'Not much military glory there for him,' said Gresham. 'I'm amazed at how much credit he got.'
George jumped in. 'My guess is that he hangs out with you largely because you're a hero of the wars. A positive veteran! You were fighting in the Low Country long before it was fashionable. And because he's paranoid about people asking him for money, because he hasn't got any, the fact that you're a true old soldier and have more money than you need is another recommendation. Take those two supposed virtues alongside your reputation for womanising, and you're everything Essex wants in a man.'
'At least I'm not everything the Earl of Southampton wants in a man. Now that would be embarrassing.' Southampton was Essex's closest friend — the Court referred to them and their circle as the 'fantasty calls' partly because of the extravagant nature of their dress — and rumoured to prefer young boys to women.
Talking of which,' said George, 'there's another reason why Essex is interested in you.' He grinned. 'Your favourite person. Your lovely ward.'
'My lovely ward!' spluttered Gresham, caught out for once in a show of emotion. 'You mean that bloody impossible girl who's driving me mad with her nagging and tantrums!' Gresham had spent a lifetime controlling his feelings, showing no emotion to the world. It was an art he lost at the mention of Jane. 'What's Essex done to deserve her?'
'You mean that bloody impossibly beautiful girl,' said George, laughing.
'I acknowledge her beauty merely as a detached observer,' Gresham said. 'I refuse to join those who pant after her like a dog in heat.' He had inherited Jane some years earlier when riding back from a long and debilitating campaign in the Low Countries. Inherited was perhaps the wrong word. Engaging in accidental conversation with a ragged, pre-pubescent girl in a village terrifying for its dirt and poverty, her guardian had rushed out and started to beat her. Gresham had broken his arm for him. For reasons hindsight could never quite properly explain he had found himself with the stick-thin little girl riding in triumph behind him, the young lady in question having screamed long and loud at any attempt to make her ride with anyone else. If Gresham had had any thoughts at all they were along the lines of bringing the girl to London and handing her over to some family who would give her a home as a servant, but instead she had wormed her way into the affections of his servants and by the time she was seventeen was virtually running The House and rescuing it from some of the neglect that Gresham had subjected it to. Why had he hung onto her? He told himself it was because only a madman would take her as a bride. More probably he saw in her someone whose background was similar to his own, someone who had dragged themselves up, someone for whom religion and morality were replaced by that simple virtue of survival. Jane was a survivor. Though whether Gresham would survive her was another matter.
'Essex apparently thought he did deserve her. Or that she deserved him. She's turned out to be a cracker, you know. A complete stunner, in fact.'
'I've got eyes,' said Gresham, 'and balls, for that matter. They tell me certain species of spider are made very attractive,' said Gresham, 'so they can lure the male to mate with them. And then eat them.'
'Well, Essex fell into her web. You remember you took her to that party Donne held?' The servants he most trusted, and the old nurse he had placed Jane with, had remonstrated that a young girl couldn't be kept locked up all day, and had to go out some time or other. Gresham had allowed her, suitably chaperoned, to attend a few dinners and one or two literary gatherings. She had taught herself to read in The House, and seemed to have her head in a book every time he passed her by. The Essex crowd, mostly drunk, had burst in on one such gathering held by one of Gresham's oldest friends, the poet John Donne.
‘I remember Essex bursting in,' said Gresham. ‘I was rather drunk, and I have a vague recollection that I had to threaten to fight that awful steward of his, that foul Welshman… funny name, hasn't he… Blancmange or something? And his dreadful mother's got another daft name, hasn't she? Lettuce.'
'Lettice, Lady Lettice Leicester, and Gelli Meyrick,' said George, trying to keep a straight face. 'Sir Gelli Meyrick, actually. In any event, Essex apparently took one look at Jane and started to fawn round her like a dog at a bitch in heat. You know how he does.'
