The Desperate remedy

Chapter 4

Gresham slipped out of the side gate of the House in the early evening. His doublet was worn and stitched in two areas, his hose washed out and his cloak threadbare at the edges. It was more and more difficult for him to act as an unknown in the city, or in Cambridge, but his change into the clothing of a gentleman fallen on hard times was not disguise, but caution. Where he was going, fine clothes were a call to robbery as well as a call to attention, and Gresham wished for neither. His sword hid its fine steel under a plain hilt and a weather-beaten scabbard. Behind him came Mannion, dressed in a rough jerkin.

'We walk,' he announced firmly to his rather sour-looking body-servant. 'You're getting too fat, and you need the exercise.' If Mannion muttered something under his breath, Gresham chose not to hear it.

It would have been far easier by boat, using the House's own vessels, the single bank manned by the vast-chested George, or even the magnificent four-bank of semi-regal splendour. Yet Gresham preferred to walk, despite the filth of the streets and the appalling press of the crowds. a restlessness came over him at times which could only be released by exercise, and in this instance there was the extra dimension of a need to feel in touch with the life and blood of the sprawling and corrupt city. And, of course, it allowed him to be rude to Mannion.

London was at its noisiest. The lawyers flushed out from Westminster were there in force, heading back into the City along the Strand, soberly dressed and bent forward to hear the muttered protestations of their clients. It was a long walk, from the Strand to Fleet Street, entering the City at Ludgate and skirting St Paul's. From Watling Street and Candlewick Street they turned right to cross London Bridge, joining the throng of citizens heading to Southwark for the playhouses.

They passed the stalls of the puppeteers in Fleet Street, each trying to shout above the din of the colliers, the chimney sweeps and the incessant din of the barrel-makers and every other worker who seemed to need a hammer above all other tools. The fresh-water carriers with their yokes and double wooden buckets, the strangely brownish water giving more than a hint of the River, the oyster sellers and the orange sellers all yelled their wares into the summer day.

They crossed London Bridge, its ancient piers supporting the half-timbered shops and residences that made it one of the talking points of Europe. Gresham eyed the pitted and mouldering stone, feeling the bridge shudder beneath his feet, wondering as he always did how much longer it could survive the neglect of its foundations and the thundering torrent of the Thames.

The Dagger in Southwark was Moll's place of business, before the magistrates or her creditors forced a change to another den. A significant portion of London's underworld was gathered there, nursing their sore heads. The assembled mass was one of the most unattractive sights he had ever seen, thought Gresham, a collection of rats and wolves in human form. He gave the merest nod to several with whom he had worked in the past. Gresham was ushered into the inner den of Moll, past three of the burliest men in London, all nursing vast cudgels.

'Hello, Mary Frith,' said Gresham, his face alight with mirth at the figure before him.

At first sight, it was not a woman at all who met their gaze. Dressed in doublet and hose, with hair cut short, Moll Cutpurse looked for all the world like a man, ensconced on a stool, legs set fairly apart and a brimming tankard of ale in her hand. The smoking pipe clenched firmly between her teeth added to the impression of a lad-about-town, determined to enjoy the day and the night as if it were his last. Only on closer examination did the smoothness of her skin and the twin bulges beneath her doublet become apparent.

'Mary Frith! You insolent vagabond, you spittle of Bedlam!' The figure wreathed in smoke put her stool forward on to three legs, where previously it had been resting back on two, and grinned in equal measure at Henry Gresham. 'Mary Frith died years ago, as any true bastard knows full well.'

Henry Gresham, a true bastard, accepted Moll's greeting with a low bow.

'Bastard as I am,' he replied, 'I salute an even greater bitch, be it Mary Frith or Moll Cutpurse!'

'You whoremonger!' she said joyfully, rising up from her stool and moving round the table to greet him. 'You come to me now for news, when you used to come within me! Am I so worn out as no longer to excite your fancy?'

'Madam,' said Gresham, bowing even lower, 'I'm old and weary, starved in my bones, a mere dried-out husk of the man I used to be. I can admire your beauty from afar…' he stepped back and looked with admiration at the trim figure hidden beneath the man's clothes,'… but, alas, it needs a young man to sire a beauty with so much youth still in her!'

Moll sat down on the table edge, stuck out her feet and took a huge draught of ale. Licking her red lips, she eyed Gresham up and down appreciatively.

'You always were a liar, Henry Gresham, and I like that in a man. You're none of your penny-pinching, arse-grabbing kind of liar. You,' she said as she poked him with the end of her clay pipe, 'you lie like the Devil himself, and take delight in it. For that, I'll even forgive you the bruises! And you always did have a body from Heaven, even if your mind was from Hell.'

Moll was fun enough to deal with and to lie with, but her evil temper was infamous, her mood swings greater than the tide on Dover beach, and she had had men, and women, murdered for a twopenny debt. She was one of the most dangerous people Gresham had ever known. She ran more brothels and stews than anyone except the Bishop of London, offered more watered-down wine and beer to tavern-goers and fenced for half the vagabonds in London. She defied authority, even to the extent of appearing on stage in front of a cheering full house at The Swan to recite bawdy ballads and sing songs that a sailor would blanch at. She had been arrested more times than she had eaten dinners, always bribing herself out of trouble with the seemingly endless money at her disposal.

'Enough of this babbling.' Moll bored very easily. 'You've no more need of poor Moll and her like in the old way, even if I hadn't become a respectable businessman, which I have. And I hear you have someone to keep your bed warm at night, so what is it you intend to rob a maid of instead?'

'I've never robbed you of anything you weren't hot to give, Moll Cutpurse,' said Gresham firmly, 'and for anything else I've taken you've received good coin in exchange. Enough of this babbling, indeed — yours and my own. The business is simple. What do you know that I should know?'

Moll slumped down behind the table, signalled Mannion to take a seat and took another vast gulp from her flagon, motioning irritably for it to be replenished by one of the villains standing guard over the door. He took it in his huge paw, filled it from a nearby barrel and gave it back to her. She looked moodily at Gresham.

'You're the fine one, Henry Gresham, aren't you? The others, they come to me with threats or with flattery, and they come to ask me a question. Where's the purse with seven angels in it stolen from my friend in St Paul's gone to, Moll?' With each question she adopted a different, whining tone. 'Find me a girl, Moll, a nice clean girl. Find me a boy, Moll, a nice clean boy. Oh Moll, my cousin's inherited a pretty penny in plate and keeps it in his house, and it should be mine, Moll, it should be mine… 1 need to throw the dice for high stakes, Moll, or play the cards, and where are the best games to be had, Moll… I need a woman who'll do it this way, I need a woman who'll do it that way, I need a woman who'll do it in ways I haven't imagined… so many questions, so many crimes, so many deceivers. Yet you… you Devil incarnate… you ask the one question to which I've to give all the answers.'

