The rebel heart hg-4

by Martin Stephen

  'Wait here a moment, please,' he said, and left the room. Five, ten, tense minutes passed before he returned, bearing a box.

  'Something so beautiful deserves something equally beautiful,' he said quietly, as he drew forth the necklace. On a simple gold chain, the ruby was like an open heart pulsing with extraordinary colour. He moved behind Jane, slipping the necklace over her neck, feeling the warmth of her skin at his fingers' ends.

  'It was my father's,' he said. 'It seems a shame for such a thing to lie in the dark. It'll be your only jewel. They'll know whence it came. And they will not call you mutton dressed as lamb.'

  Well, at least he had struck her speechless for once.

  He had thanked Sarah from the bottom of his heart. There had been no malice in their meeting, and when their time was done there had been no malice in their parting.

  'I enjoyed it,' she had said simply. 'It made me feel young again.' She did not mention that she had no children of her own. 'Tell me, have you slept with her?'

  'No I have not!' said Gresham with a vehemence partly fuelled by the thoughts he had had at the sight of Jane in her finery. Because of these thoughts, he could guess other men's reactions. As a result he felt himself aggressively protective towards Jane.

  'Do you really know what you've got there in that girl? Sarah asked.

  'A target for every man at Court?' asked Gresham glumly, ‘I hadn't realised she would make me act gamekeeper as well as poacher.'

  'However beautiful, the body will always decay over the course of life,' answered Sarah. 'The mind,' she added gnomically, 'stays with us all our lives, God willing.'

  It was difficult to say whether the radiance that lit Jane came from the superb job Sarah — and Jane — had made of an instant Court dress, or from within her own sense of well-being. Gresham never doubted that the meeting with the Queen would go well. Whatever her failings, Elizabeth had a soft spot for young girls, provided they did not marry against her will or bed one of her favourites.

  'What did she ask you about?' asked Gresham, as they went back to The House in the Strand.

  'Oh…' said Jane vaguely, 'woman's stuff.'

  He decided to leave it at that. The real business was about to start.

  Gresham and Mannion dismounted at the quayside, handing the horses over with a pat to the grooms who would ride them home. The cobbled wharf was littered with the debris of the sea, and stank of tar and foul water, thick in the heavy air that barely flapped a sail. The tiny Waves were slapping angrily yet ineffectively at the hulls, as if warning the ships of their bigger brethren waiting out at sea. Jane was due to come in the huge coach that Gresham's father had adopted in his later years. Already the arrival of the fine gentleman and his baggage was causing a stir, with men turning from the mending of sails or the lugging of stores to watch the new entertainment and relieve the boredom of their working lives.

  How did you train your men? Essex had asked Gresham. With great difficulty and at great length, was the answer. Only two of those same men were with Gresham now, Jack and Dick, to act as porters for the luggage. Other men would have taken servants to care for their clothes or shave them on such a trip. Gresham chose to take two people who knew how to handle themselves in a fight.

  The same was not true of the crew of the Anna. The master was a competent seaman, in part-retirement now. His crew were no better and no worse than many of their type — jobbing mariners who moved from one boat to another as work came up — and who would stay only a few months or even weeks when it became clear that the Anna would only leave her berth for short trips to shake out her sails and stretch her hull. Some three or four, the more permanent ones, were members of the master's own family. Gresham's instinct had been to use the Anna for the trip to Scotland rather than take passage on a boat of which he had no previous knowledge. At least he knew that good money had been spent on her rigging, that her timbers were sound and the vessel in exceptional repair. He would sell her afterwards, he reasoned, and buy another escape route in another mooring.

  But he had not trained the Anna's men. Her crew did not know him, had no particular loyalty towards him. The elements were only one of the dangers for a sailing ship.

  What if his enemies were watching him, even now? How much would Cecil's letter, or that from the Queen, be worth to someone angling for the Crown? How much was the Queen's ring worth? Anyone bringing it to James would be granted private access. On a secret mission, how would James know whether or not the bearer was the man to whom the Queen had handed her token, or the man who had murdered the initial bearer? Worst of all, was Essex skilled enough to hear of Cecil's rebuttal and try to intercept it?

