The Conscience of the King

However much they built up the fires, the chill of The Tower entered into their bones. Winter had come to London late but with a vengeance; a cold, dripping winter rather than a fierce, freezing winter.

'How much longer?' Even though they were outside, in a brief respite from the cheerless rain, Jane half-whispered the question to Gresham. Sir William Wade, increasingly out of love with his job and his employer, had allowed them full use of his private garden. 'What a world for our children,' Jane spoke in her low voice. 'No mother, no father, a sense of dread hanging over them every bit as real as the sentence hanging over us.'

Gresham's own spies — James's court leaked information and gossip like a boat on the rocks — told him that the alibis had been proven. Heaton's tunic, too expensive to throw away, had been kept. The scrap of letter had been found, and taken as proof that Heaton had in fact had the documents in his pocket. The searches of The House and The Merchant's House had been savage, and had led in the case of The House to a pitched battle between the soldiers undertaking the search and the servants. The servants had won, Gresham had been privately delighted to note, but someone had had the sense to call on Gresham to declare peace. He had been taken with Jane in a closed carriage to The House, where they had calmed their men down and told them to co-operate completely. They had shuddered at the ripped-up panelling and floorboards, but Jane had been stalwart in the face of Gresham's rising anger.

'Money can mend wood. Be thankful it's not more important things they've damaged.'

They had not found the gunmetal cabinet, Gresham noted, though they had found and ransacked one of the false hiding places behind a fireplace.

'How long?' Gresham answered. 'Who knows? There's no case to answer against us. I suspect the King no longer sees us as a threat. Yet he'll have Carr acting as a mouthpiece for Overbury, and arguing for us to be kept here for ever. And Coke will hardly want me on the loose.'

'Are you saying we're here for ever?' asked Jane, a plaintive note creeping into her voice. It cut to Gresham's heart, but he did no more than squeeze the warm hand that held his.

'No. I don't think so. I really don't think so, as distinct from simply telling you what you want to hear. James is indolent, above all. He takes the easy route. With Carr and Coke biting at his heels, it's easier to keep me here than to release me. It does no harm to James, and it makes a point to anyone who cares to listen that no one is above the King's law. He'll release me eventually. What a pity there isn't a crisis to provoke him into needing me.' He turned to Jane, eyes laughing despite the pallor of incarceration. 'Perhaps I ought to threaten him with those letters!'

'Sssh!' she exclaimed, horrified. The fact that her husband still held damning letters from the King to his lover, and had flatly denied doing so to the King, was the stuff of her nightmares.

She did not have to be in The Tower at all, of course. Queen Anna was a featherbrained barmaid who was as far away from Jane in appearance and personality as two human beings could ever be. Yet, from a distance, the two had struck up a perfectly servicable relationship in which both women actually seemed to quite like each other. Gresham had questioned the relationship.

'Imagine being married to a wet frog!' was all Jane had said. There was a language that passed between women that Gresham did not understand.

Queen Anna had interceded with the King, on one of the rare times they actually met, and spoke to each other nowadays. She had swept into Gresham's rooms in The Tower, nodded dismissively to Gresham and removed Jane to an adjoining room. Half an hour later they had returned.

'You are very blessed,' Queen Anna had announced regally, 'with your wife.'

'As indeed is the King,' Gresham had bowed low, 'with his consort and mother of his children.'

The two women had looked at each other and shrugged. Queen Anna swept out again.

The results of the meeting were immediately clear. Jane no longer had to remain in The Tower and was free to return to either of her homes. Equally, it was decreed, should she wish to move her children in with herself and her husband, accommodation would be found. She had compromised, staying in The House from Monday evening to Fridays, joining Gresham for the weekends. She had drawn the line at introducing her children to The Tower. Its air was frequently foul and always dank, the rooms cheerless and damp, and the atmosphere of the place was one of pain, suffering and terror.

