The galleon's grave

Chapter 11

August — September, 1588 London

Would he hang them there and then from the mainyard of the

Revenge! Mannion and Gresham were bundled down into the stinking hold, its damage minimal in comparison with the wreck that had been the San Martin. Drake hardly looked at Anna. To his relief Gresham caught sight of her being ushered into one of the cabins under the quarterdeck, if not with deference then at least with rudimentary respect, Two men bound their hands, flung them on loose planks covering the bilges. It had been a powder room, buried in the heart of the ship. Now it was empty, scraped clean. There was no hook for a lantern in a powder room, no fitting for any flame, and they would not have hung one even had it been, otherwise. The feeble light retreated, the door slammed shut, a bar scraped across it. Gresham and Mannion were left in total darkness. The rank stink of the bilges rose around them.

'They say despair's the ultimate sin,' said Gresham. 'Worse than all the others, because if you feel despair you've accepted that God can't forgive you. And if you do that, you're bound to be damned. I don't think I've ever felt despair before. Not really. Not like this.'

'The ultimate sin, is it then?' Mannion's voice came from somewhere in the total darkness.

Gresham had not really expected an answer, sunk as he was in his misery. He had spoken merely to ease his internal pain. 'Yes,' was all he could find to say.

'Well, that's good, isn't it?'

What was Mannion on about? 'Good? How can it be good?'

'Well, if it was gluttony or lechery, I'd be in real trouble, wouldn't I? 'Cos I ain't going to stop both, if we ever get out of this, and it'd be bad news if there was no forgiveness.'

'How can you talk about "after this"? "After this" is us swinging on the end of a rope. And choking slowly if Drake has his way.'

'Well, as my old captain used to say, where there's life there's hope.'

'Your old captain? The one who got burned alive by the Spanish?'

'Well, no one's perfect.'

There were fumbling noises in the dark, the sound of something rasping, a gasp of relief.

'Stupid buggers,' said Mannion. ‘Never did search us properly. I allus keeps this little knife strapped on me leg, high up near me crutch. It's a brave man who puts his 'ands there, I can tell you.'

Gresham did not dare to think of the prospect Soon Mannion's hands were feeling for him, finding his hands, untying the rope.

'At least this way we can piss in the corner and not wet ourselves. Or worse. Helps you keep your dignity, that does. Keep the rope in your hand. Wrap it round when they come. They'll not notice the difference. Half of 'em's knackered after the fight, and the other half looks half dead.'

Gresham found his interest stirring, against all the odds, against any objective valuation of their situation. 'I saw that. Yet the ship's hardly damaged, unlike what they did to the Spaniards.'

'I reckon as that poxed bugger in Lisbon did his bit, then. You know what happens as well as I do when a ball's not been cooled properly, or the mix ain't right. It blows to fragments when it leaves the barrel. But if the hull's in one piece, lot of the men ain't. Ship's fever,' said Mannion firmly. 'That, and I bet they're on short rations. Remember how long this lot'll have been at sea? Queen

Elizabeth, she'd rather have her tits cut off than give a ship more than a month's food and drink. And even if they get that much, you can bet half of it's rotten.'

'As much as the Spanish stores?' Gresham could sense Mannion's grimace as they remembered cask after cask being opened on the San Martin to have the men reeling away, gagging and swearing at the stench of its contents. 'Will they starve us? Will we get ship's fever?' asked Gresham, angry at his own fear.

'Precious little food comin' our way, that'd be my guess. Even less water, and sour beer if we're lucky. As for ship's fever, you tell me. 'Cept I reckon as 'ow if we was goin' to get it, we'd 'ave got it by now. A series of slight snaps came from the direction of Mannion's voice. Here, grab this.'

Gresham found two strips of what could only be dried meat thrust into his hands. 'Where did these come from?' he asked, incredulous.

'Always keep three or four strips sewed on the inside of my jacket. Easy, if you drill a hole through each end of the meat first. Eat it now. If they keep us short of water, you won't be able to manage it. Get the goodness in you now, while you can.'

And so the two condemned men sat in the bowels of the Revenge, in total darkness, munching companionably the cast iron of the meat, slowly, in order to guard their teeth.

It was Berwick that saved them. Desperately short of supplies, half his men sick and numbers dying by the day, Drake paused in his pursuit and sent boats into the town that had changed more hands than any other in the troubled history of England and Scotland. Their jailers flung back the door, and stood reeling gently before them, clearly half drunk. A loaf that had been fresh two days ago was thrown into the compartment, and a scuffed and wrinkled wineskin, lying on the planking. One of the sailors laughed, then reached into the room, wrinkling his nose, and placed two apples carefully in the gap between two planks.