  Nagging at the back of his mind was the way he had been tricked by Cecil. Was he losing his touch? Was using his own boat another sign of the decaying mental powers of someone who had lived on the edge for so long that he was now taking the easy route? And all the time the sense was growing in him of the importance of what he carried. A letter from Cecil to James was bad enough, possible proof of treachery. Yet even that was insignificant by the side of a secret letter from Queen Elizabeth of England to King James of Scotland. How many of those fighting over the flesh of the English crown would give a fortune to know the contents of that letter?

  He cast his eyes over the roadstead, from the bits of rough timber, fish scales and assorted unidentifiable lumps of matter washing up against the strand, to the boats with the precious berths by the shore out to the less fortunate moored in the tideway. Would one of these nondescript, assorted vessels, the lifeblood of England's coastal and near-continental trade, drop its sails as the Anna set out, and follow it silently out to sea? How many of the seamen and rabble on the quayside were in the pay of Gresham's and the Queen's enemies? Was the spy being spied upon at this very moment?

  Mannion was oblivious to Gresham's fears, casting a professional eye over the Anna and grunting in satisfaction at what he saw. Mannion had been a ship's boy, groomed to be a captain, until the owner of the vessel had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition and been burned alive as a heretic in front of his wife and crew. Just as Gresham hated oil lamps, so Mannion would never stay in a room where pork had been overcooked. The similarity to the smell of human flesh burning was too close.

  The master of the Anna was standing on her tiny quarterdeck, and hurried over to greet Gresham. Old now, every storm he had weathered had left a wrinkle on his face, but he had a toughness that Gresham found reassuring. What was less reassuring, and what Gresham had not seen when he had interviewed the man, was his tendency to move sideways all the time like a restless crab, and to rub his gnarled hands together like a moneylender striking a deal. Nor would he look Gresham in the eye. Interesting. Alarm bells began to ring in Gresham's head. The man was sweating, nervous. What had scared him so much?

  'You seem to have a full crew,' said Gresham noting more men than he remembered scurrying round the deck. They ranged from another wizened old man who the captain assured Gresham was the best ship's carpenter sailing from London, to a boy for whom a razor seemed an impossible dream.

  'I hope I haven't acted out of turn, sir,' the man was now saying. As well as not looking at Gresham his rheumy eyes flickered left and right, as if expecting someone to rescue him. 'The voyage to Scotland is long and sometimes treacherous, even in summer. It would be greatly in our interest for us to have two watches, but that means doubling the crew. Trade's not good at present, and there's plenty of good men around, so I took the liberty of hiring another watch. I know it's more expensive, but it will be safer, and with the lady on board…' He nodded obsequiously towards Jane, who had just arrived and whose trunks were being lugged on board by a cheerful Jack and Dick, and kept his eyes on her for longer than was strictly necessary. 'I've also taken on board a sailing master. He can navigate and con the ship, let me have a little sleep every now and then.'

  Damn! Damn! Any one of the original crew might have been paid by one of Gresham's enemies, though as a safeguard Gr
esham had instructed the master wherever possible to recruit from his extended family. But the new men? Recruited in a hurry from the taverns that served as employment exchanges along the river, they could be anyone's man. Damn! Why had he not thought of this beforehand? For someone who liked above all to be in control, too much of his life was out of his hands at present.

  'Master,' said Gresham, 'I do mind.' The man's face fell, and Gresham worked outwardly to reassure him. 'No, the responsibility is mine. I didn't explain to you the reality of what it is we do. The voyage we are embarking on is… sensitive. It's possible my enemies may have tried to place someone on board.' Had he hit a spot? Or was the old man simply angry at the implicit accusation. God! What a way to start off with someone who might at some stage in the voyage have their lives in his hands. In any event, the man showed anger, started to bluster. Genuine? Difficult to tell. Patches of his face were dead, unmoving, the nerves perhaps atrophied by too many stormy days and nights gazing head on into the wind and the spray.