'They're too young for this,' she had declared. 'When we have to, we'll cope, as Raleigh's family have coped. Until we have to, let the children have their freedom. Even without their parents.' Yet she missed her babes on her Saturdays and Sundays with Gresham, missed them desperately. Gresham heard her sobbing in the small hours when she thought he was asleep.

'How reassuring,' Gresham had said, 'that you assume periodic sojourns in The Tower are doomed to be our lot.'

‘I know who I married,' she replied dryly. There had been a near disagreement over the children's nurse on the Saturdays and Sundays when Jane was ministering to her master.

'Mannion?' Gresham had exclaimed. 'Mannion.' My young children lose their mother two days out of seven to Mannion1. If fish drank like him there'd be no water left in the oceans. His manners make a pig look respectable. Given half a chance, he spends every evening in the stews. He's a threat to anything on two legs, and for all I know anything on four! Whilst I'm languishing in The Tower, my children are being brought up by an ageing lecher with a drink problem and no education.'

'Who brought you up?' Jane asked simply.

Gresham rocked back on his heels, thought for a moment, and grinned. 'Mannion,' he replied, remembering his loveless childhood and the rough affection that Mannion had lavished on him.

'Well,' said Jane, 'don't deny your children the same opportunities.'

There were times when this woman really annoyed him.

For all that, he wished she were there when a bedraggled King James of all England and Scotland walked unannounced into his chambers that evening.

Gresham had heard the news. Setting up a decent information system had been almost his first priority when he had been consigned to The Tower. Sixth November, 1612. Prince Henry, the eldest son of King James I, heir to the thrones of England and Scotland, had died. The most brilliant, the most perfect and the most promising heir England had had in many a year. Handsome, intelligent and with a charismatic flair that lingered long after he had left a room and its inhabitants. A young man with a sense of occasion, but also with a sense of justice. A man in love with martial arts. A prude, some said, blessed with too great a sense of his own righteousness. A boy obsessed with warfare said others. A king for all seasons said the majority. A real king at last. For many, of James's subjects, surveying the decadence and expense of his Court, it was easy enough to tolerate King James when the prospect of King Henry lay on the horizon.

And now Henry was dead. Dead of a flux and a fever, despite the best efforts of every London doctor.

Gresham had heard of the illness, and of the death, and his heart had sank. Prince Henry was a future king for whom spies would be willing to die. Now all that was left was Charles. Weak, vacillating, desirous to please Charles. What would the future hold for England under King Charles I?

King James stumbled into his rooms long after the bell signalling the closing up of The Tower. There was a clattering outside, muttered words, scurrying feet. Then James walked in through the door, unannounced. He did not knock, Gresham noted.

There was more than the usual filth on the extravagant clothing of England's king. The jewels around his neck and sewn into his garments would have fed a city for months. More extraordinary were the marks of tears down his cheeks. His doublet was unlaced. He sat down in Jane's chair. Gresham had spent a lifetime training his mouth not to drop — had he not done so, it would have dented the floor. And, by the by, his eyebrows would have become permanently entangled in his hairline.

'Drink!' the King of England roared to someone outside the room. There was a hurried scuffling and a terrified footman brought in a wooden tray with five bottles on it. Wine of the most tremendous value. With two extraordinarily beautiful goblets of pure gold.

'Open!' said the drunken King. 'No! Not for us both. That bottle' — he pointed firmly to one pillar of dark glass — 'for me. The other bottle, that one there, for Sir Henry. For him alone.'

The King turned to Gresham. 'In vino Verit a s, Sir Henry

Gresham. You'll drink that bottle there as fast as you can. And when you've drunk your fill, we'll talk. Man to man. Drunken man to drunken man. Drunken father to drunken father.' It was then the tears started to fall. Huge globules of water forming in the King's eyes and dropping from them down his cheeks, as if every liquid he had ever drunk was turned to tears.

And so it was that the strangest drinking session in English or Scottish history began and ended, in a set of rooms in the Tower of London in the late evening, with the King of England present and a prisoner his drinking companion.

