The Conscience of the King

The shock had set in for Jane, as it always did, when it was no longer necessary for her to cope, to keep a good face in front of others.

She had tried to take up some needlework. It was a task she hated above all others, but a strange sense of duty drove her to try, believing it to be a proper accomplishment for a lady. She stabbed and hacked at the poor backing cloth, her stitching for all the world like the work of a mad doctor on an open wound. She sucked in her lips, muttering as the needle went where it wished. This morning her normally erratic results were self-evidently unspeakably bad.

Gresham watched her in silence. How extraordinary that a woman's body, the same size more or less as a man's, could achieve so much more. That slim body, perhaps a half inch shorter than his own, needing all the organs his body needed, had managed to grow and nurture two children, house, home and feed them within the confines of one flesh for nine months apiece. If so great a portion of her body was given over to childbirth, wondered Gresham, how about the mind of a woman? Was the child to her mind in its life as it had been to her body in pregnancy? Would her love for him persist, or would it drain away silently into the love of her children? Men loved themselves, thought Gresham. So much so that many failed to see when love in others had died.

Jane spoke, eventually, as he had known she would. That was… appalling,' she said, with a catch to her voice. She was white-faced, and the fingers of her left hand were trembling very slightly, Gresham noticed. It made the stitching even worse. To go to the play, and to be set upon by a bunch of murdering oafs… Is there nowhere safe?' She was clean, sweet-smelling and outrageously beautiful. In the privacy of the room, her black hair was loosely gathered above the nape of her neck, like a sweeping, swooping coil of ebony. The remnants of breakfast had been cleared, and she and Mannion were grouped round the table with Gresham.

They looked expectantly at Gresham. He had been distant all morning, not hostile but rather withdrawn. They knew the mood of old. His mind had gone deep, weighing up what was known and what was not known, trying to draw the map of where they were and where they should be. He got up and started to pace the room.

'Safe? It's not a word I can recognise. Not when the plague or an ague could rip any one of us out of life and into oblivion at the flip of a coin. At least in the theatre there was an enemy you could see, an enemy you could fight.!

'An enemy you could fight!' said Jane. 'An enemy gathered in your business! All I can do is run, not fight. All I can do is receive the hatred of the enemies you make.'

There was no answer Gresham could utter that would deny the truth of what she said. He stopped pacing for a moment and looked at her. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Truly sorry.'

'So am I,' she said, holding his eyes. 'Sorry for what happened. And sorry if I seem to blame you for the evil of others. And I never said thank you. For saving my life.'

The emotions that flickered across Gresham's brow were too complex for words, but she saw them all the same, and understood. Gresham's tone became businesslike.

'The man with the crossbow has to be this Cambridge bookseller Coke was so concerned about. The description fits too well. What's new is that he wants to kill us as well as sell some papers — and no, I don't know why. He could be working independently, or with Overbury. I humiliated Overbury. He was there at the theatre. Though he took no part in the fight.' Gresham was pacing again. 'For once it's not why that bothers me. It's howl There are a thousand ways to kill a man if that's what you really want. Slip a servant in and drop some poison into the man's wine…'

'That couldn't happen. now. We take too much care over who we hire as servants,' Jane said. Years earlier Cecil had slipped a spy into Gresham's house.

'It's less likely to happen now,' corrected Gresham. 'The minute you allow yourself to think it's impossible you're placing yourself at risk. Bribing a servant would still be the easy option for this bookseller, or for Overbury. Or there's a knife in your back while walking down a dark street, or a crossbow bolt from a deserted alley. Poison, knife, arrow, gun — if you want to kill someone, why do it in front of two. thousand spectators at the theatre, for God's sake?'

'Go on,' said Jane. There was clearly more.

'And why try to kill you as well?' he said to her, swinging round to face her. 'You're hardly going to carry on the investigation after my death, are you? For all Overbury knows, you're as featherbrained as the rest of the women at Court.'

Jane forgot her depression for a moment and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She mock-fluttered her eyelashes and swooned. 'My lord, as a Court lady I do not need a brain. What I need is-'

'But think seriously on it,' Gresham interrupted quickly. 'The theatre. That's what's worried me all along. It runs through this in a way we haven't got hold of. Right from the start it's not just been a set of letters from two male lovers, it's been manuscripts of plays. This bookseller… he tells LongLankin he wants the students to put on a play. A man gets murdered because someone wants the manuscripts of two plays. They try to murder us in a theatre.'