Moll got up suddenly, stuck her thumbs in her belt and walked over to the window.

'I know you might as well stick your fine head up a cow's arse as gain any joy from the man Bacon. Neither you, nor the Privy Council nor God in his Heaven will ever prove anything against him that matters a fart.'

It was pointless to ask Moll where her information came from, or which of the many men Gresham had tasked with news of Bacon had reported back to her. There was hardly a major household in London where one or more of the servants was not in her employ, information being as valuable a commodity as gold or women. Gresham knew that on occasions in the past Cecil had used her as an informant — it had been the cause of their first meeting.

'So what else do you know that I should know?'

'Had you come before tonight, I would've had little more to answer. I don't know why you've been set on a goose chase. Maybe there are those who want you set on a far road. But there's something brewing nearer to home, I reckon. Something more in your line of business… how much will you pay, for other news, Henry Gresham?'

'A fair price’

'Then you'd better meet a girl.' Moll gestured to one of the human tree trunks on guard. 'Wake up Nell from her groanings and bring her here — fast!'

A red-cheeked young girl with the look of being fresh up from the country was brought into the room. She had been crying, and there was a livid bruise down most of one side of her face and stains on the extravagant red dress she wore, all crumpled now. She limped, clutching her left hip with every faltering step she took.

'Yes, mistress, what is it, mistress?' the girl said, with fear in her eyes.

'See this man?' said Moll, gesturing to Gresham. 'Yes, ma'am.'

'Well, forget you ever saw him. Before you do, tell him the story of last night. Go on, girl. Do it.'

'It were… I was… I was downstairs when this man cum in. I know'd him from before, two, mebbe three times. He were quiet, but a swaggerer at the same time, if ye takes my meanin'. We went upstairs, and we did it, and after, as he was coming out of the room and before I was proper dressed or anything, this other man comes out of the other room and knocks into my man, sort of… it were an accident, I know for sure, there's no light up there hardly at all and…'

'Get on with it, you stupid slut!' growled Moll.

'Well, before you can say a word my man, the one I been with, he has his sword out and he's fightin' this other man.'This other man, he run back into my room and I start screamin' an' my man he turns an' clouts me one on the side of the head with the handy bit of his sword an' I goes down screamin' an' he kicks at me to shut me up an' then this other man he trips on his sword…' The girl started to blubber and to wail again, dabbing at her eyes.'… an' the point of his bloody sword goes in the side o' my arse, it does, real hard and deep, an' it hurts and hurts an' there's a mark there now for life, it be, for life…'

'It'll be a short life, that's for sure, girl, if you carry on like that,' said Moll. 'Tell the gentleman here what your man said while he was riding you.'

'Well, sir,' said the tearful Nell, 'he were rough with me, very rough indeed, an' I says, "Now, sir, can you not get as much pleasure by being a little more gentle with a poor girl?" and he says, goin' at it even 'arder, "If I bain't be gentle with that damn'd King and his rotten crew I bain't be gentle with you, girl!'"

Gresham tossed a coin to the girl, which she caught with practised ease, even though he knew it would be taken from her as soon as she left the room. She gave a faint smile to Gresham, and a pleading look towards Moll. She ignored it, motioning the girl to leave.

'That's all?' said Gresham.

'No, not all,' said Moll. 'The man's name is Tom Wintour.'

The name triggered the memory of the miserable-looking man in the tavern. Robert Wintour, Tom Wintour's brother.

'He nearly killed the other man and lost me a good girl for a while, so I was less than well pleased. I had him cornered by three of the lads and taken out round the back, to teach him a lesson, as you do. He caught one of the lads with a dagger he'd hidden on him, and it got serious. He was screaming at my lads something about this not happening to him, he'd God's business to do. It was so bad I came running myself. Before I could get there this Wintour catches one of my men in the neck, dives between the other two and gets clean away. It's bad for business, all round. One of my men might die. There should be no man who beats my ruffians. It's not good for my honour, you understand. The other man he went for on the night has a bad wound and won't walk straight again. And that's bad for custom. Keep it clean, keep it quiet.'

Robert Wintour. Tom Wintour. Wintour of Huddington Court. Gresham remembered now, as it all fell into place. The western Marches were a terrible area for the old religion, defying London to take its Catholicism away from it. He had been sent to enquire into one particularly crusty old Catholic, a Sir John Talbot, heir to the Earldom of Shrewsbury. It was feared he was plotting a rebellion. He was harmless, as it had happened, a fact which had not stopped the Government from locking him up on and off for over twenty years. Gresham had become fascinated by the network of blood relations, marriages and alliances which criss-crossed the great Catholic families of the area, binding them tight together like the finest cloth. Talbot's daughter had married Robert Wintour, Gresham now remembered. Tom Wintour was the younger brother, but the brains of the family. Their house of Huddington Court was rumoured to be riddled with more priest-holes than the Vatican.

'So a swaggerer beats a whore and wounds some men, and damns the King and talks about God's business… it's not much, Moll.'

'Not much for you, Henry Gresham, who has his inheritance, and no need to earn a daily crust by the sweat of his brow. Moll here has to work for his living.'

Gresham noted Moll's use of the word 'his' to describe herself. It was a trick she only fell into when she was at her most serious, or her most dangerous.

'Yet there is more,' she carried on. 'Does the name Catesby mean anything to you? Jack Wright? Kit Wright?'

The names echoed somewhere in the channels of Gresham's brain. Catesby… a handsome young man on the ill-fated march through London of Essex's supporters, fighting with useless courage as the supporters of the Crown closed in on him…

'Minnows that once swam in the great pond of the Earl of Essex?'

'Fools enough to march through the streets of London trying to rouse support for the Prince of Fools, when every girl in town could've told them it would fail!' replied Moll.

'What have these small fry to do with Tom Wintour?'

'A lot to do with Tom Wintour, judging by the number of times "they all of them hire a private room a stone's throw away from you in the Strand.'

'And what is to stop a group of friends meeting for a good supper to reminisce over old times and how they nearly overthrew good Queen Bess?' said Gresham, playing Devil's advocate.

'With a priest in the next room to say Mass, and locked doors, and much swearing of oaths? And with young Thomas Percy as thick as a thief with the whole sorry crew?'

The Earl of Northumberland, leader of a significant portion of English Catholics, had recommended himself to Gresham by setting himself up as a firm opponent of Cecil and vilifying the stunted creature, decorously, at every opportunity. As ever, Northumberland's action revealed the capacity of the English Catholics to always back a loser. Thomas Percy Gresham remembered as a runt of a man who claimed more blood links with Northumberland than most thought he was heir to, and who for some inconsiderable reason Northumberland had apparently made steward of Alnwick Castle, the dripping pile of masonry hung on the bleak Northumbrian coast.

