'No!' he said suddenly, jumping to his feet, making Jane nearly fall off her stool. 'I'll not have my oldest friend dragged here like a felon, even if he is one! Does St Paul's say where George is to be found?'
Jane whispered something, looking down at the floor. She was crying. 'Speak up.'
'The Duck and Drake. In Cheapside.'
Gresham and Mannion looked at each other. It was a highly respectable inn, so respectable that very few of the informers on Gresham's payroll would ever dream of going there, and hence excellent cover. But why would any of those Gresham paid to spy on London deem it worth reporting to him that his best friend was in town?
'My Lord,' Jane was still looking down, great tears dropping to the floor, 'I am… I am sorry… I…'
There was an icy calm in his heart now. He touched her on her shoulder, and felt the flesh jump under his fingers.
'Look at me,' he said. Two huge, tear-rimmed eyes raised themselves up to his gaze. 'Whatever arguments we might have had, this isn't your fault.' There was no emotion in his voice, no sympathy, not the warmth of a guttering candle. 'It's his fault, and to a far lesser extent my fault for not seeing what should have been clear to me. You
… you're just the agent of tragedy. Not its cause.'
January was at its coldest, and the thin, fashionable gloves Gresham had donned did little to keep him feeling the ends of his fingers. What small warmth the sun had given died with the sunset. Decent people were hurrying home. London handed itself over to a different breed of citizens when darkness fell. The cold seemed to freeze Gresham and Mannion's cheeks, forced water into their eyes. A blast of hot, fetid air hit them as they pushed open the door to the Duck and Drake. The babble of noise dropped slightly as Gresham's saturnine, elegant figure and that of his bulky manservant entered, but only for a moment. This was a respectable inn. So what if one of the gentry had decided to come slumming, to take their drink undiluted before summoning up courage to cross the city to the stews of Shoreditch?
There was no sign of George.
'What we do now? Ask if he's staying?' said Mannion.
'He'll have taken another name,' said Gresham. His calmness was more unsettling than a full-scale rage. A thought came to him. 'Go and ask the landlord if there's an Andrew Golightly staying.' Mannion raised an eyebrow, but did as he was bid. At school George and Gresham had fooled a young and permanently drunk usher that there was a boy called Andrew Golightly in the class, blaming everything they did on him. It had taken weeks for the deception to be revealed, to the huge amusement of the other boys; the whipping he and George received had been deemed well worth the fun.
Mannion returned. 'Sir Andrew Golightly is staying for two nights. He's booked supper for one in a private room. Up there. Servants took it to 'im ten minutes ago.'
They mounted the creaking stairs, ingrained with the smoke from lamps and candles and the cheap coal on the blazing fire, which periodically belched fume, smoke and sparks out into the main room as the wind started to get up outside.
Gresham lifted the simple latch on the door, and walked in. George was coming to the end of his meal, hacking at some hard cheese with his knife as the door opened. He hardly looked up.
'Ten minutes more,' he said, 'and bring me another flagon while-' He looked up. The colour drained instantly from his face, and he stood up.
'Henry! I was just about to come and see you… sudden call to London… business…'
He looked at Gresham, who gazed back expressionless. Slowly his words slowed, and stopped. The two men stood staring at each other in silence.
'When did you first start to spy for Cecil?' asked Gresham finally. 'And did you think that spying on me for him was all in the way of friendship? And how did it feel when you saw your contact on board another ship full of men trying to kill me?' ‘I–I never-I-'
'George,' said Gresham with intense pity, 'I can read you like a book. You've not only betrayed me and everything I thought we meant to each other, you've betrayed yourself, got yourself in way over your head, you poor, idiot booby.' Gresham shook his head, partly in disbelief, partly to rid himself of a terrible pain. George looked as if he was about to be sick. He made a sudden movement. Without anyone quite knowing how it got there, a dagger was cleaving into the wood inches in front of George's face, handle shaking gently with the force of impact.
