Something glittered. Gresham knelt down, and saw that round the boy's neck, mostly covered by the plaid that had been thrown up round it by his fall, was a silver decoration. He moved the material gently to one side. It was thin, fragile, a thing of rare beauty, with tiny, intricate interwoven designs. Was he a chieftain's son, this young man? Sent out on his first foray to test his manhood. He had no musket by his side, merely a quiver of the darts the Irish favoured and a sword, workmanlike but with no decoration to it. Youth. He had moved forward too close to the enemy, and paid the price for his courage. Perhaps he had wanted to show the other men that he was not afraid, not knowing that all men knew fear.
'Don't move! Stay down!' Mannion hissed at him urgently. Gresham looked up.
A man was standing at the very edge of the woods. Tall, middle-aged, he had the wild beard and hair of the Irish, the same mud-stained appearance. He held a musket, pointing it straight at Gresham. It rested on nothing, no stick or mound, and the barrel was rock steady. Whoever this man was he had muscles of steel.
A wave of tiredness came over Gresham. It was his own folly that had taken him off the road within musket range of this wild man; his own folly that had made him stay by the body. He looked up at the man. Who cared? Would the world cease because this boy had been torn uselessly out of life? Would the world change when the musket ball tore into his own heart? Would death be like the longest sleep possible, pure oblivion and an end to terror and trial? But then there were the dreams. Who could know what the dreams might be?
Very carefully, aware all the time of the musket pointed at him, Gresham straightened the boy's legs before they froze in death at their grotesque angle. It was always a kindness; it saved someone the unpleasant task of breaking the corpse's legs to straighten them out. He laid the plaid carefully over the broad shoulders and exposed the silver ornament to the thin sunlight only now starting to creep out from behind the clouds. He cleared the clotted hair from the boy's face, folded his arms across his chest, closed his staring eyes. And stood up.
He looked across the void into the eyes of the man pointing the gun at him. For once, he did not feel fear. It was always going to happen like this, wasn't it? On some God-forsaken field in the Low Countries, in a back alley in London or in a palace in France. It could have happened so many times before, when the galleys had chased him at Cadiz, when Drake had shot at him, when the Armada had so nearly ground itself, at Tantallon Castle, in the Tower of London. So many times, so many escapes, each one chipping a tiny part off his soul, each one shrieking the question why. Why bother? Why go through this dance to the nonsense of time? To what end? To what purpose? So it happened by a pass that no one had heard of, after the most feeble of little victories. So be it.
He smiled a thin smile at the man, and turned to face him full on, dropping his hands to his side.
'Jesus!' he heard Mannion mutter beside him.
There was a rustle from behind him. His men had seen what was happening, were scrambling to join him. Though he could not see them, he could imagine numbers of them gauging the distance, deciding whether a shot at extreme range might be worth it. Slowly he held out his hand, never taking his gaze from the man with the musket, palm up, in the unmistakable gesture that says no. Do nothing.
The man waited an eternity, the barrel rock steady. Then, quite clearly, Gresham saw him nod. He let the musket drop, butt first, turned on his heels. And vanished into the woods.
'Fuckin' 'ell!' said Mannion. 'He came out o' nowhere, just as you started to finger that necklace thing. 'Ad 'is musket up before I could move.'
'He thought I was going to steal the necklace,' said Gresham. 'Thought I was a grave robber, a battlefield scavenger.'
'Why didn't he fuckin' shoot you anyway?'
'He was sending me a message.' Two of his men had reached him now, puffing and perspiring; four or five others were just behind him.
'If you're going to climb through these tussocks and this bog with your musket at full cock we'll lose more men from friendly fire than we ever do from Irish,' said Gresham with total calm.
The first man looked open-mouthed at Gresham, then almost comically down at his musket. With a shame-faced grin, he hooked his thumb over the hammer, let it click forward so that it was on safe. The story would go down in the books of course, though that was not why Gresham had said what he said.