Gresham took the bottle his monarch had gestured to and poured himself a full measure. He brought it to his lips. The wine was Rhenish — powerful, potent, intoxicating. He drank it in one single gasp. The King looked on, nodded approvingly and motioned to continue.

In the space of a few minutes, Gresham sank a bottle of wine from the King's cellar.

He had always had an extraordinarily good head for wine. Would it hold up tonight? The excitement, the unexpectedness, the sheer maniac improbability of the evening began to take hold of him.

'And now we'll bide our time awhile,' the King stated, sipping at his own goblet, the tears still flowing. He wanted Gresham drunk before they talked. As drunk as he was. Or even drunker. 'You!' the King yelled to the servant again. 'That other bottle! There! Open it for my guest. You'll keep drinking, Sir Henry, if you please. Not whole bottles. But keep drinking.'

James and his son had been in frequent disagreement, Gresham reminded himself. Prince Henry had been polite, prurient and careful with money. The young man, only recently named Prince of Wales, had made no secret of the extent to which he disagreed with his father's lifestyle. Perhaps for this reason, Queen Anna had preferred her next son, Charles.

Yet the drinking contest had to be entered in to. James had not asked him to drink a whole bottle of wine, he had commanded it.

First the lancing of thirst, then the tremors of excitement. Then the power of alcohol, the growing self-belief. Then the vainglory, the assumption that anything was possible. Then the tiredness, the overwhelming urge to sleep. Then the loss of consciousness. And then the payment, in pain and sickness, for the days to follow. Gresham knew all these. James thought he was the first person to have ensured truth with drink. Well he would, wouldn't he? Roman spies had used the trick as a matter of course. Roman spies, and spies for King James I of England and Scotland, had learned ways to cope. There was no point in denying the physical power of the alcohol. The trick was in learning to keep a part of the mind separate from it all.

'D'ye think they murdered my son, Sir Henry?' asked the King when there had been enough time for the bottle of wine to sink in.

The room was spinning slightly, and Gresham's brain seemed to have become so divorced from his speech centres and muscles. A chasm opened up in his mind, a dread, dark abyss that had nothing to do with the drink. Suppose the search for the papers had been nothing but a diversion to put me off the scent? To stop the country's best agent discovering or acting on a plot to murder the heir to the throne?

What had Cecil said? That on no account could the country be allowed to displace one king for another, however promising the heir? Could Cecil have masterminded the whole thing from the grave, removing from the scene the only rightful alternative to King James I? He had tried to sidetrack Gresham once before, attempted to send him off on a wild goose chase to take his mind away from more important things.

Gresham had to answer. He started to put his brain back in gear by clearing his throat, pushing through the vapours of alcohol to reengage, and then halted. He had to sound as if he was part-drunk. It was his guarantee of honesty to the King.

'Your Majesshty,' slurred Gresham, 'it's… it's a terrible thing.' The tears formed in his eyes then. He had let the image of young

Walter and Anna come into his head, or the drink had forced it there. 'But… but… yes, it may be possible.'

The King gave a cry like none Gresham had ever heard. It was a call of pure agony, of a man into whose brain a white-hot knife-blade had entered, a knife-blade of recrimination and blame. Yet James, with his morbid fear of death, had fled to the countryside to avoid comforting his son on his deathbed. Queen Anna had locked herself up in Denmark House. How much had he loved his son?

'But sire…' Gresham spoke quickly. 'We learn in our trade that what might be is not always the same as what is. I shay… I say that a king's son may always be murdered, in Scotland as well as in England. But yet it need not be so. God knows, life is cheap enough.' Seven out of ten babies might die within months of being born, and even if a boy or girl made it to maturity, childbirth, the plague and a host of other illnesses still carried on taking their dreadful toll.

James was sitting back in his chair, eyes glazed, clutching his wine as a baby might clutch a bottle, i took scant care of him, my brave lad, scant care…' It was as if he was talking to himself. The accent was broad, pronounced. 'Too much love is nae any help to a future king. I had none of it, none of it, when I was a wean. It made me careful, it made me canny. He didna' need me.'

