The rebel heart hg-4

by Martin Stephen

  'My Lord, how much did Armytage ask?'

  Gresham had hoped she would ask. The size of the figure proved conclusively how generous Gresham was, the lengths to which he would go to meet his ward halfway. He named the figure, trying not to sound smug.

  Her response caught him totally unawares. Jane turned scarlet, and exploded, 'That's outrageous! A ludicrous sum! A third of that and Armytage will be able to repair all the volumes here and keep his wife and children in state for a year!'

  'Are you complaining at my generosity?' Gresham yelled, pushed now beyond his limits.

  'I'm complaining at your stupidity!' Jane shouted back. She thought about adding 'my Lord' but decided not to. 'It's criminal to waste money! It's amazing you have any to spend if you can be fooled by an old man!'

  'How dare you talk to me like that!' roared Gresham. 'What's happened now to the "my Lord" this and the "my Lord" that? Well?'

  'You told me not to call you "my Lord" because you were only a knight and not a proper Lord at all,' said Jane, She was still flushed, but back in demure mode now, hands joined in front of her, eyes downcast.

  'Then why do you still carry on doing it?' asked Gresham boring in for the kill. 'Except, that is, when you're being grossly impertinent?' God, what must it be like to be a father like George, and have more than one of these wild young animals to cope with.

  She looked up then.

  'Because whether I choose it or not, you are my Lord,' she said simply. Then she burst into tears, and left rapidly.

  Damn! That was her in her room for another two days at least! False tears? Genuine tears? How in heaven was a man meant to know the truth behind a woman's tears? Did she know the difference? And what did it matter? And what did this stupid girl matter to him anyway? He had actually been quite proud at getting the brooks sorted out. Despite the front he put up, the scholar in him hated to see a book being ruined by time. The trouble with these books was that they had belonged to his father. At one stage he had half decided to move the whole library to the new one he was funding at Granville College, Cambridge, the recipient of more and more of his time and money. Had it been the thought of the effect on the girl that had stopped him? No. Of course not. It had been the thought of his favourite room in The House lying bereft of the books that were its true furniture.

  'She's right,' said Mannion, moving forward to pour the second flagon of wine he had brought. 'That old bugger Armytage must 'ave seen you coming. You could buy the Vatican Library, and get the Pope thrown in as a free gift, for that much.'

  'Oh, shut up,' said Gresham unconvincingly. 'I'm paying enough in bribes to the Vatican as it is.' The Pope would be a crucial factor in validating any claim by a Catholic to the English throne. It was an area where Gresham needed the fullest possible knowledge.

  The annoying thing was that Mannion was probably right. Gresham always knew when he was in the wrong, and then fought hardest to try and ignore what he knew. Usually, when the storm was over, he realised his mistake and owned up to it. Gresham never realised that for a man of power to be capable of admitting he is wrong is a truly endearing feature to those who work and live with him, even more so if they can see the struggle he has to face to meet the truth.

  'Oh, shut up!' he said again to Mannion, and sighed. The fight had gone out of him once Jane left. 'And make sure to go tomorrow and negotiate a proper price.'

  'Can I take the girl along with me? Old Armytage'll do anything for 'er, and she knows 'er business. 'E'll melt in 'er 'and when she flutters 'er eyelashes at 'im.'

  And have her see him admit that he had been wrong? To hell with it!

  'Oh, for heaven's sake! Take her if you really have to, on condition I don't have to see her. Just make sure her eyelashes are all she flutters.' He hated himself for making the concession. 'And make it clear that if she crows about this I'll wring her neck. Or, better, send her with a little red bow tied round a part of her that sticks out to Essex House, a gift courtesy of Henry Gresham. Except I'm not sure I dislike Essex enough for that.'

  'Which takes us back to where we started,' said George. 'Essex. He's the key to all these rumours. Him and his battle with Cecil.

  The Queen's failing, we all know that. Essex and Cecil are fighting it out for the Crown. Well, for control of it.'

  The Earl of Essex moved in wild company. Gresham knew that. He was a major reason for it being wild.