There was Gresham, doin' the funeral rights over some Irish bastard, and up pops this savage, few feet away he was, and points 'is musket at him. Old Gresham e' don't even flicker. He carries on laying out the Irish bastard's limbs, like 'e were 'is mother, and then stands up. Stands up, I tell you! Not only stands, but turns and faces the bastard. Then 'e 'olds his 'and up, clear as daylight, tellin' us who're rushin' in to 'elp not to fire. An' they stand an' look at each other for Gawd knows 'ow long. And they nod at each other. I'm not kidding you — 'ere, pass the jug — they nods at each other. And the Irish bastard, 'e shoulders arms and fuckin' vanishes into nowhere, like these Irish bastards do, and Gresham, he turns round cool as a cucumber and tells me orf for 'avin' me musket at full cock! Would you believe it?
They would believe it, and embellish it, and men would look at him and think of it every time they saw him.
'It really doesn't matter, you know,' said Gresham to Mannion, when they were back on the road and out of earshot. 'None of it matters at all.' Yet by recognising it, he suddenly felt more free than he had for years. The pain in his head was lifting, and he had enough strength left to grin to himself. Something had changed within him when the wild man with the musket had nodded briefly at him.
A number of Essex's officers, mostly the younger ones and some of those who by now had returned from their vain chase, came up to clap him on the shoulder and shake his hand. Cameron Johnstone, increasingly seen alongside Essex's cronies, was hanging round at the back of the crowd. He was wearing what he called his campaigning garb, a coat even longer than Gresham's and fiercely clean white linen. When asked, he said simply that one had to keep up civilised standards.
'Thank you,' said Gresham.
'What for?' said Cameron. 'I very clearly didn't involve myself in your heroic charge. Unlike yourself, if I'm going to die, I'd like it to be on a matter of some significance.'
'You think this campaign is of no significance?' asked Gresham.
'I think its outcome will be of no significance. As a campaign, that is. Your leader has taken us off on a wild-goose chase, your recent so-called victory was in fact nothing more than a minor skirmish in which the Irish proved that they have refined running away to a proper military virtue. And I'm afraid the effect of this rather petty little victory on Essex won't be good. It's the idea of fighting that he's in love with. He's out of touch with the reality.'
'I still owe you thanks,' said Gresham, 'for the explosives.'
'Why?' said Cameron. 'You knew before I told you that gunpowder is far more effective if the force of the explosion is channelled. After all, that's only what a gun or cannon barrel does.'
'Yes,' said Gresham. 'But I hadn't thought of how to channel it. You gave me the idea of using a helmet, so all the force went upwards into the trunk.'
'Using a troop of horsemen to pull aside the trunk would probably have done it,' said Cameron generously. 'For some reason no one seems to have thought of that in Ireland before.'
Cameron touched his hand to his hat, and rode off. Gresham realised how much the gallop had bruised him, and gingerly started to rub his arms and legs. He took the copy of the play and, using his thumb, eased the musket ball out of the cover, stuffing the damaged book back into his saddlebag. His horse whinnied, jerked its head up and down three times, impatient to be off.
'Hold there, hold,' said Gresham, reaching out to stroke its head.
The rain. It had started to rain, a damp, all-pervasive drizzle that threatened to become a warm downpour. Soon the road would be turned to mud, the men and the carts slipping and sliding, the tents and the woollen cloth
ing damp, nowhere for a man to get dry. Then the illness would come, the coughing, the stomach cramps, the retching sickness, the boils and the carbuncles that seemed to produce two more for each one that agonisingly burst.
'We're far from home,' said Gresham almost to himself, 'in a wild country that doesn't want us. It could be weeks before we're dry again, and soon the men'll start to fall sick, and die. What's the point?'
'The point,' said Mannion, 'is that you decided to bring us on this bleedin' expedition, and as we are on it we might as well make the best of it. So stop moaning and let's get back with the rest of this rabble before the Irish come back and pick us off.'
The walls of Dublin were just visible through the drizzle and low-lying mist.
'Thank Christ 'fer that!' said Mannion with real passion. 'Well, that were fun, weren't it?'