'Perhaps not,' dared Gresham, 'but I've no doubt he loved you.' The room had started to swirl now. He focused, hard. The room was not moving. It was still. It was only the drink. It slowed down, and the sickness that had started in his stomach abated. Why let it? He forced himself to go to the side of the room, picked up the chamber pot and vomited into it. The liquid burned his throat and tongue.

'Well, Sir Henry, the problem is this.' James's eyes were hard, bright. He had ignored Gresham's retching into the pot. The drunken man who had screamed in mental agony a few seconds ago was gone, I can no longer help Prince Henry.' The tears were still there. 'And all of a sudden I am short of people to whom I can turn.

You see, if they have killed my son… then the next step is for them to kill me.'

Was that it? Was James's cry of agony for his son? Or was it for fear of his own life?

'Why so, sire?'

To get the weakling Charles on the throne, so they can manipulate and dominate with all the more ease.'

'They?' Gresham left out any formal mode of address, always dangerous with a king or a queen. James appeared not to notice.

'All those who seek to deny a king his pleasures in hunting, or his few close friendships.' A maudlin, self-pitying tone was creeping in now. 'Or perhaps those who are friends of my few close acquaintances, and fear the loss of their influence if a man starts to listen to his son.'

There! That was it! James had more or less said what he feared. That Overbury might have acted to remove Prince Henry, fearful that the young Prince might one day find his semi-estranged father in a receptive mood and could damn Carr and Overbury as a package that could not be split. Was there real agony in James at the loss of his son? Possibly. But, as always with this complex man, there was the overriding sense of survival. Of self-interest.

Would Sir Thomas Overbury have so much evil in him as to murder the heir to the throne of England?

'Now tell me, Sir Henry, am I right in my fears? And do take a drink. You'll find it guid wine.'

The room was quite stable now, Gresham noted appreciatively, giving only the occasional lurch. 'I think Sir Robert Cecil would have appreciated your fears. As for the friend of a friend, he is capable of almost anything. Almost anything. But of this? I simply do not know. Yet, sire, if this man had done this terrible thing… it would pose no threat to your security.'

'How do you mean, man?'

Gresham was thinking himself now, his brain working on the problem, his own fear that he had been duped cutting through the alcoholic fog. 'The only reason for taking the life of the Prince would be to keep you on the throne, secure in your friendships. If there were those who wished harm to your son then, the damage done, there is every reason for them to keep you alive and well. You become the key to their continued success.'

How could this man maintain his relationship with Robert Carr-while knowing that Carr's friend might have killed his son? How could Henry Gresham be playing with his own life, talking thus freely to the King?

'I think you speak with the voice of Machiavelli, Sir Henry. That Machiavelli of whom you have some knowledge,' said James in a low voice. Again, it was impossible to gauge his mood.

'Machiavelli spoke in the true voice of courts and those who seek power,' said Gresham. And in the true voice of kings and rulers, but perhaps I'd better not say that.

'And your friendt Sir Edward Coke? Would he do this to me? Take away my son and heir?' James was not looking at Gresham but into the ashes of the fire, untended now since his arrival.

Humans plan and plot and train for their future, yet forever delude themselves into thinking that they have control over their destiny. The moments that define our lives, the moment that can affect the future of millions of people, are often hidden from sight, tiny triggers that are pulled without a noise or a sign that a threshold has been crossed, a decision taken and the future changed, for better or for worse. Gresham responded instinctively and without hesitation to the King's question. It took him only a moment to respond.

'No, he would not. If the death of your son was through anything other than natural causes then Sir Edward would have no part in it.'

'Yet he is the man who is responsible for your stay in these surroundings, the hurt to your beautiful wife, the fear in the hearts of your two children that they may never see their father again. He is the man you hold responsible for locking away your greatest friend, your saviour, your hero.'

