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

by Martin Stephen

  ‘Will it feel unusual for you to be a hero?’ said Travis. The irony was back in his voice.

  ‘I know what I am,’ said Gresham, and left it at that. Unlike you, Gresham thought, but said nothing. They waited

  ‘We need to position your men now,’ said Gresham finally.

  Things were marginally better than Travis had once feared. Something over 600 men had gathered, but there was no explanation for the missing four hundred. Grim faced, Travis whispered orders. In almost complete silence six hundred men left the inn yard and the surrounding dark and dank alleyways, and made their way down to the shore. The Tower loomed to their left, a huge dark shape with only a few lights showing. The rather cursory wall that had been built to bar access to The Wharf from the west was unmanned. Bribery? Perhaps. Or simply that The Tower was not on a war footing. There were no lights in Thomas’s Tower or Traitor’s Gate, but a blaze of light from the Bloody Tower showed Walter Raleigh was staying up late, and burning more candles that a poor household would get through in a year.

  Travis’s troops were good. They halted when in musket range of the Queen’s Stairs, in six rows, and flung themselves down on the mercifully dry ground, pulling dark cloaks over their heads. They immediately vanished from effective sight. The plan was simple. They would await the cannonade from Anna 2, and immediately they heard it would throw off their covering cloaks, some at least of their night sight preserved. The front row would lie flat, the second kneel and the third stand, to let loose the first volley. The rear three ranks would step through, assume the same firing positions and fire, as the first three ranks were reloading.

  ‘Time for you to go with the lantern,’ said Gresham.

  ‘There’s been a change of plan,’ said Travis. ‘I’m sending one of my men.’ True to his word, a man with a lantern walked forward to the Queen’s Stairs.

  ‘Is that wise?’ said Gresham.

  ‘It’s what’s happening,’ said Travis, verging on rudeness. Standing behind the soldiers on the ground, Gresham and Travis watched as the soldier gave the signal, placing a cloth over the lantern, and whipping it off six times. He paused for perhaps a dozen seconds, and repeated the exercise.

  Nothing happened.

  There was no stirring from the ships moored out in the Thames, no splash of boats hitting the water, no squeak of rowlocks as men were rowed to the shore, no muttered curse as a heavily-laden soldier missed his footing.

  They waited, five minutes, ten. Travis was slightly in front of Gresham, still gazing intently out on to the river.

  ‘They’re not coming, are they?’ he said conversationally. ‘There are no Spanish troops on board those boats, are there?.’

  ‘No,’ said Gresham very quietly. ‘There aren’t. They’re either still in the Channel Islands or, more likely, back on their way to Spain.’

  ‘That’s why you were so insistent when you questioned me about whether or not I could communicate with them, wasn’t it? To see if I could find out if they didn’t sail?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gresham. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Instinct, I suppose,’ said Travis, ‘Which is another way of saying I don’t know. Why did you betray me?’ Travis was still gazing outwards, but his hand had moved casually to rest on the butt of his pistol.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Gresham. ‘You betrayed me.’

  ‘How so?’ It was as if the two men were discussing the prospects for next summer’s harvest.

  ‘It was a smile you gave when I agreed to open fire on the Spanish. It only lasted a second. It was a smile of triumph. You’d set yourself up as the man tasked with using Spanish troops to unseat the King. Yet that fleeting smile told me that what you actually wanted was for me to declare war on those troops.’

  ‘And how did that mighty brain of yours see that working out?’

  ‘I didn’t doubt that the plot was real, that an unholy alliance featuring some Livery Companies, Cecil and Raleigh had cobbled up the idea of getting Spain to send troops to oust James and put a puppet Queen on the throne. But then I thought, what if someone decided to change the plan?’

  ‘And?’ said Travis, still not facing Gresham and still outwardly calm.