There was no answer from George or Cameron. The latter had attached himself to Gresham an hour ago. They rode with their chins dug into their chests, hats pulled down over their eyes, the rain defeating their eyelashes and driving into their eyes.
'The fun's about to start,' said Gresham.
'What fun?' asked George, suddenly alerted.
'Do you think the Queen's going to be delighted that after over two months campaigning we've got nothing to show for it — no major rebel army defeated and no major rebel stronghold taken? Nearly half our horses are sick or dead, the men are depressed and we've lost over four thousand of them. If Essex has any sense he won't be opening his letters in a hurry.'
But sense never was the commodity in greatest supply for Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. The Queen's letters were vicious. He showed them to his followers, increasingly favouring the younger ones, the hotheads. At times Essex seemed to despise the Queen. At other times he showed a total dependency on her goodwill.
'We are misunderstood and grievously wronged!' the young man shouted. The Dublin tavern was full, the low ceiling smoky from the guttering candles and lamps. There was a roar of approval from round the table. The others — fifteen or twenty or so — were well on their way to becoming seriously drunk. Spoiling for a fight, in fact, except that the enemy lay outside the walls of Dublin, unreachable, vanishing as quickly into the mists of Ireland as the mist itself could vanish at the first brush of sunlight.
The young man himself — thin, wispy-bearded with delicate hands and almost ludicrously long fingers — was the third son of a none too rich country squire from Shropshire. He had sold his annuity to buy his equipment for the campaign, hoping in some ill-thought-out way to gain fame and fortune in Ireland. Now his fine leather belt had rotted through in the damp, his horse had died shivering and he was relegated to little more than the status of foot soldier, too impoverished to buy another horse. He seemed to have found enough money for drink, judging by the state of him.
'We risk our lives for England,' he was saying, 'and those at home mock us for our efforts!' That went down well. There was another roar of agreement and approval. 'How can they understand this God-forsaken country, how even the bravest of men cannot fight with honour here?'
That got the biggest roar of the lot. The bogs, the perpetual rain, an enemy who would never come out to meet you but always melted away, an enemy who would simply burn a castle to the ground rather than stand and fight for it, an enemy who could not be drawn out to fight for any reason…
"We're criticised and condemned by those who stay at home and grow fat! And the Queen's advisers tell lies about us!'
Mannion watched silently from his corner, his tankard for once forgotten.
'They was stokin' themselves up right good and proper,' he reported. 'It's not good. 'E warn't alone, that young fool. There's 'undreds of 'em out there.'
'Well, Essex's answer won't help him with the Queen, or his own people,' said Gresham morosely. 'Decimation, it's called. It's a Roman idea.'
Sir Henry Harrington had been heavily defeated while out on a supposed punitive raid. Essex had court-martialled him, confined him to prison and executed his lieutenant for the crime of wrapping the English colours round his body and fighting until he dropped from exhaustion. Essex had also executed one man in ten of Harrington's force.
'So that's what you gets from a bloody education!' said Mannion morosely. 'Better off without it, in my opinion. We're losing enough men as it is from illness, without needing to help the Irish along and kill 'em ourselves.'
What need was there of a plot by Cecil, thought Gresham? Essex was his own plot against himself. The only time he had appeared to show any real energy or drive recently had been in pursuing revenge on Harrington's miserable troops.
Since his success at the Pass of Cashel, Gresham had been dropped from Essex's Council. Was it from envy of Gresham's heroic action? More likely it was the perilous loneliness of his relationship with Essex, all his other advisers seeming to see Gresham as the anti-Christ. There had been one attempt on Gresham's life already. If he was right, one was prepared for Essex. But when? And was another attempt on Gresham's life overdue? The animosity shown towards him by Essex's inner circle was palpable, almost a physical presence.
He and Mannion had found a decent room in the castle, high enough to be above the stench of the place on all but the hottest days, days which came rarely in Ireland. They were sharing a flagon early one evening, with Gresham worrying that he was falling into George's trap. Letters had come from home and plunged George into melancholia. He had refused all offers of consolation, refused even to divulge their contents, and had retreated off on his own. Again. If George had meant to come on this campaign as a friend something had clearly changed his mind. Now he spent most of the time on his own, consumed by his own devils. Nothing Gresham could say or do seemed to snap him out of it. It was unlike George, and Gresham felt intense worry for the man whose unfailing good cheer had been one of the mainstays of his life.
