The Desperate remedy

Chapter 5

Gresham had lain awake during the night, his whole body tensed with anger. There were few tears left in him, and he shed none that anyone could have seen.

He knew what life was. Two thirds of a woman's children could be swept off from life before they were months old, whilst ague, palsy and the plague could bite into the wealthiest and poorest households alike with no warning. There was only one answer. Live, whilst there was life. Fight the powers that condemned men and women to know the truth of their prison yet have no means of escape. Laugh in the face of the fragility of existence.

Yet the tide of despair had swung down on him, as he had known it would, and engulfed him. The dark of the night flowed into his mind and extinguished all light. The mood came on him rarely, but when it did it threatened all that he was. He felt the pulse beating through his body, felt how frail was a human's hold on life, knew how easily the pressure of that pulse could be let out from its prison by the deftest and gentlest wielding of the knife or dagger. As the blood pounded through his head, causing an agonising pain to throb behind his eyes, the temptation to release the pressure with the sharp cleansing point of metal became almost unbearable. It was as if his blood was prisoner inside his body, screaming and pummelling to get out, as the sailors trapped between decks on the Maria had screamed and punched at the unyielding timbers in their frenzy to escape. No more pressure, no more pounding, no more pain. Release. Yet he was a coward, he told himself as he stared sightless into the dark. 'Conscience doth make cowards of us all..That man Shakespeare had it right, damn him.

His own innocence had died long since, and his survival was a matter of pride rather than of necessity. He had known in his heart that a new dawning and a first sight of the night would come to Jane, as it came to all thinking people, and that the black edge of despair would tear at her soul. The knowledge that it would come did not lessen the pain of its arrival. She had killed a man, and such a thing killed a part of the person who did the act. There was no other way. It was the way of life to demand death. So at least he would meet Jane in Hell. Yet he had reluctantly decided before the events of the previous night that any Heaven without Jane might as well be Hell for him.

He had put Jane to bed, and then gone to an old, battered chest that nowadays he rarely had cause to open. Among its contents was a bottle of a reddish fluid. The smell of it hit him as he opened it, and in a second he was back in his cot in the Lowlands, crying for the blessed liquid that would ease his pain and send him back into the numbed, drowsy state that was his only escape from suffering. The physik had been supplied by an ancient orderly. Gresham knew neither its origins nor its contents, but years later he had gone to one of the most secret and successful apothecaries in all London and described the colour, smell and taste of the physik, as well as its effect on a ravaged body and mind. The apothecary had nodded, gone to a back room and emerged with a small vial.

'What you were given was in all probability a much diminished potion than this you see here now,' he had lectured. 'Be warned. What is here is five, ten times the strength of what you had before. Taken in small measure, and only in time of strictest need, it will offer release from pain both of the body and of the mind. Yet- be warned. Taken too often, it will imprison the taker whilst appearing to release him.'

So the mixture, whatever it was, was dangerous to know, should only be taken sparingly and if the dangers were ignored would destroy you. Not a bad emblem for his dealings with Cecil, thought Gresham. He forced a minimal dose down Jane's barely resisting throat, and left her. He knew that her drug-induced sleep would fade into a more natural slumber, and that the twin healers of time and sleep would allow her not to forget what had happened, but to accept it and still live on. In time. For the pain in that time he. could do little, except help her over the first hurdle.

That done and Jane settled, he posted Martha by her bedside and took himself off to think.

Someone had tried to kill them on the river, that much was clear. Simple robbery? Gresham doubted it. There were easier pickings on the river that night, far easier than a boat manned by six sturdy men. The attacking boat had gone straight for them. It had been well-manned, heavy-built, expensive. This was not an attempted robbery. It was an attempted assassination.

There were too many men, and some women, who might want Henry Gresham dead. There had been a rosary bead on Shadwell's corpse, and Shadwell’s final meeting had been with the Catholic Percy. There was a rosary round the neck of the ruffian who had tried to kill Jane. Had Gresham come too close to a new Catholic plot, first through Will Shadwell and then by means of Moll, and made himself their target? Or had he offended Bacon? Did Cecil want him dead, despite the papers that Gresham's death would release? Had someone found out his role in the Essex rebellion, and sought to take revenge in the name of the dead leader? Or had one of the Spaniards flooding the Court after the peace treaty found out about his involvement in the Armada, and decided that to exact vengeance on water would be sweet revenge for the loss of so many Spaniards and so much prestige? The Spaniards were the most

Catholic nation in Europe, with rosary beads enough to fill the Thames. Had King James discovered the role Gresham had played in the execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, so many years ago, an execution which had acted to blood the young Henry Gresham into the world of espionage and intrigue? Mary had been a Catholic…

There were simply too many options. Once, hiding in a ditch in Norfolk in pouring rain, a young rabbit had emerged from its burrow on the side of a dried-up stream and gambolled on the bed of the old watercourse, below Gresham. He had welcomed the animal, feeling in it an unspoken companion and noting that his cover must be good if the rabbit had not realised his presence. Then, swollen with the torrential rain, a dyke had burst and a small, rumbling wall of water torn down the old path of the stream. There were four, five, perhaps even six ways up from the bed, and Gresham willed the rabbit to run up one of them to safety. Yet the number of choices seemed to confuse the animal, which was still looking, stopping and starting when the water hit it and tumbled it along in its path, sucking it against one too many boulders. Its broken, twisted body lay there until the crows had plucked half its flesh off through the wet fur. Too many choices confused a man, as they had confused the rabbit. It was not movement that killed, but staying still. Someone was forcing an issue with Gresham. Someone wanted him dead. He must decide who it was.

Concentrate! Will Shadwell's murder had started it all and a supper with a drunken Thomas Percy. Whatever he had heard there sent him running pell-mell off to Cambridge, and triggered his killing. Percy had command over men, was ruthless and would murder in an instant if he thought it would serve his own ends or ensure his survival. Had Percy ordered Shadwell's murder, regretting what he had told him, and Gresham's murder, fearing what he might find out? Percy was newly and surprisingly appointed to the King's bedchamber. He could have wished to kill Gresham as a Catholic fearful of the exposure of some plot, or perhaps even on the orders of the King.

Shadwell’s ring linked Sam Fogarty to the murder, and because he was Cecil's creature linked it directly to Cecil himself. Yet it could be dangerous to draw too many conclusions from that. Gresham knew at least two nobles who were taking money from both the Spanish Catholics and the Lowland Protestants, and a rogue such as Sam could have two, three or four masters. Sam Fogarty was a Northumbrian. Was he in the pay of the arch Catholic, the Earl of Northumberland, as well as in Cecil's pay? Or was Sam Fogarty's true master the Catholic faith, and was he a spy in Cecil's household for that faith, as well as a spy for Cecil in Gresham's household? If Fogarty was a religious fanatic then the chances of Gresham getting the truth out of him were slim indeed. Men who were prepared to die on a bonfire for their faith, and who feared the fires of Hell if they betrayed it, often could not be broken even by torture.