  'It may not be a prize worth having,' said Gresham. The row with Jane had left him tired and irritated, as meeting her always did. Why was he fighting on so many fronts? Was that all life held for him?

  'What do you mean?' said George.

  'You worry about the goings-on at Court. It's typical of the arrogance of Essex to think the only contenders for the throne are English. France, Spain and the Pope are actually more of a threat. And do you know the real problem? All these powerful men playing with countries and with crowns just as if they were chess pieces on a board! I worry about the country, and about London. You remember the three bad years in the 1590s when it seemed to rain for eleven and half months each year, and the crops just rotted in the ground?'

  'Remember?' said George. 'I can hardly forget. We had people dying, children starving. I had to mortgage farms to feed some of the worst-off families. I'll be paying for those three bad years for twenty more years, and some families paid with their lives.'

  'Your people were lucky. They had a master who was willing to pay to see them fed.' A master who mortgaged the estate more than it could bear, Gresham now knew to his and George's cost. 'Most didn't. Something snapped in England when it was clear the third year was going to be like the others. Remember all the preachers going around talking of the seven lean years? People really believed there'd be no good harvest for four, five more years.'

  'So? said George. 'Bad harvests and famine are as old as farming, as old as mankind itself.'

  'Yes,' said Gresham, 'but it's always at its worst when things combine. It wasn't just three disastrous years. It was the fact the years came at the time when everyone had realised there'd be no heir, realised Elizabeth'd never marry, there wouldn't even be a husband to call King when she died.'

  'Most of my people working on my lands don't know or care who's Queen. Or King.' George was getting glum now, the wine depressing rather than lifting him. 'It's always been about survival for them.'

  'They care in the Low Countries,' said Gresham. 'I've seen a dead family outside the gates of a big city, their eyes eaten out by the birds and their arms chewed off by wolves. They know what happens over there if there's no strong leadership, no one person in charge. And I think people are starting to turn on Gloriana, to hate her for her selfishness in having no heir, in naming no successor.'

  'Evidence?'

  'The talk in College is always a good guide. Every Cambridge College is full of men with shoulders looking for a chip to sit on them. But look round here in London: they no longer cheer when she drives through the city. The boatmen just about pull aside for her barge. They don't shout or cheer, or even put their oars up in salute. Sometimes they don't even look in her direction. They look away. And row on.'

  'So?'

  'They cheer when Essex rides past, cheer as if there was no tomorrow. And that's dangerous, don't you see? Essex has stood up to the Queen. He's handsome, he's dashing-'

  'And 'e knows it!' said Mannion decisively. 'Don't 'e just love the attention! Not clever to love it so much, and to show it.'

  'He's new!' said Gresham. 'The Court's like a musty old sheet that's been in the chest far too long. He's a breath of fresh air, not an old wrinkled lady with a Court that smells of lavender and cedar. A lady whose top servant is Robert Cecil. You know what someone painted on the walls of his home? Cecil's home?'

  'Decorate me? said George, who was dangerously close to getting drunk. 'Give me a new coat of paint?'

  'No. Toad,' said Gresham. 'Toad. Is that a country happy with its leadership?'

  'Sure you didn't paint it yours
elf?' asked George, giggling.

  'Wake up, George!' said Gresham. 'There's things going on out there that worry me too, unsettling things. Not just my survival. That's minor. Who'll care if I end up dead in the Tower? You and a servant. But if we unleash civil war in England? That has to be more important than you, or me. We may be coming to the end of an era. But we don't know what's going to replace it.'

  'So?' said George. 'Do mere mortals ever know that sort of thing?'

  'But what if we replace it by what's happening in the Low Countries? Twenty, thirty years of rival armies fighting over ordinary people's bodies for a power no one can ever truly win. What if the wolves become so bold as to come up to your door?'

  Perhaps, thought Gresham, the wolves are here already, just dressed in sheep's clothing.

  They had talked on, until George fell asleep by the fire. Gresham had left him, snoring gently, though it was only noon.

  'You goin' to tell 'im the truth? About Cecil?' said Mannion. Gresham had told Mannion immediately.

  'No,' said Gresham. 'At least, not yet.'