'I won't kill you now, as I've killed everyone else who's betrayed me, simply for the sake of our friendship. But if you make even the slightest move for a weapon, or any sudden move, I will kill you. Do you understand?'
George cleared his throat, made a noise, cleared it again, swallowed and finally got words out, 'I understand. And I believe you.' *Now,' said Gresham, his voice cold as a frozen sea, 'you'll tell me everything. Mannion!' Even Gresham's tone to Mannion was grim, clipped, short. 'My old friend here's been turning to the bottle increasingly often. Fetch two flagons from the landlord to oil his tongue.'
Mannion left, and took five minutes to return clutching two black large jugs of wine. The two men were still staring silently at each other. Neither had said a word.
'Now, damn you!' and for the first time some of the intensity of Gresham*s feelings crept through into his voice. 'Tell me the truth!'
'Mortgaged,' said George.
'Speak up!'said Gresham.
'Mortgaged!' George nearly shouted. 'Mortgaged to the hilt! All my estate. Mortgaged by my worthless father. Debts everywhere, and the estate collapsing. Walls not mended, wells running foul, corrupt stewards, the wrong crops sown in the wrong fields — and then three bad years, what grain there was rotting in the fields. Men and their families — my men, people I'd grown up with, men and women I knew by name — facing starvation. And marriage to a wife whose fortune turned out to exist more in the imagination of my father than in any reality, and whose mother insists on living like a Queen.'
'So someone came…' prompted Gresham.
'I borrowed as much money as I could. Tried for positions at Court, was rejected all the time. No powerful relations, no contacts; just friendship with the wildest member of the Court, which did me no good at all. I was about to be bankrupted. Then a man came to me. Offered me enough money to bail me out, see off the most pressing debtors for six months or so.'
'And what did this man ask for in exchange for his money?'
'He wanted me to spy on Essex!' There was anger in George's voice. At least he had some spirit left. 'Not you! He said he was working for the government, and I assumed that meant Cecil, and that Cecil and Elizabeth feared Essex above all others as an enemy and future King of England. Well, I hated Essex — you've always known I hate Essex — so I didn't see that as a betrayal. You only came into it because I could use my friendship with you to get closer to Essex, get inside his social circle.'
'But it didn't stop there, did it?' said Gresham. 'And before he gave you the gold, he made you sign a paper, didn't he?'
'How did you know?' said George, shocked.
'Just tell me,' said Gresham.
'Well, yes, he did make me sign something. It was that or ruin, and everyone knows that half the Court's taking money from Spain! I thought it's what they made everyone do. I thought if everyone else at Court was getting their slice of the pie, why shouldn't I? And then-'
'And then,' said Gresham, 'your little tame man paid you even more money to spy on me. To tell him what I was saying to Essex. He said of course that he knew I was going to Scotland for Cecil, but that you had to tell him if I was about to be sent on any secret missions for anyone else, or carry any secret messages. And where I was to go.'
'Well, yes,' spluttered George, going a deep red, 'but he assured me-'
'That I wouldn't come to harm,' said Gresham. 'Indeed, you would be helping me. Your little man, who spoke perfect English and could so easily have been Cecil's man, who knew so much more about what was going on than you could ever hope to know, told you that if any mission you reported on was going to be dangerous for me he would wa
rn you, and you could warn me. Knowledge, that was all he was after. Pure knowledge. And of course you told him, you poor fool, that I was carrying a message from Elizabeth as well, didn't you? And he thanked you and said that if you carried on simply watching and reporting, not only would no harm come to me but you would find yourself in receipt of a Court pension, or perhaps even a share in one of the lesser monopolies-'
'But how do you know all this? You've used almost his exact words-'
'Because it's how I would have played you, like a fish on a line, how any professional would play a poor, bumbling idiot who stumbled into their trap.’
The words were tumbling out of George now. 'And then you told me about the man. On the boat. With the goatee beard. You told me he was the leader of a brutal bunch of thugs who tried to kill all three of you.'