Even though it was not yet dark and only August, they had lit a fire, paying a King's ransom for coal rather than the smoky, heat-free lumps of peat that the Irish favoured. At least the peat smoke did not sting the eyes, which was more than could be said for the rough coal they had acquired.
'I think I made a mistake coming over here’ Gresham said finally. It was dark enough now for the flames of the fire to dance lightly on the walls and reflect in his eyes: in their centre, not like the crimson ring he had seen twice in Essex's eyes.
'Pity you didn't realise that months ago,' said Mannion.
'I came to protect Essex. Or maybe just to stand in Cecil's way. And to draw out my enemies. But I'm not helping Essex, and no clearer about who wants me dead.'
The two men identified by Mannion as Gresham's would-be assassins had deserted that same evening.
Gresham was impatient to get home. At the back of his mind was the fear that Cecil had engineered his presence on this trip to get him out of the country, so the next assassination plot against the Queen could succeed. Was Gresham overestimating his own power? Yet he knew he was the only force Cecil really feared, and the only agency in the Court that might, conceivably, pick up wind of such a plot before it happened.
England was like a vast pot, simmering with its rivalries and its tensions hidden under a calm surface. Now the occasional bubble was breaking that surface, the fire stoked up. Any moment now that pot would boil over.
Robert Cecil was in audience with the Queen. At his request, in an almost unheard-of concession, he had asked for Sir Walter Raleigh to be present, as well as Lord Mountjoy, Thomas Howard and the Earl of Nottingham. It was a rare combination. It was a Council of War, that much was clear, Elizabeth thought as her eyes flicked round the chamber. She was dressed outrageously again, the off-white material so hung with pearls and jewels as to distort its shape, its length too short, its sleeves somehow too cramped.
'The information is valid, Your Majesty,' Cecil was saying. 'Indeed, the Spanish force may already have set off. We must mobilise our troops and our ships now.'
It was always dangerous to tell the Qu
een what she must and must not do. Equally, if he had not done so, it would have belied the apparent urgency of the situation.
‘Is this force heading for England or for Ireland?' asked the Queen testily, as if its sending had been on the orders of Cecil and not the new Spanish King.
It was Nottingham who answered. He and Cecil had rehearsed this carefully.
'We cannot know,' said the Earl.*We believe in all likelihood the Spanish force is for England. We have sent many, many troops over to Ireland, and our most acclaimed general. It is possible that the Spanish are convinced that with our eyes set to the west we are vulnerable, as well as stripped of men.'
'And I have been persuaded to send two thousand more into this bog!' The Queen looked accusingly at her advisers, who dropped their eyes. In response to her angry and accusing letters, Essex had replied with a mixture of self-pity, self-justification and high drama. He had also included a few facts, such as that he had fewer than six thousand fit men left to him for the attack on Tyrone in the north that the Queen was pressing on him so urgently. The two thousand reinforcements she had finally agreed to send had had to be virtually dragged out of her with red-hot tongs. 'I am paying my Lord of Essex a thousand pound a day to go on progress!'
Queens went on progress. Elizabeth did not need to add 'royal' to the word 'progress' for her meaning to be clear. It was the opportunity Cecil had waited for.
'Your Majesty, I am sure the Earl of Essex will use the men you have sent wisely, and will launch the offensive we are all anticipating. Yet…'
'Yet what?' snapped the Queen. 'Out with it, man.'
'Yet in your next-message to him, it might be wise to insert an instruction that he should not return to England before Tyrone is subdued.'
Cecil did not add 'not return to England with the army with which you have equipped him', but all present heard the words even if they were not spoken. News of the dissent and anger in
Essex's force had reached home from the thousand and one spies in its midst. Like two contrary tides meeting in the middle of a great open channel, the anger and disillusion in Ireland met the anger and disillusion of those in England.
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