'Why does no one else tell me these things?' asked Essex.
'Because they've got more sense. Because they depend on you for their livelihood. Because all great men surround themselves with people who say what they want to hear. And because though I sometimes think you're one of the biggest fools I know, and I wouldn't trust you most of the time for more than the price of a drink, you make me laugh and at least you've got a personality.'
'I'd hoped to tell you things you didn't know,' said Essex. 'Instead, you've told me things I should've thought of. If Cecil is plotting Ireland as my doom, I'd better make sure I understand the country. Hadn't I?'
There was shock on the faces of the others when Essex emerged. Quite clearly, when their master had one of his fits of passion they were used to him retiring to bed for days. Rather than welcoming his return, they seemed almost resentful of it. If one gets accustomed to dealing with a madman, the return of sanity can be as taxing as the madness itself. Systems, thought Gresham, systems. We all live by systems, learn how to cope with the idiocy of life by systems. Disrupt the system and you disrupt the person.
‘You're an experienced soldier with a high reputation' said Essex to Gresham. 'Few of those close to me have such experience.' Well, that would do Gresham a lot of good with Meyrick, Blount and Southampton. 'Give us your opinion of Ireland.'
Campaigning had nearly killed Gresham, yet being a soldier was like an illness that once in one's veins could never quite be got rid of.
'I've never served in Ireland,' said Gresham, with no trace of pomp or circumstance, 'but I've talked with those who have. I'm sure you've talked to them as well. I doubt you need my pearls of wisdom.'
Try us, Sir Henry.' It was the weasel Southampton. 'I am sure we are all desperate to learn from your knowledge.'
Gresham eyed Southampton with a contempt he did not seek to hide.
'I can believe you're desperate for all sorts of things you can't get,' said Gresham. 'My knowledge isn't one of them.'
Southampton could have, should have challenged him to a duel for such an insult. Instead, he snickered, a simpering, sickening little giggle.
'So… forthright!' said Southampton. He meant rude, of course. Then his face narrowed. 'So full of breeding! As one might expect from a man whoring his services as an informer and a spy to the highest bidder!'
The challenge hung in the air. The others in the room froze.
Gresham took off a glove, carefully tugging at each finger.
'There you have me, my Lord,' he said, in a regretful tone. He looked calmly at Southampton, and the man suddenly took a pace back. Something in Gresham's eyes chilled him, cut through even his spoilt arrogance. 'I've no breeding, whereas you have more than you can handle, I'm sure. As for the whoring bit, I'm truly a bad man of business; I give my services for free, alas. But I do have manners. And manners tell me that a gentleman responds to a challenge.'
Gresham tossed the glove towards the table. Before it could land, a hand plucked it out of mid-air. Essex's hand. Well, if he was ill it had not yet affected his reflexes.
'No,' he said. 'I will not permit this. I will have no squabbling among my allies or my friends.'
That was a little rich, coming from Essex, who had nearly torn apart the expedition to the Azores by his permanent and unreasoning feud with Sir Walter Raleigh.
'As you will, my Lord,' said Gresham easily. He and Southampton would have their day. 'But please do tell this brat of a Lord to keep inside his kennel for fear that it's he who gets bitten by something bigger, better and more dangerous.'
Southampton made as if to respond, but again caught Gresham's eye and halted with his mouth half open. It made him look even more vacuous than usual, and Gresham caught the slightest hint of a smile from Gelli Meyrick. It was not a smile of friendship, more a sharp-toothed recognition from a predator of a fellow animal that had been wounded.
'The campaign in Ireland,' said Essex. 'I wish to hear your views.'
Gresham looked round the room. Playboys. Adventurers. Blount had seen some service and was a bluff enough soldier. Outside there were some good men who would serve in Essex's army. But in here? Essex's previous military ventures had been distinguished by the tangerine livery of his men, many trumpets and the excellent playing of drums, rather than by any military success or sign of strategic planning from the commander. Brave, yes: no one could take that away from him. But a great general pays others to be brave. He is paid to command and to think. Could Essex think for long enough to get the job done? As for the rest of his crew, they were hangers-on, men like Meyrick who were excellent at terrifying tenant farmers and peasants, bullies to the core, or young, spoilt idiots like Southampton who thought war was about pretty uniforms. Oh, well…
'I'm sure you've heard all this before.' Essex was about to say something, but Gresham held up his hand. As he fingered the maps, Gresham seemed to grow in stature, become less of the shadowy figure of vague menace, more the commander. 'The land itself appears to be your greatest enemy. It's uneven, marshy, treacherous to foot and horse, subject to wild swings in weather, with bogs even on top of mountains. All this seems to breed a strange marsh fever. The Irish seem to be able to melt into their landscape. They've skills our soldiers haven't even begun to learn. They can shadow an army for days and give no hint of their presence, rising up out of the swamp, the bog or the grassland as if they were wraiths. So many of the ways are treacherous, fords over rivers so few, that it is folly to stray from the beaten path. Yet the Irish can find their way over bog and marsh and will adopt a favourite tactic of dropping one or two trees across a path, blocking a route, then punching in from the sides and rear, melting away if they meet fierce resistance, wiping out the party if they don't.'