'Bloody expensive way to go about it,' said Mannion. 'And risky. Never know what might happen with that many people around. And not exactly secret either.'

'Why does the theatre run through all this like a thick vein? We just don't know!' The tension came through in Gresham's voice, the way he still walked up and down the room.

'Well,' said Mannion carefully, putting down his tankard. 'Mebbe we do.'

Gresham and jane looked at him, startled. 'Come on, old man. Don't keep us in suspense.' 'I've been thinking,' said Mannion.

'That must have hurt,' said Gresham with compassion. 'Have another drink to get over the pain, and mind you don't do it again.'

'Ssssh!' said Jane, irritated at his banter and intrigued. Mannion did have a brain. It was simply not the organ he found most use for. He also had, when he cared to use it, an outstanding memory for faces and people, as well as a capacity to make instant and lasting judgements.

'I reckon as how that bastard with the crossbow wasn't any bookseller, not leastways any one as I've ever seen. I think that bookseller was Christopher bloody Marlowe.'

There was a stunned silence.

'But Kit Marlowe died in 1602…' said Gresham, his mind spinning.

'We was told he died in 1602,' said Mannion. 'But then again, we told everyone he died in 1593, when we bloody well knew he hadn't. If he died once when it was convenient for him, but didn't really die, why shouldn't he do the whole trick again without our help?' 'Now I remember!' said Gresham, clapping his hand to his head. 'Cornelius Wagner!'

'Who's he when he's at home?' said Mannion. it's the name Cecil's spies gave to the "Cambridge bookseller". Coke told me when we met. Cornelius Wagner. Cornelius and Wagner are two characters in Marlowe's play, Doctor Faustus. Wagner is Faustus's servant. It all adds up…' Gresham's mind was racing. 'Are you certain it was Marlowe?' i spent time with him, didn't I? It was me who got him over to France,' Mannion replied.

'You faked Marlowe's death? Got him over to France? Alive? And now he wants to kill you? I don't know this story at all,' said Jane. She felt the great tidal wave of intrigue, of double- and treble-dealing, of plots, of deception, tugging at her, the tidal wave in which her husband had chosen to swim for most of his life. Or was it. a whirlpool, sucking them to their deaths? Together with Gresham, Jane had been swept away by the magnificent verse of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, chilled by Doctor Faustus, horrified by The Jew of Malta and Edward II. 'Tell me.'

Gresham laughed. 'Did we get him over to France? Yes. Did we fake his death? No. That was Marlowe's idea.' He nodded towards Mannion, who pulled his tankard towards him and continued the tale.

'Marlowe'd got himself into trouble. Well, to be truthful, he was never out of it. 'Cept this time it was real trouble. He was a spy, for old Walsingham, spying on the Catholics. Leastways, meant to be spying on the Catholics, but with a nose for trouble that meant he ended up spying* on everybody, including some very inconvenient people. Like the Queen, Pexample. When Walsingham died he started to work for Cecil.

'Always getting drunk, he were, always fighting, always shooting his mouth off. Bad thing, for a spy, that. Started to shoot his mouth off about Cecil being left-handed, so to speak.' Mannion used the slang term for describing a homosexual. 'And loads of other stuff no one could understand. Cecil's father, old Lord Burleigh, decided he were a risk too far and got him summoned to the Privy Council.

After that, he'd have bin referred to the Tower, and probably died of some mysterious illness short after…'

'He never was a very good spy,' said Gresham. Too fiery, too intelligent, too much wanting to be the centre of attention.'

'Anyways, we gets to hear of it too, before Marlowe even. Sir Henry here, well, Marlowe's a bit of a hero for him, literary speaking.'

'I thought the man was a genius,' said Gresham simply. 'A pain in the neck, right enough, but a genius for all that. Burleigh and Cecil wanted him dead and even then I was pleased to do anything I could to put a stop to Cecil's plans. I thought in exchange I might get some real dirt on Burleigh, and on Cecil. And I really did want to stop them killing the man who had written Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine. Think of it as my early patronage of the arts.'

'So what happened?' asked Jane.

