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

by Martin Stephen

  The Fat Lord Mackintosh looked at Gresham, and spat. Straight into his eye.

  Gresham blinked instinctively, and was rewarded with a warm trickle of fluid down his cheek. A compound of his own eye’s response and the spittle of the Fat Lord’s response. No-one had spat at Gresham and lived since his thirteenth birthday. One’s honour mattered, more actually, than life itself. Life could end instantly, without warning. Honour lasted, beyond the grave. Gresham had a long and acute memory.

  Mackintosh leant in close to Gresham’s face, the stink of his fish-breath stinging Gresham’s nostrils.

  ‘Will you tell me now who paid you?’ hissed the obscene man, ‘or later, when we have all the machinery of your famous Tower of London available to us?’

  Gresham wondered if it would be the same rack he had been fixed to in 1588, when his unlikely rescuer had been Queen Elizabeth herself. Well, one thing was sure: that particular lady would not be rescuing him this time. He tried not to think about the rack. Essentially a machine for stretching the human body, the pain it exerted was excruciating, unbearable, and even those who survived its rigours lived the rest of their lives as agonised cripples.

  Mackintosh snapped his fingers, and four bruisers took Gresham out of the chair, half frog-marching, half kicking him out of the room, down some dark stairs and into a dripping, pitch black cubbyhole. Not designed as a dungeon, Gresham thought; more a strong room, not that it made much of a difference. A slight draft showed that at least air came in, though the lack of any light showed it was not coming in through an outside wall. Arms in front of him, Gresham paced out the room. Six paces square. A veteran of several imprisonments, he did what all survivors of such experiences do, and shut down the active part of his brain once essentials had been completed. He was to be taken to London, imprisoned in the Tower and interrogated there, too important to be killed now before he gave up his information – or was it that someone in London would not believe him dead if they saw it with their own eyes? Little difference in what it meant Gresham had to do, so no point wasting energy on it. Somewhere on that journey he had to escape. Time to think what of the rest of his life might hold, how to get word to Jane and Mannion, later, when he knew if he had a life or not. He worked out the remaining essentials. If they brought him food they would open the door as little as possible, and slide it through, slamming the door shut. It was not sensible to crawl on hands and knees in total darkness and then knock over what paltry sustenance was on offer. So he felt for the door and propped himself up against the wall by the door. Opposite in the corner was where he would relieve himself; he prayed he would not be kept here too long. He started the exercises he had learnt from an English priest in a jail in the Netherlands. Lie on the back, push the leg up against the clammy wall. Push, until the back was fully arched and off the ground. Repeat fifty times. Then the other leg. Then similar exercises for the arms. And then, using a skill he had learnt years ago, he told his mind to sleep for eight hours, banging his head gently against the stone wall eight times. He slept.

  It was impossible to keep count of the days, and he did not try. It felt like several weeks he was incarcerated, but suspected it was several days. To his surprise, his food was actually rather good, and came twice a day. To his even greater surprise, an ornate china chamber pot was also shoved through the door with the food, and emptied and returned when the plate was finished with. After some time – a day, two days? – a lighted lamp was thrust in once a day, or night. Its light survived four, perhaps five hours, enough at least to stop him going blind.

  Eventually they hauled him out of the room, blinking in even the meagre light of two torches and a dim wall sconce.

  King James was on the move to claim his new kingdom. The cobbled yard was full of horses, wagons, carts and men, the shouting, clanging and clattering deafening. Gresham was bundled into a covered wagon. Heavy iron manacles were placed on his wrists and feet, the chain fed through two rings that had been hastily bolted into the two biggest main frame timbers of the wagon. The tailboard clattered down, and a small boy in a rough jerkin clambered into the wagon. A hard lump bread and a rectangle of even harder cheese were thrown in front of Gresham, alongside a weathered water bottle, from a safe distance. The boy stopped long enough to check that all three items had landed close enough for Gresham to reach, before exiting as quickly as he had come.

