Jane had been little more than a foundling when she had first been entrusted to the care of The House. Unlike Gresham she worshipped it; its architecture and its grandeur staggered her. Its comfort seemed to her as if heaven had indeed arrived on earth. Its Library was proof that paradise did indeed exist. So much to find out! As a little girl rescued from the cruelty of being a bastard in a mud-soaked village, she was simply another whim of Henry Gresham, the man who had scorned one of the biggest fortunes in England to go and fight in the Low Country, risking death by bullet or pestilence with every step he took. To those he paid to work in The House, the man who had rescued her was little more than an absentee adventurer and rather too many of them remembered their master as a ragged-arsed urchin who, like Jane, had wandered the endless corridors and passages of The House, owned and loved by no one. She too had been free to wander The House from its finest rooms to its lowest cellars. And she had listened. Oh, how she had listened, a mere child, wide-eyed and posing no threat to anyone. What she had heard had horrified her. The Gresham fortune was feeding half of London. Even worse, basic repairs were being neglected. She had never had any position of power; she had always been cast as the victim: 'Ah, there she is — the poor little bastard girl rescued by that strange man who does the dirty work for the Cecils!' Jane could remember the moment, the single defining moment, when she had declared war on life as a victim. It was when she saw three sides of beef being delivered to The House, and two of them just as quickly being whisked off to destinations unknown; a nod and a wink the only currency that changed hands. It was then that she had given herself a purpose in life. Henry Gresham — Sir Henry Gresham — was a book she could not even lift off the shelf, never mind open and read the pages. His House was a different matter altogether: that she could read and understand. From that moment it became her aim to run The House as it should be run.
How to do it? Very difficult, as she had no status and was nothing more than a discardable whim of her master. Yet she had one thing, one thing only, on her side. None of those in the employ of The House and her master knew the exact nature of the relationship between them. The fact that there was no such relationship was as true as it was not widely known. She had traded shamelessly on that ignorance. She had waited until she had turned sixteen, the age at which many a girl was married and nominally at least became responsible for running a household. She had positioned herself in the right place when the sides of beef arrived, and at the crucial moment when a grinning labourer was about to cart the majority of the delivery off elsewhere she had asked, in a loud voice, 'Does my master know where his beef goes?'
There had been a stunned silence, and the grin had frozen on the face of the man with one of the sides of beef hung over his back. The cook had fought back, inevitably. Jane had planned for this.
'Stop your nonsense, girl!' she had said. 'What do you know about such matters? Get about your business — and while you're at it, out of my kitchen!'
'I know you're cheating Sir Henry!' Jane had said with an air of absolute finality; inwardly she was quaking. 'And if you carry on doing so, I shall tell him.'
They had reached an agreement, the elderly cook and the young girl. These sides of beef would go their way, as they had done for so long, but would cease to do so after that. As of now. And if the lucrative business ended, her conversation with Henry Gresham — the one he would never in reality have allowed her to have — would never take place.
She had then gone immediately to the steward, and demanded that she scrutinise the meat orders in future. Reduced to panic by the thought of what could be revealed about his mismanagement, he had agreed.
Slowly, Jane had thought. One piece at a time. It had taken her two whole years to gain control, to do the steward's job while he continued to receive the rewards. Yet it gave her a strange satisfaction to know that The House was now well managed, albeit at one remove.
And Mannion had proved her greatest ally. The stables in The House were as corrupt as the rest of it. Certainly Gresham's fine horses — one of the few things he really did seem to care about — were well fed and well looked after, but so were many other horses in London from money siphoned off from The House. The Head Groom was a vicious bully, renowned for the violence he inflicted on prostitutes in the stews of Southwark. Jane had left him until last, partly through fear, partly through realisation that he would be her greatest enemy. He was no cleverer than the others, the sum of money he was taking from his master no greater than others, but he hated women. He, of all the power figures in The House, would not bow down under a threat from a woman, and he also had the strongest position. Gresham cared more about his horses than he ever did about his ward, and the Head Groom was good with horses, one of the best in his profession. Would Gresham care how much money was wasted if his horses were well cared for? In her heart of hearts, Jane thought not. And she had no doubt that if it came to a choice between the welfare of his horses and her welfare, there would be no competition. She actually, went to her show-down with the Head Groom convinced that he would win, for the moment at least, and that she would be lucky to emerge from their conversation with anything less than a black eye or a bloodied lip.