'1 warned him that if he went to the Privy Council hearing he'd never walk out of it alive or a free man. I arranged to spirit him over to France,' said Gresham, 'but that wasn't good enough for Marlowe. He had to fake his own death first, with the biggest crowd of villains in the country. We got to hear of that too late to stop it, but we reckoned those particular villains would take his money, do what he'd arranged and then kill him anyway. That way they could claim a second payment from the government. Mannion managed to tail him on to the brig we'd hired to get him over the Channel.'

Gresham looked to Mannion.

'As it was, two of the crew on the brig over to France tried to murder Marlowe in his sleep.' 'What did you do?' said Jane.

'I killed 'em,' said Mannion simply, slurping at his small beer. 'Anyways, I got him over to France. We know he took himself off to Spain after that — separate story. We heard he'd died or been killed in 1602. He always were a stupid bugger, excusing my Ian-guage, mistress. It were no surprise to hear someone had topped him.*

"Are you sure it was him at The Globe yesterday?' said Gresham.

'Yes, I reckon. He's changed a lot. Shrunken, sort of. Lost his hair. So it took me time to spot him. But that's who it is. Marlowe. Back from the grave. Reckon he's got a dose of the pox. Did you see him with that crossbow?'

'I saw him fire it,' said Gresham.

'I saw him put his hand on the release,' said Mannion. 'I mean, he rested the bow on the woodwork, wedged it into his arm and then he put his hand on the release with his other hand, as if he couldn't really feel it. That's what they do with a bad dose of the pox. They can't feel much in their hands or their feet. I know about these things.'

How Mannion had avoided a dose of the pox was a quite remark-able story of there being no natural justice in life. There was no doubt that his extra-curricular lifestyle brought him into contact with many who had not been so lucky.

'Well, well,' said Gresham. 'My old friend Kit Marlowe.'

'Why should he want revenge on you?' asked. Jane, bemused. 'You helped him get away, didn't you?'

'1 think I know,' said Gresham. 'Hold on here while I fetch something.'

Gresham left them in the breakfast parlour and moved through the corridors with a greeting, by name, to the servants who bobbed, curtseyed or doffed their caps to him. He went to his private study, at the centre of The House and guarded by its stoutest door. Lifting the extravagance of carpet that lay on the floor, he revealed the planking. He gave a sharp tap on the end of a join, indistinguishable from the others. The plank-end jumped up, and settled down a half inch or so higher than its neighbour. Gresham lifted it, revealing that it was hinged at its other end. The cavity exposed as the plank swung back had a dullish sheen to it. Gunmetal. There was a metal box beneath the floor, with its own lock. Gresham swung back the heavy door with a key from his golden keyring. No money lay there, as might be expected in a rich man's house, a rich man who had gone to the expense of constructing a special metal box hidden beneath the floor of the most secure room in his property. Nor were there deeds of land, or sureties, or any of the paperwork beloved of the lawyers. Rather, there were letters. Letters and papers. Of no apparent significance or value to the idle viewer. Gresham smiled inwardly as his eyes lit on some of the papers. Monarchies, kings and queens were compromised by those innocent-looking documents.

Men have to tell their secrets, to prove that they are men. Great men merely have to know great secrets, and tell no one.

Gresham found the two letters he had come for and closed his private store. Would it survive a fire? he thought. For a while, perhaps. It was gunmetal, after all. More likely, the survival of it and its contents would depend on him or one of his very few trusted servants making the gunmetal box their only priority in the case of a fire. Nothing was certain, Gresham thought, except death. The readiness is all. You cannot predict. You can only prepare.

He brought the two letters back into the room. Mannion had replenished his tankard, Gresham noted.

Two letters,' he said to Jane, 'three months apart. Both from Marlowe. June and August 1602. Someone had just tried to kill him, he said. I hadn't saved him at all, he said. I'd set the whole thing up on Cecil's orders, so Cecil wouldn't be embarrassed by the revelations Marlowe would have made at any trial.'

'They weren't planning any trial!' said Mannion with a guffaw.

'No, but Marlowe'd obviously imagined one, with himself playing the heroic role. He'd been meant to go to France, but went to Spain instead and sold himself as a spy to them. Worked with them for years, as I understand it. Then he fell out with them, and blamed me and Cecil for poisoning the Spanish against him.'

'Had you?' said Jane.