'Does Cecil know of this?'

Moll turned to her tankard, discomfited. 'I doubt it. And certainly not from me, if he does. Cecil and I are… not dealing with each other, as things stand.'

'Why, Moll,' said Gresham, the half-smile lighting his face, 'what did we do to his Lordship?'

Moll scowled, and then let a half-grin cross her face. 'Why, it was a good song. They loved it at The Swan. Here, it was so good I bought this in the street three hours after I had first sung it.'

Gresham looked at the crudely printed ballad sheet Moll thrust into his hands. He read the words with increasing astonishment and good humour.

‘I would believe almost anything of Cecil,' he said, struggling to keep even half a straight face, 'but surely not with a three-legg'd goat and a candlestick?'

'Aye, well, we poets must give free rein to our imagination, mustn't we? Careful — that cost all of a penny!' she exclaimed as Gresham pocketed the paper.

'Include it in the bill,' he said lightly.

'There's more,' she said. 'Will Shadwell was a man of yours, wasn't he?'

'He's no man's man now, except the Devil's, I suspect,' said Gresham, interested again. 'What of him?'

'I heard today of his death. He dined here a week before, in the Norfolk room.' Private rooms in the inn were named after the English counties, or so Moll said. Gresham believed they were named after noble lords who had bedded their whores there. 'He dined with Thomas Percy.'

'Did he now.' Gresham's face was stony, impenetrable. Did Thomas Percy have a string of rosary beads around his neck? wondered Gresham.

'Had you considered he might have been on his way with news for you?'

'I'd considered it,' said Gresham.

'Percy got drunk that night. Very drunk. Will was playing drunk, but I swear he was plain cold sober. He was on to something, I'll swear to that too. Will never refused a drink unless he was on to something. Did you know Will was a sentimental old fool?'

'It wasn't my most obvious conclusion, as far as character judgements go.'

'Well, he had a ring, a gold ring, he used to wear round his neck. No-one would know, unless you saw him with his clothes off. He bought it for the first girl he lost his cherry to. She died young — some story or other, I don't recollect the details and who cares? — but he kept the ring about him, always. It was his charm. Never took it off, even in bed.'

'Does this romantic story of young love actually have a point?' said Gresham, rudely.

Moll gazed at him levelly. 'It's always a wonder to me how you've managed to live so long. Yes, it's got a point. The point of a great ruffian in here a couple of nights ago, wearing Will Shadwell’s ring on his great hairy finger!'

Gresham was very still for a few moments. 'And this ruffian? His name?'

'Sam Fogarty, or so he said. Great lump of a man with red hair.' 'And a Northumbrian accent as thick as cake?' Moll looked startled. 'You know him?'

'I think we've met,' said Gresham. It was clear he was going to say no more.

'Well, you great ox,' said Moll, in one of the sudden mood swings that affected her, and turning on Mannion, 'does your master know what bills you run up in my houses?'

Mannion stood up with the lazy ease of a man half his age and delivered a mock bow to Moll. 'I go where my master sends me, Mistress Moll. If I'm to go undetected I can't stand out now, can I, and must blend into the background. Don't the learned say that when in Rome a man must do as the Romans do?'

'By that argument I wonder what you'd do if you found yourself in Sodom,' Moll replied tartly. 'I wonder a man such as you stands for such insolence,' she said, turning to Gresham.

'He has a very small brain,' said Gresham airily, 'which means he thinks with his rod, which is unfortunately much larger. I'll reprimand him, and no doubt he'll weep for his insolence.'

He pulled a purse out from under his cloak and tossed it on the table, where it landed heavily.

'Generous as ever, Sir Henry. Why do you who have so much play these dangerous games? You've no need, surely? Why play Lord Cecil's games?'

'Who's to say it's not Cecil playing my game? I play because I have to,' said Gresham, which was at least true. 'And because of all the things I might die from, I fear boredom more than any other. You above all others know that feeling, old Moll. We're two of a kind.'

She looked at him for a moment. 'That we are — and both likely to die on the gallows or on the rack.'

There was a brief, companionable silence.

‘WHAT'S THIS DAMNED POISON THESE OAFS KEEP SERVING ME?'

Without warning she hurled the tankard at the head of the man nearest the door. It smashed against his forehead, leaving a deep cut. A second later a knife flashed out and caught the sleeve of his jerkin as he raised it towards his wounded head, pinning his arm by the cloth to the door.

That's how to fight,' she said with satisfaction, as blood dripped on to the boards from the man's head. 'Quick. Unexpected. Sharp. That's how a man should fight.'

There was no debate about travelling to the Palace of Whitehall for the King's masque. The finery worn by both Gresham and Jane would have died on the streets and suffered a seizure on horseback. Jane's gown was not as diaphanous as the fashion now worn by many of the Court ladies, but was of the deepest emerald green, trimmed with pearls. The necklace she wore had belonged to Lady Gresham, and had at its centre a diamond as perfect as any the King owned. Gresham wore a doublet of black, as was his custom, but of such fine satin that it seemed to breathe with a life of its own, flowing with his body as he moved and accentuating rather than hiding the muscularity of his body. On his-finger was the one ring, at its centre the Gresham emerald, another stone to make King James, who was obsessed with jewels, turn as green as the gem with envy.

Four men manned the barge, the edge of each oar tipped in gold. A small house hung on the stern of the barge, with the richest of hangings that could be drawn back to allow a view of the passing river, or closed to give privacy to the occupants of the two gilded seats, almost like thrones in the finery of their embellishment. The larger vessel required eight crew, but Gresham hated the ostentation that would have shown in his use of it for so public an arrival.

A string of vessels was making its way upriver to Whitehall, having to beat against tide and current. The feasting and merry' making had been going on all day, but most guests who were not actually resident at Court would come simply for the climax of the revels, the grand dinner and the masque written by Ben Jonson.

Gresham gazed out over the river, oblivious to the excitement of Jane by his side. A heavy, ornate boat with an inexperienced crew had lurched out of line as an oarsman missed his stroke, and slewed round into a plain wherry, splintering part of its bow. The two boats lay dead in the water, being swept downstream, the boat-man's grapple firmly embedded in the hull of the rich barge. A shouting match was underway between the boatman and the leading servant in the fine barge, the fat alderman in the barge trying to retain his dignity and pretend he was above the demeaning spectacle.