'So can a campaign in Ireland ever be won?' asked Sir Christopher Blount.
'Any campaign can be won,' said Gresham. 'The Irish weakness is their lack of unity, which Tyrone is addressing; their lack of artillery, which means that forts and strongholds can be held far longer than would be the case in the rest of Europe; and their fear of our cavalry, which has always been our strongest hand in Ireland.'
'And our weaknesses?' It was Essex.
'The English Pale, our sphere of influence, is based in relatively few counties and is supported by English settlers. There's a host of Irish chieftains who will support whoever pays them most. Vast tracts of Ireland have never been actually conquered by us. There's a fierce patriotism in Ireland, and we've profited as we have only because so many of the Irish hate each other more than they hate us. Now they are starting to unite. England and its troops can command Dublin and some of the counties, working from castles and strongholds, while the Irish can command the countryside with their wild kerns. They can overwhelm our troops if they gather in sufficient number as they did at Yellow Ford. If they receive troops and artillery from Spain in large numbers, they will be able to match us in the fixed battle and take our strongholds by siege.'
Gresham was saying nothing that was new, but a part of his heart fell as he realised from the glum expressions round the table that some of it at least was new to his listeners.
'So what would your plan be?' It must have cost Essex much, with his dreams of military glory and vision of himself as a commander, to ask that question. What did he think Ireland was? A gentle version of the Forest of Arden?
'Go for the heart of the matter. Head straight for Tyrone's base in Ulster, kill him or drive him into the countryside for ever. Tyrone is the key, England can divide and rule well enough in Ireland. It is when Ireland unites that we face defeat. Tyrone is the key to Irish unity.'
'How goes your recruiting?' asked Essex, changing the subject in his infuriating mercurial manner.
'I'll bring one hundred foot, fifty horse and fifteen officers to your command. If we have until March to train them, they'll be passable.'
'And will you join my command team?' asked Essex.
'I will not, my Lord,' said Gresham. There was the hiss
of indrawn breath from someone in the room. 'I will be too busy whoring my services. But I will fight for you, and for the Queen, and fight long and hard.'
'So we're off again,' said Mannion, as they walked away from Essex House, the mud frozen on the paving that made the Strand one of London's better-favoured streets.
'Does it make you unhappy?' asked Gresham.
'No,' said Mannion. 'Seems to me life's just one fight after another, always has been, always will. If yer not fightin' people, you're fighting life. I know war's bloody horrible, and from the sound of it Ireland's worse than most. But at least out there you know who the enemy is, you know who you're fightin'. Way we lead our lives, we're spending most of the time fightin' without knowin' who it is we're fighting.'
'I suspect,' said Gresham, 'that there'll be the enemy we can't see and the enemy we can see in Ireland as well as in London.'
'Well,' said Mannion with a grin, 'we'd best get down to trainin' those buggers we've just recruited to make sure when we does get shot it's at least by an Irishman!'
'Why can't I accompany you?' asked Jane.
'Don't be monstrous!' said Gresham. 'You're a woman!'
'I'm glad you've noticed,' she said tartly. 'Mannion tells me there are literally hundreds of women who follow the army. I've shown I can be useful. In medieval times Kings used to take their wives away with them on campaign. Queen Eleanor had two of her sixteen children on campaign.'
'Good God! You're not pregnant, are you?'
'No, I am not!' said Jane, going a deep red. 'I was using it as an illustration!'
'The women who follow the army are not normal. They — they are
…' How could Gresham explain to a young girl what the women who followed the army were?
'They are common-law wives,' said Jane, 'that's what Mannion told me.'
'They're whores!' said Gresham, desperately. 'Give them any fancy name you like, but they're whores for the comfort of the men. Many of them are… shared between men. I'm sorry. I can't put it any more plainly.'
Jane stood silent. It was impossible to know what she was thinking.
'Don't they cook? And wash? As well as… do the other thing?'
'What?'
'Well? Don't they?'
'Yes, I suppose some of them… look after their men, I suppose-' 'Well!' said Jane triumphantly, 'I can come as your housekeeper! I can make sure you get decent meals and clean clothes and-'
'Why on earth do you want to come?' asked Gresham. 'This is war, for God's sake. People will die, half of them from marsh fever! It is no place for a proper woman. It just isn't.'
'I want to come because… because…' her face went red again. 'I want to come because it gives me a role! If you leave me here… I'm not your wife! I'm not your mistress!' She had the grace to blush. 'I'm not even a servant! I'm a nothing! An expensive mistake who spends your money, wears the clothes you pay for, lives only through you. At least on the boat I was serving a purpose, was doing something. Here, with you and Mannion in Ireland… I'm nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.'