'God help us, no,' said Gresham. 'To be frank, I'd more or less forgotten about him until these letters came. He'd have been better off dying in The Tower, he said. There, you can read it. He was in poverty. He'd never had the recognition he deserved… and more. And, of course, the accusation that it was Cecil and I who'd tried to have him killed.'

'Had you?' asked Jane again.

'I hadn't, of course not,' said Gresham, shrugging his shoulders. 'There was no need, no reason. He was just history as far as I was concerned. I suppose I hoped he'd write things abroad, under another name, set up theatres in Europe… I remember feeling quite shocked when we heard he had actually been killed, after he'd written to me. It was in September, I think. I also found something out later that convinced me Cecil had done it.'

'What was that?' asked an intrigued Jane.

'For a long while I don't think Cecil knew Marlowe was alive. He took over Walsingham's spy service but he never ran it properly. Preferred to work through ambassadors, official people. Well, the letters make it clear someone tried to murder Marlowe in 1602, in Spain. I think it was Cecil. I think that's when Cecil found out Marlowe was alive, and who he was working for. It must have been the biggest shock of his life.'

'Why the biggest?' said Jane. 'We know he had quite a few shocks in his life, even before 1605.' She could not help smiling at the memory of the Gunpowder Plot, and the exact nature of the shock administered by Gresham to Cecil.

'Because in 1602, when it was clear Elizabeth was dying, when everyone thought Robert Cecil had chosen King James I as the new King of England, and when Robert Cecil himself was writing away to James and declaring himself his most loyal servant, all the while the bloody man was plotting with the Spanish to get the Spanish Infanta on the throne in place of James! He was riding both horses, wasn't he?

'Well, Cecil is fearful of the Queen finding out he's been writing to James in Scotland, and fearful of her and James finding out he's been trying to ride two horses and back Spain as well. Then, lo and behold, what does he discover? That Marlowe's been an agent for the Spanish for years! Marlowe, who hates him! Marlowe, who's privy to all the Spanish secrets — might even have seen some of his cursed letters. He must have ordered Marlowe knocked off as soon as he heard. Obviously Marlowe got away, if it was him you saw this afternoon…' Gresham glanced at Mannion, who nodded.

'Are you sure Cecil was riding both horses? Backing the King and the Infanta?' asked Jane. 'It's absolutely explosive if it's true. Elizabeth could have had him killed for it, and James could never have let him run the country for him.'

'Oh, I'm sure, right enough,' said Gresham with the grin of a devil on his face. 'You see, I've got two of his letters to the Spanish! I've held them as a bargaining counter for years. It's one of the main reasons Cecil didn't have me killed long ago.'

Jane's head was reeling. 'Are you telling me you could have proved Cecil a traitor since 1602? And I know you could have done it again in 1605 with the Gunpowder Plot? If you hated the man so much, why didn't you topple him?'

'You know why,' said Gresham. 'Power is a filthy business. It dirties all those who wield it. There's no room for a good man in government. We've had peace for years now, haven't we, over the land of this country at least? No babies killed, no villages razed to the ground, no women raped, no harvesting of all the best young men to die stupidly in battles no one understands. If the price we pay for that peace, that stability, is to have the anti-Christ on the throne, I'll take it. Cecil's evil, the fact he had no morals, the fact he would assassinate without thinking to keep the peace — we need someone like that as our ruler. And if he damned himself in the process, why should I care?'

'So you're saying Marlowe got away some'ow, and buggered off somewhere to lie low? When he knew people was trying to kill him?' said Mannion.

'Must have done. The Americas* perhaps? Or Russia? That's where I'd have gone. Wherever it was, it must have turned his brain. Not that it ever needed much turning. And now, all of a sudden, he turns up in England again,' said Gresham, 'and I bet I could dictate the letter he sends to Cecil. "I'm going to get my revenge on you at last," he says, "and on that arch-villain Gresham who helped you ruin my life.'"

'Oh dear God!' said Jane. 'I see it now… it's so simple.'

'Isn't it?' said Gresham.

Mannion, whose face was screwed up like a cow's, was clearly not finding it simple at all. Gresham carried on.