'There!' he roared. 'On yer knees, if yer wants it! Go on with you! Let's see you grovel!'

Both sailors were reduced to paroxysms of laughter as Gresham and Mannion, hands apparently bound before them, tried to catch the apples in their teeth, scrambling for them on their knees. The sailors were still laughing as they slammed the door shut.

Gresham thought he had lost his sight when finally they were hauled on the deck of the Revenge. Blinking frantically, filthy, his beard as ragged as a wild man's from the hills, he could only think of Mannion's words. Dignity. It was all a man had, after all, when God, life and other men had taken everything else away. They were bundled, half carried into a boat, and thrown across a horse.

Gresham arched his back, newly-bound hands and legs meaning he could not stand as he landed badly on the ground. Swearing, cursing, the sailors picked him up, prepared to throw him back on to the horse.

‘I fought on the San Martin!' he managed to say, through cracked lips. He could vaguely discern the sailors now, clear shapes moving in a blur of browns, grey and blue. 'I stood up like a man as you threw everything you had at me, as did that man.' He motioned with his head, all he could move, at. where he thought Mannion might be. 'Does that merit riding through London with my arse as my highest point? Or have we earned the right to ride with our heads held high?'

There was a muttering among the men.

'We made no pleading with you at sea, did we? We fought to the end! Yet I plead with you now. Allow me my dignity, and my man here, as fighting men.'

They were decent men, as most are. They cut the bonds round his ankles, let him ride the mangy horse, kept his hands tied but thrust the reins into his hand, a secure tether leading to the man ahead. And so Gresham's ride began. Every bone in his body crying out for release, wanting nothing more than to slump across the horse, to give up. Somehow he stayed upright, seeing through the pain and agony of his body the sight he had most dreaded. He had ridden through London once before in sea-stained clothing, in triumph. Now he rode through as a prisoner.

When the Normans had conquered England five hundred years earlier they had built two symbols of power in London, the four towers and keep of the Tower of London, and St Paul's Cathedral, its mass sending an unequivocal signal that those in power in London held supremacy over men's souls as well as their bodies. But it was not to St Paul's that Gresham was headed. It was the Tower, whose bulk squatted over the Thames. First the drawbridge leading over the moat, coated with scum and full of noisome lumps that did not bear close examination, to the Lion Tower. Then over the wooden planking, shouted words. A sharp left turn, under the Lion Tower, across the moat again and the second drawbridge. The two round, squat forms of the Middle Tower stood in their way. More shouted instructions, a rattling of chains, and they lurched forward again. Yet another drawbridge, and then the taller, round form of the Byward Tower. Under its rusting portcullis. Into prison, with three vast towers and their gates blocking their route to freedom. To prison? No. Worse than that. Bundled off his horse, into the White Tower itself, down damp, stone stairs, down and seemingly ever down. Flickering torches in rusted iron sconces hung on the walls. A huge, heavy door, black iron hinges set deep into the wall, flung back.

The rack.

They used to show it to prisoners, knowing that even the sight of it would send them into paroxysms, make them willing to sign whatever was needed, welcome the clean simplicity of the axe. Anything except the torture of the rack. It was a simple enough structure, crude planks and timbers making up for what might seem little more than a giant's bed. Except this bed had ropes at either end, ropes connected to wicked cogs and wheels and handles that turned. And how those handles turned. With the man strapped to the ropes, those handles, cogs and wheels could coax a man's body to extremities of pain no person was capable of imagining, drag his muscles and sinews into one long agony that burned and fried the soul of a man as if it were turning on a spit above a roaring flame. No man walked from the rack. He might collapse off it, if he was lucky and the final cog had not been turned, his mind seared and horrified by the impact of pain as much as his ravished body had been, never to walk again and to spend what little remained of his life as a discarded, crumpled heap thrown into a corner. All would choose death rather than the rack. Its final cruelty was to deny men even that solace.

Gresham had no power to resist as he was laid on the rough planks, stained with something foul that could once have vented from a human being. He felt the ropes clutch his wrists and ankles, smelt the corrupt breath of the grinning jailer, saw the arched stone ceiling flicker in the dim light of the torches, felt his grip on consciousness loosening, knew that the first sharp stab of appalling pain would bring him back to this world.

And from out of the gloom of the Tower, a vision came to him. Not of Christ, nor even of the Devil. A vision of a man. The Duke of Medina Sidonia.