If Cecil wanted Gresham dead he would have been better off leaving him in Cambridge, where his only servant was Mannion and where a drunken student could climb into College under cover of dark, never mind an assassin. Yet Cecil had called him to London, to live in the well-guarded House, and where even on the river he was guarded by sturdy and loyal men. Cecil had much to lose by Gresham's death and too many secrets that risked exposure, but how much did he have to lose if the King his master had ordered Gresham's death? Now there would be a conundrum for his Lordship! Ordered to kill Gresham and out of favour if he failed, but very much out of favour if he succeeded and Gresham's papers became public knowledge. Cecil was devious enough to try and satisfy his master and keep Gresham alive by arranging a murder attempt, but ensuring that it failed. Yet if his assailants on the river had been in any way uncommitted to their task, Gresham had seen no sign of it.

One coincidence struck Gresham as too obvious to be dismissed.

Shadwell and Percy had dined in The Dagger. Shortly afterwards, Shadwell had been murdered. And where had Gresham chosen to go almost as soon as he could after seeing Cecil? To The Dagger, to meet the most notorious purveyor of information in London. Shortly afterwards, someone had tried to murder him. Visits to The Dagger were clearly very unhealthy propositions at present, and not only because of the quality of the ale. If Thomas Percy was behind the murder of Shadwell, Gresham's visit to The Dagger must have sounded every alarum bell in the man's head. What if Percy believed Shadwell had left a message for Gresham, writing down secretly whatever it was as insurance in case he never reached Gresham? What if Shadwell had told Moll whatever it was he had learnt, knowing it was only a matter of time before she met Gresham? It was time Moll left town, even if only as a precaution. She and The Dagger were too close to this fire for it not to burn her sooner or later, and he had too much affection and need for Moll to want to see her share Shadwell's fate.

Gresham roused Mannion, who slept on an old army mattress by Gresham's bedroom door. Hastily he scribbled a note by the flickering light of the candle.

'Here, take this to The Dagger, to Moll. Don't leave before you see it in her hands. Go armed, and wake three men to go with you.'

It was two o'clock, with not even the bakers nor the milkmaids stirring, but Mannion did not question his orders. He gave a simple nod, and left. If Moll Cutpurse had any sense she would be gone from London by dawn, or hidden in some rat-infested warren in the City where even the King or a Catholic God could not find her. She would know when to emerge. Her kind always did. Would whoever the murderer was have gone for her already? He doubted it. A killing on the river, shrouded in fog, was one thing. It would take longer to flush Moll out of her den, cunning vixen that she was, and longer even than that to mount an assault on The Dagger, with Moll's private army of ruffians around her.

He was no nearer an answer, though if Moll took his advice he might at least have stopped another murder.

Should he have kept one of his attackers alive? In terms of Gresham's code of conduct the answer was clearly no. Life was the cheapest of all commodities. There was a simple rule for such piracy, as there was for the footpads who preyed in gangs on many roads: kill, or be killed. From the moment that prow had appeared out of the fog every person on board both boats, except poor Jane, knew that no quarter would be given. He killed only those who sought to kill him. It was life and the nature of death. In terms of information, would preserving one have helped? Probably not, he mused. Of course one of them could have been persuaded to talk. Any man could be persuaded to talk, given time. Yet torture could easily make men talk not the truth, but what they thought their interrogator wanted to hear. Under torture truth became less important than the release from pain. Gresham doubted any of the men even knew who their employer was. The boat would have been picked up from an anonymous wharf, the leader of the men recruited by a nameless nonentity in a back room in some ordinary or cheap tavern, and the leader then left to recruit his crew. Whoever had planned this attack was no amateur.

The key was a series of names, the names provided by Moll: Thomas Percy had in some way to be the key, and his name led to the others: Tom Wintour, Robert Catesby, Kit and Jack Wright. They were all Catholics, all members of the ill-fated Essex rebellion. Something one of them knew had caused someone, possibly one of them, to mount one murder and try another. What was the cause on which they were meeting? What did they know that had to be kept at all costs from Henry Gresham?

He needed a way in to that group. He needed a lever, a way of prising open the door to this group and letting his ears and eyes into their dealings. He waited in silence, allowing the candle to gutter and die, until the first flush of dawn streaked the sky and he heard Mannion return.

'She's not a woman that likes to be woken up, master, that's for sure!' Mannion seemed undisturbed by being awakened in the small hours, and sent halfway across London with no breakfast.

'If she takes my warning she won't be going back to bed tonight. She's at the root of all this, or at least The Dagger is…' Gresham explained briefly his thinking and the conclusions it had led him to.

'This pack of Catholics is the key, the names she gave us. I must find out what they know. Every cutpurse and vagabond, every spy and traitor, every whoremonger we know -1 want them all on the trail of these names. I want to know when they launder their linen and where they throw the piss from their chamber pots… and work through those few we know we can trust. We mustn't be linked to these enquiries. And we must move fast!'

Mannion nodded. This vast trawling for information looked as if it might be the biggest they had undertaken, but its principles and its urgency were not new. Yet despite that urgency, he did not move immediately.

'Master?' Mannion was unusually hesitant. Gresham turned to him, expectantly. Mannion spoke slowly, as if he had given the matter much thought.

'She's young. She's strong. She's more than in love. She's given herself to you. She'll survive anything. Except your despair.'

Gresham thought for a moment.

Must I forever hide, he thought for a brief moment. Then the moment passed.

'Thank you,' he said, simply. The two men, divided by age and by breeding, locked eyes with each other. Words and thoughts for which no language had been invented passed between them in an instant. It was all that was needed.

Gresham became brisk, businesslike. He gazed at Mannion thoughtfully, and spoke with a light-heartedness he did not feel.

'I've no doubt you'll have been bragging about the twenty men you killed on the river?'

For once, Mannion did not respond with a grin. Too serious for that, master. I've been in fights enough, you know as well as I. But it was a close-run thing last night, too close. Someone wants us dead, and they don't mind who else they kill in doing it. It was different, seeing her involved.'

'Who wants us dead? Who is it this time?'

Mannion did let a grin light his face, then. 'Why, there's no shortage, is there? It's a fine job you've done of offending just about everybody, in this country and half of Europe, and you not halfway through your natural life as yet.'

'Be serious, old man. You must have your thoughts, as I've mine.'

'I don't think,' said Mannion firmly. 'I just do. That's what I'm best at. I leave the thinking to you.'

'But you have a nose on you, don't you? Who do you smell in all this? Percy and his Catholic brood? The King? Cecil? Spaniards?' Gresham issued the names as if he was punching the air with them.

'My nose tell me this one stinks to high heaven. And there's only one person I know who stinks that much. Cecil. He's in it somewhere, I'll warrant.'

'If Cecil's the one who wants me dead, he must think he can bear exposure from the papers I have lodged in Rome. Does that bring any of our recent visitors to mind?'