'Cecil sets me, his best agent, on to finding Marlowe, carefully not telling me it is Marlowe, of course, just to add a bit of spice to it. So I'm moving about with the highest possible profile, more or less guaranteeing that Marlowe's going to come screaming out of a side alley and try to kill me. If I kill Marlowe, which is the best option of all, then what a joke for Cecil from his grave. He's got his oldest and bitterest enemy to preserve his reputation, pure and unsullied, for all of history. That would appeal to Cecil's sense of humour. And if Marlowe kills me — the second best option — what a joke as well! Cecil's oldest enemy follows him to the grave with a helping hand from Cecil, 'and the killer is the person whose escape I arranged twenty years ago partly to spite him! Poetic justice and the wheel come full circle, isn't it, if Marlowe kills me?'

'Are you sure Cecil's first aim wasn't to get you killed by Marlowe? We only survived by luck. If you hadn't been prepared… What an evil man,' said Jane. 'What a horrible mind.'

'Brilliant mind,' said Gresham in appreciation. 'Almost as good as mine.'

'Well,' said Jane,' at least we know why everyone's talking about a lost play by Marlowe. He must have written his masterpiece in all those years of exile.'

'And now one of his aims is to get it performed,' said Gresham. 'He's obviously been peddling it in the disguise of this bookseller.'

'But not got it performed yet,' said Jane.

'Any decent company's going to get itself laughed out of court if it claims a play's by Marlowe without concrete evidence. It'd take time and money to get one of the respectable companies to put it on. I doubt Marlowe's got a great deal of either.'

'It's almost pathetic,' said Jane, 'if he is trying to get the students to put it on- It's almost like a homecoming. Or beginning all over again.'

One of the greatest playrights of all time reduced to having students put on his play? There was little sympathy for Marlowe in Gresham's heart. That commodity had been used up long ago.

'So where do the buggers' letters come in?' asked Mannion, direct as ever. too you have an answer?' asked Gresham.

'How about this?' replied Mannion. He got up and put his mug down on the table. It was half full. It was almost unheard of for Mannion to put down a mug with drink still in it. 'You're Marlowe. You've got dirt on Cecil and you want to cause as much 'avoc as possible in as short a time as possible. Who do you go to?'

'The King?' suggested Jane.

'No!' said Mannion scornfully. 'Think on't, mistress! How does Marlowe get to the King? Goes up to 'is man on the door, does 'e? "Excuse me, Mr Gatekeeper. I'm a sodomite ex-spy and playright who died in 1593 and who's been working for the Spanish ever since. Oh, and by the way, I died in 1602 as well. Anyway, I'm here and I've got the dirt on the King's right-hand man. So let me in, will you, to talk direct to His Majesty?"'

'Put like that,' said Jane, 'it doesn't sound that easy.'

'Marlowe's a spy, isn't he?' Mannion was pacing up and down now, his brain engaged. Did he realise how like his master he looked? 'He knows about real power. So who's the real power in England?'

'Carr. Robert Carr. The King's lover,' said Gresham, happy to feed Mannion, fascinated by what he was seeing.

'No, master! Not Carr! Carr's just the beautiful body! Who's the brain? Who's still trawling taverns and going to stews where gentlemen shouldn't be seen? Who's accessible to a runt like Marlowe?'

'Overbury,' breathed Gresham. 'Sir Thomas Overbury.' Someone had just opened a window in the darkness of his knowledge. 'It's about comfort. It's all about comfort.'

'What do you mean?' asked Jane, perplexed now.

'The King's tired, losing himself more and more in hunting and wine and beautiful young men, selling out to comfort.'

'There's men as can't take power,' said Mannion, speaking to Jane. 'We've seen 'em often enough in the wars. Men who get tired of decisions. First it's the wine. Takes the place of thinkin', blocks it all out. Then, if that don't work, beggin' your pardon, there's women.'

'But it's a young man in King James's life!' said Jane, unabashed.

'Yes,' said Gresham, 'and a brainless one at that! All James wants is comfort and freedom from strain, and all his lover wants is the same! Robert Carr can't make a decision to save his life, other than what doublet to wear — and I bet that takes all morning and most of the afternoon. So that's where Carr's friend comes into his own. Overbury. Sir Thomas Overbury. Able. Intelligent. Wanting nothing more than to take the King's decisions on his behalf. Wanting nothing more than his share of power.