When all else fails, and all seems dark and bleak, it is not die judgement of the world I believe will matter to me when I pass into the vale of death. The judgement that must matter most to me, the crucial, the most scrupulous, the testing judgement must stand as my own judgement on myself.

Was Henry Gresham to die here on this foul contraption, venting his own piss and shit as he shrieked what his interrogators wished to hear? Die before his time, die without issue, die as a traitor to England, reviled for ever more, if even he was remembered? Could a man die with dignity on the rack?

Suddenly, the world fell into place. He was no longer in a swirling, dream-vision of hell. It was a simple, large stone chamber, with an arched ceiling and soot marks smearing the walls. The walls glistened with moisture, throwing the light of the torches back, except to his right where bricks encompassed the dull red glow of a furnace, fitted out like a blacksmith with bellows. Opposite him were manacles for feet and hands, set deep into the stone. To hang men there, until their very bones and sinews cried out for release.

He heard the shuffling before the voice spoke. Someone was coming from behind the apparatus of the rack, now that he was secure, thrusting himself into Gresham's line of vision. 'Welcome back to England, Henry Gresham,' the voice said. Cecil. Robert Cecil. Looming above him, his pinched face outlined by the ancient stone. A beatific smile on that same sour face. A smile of triumph.

'Robert Cecil,' croaked Gresham. 'What an immense surprise.' Gresham was surprised by his own control. 'As you undoubtedly intend to tear me limb from limb, perhaps you might arrange for some water to be given me? Not to keep me alive, you understand. Merely to let me speak clearly. Just think on it. My screams will be all the more clear when the time comes…'

Cecil smiled, a smile of immense cruelty. Not so the jailer. He looked worried, confused even. Men on the rack did not talk about their impending pain in this matter. Particularly young men, with fine, strong bodies, bodies that would never again delight the girls.

The water was the best thing Gresham had ever taken through his lips. He hoped they had not drawn it from the moat, though it hardly mattered. He was dead anyway. Perhaps that was why he heard the noise as of a door opening, a rustle of cloth that was unfamiliar, even a faint smell as of… perfume. In his mind, of course. 'There was this small thing between us,' Gresham managed to say in something closer to his normal voice. 'I thought we had agreed to work together.'

'I do not work with traitors,' said Cecil. He was enjoying this. 'The Spanish fleet has been sent with its tail between its legs to weather Scotland and face the rocks of Ireland as best it can. The Armada is defeated. This business is over.' There was a crowing, exultant tone in his voice. 'The Enterprise of England has failed. As all remaining spies for Spain must fail. Preferably in as much pain as possible.'

'You wish to destroy me?' asked Gresham. Had it been Cecil all along?

'You have destroyed yourself. You have no need of my help. You are a declared Spanish spy. You deserted us in Flanders, using the goodwill and influence I had given you to spy for Spain. You told me the truth about you when my spy — yes, I too can employ spies! — overheard your treasonous conversation with Parma, the conversation where he hailed you as Spain's greatest asset in its war against England! You told the truth about yourself when you took ship for Spain. You confirmed it when you sailed with the Armada, were seen conversing with its commander by no less than Drake. You were captured, with your Spanish whore, by mere accident. An act of God, the true God, as was the defeat of the Armada. Now all that remains is to extract the confession from you. A traitor, proven and confessed. Your estate to go to the Crown. How wonderful that the fabled Gresham wealth will go to repay Her Majesty for her grievous expenditure in fighting off Spain.'

Gresham was tied to the rack, and Cecil apparently in command of the jailer. And of everything else.

As if to confirm his power, Cecil motioned to the man standing by the great wheel at the head of the rack. Ropes creaked, and suddenly Gresham's arms, lying loose at his side, were pulled taut, not yet painful, merely at full stretch.

That faint whiff of perfume again. And something rotten, corrupt. Was it angels with bad breath come to take him to his rest? Yet he knew he would have to pass through Hell before he came to Heaven.

'I'm no spy for Spain,' said Gresham, thinking Christ must have felt such as this, stretched, exposed, before the first nail was hammered in. 'And you, you've no fear for Elizabeth Brooke? Your fiancйe?'

'I spit on your feeble threat!' said Cecil, ignoring his denial. And he did spit, the globule landing on Gresham's cheek. 'With you dead, your man dead, the name of Gresham a stench on the lips of every decent Englishman, will your henchmen carry out your contract? No! With you dead, they will take their money and laugh at you for thinking it worth their while to offend a man such as myself!'