  Chapter 3

  Mid June, 1598 London

  The extravagant and luxurious trappings of Essex House were a lie, of course, albeit a very pretty lie. A hundred tradesmen had been ruined by Robert Devereux's extravagance and his inability to pay for what he used.

  'It must be Ireland, my Lord,' said Gelli Meyrick. 'It's been your destiny from birth. It's your chance for the future.'

  Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, did not glance in the direction of Sir Gelli Meyrick, his secretary. The Earl was stretched out on cushions, his long legs apparently carelessly cast in front of him, but not so carelessly as to fail to reveal either the fine silk of his hose, or the magnificent shape of the legs it hugged so closely. He was in his shirt, a goblet clutched in his hand. Dark sweat marks showed under his arms and across his back. He had come from the fencing master, whose session he had extended by nearly three quarters of an hour. Essex was good, and he knew it.

  'Ireland,' he mused, the lilt of the Welsh accent he had never quite lost clashing with the more refined Court accent. 'You say is my destiny. Isn't it more accurate to describe it as my family's fatal attraction? Or perhaps you believe in kill or cure?' He tossed back what wine was left in his goblet.

  The Earl's father, the father he had hardly known, had died horribly of dysentery in Dublin, his very innards seeming to turn to corruption. Power in Ireland was an enticing prize for the newly ennobled, those with no inherited land. Yet the lands and income Ireland offered had one weakness: much of the land had to be conquered before it could be raped for its income. Appointed by Elizabeth as Governor General of Ireland, the endless battles to suppress the wild Irish peasants and their treacherous feudal lords had worn out his father's body and what little wealth he had in equal measure.

  'Your father tried and failed,' said Meyrick, unabashed, 'partly because he was never the soldier you are, partly because he went to Ireland for wealth.'

  'God knows,' said Essex, 'I could do with the wealth! Is there no more money to be got from my lands?'

  No, thought Meyrick, remembering the screams of the three men he had had whipped in front of their wives and children for hiding a few sacks of oats, there is not. However, the Earl should not be bothered with such trivia as the bleeding backs of his peasants. Indeed, he was soft enough to be moved by their sub-human wailing.

  'We do all we can, my Lord. But Ireland is your Holy Grail. Take it. Drink from it. You'll be immortalised.'

  'You flatter me,' said Essex, a faint smile crossing his lips. It was the smile that so helped him with women, suggesting as it did great sadness allied to great vulnerability. It was no lie. The Earl was a far more melancholic and vulnerable man in his own mind than he hoped his friends ever saw. 'And I know you flatter me. I'm like the child desperate for the nurse to tell him the same old story, the story that comforts not because of its content but because of its familiarity. So, carry on. Let me be the child I am. Tell me about immortality. My immortality.'

  'Ireland is in turmoil. Tyrone is fighting to throw the English out of Ulster; has gone back on all his agreements. The Lord Deputy is dead and the Queen will appoint no new person. Our forces are weak and badly led, and one of our prime strongholds at Blackwater is under siege. Ireland awaits a true soldier. A man whose valour and leadership will finally wrest it from its warlords. And when Ireland finds its hero, so will England. It'll hail you as a saviour, as the man who finally marked out the greatest expansion to English rule since the loss of Calais.'

  'Now tell me why all this will make me immortal?' whispered Essex, his voice dropping to almost inaudible levels.

  'Because the Queen is dead!' hissed Meyrick. 'Not dead quite yet in her body, but nearly so. Dead in her mind. Dead in her leadership. Dead in her capacity to inspire the love and affection of her subjects. When you return victorious from Ireland, London and the whole country will be yours for the taking! This country has had Regents acting for the very young, when such a one has become King. It's a small jump for it to accept a Regent for the very old.'

  'Or mount a rebellion,' said Essex. Some physical change had come over him, a hardening of the muscles in his face. His voice had changed as well, the rural Welsh lilt more pronounced now, yet the words more clipped. Essex did not like people to come close to him. Perhaps because he himself never quite knew what personality he would wear on any day, or even in the course of any one hour. He liked drink to act as a buffer between himself and those to whom he offered friendship.

