The Coming of the King: Henry Gresham and James I (The Henry Gresham Series Book 3)

by Martin Stephen

  Interest now from the crowd, heads craning to see the impact of this on Clapton. Had this been a show trial in London, the crowd would have been bought in by the Government. Here in the provinces they were of all sorts, including, Gresham saw, more than a score of men in the dress of a Fellow, amidst all the peasants, tradesmen and undergraduates.

  ‘What is even more remarkable is that Joshua Carruthers, Manciple of Granville College, has also taken leave of absence. He is the only servant of the College to hold a key to the Master’s cellar. He left on the same day as the two porters.’

  Gresham paused for effect.

  ‘He apparently received news that his father was dying.’

  A gale of laughter swept the Hall.

  ‘It would appear,’ continued Gresham, ‘that a strange curse was enacted on all those who had occasion to visit the Master’s cellar, a remarkably effective curse that ensured their fathers contracted fatal illnesses at the same time.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the wizened lawyer, sitting with Clapton, ‘they were Devil worshippers fleeing justice.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Gresham, ‘how strange that no mention of them was made in the original deposition; how strange all three men clearly plan to return, all their belongings remaining in their lodgings; how strange that one of the leading wine merchants in London also took off unexpectedly …’

  ‘’Is Dad were dyin’!’ came a raucous cry from the floor of the house. More laughter.

  ‘… at the same time. However, it was not widely known that the Master had a taste for Spanish wine. A private taste, not shared by the College in general. Thrice yearly he had a good barrel or two delivered to his cellar. By no less than Mr Drummond here. Mr Drummond delivers his wine by barge, and always personally sees it home. Particularly to Cambridge. You see, he is a Cambridge lad. His family lost their home when the great building of King’s Chapel took place in the reign of good King Henry.’

  There was an immediate stirring from the crowd. The eviction of poor families for the building of the Chapel had been a massive cause celebre for locals. There was an almost tangible swing of sympathy to the local lad made good.

  ‘Would you care to tell your story, Mr Drummond?’

  Drummond was a thin, miserable man, with downcast eyes. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his robe.

  ‘Well, it’s as you say. I used to see the wine personally into the Master’s cellar.’ He still had a thick Fenland accent. ‘In fact, did so last week. Told to bugger off, I was. Master was dead, they said. Take the wine back. Well, as it ‘happened, it’d been paid for. Unusual, to say the least, but it had.’

  Drummond had confessed to Gresham that the late Master owed him for two shipments. Drummond, one of the few men to have access to the Master’s favourite tipple, had given an ultimatum: no more wine unless the debt was settled, and the next order paid for in advance. The money had come by courier, and a mollified Drummond had decided to deliver the shipment personally.

  ‘I thought I might leave at least one barrel, seeing as how it was paid for. So I went down to see if the cellar was open.’

  ‘Was it?’ said Gresham.

  ‘No bloody way,’ said Drummond. ‘Door was locked, and there was hammering and sawing coming from inside. Hammering and sawing, like they was building a house. And talking. Voices. Three men at least.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Took the wine back, didn’t I? I mean, I’d offered to leave it. Damn near killed me doing it. No real room on the barge; had to take all the empty barrels away.’

  ‘Are you suggesting, Sir Henry, that we take the word of a tradesman that it was not until shortly after the Master’s death that his cellar was converted into a … a place of abomination?’

  It was the clergyman with Clapton, not the lawyer, as fat as the lawyer was thin, and not looking as if he had taken vows of poverty. It was also a big mistake. The clergymen pronounced the world ‘tradesman’ with contempt, something picked up immediately by the crowd.

  ‘That is precisely what I am suggesting, Lord John. And the fact that the noise of building was heard that night will be confirmed by Mr Drummond’s labouring man, and by at least three College servants.’

  At least there were three College servants not prepared to lie for thirty pieces of silver.

  It was vital that Clapton was not allowed to settle on any one point, defend each one bit by bit. Gresham rushed on.

  ‘May we see the bones, My Lord? The baby’s bones found in the cellar?’

  A tiny coffin had been made and the bones placed in it, the whole thing brought into the Hall for effect. Burial had been arranged for the day after the hearing, in Great St Mary’s.

  ‘Why …’ Clapton started to speak, but before he could get more than one word out Gresham had placed a wedge under the coffin lid, and wrenched it off. There was a shriek from the crowd, who rushed forward.

  ‘Sacrilege! Sacrilege!’ shouted the fat clergyman.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Gresham. ‘The funeral service has not been read, the remains not sanctified. Sir, will you step forward?’

  The crowd gasped as a man-mountain of a man forced his way through the crowds. Thomas Rentcroft, butcher of Cambridge. Most of the meat eaten in Cambridge touched Tom’s hand, or the hand of one of his extended family, at some stage in its life or death. He looked down at the content of the coffin, reached in, tumbled a few dry bones together, and said,

  ‘Pig.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Gresham.

  ‘Pig’s bones,’ Tom said witheringly. He turned to the crowd, his back to Clapton.

  ‘Pig bones. Them’s not babies. Them’s pig’s bones.’

