more often than's good for him. I've seen nothing of it with Essex. But he compartmentalises his life, and I suspect I'm in my own compartment.'

  The Earl of Northumberland was known as the Wizard Earl, gathering a group of people round him who conducted what they called scientific experiments but which others called witchcraft.

  'Well,' said George, 'I haven't heard those stories.' His voice took on strength again. 'But I've heard stories connecting you to every plot in Christendom. You're in danger, my boy. You really are. This country is a powder keg poised to explode. You're in danger of being seen as a lit fuse, and of being snuffed out.'

  Something in the plain simplicity of George's affection bit into Gresham's heart, though no man and only an exceptional woman would have seen it on his face.

  'Thank you,' said Gresham in a flat tone. 'I mean it. I really do. But you see, I don't care very much, quite frankly, about God or Mammon. I suppose I have to admit I care just a little bit about the rather bumbling force of nature that I know of as you. And rather less — indeed, a mere tiny fraction — about that great fat lump who's just polished off a flagon of rather good wine that's wasted on him' — Mannion grinned — 'but otherwise I don't care for very much, except survival.' And perhaps I am starting to care even less about that, he thought. 'Look, I'm not a fool. I've heard the rumours. I'm trying to keep out of it, away from the whole bloody Court, spend as much time as I can in Cambridge.'

  'Fair point,' rumbled George, recognising the concession Gresham had made in admitting so much, 'but the College want to tear you apart as well, don't they?'

  Gresham was well on the way to refounding the decrepit Granville College where he had studied as a youth. Refounding a Cambridge College, even with all the money he had, had shown that Cambridge had just as many knives as London.

  'When you've never been popular,' said Gresham with resignation, 'you learn to do without it. To be frank, I'm trying to get out of the world of spying. When I was younger and it was run by Walsingham it was more exciting. Now, most of the time it just seems dirty.'

  'It always was dirty,' said George. 'It's just that you didn't want to see it like that and were quite excited by the dirt. Well, you'd better be warned of something else,' said George. 'All the rumours are that you're popular with the Earl of Essex for a different reason.'

  'You mean for more than my charm, devilish good looks and cutting wit?'

  'That's what it is, is it?' said George, witheringly. 'The Earl must have weak sight and hearing, as well as weak judgement.'

  'He's got all three, and more, — ' said Gresham, 'but at least he's got a bit of life and colour to him. Essex lives life at full speed, beyond full speed. He's exhilarating. Fun. And lots of the time he doesn't give a shit, which attracts me to him.'

  Essex and Gresham did not spend a great deal of time in each other's company, but various occasions spent together had gone down in the folklore of the Court.

  'Essex knows how to enjoy himself,' said Gresham, thinking back to the last time he had spent an evening with the Earl. As far as he knew, or could remember, most of those involved had recovered from their injuries. But my, it had been fun. 'And even I need that sometimes.'

  'You know he's locked in mortal combat with Cecil?' said George.

  'Of course I do, idiot. You'd have to be blind and deaf not to know. But calm down. You loath
e Essex — fine.'

  Was George jealous of Gresham's burgeoning relationship with the Earl? Or was it a basic puritanical sense that rebelled against the Essex set, where one member had gambled away a fortune on the throw of one dice? Or was it simple envy of someone who seemed to have been given so much by nature?

  'I'm free to like anyone I wish — even someone you hate. Essex is an occasional social companion — I'm simply a bit of rough he likes to amuse himself with every now and again. I keep out of his politics, and out of everything except his social life. Actually I don't like quite a lot of the people he surrounds himself with as servants and advisers.'

  'But you must have an opinion on the battle between him and Cecil?'

  'Oh, it's a fascinating contest between the pair of them, I'll grant you that,' said Gresham. 'The Queen's favourite versus her most regarded adviser, who happens to look like a rag doll that's been boiled in the wash. Noble versus commoner. Best out of twelve rounds, winner takes all and the chance to decide the next King of England. I'm best out of it. Let 'em fight it out between themselves.'

  'But you say you like Essex, and you detest Cecil. And you're not taking sides?'

  'I keep telling you: Essex is an amusing companion. He pulls the curtains back in a darkened room sometimes. Which is what you need, old friend — you're getting far too glum far too often.'

  'Essex only believes in himself,' said George rather pompously. 'And he yearns to be seen as a soldier after Cadiz and the Azores.'