  'Sir Henry! I'm an honest man and I ply an honest trade!' Why, when a man felt the need to tell you that he was honest, did it always mean the opposite? 'The idea that I would allow — a spy — on board my ship — your ship,' he hastily corrected himself, 'is a deep insult.' Did he realise what Gresham was? If he did, he was about to allow the deepest insult he had ever met board his ship. For money of course. Which would be why he would have let others on board of the same type, if that was what he had done. Gresham let him rant for a while longer, then cut in.

  'What's the minimum number of men you need?'

  The man's brow furrowed in concentration. It was clearly with only the greatest reluctance that he spoke. He was caught in a dilemma: when Gresham had hired him it had been plain as a pikestaff that the man was not only rich, but knew about boats. There were some as said that he had sailed not against the Armada but actually on it. 'Well, two more might let me stand down most of the rest, I suppose, so that we run with a full crew in the day and have only two on watch at night, if the wind is steady and the boat's working well. It's not ideal, but it'll do. There must be a good man at the helm, of course, and one as a look-out. It's dangerous out there, and I don't mean just the chance of running into another vessel.' He thought for a moment. 'But I would implore you, sir, to let me keep my new sailing master. The only other man I could have trusted to take charge on a watch left me last week to take up his own command.'

  Gresham would probably have to compromise on that. Experienced sailor that he was, he was no navigator, nor qualified as a captain. He spoke as if granting a great favour.

  'By all means keep your sailing master,' said Gresham. And I will ensure that either Mannion or myself are awake whenever he is on duty. 'And you'll have four extra men. My men. These two here and two more I'll send for. They've all been at sea. The two you see here are quite experienced.'

  Was fate playing against him? There were ten, perhaps twelve men in The House he would trust in a fight. Apart from Jack and Dick, he knew of only two remaining whom he could call on as reinforcements. The rest he had allowed to go home to their villages, knowing he would be gone perhaps for months, knowing also what a difference the men would make to their families and their villages for the harvest. Many of the great London houses ran on a skeleton staff in the summer, the owners fleeing the heat and increased plague risk in London for the country, the servants desperate to get back to their homes to help in the crucial time that could decide whether a family starved over the winter.

  Yet at least he had two men at The House, men with no family to return to. Gresham's boatmen were all originally sailors. They were tough, adaptable and very happy to swap the sea for the Thames. There was little glamour in life at sea. Take the Anna, Drake had taken ships as small with him around the world. It was standard policy to take twice the men one needed on any long cruise, on the assumption that half would die of disease or injury.

  Even though Gresham sweetened the signing off of the new sailors who had been recruited with a week's wages, two of them took it very badly, looking poisonously at Gresham and rubbing their foreheads. Gresham's sense of danger grew, was screaming at him now. He knew that when a man touched his chin in talking he was uncertain, when someone played with their earlobe they were considering a lie. His life had depended at times on knowing these things, reading the language spoken by the body as well as hearing the words spoken by the mouth. And he knew that the man who rubbed his forehead in that manner was not only angry and disturbed, but scared and rebellious as well. Why so? The men had received a week's wages for no work, and sudden appointment and dismissal were as much a part of a sailor's life as fighting the sea or eating badly salted beef. Had these men been paid to act as spies on the spy? To steal the packages he carried from Cecil and from the Queen, and her ring? If so, he was well rid of them. But it meant that the secret of his trip was out, to someone at least.

  He motioned to Mannion.

  'Sure you're not just getting into a panic?' asked Mannibn gruffly. 'You've been in a right old mood for months past now.' It was the nearest Mannion would ever come to criticism.

  'The master talked about our voyage to Scotland,' said Gresham flatly.

  'Well, that is where we're bloody well goin', ain't it?' said Mannion.

  'But he doesn't know that!' said Gresham. 'When I ordered him to get ready, I mentioned a long trip. Supplies for two months. I didn't say where we were going!'

  'But there's others who knows, ain't there?' said a perplexed Mannion.