  ‘I thought to myself, what might happen if instead of being let in to the Tower, the Spanish troops were slaughtered? Firstly, there’s an end to peace with Spain, an end to the planned conference, sealed by the blood of five hundred Spaniard in the Thames. And, as a result, a small but very, very wealthy group of businessmen continue to make vast profits from piracy and smuggled goods. Secondly, Raleigh can take all the credit, claim to have appeared to co-operate with the plot simply in order to destroy it from the inside, using his old friend Henry Gresham to turn the welcoming party into a firing squad. And I imagine, knowing Raleigh’s flair for the dramatic, that following the slaughter the plan was to release him, pretend it was actually he who had raised the troops and given the order to fire. He then locks himself back in The Tower, and James, eating nails, has to release him and acknowledge to whom he owes his Crown. There’s only one problem …’

  ‘Which is?’ said Travis. If he did not know better Gresham would have imagined Travis was smiling.

  ‘Me,’ said Gresham. ‘You see, I was tricked, manoeuvred and manipulated into the slaughter of five hundred Spanish troops, lied to. So I might not play ball. I might not agree that I was Raleigh’s double agent. But apart from that, I offer a unique opportunity.’

  The men on the ground were becoming restive. Travis barked out a command, and they rose, confused to their feet, whispering nervously to each other. The soldier by the Queen’s Stairs was still giving the signal, rather forlornly now.

  ‘Go on,’ said Travis.

  ‘I’m known not only to be a friend of Raleigh’s, but rumoured ever since my trip with the Armada to be a friend of Spain. How hugely credible that this was all my plot to bring Spain to England, a plot in which I involved my old friend, Walter Raleigh, known for his lasting hatred of Spain but presumably willing to swallow that for his freedom. But brave Sir Walter, noble Sir Walter, patriotic Sir Walter put aside his love for his old friend, put aside the prospect of freedom and a dominant position in a new government, put aside even his justified grievance against James I and used all his charms on the young, dashing, romantic Captain of the home team to persuade him to transfer his allegiance and order the killing of his paymasters – thus proving himself a mercenary second and an Englishman first. So this becomes the Gresham Plot to usurp the throne, and what more credible a villain could there be? One problem: Henry Gresham himself might argue a different story, so just to be sure the young, dashing, romantic Captain of the home team will have to put a pistol ball into Henry Gresham’s head.’

  Travis finally turned to face Gresham.

  ‘Your brain has been busy, hasn’t it? And the four hundred men who didn’t turn up? Are they your doing, as well as the missing Spaniards?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gresham. ‘I managed to have a conversation with a certain Livery Company flunky, in which I described in loving detail the Rack and what actually happens when you’re hung, drawn and quartered. He must have got to quite a few commanders to tell them the deal was off. I’m impressed with the flunky. I gave him some ideas as to how to frighten the commanders in to not trying to contact you, or to tip you off, but it was a gamble.’

  ‘But you’ve made one mistake,’ breathed Travis. ‘So there are no Spaniards. But there is the fortress whose men have been persuaded to let us in. There is a charismatic leader in the fortress. There is an unpopular King. And there is Robert Cecil, who will have made sure that Whitehall and the King are undefended this night. The original plan might still just succeed, even without the Spanish. Who knows? Perhaps without the Spanish we’ll gather enough popular support to more than offset their absence.’

  ‘No,’ said Gresha
m calmly. ‘You’re making the mistake. I’ve dealt with your men in The Tower. There are no open doors. And the walls are manned.’ He turned, and shouted up at the walls. One by one, there were sparks of light and flaring torches were placed in sconces all along the battlements. ‘There’s a man behind every torch,’ said Gresham, ‘and without siege equipment they might as well be in Heaven for all that you can reach them. But they can reach you, and cut you down. As will happen if you turn towards Whitehall, in which case the guns of the Anna 2 will cut you down.’

  Travis realised that Gresham’s ship, which he had merely thought was moored up stream of the five decoy rigged vessels Gresham had paid to moor there, was in fact moored directly opposite the point where Travis’s men were gathered.

  ‘And besides,’ said Gresham, ‘your muskets won’t work.’

  ‘What?’ said Travis disbelievingly.

