The Conscience of the King

"It stinks!' said Mannion. 'As usual, he hasn't told you half of it, and the half he hasn't told you is what'll get you killed.'

They were in the library. Gresham had had it built on when he had first bought The Merchant's House, with long windows set almost from ceiling to floor and a gallery. It was less splendid than the library at his London home, known simply as The House, but somehow it felt more like home. He loved the smoke-free sky of East Anglia and the glorious cacophony of light in its sunsets and sunrise. He loved the mist over the meadows in the morning, and the thrusting turrets of King's College Chapel, forcing themselves to dominate the Fenland on the ride from Trumpington to Cambridge. He loved his relationship with Granville College of the University of Cambridge. His college. His contribution to history. His only contribution until the arrival of Walter and Anna, his children after a lifetime when he had thought himself barren.

'Of course it stinks. Do you think I'm fool enough to believe that what Robert Cecil chooses to tell me is even half the truth?' Gresham was pacing the room. In front of him were Mannion and Jane, his council of war. Gresham had been a bastard son. He had never known his mother. The whispers had been there as long as he could remember. The fabulously wealthy but elderly banker widowed, his only child dead. The enforced guardianship of Lady Mary Keys, sister of Lady Jane Grey and victim of an imprudent marriage. There was no one left now to confirm or deny Sir Thomas Gresham's secret, the name of Henry Gresham's mother. At least the distant, cold figure of his father had taken the boy in, clothed and fed him, let him roam like a wild young puppy through the house. He was left to drag himself up in its entrails, adopted in a strange father and son relationship by Mannion, himself a boy just turned man. Mannion had been the only servant Gresham's father had trusted near him in his final days. Gresham had been a non-person, a boy with no real status, a servant yet not a servant, gentry yet not gentry. A bastard, but with noble blood. He had inherited the fabulous Gresham wealth when he was nine years old. The servants who had been there remembered the thin, wire-straight boy with round eyes gazing steadily into those of the ancient lawyer, eyes that did not flicker as the nine-year-old was told he was now one of the richest men in the country. Henry Gresham had learned very young how to withdraw into himself. He had first learned how to fight when, on his rambling through the night streets of London, street urchins had sensed the smell of money and set upon him. He had learned at times of crisis to force all other thoughts from his head, to develop a concentration of almost unnatural power and ferocity. He was showing it now, pacing like a wild beast up and down the room, almost unaware of the others in it.

'What do we actually know?' he asked, punching out the words.

It was Jane who answered. She could not keep the tension out of her voice, nor, to her regret, the fear. She knew fear was weakness, prayed that her weakness might not in some way reduce his respect for her.

'We know that whenever Cecil's entered our lives in the past, your life's been put at risk. The man's like some evil daemon, a harbinger of death, pain and suffering. He asked you to get involved in two things: these letters and the manuscripts.'

The tiny part of Gresham's brain that was always distanced from him, watching, waiting, picked up the tension and the fear in Jane's voice. A sharp pang cut across his heart. Fool! How easy for him to turn his agony of worry into the exquisite release of action. How terrible for her, condemned by the way men and women lived to be the passive recipient of his actions. His step did not falter. His eyes did not flicker. He would act, and speak to that fear. Later.

'Let's start with the incriminating letters. Would James be fool enough to write in explicit terms to his lover?' Gresham was acting as devil's advocate.

'Yes,' said Jane firmly. 'The ladies at Court say he kisses this Robert Carr full on the lips in public. They also say he fingers his codpiece as he walks along with him. Quite openly. That's not just a man taking his pleasure. It's someone who wants to fling what he's doing in people's faces, or who's simply forgotten to be discreet. Either way, it's hardly more of a risk writing letters. It's like when he fingers his codpiece, only he's getting pleasure from his pen.'

'Did you say his pen?' asked Mannion, confused.

'Yes,' said Jane with a look that would have frozen hell. 'Pen.'

'Ah…' said Gresham thoughtfully. 'Well, let's concede that King James could be so… blown away by passion as to put his experiences into writing.' He grinned at Jane, which annoyed her. As this had been his aim, he carried on with renewed vigour.

'But how damaging would such letters be?'

'Very damaging,' said Jane. She was in her stride now, given a role, certain of herself. She knew she was Gresham's eyes and ears, knew his total trust of her judgement. 'The Puritans get louder and louder as the Court gets more and more openly sinful. The Puritans are increasingly powerful in Parliament, and James needs Parliament to approve the money to fund his goings-on.' Jane listened to all the Court gossip and reported back, to Gresham. Just as importantly, she listened to the gossip among the booksellers at St Paul's, with whom she had long been a favourite and was almost a mascot. 'The Puritans are looking to Prince Henry to bring a new age of goodness and purity to Court. I suppose they could always try to speed things up and get James to abdicate.' 'So where does that leave us?'

'The manuscripts.' Jane was away now, allowing her mind free rein. 'The stolen play scripts. They have to be more important than Cecil's owning up to, however damaging these letters might be. That's how Cecil's mind has always worked. Always give a dog a bone, and hide the butcher's shop from him.'