'Tom Barnes?' responded Mannion.

Tom Barnes was a devious, sideways-looking rat of a man, servant to one of the greatest villains in London, Tom Phelippes. Phelippes was a forger, code-breaker and general villain to the Government, who had tried one intrigue too far against his masters, and was now residing in less than comfort in the Tower of London. He had been betrayed by his servant Barnes, who had a disturbing habit of turning up on his master's business at midnight and banging on the downstairs shutters of the house he was visiting, instead of the door. Gresham had received just such a visit shortly before his departure to Cambridge, and shortly before Barnes had betrayed his master. Barnes had brought with him, and demanded a pretty price for, one letter in particular which he had stolen from his master's desk. That same letter was still under the boards in Gresham's Cambridge rooms. Gresham had been about to take the matter up with Phelippes himself when the man had suddenly been removed to the Tower.

'Well now,' mused Gresham, 'I think Mr Barnes and his papers are suddenly explained to me, in a way that was not clear before.'

'Are we going to the Tower?' asked Mannion.

'Yes,' said Gresham simply. 'We must.'

'Can we have breakfast first?' asked Mannion.

The Tower of London stood guard grimly over the eastern section of the City walls, where they joined with the Thames. They went by boat, the only sensible way to travel such a distance. Gresham had four armed men come with him. He had not won a pitched battle on the river to be wiped out in some street skirmish. Rather than using one of the House's own vessels, with no Harry fit to take command, Mannion stood by the House's jetty and cried, 'Eastward Ho!' Knowing Gresham's mind, he dismissed several boats, vying for the rich trade of the great houses on the Strand, until one with a young head came in sight.

'Do you land, or do you shoot the arches?' enquired the young man, grinning at his passengers. The hundreds, thousands of men who plied their trade on the river were as filthy with their mouths as they were with their clothes and bodies. This one looked almost healthy. Most people landed before the bridge, picking the boat up again if needs be after it had leapt through the narrow stone arches of London Bridge.

'We go the fast way,' said Gresham firmly. Young as he was, the boatman was both strong and skilled. There were feet on either side of them as they shot through one of the narrow arches of London Bridge, the speed and the danger as exhilarating to Gresham as it always was.

They smelt the Tower before they saw it. A permanent dispute existed between the Lord Mayor and the Lieutenant of the Tower over the City's draining of the town ditch into the Tower ditch. The dispute had been raised to a new level when the City had opened the sluices that let all the sewage from the Minories into the town ditch and so into the Tower ditch. The stink was vile, and even the hardened inhabitants of the Tower were gagging for sweet water. He left the four men to await his return by the postern gate, and took Mannion in with him.

He remembered the first time he had gone to see Raleigh after his farcical, trumped-up trial. Here was the man who had taken on the might of Spain and defeated it, a man with the mind of a scholar, the tongue of a poet and the heart of a lion. A lesser person would have been in tears, and Gresham knew that Raleigh had already tried to take his life. Yet there was no sign of that in the man sitting quietly at his writing desk in the Bloody Tower where he was lodged, still dressed in Court finery. He had raised an eyebrow as Gresham had entered the room.

'Well, my friend, how goes the world with you?'

'I'd thought rather to ask the question of you,' Gresham had replied.

'With me? Why, as you can see, all is well. The thickest walls in England protect me from my enemies…' he motioned to the environs of the Tower around them, 'and I have my wife and son at my side.'

He called out and Bess, the early cause of his troubles with Queen Elizabeth, came into the low-ceilinged room, wiping her hands. She was pale and hollow-eyed, but her face lit up as she saw and greeted Gresham. Bess Raleigh had mothered many more men than her own son, and saw Gresham as a favoured, albeit wayward, stepson.

'My Lord,' said Gresham, 'how can this be?' Raleigh gave a dry, gentle laugh.

'How can it be that I'm accused of being a traitor in league with Spain after having spent all my life fighting that country? How can it be that I'm convicted in a trial where the only evidence is retracted and I'm never allowed to confront my accuser? How can it be that one of my oldest allies and friends seems to be my chief accuser, the man whose sickly child my own dear wife helped to nurture and feed?'

Bess smiled at the mention of the boy she had treated as her own. Cecil's sickly son had been welcomed into the warmth of Bess Raleigh's household and brought up alongside her own bawling bundle of extreme good health.

'Why, my friend, the answer is simple. I'm a mortal being, and I live in the world God has created. And I have pride.'

He was not standing, Gresham realised, because he could not stand. The strain upon him, recent illness and his attempt on his own life had left him too weak to stand. The body had come near to being broken. The spirit, Gresham realised with an upsurge in his heart, was very much alive.

Raleigh's pride and arrogance had made him many enemies, but the wits at Court were saying that he was now the only man whose guilty verdict at trial had proved him innocent in the eyes of the great mass of people. The numbers queuing up in the hope of seeing him, on the narrow walk by the Bloody Tower that fronted the river, had swelled, until it seemed that every person of note in London was lining up hoping to see the great man, the last of the Elizabethans. The Bloody Tower itself still smelt of the new building work and fresh timber brought in to accommodate such a distinguished prisoner. A prison, thought Gresham, needs no bars.

Two years now into his imprisonment, Raleigh welcomed Gresham warmly. Mannion he clapt on the shoulder, thrusting a bottle and a fine silver drinking goblet into his hand.

'Here, you great Goliath, take this out on to the river walk and shout out that you're the great Sir Walter Raleigh!'

Mannion grinned and left, closing the door behind him.

'And as for you,' he continued, turning to Gresham, 'drink this.' Raleigh offered a beaker to Gresham.

'Water?' asked Gresham. 'Drink it and see.'

Gresham took a reluctant sip, tasting the fluid on his lips and mouth. There was a slightly brackish, unpleasant tang to it, but it seemed wholesome enough.

'Don't worry!' roared Raleigh in laughter, seeing the expression of distaste on Gresham's face. 'It won't kill you, or at least it hasn't killed me this week past. It's nectar, young fellow Do you know what it is?'

'Is that a question in rhetoric, or one I'm expected to answer?' said Gresham dryly.

'That fine fluid you're guzzling was once sea water. Sea water, mind! The water that taunts mariners on their longest voyages, those mariners who're dying of thirst but yet can't partake of the water that surrounds them. Imagine what it could mean for exploration not to have to take casks of water aboard, to take your very drinking water from the sea itself…'

'Is your concern the health of the mariners, or the extra looted Spanish treasure you could cram on board in place of the water casks?' asked Gresham innocently.

'Both!' roared Raleigh, rocking back on his heels with an explosion of mirth. 'It's my ability to combine the practical and the spiritual that marks me out as a great seaman!'

'It's my ability to agree with my master that makes me such a good servant,' replied Gresham. 'Even if it means lying like the Devil.'