  He threw the bones carelessly back in the coffin, shouldered his way through the crowd and noisily banged the door behind him. Dear Tom. His son worked for Gresham at The House in London. Tom would have sworn they were pig’s bones even if they had been the bones of the baby Jesus himself. Gresham had offered him money for his testimony, an offer Tom had refused with a dismissive wave of his hand. After all, they were pig’s bones. He had not had to lie.

  The crowd were stunned. Gresham chose his moment.

  ‘It is a fine thing, My Lord, when in this country a man or a College is put on trial for killing a pig!’

  The laughter was uproarious this time.

  The clergyman was not going to let go.

  ‘But even a sacrifice to Satan of a pig is an act of Devil worship …’ he offered.

  ‘My Lord,’ said Gresham, ignoring the clergyman, ‘this hearing should be asking who sought to discredit this College and to pervert the course of justice by corrupting an old woman; fabricating a black chapel only hours after the death of the Master; causing to leave all those who could verify that the cellar in question was simply a cellar; planting pig’s bones to masquerade as those of a human baby.’

  Clapton was almost on the verge of tears. His moment of glory was gone, his paymasters in London would be furious. It was ridicule that had proved Gresham’s strongest weapon. Clapton was no genius, but neither was he a complete fool. He had little option.

  ‘I declare this trial … adjourned,’ he announced. There was a cheer from the crowd.

  ‘Well,’ said Alan later, ‘that was good.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Gresham, ‘that was close. I only happened on good Master Drummond late in the day.’

  ‘Did you kill Moll?’

  ‘Good God, no!’ said Gresham. ‘We knocked on the door late at night, Empty Street. Gagged the jailer, did the same for Moll, drove them off in the jail cart. Mannion organised it …’

  Alan raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you left Mannion in London?’

  ‘I did. He came up late with four of London’s finest, let them do the work. He’s too well known in Cambridg
e to be allowed the lead role, in case it went wrong. As it is, it went like a dream. No-one around at the jail. Moll and the jailer expressed a strong willingness to receive a large sum of money and a new home. It’s possible they may have been influenced by the suggestion they’d die if they didn’t. Gloucestershire and Yorkshire are the preferred directions, I think. They should be there by now.’

  ‘What if they come back?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s dead. We killed it today. If Moll and the jailer return, so will the wine merchant, the Manciple and the two porters. I just don’t think anyone can make all four of them deny the evidence of their own eyes in that cellar. As far as we can work out, they weren’t bought. They were genuinely told their fathers were dying. One of the porters I don’t know. The other, and the Manciple, I do know. They’re both good men. Loyal to the College.’

  ‘Well,’ said Alan, ‘you saved this College once with your money. Now you’re saving it with your skill.’

  ‘I haven’t saved it yet,’ Gresham replied. ‘We’ve won a battle, not the war. What I need to win the war is why in God’s name all this is happening. Until I know that, I can’t stop the source of the infection.’

  Chapter Five

  March 1603

  The Queen had not called Gresham to see her. He had come back straight to London: no messengers from Elizabeth; no stark summons; no recrimination.

  London was preparing for the death of Elizabeth. The prospect hung like a storm cloud over the city. The rich hired every cartman in London to take their wealth out to the suburbs. Admiral Nottingham closed all the ports. The Crown Jewels were locked in the Tower. Extra guards were placed at Richmond.

  Gresham’s frustration at not knowing what was driving the campaign against the College came on top of the greater frustration he felt at his total lack of success in tracking down who was trying to murder the Queen, and the stupid interruption posed by Cambridge which had taken him away from London at a crucial time. Through Mannion he had bribed half the staff at Richmond, to no avail. He had had the Queen’s food and drink tasted and double-tasted, again to no avail. In his own mind he was convinced the Queen was withering away from simple old age, her mind unwilling to accept the truth. But how to tell her? He had circled Cecil’s household, followed his servants, got some of them drunk in front of informants in his employ. He had gone down one of the darkest alleys in London, so many men with him that the resident of the mean, stinking property had thought it was an army come to his door. He had faced that man, that trembling and sweating man, the only man in London who knew every poison in the world, and mentioned Cecil’s name. The man had not blanched, nor shown any sign of guilt. He was a man whose poisons worked secretly, just as he tried to maintain the secrecy of his trade. He distanced himself from his ‘clients’, never seeking or showing the slightest interest in who bought his poisons or who they were intended to kill. Gresham had thought there was enough hope that having the most powerful man in the country as a customer might have filtered through even to him, but he had been wrong and Gresham knew he had wasted his efforts.

  The ring worked its magic, though this time the guards – younger and cleaner looking – let him in, with no sign of twittering ladies-in-waiting.

  Gresham blinked. The room was darker than it had been last time, and he was struggling to see clearly. There was the pile of cushions which had become the Queen’s home. In some strange way she had persuaded herself that the moment she went to her bed it would be tantamount to admitting she was dead. So she chose to sit, in pain, on a pile of cushions, for all the world like a mock throne children might have thrown up in play.

  There was a lump to one side of the cushions. A snoring lump. Queen Elizabeth I of England. No doubt with her red wig on, slightly askew.