'You know how crucial these manuscripts are to the players.' Gresham was unconvinced. 'It's not unreasonable for The King's Men to put in a plea to the King's Chief Secretary to get them back, particularly if the thief is linked to the letters. Yet their value only holds good for other players or rival companies — and the actors might get drunk and brawl but they've never killed each other before for a stolen manuscript. What's so important about these plays? I know there's a power in the theatres Cecil's scared of, something he can't control for once, something that could challenge his law and order.'

'We don't know,' said Jane. 'But Cecil did, and that's what matters. There has to be something we're not being told. They're always is with Cecil.'

'There's something else that bothers me. Why steal only two manuscripts? If you're going to go as far as to murder an old man for them, you may as well take the whole lot.'

'Perhaps the thief was disturbed,' said Jane. 'You can't base anything substantial on the number of plays they took.'

Gresham stopped his pacing and sat down abruptly. The library had a view out on to the river and its peaceful, meandering summer mood, a band of blue winding its quiet way through the green of the pastures. 'And Shakespeare is a traitor. As well as a genius.' 'Are you sure?'

'Shakespeare was as rough as they come when he first arrived in town, and ready for anything. He was a natural recruit for Cecil. The players get everywhere, into Court and into the taverns. They travel the country — Europe even. And they drink and womanise too much and'U do anything for ready cash. Many took different names when they were paid. Shakespeare was always William Hall. Some Stratford link, I think. Raleigh believes it was Shakespeare — in the days when he was William Hall — who hit lucky and betrayed him in the Bye Plot. I've no proof, but straight afterwards Shakespeare's crew were made into The King's Men, and Shakespeare bailed out of the game. Raleigh's sworn to kill Hall, or Shakespeare. By his own hand. He was most insistent it should be by his own hand.'

'Was?'

Gresham turned to his wife, his hand resting lovingly in her hair for a brief moment, running it through his fingers. 'I was on my way to do it myself. Raleigh stopped me. I've his order to kill the man if Raleigh dies in the Tower. If he's ever released, Raleigh will do it as his first act.'

'That much hatred…' mused Jane, considering the brave, tragic, foolhardy figure of Raleigh, his heart being eaten out every day by hatreds from his lurid past. Raleigh frightened her, not for what he was but for what he was allowing himself to become.

'That much betrayal. Raleigh'd helped the man get a place with the actors in the first place.'

'The theatre's always been trouble, hasn't it?' said Jane.

'It's a new art form,' said Gresham, 'come screaming and yelling into the world. Come to London to be born. Sometimes I think it was conceived by God, like poetry and music. Cecil thinks it was conceived by Satan. He could never see its beauty. Only its power.' Gresham's own sonnets had been published anonymously to wide acclaim.

'What's an art form?' asked Mannion, finger in mouth and digging in his tooth for something dead.

'It's when you paint a bottle of wine instead of drinking it,' said Gresham.

'Doesn't sound much fun to me,' said Mannion, adding, with gross illogicality, 'I like the theatre.'

'The Puritans think it's Satan's doing,' said Jane. 'They frighten me, much more than Catholics ever have.'

'We took away the Puritans' natural enemy when the Gunpowder Plot blew the Catholics into-limbo,' said Gresham. 'They've no one to hate now, except people who like cakes and ale, and the theatre. Or anyone who has fun!'

'The last time I was at the bookstalls,' said Jane, 'I saw a man with one of those stupid black hats they wear come and let loose a tirade against a bookseller who had play texts on his shelves. It was frightening. His eyes were rolling and half the time all you could see was the whites. He was shrieking, and there was white stuff round his mouth. The bookseller kept having to clean the man's spit off his precious covers. He was scared. So was 1.1 thought the man was going to do a clearing out of the Temple, and scatter all the books.'

'Men who think God's on their side often have trouble realising they're not God.'

'There's one other bit of stage gossip,' said Jane.

'Yes?' said Gresham, part intrigued and part wanting no more complications.

'They say there's a lost play by Marlowe that surfaced recently. The Fall of Lucifer. Apparently it's too dangerous to perform, so wild and heretical that it could shake governments. No one's seen it, though there's lots of talk.'

A strange, unfathomable expression flitted across Gresham's face at the mention of Marlowe's name. Jane carried on. 'If this lost play is so dangerous, and the sort of thing that causes a riot, could it have been this manuscript that the murderer was looking for? On

Cecil's orders? You know how frightened he is of the theatre and its power over the common people.'

'So you think Cecil's real wish might be for me to find this lost play? Hide from me what it is? It's tempting, but it doesn't really work. If whoever murdered to steal these two manuscripts was in Cecil's pay, Cecil doesn't need me to hunt them out. I can't see a link between the letters and these two stolen manuscripts, never mind a play written by a dead man that no one's seen.'

A young serving lad must have pinched a maid laden with bed' ding as they walked past the door. An outraged but part-pleased shriek was muffled in to silence as the pair realised their master and mistress lay behind the door.