  ‘Order one of your men to shoot me,’ said Gresham.

  Travis eyed Gresham, and motioned a man forward. ‘Willingly,’ he said, and gave the order. ‘Shoot him,’ he said, pointing at Gresham.

  There was a sudden rustling as man drew aside, leaving Gresham standing relaxed and alone. The soldier looked at Travis.

  ‘Do it!’ said Travis.

  The soldier took careful aim at the centre of Gresham’s chest, and pulled the trigger.

  There was a click.

  ‘Try all of them if you like,’ said Gresham, ‘they’ll all be the same.’ Some four or five did just that, two pointing at Gresham. There was a volley of clicks.

  Jane and some of Gresham’s most trusted men had taken over the old stables, emptied for repairs which had yet to start, and heated up The House’s entire store of candles. They had poured a small quantity of molten wax carefully down the barrel of each musket the mercenaries had handed in. It was an old trick. The wax hardened at the bottom of the barrel, and stopped off the route for the priming charge to reach the powder in the barrel. There would not be enough heat to melt the wax in April. It was weightless, and so little was needed that a man loading the weapon would not notice that the space at the bottom of the barrel was fractionally shorter. Best of all, if any dripping wax was wiped off, the sabotage was undetectable.

  There was only one problem. There was no absolute guarantee that every soldier had handed in his musket. Gresham had decided the odds were in his favour.

  ‘Go home,’ said Gresham, his voice carrying in the night. ‘Your weapons will not work. There’s no war here for you to fight tonight, only death. Disperse. Keep your muskets. They can be mended, Keep your purses. Slip through the streets, and stay alive.’

  There was silence. Not a man moved.

  Travis drew his pistol out from his belt, cocked it. ‘I don’t know what you did to the muskets,’ he said. But this pistol hasn’t been out of my sight for months. This weapon, I assure you, will fire.’

  He raised it and pointed it at point-blank range at Henry Gresham’s head. Then, suddenly, there was a ragged chorus of bangs from the nearest wall of the Tower. A neat hole appeared in Travis’s forehead, and an explosion of blood, bone and brains spattered out from the rear of his smashed skull. Gresham saw little spouts of dust on Travis’s jacket, knew they were musket or pistol balls punching into the already dead body. Travis collapsed, the pistol dropping from lifeless hands. As it hit the ground, there was a flash and a bang, and it discharged its load harmlessly somewhere over the Thames.

  For a split second Gresham hoped the crew of the Anna 2 would not confuse the one discharge and the volley of shots that had killed Travis with the three, regular and spaced shots that were the signal for them to rake the shore. But they were better trained than that.

  There was silence again, and motionless men.

  ‘Go home,’ said Gresham. ‘Disperse. Or make his fate yours.’ He spoke quietly, but it carried to every man.

  One of the men started it. He seemed to shake himself, slung his musket over his shoulder, followed it with his cloak and, with no words, turned and strode off in the direction of the City. One, two, three and four others followed, and within minutes the whole force had vanished, as if into the air.

  Mannion emerged from the gloom of the curtain wall.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, ‘don’t ask me to do that again!’

  Mannion had indeed been stationed at the other end of The Wharf, he and five men holding bundles of unlit torches. The minute the signal had been made from the Queen’s Stairs he had knocked on the gate that Raleigh’s accomplices had arranged to be unlocked, knocked out the unsuspecting Guard and gone, with five men, up on to the ramparts. Hurriedly they had put the torches into the sconces on the wall, and lit them. Gresham had gambled that in the heat of the moment neither Travis nor his men would noticed the relatively slow rate at which the torches were lit, and their flame made it impossible to see past them and identify just how many men were on the ramparts. Mannion and his men had then rushed down to ground level again, and crawled with their backs to the wall round to where they could cover Gresham when, as seemed inevitable, Travis tried to kill him.

