The Desperate remedy
( Henry Gresham - 1 )
Martin Stephen
Martin Stephen
The Desperate remedy
'Enecessario a chi dispone una repubblica, ed ordina leggi in quella, prassuppoie turn gli nornini rei, e chli abbiano sempre a usare la malignita dello animo loro, qualunque volta ne abbiano libera occasione.'
('It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.')
Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527
Prologue
It was a murderer's moon, with dark, scudding clouds hiding the stars. The soldier moved quickly but silently through ebony night, his stride confident and determined. London was deserted this long after midnight, yet still he was careful, gliding close by the sides of the darkened buildings. He had no fear of the Watch, feeble and infirm as it was, but on his business all complications were best avoided, however minor. Tall, dark and powerful, his mop of red hair was invisible beneath the hat pulled firmly down across his brow.
He arrived at the place, and drew back into an opposite doorway, waiting. He heard the courtier long before he saw his shadow arrive at the door, panting with exertion. The storm lantern was shaking in the courtier's hand. He moved out from the shadow of the door' way and heard the other's indrawn breath of fear, before recognition struck. The courtier might be the finest of servants at Court, bowing and scraping his way up the arse of his masters. He might be lord of all he surveyed below stairs. He was certainly a trusted secretary of one of the most powerful men in England. Yet here, in this place, he was a frightened little man, on his master's orders, in a dark cloak and borrowed boots. He paid for his pleasure and his vanity by this meeting in a dark place.
The soldier smelt the familiar stench of fear on the courtier, who scuttled to the door like a frightened rabbit, but he did not show his contempt. He had made a career of hiding behind the bluff manner of a simple man. Deceit was second nature to him. He was even sympathetic to the stinking wretch, enquiring solicitously in a hoarse whisper if he was ready to enter the cellar. A curt, nervous nod was the answer to his pains.
It was a marvellous thing, the soldier's lantern. Its flame had been lit in the man's lodgings, and then locked away behind the ingenious shutters. The flame could breathe, but yet it could not be seen. He opened one of the shutters, and the thin light gleamed on to the lock of the ancient oak door. He drew the key from his purse, and the well-greased tumblers moved solidly and silently back.
The courtier gagged as their feet kicked up the dust of ages. He cursed under his breath as he cannoned into one of the stone pillars that held up the cellar, feeling the fear in the pit of his stomach. He fell back on to a pile of ancient hangings, discarded since Henry VIII’s days and left to moulder. More dust rose up and coated their dry tongues. The soldier paused, courteous as ever, his thoughts hidden behind the craggy, pleasing mask of his face.
They reached a pile of faggots and brushwood.
The soldier opened the other shutters on his cloaked lantern. He placed it on the floor. His shadow and the courtier's shadow danced briefly on the ancient walls, elongated, cutting through the mingled smells of fresh wood and decay. He cleared a path through the wood, revealing a stained barrel. Its lid had already been prised open and lay, resting loose, across its top. He took his dagger and flipped the lid to one side. He spoke in a low voice, for all that they were alone.
'Here, you see it?'
There was the tiniest of echoes through the long vaulting. He reached his left hand into the barrel and drew out a handful of the gritty powder within it, holding out his hand to the courtier.
The courtier looked nonplussed.
'It's decayed’ the soldier explained, as if to a child. 'If gunpowder's badly stored, or if it's stored too long, the elements disperse. If they do, it won't explode, but only burn with a fierce fire.' He looked at the cringing figure of the courtier, his face dripping with sweat. 'Fades away. Like a man with too much ale in him,' he added unnecessarily.
The courtier reached out, taking a pinch of powder between shaking finger and thumb. He looked at it, pretending to a knowledge he did not have. He had eagerly claimed to know of gunpowder, to have experience of it, seeing advancement and the favour of his master by his pretence of knowledge.
'Yes,' he muttered, 'I see. In faith, in true faith, I see.'