It had certainly been heading that way. He had actually stood up and started to walk towards Jane, his right hand clenching into a furious fist, when suddenly he stopped. The stable door had opened. Someone was standing there, blocking out the light.
'If you lay a finger on 'er,' said Mannion, 'you're dead. Tragic episode. Man killed by 'orse. Except it won't be an 'orse that kicks your pathetic little life out of you. It'll be me.'
The man looked at Mannion, stunned. There was an air of absolute finality in what he had said. When he chose to exercise it, Mannion carried massive authority.
'And while you're at it,' Mannion said, in the same flat tone, 'pack your bags. You just resigned. You got an hour. Otherwise, I'm telling you, one of these 'orses is going to behave out of character tonight.'
The man left the stables, his white face suggesting that The House would have a vacancy for a new Head Groom within the hour.
Jane was stunned. She had not even realised that her master and Mannion had returned to The House. She had not seen Mannion at work before. The sheer, blunt force of the man in part overwhelmed her, made her feel fragile and will o' the wisp. And no one had ever helped her before, not like this, except for the one moment when the fine gentleman had rescued her from poverty and humiliation. Jane was used to being alone, and acting on her own.
'Why did you… how did you know…?' 'Pleased I 'appened to be around.'
She felt she ought to say something, started scrabbling for words. Mannion put his finger to his lips.
'Look, girl,' he said, and somehow the 'girl' was not patronising. Rather, and very strangely, it made her feel an equal. 'People like
'im upstairs' — it was clear he was referring to Henry Gresham — 'they need 'elp from the people who really know how it works. You give it your way. I give it mine. Truth is, we're both on the same side. 'Im upstairs, 'e'd use a sonnet to say it, and then not get it right. Us, we don't need fancy words. We just need to know as 'ow we're on the same side.'
He grinned at her, gave an ironic touch to his forehead, and left, leaving the stable door open. A few of the horses had become restive at the tension and the voices, and before she left, almost without thinking, she walked down the length of the stables, reaching out a hand here and a hand there, talking nonsense softly. The smell of horses was all around, not offensive like the stench of human sewage, but somehow rich and warm, tempered by the delicate scent of straw and fodder.
It was a strangely assorted trio that watched as the Anna's scratch crew dropped her dun sails and eased gently out of Deptford, enough hours of daylight left to get her safely out to sea: the young man of fashion in his prime, the waif-become-spy and the great bulk of the serving man.
For two of them at least, it was not the blustery wind nor the rapid, chopping motio
ns of the boat that held their attention. It was the other vessel that also slipped its moorings at exactly the same time as they did, let them build up a lead and then started to follow a suitable distance behind.
'Coincidence?' asked Gresham.
'You must be jokin',' said Mannion. 'But, you know, you get feelings, don't you? Even before your business with the captain. I got a feeling about this one.'
'I've got a feeling about the whole bloody trip,' said Gresham, under his breath. No point in alarming Jane. The wind streamed her hair behind her as she gazed excitedly at civilisation slipping past them. Her maid was puking over the side. She had told everyone she was going to be seasick, and was determined not to let them down.
'We can still turn round,' said Gresham. 'Yeah,' said Mannion, 'we could.'
They watched as they made more open sea. The sails behind them, even darker than their own, stayed steady, neither coming nearer nor turning for France.
Chapter 5
1 July, 1598 At Sea
They rigged and lit the running lights as night came on, one at the stern and one at the bow. Then, unusually, two bright lights at the mast head, one to port, one to stern, hung from the widest yard of the mainmast. A landsman would have thought it routine. For someone like Gresham, who had sailed with Drake, it was extraordinary. Was it his imagination, or were the shadowing sails catching up on them?
