The bonus for Gresham was Excalibur's Pool. He couldn't help but call it that, for if anywhere in England there was a place where a magic sword might rise up out of the mist, it was in the bend of the river where the water had scooped out a deep, dark pool, somehow separated from the moving water, a place where time and motion stood still. You could look into the translucent depths of Excalibur's Pool and see the history of England. He found himself drawn to it more and more, spending the night in the simply furnished great bedroom so that early in the morning he could walk out over the meadow and plunge into its darkness. Buying The Merchant's House created more trouble in the College, of course. It showed unseemly wealth. Residence in College was mandatory for Fellows, the core of communal living on which the whole concept of the College was based.
He had spent Christmas in London. No young man with blood flowing through him would refuse his monarch's order to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas with the richest and most spoilt of the land. The memories blurred into each other. The swirling, flickering light from thousands of candies, the stately procession of the dance with the vibrant bodies, hungry for each other under the strict discipline of the music. Anna, with fire in her eyes, being swept round and round by a courtier whose tongue was hanging out, and who later offered her his whole inheritance for one night spent with her. She had sent him home to his mother. The dreaded moment when a really drunken Gresham had looked up to see that the dance had placed him yet again opposite Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. He had never danced as well, nor sobered up more quickly.
The men, the ships, the very countries involved in this great game of life now stood like dominoes stacked in a line, each one carefully placed over years through the scheming ambition of those with a desperate desire to retain power, or those with a desperate desire to grab it. For years those dominoes stood still, silent, and then came the push. It only needs one of those dominoes to topple, and worlds shiver, history is changed.
The first of the great dominoes to topple and knock the next in line, was the death of Don Alvaro de Bazan, Marquis of Santa Cruz, Captain General for the Ocean Seas, hero of Lepanto, victor of Terceira and endless other conflicts and Commander for the Enterprise of England, on February 9th, 1588. He died, the old man, with no tears from his servants for this abundantly cruel man.
Then the worst day in his life came to the Duke of Medina Sidonia. It had started badly. There was rarely peace for any Spanish grandee, living his life from dawn till dusk in the eyes of his people, the few snatched hours of night with his wife the only time he was not on show. It was his duty, he accepted it both as his responsibility and his birthright, but sometimes he ached for isolation. Having returned from Cadiz he had been sitting in judgement on tenants all day, and one particularly unpleasant case where a man had denied God, his duties as a tenant, and his duties as a husband and father had sickened him. So it was that he had a strange feeling that things were not well, coupled with a great restlessness.
The messengers arrived at his home as he did. King Philip never sent one man where ten would do. The letter hit him like a sword through his heart. Santa Cruz was dead. His King required the Duke of Medina Sidonia to become Commander by Sea for the invasion of England. He clutched the parchment in his hand, frozen, the blood draining from his face. For minutes he said and did nothing. Then, with a slow walk, he called for his Secretary. He had no time to think over his response, merely to feel the awful dread pulling at his heart. It was from his heart finally that he wrote to his King.
My health is not equal to that needed for such a voyage. I know this since the few times that I have been at sea I was sea sick and always caught a fever. My family have debts of over nine hundred thousand ducats. I have no money to spend on the enterprise, nothing to spend even for my King. I have no experience of war, nor of the sea. How is it that I can be suited for such a great command I know nothing of what Santa Cruz has been doing. I have no intelligence of England. I fear therefore that I will let myself and you, Your Majesty, down most terribly, acting as a blind commander, relying on the advice of those I do not know, unable to distinguish truth from lies, the good advice from the bad…
As soon as he had sealed it and sent it he regretted the impetuosity with which he had written. Fretfully his mind told him that his response would make him look like a coward. He feared such an accusation against his honour, far more than he feared death itself. Yet equally potent in his growing sense of despair was the realisation that his letter would fail, of course. Like all limited men, Philip was incapable of changing his mind, not seeing that sometimes to do so was wise, but seeing it rather as him being proven wrong. And the King with God's ear could never be wrong.