Limitless wine had been available all day at court — Spanish wine, French wine, the sweet white wine so beloved of the King, Alicante, Rhenish, Muscatel, sack, Madeira, fine sherries and even ale and beer — and would continue to flow all night. Every creature that walked, flew or swam God's earth would be skinned, plucked or scraped, roasted, boiled, tossed in oils, pickled or jellied and served up to the throng. Every matter that grew in or on the ground would be harvested, peeled and diced or sliced, placed into pastries or set into jellies, covered in creams and decked with spices, to go alongside the honeyed sweetmeats and the cakes. On the last such event Gresham had attended, a groaning trestle table had given way under the mountain of food, and collapsed with such weight as to break both the legs of the serving-man who had placed the last huge side of beef upon it. As darkness came on, torches, lamps and candles would seek to turn the night into day, and the light would glitter on the vast jewels that the men and the women wore to show their wealth and their status. The plate on the King's table would be all gold, and nothing less than silver would grace even the furthest table. Meanwhile in the sweated, smoking kitchens greasy cooks slipped, slithered and yelled for the attention of their underlings and aimed swipes at the kitchen boys with their ladles and heavy spoons. Even by the time they made their landing, Gresham knew that men and women would be spewing in the corners of the court' yards, and sometimes even in the rooms. Increasingly drunken men would piss where they stood, and even some of the women would hardly wait to walk into a shadow before pulling up their skirts and doing likewise, the more brazen shrieking with hilarity at their party as they did so.

Meanwhile, as the torches lit the sweating faces and threw shadows into the corners of the beautiful building, as the light glanced off" the jewels and the silver and the gold, just beyond the reach of the light, there lay the ordinary men and women of England. Most would be lying on a pallet if they were lucky, on an earth floor with a leaking roof and walls little more than mud. Their meal would have been some portion of a rough baked loaf, with more sand than flour in it if the miller was up to his trade, some scraps of filthy meat, a fresh-caught fish if Fortune had smiled on them. Their children would be bare-footed, and if the family had a poor animal it would be there in the room with them, its stink just another stench to go with that of the bodies for which soap was a ludicrous luxury.

Contrasts, clashes; the peace of the Church and the violence it caused among men; the beauty of the music echoed by the retching of the drunk and pampered guests; the wildest perfumes alongside the stink of piss. It was all summed up by the person of the King, thought Gresham. The jewels bedecking his body would be worth hundreds of thousand of pounds, never mind those on his wife's flesh, his clothes worth an Emperor's ransom, yet the man himself was unkempt, unwashed and stank to high heaven. What matter the show, if the inside was rotten?

As the four men pulled strongly towards Whitehall and the King's Landing, Gresham asked, not for the first time, how a just God could let such a world exist. The answer was obvious. There was no justice. There was no logic in creation. There was no God.

There was simply survival. The measure of a man was not how he seemed before his maker, but how he seemed before himself. To live long was to succeed; to die young was normal; to die was to cease to exist, and so life was to be lived to the fullest and to the utmost while it was there to be savoured. It was a joke, a joke so vast that no one human could ever properly understand the cosmic scale of its laughter.

He gazed fondly at Jane, her girlish excitement palpable. She had spent the last stages of the voyage excitedly demolishing the dress sense of the other guests as they hove into sight. Immediately they came in earshot she became a haughty and silent presence, stepping daintily from the boat and causing all eyes to turn in her direction.

It did not take him long to find out that he had missed Bacon's speech of welcome — only one of many, Gresham heard, and rather too intellectual and rambling for the taste of most of the early revellers and the Court. Gresham felt a momentary pang of annoyance.

Already casting around and looking for Sir Francis Bacon, his eyes lit on Cecil. He was huddled in a corner with a small entourage of cronies. Or perhaps he was standing straight, but just looked huddled. The air seemed to darken around Cecil and his cronies wherever they stood, as they moved through the quadrangle, and become more chill. Cecil's eye caught Gresham's. He raised an eyebrow by the tiniest height, and gave the slightest possible nod of his head, before returning his gaze to his own company.

'Bastard!' muttered Gresham, cheerfully, and sought about him for someone important to torment. Then he remembered Jane, feeling a conscience pang that he must see to her amusement, and was rescued by the sight of Inigo Jones and John Donne with his wife. Jones was a bag of nerves on this night, as his design for the 'machinery' of the masques which Queen Anne loved so much was to receive its first test after the banquet. As for poor Donne, banished from Court for marrying his patron's wife and sent for a time to the Fleet prison, he was allowed back occasionally so the King could pester him into accepting high office in the Church. He could not give up the wife he loved, which stopped him from one area of preferment, and he was at heart a Catholic, which barred him from accepting the preferment offered by the King. Donne was threadbare, but surprisingly cheerful, and the love he showed for his wife was pathetic.

There was a tap on Gresham's shoulder. A servant, plainly dressed, spoke softly in his ear.

'My master requests a brief interview with you, sir. Would you be so kind as to spare a few moments of your time?'

'Your master's name?'

'He would prefer to announce himself.'

Gresham flicked a finger at Jane, muttered a few words in her ear, and left her with Donne who was rewriting the opening of Genesis to suggest how the new King came to be created, to the credit of neither the Holy Book nor King James. He motioned to Mannion, who emerged from out of the shadows where he had ensured a plentiful supply of food and drink.

The servant led them to a small room on the first floor of a nearby quadrangle. He opened it, and invited Gresham to enter. A figure sat in a tall chair, back to the door, in front of a small table and a blazing fire. There were no hangings for a man to hide behind that Gresham could see. He smiled at the servant, who was holding the door half open, bowed down low, and kicked the door back out of the man's hand with all his might. It flew back on its hinges, banging off the wall with a magnificent crash, and rebounding with sufficient force to knock the shocked servant forward on his heels. The figure in the chair started sufficiently to knock over his wine glass, and leapt to his feet, turning in alarm to view the cause of the upheaval.

It was Sir Francis Bacon.

'My apologies, Sir Francis,' said Gresham, albeit with his infuriating careless grin on his face. 'Doors are good places for men to hide behind with a knife, particularly so when one does not know who it is one is being invited to meet.'

That, thought Gresham, will teach you not to give me your name.

Bacon looked as if his heartbeat had returned to merely twice its normal rate by now, and some colour had come back into his cheeks. He nodded to Gresham and invited him to sit down.

'My apologies, sir. I'd forgotten what it is to be a man of action — particularly as it wasn't in that role that I asked to see you.'

There was well-cooked meat on the table, and what looked like a delicate dish of fish. It too was cooked through, unlike much of the food Gresham had seen outside. A fire blazed in the hearth. A man who could command good food, a fire and a private room at one of His Majesty's gatherings was no fool, Gresham thought.