  'Think about it,' said Gresham. 'I know. You know. The girl knows. Cecil has every interest in keeping my going a secret until I've at least embarked and am well on my way. The Queen likewise — which is why I never mentioned the reason for my request to see her to anyone before the audience, and why she agreed to issue the passport in secret and make no announcement. Of course people will find out where I've gone. There are no secrets in England — or, probably, in Scotland. But I bent over backwards to keep the knowledge secret until we were halfway up the coast and out of harm's way, too late for anyone to stop us. We did everything to make sure our destination was a secret. And an old sea captain doesn't exactly hob-nob with a lady-in-waiting who might just conceivably have been listening outside the door, or spend time with one of Cecil's servants. Someone else told the master we were going to Scotland.'

  'And?' said Mannion.

  'And the only reason, the only reason, must be to suborn him, buy him. The quick blow on the head, the search of us and our baggage? Or the arrangement to meet with another vessel off a certain point at a certain time?'

  'So what do we do now?' said Mannion, looking around the quayside. 'Call it off and go 'ome?'

  'What for?' said Gresham. 'Cecil'll pull the plug on us if I don't get going. The Queen'll have my balls, likewise. And if we do turn round and get another crew in time, what's to stop it happening all again? We've got the two of us, two good men we've trained ourselves and two more we can get in time. And we can lay on a few surprises. We've faced lots worse odds. And we know what might be coming. Better out than in, I say. If someone's after us, let's bring them on, find out who it is.' He paused for a moment. 'I'm tired of all this shadow-dancing. Let's get this out in the daylight. I'm tired of running away. Let's run into it, head first.'

  Gresham felt a cloud lifting from his soul. It was madness to walk into a trap with himself, five men and little more. But it was doing the unexpected, taking a perverse control. If his instinct was right, he would soon have an enemy to fight. A real, physical enemy, tangible and visible.

  'Right you are,' said Mannion, simply. He rarely agonised over decisions. 'We got some more work to do, then, ain't we?'

  There was time enough to get some extra supplies from The House and the two men — Gresham hoped they were still there and had not already gone off to some tavern — and still catch the tide. He had planned for everything to be ready two hours earlier than was strictly necessary, assuming Jane would be
late by at least that much.

  Jane appeared on deck.

  'Lucky bugger!' an onlooker shouted, as Jane bowed politely to Gresham.

  Lucky? The particular bugger who had cried out did not know half of it — the tears, the tantrums, the moral blackmail… well, at least she had agreed to come and not made his life difficult. He owed her something for that. If she kept to it, of course. Storms at sea could take on a new meaning over the next few days.

  The age of chivalry could not be allowed to die entirely, and so the master's cabin had been given over to Jane, tiny as it was. She shared it with her maid, Mary, who was thankfully ugly enough to put off even Mannion's roving eye. Gresham had never doubted that Jane's maid had to come with her. It was not only that the girl would need help dressing, particularly if as part of their cover, she was to be paraded before a King as she had just been paraded before a Queen. Sarah had been persuaded to part with two more Court dresses, so there were now three packed carefully in a chest all their own, carefully sealed against damp and salt spray. It was also the more mundane matters. It would be wholly unseemly, for example, for a man to enter the cabin in the morning and ditch the contents of the chamber pot over the side. That was definitely another of the maid's jobs. Gresham took over the one other, even tinier cabin, knowing without asking that Mannion would sleep at the foot of his truckle bed. The master, pushed out by the need to house Jane, would make do with a hammock slung at the rear of the hold, an old sail slung across to mark out his space even though the hold was empty apart from Gresham's baggage.

  Jane was excited by the prospect of the voyage. It was quite pathetic really, and if Gresham had had any spare emotional capacity he would have found it rather touching. He knew they could be in for weeks of damp boredom, a tiny deck their only exercise. Yet for Jane, who suddenly at the prospect of the voyage had turned from a sulky young woman into an excited young girl, this was clearly an adventure. She saw little outside the confines of The House, her visits to St Paul's to buy books and her occasional visits to Cambridge. She had invented a role for herself in The House, becoming in effect its steward; the old man who occupied that role had been only too willing to allow her to take over.