'He is all those things, Your Majesty. Yet if I am any judge of men, he is not a murderer of the heir to the throne. For one, he is too scared. For another, though he has sold out to ambition long ago, he has lived with himself by believing that he works for and within the law. For a third, he has no advantage to gain from such a death.'

'And could the man you call Robert Cecil have planned this action, from his grave, and be reaching out to punish me even now?'

This man was no fool! Again, Gresham responded instantly.

'I had thought, for a brief moment, that it might be so. He talked about it once, indirectly. At our last meeting. He said that however great the heir to the throne, he must never be allowed to replace the King in case the people came to believe they had the power to choose a monarch. I cannot tell you what happened in Cecil's mind. My instinct, despite an appalled moment when you first spoke and I wondered if I had been misled, is no. This would be too unsubtle for Cecil.'

'Did you feel the axe brush across your neck just now?' asked the King. A cold breath ran through the drink-heated fires of Gresham's brain.

'I have felt the axe resting on my neck for most of my life, Your Majesty. The answer to your question, since you have come here in search of honesty, is no, I did not.'

'Then you should have done, Sir Henry. You are not the expert reader of men that you think you are!' There was almost an air of triumphalism in James's manner and tone. 'You see, had you sought to damn Sir Edward or my dead Chief Secretary, and to exact your private revenge on the back of my grief and loss, I would have despised you and believed that not only do you read Machiavelli but that you are him. And you would have died, by axe or by poison. But died, beyond doubt.'

And do you think you could sneak poison past my defences, even in this, your holding-house for the damned? Thought Gresham. Kill me you might well have done. Yet you would have had to have done it by the axe and in the open air, where a man could at least breathe a deep breath at his final moment and not face a dingy reckoning in a darkened room.

The two men sat in silence. Gresham had no idea how long it lasted. Finally, James spoke. 'You tell me the truth, I believe, Sir Henry Gresham.' There was moodiness, self-pity in his tone. 'And there are few such men around me. You will work for me now. Not Sir Edward Coke, nor for… others. You are a free man, Sir Henry. You may leave. There are two conditions to your freedom. You will accept my commission to ascertain the truth of my son's death. You will tell me that truth. And should that truth need action, you will act on my behalf to make that action take place.'

Gresham jumped up and bowed deeply. James too stood up, unsteadily. He looked at the gold goblet in his hand and raised it to drain the dregs.

'You might care to know that a certain man in my care and custody

… a man with a sore knife wound in his arm… escaped that custody three days ago. He had agreed to make certain other papers available to me. Not the letters you know of, Sir Henry. Other papers.'

'Would these "other papers" be connected to the theatre, Your Majesty?' That flicker again in his eyes, of amusement or pain, it was difficult to say. James looked at the door. It was firmly shut, the servants out of earshot.

'Aye, that they would.' He poured another dollop of wine into the golden goblet and drank it back in one huge swig. 'The second condition is this. You will meet, tomorrow night, in my Palace of Whitehall with two men who must needs speak with you. They will tell you of the second task I have set you. ‘Tis better it come from them. Six o'clock, Sir Henry. Ye'll have had good time by then to take your wife in your arms, aye, and do more than hold her, I'll be bound.'

The King's lewdness, his fascination for other people's sexuality, was notorious. He gazed lugubriously at the pure gold in his hand, empty now, and weighted it. Then, unexpectedly, he tossed it to Gresham. Calling in a servant, he nodded at the man, who bowed deeply to Gresham and gave him a folded warrant.

'There, a present to your fine wife. The pair of them, this goblet and the one you are holding. Though I do not doubt it is the paper she will value more than the gold.'

With that, James stumbled out of the room, calling for his servants. Back, no doubt, to Whitehall, and a confused Court and a wailing wife and current beyond current of intrigue, suspicion and gossip. The environment, in fact, in which kings live all their lives.

As well as a pre-written warrant for his release, Gresham wondered, had James also brought along a warrant for his death?