  Gresham could have drunk an ocean – there had been more food than water in his prison cell – but hard-learned discipline conquered. He allowed himself one mouthful of water, swilling it around his mouth for almost a minute before swallowing. Then he broke the bread up into several hard lumps, and very carefully dropped water on to each lump before putting it into his mouth and chewing at least twenty times. He knew that water sunk in food seemed to stick to the body in some way. He had seen thirsty men suddenly given water who had gulped down pints and then seemed to piss it away half an hour later. The bottle was full, mercifully, and he washed down each piece of rancid cheese with half a mouthful of water.

  The tail gate swung down again, and a familiar head poked up under the canvas. It was Carey.

  ‘I have been made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber!’ Carey announced proudly.

  And I have been knocked out, imprisoned and chained, thought Gresham. I wonder whose news is more interesting.

  ‘I’m thrilled for you,’ Gresham said drily. ‘Forgive my dress.’ They had left Gresham with his hose and the long, fine linen white shirt he had been wearing when he arrived in Edinburgh. It was now stained, filthy.

  ‘Oh … yes,’ said Carey, flushing. ‘I heard you had been taken. I arranged extra food for you, and … sanitary arrangements and a light.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gresham, strangely touched. Many men Gresham had known and helped would not have bothered.

  ‘The King believes you were sent to murder him,’ said Carey, looking nervous now. ‘I have told him he must be mistaken, but he insists on taking you to London. In chains, alas.’

  To his credit, Carey looked shamefaced. There were advantages in simple men, Gresham thought: men too stupid to form plots. Poor idiot. How long did he think the King’s favour would last?

  ‘What’s the date?’ asked Gresham.

  ‘Tuesday, 5th April,’ answered Carey. There was a noise from the yard. ‘I’m sorry, I must go,’ said Carey. ‘Do you want for anything?’

  Gresham looked at the chains that circled his arms and legs, and looked quizzically at Carey. Carey blushed. ‘I’m …’ he managed to blurt out, before he vanished.

  The wagon started with a rumble, and a bone-breaking descent into a pot-hole which the affected wheel managed somehow to survive.

  The next few days were among the worst Gresham had ever experienced. The King’s train made its triumphal progress – Berwick, Newcastle, York – each city more rich than the last, each welcoming cannonade louder and longer. Gresham could imagine the scene. A vast crowd of Scottish hangers-on meeting an increasing tide of plaintiffs from England, each one determined to stick his head in the trough.

  And there was nothing Gresham could do. Every day that passed the rack in the Tower grew nearer, yet he could make no headway. The chains that bound him to the wagon were never removed, and the accident that might have broken the timbers to which the chains were attached would have broken Gresham as well. He even bloodied the manacles on his wrists, made the rough iron bite in to his flesh, but his mute display of them to his gaolers provoked an equally mute response. Those who served him food and water changed every day, and refused any conversation. The boy who had first served him proved to be both deaf and dumb.

  A fire burnt in Gresham that nothing except death itself would extinguish, a single-minded commitment to survival. For perhaps the first time in his life, he started to contemplate his own death, preceded perhaps by weeks of torture, and the victory of his enemies. He held on
to that one image, the vision of Robert Cecil with a smile on his face. It gave him strength, strength in his despair.

  They had journeyed to the Midlands, that much he sensed. Burghley House, near Stamford. It had to be. The vast, E-shaped mansion, built by Lord Burghley, Robert Cecil’s father, now owned by Burghley’s heir, his idiot oldest son. Robert Cecil had created his own palace. He did not need to live in his father’s shadow. Yet Burghley House would be James’s first taste of the real wealth of England. Would he care or even notice how much of that wealth had been amassed through corruption, the selling of favours and the guardianship of wealthy children too young to inherit their estates and too powerless to stop a royally-appointed guardian draining them? Gresham doubted it. Elizabeth had always complained of being starved of cash, but to the King of Scotland the English Court represented wealth beyond his wildest dreams. He managed to feel a twinge of sympathy for Cecil. Show him the wealth and you persuade the new King that this is his new world, a world where wealth came to the people who mattered. Or show him the wealth and you persuade the new King that his servants have made the wealth that he should be heir to. How much wealth did you display to establish your importance before those you showed it to vowed to acquire it?