Bacon was a relatively small figure, his most notable feature what his friends described as deep hazel eyes, which his enemies (who outnumbered the friends) described as snake-like. He motioned to his servant, who was muttering words by the door among which could be heard 'oaf', 'ruffian' and even a hint of 'call yourself a gentleman…' He was rubbing his hand, which had near been wrenched from the arm when Gresham had hurled the door out of its grip. The servant, with marked unwillingness, brought a bundle tied in tape to Gresham, and surlily plonked it down on the table before him. It was a bundle of books, six in all, identical.

'I call it The Advancement of Learning. I've been working on it for many years. In it I ask for the cobwebs to be blown off our vision of learning. I ask that we seek anew to experiment, and to learn from that experimentation, as the only way that true learning will advance.'

'I'm honoured, Sir Francis. But why should I be so honoured, the mere bastard son of a merchant and an occasional supplicant at the altar of learning?'

'I was more inclined to make a present of six copies of my book to the Patron of Granville College, Cambridge, and the man who more than any other is responsible for the rising star of the College.'

Gresham looked at Bacon impassively, inclining his head slightly forward as if Bacon had spoken to him in a foreign language he did not quite understand.

'Forgive me, Sir Henry. I know your wish to be anonymous, and whilst I don't understand it I can be capable of respecting it. Yet I too have my spies — or, rather, I have those in Cambridge who will respect me for my mind, and trust me as such, rather than see me as a lawyer, a Parliamentarian or a candidate for high office. Your secret is safe with me, and with old Thomas here — who is, by the way, the only one of my feckless crew of servants who I'd trust with such a secret.'

A muttered 'young vagabond' could be heard from the doorway. Gresham hoped Mannion would not kick old Thomas to silence him.

Gresham picked on one phrase of Bacon's statement. 'Are you a candidate for high office, Sir Francis?'

'I'm worse, sir. I'm a failed candidate for high office. With superb judgement,' he said with heavy irony, 'I backed Essex, who lost, and so I lost the support of the Queen. That was the first disaster. I opposed Cecil, who won, so now I have an enemy in the most powerful man in the land. That was the second disaster. I then prosecuted Essex — who, by the way, ignored all and every piece of the excellent advice I gave him — and in so doing lost the support of any poor fool who had not already left my party. That was the third disaster. I am a mediocre lawyer with an excellent brain, and lawyers don't need a brain. That is the fourth disaster. I am troubled with occasional pangs of morality, and lawyers need that even less, which is the fifth disaster. I am also ruthlessly ambitious, and thereby offend even my few friends, which is the sixth disaster. I am not so much sinking, Henry Gresham, as vanished beyond sight of mortal man!'

Gresham burst out laughing. 'Yet some who appear to sink deepest rise upwards again fastest! You were knighted only two years ago, Sir Francis. Not a disaster, surely?'

‘No. Merely a consolation and a leaving prize, earned more by my dear Brother Anthony than by myself.'

'I can only conclude,' Gresham replied, 'that given your own ranking of your good judgement, any regard you have for me is also a doomed misjudgement. Am I then the leading contender for the post of seventh disaster?'

Bacon joined in the laughter. 'Just as those who cook with the Devil need a long spoon, so you'd be as well advised to try and fly without wings as to nail your colours to any part of me. But no, what I want from you, if you're willing to grant it, is simple enough. I wish you to read my book. Then, if you think there's any sense in it at all, I wish you to give five copies to the five people in Cambridge for whose learning and judgement you have the most respect.'

'Just as you say it's not a good thing for a lawyer to have brains or morals, so these commodities aren't always in the most supply at the High Tables of Cambridge or Oxford. You trust me, a bastard and an ex-soldier, to make such a judgement?'

'As for the bastard, the ex-soldier or the many other things I hear you might be, I've no knowledge except what you tell me. Yet I've some feeling for another creature who bears your name.'

'And who might that be, Sir Francis?' enquired Gresham lightly.

'The author of Machiavelli's Choice, and also the author of Sonnets on the Source of Power.'

To the best of Gresham's knowledge his pamphlet on Machiavelli had been circulated secretly in Cambridge to the tune of only a hundred copies, with no way of tracing the authorship back to Gresham. He had been new on the scene at Cambridge in those days, and wished to test the water of the town before making his commitment to it, to Oxford or even to Wittenburg. Seemingly within days it had been the talk of every High Table, generating considerable excitement and a surprising measure of agreement and approbation. The Sonnets had been even more privately circulated, in manuscript and never printed. John Donne had sniffed and said nothing when he read them, so Gresham had known they were good. Bacon was very well informed, or capable of inspired guesswork.

So Bacon knew. So it was done. Leave the past behind. Do not fight what cannot be changed. Gresham rarely spent time making decisions. Life was for living, for deciding, and not for thinking. Showing no shock at Bacon's knowledge, he simply said, 'I'll take the books, Sir Francis, with gratitude, and will do as you wish, provided I like what I read.' He smiled broadly at Bacon. 'If not, I fear I will cast the books as deep as you think your reputation has sunk!'

'Worry not,' said Bacon, 'reputations are shallow, meaningless things, but like all things insubstantial they can rise as easily as they can sink.'

Gresham took another decision. 'Sir Francis, while we're here you might perhaps answer one question that is concerning me at the present time…'

Bacon looked up, pleased with the outcome of the exchange, invigorated by the dialogue. 'Of course,' he said.

'Why has my Lord Cecil tasked me with finding damning evidence of unnatural practices on your part?'

The colour drained from Bacon's face, and his mouth snapped open. There was presumably a tongue inside it, but it was finding it the Devil's own work to make a noise. 'He… I…'

The surly servant bumbled up to the table, looked witheringly at Gresham, and heaved a goblet of wine at his master. Bacon drank deeply, coughed only slightly, and returned to earth.

'As I think I've made clear, I wasn't aware that Cecil had any such designs — and, indeed, can think of no reason why he should do so. I pose no threat to him at present.'

Ruthless? Ambitious? Capable of deceiving? Almost certainly all three, Gresham thought, but somehow not corrupt, and, to Gresham at least, not dangerous. Gresham took another decision.

'Sir Francis, I don't know what you do between your sheets, or between the sheets of others, and frankly I don't care, provided you keep out from under my sheets. Tell me, if I were to pursue this chase Cecil has set me on, would I find a truth that would rock Church and State on its heels, and see you in a court not as a lawyer but as a criminal?'

The eyes of the two men locked together for what seemed a very long time. Bacon spoke first.

'You would find an impending marriage the heat of which wouldn't raise the temperature of a drop of Thames water by a single degree — and might even freeze it. You would find a man for whom talk with women has never been easy. You would find a lonely man, Henry Gresham, more lonely than you might imagine, who surrounds himself with young male servants who cheat him and run him riot and drink and eat him dry, but who fill the air with laughter, excitement and energy. And if some of those young men keep him company at times, then there's no force to it, no violence, and there's comfort for a lonely man and I think something not without a certain value for the young men, if they so choose. I don't mean money, Sir Henry, but something softer. Is that hard for you to understand, with your fine strong girl by your side?'