Mannion thought so. 'What's it look like to you?' Gresham asked him. There was complete trust between them at moments like these.
'Well,' said Mannion, 'I ain't seen this many lights outside of a Palace. Must want someone to see us. As for that ship, they're smaller than us, but faster.' Mannion paused to collect his thoughts. 'Smuggler's sails, probably not heavily armed.' Smugglers tended to favour the darkest possible sails to avoid recognition at night, even darker than the traditional dun sails that a number of the London vessels favoured. What was following them was a smuggler's boat — large enough to take a decent cargo, but small and nippy enough to make the Channel crossing at speed, probably with a few popguns to discourage boarders. 'Room for lots o' men on board, mind.'
'If you were them and you wanted to do us damage…' asked Gresham.
'I doubt they want to do us damage, at least not right off. It's what you're carrying they wants, and that means keepin' you alive, at least until they've found it. After that…' Mannion needed to say no more on that count. When Gresham had been milked of his information, he and the rest of them would tell no one of the assault, pursue no vengeance, provided of course they were at the bottom of the Channel. 'I'd wait till it's real dark, pull up on us, grapple and board. They could have ten, fifteen men, easy, spare for a boarding party. Mebbe more, God help us. There's two of us, and fer all they know we've only got a couple o' piss-pant servants with us, 'stead of four trained men. The crew 'ere, most of them'll be asleep. And any road, they ain't goin' to shed too much blood for us, are they? Even if they haven't got their own men among 'em, which they probably have. Like 'im up there.'
A thick-set sailor with a villainous low forehead was crouched in the tiny crow's nest. The vessel behind them could simply crack on sail and overtake them within the hour if it so chose, but that would give Gresham an hour to prepare if a suspicious look-out called the alarm. If it could be managed, it would be far better to creep up on the Anna, the look-out and whoever was in command bribed to silence. As if to echo their thoughts, the master came up to them, touching his forelock in the traditional salute.
'I'll be taking myself off for a while now. The ship's in good hands.' He motioned to the sailing master, a surprisingly young man with a shock of fair hair under a woollen cap and a ready grin.
'Could be coincidence,' said Gresham.
'Yeah?' said Mannion.
They gathered their four men in the tiny space of Gresham's cabin, bent almost double, and gave them instructions. If anything, the four of them looked more excited than frightened. Jack and Dick were both dark-haired, well-built men, the difference being that Jack had twenty years on Dick, most of that spent at sea. Tom was the man with the broken nose Mannion had brought along to knock some respect into Cecil's messenger: no great brain, but brilliant fists. Edward was thin, lugubrious, and the best oarsman on the Thames.
The Anna carried four small brass cannon on either side, but the one addition Gresham had made to her when he had bought the ship were four swivel cannons on the stern, two on either side of the upper deck. The for'ard pair could cover the tiny main deck as well. Such a gun was usually designed to sweep grapeshot across an enemy's deck, but its size was limited by the fact of it being more often than not simply secured to a strengthened guard rail. Too powerful a load, and the recoil would smash the wood and unseat the gun, making it useless. On the Anna, each gun was secured on a metal rod that passed down through the deck and was secured deep within one of the main frames of the ship. As a result, the guns could take and fire quite a sizeable ball, as well as grapeshot.
'Do we tell the girl?' asked Mannion.
They knocked on her cabin door. She had not undressed, but was clearly about to. Gresham felt stupid, bent low under the deck timbers, the girl sitting on the crude bed that jutted out from the side of the hull.
'We think we might be being followed, by another boat. There's a chance it might try to board us. Things could get violent, I'm afraid.'
'Why should they want to board us?' asked Jane, outwardly reasonably calm. Gresham had been terrified she would get the vapours, or whatever women did.