If Essex's sexual organ was as large as his ego then intercourse with him must be very painful, Gresham thought. It was amazing how many people fell for it. The ego, that is. Essex was rumoured to have had a child recently by one Elizabeth Southwell, and was known to be panting after and probably between the sheets with Lady Mary Howard and a girl called Russell. There was a sort of a rivalry between the two of them, though Gresham did not approve of getting women with child. As a bastard himself, he had no desire to inflict that status on anyone else.
'Anyway, Essex apparently came straight out with it.'
'Did he, by God!' said Gresham, his mind snick on one track. 'And in a public place! I know standards are slipping, but even for times such as these-'
'Not that, you fool!' said George, annoyed at the flow of his story being broken, but pleased that he knew something Gresham did not. 'Came out with how he loved her, how his love was of such an instant growth that it must have instant satisfaction, how he would die unless she would grant him her favours.'
'Sounds like a man who does too much reading,' said Gresham, 'and of the wrong type of book, too.' But he was intrigued, despite himself. He would no more mate with his ward than climb into bed with an open mole trap, but any match between two personalities as big as this had to be interesting. If he was honest, he was also annoyed that he had not found out this story himself. If Essex fancied his ward, he might have had the decency to tell him.
'So presumably his Lordship planned to give my ward a right noble seeing to, standing up against an outside wall when nobody was looking,' said Gresham enjoying the conscious use of barrack-room language, largely because he knew George found it offensive and unnecessary. Which it was, of course. That was why it was fun. 'Well, it stops them getting pregnant if you do it standing up. Or so my nurse said. Mind you, she had twelve children of her own, so perhaps she didn't speak with total authority. So what happened? Did my little fire-vixen spread her legs to a belted Earl, or rather an Earl about to take his belt and other things off?'
'She asked for a pen and paper,' said George, straight-faced.
'What?' said Gresham. 'Now I've never heard of anybody doing it with those before.'
'Pen and paper. And he was so surprised he asked someone to bring some. After all, you may not find food in Donne's house, or coal, but you'll always find a pen and ink. So eventually — and in the interim my Lordship's hot breath has put condensation on all the walk — she takes both pen and paper, writes a few lines, and hands it to him.'
'What did it say?' asked Gresham now intrigued.
'It isn't so much what it said,' replied George. 'It's what she said. Apparently she faced up to him — he's quite tall, you know, and so is she — and said, "My Lord, I may have no breeding but I am not a toy to be used by you and then discarded. I've written my polite rejection of your kind offer to copulate with me here in this letter. I've addressed it to your wife.'"
'Did she do that, by God!' said Gresham, amazed and alarmed at the same time. He suspected women had been hung from the ramparts of Essex House for less. 'What did he do?'
'He went as red as his beard, my Lord,' said Jane, 'looked as if he was going to hit me, and then burst out laughing. He has been sending me notes and gifts ever since. I came to ask if you could intervene and ask him to stop. It's getting very boring. A girl must look to her honour, even an orphan such as myself. And you are my guardian, however much you might regret it. A good guardian would be incensed at this assault on his ward's virtue and seek to protect her with all his power.'
Dammit! How much of the earlier conversation had she heard? How had this woman got the knack of entering a room in total silence?
'You need protection as much as a grown lioness needs an escort from a sheep!' said Gresham
. Jane was looking very cool, her dark hair worn down as befitted an unmarried woman, her dress a working smock that did little to hide the length of her limbs or the curve of her body. He decided not to look into her eyes. They were disturbing, as deep as the darkest pool and flecked with intelligence. And sulky. Very sulky. All sorts of things would have been much, much easier if she had been stupid. And ugly. 'Are you going to make my life hell over this, as well as everything else? What do you expect me to do? Challenge Essex to a duel? If I do, everyone will think it's because I'm sleeping with you. Or want to. If I kill him the Queen will kill me. Mind you, if he kills me your problems really would be over.'
Jane's perfectly composed features did not shift at all. 'Despite a life lived largely without luxuries, prior to your kind rescuing of me,
I have never felt the need to indulge in self-pity. It's demeaning for anyone, and, if I may say so, particularly for a man.'