He looked up into the soldier's face. It was impassive, as ever. Faith, the soldier was thinking, true faith, is something you will never have.
'I shall tell my master so.'
And what is it that you see? the soldier thought. A fine new robe, perhaps, or a jewel to adorn your finger, or even a purse with thirty pieces of silver in it? Or a bucking whore beneath you in your fine bed? Whatever you see, it is not the powder thrust in your face. Nor, in mercy to your miserable little soul, do you see or even dream of the truth. Because if you even wondered at it, your soul would shrivel in the flames of Hell. He kept his thoughts silent, as always. He merely nodded. He flicked the lid back on the powder barrel with the dagger held in his right hand. He looked down at the courtier.
'I must check the other doors. Will you cover the barrel with the wood? I'll leave you the lantern.'
The courtier had no option. As he scrabbled to replace the faggots, the soldier retreated to the nearest archway, resting his body behind it. Let the popinjay put back the wood. Let him experience servitude. What matter if he did it badly? His master was hardly likely to order the cellars searched. Or at least, not yet.
He emerged when the scrabbling noises ceased and the courtier's shadow calmed down from its avid dance on the walls. He closed the lantern down to one shutter.
He bade the courtier farewell by the open door of the cellar, hearing him squelch, stumble and mutter his way home through the pitch-black night. He waited until the noise of his going faded into echoes and then died completely. He listened then, in total silence, for a full quarter of an hour. Not a dog howled, not a mouse stirred. There was only the thin whistle of the wind in the eaves. He was safe.
He bent down and silently inserted key into lock. He turned it, securing the house and its cellar behind him, and with the same hand drew down the last shutter on the lantern. He listened in total stillness for a further five minutes or so.
The soldier opened up his clenched left fist. A thin, sharp residue of powder lay within it, stuck to the sweat on his palm. Not decayed powder. Not separated powder. Not powder ruined by damp. Wholesome, fine-ground powder. Powder in prime condition. The best powder. Powder ready to blow to Hell or to Heaven those above it when it was lit.
Guido Fawkes, or Guy Fawkes as he was known in England, made his way silently homeward through the dark streets, allowing a rare, thin smile to cross his lips.
Chapter 1
Will Shadwell froze in terror. There was the noise again.
Behind him, somewhere in the enveloping and impenetrable dark. He had heard it once before, a tiny crack like a twig breaking and the briefest rustling. Imagination? A cow, a sheep? Some idiot peasant's hog stirring in the field? Or men with knives destined for Will Shadwell's back, creeping up on him through the black silence?
He had trudged on, as the sun had hung like a raw orange ball over the horizon's razor edge, taking an age to set. The sense of danger, the fear, were ever present, tingling his bones. Something was wrong. He knew it.
Hot tears of self-pity welled up in him, burnt his eyes against the cold of the night. He was crouched low in a dry ditch, the dust in his nose and mouth, the debris of a country track already working its
way inside his doublet and scratching against his skin. He had never felt more alone or more in terror of the nameless things hidden in the vast sweep of the flat countryside. He was holding back his breath, despite the red-hot iron bars in his chest, the impossible urge to scream and run. He had never meant to be on the road in the middle of the night. It was the horse's fault, that damned animal. He knew nothing of horses, could hardly ride. It had looked as good as any other in the dim light of the early morning, rolled its mad eyes at him like any other horse. He had thrashed it into action, hurling it towards Cambridge and the only man to whom he could turn, the panic driving him on and communicating itself to the animal beneath him. He had to see Henry Gresham. Gresham. The only man he could turn to, the only man who would know what to do with the terrible secret Will Shadwell had stumbled on, the secret he carried only in his head. The only man who might stop this terrible pursuit, take the wolves off his back.
The night spread round him, silent, still. There had been nothing now, no noise, for five minutes or more. Hope flared up in him. He knew every noise in London's mean streets, could interpret every sound. Here in the country the night spoke a different language, every sound of it in his heightened state of terror a possible death threat. Had it been some animal, treading lightly over the ground? Surely no men could be so silent. His breath was starting to come to him normally now, his heart thudding less against his eyes.