'And your little world fell apart, didn't it?' said Gresham pityingly. Except there was a harsh undercurrent in his tone. 'All of a sudden you started to realise that you'd been betrayed, that your little man would as like kill me and you if it suited him, and that you'd been used. Used by Cecil. And you probably thought it was about the Queen's message, that in some way Cecil feared it and wanted it stopped, and me stopped in case she'd told me what it was. And you realised what you'd become Judas.'
'I never meant to-'
'It's the most pathetic excuse people like me hear all the time. If your panic over money hadn't totally clouded any judgement you might have had, you'd have seen that the only thing in the interests of Cecil and others is Essex's total destruction. Either by a rebellion that brings him down, or by his making a total fool of himself. And I'm one of the few people who every now and again has been known to talk sense into him, so I pose a threat to all those who want Essex dead.'
'But you've never faced the loss of everything you own and love!' It was almost a howl from George.
'I owned nothing for a large part of my life,' said Gresham witheringly. 'And I can assure you, I value my honour and my friends more than my possessions.'
In the silence that followed, the talk from the crowded inn filtered through the door. Someone walked heavily across the floor in the room above, and a few tiny particles of dust fell from the thick, dark beams on the ceiling.
'There's one other thing you haven't told me,' said Gresham.
'I can't think of anything-' George started to reply.
'Cameron Johnstone's taken over from your original contact. The little man on the boat.'
George's shoulders sagged even more.
'You know everything,' he said. 'I was a fool to think I could match you.'
'Match me?' said Gresham. It was his turn for confusion now.
'Oh,' said George with a harsh laugh, 'so there is something you don't know. Of course I wanted to match you. All my life you've moved effortlessly through plot after plot, intrigue after intrigue. You've gambled with kingdoms, walked through high and low life with equal ease, always seemed to be in charge whoever it was asking you for your favours. You made it all look so easy, and I was jealous. Jealous to the core of my being.'
'How dreadful for you,' said Gresham. 'Well, just to show my effortless ease, let me predict what Cameron said to you when he reintroduced himself to you in Ireland. I imagine he said that he was replacing Mr Little Beard of boating fame, and that you'd better damn well listen because what you'd signed in receipt of your first bribe and hadn't really read because you were so hungry for the money, wasn't a receipt but a contract with the Pope to take his money. A contract that could have you hung. And then he left you alone for a bit, but with quite a lot of money to soften the blow to show you the deal was still on. And I bet he's been to see you recently and come clean, and said that at all costs Essex must be made to rebel. If I looked as if I was going to do anything to stop it, you needn't kill me so long as you knocked me out or drugged me. And if you didn't, Cecil would have me killed.'
'Yes,' said George. 'You are right.' There was a dignity to him, despite all the odds. Stripped of his pathetic attempts at intrigue, caught out for what he was, he stood exposed and shivering. He appeared a simple but a genuine man. He was not trying to fight Gresham's rapier thrusts, had not sought to do so: it takes strength to face up to one's total foolishness.
'So what you said when I first made an appearance here was true,' said Gresham. 'You were coming to see me. You were going to stick to me like glue, and I bet you've wasted days and a lot of money buying powders to put in my drink from every quack in London.'
'What happens now?' asked George. 'To you and me, I mean.'
'What happens to you? That's your business. If you don't fulfil your obligation, Cameron will crawl out of some rotten woodwork and demand repayment. You'll have to explain to him that unfortunately you can't repay him, at least in terms of any contact with me. Because there won't be any contact. We no longer know each other. Don't bother to call, here or in Cambridge because you won't be let in. Ever again.'
Gresham stood up, yanked his dagger out from the table, and turned away. There was a chasm where his heart used to be, and an aching blackness.
'Henry.'
Gresham did not want to stop. He did so, for a moment, in the doorway, his back to George.
'I'm truly sorry, for the insignificance that's worth.' Gresham said nothing, but nodded briefly as if acknowledging a passing comment. The door closed behind him.