'No, you may not say so!' said Gresham. Was it a shout? Of course not. He would never lose his dignity in such a manner. How this woman had acquired the capacity, not only of silent movement, but of breaking through his lifelong self-control was quite beyond him. Once, when she was younger and being equally outrageous, he had moved towards her fully intending to put her over his knee. For the first time in his life Henry Gresham had been halted by a look. He would not try that again. This was ridiculous. He had been shot at, pierced several times by sword and dagger blades, blown up by gunpowder, near-drowned and once actually stretched out on the rack in the Tower of London (most incidents, now he came too think of it, connected in some strange way with Sir Robert Cecil) — and managed to keep his self-control. Yet now he was losing his temper, yet again, with a chit of a girl. It was nonsense. With a massive effort he calmed himself down.
'Please knock before you enter a room,' Gresham said, in as mild a tone as he could muster.
'Yes, my Lord,' said Jane, dropping her eyes from his gaze, but looking up at him for a moment from under her dark, deep eyelashes. 'I was about to when your body servant opened the door and let me in.'
Gresham directed a look of pure hatred at Mannion, who gazed back imperturbably and simply shrugged his shoulders. In answer to the question Gresham had not asked he said, 'Only being polite, wasn't I?'
Damn the both of them! A more unlikely combination than Mannion and Jane could not be imagined in the wildest writings of the stage, yet Gresham had never seen the pair exchange a cross word. There was some deep, unspoken level of communication between them that he could dimly sense but not understand. It annoyed him, because he valued Mannion more than any other person alive, more even than George. He resented her relationship with Mannion, was jealous of it. Mannion thought most women were like a meal, a necessary pleasure to be enjoyed at regular intervals. Yet never for a moment had Gresham sensed anything of that sort between the pair of them. Whatever their relationship was, it was beyond sex and, for that matter, beyond him.
If someone had suggested that what drew them together was a very full understanding of their joint master, Henry would have laughed in their face. No one understood Henry Gresham, not even himself. It was a matter of great pride to him.
'Well,' said Gresham trying not to be rude and managing to be so, 'I'll mention to my friend the next time we meet that you're off limits. Will that do?'
'Thank you for treating it so urgently,' said Jane, the sarcasm dripping like honey from a comb. Acid honey. 'Perhaps you might take care to mention it early on in the evening?'
'What's important about the timing?' asked Gresham before he had thought properly and saw the hole in the road opening up before him.
'Having seen you come home after an evening with the Earl of Essex, I'd have some reservations about your memory after the first hour.'
That was her going too far!
'You've no right to comment on what your master does either in his business or his social life. You are impudent and impertinent.'
She flushed at that, and bowed her head. It was a minor victory for Gresham. He decided to capitalise on it.
'I doubt you came here to discuss the Earl of Essex. Now that you're here what can I do for you?'
'I was hoping to request some money from you,' said Jane simply.
'More fripperies for yourself?' asked Gresham nastily, and regretted it the moment he spoke. Whatever her faults might be, and her continual nagging, she was scrupulous over money. She virtually ran The House and the accounts were superb. She never asked for money for clothes or jewellery. Indeed, it was the old nurse who came to Gresham every now and again and pointed out that even the poorest girl occasionally needed some money spending on her clothes. He had remembered the humiliation of his own childhood in the shadow of St Paul's, when the other boys at school had picked on the poor boy dressed in cast-offs, and had immediately handed Jane a purse that would have bought three gowns for the Queen. She had looked at him very oddly, and a week later had paraded herself in front of him with a sombre day dress in a cheap, dark-green material. At the same time she had given him the purse back, virtually all the coin still in it, together with an invoice for the paltry sum the dress and one other of similar economy had cost. After that he had gone to Raleigh's wife, got a figure out of her of what might be a suitable monthly allowance for a young girl to spend on clothes, and given it to her regularly. He suspected she spent most of it on books, but that was her choice. At least his ward looked presentable and did not disgrace him.