Raleigh was in the best of moods, his huge energy refusing to be constrained. As well as writing a History of the World he had a chemistry laboratory in a room a short way off from the Bloody Tower, where he had concocted the brackish water from a sample of sea water.

'Time,' he told Gresham, 'time is what I need. The process for the distillation is not right yet — it works only one in five, six times — and the machinery is too cumbersome and yet too fragile ever to set to sea. No point in having fresh water only until the first blow lays the ship on its side. And time, time is what my Lord Cecil and His Majesty the King have given me in plenty!'

'Time is what someone is trying to take away from me…'

Gresham revealed to Raleigh what he knew, and what his fears were.

A sombre expression fell over Raleigh's face.

'You're right, there are too many names,' he said. 'And Sir Walter Raleigh is hardly the person to ask for advice in evading an enemy's clutches,' he said ruefully. 'One thing's clear, you need to get inside this Papist crew. But that'll take time. The man Fogarty — Sam, was it? — will be of no use to you. He's either Cecil's man, in which case he'll be more frightened of Cecil than you, or a Catholic, in which case he'll be more frightened of Northumberland or God. Tom Phelippes, now, he might be an answer. You say this man Barnes, this servant of his, brought you letters? Incriminating letters? Then Phelippes is your man. Try not to kill him, will you? It does seem to be getting something of a habit with you.'

'Is he a friend of yours?' asked Gresham, startled.

‘Not a friend, but a new face, and one with some interesting tales to tell. The social circle within the Tower may be very select, but it's also somewhat restricted. Prison's worst punishment isn't loss of liberty. It's the onset of boredom. Phelippes had the look of someone who might liven up more than one evening's dinner.'

'On that basis I'll try and take off only bits that aren't life-threatening. Remember it as just another sacrifice I make for my lord and master.'

'Take care, Henry Gresham.' Raleigh was suddenly serious. 'They have me in their clutches. One free spirit is enough for them. Take care not to give them, or your Maker, another one into their power.'

This time Gresham did not make straight for the gates when he had finished with Raleigh. The guards were as slack as ever, and a small bribe allowed Gresham and Mannion into the room occupied by Thomas Phelippes. Getting out of the Tower was always much harder than getting in, but for prisoners in the Tower with their own money life was akin to that in a reasonable inn with a fractious and bad-tempered landlord. The door to Phelippes' room — or was it a cell? — was unlocked, the turnkey needing only to unlock the door that blocked the end of the dank corridor.

Phelippes' accommodation was not the best, Gresham noted. The famous prisoners in the Tower, including Walter Raleigh and his accuser and friend Lord Cobham, were kept in lodgings that had some style, and could use the Warden's garden. Phelippes was incarcerated in one of the poorer towers. The window in his cell was high in the wall and heavily barred, and there was no view out on to the garden area that the best class of prisoners could use and the next best class at least gaze out on. There seemed to be little furniture in the room.

Thomas Phelippes was a small, physically unprepossessing figure with a stoop and a pockmarked face. His origins were obscure, and he had been despised by the Court for his lack of breeding, but he had risen to be one of Walsingham's espionage chiefs by virtue of his intelligence, his ability with languages and most of all his ability to create and penetrate the most obscure ciphers.

'Good morning, Tom,' said Gresham, as cheerfully as the setting allowed. He of all people had no reason to feel cheerful in the confines of the Tower, given the various humiliations and pains he had had inflicted on his person whilst within its boundaries. Yet even without his own memories it was a dreadful place. It stank from its own ditch, and the central block of the White Tower, dating back to King William, was as blunt and as cruel a statement of power as Gresham had witnessed, a building with no concessions to form or beauty and a record of cruelty within its walls second to none. The outer walls, though representing a huge span of English history, were similarly uncompromising. The Tower was a fortress, pure and simple, a blunt instrument in the wielding of total power.

It was an evil place, a place where even music would be sucked into the darkness and silenced as so many souls had screamed soundlessly within its space.

Phelippes had risen to his feet when Gresham and Mannion entered, his features lightening for a brief instant. Then his face fell back into a worried frown, though his pleasure at his visit was still clear. Gresham noted, but did not comment on, the frown.

'Henry Gresham, by God! And that walking tree trunk of a manservant who always hangs about you! How are you, sirrah? How goes the real world about its business?'

When Walsingham had died, the empire of espionage he had built up had slowly decayed without the power at its centre. Tom Phelippes had been left in the comfortable position of Collector of Subsidy, with easy bribes at hand and a comfortable house that gave him the chance to witness all those who set sail to France, and report on them to Cecil, his new master. He lived in apparent amity with Arthur Gregory, a Dorset man whose greatest ability was to open sealed letters and reseal them without the final recipient being any the wiser, and that disreputable little runt of a spy by the name of Tom Barnes. It had all seemed very happy, until of a sudden Phelippes had been whisked off to the Tower, apparently at Cecil's command, and left there.

'The world changes little, Tom,' said Gresham easily, 'and the people in it are as corrupt as ever.'

'Well, then,' laughed Phelippes, 'things don't change at all.'

He busied himself with the contents of the basket Mannion had brought with them — the best the kitchen of the House could provide, with three bottles of very speakable wine from its cellar, the best laid on top. Gresham noted the hunger with which Phelippes attacked the food.

Phelippes finished his mouthful, took a swig of wine from the cheap wooden beaker on the bare table and looked at Gresham.

'Others would talk. Ask questions. You just wait. And bring me food and wine. Why?'

'Why wait? Or why bring you food and wine?' Gresham asked. He eased himself forward on the three-legged stool on which he sat, one of the few pieces of furniture in the cell. 'I wait because you're a crafty old fox who'll tell me what you wish to tell me when you wish to tell me, and not before. I bring you food and wine because it costs me little, and because that crafty old fox helped me once in the past, and, who knows, may help me again now.'

'And what help do you need, Sir Henry, with your fine fortune, your fine house and your fine lady? What use can a crafty old fox be, if he's been locked in his lair and looks likely never to leave?'

Gresham spoke softly, without self-pity, as if relating a simple matter of fact: 'They are trying to kill me, Tom.'

A sudden silence descended in the dark, damp room. Was there just too little surprise on Phelippes' face?

'Not for my fine house, I think, nor my fortune, not even for my fine lady. I don't know why, and I don't know who. And you will know that for us, knowledge is all.'

'Aye, I know well enough,' replied Tom, his first hunger assuaged and the lure of the wine taking over. 'Or at least, I used to know. They've tried to kill you before, and will no doubt do sq again. And one day, Sir Henry Gresham, they'll succeed, as they will with all of us.'

'Why, Tom,' exclaimed Gresham cheerfully, 'if they don't succeed, God or the Devil certainly will. But before that I'd like to think I'll give them a run for their money.'

'How many have died so far?' asked Phelippes glumly, looking at Gresham with eyes that had not lost their shrewd cutting edge.