The horse had foundered outside Royston. He knew they would come after him, expected someone to notice his sudden run from London. With the horse under him he could at least match pursuit. With its useless carcass dead on the road he had had to branch off to avoid pursuit, on to the side roads and tracks. It had been a mistake, dull-faced peasants eyeing him as the only thing of interest to have passed that way in years, noting his progress and all too willing to tell it to whoever came behind. If only he could have hidden the horse, instead of leaving its lathered hide as a sign to any pursuer.
Dare he move? If there were pursuers still out there they might walk past him in his ditch. They were showing no lantern, lighting no flares, if even they existed. He knew he stank, but if they were there they had no dogs, that much he was certain of. He was lost, of course. The tracks he had taken weaved their way through the
Flatlands, but the stars stayed where they had always been. He reckoned he was upstream of Cambridge, knew if he kept on he would meet the slow, flat river. Gresham would be in bed now in his College rooms, simple and book-furnished for all the man's impossible wealth, a world apart from the magnificence of the house on the Strand and the whore who kept it for him. He would know what to do. Gresham always knew.
He was feeling drowsy, despite the cold that was starting to penetrate the thin, ragged cloak that was all he had time to grab when he fled London. Perhaps he would sleep here in the ditch, wait until morning…
He did not hear or even sense the man. He felt his hot breath against his cheek, heard the words cut through the night in his ear, had time to note the almost caressing husky tone.
'Will Shadwell… a fine dance you've led us.'
He screamed then, a spasm tearing through his body and hurling him up out of the ditch. He dimly saw three, perhaps four vague shapes where the night was blacker. He twisted away, felt a thorn tear at his boot and into the soft flesh above his ankle. He felt a thud in his back, was knocked forward, and looked down startled at the blade that had appeared through his flesh, just beneath his ribcage. He opened his mouth, and the warm, salty taste of his blood hit him at the same time as the tearing agony of the pain. He felt himself falling, heard rather than felt himself thud into the soft ground. Gagging, gasping, drowning in his own blood, he felt a boot kick him over. The last thing Will Shadwell saw on God's earth was the thin blade driving down towards his eye socket.
'You'll pay me the usual?' sniffed the miller, who seemed to have a permanent cold.
Henry Gresham prodded the dead face with his boot.
'I've told no-one else…' the miller added morosely, wiping his nose.
Gresham cut a fine figure by the riverside. Tall, strongly built, there was an inner fire in his eyes and a slight smile that suggested he found the world both ludicrous and amusing.
The body bobbed gently up and down in the tiny ripples that lapped the edge of the millpond.
'I turned 'im over for you,' the miller said, half bowing and putting his head between Gresham and the corpse, demanding attention yet being sycophantic at the same time. The drowned always lay face down, as if turning their heads from the sun for the last time. The body was swollen, white with corruption, but still recognisable.
It was Will Shadwell. A murdered Will Shadwell.
Spy, informer, double-dealer, whoremonger, pimp, thief, gambler, sodomite, drunkard, occasional follower of Satan when the money was good — and one of Gresham's best men. He had possessed no morals, and so could not be suborned by a good cause. He was utterly selfish and ruthless, and therefore a thoroughly known commodity. He was greedy beyond belief, and hence utterly reliable, provided Gresham paid him more than anyone else.
Once, in a Southwark stew, Shadwell had falsely claimed that someone else was paying him more. Gresham had nailed his hand to the table, sinking his dagger through the soft flesh of the palm he was holding out for more money.
'I've given you a good dagger as well as your gold, Master Shadwell,' Gresham had commented mildly, leaving the room with the screaming and impaled man gaping at the blood seeping into the timber. 'Come back to me when it's spent up.'