He knew why he had been appointed. They were proud men, the sea captains of the Spanish Empire, and men uniquely conscious of their rank. Well, Sidonia was superior to any of them in rank and, more importantly, breeding. He had the status to quell the extra proud spirits of the other commanders. Was all lost? These commanders had won and held an Empire. There was huge skill and knowledge in their ranks. They would give him the military advice he would be so desperately in need of. Yet the challenge! Not the challenge of fighting. He was born to that. It was the challenge of marshalling over one hundred ships and ten thousand troops languishing in Lisbon harbour, every month's delay costing seven hundred thousand ducats.
He wrote again, of course, two days later. Useless though he knew it was, he felt he owed it to himself. And to history, if anyone ever bothered to read his laboured offering. He was more reasoned, this time, questioning the whole wisdom of the Enterprise. The sea was a fickle battleground. A storm could destroy the whole endeavour in an hour. As Sidonia understood it, the Duke of Parma was penned in behind shallows patrolled by the infamous Dutch fly-boats, waters no ship the Spanish possessed could travel. It did no good. Don Cristobel de Moura, the most influential of King Philip's secretaries, wrote back immediately.
We did not dare show His Majesty what you have written. God will see that the Armada is victorious.
Well, so he might, the Duke thought as he mounted his horse for the journey to Lisbon. Yet in his experience, God rarely made up for man's inadequacy, and there were very many inadequacies that needed to be dealt with before the Armada could hope to succeed.
On arrival in Lisbon the first thing the Duke of Medina Sidonia saw were great sackloads of paper being carted out of Santa Cruz's administrative headquarters. All the paperwork for the Armada. Invoices, bills of lading, lists of ships, charts, all vital to an invasion. It belonged personally to Santa Cruz, of course. There was no doubt about that. History and tradition dictated it was so. Sidonia called over the most sympathetic and charming of his secretaries, gave him clear instructions. Somehow those papers had to be retained and preserved, at all costs. The Duke was starting to realise that the actual fighting would be the easiest part of this endeavour.
And so the dominoes continued to fall. Cecil called for Gresham. It was their first meeting since the night Gresham had returned from sea.
'The Queen has pushed for negotiations with the Spanish forces in the Netherlands, and the Duke of Parma has agreed,' said Cecil. 'I can tell you now that the death of Santa Cruz has just been reported.'
What a surprise, thought Gresham. Mannion will be gutted.
'The death of Santa Cruz will throw the Spanish into confusion. We leave from Dover, for Ostend, immediately, in the hope that we can profit from that confusion. I have been allowed to join the party as an observer, as you expected.' Cecil's chest seemed to swell, 'In fact I have been asked to use my best endeavours to obtain the maximum amount of information on the military preparedness of the Netherlands.'
Gresham could not repress a smile. 'I'm sure your extensive military experience will be a wonderful asset to you in that task,' he said. 'In fact, you'll be acting as a spy. Welcome to the club.'
'A spy?' Cecil sniffed. 'An ambassador with eyes is how I prefer to think of it. Spies are employees, after a
ll, paid for their work.' Cecil realised his mistake as soon as he had spoken, but it was too late.
'Really?' said Gresham, who had less need of money than anyone. 'Fancy that. If I'd realised that someone was meant to pay me I'd have asked for the money… After all, you can never have too much, can you?' Which might well have been the motto of the Cecil family, come to think of it. Gresham doubted that the magnificent palaces Lord Burghley had built and was building were afforded from whatever allowance the Queen made to him.
'In any event,' said Cecil, moving rapidly on, 'you have the excuse of seeking your… ward's fiancй, I gave you my word that I would facilitate your access to Lisbon and to the Netherlands. You may join my party. You will be listed as an adviser, a status little above a servant. But alone. The woman cannot come with you.'
'I wouldn't wish her to do so,' said Gresham. 'The Netherlands is a war zone. There's no certainty of finding her fiancй perhaps not even a reasonable chance. What I need to do there doesn't involve her. It does, however, need your expedition, as my cover.'