For almost the first time he felt a tinge of sympathy for her. But he had no option.
'Look, I'm sorry,' he said, and perhaps he was. 'I'll have enough to worry about with my own survival in Ireland and that of my men. If you were there I'd have to worry about you. And I'm not prepared to be the person who's responsible for your death.'
'But you don't think twice about being responsible for your own death? Or the men you take with you.'
'I know what I'm doing. So do they.' ' 'What if I know what I'm doing? What if it's what I want?'
'I'm sorry. Campaigning is no place for a young girl.'
There was a rebellious, angry expression on her face which carried through to the whole way she stood.
'Do you want me to be really blunt with you?'
'Aren't you always?' she retorted.
'There's no way I could guarantee to keep you a virgin on such a campaign as this is likely to be. And before you say anything' — he had seen her about to speak, to remonstrate — 'what I mean is rape. Pure, simple rape. There are men there, possibly many men, who would simply bide their time, take their chance, wait till I was out of camp. They would come to your tent — and no one I know has ever been able to lock a tent — and put a bag over your head so you couldn't identify them. Then in silence, their silence at least so you couldn't recognise their voices, they'd rape you. With a rag stuffed in your mouth to drown your cries.'
That got through to her, he could see. She gave a bow, lower than her normal cursory bob, and retreated.
The odd thing was, a part of him was sorry to leave her behind.
There was a great banging and crashing down in the yard, the boom of a voice and the sound of a door being assaulted. George almost fell into the room.
‘I’m coming with you!' he announced. 'Now shut up and understand one thing. I'm bored out of my mind at home, this is a great adventure and I am not, I repeat not, going to let you go to Ireland without me to keep an eye on you. Fetch the wine.'
Dear George, thought Gresham. You won't be raped, but I've just moved heaven and earth to stop Cecil from ruining you, and now you insist on coming to Ireland where a great clumsy oaf like you will be the first to get an Irish dart in his breast or catch dysentery, and so you will kill yourself after I have been to all this trouble to stop you getting killed or worse.
But in his heart of hearts he was glad.
The horses were restless, pawing at the ground and snorting, impatient to be off on the journey they sensed was imminent. There must have been fifty at least gathered in front of Essex House, and a straggling line of men and baggage carts, together with 200 men dressed in the tangerine finery of the Essex livery. They were blocking the Strand and attracting a vast crowd, all of whom had fallen silent for the prayer.
They had hoped for the Bishop of London, but he had declared himself ill. Essex's chaplain, who had the advantage over the Bishop in that he actually believed in God, read the specially written prayer. Heads bowed. Even the horses seemed to sense the occasion, and calmed down. It was so silent that the brisk wind could be heard flapping the pennants tied to the spears.
'Almighty God and most merciful Father…'
The chaplain's voice was thin, half blown away on the breeze.
The vengeful words, asking for destruction to be hurled on the heads of England's enemies, seemed more futile than threatening. The final 'Amen' rolled round the street and its close-packed houses like a subtle roll of thunder.
There was a shouted order and, led by the Earl, the mounted men wheeled round and rode for the embarkation at Chester. Old women, men and boys started to shout and cheer, a gathering crowd crying out their good wishes and blessings, an old woman with tears in her eyes at the sight of the fine Lord on his magnificent charger.
The weather seemed set fine until the party, swelled by even more hangers-on, reached the fields of Islington. There, out of nowhere, black clouds boiled up. Within seconds the fine plumes on the hats of the officers lay slicked down onto wet cloth, horses and men were drenched by the sudden downpour and large lumps of hail bounced off the track, turned instantly into mud.
The old woman who had cried at the sight of Essex had followed the slow-moving train of baggage carts, despite the evident pain in her legs. She stopped now, tears of rain dripping down her lined cheeks.
'It's an omen,' she whispered, 'an omen.'
There was no one to hear her, the driving noise of wet rain on cloth, flesh and ground drowning out all other noises except for the jingle of harness and the squelch of hooves and feet on the roadway.
Chapter 8
April to July, 1599 Ireland
'E can award knighthoods — and is doin' it by the sackload, as it 'appens,' said Mannion. He was referring to the Earl of Essex. "E can proclaim someone a traitor, 'ang 'im or pardon 'im, as and when 'e wants. 'E can raise taxes — in fact, the only bloody thing 'e can't do is mint money with 'is 'e
ad on it.' Mannion took another bite at the chicken leg he held in his massive paw, leaving a shred of meat hanging out of his mouth as he carried on. 'And the only other bloody thing 'e can't do is decide what to do!'
The Council of Ireland had been meeting endlessly, while the army kicked its heels.
'I suppose 'e'll ask to see you again,' said Mannion.' 'E usually does. Though God knows why, seein' as 'ow he don't show any sign of listening.'
Gresham shrugged his shoulders, and dropped off" the low stone wall on which he and Mannion had been sitting. George had gone off earlier for a meal.
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