'On my side, just the one. Poor Will Shadwell. Remember Will — the plague in human form, with more illnesses than a trugging house, but loyal in his own way, and worthy of a better death than drinking too much river water. As for the others, hired men, on the river, at night. They won't be the last, on present form.'

'I remember Will Shadwell. He would have died happy if he drank himself to death, but not on water. So what can this poor prisoner do for you?'

'First, tell me how you come to be here in this pit. I thought things were going well for you, before this business. Why has the wheel of fortune cast you down so readily?'

'I became idle, too comfortable. I relaxed — the one thing you have never done. I'd wind of a Papist storm brewing abroad. Too many comings and goings, from the wrong sort of people. I wrote to that damned villain Hugh Owen, calling myself Vincent, pledging myself to whatever cause he was espousing, hoping he'd reveal himself to me, and write back with something I could show to Cecil. There was no reply.'

Phelippes took another swig of wine. The bottle was already half gone.

'So I replied to my letter myself.'

'You wrote to that traitor Owen abroad… and then replied to your own letter yourself?' asked an incredulous Gresham.

A wide grin split Phelippes' ravaged face. 'Why not?' He spread his arms wide. 'A man must live, after all. Cecil wouldn't know a proper spy if one came at him and bit his arse. I put the reply in my best cipher, and called myself Benson. Benson wrote a good letter, hinting at many dark plots against Crown and Country. So I sold his letters to Cecil.'

There was an explosive laugh from Mannion, and an equal snort from Gresham.

'So you forged a letter to Owen, forged his replies and sold them to Cecil? A most economic use of material, Tom. Didn't the Lord Cecil smell a rat?'

'A rat? He smelt nothing except the sweet smell of conspiracy, and loved every second of it And then that fucking bastard, that… skive Tom Barnes stole a copy of a letter in Vincent's hand and a letter in Benson's hand — Cecil had only seen Benson's hand, you understand — and showed them to Cecil. I hadn't bothered to use a different hand. It wasn't at all part of the plan for Cecil to see

Vincent's letters. How was I to know Cecil would see samples of both handwritings, which were, of course, identical?'

'Whereupon his Lordship became… cross?' mused Gresham.

'Cross! He pissed his fine linen and sent for me straightaway, pissed all over me and with a fair dose of shite as well and sent me here, the warped devil that he is. He's no sense of humour, that man. After all I've done for him and his scurvy State!'

'Is he more cross with you by the minute? Your quality of accommodation is hardly the best the Tower can offer.'

'No, that's not Cecil. I do believe he's forgotten I'm here. It's that walking fart Waad — Sir William Waad to you — that walking fart with lumps in it. You know his Fartship is now Lieutenant of the Tower, sworn in only days ago. I could do some swearing. Raleigh and some of the important prisoners put him in a terrible mood when he inspected his new fiefdom. He's too scared to touch them, except with words, but I'm easy meat. I was moved two days ago.'

Phelippes settled back on his stool.

'Enough of me. I accept your charity with good grace, yet there must be a price. Speak. What is it you want of me?'

Gresham gazed calmly at Phelippes. They had known each other for years, and if not friends had at least been comrades in the dark, shadowy world of spies and double-dealing intrigue.

'An explanation, Tom, just an explanation.'

A film of sweat was on Phelippes' brow. It was a warm day, but the cell was dank and chill despite the heat of late summer.

'An explanation? Explanation of what?'

'Of why when your servant Tom Barnes stole letters to show to Cecil, letters you most certainly did not wish Cecil to see, he found a packet of letters which most definitely were for Cecil, one of which appeared to be in the hand of one Henry Gresham. Letters written by you, forging my handwriting and appearing in every regard to come from me. Why, you old devil, you'd even used the same paper as I use myself! Well, Tom Barnes decided to show that packet to me, instead of obeying your orders and delivering it to Cecil. He knew I paid well. You write a fine hand, Tom, particularly so when you seek to make it my hand.'

'I know nothing of…' spluttered Phelippes, real fear showing now in his eyes.

'They are interesting, these letters I seem to have written, Tom. I didn't know I was a Catholic, though my plea to the Pope to support an invasion of England to throw King James off his throne is as powerful a piece of writing as I've never put pen to.'

Not only was the letter a superb forgery. It would have discredited Gresham for ever in the eyes of the masses, showing him a mere lackey of the Spaniards and an enemy of England. With that reputation Cecil's chance of ducking whatever furore the letters in the Papal archive created would have been vastly increased. Who would believe accusations written by a traitor? And, thought Gresham, it was even cleverer than that. The very provenance of the letters giving the dirt on Cecil — letters lodged in the Papal archive — would in itself suggest that Gresham was in league with the Papacy, and therefore a traitor.

'Why, Tom?' asked Gresham, gently. 'Why help to spread false tales about me?'

‘I..'

A dagger had appeared in Gresham's hand, and Mannion had moved to be in front of the iron-bound door.

'I'll kill you, Tom Phelippes, if I have to. You do know that, don't you?' said Gresham conversationally, the fine point of the dagger resting gently on top of the table's rough planking, held vertically there by the tip of Gresham's finger.

'I know it,' said Phelippes, whose face had gone a deathly colour, the pockmarks standing out lividly on the flesh of his face, 'yet if he who gave me the orders to forge your writing kills me for telling, as he surely will, why should I not choose an easy death now?'

'Because you can never know for certain that he will kill you, or find out what you told me, but you know you are surely dead by my hand if you don't tell me.' The level gaze of Gresham's eyes held and locked Phelippes' vision. He started to blink rapidly, like as rabbit caught in the light of a flaring torch. He shook his head, a tone of defiance beginning to underpin his fear.

'You can't kill me here, Henry Gresham!' he announced. 'I've no knife, I'm searched for weapons. Only you are with me. They'll accuse you of my murder as surely as Herod was accused of the slaughter of the innocents.'

'Perhaps they would, Tom, if I were to kill you with my knife,' mused Gresham. 'But you see, you've already drunk your death in that wine I so kindly supplied, and which you were so kind to drink in such quantity. My good friend Dr Simon Forman assures me of the potency of the mixture. You've drunk your death, Thomas Phelippes — unless, that is, I care to let you drink this antidote I happen to have in my purse, within the hour.'

Gresham withdrew a thin, stoppered bottle from his purse, containing a clear fluid. Phelippes' eyes followed it, as they would a vision from Heaven or Hell. Simon Forman was rumoured to have concocted more poisons than the Borgias.

'So do you want your next drink, Tom Phelippes? Or will you have done and be content with your last drink? Your last drink ever, that is…'

'You wouldn't do this to me!' spluttered Phelippes.

'I wouldn't have done it to you, before you betrayed me. Those letters you forged in my hand are my arrest, my trial and my hanging, drawing and quartering on the block, Tom Phelippes, as you full well know. Your death would seem a fair exchange. Enough of this chatter. Do you talk, or do I leave you to die?'