Cecil's lips turned up in distaste at the word "cover". 'It has cost me in credibility to include you in our party,' said Cecil. Already it was "his" party, though as the mere son of a nobleman he was the least important member of it. 'So perhaps you may feel able to tell me, following our "agreement", what you achieved — if anything — in Lisbon.'
'Something. Perhaps nothing. Not enough. As I said previously, it's better you do not know. Particularly as we're heading into a country ravaged by war where even the best-escorted parties can't be guaranteed safety from brigands.'
Cecil blanched slightly. 'I am sure it will not come to that.'
He returned to The House and Anna. She had had a wonderful time over the twelve days of Christmas, though she would never admit it to Gresham, and was glowing as a result. The glow turned to frost when she saw him. The chaperone looked more miserable by the minute.
Cecil was not his only reason for being in London. Gresham very much wished to attend a party hosted by Edmund Spenser, who seemed about to give birth to his own baby, a lengthy poem called 'The Faerie Queene'. It was the least glamorous of the events Anna and Gresham had been invited to, but Spenser was a true friend, and a true poet, so the event was worth dragging him away from Cambridge. Anna refused to talk to Gresham, but had softened towards George and talked to him with some animation, seemingly with complete trust. At an earlier soirйe the Earl of Essex had made a pass at her.
'It was appalling!' she said, clearly not at all appalled. 'He is such a handsome man, a favourite of the Queen and they tell me he is a bolted Earl. Yet he dresses so carelessly!'
'It's belted Earl actually,' said Gresham later, as they walked the Long Gallery of The House, 'and yes, he's deemed to be the most handsome of the lot.' George had left to go home, his face long. His elderly parents were about to arrive in London on one of their increasingly rare visits, and spoil his bachelor life.
Anna looked at him. 'I do not listen in to your conversations. I fail to see why you should listen to mine. It is probably unsafe for me to even be near you. The girls at Court, they say you are dangerous.'
Well, dangerous to one or two of their husbands, perhaps. What was a young man to do if a girl flung herself at you? It would be impolite to refuse. 'Not as dangerous as the Queen will be to you, if she thinks you're stealing the attentions of her latest young man. So what happened?' His curiosity overrode his distaste for this foreign creature.
'The Earl — Robert Devereux is he not? — danced with me for the first time, and then took the second dance and even the third. I know he had ladies for the second and third dances waiting for him. I saw, because they were most upset.' There was no sign that Anna had been upset on their behalf. 'And then, in the third dance, he whispered in my ear!'
Gresham paused, and looked at the girl. Why had she not flung herself at him? There was more control to her than he had given her credit for, Gresham realised. The pan might be boiling, as Mannion had insisted to his laughter, but the owner was managing to keep the lid on tight. Now he thought about it, this must be the first really beautiful girl who had not flung herself at him. Did he mind? Of course not. 'And what did he whisper?'
'What men always whisper,' Anna said simply. 'To go to bed with him.'
'So what did you do?' asked Gresham, despite himself.
'I told him that I was a virgin,' she answered simply. 'And more than that, I was a Catholic virgin. So that I could only go to bed with a man who would guarantee me an Immaculate Conception.'
Despite himself, Gresham burst out laughing. 'And his response?' he found himself asking.
'He burst out laughing, like you. Men are all the same. He said that great though he undoubtedly was he was not yet ready to be the father of Jesus.'
Good on him, thought Gresham, his respect for the Earl of Essex reluctantly increasing. Then the bleakness of his situation forced itself into his mind. Once, as a child, he had seen a flock of pigeons scatter up from the roof of The House, winging up towards the clouds. Then, suddenly, one of the pigeons had crumpled in the air, as if shot. Yet there was no man with a gun nearby, no archer trying the impossible task of killing a bird on the wing. The dead bird, transformed in an instant from a thing of beauty to something inert and lifeless, had plunged like lead to earth, landing with a soggy thump on the roof, dislodging two of the tiles by its impact. The still-warm flesh lay motionless, the tiles skittering down the length of the roof to tumble and smash into pieces on the hard ground below. So it was with Gresham's mood at present, as he remembered the bleak reality of his future, the gaiety of the moment crumpling like a dead bird. ‘I must leave,' said Gresham. 'I have to go to Flanders.'