  There were many things Gresham was not expecting as evening descended over the wagon that had become his life in recent weeks. Apart from the appearance of Queen Elizabeth, the next least-expected was the appearance of Sir Walter Raleigh.

  The tailgate crashed down, to reveal an angry looking Raleigh peering into the wagon.

  ‘I’ve been dismissed!’ he announced. ‘Sent home like an urchin, without even an audience! Humiliated!’

  ‘Hello, Walter,’ said Gresham.

  ‘Do you understand what I just said?’ Raleigh shouted. ‘I’ve been dismissed the presence, without even an audience!’

  ‘I’ve been put in chains, and told I’m going to London to be tortured,’ said Gresham. ‘Do you fancy a swap?’

  ‘You,’ said Raleigh, ‘will be fine.’ He offered no explanation for his reading of the situation. ‘I, on the other hand, will clearly not be fine. I’m dead in the water, Henry, and soon to be dead on land.’

  ‘You know what I think,’ said Gresham. ‘To worm his way into James’s favour Cecil had to show there was real opposition to James, opposition that only Cecil could defeat.’

  Why was he having this bizarre conversation? He carried on.

  ‘You set yourself up as one of the villains Cecil needed, with your noise and your arrogance and insatiable desire to be at the centre of things. Cecil set you up as the Anti-Christ, and you fell into the trap.’

  Raleigh levered himself up into the wagon, and sat on the bare wood by Gresham’s side, moving one of the manacle chains to make himself more comfortable. Raleigh smelt of drink and had clearly been seeking solace in the bottle, but seemed none the worse for it. Gresham had a good head for drink, but he had never seen anyone drinking as much as Raleigh could do and show no outward sign whatsoever.

  ‘Henry,’ said Raleigh, ‘I want to ask you a favour.’

  Gresham rattled a chain. ‘I’m hardly in a position to offer favours.’

  ‘You’ll get out of this,’ said Raleigh, ‘mark my words. You might have to go abroad, but what’s that to you? You’re as much at home in France, Italy or the Low Countries as you are in England, and I simply don’t believe that vast wealth of yours hasn’t been put somewhere you can access it from any country, and keep it safe.’

  Well, that much was true. Even Cecil could not get at the part of Gresham’s fortune cared for by the Vatican, and for complex reasons Gresham could be sure he would never be denied access to it.

  ‘As for me, I came from nowhere. Any money I’ve had came from the Queen. They’ll be no more of that. It’s clear to me that James has been poisoned against me. Even he must know the insult to my honour in refusing an audience – particularly when every tin-pot runt of a courtier who’s flocked here has been welcomed with open arms.’

  Gresham sighed, and eased his stiff joints. ‘It’s not just an insult,’ he said. ‘It’s a signal. You know what it’s like. You walk into a room and the people fall silent. All the tradesmen you owe money to suddenly start banging your door down and demanding payment.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Raleigh. His dark features, the chiselled, larger than life face, seemed almost black. ‘I’ve been in the sun too long. You spend your life in the shade. What then?’

  Gresham thought for a moment.

  ‘James wants peace with Spain. Spain hates you. So if I were advising James, I’d link you to the first petty plot that comes along, hold a show trial and have your head off before anyone can say no. It pleases Spain, shows the new order has arrived and flatters that the King is firm, decisive and not afraid to wield the axe.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Raleigh. ‘Well, I won’t give up without a fight. But I still need that favour.’

  ‘You gave me my life,’ said Gresham simply. ‘That buys quite a lot of favours.’

  ‘It depends,’ said Raleigh, ‘what value you put on life. Frankly, I’m starting to think it’s a pretty squalid, sordid thing, and greatly overrated.’

  ‘Those who aren’t in immediate danger of losing it tend to favour that view,’ said Gresham.

