The Conscience of the King

Gresham went straight from The Tower, taking King James at his word. It was locked for the night, but the King's warrant was sufficient, with much grumbling, to have three huge doors squeakily unbolted and raspingly drawn back. Horses were summoned, hooves clattering on the greasy cobbles, and with two of the servants the King had allowed him Gresham rode through the gateway. He tensed as the final shadow of the Lion Tower fell over him, waiting for the call back, the clash of arms. Nothing came. He was free.

He had already banished Mannion, worried about Jane and her safety at The House and feeling infinitely more relaxed knowing that Mannion was guarding her. He sent no messenger ahead, and it was in the pitch dark that he raced past the darkened bulk of St Paul's and up the length of The Strand. He pulled up the poor, panting beast that was all The Tower had been able to provide, hurled its reins to a startled doorkeeper and rushed into The House.

Jane was sitting in her parlour, the private room Gresham hardly ever entered. Even now he did not cross its threshold, but simply flung open the door. She turned, startled, towards him. She had been crying, he saw. She would do that — cry at night, when the children and the servants would neither see nor hear. Except Mannion, whose bed was positioned by the outside of the door. It was a campaign mattress, Gresham noted: rough canvas stuffed with straw.

He noted the expression of alarm and terror in her eyes and cursed himself for not putting himself into her mind.

'No,' he said, cutting in to her worst thoughts and disarming them. 'I've not broken out of The Tower, nor started a rebellion, nor come here three horse-lengths ahead of the executioner. Which would you like first? Two fine gold goblets that the King has gifted you — or his warrant freeing his good and noble servant Sir Henry Gresham from any taint of treachery?' He held the goblets out in one hand, the warrant in the other.

She looked for a brief moment, and then crashed into him with such force that goblets and warrant went flying and he, caught unawares, was cannoned into the back wall, pinned there.

'Are you really, truly free?' she said, stepping back to look at him, hardly able to breathe, her colour up in her face.

'As free as we've ever been. Which means, free until some monarch decides to lock us up, or a syphilitic maniac tries to kill us, or-'

'Do shut up,' she said, taking his face and holding it, looking into his eyes as though they were a marvellous, undiscovered country, 'and talk sense, for once.'

Mannion had stepped smartly aside as his master and mistress had rocketed from doorway to back wall. Ever practical, he had managed to catch both gold goblets as they went flying, and looked at them appreciatively before setting them down carefully on the floor on the tiny ante-room. Casually, he picked up the warrant from the King and read it, assuming that the pair of them would be cooing and doving for hours and not need him there at all. In fact, he was already making to leave the room when his eye was caught by some wording on the paper.

Mannion could read, very fluently. He just preferred people to think he was illiterate, believing reading to be rather foppish and unmanly. This time, whatever it was that had caught his eye made his face light up with a grin that was almost evil.

'Forgive me for interrupting, Your Lordship,' he said loudly, doing just that. 'But I thought I'd better check with His Lordship if His Lordship required my poor and humble services any more before I leave His Lordship and Her Ladyship-'

'What on earth are you prattling on about?' Gresham asked, confused. Jane addressed Gresham as 'my lord', a familiar title between women and men, but one the House of Lords had no trace of.

'You should read what the King writes for you,' said Mannion, grinning even more widely. 'Read it through to the end, I mean. According to this, you're not only a free man, you're also very shortly to be Henry Gresham, First Baron Granville. Congratulations, my lord.'

Gresham looked nonplussed. 'But two hours ago I was locked up in The Tower… I don't understand…'

'I think,' said Jane, the light dancing in her eyes, 'that the King has decided to trust you at last.'