  Gresham placed no stock on physical beauty. He had learnt that at war. When he had taken himself off to the wars in the Netherlands, he had thought it a desperate attempt to find himself. Now he was dimly starting to realise it was because he wanted to die. He had fought for a while alongside one of the most beautiful young men he had ever known, a witty and charming companion who was heir to a vast estate in Yorkshire and had gone for a soldier to show off to his doting parents and prove his independence from them. They had been standing by a hastily-dug parapet, in the early morning, pissing and exchanging desultory conversation. Gresham had just turned to look at his companion, The cannon ball struck him fairly and squarely in the centre of his head. It exploded, and the superbly muscled youthful trunk stood there for a moment, as if confused, blood spurting from where a neck had once been. Then it toppled, leaving Gresham dappled in blood, and fragments of muscle, brain and bone. So much for beauty. So much for the physical face a human presented to the world. Easy come, easy go.

  So it was not the shrivelled body of the Queen that took Gresham’s attention. It was her snoring. It is impossible to appear important and snore. One snore and all the humans who had ever elevated themselves above their fellow humans became what they really were, a concoction of blood and bone cursed with a brain but actually slaves to their physical being. The Queen’s snore started as a low rumbling, then crescendoed into a stentorian, ceiling-smashing roar that shook her frail body. Then, as sometimes happens, the noise stopped. For a moment Gresham thought the Queen had died. Then, dimly, he saw her chest rise and fall, and his muscles relaxed.

  Gresham moved back. There were no seats in the inner sanctum, one of her withdrawing rooms. He leant against a pillar, withdrawing into shadow. Like an assassin.

  Time passed. He felt no urge to wake the Queen. Let the old girl sleep. It was the only peace available to her at the moment. Then a thought broke into his reverie. If the Queen were to wake and perceive a figure lurking in the shadows she might indeed think it an assassin. It would match Gresham’s warped sense of humour for him to meet his end skewered on the end of a pike wielded by an over-hasty guard, whose rush in response to the Queen’s cry had not been stopped by his protestations. As he was thinking to move, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Damn! Had he left it too late?

  Then his eyes picked up the source of the movement. A rat. A long, sinuous and plump rat. Fascinated, Gresham watched the creature, its tail twitching in and out of the shadows. He felt no fear for the Queen. He had never known a rat chew on a live man, unlike crows. The animal stopped short of the Queen’s outstretched hand. Her prayer book, dropped when she had fallen asleep, lay on the floor. The rat circled round it suspiciously, with quick, nervous movements. Then, taking a decision, it sniffed at the leather cover, and started to nibble at a corner. Gresham knew the book. It had belonged to her father, Henry VIII. The story was that he had bound it himself, though Gresham doubted the will or the patience of the pain-wracked monarch to do such a thing.

  Gresham’s heart stopped. The rat had given itself a meal from the binding, and jumped on the centre of the book. It was showing increasing signs of distress, its head starting to tremble. It seemed to be troubled by something to do with its feet, trying to walk with one foot in the air, then seeming to gnaw at the soles of its paws. Finally, it was hit by a spasm so fierce it actually rolled over on its back, recovering and running off jerkily to wherever it had come from.

  Poison. Poison soaked into the binding. The binding of a book hardly ever out of the Queen’s hand. Years earlier someone had tried to kill her by impregnating one of her gowns with poison. The skin absorbs poison. And even if not, the hands that touched the book touched her food.

  Sickened at his sheer stupidity in not seeing the truth, his mind raced. Wake the Queen and tell her? Or would the sudden realisation, while she was still flustered from sleep, push her over some edge or other? Taking a glove from his doublet, a fine thing wrought out of Spanish leather for looks rather than warmth, he picked up the book. At least she would imbibe no more poison from it. He needed to know how lethal the poison was,
whether permanent damage had been done, Would it be a kindness never to tell the Queen, if by telling her averted or changed nothing? Were he and the Queen linked in some way, so that the same person needed them both dead? Whoever was trying to kill each of them had some knowledge of poison, a knowledge that went far beyond that of a layman.

  There was a buzzing in his head, a sense of being picked up bodily and thrown into some uncertain future. What if armed men were waiting outside the Withdrawing Chamber, ready to lay hands on him as he left with the incriminating evidence in his hands? After all, it was simply another way of getting rid of him, actually rather simpler and cheaper than hiring a mob to sack his house – and if it was the man trying to kill the Queen before Gresham exposed him, he of all people would know about the poisoned prayer book.

  There was a covered chamber pot an arm’s length from the Queen’s side. He edged over to it, silent as a cat. He took the lid off, and gagged. The pot was full, and not only of urine. A detached part of him noticed the Queen’s stool was pitch black, black as coal. Surely that had some meaning, some link with the poison? Why had the doctors upon whom she showered money not investigated?

  Trying not to breathe through his nose, he dropped the prayer book into the stinking liquid, pressing it at the same time against the solid matter. He doubted anyone would ever use that book again, but if they did it would be with a new binding. A pity it meant he lost the evidence, but even if his apothecary had been able to tell him what the poison was, would it have helped him? He doubted it. As it was the poor Queen would be blamed for dropping the book into her own piss, yet another sign of her dotage.