'The King's lover, more perplexed and far less able to deal with matters of state than his master, breathes a sigh of relief when his friend offers to help. Overbury. Brash. Arrogant. Receiving at third-hand unopened papers of state. It is Sir Thomas Overbury who now wields part of the power that Cecil once held. Yet Overbury has no protection of office. Ordinary men still have access to him. As did Kit Marlowe.' Gresham was speaking quickly now, as if to preserve his view in words before it slipped from his grasp.

'Marlowe goes for Overbury. Tells him he can destroy Cecil. Overbury's flattered. What power! Takes him in. Pays for him to be lodged out of harm's way. Talks to him. And then, one evening,

Overbury lets slip the existence of these letters. Too much drink, probably, fed him by Marlowe. Brags to Marlowe that Marlowe isn't the only one who has power over people.'

"'They could be your insurance policy, these letters!" Marlowe says to Overbury. "They could be your pension!'" It was Mannion now, picking up the baton. '"Think on it. Your friend Carr will lose his looks one day. There are enough pretty men in the Court, aren't there? And the King hates you. And his Queen. Let me have a look at these letters. I'm a spy, ain't I? I know about these things." So Overbury brings these letters along, to show off. Lets Marlowe hold them. Tells Marlowe where he keeps them. Puts them back somewhere Marlowe knows about.'

'So the next thing that happens,' Gresham said, 'is that the letters disappear. Marlowe's also gone. And Overbury's set up to be the biggest fool in the country. Carr will lose faith in him if it becomes known he's the reason the letters are in the hands of an enemy. James will kill him, or kick his creature Carr out, which'll be just as bad. So how does Overbury cover himself?'

'He reports the letters are stolen,' said Jane, realisation dawning on her face, 'but stolehfrom Carr, not from himself. And he reports it to Sir Edward Coke, the legal bastion of the kingdom. Knowing full well that Coke will run to Cecil, of course. Suddenly it's somebody else's problem. He's covered himself brilliantly. But… why would Cecil care so much about Marlowe? He was dying, knew he was dying,' she continued. 'It seems an immense amount of effort to go to to get someone killed, when you won't be there to be disgraced. Why would Cecil bother.'

'Reputation/' said Gresham. 'More than anything else, he wanted his reputation not only to live on after him but to grow. Marlowe's the threat to that. I'm the other, knowing what I know. So set the two against each other. That way he can guarantee one threat at least's removed.'

'So Cecil wasn't really interested in getting the letters back?' said Jane. 'All he really wanted was for you to kill Marlowe and preserve his reputation as an honest broker and a loyal servant?' Something in her soul rebelled at the thought of Gresham being used merely as an unpaid assassin.

'Oh, I think Cecil would rather the letters were destroyed than not. He wouldn't wish more instability for the King he'd made his life's work out of. But they were just the lure to get me into the arena, draw me in. My getting the letters was always the secondary aim. The first was to force Marlowe to reveal himself to me, and for me to kill him.'

'Or for Marlowe to kill you. Why didn't Cecil tell you it was Marlowe? Why use this Cambridge bookseller thing?'

'Do you think I'd have taken on the job if I'd known straight away the real reason was to save Cecil's reputation for posterity, instead of the King's? I'd have laughed in Cecil's face.'

'Where do these plays come in?' added Jane. 'The manuscripts by Shakespeare? We can explain everything else, but not them.'

'God knows,' said Gresham, 'but haven't we solved enough problems in one sitting? Marlowe wants to stir up as much trouble as possible, and get some play of his performed. Probably reveal himself, like a genie out of the bottle, on its first showing. Look at me, everyone. The late, the great Kit Marlowe — alive and well! What a show-stopper that'd be… And anyway, that's not what bothers me…' He had to stop and think for a moment before completing his sentence'… what bothers me is you.'

'Me? What've I done wrong?' asked Jane, rather plaintive.

'Nothing. You've done nothing wrong. Cecil gambled that Marlowe would risk showing himself if it meant killing me. But haven't you spotted the really terrible thing?'

Jane looked nonplussed. Gresham stared at her. He had to tell her. For all the hurt, for all the pain, he had to tell her. If she was to protect herself she had to know.

'He didn't try to kill me. He tried to kill you, Jane.'

'But I don't-' i saw his eyes in the theatre,' said Gresham. 'They were looking at you, not me. The second bolt was aimed at you. And-that first bolt, the one I felt go by me earlier. It hit the wall just where you'd been a second before. 1 was six or eight feet away.'