To find Jacques Henri?' asked Anna.
'That's part of my excuse. If this damned man of yours exists, which I'm beginning to increasingly doubt. But it's not my real reason. And I can't take you with me. It's a war zone there, out of control. It's going to be difficult enough keeping Cecil out of trouble and myself free to do what I need. And you would be at real, serious risk.'
She chanced a very rare smile, to herself more than to him. 'More risk than being stranded at sea on a sinking ship with fifteen pirates?'
Sometimes the best way to deal with a woman was to remain silent.
'You are happy for me to remain here?' she asked. 'Living as I do?' She was asking if he consented to her continuing to spend his money.
'Of course. You're my ward, aren't you?' Gresham liked saying that. It gave him a feeling of power. 'Yet for a short time, in a month or two, I may ask you to stay in a new place. Not for long, I hope.'
A puzzled expression crossed her face. It was time. He had no option. He had to tell this girl his real business. The truth. The truth that only Mannion had known hitherto. The truth that would most likely lead to Henry Gresham being killed in disgrace. As she was a Spaniard, perhaps he should have told her much earlier. Who knows? Secrecy becomes like a second skin, and humans are not like snakes who slough off their skin effortlessly. 'Let me explain,' he said. And then he told her the truth that had been haunting him for so long. The truth that he knew would decide his fate, his life. As he did so, he realised how stupid it must sound to an outsider.
When he had finished, he looked at her face. She was white, aghast. There were tears starting in her wide eyes — of shock? Of horror? Suddenly, surprisingly, he realised what a terrible moment this was. For the first time since he had known her she looked into his eyes, and broke down, the emotion shaking her whole body.
'I'm sure you'll be safer where I'm asking you to go than in the Netherlands,' he added lamely, at a loss as to what he could do. He was to remember his words later on.
All Mannion said when he heard of the conversation was, 'You don't make life easy for them as follow you, do you?'
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's Embassy to the Netherlands was one of the most bizarre, mad and, in some strange way, ridiculous events of Gresham's life. Perhaps all dipl
omacy was this ridiculous. If so, it was a wonder that the world was not permanently at war. Then again, perhaps it was.
Why should the Duke of Parma want peace, wondered Gresham, when he had every chance now of winning a war that had cost him and Spain so dearly? All the cards were in Parma's hands. He had the best army in the world at his disposal. He was winning the war to keep the Netherlands in Spanish hands. He had the biggest fleet in history coming to help him get that army over to England, and he must know how little there was to oppose him if he landed. So England was sending a peace delegation. And was this the team to conclude a peace? Henry Stanley, Earl of Derby, was urbane, intelligent and widely-travelled. But the other two nobles, Cobham and Sir James Croft, were bewildered, the two civil lawyers accompanying them pedantic, and Cecil and Tom Spencer, a relative of Derby's, intelligent enough but wholly inexperienced. This was what England was sending, to oppose an army.
Dover in late February was death by ice. The winter weather was appalling, ships huddling in the harbour as if in fear. For days the wind howled, blowing so hard down the chimney of the inn reluctantly occupied by the peace party that it drove smoke and cinders into the main room, setting furniture ablaze. It was just before the end of the month that they managed passage to Ostend. Gresham thought he was accustomed to rough seas, counted himself a seaman now, but this bucking, crazed animal beneath his feet surprised and frightened him. The bitter cold cut like a blade, flecking their beards with sharp particles of ice just minutes after being on deck. God knows how the sailor's fingers kept enough feeling to work the sails for more than seconds.
Ostend was a city surrounded by war, in a country taken over by war in the way that plague takes over a human body. A whole family lay dead a quarter of a mile outside the walls. The father was on the ground, in a shirt, arm outstretched. It had been gnawed to the bone above the hand, which showed white against the brown mud, half his head eaten away, and great chunks of flesh taken out of his body. His wife and children were similarly mangled, holes where their eyes had once been. 'Wolves,' said their guide, 'and birds, of course. The wolves come right up to the city walls at night now. You'll hear them, well enough.'
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