'No, Sir Francis,' spoke Gresham, softly, his gaze still locked into Bacon's, 'it's easy to understand, for I have been there also, albeit only once.' Bacon's eyebrows rose. Gresham broke the look, and got to his feet.

'You'll hear no more of this from me. I'll tell Cecil you were left in a cornfield as a child by mistake and had an unfortunate meeting with a reaper and a very sharp scythe.' Gresham applied his most serious expression to his face. Bacon, whose hazel eyes had twinkled at the thought of the reaper, assumed an equally serious expression. 'But, Sir Francis, will I get six more of your volumes if I forbear to tell Cecil about the sheep?'

Bacon's laughter followed him out of the room. A man in need of laughter, thought Gresham, and a man starved of it for too often and for too long.

A couple of young nobles had joined the supper party when Gresham returned, of families whose fathers had not gained the pox from their horses, and Jane was at the centre of a crowd of admirers. Her dark eyes sparkled more brilliantly than the jewels that adorned her, the rise of her breasts and the flick of her head to remove a ringlet from out of vision accentuating the raw sensuality she carried almost, but not quite, unconsciously. Beautiful women are so often spoilt, mused Gresham. They know their beauty, they are flattered by it and they use it, as they are made to feel superior by it. But you, my Jane, simply accept your beauty and take no credit for it. You believe in yourself, girl, but not so that others must suffer for your belief. She glanced at Gresham to gain his approval. He grinned at her, pathetically pleased that his opinion mattered to this creature who had him in her thrall.

'What, drunk again, my lady?' he riposted, and she laughed full out loud at the nonsense and the heady excitement of it all, forgetting in the face of him the icy detachment she favoured at Court.

No-one paid any attention to the King, who was following his usual practice of seeming to woo the ladies sat near to him at the same time as veering frequently into appalling rudeness and acid attacks on their kind. The Spanish Ambassador was nowhere to be seen.

Clouds of wet smoke began to drift out over the courtyards and artificial lake created by the workmen, sign that the masque was about to begin. Not all the musicians were drunk, and in the light evening air they made quite a passable noise, Gresham thought. Sufficient wisps of smoke were persuaded on to the lake for at least a suggestion of mystery to be created. A huge gate at the far end of the lake opened silently, and with no visible sign of propulsion the gilded boat drew out from the gate with the flimsily clad figure of Faith in the prow. Large towers rose up from the lake as the ship passed by — Inigo had excelled himself, as every one actually worked — and a choir joined in with the musicians to herald the progress of the boat. It was all rather jolly, thought Gresham to his surprise, as lights sprang up around and on the lake, and he found himself admiring both the ingenuity of his friend and the music, whose composer he did not know.

James, without his Queen, awaited the arrival of the first boat in a gilded palace erected at the other end of the lake. He was drunk, but not embarrassingly so, taking short but frequent sips from his jewel-encrusted goblet. There was spittle on his mouth: some said his tongue was over-large, causing him to dribble.

Inigo Jones had come to stand by Gresham.

"Not bad, eh?' he nudged, and then his face sagged. 'Oh no. Dear Christ, no…'

A whoosh of flame came from the barriers between the lake and the bonfires. Something like two dying snakes curled up and flopped over, smoking at the edges. They were the ropes destined to haul back the first boat as it sped towards the King, slowing it down and finally drawing it to a decorous halt by the landing stage under the King's viewing platform where Faith could descend and deliver a beautiful, if over-lengthy, speech to the King. Instead of slowing down it sped on with seemingly ever-increasing speed. Faith began visibly to lose faith, at least in things worldly, lost her lines and began to look round in anguish for someone to do something to stop Faith turning into Despair. This did gain the attention not only of many more of the assembled throng, but also of increasing numbers of the musicians who lost the beat and increasingly played their piece as if its finish was a race where there might be five minutes' difference between first and last.

A peasant girl would have shown more mettle in a crisis, but Lady Broadway had been slapped into playing the role of Faith by her husband, who desperately needed the King's favour. She started to scream and flap her hands, reducing most of the audience to fits of laughter. The boat crunched into the landing stage and she was flung forward through the air, landing tumbling head-first almost into the King's lap, head over heels, her masque dress over her head and showing clearly that my Lady wore no undergarments. The King, who looked fuddled, seemed hardly to notice. There was a cheer from a group of drunken courtiers as Lady Broadway, like her vessel battered but not-yet sinking, somehow rose to her feet and tried to deliver a garbled version of her speech.

To thou, Great Guardian of Our Faith, Preserver of our country's peace…'

Gresham looked down at Jane, who was laughing with such violent physical force that she looked like to burst out of her own dress.

'Well,' said Gresham, 'that was good. I wonder what comes next?'

The remainder of the masque went without interruption, the climax being the delivery of the empty-headed Queen Anne as Charity to her husband. The King clearly believed charity began at home, and left his rostrum almost as soon as his Queen had landed and delivered him an extravagant kiss.

There was a tap on Gresham's wrist. He turned, half expecting to see old Thomas. Instead it was one of the young Scots Lords, half drunk, who through an accent thick as alcohol-soaked ship's timber intimated that His Majesty wished to see Henry Gresham and his niece.

The King was in the Great Hall, rather than the Presence Chamber, a blazing fire sending most of its heat up the chimney and the chill of a foggy summer night beginning to creep into the room.

'Good evening to you, Sir Henry Gresham. I hope you and your… niece…' his gimlet eyes flickered over Jane, 'have supped and dined well?' He spoke the 'Sir' as if it were 'Sair', the accent thickening the more he spoke.

The words were slurred, but only slightly so. The man had a strange mix of muscularity — no-one who rode to hounds as often as he did could fail to be fit — and the same sense of a warped body that came from Cecil.

Gresham bowed low, to match Jane's deep curtsey.

'Your Majesty, we are humbled and inspired in equal measure by your Highness's generosity and benevolence to your humble subjects. Your Majesty affords us great honour by your hospitality.'

Well, I managed to say 'humble' twice, 'Majesty' twice and Highness once, thought Gresham. Not bad.

'I hear you have been of good service to Our State in times past, Sir Henry.'

Ears around the Hall pricked at this. Many of the time-servers were either unconscious of spewing their guts up in their favoured location, or banging at their whores, but the professional power-brokers would neither have drunk too much nor expect to go to bed before His Majesty. There was no sign of Cecil, Gresham noted, but those who reported to him would be sprinkled throughout the Hall.

'What little I have done can never be enough, Your Majesty. Those of us who can offer some small service only regret it is not more.'