His jibe had gone home. Jane coloured up again, but she still had guts enough to respond.
'Not money for myself, my Lord. Money for the Library.'
'More money for the Library?' said Gresham. The realisation that he had been unfair to her was making him even more annoyed and vindictive. 'You have a small fortune to spend on this cursed house as it is. What need have you of more?'
Gresham hardly needed the money. He was one of the richest men in London, thanks to his father who had built The House. And he paid nothing to Jane for acting as housekeeper and saving him a steady fortune.
'I believe, my Lord, that I save a small fortune on this house.' Good God! She was reading his mind now. 'Unless you were happy with your servants feeding every vagabond in London and half the villages around it!' Jane was getting angry now.
Here we go again, thought Mannion. They're off. It was better than a play. Gresham could make another fortune by charging for tickets to watch.
'Well, you of all people should know about poor villages. And vagabonds.'
Her face registered the unfairness of the comment, but she clung to her point.
'My Lord! That is so unjust! This Library, the state of so many of the books in it, is… is a disgrace.*
'As you now claim to run The House, why have you allowed this to happen? If indeed it is true.'
'It is true, my Lord,' said Jane. 'Just look, here!' She turned to one of the dark, oak shelves and pulled out a book, one of those still with dust all over it. A small cloud shot forth in the beams of sunlight, as if angered to have its rest disturbed. 'See? The binding is going here… and here… and here… if I open this work fully the spine will crack and the pages will fall out. It will be ruined.'
'Here. Give it to me.' He took the book rather less gently than she had handled it. He opened the cover, suddenly remembering and slowing down so that he did not rip the binding from the pages. He had no intention of proving her point. The Revenger's Tragedy. There was no author. It was a cheap, hurriedly put together edition. Gresham knew. He had paid for it. The author, Thomas Kyd, now long since dead, had been one of nature's victims, subjected to torture and caught up with the truly dreadful Marlowe. Gresham had helped him out by paying for the book to be published, to give Kyd something to sell. He baulked at giving the man money, which would simply be converted straight to drink. Would the world suffer if this new pot-boiler was lost to posterity? Well, people were now producing new editions of Kyd's plays, claiming they had written them. But this book, with no auth
or listed, would not solve that problem. And it would have fallen apart in five years, anyway.
'It's just a play,' said Gresham. ‘Not even a very good one. All blood and thunder and not much poetry. What will it cost to repair and preserve this… light reading?'
'A few pence. The content of the book isn't the point. Books are
… for posterity.' She was prim now, like a schoolboy reciting a passage he had learnt by heart. 'What we discard, later generations might revere or worship. We mustn't judge. We must preserve so others can judge.'
'Fine speech,' said Gresham cuttingly. 'Where did you read it? But if later generations worship rubbish like this you won't find me going to church.'
'You don't, actually,' said Mannion from the doorway. 'Go to church, that is. At least, not as when you can avoid it.'
'Did I ask for your comment?' Gresham whirled round and glared at him.
'You never do,' said Mannion.
'Though it never stops him giving it!' guffawed George, who was clearly failing to see how serious the situation was.
Jane was not backing off. 'Please, my Lord', she said, though it clearly cost her deep, 'the worms will have these unless we do something soon. It would be an act of blasphemy to let so much knowledge go to waste.'
Now was the time to play his trump card.
'You had Armytage, the old bookseller, in here last week? Yes?'
Jane was caught unawares. Was this a criticism? What had she done wrong? Did he think she was selling her favours to the old man in order to purchase more books?
'Yes, my Lord. I-'
'I need no explanation. I passed him as he was leaving, invited him up here. These continual requests for money for the Library have to stop. So I asked him to estimate how much it would cost. For the whole lot. To get them mended, de-wormed or whatever you have to do. I've agreed a figure with him. He will do the work. And now will you stop pestering me with these requests? You have what you wanted. You may leave us.'
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