'I talk. The antidote…'

'Comes when you've finished speaking. First the letters. Why?'

'Because Cecil commanded — why else do you think? And because he paid. You know the loyalties in our game. To money and to preservation. Friendship comes a long way third.'

'Your honesty does you credit. A pity it didn't come earlier. Here, you may drink from the one bottle.' Gresham tossed the glass towards him. Phelippes grasped at it convulsively, ripped the stopper out and crammed the fluid down his throat. 'It takes two bottles to stop the work of the poison. The second is there when you finish. These names. Tell me what you know. All that you know.'

Gresham tossed a piece of paper to Phelippes. On it were the names given him by Moll Cutpurse.

Tom Wintour, Robert Catesby, Kit and Jack Wright and Thomas Percy.

Phelippes looked up, startled, his professionalism temporarily overcoming his fear. 'Catholics, one and all. A set of brothers. All related, by birth or by marriage. Catesby and the Wrights were held in the Tower together in '96.'

'Tell me about each one.'

'Why, do you think I've a clerk to hand?' Gresham held the glass bottle over the flagged stone floor. 'This has to come from my head, you know! Peace, peace, I'll try.'

Phelippes rocked back and closed his eyes.

'Catesby… old Catholic family, handsome devil of a man. Good swordsman too, by all accounts. Caught up with Essex, wasn't he? You would know better than I…' He gazed slyly at Gresham, who returned his look unmoved. 'Wife died, so I believe; thick with the priests. House in Lambeth, or used to have one there. Also lodgings in the Strand… A hothead, powerful, many friends. One to watch, definitely, one to watch…

'The Wright brothers… Catholics to the core, good swordsmen both

… reckoned some of the best in the country. Up to their necks with Essex and his song and dance, with their friend Catesby. Travellers to Europe, both of them, up to no good. It was me who tipped off Walsingham about them…

'Tom Wintour… Wintours of Huddington Court, sitting on a fortune with the saltpans at Droitwich — God knows what they have to rebel about with their money. Another known Catholic, younger brother. Restless, fiery, Witty, fond of the women and the wine… another traveller, up to no good I would guess…

'Percy… now there's a man of piss and wind. Does Northumberland's dirty work for him, went to negotiate with good King James for Northumberland, angry, vainglorious… King seems to like him… hates Cecil… nettles in his arse and an ambition that burns him dry. Wild, wild, to be steered clear of… master of no-one yet servant to none in his heart as well… For God's sake, man, will you give me that bottle’

'Eventually,' said Gresham calmly. 'One more thing. You're a professional traitor, Tom, aren't you? So who's my lever into opening the lid of this affair?' Gresham's eyes could have pierced through the timbers on a ship's side as they looked at Phelippes. 'Who can be bribed into betraying their friends from this group? Who is there of your kind amidst these men?'

Phelippes looked longingly at the bottle. Gresham made no move.

'Tresham,' he croaked. 'Francis Tresham. I know he's not on your list, but he's been in bed all his life with those who are. He's a thieving, violent, angry little runt, and if his friends and relatives are up to mischief you can bet Francis Tresham won't be far away.'

'More,' said Gresham. 'I want more.'

'Big Catholic family.' The sweat was now running in small beads across the cavities on Phelippes' face. 'Father a patriarch, big builder, big spender. Had to bail the boy out endless times. Had to bribe him out of here, the Tower, after the Essex rebellion. Young Tresham's lucky still to have his head. He's a wild one, out of control — for God's sake give me that bottle’

'Here.' He tossed the second bottle to Phelippes, who fell upon it and managed nearly to swallow the bottle as well as its contents.

'Don't betray me again, Tom,' said Gresham as he took his leave of the miserable cell and its occupant. 'In an hour or so you'll start to feel ill, and then your body will seek to expel the poison you fed it, by venting your bowels and your stomach. It'll be forcible, and it'll hurt, I'm pleased to say. A lot. You'll be able to take no food for three, four days, perhaps even a week, and your gut will hurt all that time as if it had been fed molten lead. But you'll recover, unless you catch the plague in the meantime. And by the way, the other wine is pure.'

It took them an interminable time to move through the various gates that let them out to the Thames, twice as long as it had taken them to enter.

"You've not used poison before, master,' said Mannion. There was no accusation in his carefully guarded tone. 'I haven't this time,' said Gresham.

But I was sorely tempted. Forman gave me the bottle of poison that is here still in my purse. I was ready to pour the wine into the goblets we brought in the basket, and slip the poison in by sleight of hand. I wanted him to die, to suffer for what he had done. And I don't know why I stopped in time.

'There was no poison?' asked Mannion incredulously. Gresham's act had clearly convinced him.

‘No poison in the wine. The last bottle contained a potion that Forman assures me will give Thomas Phelippes a gut-ache that he'll remember for the rest of his misbegotten life.'

Mannion started to laugh, his hilarity causing his whole body to shake so that he had to grasp one of the rotting wooden stakes by the jetty.

'In dosing him I did no more than my civic duty. A change gives as much peace as a rest, and those who tend Phelippes will soon have a new stench as a change from that of the ditch!'

Gresham laughed alongside Mannion. In his laughter was a sense of release. Without conscious thought on his behalf, he now knew who his enemy was.

Jane had awoken when they returned to the House. Traces of the drug were still in her. She was sitting in a back room overlooking the river, thin and drawn, with a blanket over her shoulders despite the summer's day.

Gresham was brusque with her. 'I think I know why someone tried to murder us on the river last night.'

She turned to look at him, the fire in her eyes dead.

'Wake up,' he said to her, more gently. 'Wake up, or give in. You never let that stinking village kill your spirit. You never let me kill your spirit. Now choose. Are you going to let a ruffian who wanted your life take it from you, even though you killed him?'

Something like a tiny flicker of fire, as if from a grate where the embers had been left overnight, came into her gaze.

'It was…' She was about to collapse into sobs again, Gresham could see. He spoke, sharply, unkindly.

'It was indeed. It happened. You can't change that. Either let it destroy you, or conquer it. There's no halfway house.'

Instead of shouting at herself she did what Gresham had hoped, and shouted at him.

'How can you stand there so calmly? How can you let the blood wash off your hands so easily? How can you forget? These were men last night, not animals. We were so happy, and then from nowhere… this awfulness came and hit us and I… I had to…'

'You had to kill!' He was shouting now. 'Do you hear? You had to kill! Do you think you alone of God's creatures have a special existence? Do you think in this Godforsaken world God would come back to give you a special exemption from reality. Wake up, woman!' He moved close to her, kneeling down to breathe in her ear. 'And never tell me that I forget. You don't have that right. I remember, all of the times, all of them. And I do not forget. I learn to hide the memories.'

He knew then he had won, and he knew then why he loved her for her courage, for her independence and for her strength. She sat for a moment head bowed, then looked up at him. There was no extra line on her face, no extra wrinkle or grey hair, yet she had aged in a way that no physical mark would ever show. She would never be the same again, but she would be stronger, more able to survive. What she had lost to gain that victory he did not know. It was the price for survival.