  'Crowns are taken by force of arms! Henry the Seventh felt no need to act as Regent for a failing King! To rebel against the Queen would be no rebellion at all. It would be a succession. A right and proper succession.' Essex's eyes were ablaze now and he swung himself off the couch, stood to his full height.

  Was he as handsome as his admirers always claimed, Meyrick wondered? Probably not, but the combination of the clean body, the wide and handsome face and the money to dress it properly made for a powerful appeal, fired as it was by a mind that soared and crashed in an infuriatingly unpredictable manner.

  Well, there had been no other career option for Meyrick when he had hooked his hungry claws into the handsome young noble-man, hoping against hope that this man would be the means of lifting him out of grinding, humiliating poverty. And it had worked, had it not? Sir Gelli Meyrick now ran the Earl of Essex's Welsh estates with a rule and a rod of iron that made him the most feared man in the Marches. Would this man, his master, become King of England? It was no more fanciful than the prospect of Meyrick gaining a knighthood had been ten years ago. Why not? How many of Bolingbroke's followers, when they had joined his service, had expected to end up wearing the King's livery?

  'There is a tide in the affairs of men…'

  Meyrick looked blankly at Essex.

  'Shakespeare. Julius Caesar. It's spoken by one of the men who kill Caesar, and then try for his crown.'

  It was typical of Essex that in the broad sweep of the idea he had forgotten that Caesar never had a crown, had been killed because he seemed about to claim one. He had also apparently forgotten the moment when old Lord Burghley had drawn a prayer book out of his pocket and pointed to the 55th psalm with trembling fingers, 'Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days.'

  Essex had been arguing passionately against peace with Spain at the time. But Essex was not finished.

  'For each man there comes a moment, a moment of destiny, a moment of truth. It appears, it is there to be grasped… and then it goes, like a shooting star in the heavens. Grasp the right moment, and mere men become Kings and Kings become Emperors. Choose the wrong moment, and vaunting ambition turns into dust. Or kills the conspirators, as it did those who rose against Caesar. But who knows when that moment is?'

  This was not Meyrick's strength. Intellectual debate bored him. Essex liked to patronise those around him, careful to keep his drinking companions to soldiers and bluff men of the
world, or play-actors who would sell their souls for another jug and one good line. If he had attracted a circle of true artists, perhaps they might have challenged the sense of intellectual superiority he seemed to need so much. There was only that turncoat Francis Bacon perpetually whispering in his ear. Damn him! thought Meyrick. My life rests with this man, yet he can wear so many personalities in the space of one hour that he would tire out the very Devil himself. Which Robert Devereux, of the many available, am I talking to now?

  'Am I Brutus?' asked Essex. 'Tumbling to my own destruction because I know my monarch is wrong, and simply clearing the way for Octavius Caesar to step in and take over the crown I should have won? Or am I Bolingbroke, making one strike because I know that all the fabric of government is rotten to the core, rotted from within, waiting merely for the one, savage blow to bring it all tumbling down in my favour?'

  Or are you simply a vain, bloody and deceitful man who, for all that he seems to talk about others, can only talk about himself? thought Meyrick, and then dismissed the thought. It was not helpful to someone who had no other cause, and whose role was to stiffen in its determination the one cause he had.

  Essex was standing by the window, victim of another sudden mood change. He spoke aloud, but Meyrick knew the words were private. He often did this, speaking out private thoughts apparently oblivious to the fact that others were hearing him. Essex was like a child, a fatherless child in desperate need of someone to tell him what to do.

  'So little time!' he said. 'All that awaits the slow is the plague, or decrepit failing old age. So little time!'

  'Make time your friend by grasping it,' said Meyrick, almost desperately, 'or lose it by delay!'

  There was no answer. Meyrick waited, for seconds, for minutes. It was as if the Earl had frozen. Sensing something he did not understand, Meyrick bowed briefly, and left.

  The image of a small boy swam before Essex's eyes. Eight or nine, perhaps, with unusually fine features, startling blue eyes and. a mop of blond hair. Why? Why had he given in? Some were granted time. Others had it ripped away from them.