'What have I done to deserve this? 1 she cried out. 'I've never set out to hurt or destroy anyone in my life. 1

'He's a sick man, Jane. Sick in his mind as well as his body. He was always unstable. Now he's fired up with years of festering revenge, and the pox. I think he's decided the best way to hurt me isn't to kill me, not yet at least. It's to kill my happiness. To kill you.'

The silence seemed to stretch on for an eternity. She had fought against the thought that she and Gresham were equal targets for whichever madman was hunting them down. The realisation that she was the target, the way of inflicting the most pain on those she loved, threatened to clutch at and cut the parts of her mind that moored her to sanity. Where was the justice in this world?

'Not here, not on this earth with us,' said Gresham. Jane had not realised she had spoken out loud.

'So what hope is there?' She turned her face, despairingly, towards his.

'The hope in our own strength,' he said intensely. 'Justice lies with how strong we are. Safety lies in how strong we are. Survival lies in how strong we are.'

'I feel very weak,' she said.

'We all feel weak sometimes,' said Gresham. 'The strong are those who fight the feelings and carry on living.'

'I'll try,' she said, feeling like a lost little girl.

'I know you will,' said Gresham simply.

'Are you sure?' It was a very small voice that Jane spoke in.

'That you're my happiness? Absolutely. That it's you he wants to kill, to hurt me? No, not absolutely. But it'd be wise to assume it, until we can prove otherwise. We both know you're my weak spot. You and me, we're both at war with Marlowe, and Overbury for all I know. You know what it means. We're under siege.'

Oh God, not again, thought Jane. No leaving any house without an armed escort, no going out at all unless it was totally unavoid-able…

Mannion chose not to help Gresham, but to answer a different question. His mind had been working on it, clearly.

'That bastard Overbury wasn't behind the lot trying to do us in in the theatre.'

'Why not?' It was Jane who answered. 'He has reason enough to hate your master, and it's surely too much of a coincidence that he was there on the afternoon when it all happened.'

'He were surprised when he met us. You could see it in his eyes. And he only had a couple of men at best with him, and neither of those armed. He could have made a real difference in the fight, with a sword, but he cleared off. Are you telling me a bastard like that wouldn't want to watch and gloat if he'd gone to all that trouble?'

Gresham thought for a moment. 'You could be right,' he said, 'but it makes no difference if it's one man or two we've to guard against.'

He was pacing the room again, hand running unconsciously through the black mop of his hair. 'It's the mystery I want solved. The mystery isn't Sir Thomas Overbury or Sir Edward Coke, or even Christopher Marlowe. It's Shakespeare and these confounded manuscripts. We need to meet with Master Shakespeare. Urgently. All three of us.'

'I'm flattered,' said Jane, seeking to hide the pain in her mind and the awful, threatening waves of paralysing fear. 'But why do you need me?'

'Firstly, to stop me killing him on sight. Secondly, to stop me being too rude to him, and thirdly, because you're a trained hand in dealing with drunken writers.' Keep it flippant, make light of pain. Ben Jonson, now masque-writer-in-chief to the King, had been a friend of Gresham and Jane's for years. Only the three people in the room and Jonson himself knew that Jane read Jonson's manuscripts in draft. He howled, swore and hurled things around the room when she made criticisms, and called her every name under the sun and several from below the moon. But he always made changes, Gresham noticed. In fact, he reckoned Jane had written nearly a quarter of Jonson's Volpone, or The Fox.

'It's a pity we can't call Ben in on this. He's a great pal of Master William's, or so he says.' It was Mannion. Jonson was touring Europe as tutor to Sir Walter Raleigh's son, one of Gresham's better ideas for a pairing.

'Well, yes,' said Jane, 'but there's a lot of jealousy as well. He's always trying to put Shakespeare down. Come to think of it, Ben's actually put me off meeting Shakespeare once or twice.'

'I think I must meet this genius,' said Gresham. 'Or rather, meet him again, with his new name. We'll need to be careful. He'll know I'm one of Raleigh's party, and if he thinks I'm after him he'll run. Mannion, send our people off* to see if he's still in London. He was there at the play, doing a bit part, I saw him. Maybe he's scuttled back to Stratford, like they say he's doing more and more now. v-Find out where he is, but do it quietly. And fix a time — a time very soon — for me to meet him with my mistress.'