'What do we know about Shakespeare?' asked Gresham. 'What's the gossip about him?'

'No one really seems to know him. He keeps a very low profile in town, and they say that back in Stratford, where he spends most of his time now — he owns half the town, apparently — they think of him as a grain dealer and hardly anyone knows about his plays! He's stopped writing, they say, and wants to sell his share in the company.'

'Well,' said Gresham, 'I suppose I'd better renew my acquaintance with him, as the new man he is rather than the person I knew. I see Sir Edward Coke in London four days from now and I'm not feeling as if I'm going there knowing much more than I did when I left Cecil.'

'I'd be happier steering clear of this Sir Edward Poke,' interrupted Mannion.

'Sir Edward Coke,' said Gresham patiently. Mannion had taken an instant dislike to the man.

'Whatever,' said Mannion dismissively. 'He's trouble. I've got a nose for these things.'

'Be thankful your nose can't smell your own breath, old man,' said Gresham. 'As for Coke, you know I'm no friend of his.'

'No. But you ain't had to fight him before. Not direct. And I bet Sir Edward Joke can stop being funny right quick.'

'Coke..Gresham started to say limply, and then gave up. He turned to Jane.

'Be careful,' said Jane in a sombre voice, before he could speak. Why waste her words? Henry Gresham could act almost all things except being careful. 'You've a weakness. This is the man who gave Raleigh a show trial, who preaches the law and then suspends justice when a king wants a man condemned. You hate him before you know him. Your hatred could blind you.'

'Well, we know more about Coke than we do about Shakespeare.' Gresham was pacing the room again, head down, hardly seeing the others.

'Top lawyer,' said Jane, 'but…'

'Go on?' said Gresham.

'The legal booksellers say that he trades on that reputation, and sometimes gives outrageous judgements which no one eke dares challenge because of his reputation with the other lawyers.'

'What about the clash with Bacon?' Gresham asked. Sir Francis Bacon had brushed across Gresham's life as an academic author but never as a political opponent. There were very many who disliked Bacon intensely. Gresham had always found him human, amusing and able. He had a brain the size of a Spanish galleon, but much nimbler and faster. Of course he had no morality at all, except to his own self interest, but had freely confessed as much to Gresham with an engaging wit and honesty that somehow robbed his amoral-ity of its venom.

'You know more than I do,' said Jane. Bacon was homosexual, tied to a wealth-generating but loveless marriage.

'I know he's locked into bitter battle with Coke over who'll be the next Attorney General. The popular bet has to be Coke. He's got himself the image of a legal god, he's done James's dirty work for him in court time after time and Bacon can be his own worst enemy.'

Jane prepared to reply, then noticed Mannion looking with excessive interest out of the window. Alice was the newest and youngest of the servants recruited to The Merchant's House, sent to work in the kitchens. A rather bewitching, fair-haired girl, she had been ordered into the kitchen garden to beg herbs for the cook from the gardener. Did she know how her hips swung as she walked into the garden, basket clutched before her? Or was it mere innocence?

'Do I have to warn you again?' Jane's voice was low and so threatening that it stopped even Gresham in his tracks. Fascinated, he watched a rare insight into the hidden relationship between two of the four most important people in his life. 'That girl is in my charge. I talked to her mother, I gave my word she would be looked after. You mill not touch her.'

Mannion looked direct into her eyes.

'She's simple,' said Jane. 'She doesn't appear so. You might be forgiven for thinking her normal. And she's very beautiful. Her mother was in despair because no one would take her into service and all the men wanted to take her into bed. I said I'd help her. And if she finds her John the Ostler, who'll love her because she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and who'll forgive her a simple mind, then so be it. That will be her choice, and his. But I'll not have her spoiled by a careless and powerful man, in breach of my word to her mother.'

'Well then, mistress,' said Mannion, grinning at her. Grinning at her? Gresham was part amused, part outraged. Would he have dared grin at Jane in such circumstances? 'You're lucky to have me on your side, aren't you? There's only one real man who could put her in harm in this place, and only one real man as could protect her. And I'm both.' He ambled over to Jane, as if to put his cup down on the table at which she sat. 'You see, I'm happy to go for the willing. I've never gone for the weak.'

'I know,' said Jane.

'You want her wed to John the Ostler?'

'He needs to love someone other than a horse, and her simple nature won't stop her being a good wife to him.'

'Leave it to me,' said Mannion. And they both smiled.

'Excuse me!' said Gresham, 'and hello. Is there any possibility of my being allowed back into this conversation?'

It was rare for Jane to flush, but she did so. It was left to Mannion to resurrect the conversation.

'We were talkin' about Sir Edward Bloke, weren't we?' asked Mannion innocently.

'Sir Edward Coke, you blunt-wit ignorant peasant!' shouted Gresham, his patience at an end.

There was so much he did not know, the clinical part of Gresham's brain was telling him. Well, inaction would find nothing out. That sense of total concentration that Jane and Mannion knew so well came over his whole body.

'London. All of us. To meet Sir Edward. And to visit the theatre.'