  There was noise from inside The Tower, lights starting to show in various windows, the clatter of hastily-roused men. The garrison might be tiny and consist largely of old men or servants, but musket shots and lighted torches aroused even them. The slowness of the response made Gresham realise just how easy it would have been to take The Tower, and either kill or simply bottle up the garrison, who even now had not appeared to defend the place. There was an enraged shout from within the walls. Authority. Had the Keeper of the Tower finally appeared? It was time to be going. The Watch would inevitably come to the scene, and Gresham risked being pincered between them and the garrison. Motioning to two of his men to drag Travis’s body to the stairs where a boat from Anna 2 had appeared, Gresham, Mannion and the other three men melted into the darkness and fled for the anonymity of the City.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Back to Late February 1604

  Following his talk with Travis, Gresham had lain awake most of the night, weaving together the strands that flowed from Travis’s tiny smile of triumph, Jane curled up against him, the contours of her body fitting his, breathing softly. He knew that at some hour in the morning, when he finally slept, she would noiselessly rise from the bed and leave him to wake with only the warm indentation in the bed to mark her presence. Then, as had happened every morning in his adulthood, Gresham would wait while Mannion poured jugs of cold water into a tub and, standing naked in it, Gresham would scrub himself all over. It provoked horror among the few of Gresham’s friends who knew of this ritual, believing that too much water removed the body’s essential oils. Gresham preferred to believe that strange old Cambridge quack, Dr Stephen Perse, who held the wild theory that all dirt carried contagion. Gresham privately acknowledged that the bathing routine was more to do with his mind than his body. In some way he did not understand, it rinsed clean his mind as well as his body, perhaps more so.

  Could what his mind told him was the plot really be true? Was there a plot within a plot? Bad enough that leaders of the land would conspire to have Spanish troops take The Tower and usurp the King. But could unscrupulous men opposed to peace use the plot to their own advantage? Power is a drug, and those merchants in the City who profited from hostilities against Spain could justify their bloody greed by citing the popular hatred of Spain. Yet such a devious plot within a plot needed a leader. Gresham doubted the fat City men had the initiative to mount such a plan, even though they had the greed to follow it. And the leader? It all pointed to Raleigh. He of all people gained most – his freedom, his reinstatement at Court and a sweet revenge on Cecil, whose part in the original plot Raleigh would undoubtedly reveal.

  Rack his brains as he might, Gresham could see only one way forward. That way was to talk to Cecil, the only man who could stop those cursed Spanish troops fr
om making their journey. Yet doing so carried a horrific risk. Gresham had a conviction but no evidence that Cecil was involved at all in the plot to bring Spanish troops over. Indeed, in terms of being an active plotter Cecil was almost certainly not involved. It was far more likely that the Spanish, who already paid Cecil a pension, simply wanted him to look away and ensure that the government took no steps to stop the plan. That was an ideal situation for Cecil. He had to do nothing. If the plot failed, he was simply where he had always been. If it succeeded and a puppet Queen placed on the throne, Cecil would in effect be King of England.

  But what if Cecil was not involved at all? What if Gresham’s hatred had forced him to try and condemn Cecil unfairly? If Gresham arrived at the door of an innocent Cecil and revealed detailed knowledge of a plot to unseat James, Cecil would have him instantly locked up as a confessed traitor. Equally, if Cecil was guilty he might well risk having Gresham killed then and there, perhaps even claiming that Gresham had come to him as an assassin.

  To make matters worse, Cecil was at Theobald’s, his palatial mansion in Hertfordshire which James was allegedly already casting envious eyes over, for its hunting rather than its architecture.

  It was the longest ride Gresham had ever made. Mannion, his only companion, did not help.

  ‘You must be mad!’ he said. ‘The minute you opens your mouth you’re as good as dead!’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gresham, feeling inclined to agree.

  He took some precautions. When demanding to see Cecil, he ostentatiously stripped off all his weaponry, and invited the Steward to note that Gresham went to see Cecil unarmed. It made it just that little bit harder for Cecil to claim that Gresham had tried to kill him, but at best it was only the tiniest of gestures.