'I… I'm carrying… material that could be of advantage to any number of people.' He found this very difficult, but anyone successfully taking the Anna would be likely to take her and her maid, before dumping them over the side. It seemed unfair not to tell her as much as possible, given what would happen to her if they lost. 'But the truth is, we don't really know who they are. It's what I do. I live in a world where… where for a lot of the time we know very little, particularly where the threat comes from, or even why it comes.'
He was impatient to get back on deck. There were things to do.
'Here, take these.' He handed her two pistols, expensive flintlocks primed and half cocked. They were part of the extra supplies he had ordered at the last minute from The House. 'Bar the door when we leave. Do you know how to use these?'
'I've watched others do so,' she said, looking distastefully at the gleaming, oiled weapons.
'Check the flint is here.' He motioned to the firing mechanism. 'And that there's powder there. See? The metal cover lifts back if you do… this.' He tossed a small, oiled, canvas bag onto the bed. 'There are spare flints and four separate charges of powder. The guns are on safety now, the hammer pulled back, so it won't fire unless you pull back a little further, until you hear the second click and it locks. Then it'll fire when you pull the trigger. Hold it with both hands. The recoil is vicious. Aim at the middle of the body, then you'll have more chance of hitting something.'
Her face turned white, and for a moment he thought she was going to be sick.
'I'm sorry about this,' he said lamely. 'I'd no idea it would happen, or that it would happen this early.'
She was pale, but in control. 'Perhaps the other boat isn't following for a reason,' she said gamely. 'Perhaps it's just a coincidence.'
'I'd hoped so, for a while. But the other boat is faster than us, designed for speed in fact. No one spends longer at sea than they have to, even in high summer. She's holding back, using only half her sail. If she'd other business, she'd be about it by now and long out of our sight. Sorry.'
It was nearly dark now, and if the other vessel was an enemy it would be loosening out the remainder of its sails, surging through the heavy swell to catch up, the sound of her bow pushing through the water lost in the wider noise of the sea. The enemy vessel reminded Gresham of a hawk, gliding silently through the air, the fat thrush in its sights. The Anna ploughed contentedly on, dipping into the waves and then rising in an easy steady motion. She was no g
reyhound, but she was still a sturdy, long-legged creature, gobbling up the miles.
Timing. It was all about timing. He placed himself casually on the quarterdeck, as any grand noble might do on board what was in effect his private yacht. He noted a thin sheen of sweat over the sailing master's face, despite the rapidly increasing chill of the evening, and felt the change that came over his body when he knew he faced action. He fixed the enemy sails — they had become the enemy now, guilty until proved innocent — with his eye, and measured the distance. How long for her to catch up?
So many variables! There was her speed, which he could only estimate: in open sea, there was a tidal drag for or against each boat which affected speed. An hour. That was his guess. An hour between the moment when he lost sight of the shadowing sails in the dark and the moment when the other vessel could be expected to be alongside.
The sailing master was looking at him now, worriedly. Owners did not pace the deck when light had gone, and there was nothing to see except for the occasional flash of white as a wave broke.
It was time.
Mannion appeared on the main deck, a flagon in his hand. He was swaying slightly, and not with the buck and heave of the deck. He looked up at the main mast, where Lowbrow was still crouched in the crow's nest. Mannion hailed him, clearly to offer him a drink, and made for the stays, starting to climb the mast.
'Stupid bugger!' said the sailing master, at the wheel. He looked at Gresham. 'If that man o' yours falls in, he's a dead 'un. We'll never find him in this dark.' Rather ominous thick cloud covered the moon and stars. This on its own had interested Gresham. Without the stars there was no aid to navigation except an ancient compass. A ship within sight of the shore should have hove-to, put out a sea anchor, strove to remain where it was until dawn showed it its path again. Yet the sailing master had made no effort to halt the Anna. Perhaps he knew by intuition where they were. Or perhaps a moving vessel would cloak the sound of another vessel coming alongside, homing in on their stern light. And why was the sailing master handling the helm? Traditionally on a reduced night watch, he would give the orders, and a seaman would take charge of the wheel.
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