  ‘This favour ... it comes hard to me, goes against my nature ...’

  ‘If the worst happens, and I survive my present predicament, I’ll make sure no harm comes to Bess and Wat, and that they lack for nothing.’

  ‘How did you know ...?’ spluttered Raleigh.

  ‘I guessed,’ said Gresham. Raleigh was a fiercely proud man, ashamed that his parents had none of the wealth of many of the courtiers he had been competing against for most of his life. Only a request for money could have reduced him to the stumbling incoherence Gresham had witnessed. ‘And what’s more they’re both thoroughly decent people who don’t deserve you as husband and father, so my charity will be speeded by sympathy.’

  Raleigh bridled.

  ‘No-one patronises me, Henry Gresham.’

  ‘No-one used to,’ replied Gresham, showing no sympathy in this case, ‘while you had the favour of the monarch. Now you don’t, being patronised is the least you have to fear.’

  There was a muffled shout from outside.

  ‘The time I paid for is used up, I fear. Until we next meet ...’ Raleigh dipped his head, rammed his hat back on and vanished as quickly as he had come.

  The evening thickened, and the deaf and dumb boy brought him water, cold meats and a chunk of bread. The bread was fresh. There must be truly royal feasting going on in Burghley House, if this was the food offered to prisoners.

  Gresham woke suddenly, trained reaction meaning his body lay still as his mind jerked into consciousness. A soft thud and something falling to the ground, that had been the noise that woke him. From the pressure in his bladder Gresham sensed it must be nearly dawn. As in a dream he saw the tail gate drop ever so gently down. A face appeared.

  Not Raleigh.

  Mannion. The most blessed sight on earth. Mannion with his fingers to his lips. He leapt up lightly into the wagon, surprisingly agile for so large a man.

  ‘Can you move?’ he hissed, as a huge iron key was applied to the manacles. Gresham nodded, restricting himself to a few fierce rubs of his wrists and feet. Pain shot through him as he stood. Mannion steadied him.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  A pair of boots appeared from the pack Mannion carried, a clean shirt and an old padded doublet in last year’s style, a hat and a riding cloak. They climbed out of the wagon. They were in a field near the main house, full of wagons and tethered horses. The crush round James had clearly taxed to overflowing the stabling capacity of even the big house, with the field being used as an overflow. A few fires flickered feebly, but
the whole world was asleep.

  Of course, the hour before dawn. The ideal time to make a raid. The time when the human spirit was at its lowest ebb, when the injured and the ill most often chose to die. Gresham noted no less than three pairs of feet sticking out from under the wagon. Three guards, no less. Given that there was no way Gresham was going to be parted from the wagon to which he was chained other than by a key, the number of guards emphasised how important Gresham’s captivity was to someone. Gresham stiffened in alarm as two figures emerged from the shadows, then relaxed as he recognised Tom and Will from The House. That was how three guards had been taken out silently. Together, they drifted through the silent encampment towards the woods that fringed the field, the start of the splendid hunting grounds that fringed the house.

  Gresham knew Mannion’s plan. It was what his would have been. Once the escape was discovered, all would assume Gresham and his accomplices would ride like the furies to put as much ground between them and their pursuers. Far better to stay one, two or even three nights in the woods, let James and his ever-expanding army of hangers-on move on.

  They strode down a woodland path, with just enough light to see by. Gresham revelled in the sense of strength returning to his legs. Thank God for the hours of exercise. As dawn was breaking, they broke off into the undergrowth. Mannion had set up camp half a mile in, a small clearing with a brook running through...

  Mannion had visibly relaxed the further away from the house they had got, but they hardly exchanged a word until they reached the clearing. Biscuit and dried meat were all the food available – not knowing how many people lived in the woods Mannion had not lit a fire – but Gresham tore into the strips of meat as if he were at a banquet.

  ‘Came as soon as I ’eard,’ said Mannion. ‘Raleigh sent a message, said you’d been nobbled. Got the boat waiting in Norfolk.’