'I'm sorry,' she said, with a slight sniffle still in her voice that made her pathetic, still vulnerable. 'I was rapt in my own grief. It's as you say. Do you remember it, on that horse all those years ago, me with your cloak over my village filth?'

'Remember what?' Gresham was confused.

'What you said then. I don't think you knew much about little girls. You spoke to me very solemnly, as you might your bride taking her home in splendour on their wedding day. You said, "Your life starts here. We wipe out the history of every day as we live it, and if we're brave we can start it all over again with every new day. This is your new day." I thought you were mad, and very, very handsome and dashing. No-one had ever spoken to me like that before.'

'Was I really that pompous?' If the truth be known, he did remember it.

'And still are. But I'll forgive you. I'll try very hard to make it a new day. But you must be kind to me. There'll be times when it's hard, and when I'll need loving, and not shouting at, to keep me from falling into the abyss.'

In the imperceptible way that it is with people, something in them had meshed again, and moved forward with an unspoken, unseen power.

'So why was I turned into a murderess last night?'

There was a flippant edge to her voice, as well as a dark undertone. Gresham sensed that the use of the word 'murderess' was deliberate, part of her feeling her way to an acceptance of what had taken place. He did not challenge her description of herself. Let her feel her own way to her own form of salvation. There was no simple rule.

He told about the forged letter that Tom Barnes had brought to him.

‘Why didn't you tell me about the letter?' 'I wanted to tell you when I had an answer, not just the question.'

'Is that wise? To share the information with me as it comes isn't to admit weakness, it's simply to recognise that two minds can sometimes do more than one.'

'On that basis,' said Gresham, 'I should share all my information with Mary the maid, Martha the Housekeeper and Harry the boatman. Oh, and there's young Will, Cook of course, and…'

She cut him short. 'The difference is that none of them have a mind like mine. And they may love you in their fashion, but I love you in mine. And mine is stronger.'

That shut him up, for a moment. She carried on.

'The forging of the letter was a long-term plan, anyway. Who tried to kill us? What triggered… last night?'

'I think I know now. I've been confused, ever since Will Shadwell’s murder. At one time I had Percy killing Shadwell, and organising the business on the river in case Shadwell had left a message for me. Then I thought even the King might be involved, or Bacon, or even the Spaniards. But I was wrong.'

'So who is it?'

'Cecil. It has to be Cecil who tried to kill us. I think Cecil was trying to outflank me anyway, probably before all this started. He knew I had papers that would damn him. He must have hated my having that hold over him, wracked his brains to get himself out of the trap. Letters apparently in my handwriting pleading for a Catholic overthrow of England was an idea of brilliance. It not only makes me a wholly unreliable witness, but it makes my papers coming from the Papal archive an admission of guilt.'

'All you've said is that Cecil wanted to be able to counter what you had that threatened him. Why did he suddenly decide to have us killed?'

'Will Shadwell, I'm sure. He's at the heart of it. Will must have heard something that sent the poor fool scurrying to me, and the evidence is that he was murdered by one of Cecil's men, not by Percy or anyone else. I've been too clever for my own good. I invented all sorts of reasons why Sam Fogarty could have been working for Northumberland, or perhaps for Rome and the

Catholic cause. The only two things we know for certain are that Fogarty works for Cecil, and he was involved in Shadwell's murder closely enough to have taken Will's ring. That links it back to Cecil.'

As Gresham had hoped, the chance of explaining why her horror had happened gripped Jane, drew her mind out from the depths of her depression, forced it to work.

'But Cecil didn't try to kill you after Will Shadwell. He called you back to London and sent you off after Bacon.'

'Cecil must have feared something Shadwell knew enough to have him killed. Then he must have wondered if Shadwell had got the news to me. Whatever it was, it must have been of such great importance that I couldn't be allowed to know it and to live. Cecil wouldn't want to alarm me unnecessarily in case I knew nothing, so he must have called me back to London on a wild-goose chase after Bacon to sound me out. I didn't give him any cause for suspicion when we met because I knew nothing then that linked Will's death to him. Truth is always the best defence. Cecil read me right that day. I didn't suspect him of Shadwell’s murder, or of anything other than being the slimy rat I know he is. So Cecil must have felt really pleased with himself, and sent me off after a red herring in the hope it'd keep me out of trouble and off the scent of whatever it is he wants to hide from me.'

'Then why did he then suddenly want to kill you?'

'It has to be my trip to see Moll. Cecil must have thought I'd gone to pick up a message from The Dagger. It was stupid of me to go so openly. There must have been endless numbers of Cecil's spies in that place, seeing me walk through and reporting back. Shadwell met Percy in The Dagger, and Moll puts out that she knows everything, even if she doesn't. What was to stop Shadwell leaving papers for me back at The Dagger, as insurance in case something happened to him? It's what I would have done. Poor Cecil. He must have congratulated himself that he's stopped the trail and sent me off on a wild-goose chase, and then I turn up bold as brass at The Dagger. He must have had a seizure. I sent Mannion to warn Moll. She'll go into hiding. Cecil is bound to be after her, to find out what she did know.'

'And I suppose once he'd commissioned one set of letters to prove you a traitor, he felt he could simply commission another to cover for your death. One other thing points to him,' said Jane. 'The boat that attacked us, it was new, well-found, expensive. The men on it… may have been thugs, but they were trained, after a fashion, and many of them. All that signals money, resources, the power to gather a crew and a boat at short notice. There are few people in London outside of Cecil who could call on resources to that level. But why the rosary beads?'

'Who knows? Even Cecil can't have that many thugs at his disposal. The man whose beads Shadwell broke could have been the same man you killed on the boat.'

'Do you really believe that?' said Jane. 'Or are you trying to make me feel better? I didn't kill a man, you're trying to tell me. I simply executed Will Shadwell's murderer?'

She was too clever by half, thought Gresham, too astute for his tricks even in the immediate aftermath of her grief.

'It's possible. Or it's Cecil setting a false trail, suggesting Catholics are behind the murders, putting up a smoke screen behind which he can hide. Rosary beads are cheap enough, after all'

'We may have got closer to what happened,' said Jane, 'but we still don't know why. 1

'True,' replied Gresham. 'Well, Tom Phelippes may have given us our key into these Papists. Francis Tresham, he said. A pleasant piece of work by all counts, but I'd back Phelippes to know a traitor any day. He looks at one in the glass every morning, so he should know.'

Jane rose. Her gait was tired, the movement an effort. 'I'm going to bathe and to change, and shout at a few servants to stop them sympathising with me and treating me like a sick woman.' The

House knew what had happened on the river, of course. Gresham doubted if his own boat crew had stopped telling the story even now downstairs in the kitchen. It was a good story. Let them tell it. It bred a pride in his servants and it made sure that the crossbows in the boat would be well oiled. 'But just one thing more. You've warned Moll. Yet won't Cecil be suspicious of Tom Phelippes, if you walk up to him as you walked up to Moll? Won't you have signed Tom Phelippes's death warrant, as you nearly signed Moll's?'