Mannion had always had the knack of knowing when to say nothing, and he exercised it now. He was the only silent person, apart from Gresham in the inn. Something had obviously excited the clientele, and groups of them were gathered in huddles of heated discussion. As they reached the door to the street, Mannion halted, and said to Gresham, 'I knows as you don't want to stay 'ere any longer than you 'as to. But 'ave you 'eard what they're talkin' about? I think we ought to get the story.'
Gresham turned and gave a nod to Mannion as brief as that he had given to George. Mannion looked for a moment round the room, and picked on an elderly man who looked as if his tankard might be permanently wedged to his face judging by the ferocity with which he was ramming it there to drain the last dregs. As the tankard finally dropped it was to reveal Mannion beckoning him, a coin held between his finger and thumb.
The man came over, and Mannion flipped him the coin.
'What's the'news then?' he asked, as the man raised the coin in the air and a tap boy came over to take the order.
'Ain't you 'eard?' said the old man. 'Southampton — Earl of Southampton, that is — were riding by Raleigh's house this afternoon, and Grey, Lord Grey, rode at him wi' 'is sword, tried to kill 'im, 'e did. One o' Southampton's pages, 'e 'ad 'is 'and lopped right ‘orf, he did. Cut off clean as a whistle.'
Grey and Southampton had a long-standing hatred for each other, and the Privy Council had been spending much of its time forbidding them to have a duel. Grey was Cecil's man.
'Well,' said Mannion, 'that'll put the cat among the pigeons.' There was no answer from Gresham. 'Look,' said Mannion, 'I don't want to intrude-'
'I wouldn't,' said Gresham, still locked in his own world. How could George have betrayed him? How could he have been so stupid?
'About all it needs,' said Mannion remorselessly, 'for your friend the Earl to go pop is for one of Cecil's cronies to ride full pelt at 'is closest friend. Which, 'as it 'appens, is exactly what 'as 'appened. I'm sorry about George, I really am. I thought 'e were a good man. But get your arse in order, will you? 'Cos if Essex takes off, we could 'ave your pal as King by mornin'!'
Chapter 12
February, 1601 London
The scenes at Essex House were ugly. Half an army was camped in the yard, but there were no orderly lines, no bread and cheese. Instead, there was vomit over the cobbles, half-drunk men shouting and cheering, at least two men lying unconscious in a corner, heeded by no one.
It was harder to get in to see Essex. There were guards at the entrance to the house, and armed men outside the room he was in. A group of men emerged from it as Gre
sham and Mannion mounted the stairs, including Gelli Meyrick and the small, wiry figure of John Davies. Both men drew back, hands on their swords. Before either of them could get their swords more than half out of their scabbards Gresham's blade was in the air between them. Mannion had turned round instantly and was back to back with him, having drawn from somewhere on his person a strange, flat, heavy blade like a Roman sword.
Gresham appeared entirely calm, his sword blade rock steady at eye height.
'I'm rather tired of people trying to stop me seeing my friend,' he said, and despite the quietness of his tone, his voice carried down the stairwell. 'And I do so tend to lose control when I'm tired. Now let me through.'
Suddenly his blade was resting on the side of Davies's neck, right where the vein pulsed.
'What if your friend doesn't want to see you?' asked Davies, tense but not cowed.
'Well, let's find out, shall we? If you and the rest of the crew back into the hallway there, you can let us through, can't you?' Essex's room was at the top of the stairs, with a small corridor outside, a corridor that led to a hallway with a view over the yard.
'You've drawn your sword on me,' hissed Davies, motioning the others behind him to move back. Southampton was there, Gresham could now see, standing on tip-toe to peer over the shoulders of those in front.
'I had noticed,' said Gresham mildly.
'You'll pay!' said Davies.
'One of us might,' said Gresham. His reputation as a swordsman was fearsome. Davies dropped his gaze for a moment.
Essex was agitated, the quasi-religious calm of their previous meeting gone. He was sweating, in his shirt despite the cold weather, tugging at the fine lace on his sleeves. His beard was straggly, untrimmed, his eyes red-rimmed and his pupils pin-points. An awful thought crossed Gresham's mind. Had Essex drunk human blood more than once?
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