And because Shadwell was all these things and yet a coward, he had come crawling back to Gresham three weeks later. He did not lie again about how much others were paying him. He appeared to bear no grudge. Violence was nothing in his world. Mastery and power had to be proven. If proven, they were acknowledged, as much a fact of life as lechery or drunkenness. The mark of the dagger was still visible now on the puffy flesh of his right hand. It waved liked a dead weed in the water.
Now he was dead, hunted down, a town creature flushed out of its habitat and hounded to death in the broad sweep of the countryside. Even the water damage could not disguise the tears the brambles and thorn had made in what looked like a pell-mell chase. Something or someone had torn off a boot. He had been skewered from behind, enough to kill him in time. The actual killing blow, the knife thrust, had gone in through the eye socket and upwards, with so much power that it had broken through the top of the skull. It was a classic thrust, requiring pinpoint accuracy.
Gresham nodded distantly to the miller, and again to Mannion, his servant, who was behind them both. He heard the clink of money as Mannion drew a purse from his belt and started carefully to count out coins. The miller slavered over the sight, his eyes fixed on the money and his greed only thinly cloaked by a ragged air of servility.
'Thanks, master,' said the miller, who would have tugged his forelock had there been any hair left on his greasy pate. He gave a curt order to his lad, who started to drag the body out of the water. The miller was turning away to go back to the screaming wife and screaming brood who were warming up for the day in the stone-built mill when suddenly he paused. A thought must have struck him’ Gresham realised, an event so rare as to stop him in his tracks. 'Why is it you're the only genl'man who pays to see corpses?' the miller asked, daringly. He sneezed, and a globule of something white shot from his nose and lay on an uncomplaining reed. Gresham turned to look at him.
'Why, a man must keep his finger on the pulse,' he replied, straight-faced, gazing down at an entirely pulse-free corpse. The miller, not surprisingly, failed to get the joke. As a trade millers were universally corrupt and oafish. All within a ten-mile radius of the city were bribed by Gresham to report any bodies in the water to him. Except babies. Gresham did not require to be shown the babies, unless, that was, they were finely dressed. The bodies always ended up in the millstream. At least Shadwell's had not been pounded to a pulp by the great paddle of the millwheel. It was no consolatio
n to Shadwell, who was past caring.
As he went to mount the fine grey mare for the short ride back to Cambridge, Gresham halted, and went back to the corpse. Something had caught the light, glinting fitfully inside a tear in Shadwell's tattered doublet. He motioned to the miller's lad to halt his labours, and bent down to feel inside the sodden, stinking material.
A bead. A single rosary bead, from a string of such beads that sold in their thousands in Europe. A dangerous item for a man or woman to wear openly in Protestant England, where to be a Catholic was all too easily seen as being an enemy of the state. The tear in the doublet looked new enough. Had Shadwell’s flailing hand caught at the rosary as he fell to the ground? Well, one thing was sure. Gresham would never find out the truth from Will Shadwell.
A thick mist still clung to the river and its banks, reaching head height in the lower meadows. The dew clung to the ground and the heady smell of wet grass was everywhere. The towers of the great King's Chapel towered above Cambridge in the distance, and the pall of smoke was already beginning to cling to the town from the early-morning fires.
Henry Gresham saw none of it. He was preoccupied with his thoughts.
Why kill Will Shadwell? He and his kind lived in a raw, violent and a brutal world, yet even there the game was usually played by certain rules. Who among the vagabonds and thieves, the beggars and the rogues, the cutpurses and the pimps he called his friends would kill him? An argument over an unpaid bill? Some story of treachery? A whore who had caught the French welcome from him, paying him back as he sweated inside her spread legs? Or some noble Lord who had attended one too many Masses or plotted once too often to restore the true faith to England? Yet for someone as base as Shadwell there was no need for high treachery to explain his death, no need even for low drama. His death could be about nothing more than a debt that had gone on too long, or simply an opportunist robbery in a dark country lane.
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