'Will I?' said Gresham carelessly. 'Well, now, there's a thought.'

'Is that all you care?' said Jane. -

'Yes,' said Gresham, 'it probably is. He betrayed me. And it'll be interesting to see if someone tries to take his life, won't it? If they do, it will prove Cecil's involvement. No-one else has the key to let an assassin into the Tower, do they?'

Raleigh hated most of all the time when the bell tolled and the Tower was emptied of all its visitors. In the day he could lose himself in the bustle of the King's prison, in his laboratory and in his writing. At night too he could turn, in the silence, to his books. Yet in the late afternoon, when the people hurried to leave the Tower, then it came upon him that he could not leave, that he was truly a prisoner.

He had freedom to walk in the inner ward, though a warder would trail him quietly if he did so. The image of Robert Cecil haunted his mind. Cecil's power had destroyed Essex, and was now set to destroy Raleigh himself. In a strange way, it was probably not personal at all, Raleigh mused. He believed that Cecil had been, probably still was, genuinely fond of him. Affection had never stopped Robert Cecil ordering a man's death. Why would he do it?

Because Raleigh had the two things that Cecil most dreaded in a rival; the capacity to hold a crowd, to be a popular leader, and the capacity on occasion to act on principle, and not simply through self-interest. Cecil would never make a crowd eat out of his hand, and he had always feared those who could cut direct through to the hearts and minds of the common people. Nor could he predict which way a man might jump if ever he stepped off the predictable path of self-interest, and on to the more dangerous road of principle, and Cecil hated those whose moves he could not predict. It needed only the tiniest push to separate Raleigh's head from his body, he knew. He had become a threat to Robert Cecil, a potential rival for the heart and mind of the King and the heart and mind of the people. Already with no charge to answer he was locked inside the strongest prison in the land. One slip, and Cecil would have him in his shirt on Tower Green, ready to kiss an axe in place of Bess.

Henry Gresham was a man's man as well, thought Raleigh, a born leader and someone men would die for. Yes, and women too. He too had caught Raleigh's habit of not only having principles, but occasionally letting them command his actions. Was that why Gresham now seemed to be Cecil's target? Perhaps in part, but it could not be the whole answer. It was Raleigh's potential to sit in Cecil's chair by the side of the King that made Cecil want him dead, and Gresham would never aspire to sit next to any throne, though he might condescend to underpin it. Was the long battle between Gresham and Cecil finally coming to an end, in Cecil's favour as it would have to be? Anger at the power the man Cecil was able to wield fought with black despair at his powerlessness to make things change.

He turned towards the Tower which lodged Phelippes, expecting to find the door locked for a less privileged prisoner. It was ajar, he saw, to his surprise. He quickened his pace. As he reached the ancient, heavy wood and iron door he heard a crash as of an object being hurled across a room.

He had no sword or weapon, but the old warhorse needed no second notice. He pushed through the door, ran to the cell, crashed through that half-open door. A tableau met his eyes, as if cast in wax.

A tall, powerfully built man in a rough jerkin with a hood pulled over his head was standing in the middle of the small room, a dagger in his hand. Tom Phelippes, his eyes wide-staring in terror, was hunched behind the trestle he had grabbed and was using as a shield, on his knees, his face pleading. Such scant furniture as the room offered was thrown around the room. Raleigh guessed the attacker had come in silently, perhaps behind Phelippes, whose animal instinct had alerted him in some way. He must have hurled the stool at his attacker, and then grabbed the trestle as his only defence.

'Halt!' Raleigh's roar of command had cut across the decks of Spanish galleons, brought drunken crews to order and quelled mutiny. In that small room it had the force of a cannon blast. Yet Raleigh was unarmed.

The attacker swung round, face half-hidden by the hood. There was silence, a triangle of people — Raleigh by the door, Phelippes crouched on his knees in the far corner, the attacker in the middle. Slowly, carefully, never taking his eyes off those of the attacker, Raleigh raised both his hands in front of him, and moved, one gentle pace at a time, to clear the way to the door. He could take the man on, but the dagger put the odds firmly in the attacker's favour. Yet if he tried to kill Phelippes and beat off Raleigh then he might be overcome, the dagger won from him and used against him. Raleigh moved aside two more paces. The path to the door for the attacker was clear. Raleigh nodded towards it, raising an eyebrow quizzically. Leave, it said, with your job undone but your body intact. Or stay, and fight two men, and run the risk of killing the Tower's most famous prisoner. The attacker returned Raleigh's gaze, glanced briefly towards Phelippes. Was there a hint of a smile on the half-hidden, unshaven face? The attacker drew himself up to his full height, gave a short, almost formal bow to Raleigh, and backed out towards the door. He was out through in an instant, the soft pad of his feet vanishing up the passageway. There was no shout of alarm, Raleigh noted, even though the warder trailing Raleigh could not help but be outside the tower.

'Well, well,' said Raleigh, stooping to help Phelippes to his feet.

The man was gibbering with fear. 'I had thought it was my misfortune to be tried and killed in public, but it appears we guests of His Majesty have more to fear from a private reckoning…'

'Can I get you out of here?' Gresham asked. He had obeyed Raleigh's summons to come to the Tower. 'You know it can be done, has been done…'

'No, I think not,' said Raleigh, I'm not at risk from a vagabond murderer. Even Cecil wouldn't dare have me murdered here, though I don't doubt even now he's thinking how to achieve the same end within what passes for the law. No, this was all about our friend Tom. He had one chance at Phelippes, and if it had been done silently and quickly it would have been a three-day wonder. He daren't try it again, and I'm safe enough.'

'But that's not why you refuse to escape?' queried Gresham.

'No, I suppose not. You know me too well. If I escape, where do I go? To Spain, and prove that I was a traitor all along? All I do by running is prove my accusers were right. My battle is here. As you have reason to know, I'm not a man who runs away from battles.'

'Yet you're suggesting that I should do just that?'

‘Not run away, no. Hide, yes. Go to Cambridge and lie low there, perhaps? It's such a small place you'd be bound to hear of any outsiders coming to the town who might pose a threat. Go abroad? You've enough hiding places there, haven't you? Cecil is all-powerful. He wants you dead, for what you might know, just as he wants me dead for what I might become. You can swear until Doomsday that you know nothing and he won't believe you. My advice is to take a leaf out of that girl Moll's book. Lie low, go away.'

'I accept half the advice,' said Gresham. 'Hide and lie low, yes. But not in Cambridge, nor in Europe. Here, in London, in Cecil's back yard, where I can still do my work, turn the tables on him. I have my battles, like you. Like you, I don't run away. I stay and fight.'