Will Shadwell really regrets he could not do more. Like stay alive. Do you know how many die to keep you informed, you Scottish runt?

'Aye,' replied the King, belching delicately into an ornately ruffed sleeve. 'Yet tell me, Sir Henry, why are you alone of my subjects not beating a path to my door requesting favour? We do not see you at court, Henry Gresham. I see no letters from you pleading for advancement.'

The King was rumoured to despise those who did not come to him begging. The endless requests he received — and granted — for largesse were flattering to his soul, confirmation of his power.

Oh God, why I do get into these conversations!

'Sire, it is true I have done work for your State and Kingdom…'

Well, everyone's State, if the truth be known — but truth and Kingship ne'er did sit easily side by side.

'… which work has been its own reward.'

Well, that was true enough. It had to be, of necessity, for the likes of

Gresham. The miserable bastards Walsingham, Burghley and Cecil had not paid for so much as a horseshoe.

'It is also work that has needed little advertisement, and perhaps been best done quietly and discreetly. As for advancement, Fate has been kind to me. I have what I need to be content.'

'Would that the rest of my subjects felt so!' exclaimed James, sipping at the wine in the jewel-encrusted goblet he held in his hand. It was difficult to know if his enthusiasm was genuine or counterfeit.'His hand was fine, white, delicate, Gresham noticed.

'May I say more, Your Majesty?'

'Aye,' replied the King, gazing at Gresham from under hooded lids, 'you may indeed, man.' The Scottish accent had become more marked. The Scottish Court was rumoured to be far more informal than the English Court, and James exchanged words with his servants as well as his courtiers at mealtimes.

'It is in the nature of Kingship for the servant to ask of the master. Yet the good servant knows that the master who gives without being asked gives with twice the heart he might otherwise have done.'

And take that up your tight Scottish arse and do with it what you will.

King James I of All England, the first man in history to have had actual sovereignty over the two nations of Scotland and England, gazed speculatively at Gresham. This man is not drunk, thought Gresham, merely liberated by alcohol. Nor is he stupid. No, very far from stupid.

'I go shortly to Oxford. I must not offend by seeming to neglect the great University of Cambridge. Does Granville College have rooms fit for a King?'

'There is no room in the land fit for Your Majesty,' said Gresham, bowing low again.

You creeping little toad. When in Whitehall, do as the sycophants do… Yet Gresham was surprised to see a glint of humour in the King's eyes, recognising the ironic flattery for what it was.

'But certain, Your Highness, if such rooms do not exist now they will do so by the time Your Majesty grants us the honour of Your presence.'

'So be it.' The interview was ended, not impolitely. 'I shall visit you, Henry Gresham. You are near to my hunting lodge at Royston, are you not, in Cambridge? I bid you and your beautiful niece God speed and a safe journey home to your fine house on the Strand.'

Gresham let out a long breath as they emerged from the Great Hall.

'What was all that about?' asked a bemused Jane.

'I think he wants you as his mistress, and was just looking to see if you fitted the bill, so to speak,' said Gresham, and received a poke in the ribs for his pains. 'Mind you, looking at you now, it's probably the House he wants, as being more beautiful and certainly more valuable…'

‘I didn't like the sound of "your fine house on the Strand",' said Jane. 'It's ten to one he wants it for one of his stinking Lords.'

They mounted their barge and set off back to the House. The four men had drunk but were not drunk, Gresham was pleased to see. The river was a dangerous place at best of times, and in pitch dark with a fog it was more dangerous than ever. The torches set all round their boat gave each of the men a halo as the flickering light caught the moisture in the night air.

Jane curled up on to his shoulder, wrapped in a vast boat cloak. He looked fondly down on her dark head, and softly began to sing to her, a song by Tom Campion.

'Come you pretty fake-eyed wanton. Leave your pretty smiling. Think you to escape me now With slippery words beguiling…'

She turned her head to look up at him. 'I've no desire to escape, my Lord,' she said solemnly, 'unless you have truly novel plans for the remainder of this night.'

Gresham laughed softly, and then suddenly stopped.

The sound of fierce rowing came to them from somewhere very near on the river, regular, hard splashes in the water, even the sound of men exhaling hard, grunting with effort. Six, possibly eight men, rowing hard in the fog and yet with some skill, and showing no light — there was no missed stroke there, but a hard, regular and practised rhythm. Coming nearer, as far as the fog would allow noise and location to be identified.

Gresham stood and exchanged glances with Mannion. He nodded.

'Douse and arm! Douse and arm!' he hissed to his four men. He turned to Jane. 'Down, down! Into the middle of the boat. Crouch as low as you can, and cover yourself with the cloak.'

Other women would have screamed or asked fool questions. Jane merely nodded, and crouched down low in the boat's centre.

The boat moved gently, rocking in the swell.

Gresham's boat crew were well trained. A rich man's boat at night on the river was fair game to the river pirates, and Gresham's men had often needed to row him into situations where good manners mattered less than sharp blades and a stout heart. The torches at the prow, stern and sides were doused. The men set their oars at the rest position, and scrabbled in the central locker for the crossbows that were kept there, passing one apiece to Mannion and to Gresham. The crossbow was a good, one-shot weapon for the sort of engagement they might face. Once wound there was no need to draw the arm back to fire, merely a trigger to pull and release the short, lethal bolt. The trajectory was flat, ideal for short-range work, release was instant if the weapon was pre-wound, and it could then be discarded for the short boat axe that the lockers also carried. A sword was too long for the close work that fighting on a small deck required, a dagger too short. A heavy, double-sided short axe was ideal, allowing the fighter to carve his way through an enemy and knock aside, with a long knife in his other hand for really close work.

The men shipped the oars, silently, only a rustle of cloth and foot on board betraying their presence. The crossbows were well maintained, and wound without the infuriating screech that would have given them away. They drifted in silence, the fog and the darkness blinding them, the only sound the lapping of the water on the boat's hull. Both shores were too far away for what dim light might be showing there to penetrate the mist. If they kept this drifting up for too long they would be swept through, or more like smashed on to, the arches of London Bridge.

The enemy had given themselves away by stopping as soon as the torches had been doused. A nobleman hurrying home would have continued on his way. A large, expertly rowed craft showing no light and coming up from behind, and presumably marking them on their torches, that stopped when they did? It was after one thing: them.

Gresham motioned silently to Mannion to put over the tiller, sending them towards the Southwark bank and away from home. In the dark the other boat would have to move in one direction or another if it was to find its prey. Gresham, guessed the other boat would assume he would steer towards the left bank, not towards the darker and more uninhabited right bank.

He guessed wrongly. There was a sudden explosion of water and noise of rowers starting up. A large wooden prow appeared from nowhere out of the mist, smashing into their hull. Perhaps a sudden break in the mist had given their position away. Gresham would never know. A grapnel was flung over and stuck into their hull, and the eight men on the other boat made a mad rush to board.

He exults in this, Jane thought, as the boats crashed together with a splintering blow. The deck lurched up beneath them. Gresham's head was flung back, and he swept up the crossbow with a roar almost of glee. Loosing its bolt, he flung it downwards and hurled himself with maniac force towards the enemy, sword upraised.

The attackers were at a disadvantage in that first moment. The torches had been doused long enough for Gresham's men to gain some night vision. The enemy had made a mistake by hitting them bow-on and not drawing up alongside. The bow of the other boat only allowed two men to stand and jump from their vessel on to the other craft. The crazy movement of both boats affected the attackers, who had to jump, more than it did Gresham's men. The enemy were silhouetted for a brief instant. One of Gresham's men, the youngest, fired high and wildly, but the other three bolts stung home in the flesh and bone of the first two attackers, sending one screaming backwards into the well of his own boat and the other into the river. Six remaining.

Gresham and Mannion held their fire for the briefest instant. The man who had fallen back into his boat caused the others coming behind to stumble momentarily while they found their feet in the rocking vessel. Gresham shot to the left, Mannion to the right. It was an old routine. One man died instantly, with the bolt through his neck. The other twisted at the last second and the bolt went through his right arm. Weakened, then, but not to be ignored.

Four remaining, with one wounded.

A blow from one of the boarders, who seemed to be wielding a mixture of clubs, swords and daggers, felled the youngest of Gresham's crewmen instantly, yet the unexpected crossbow fire had reversed the odds. A scything blow from Harry, who captained the barge, sent one of the boarders off into the river, another from young Will opened up another's face from left to right, slicing through the left eye and releasing a fountain of blood that appeared black against the white skin of the man's face.

Two left, with one wounded. The fight was over.

Mannion had not left his position in the stern. Gresham had moved down into the well of the boat, behind his men, standing over Jane. He felt rather than saw the slight tugging behind him, the deck moving in a different way beneath his feet. He swung round to see three bedraggled men hauling themselves out of the water from the side opposite the battle. Two of them were stumbling to their feet on the narrow deck, dripping water over the planks. The enemy had been cleverer than Gresham thought, and sent men round to the undefended side of the boat to catch them by surprise. The man with the bolt through his arm took courage when he saw his compatriots, and with a huge bellow lurched upright and hurled himself into Gresham's boat. It leaned viciously, dangerously under his weight.

Six boarders now to five defenders.

Gresham felt the battle lust come upon him. A red haze covered his vision. He lunged at one of the boarders who had not quite made it on to the deck. He twisted away, Gresham's axe landing where his wrists had been an instant before, but still held on. In making his move Gresham exposed himself to the man on his right, whose face suddenly took on the shape of a cross as a crossbow bolt penetrated his head from one side to another. His eyes crossed and an expression of total confusion came across his pock-marked face. 'Oh!' he said quietly, and sank to the deck. The man who Gresham had missed flipped over the hull and on to the deck, jumping to his feet.

Five boarders to five defenders.

Harry looked to have taken a broken arm, but was still swinging gamely with his left hand. Will and the other man were forcing their two remaining boarders back towards the bow. Mannion jumped down to join his master, throwing the crossbow he had reloaded to one side. Gresham made as to pull back for a mighty swing with his axe, saw the man opposite him start to lunge and bent aside, plunging his axe into the back of his head with a sickening thud as he fell past him.

Four attackers to five defenders.

Half turned, he saw a sight from Hell. The boat was bobbing erratically up and down, caught in the waves the battle had generated.

The enemy with the crossbow bolt in his arm was standing over the huddled bundle that was Jane, the boarding axe he had grabbed from the deck raised high above his head, a killing lust in his eyes. Blood from his wounded arm was falling, dripping into Jane's hair.

Slowly, so slowly, the arms went back over the man's head, as slowly, so slowly, Jane appeared to be bowing her head and scuffling about in her skirts. Slowly, so slowly, she flung up her beautiful head, and in her hands was a long, thin dagger of Spanish steel. Like a nun praying for an offering she clutched the dagger in both her hands and in supplication raised it to the man bending over her, thrusting it hard into his groin. His scream of dying agony ripped through the fog, brought even the fighting at the bow to a momentary halt with the animal scream of pure pain. The axe dropped to the deck, and the man toppled backwards, the dagger still inserted in his middle. Jane was clutching at the hilt like a drowning woman, sobbing with her own agony. She seemed unable to let go, and she toppled over with the man, ending lying on top of him in an awful parody of the beast with two backs.

Three attackers to five defenders, all forced now to the bow of the boat, all desperately fighting for their lives against Gresham, Mannion, Will, Jack and the wounded Harry.

In one fluid movement Gresham turned and hurled his axe forward into the forehead of the man in front of him. It clove his head near in half.

The remaining two men looked at their struck companion and dropped their weapons, raising their hands, looking beseechingly into the eyes of Gresham.

'Kill them,' said Gresham.

More screams rang out above the water.

Gresham turned to Jane. Very gently he rolled her off the corpse of the man she had killed, ignoring the frantic sobs that were shaking her whole body. Very gently he prised her fingers from off the hilt of the blood-soaked dagger, the blood already drying and sticking to both their hands. As she let go of the dagger, the man's head lolled back, mouth gaping, revealing his bare neck.

A string of beads, rosary beads, lay on the sweated hair between shoulder and neck.

Gresham placed an arm under her shoulder and picked her up in his arms, carrying her to the rear platform where only a short while earlier they had sat in so much state. The other boat still clung to them, the grapnel holding. It had splintered a V-shape in their side, above the water line, and the boats screeched as if in pain as the broken and exposed wood of both vessels rubbed against each other.

Jane was shivering as well as shaking, great racking sobs heaving through her whole body. He said nothing, as yet. He knew what was to come. Her eyes were wide, startled, endlessly moving in her head. They rested for a brief moment on the man she had killed, his head flung back in the agonised rictus of a shrieking death, the hilt of the dagger still sticking up into the night air like some awful erection.

He held her as she vomited over the side, her meal floating away silently downstream. The vomiting noises continued long after she had emptied her stomach.

'Why?' She turned to him, finally. 'Why?'

He did not answer, merely held her closer as Mannion and the others set about finding where they were and towing the other boat home.

Why, indeed.

Why was he being hunted on the river? Why was life a string of so many squalid little agonies, always ending in death, the smell of fresh blood?

He had the answer to neither question. As for the last question, it had been asked of humankind for all eternity, with no answer that he could believe.

He held Jane in his arms, mourning the death of innocence.