'A man such as you might be,' said Gresham, surprisingly gently given his condition. His arms were beginning to ache now, the blood supply contorted. 'But are not yet. Anyway, there never was a threat. I have no quarrel with women. I set no men to murder your fiancйe.'

'You mean there were no men set to murder or disfigure my… future wife?'

'Of course not,' said Gresham. 'Only a man who would consider such a thing himself might believe it in another man. It was a threat to frighten a child. What use is vengeance to me after I'm dead? I'll never savour its taste!'

Cecil had believed it. He had believed that Gresham would kill his fiancйe. That much was clear from his rising colour, visible even in the light of torches and from the viewpoint of a man spread-eagled on the rack. 'And so you have nothing left with which to threaten me, Henry Gresham?' Cecil was crowing now, exulting in his victory.

'Only the truth,' said Gresham. 'I was no spy for Spain. I fought for England.'

'And who will believe you?' asked Cecil, actually shaking his head in his own disbelief.

'The Queen of England might believe me,' said Gresham simply. 'That same Queen who entered by the far door, outside my limited range of vision, some minutes ago, and has stood there in silence ever since. Yet I pray to her to be allowed to state my case.' He had known it from the perfume. And the stench of bad breath.

Cecil smiled across his lips, and turned towards the door, arm outflung in a gesture of disbelief. The arm hung for a moment, dropped, became part of a bow that somehow transfigured him into a man on his knees, dropping below Gresham's line of vision.

Why had the Queen come here? She hated the Tower. Loathed it for the memories of her voyage into it through Traitors' Gate, never visited it unless absolutely necessary. And as well as visit it, come to its darkest and most painful chamber? It was inconceivable. And with Walsingham dead, there was no one to tell her of the complex double and triple betrayal he had been engaged in these past three years, three years where under Walsingham's guidance he had worked his way up to becoming Spain's most trusted spy in England. In that position he had fed Spain the information Walsingham wanted Spain to hear, always with enough truth to give it the smack of reality.

The Queen swam into Gresham's view, her pasty white face peering- down clinically at Gresham. She stepped back, motioning to Cecil. He rose from his knees, head still inclined towards the Queen.

'Your Majesty!' Cecil made as if to kneel again, confused, perhaps even appalled, his world falling about his ears.

'Get up!' she said, 'and cease your fawning! And you,' she glanced down at Gresham, 'you can stay there. You!' The voice was a snarl, directed at the jailer, its rasp the killing edge of Henry VIII. 'Get your Queen a seat! And do so now.'

A stool appeared as if from nowhere. She sat.

Gresham considered a clever comment that he would bow if his circumstances allowed it, but thought better of it. His limbs were really aching rather seriously now.

'So, my little pygmy, you propose to interrogate a man you tell me is a very great traitor, without my knowledge. Nor, indeed, my consent for torture.' She looked towards the rack and its splayed occupant. In theory and in law, the consent of the monarch was required for torture to be used. 'Yet I am ever generous as Queen. I grant you my permission. Carry on your interrogation. Now.'

Gresham's heart failed him. The Queen had just commanded his torture.

Cecil was ever quick to recover, Gresham noticed. Clearly the presence of the Queen had not been part of his plan, had shocked him to the core, yet already he had adapted, mutated to meet present circumstance.

‘You deny you have been a spy for Spain, here in England? A regular attender at illegal and illicit Mass?'

Were his ears still ringing from the drubbing the San Martin had received? His eyes still weak from his incarceration in the bowels of the Revenge? His wits addled by weeks of poor food and continual stress? What other condemned man had to speak in his defence strapped onto the rack, with no advocate to plead his cause? No matter. This was here and now. The next few words would decide his fate. And how tall he was at burial.

'I deny I've been a spy for Spain. As for an attender at Mass, I've been so for three years, God preserve my soul. An attender in Her Majesty's Service, as instructed and advised by my Lord Walsingham.' That same Lord Walsingham who was now dead, and his only alibi.

Cecil was nearly spitting now. 'Attending Mass in Her Majesty's Service? How can it be?' Cecil raised his hand to order the jailer to tighten the rack.

'Hold.' It was the Queen. The man dropped his hands from the wheel. 'Let him speak before the pain fogs his judgement.'

'In Her Majesty's Service. On the orders of Walsingham. When I was sixteen, seventeen years old. A student. An impoverished student. I was offered money. To seek out a priest, attend his secret Mass. Present myself as a Catholic'

'And you sold your soul for money?' asked Cecil managing to make his voice sound incredulous.

'No,' said Giesham. The pain in his limbs had ceased to be an ache, was a real, sharp pain. 'I kept my soul and its Protestant heart I did it because it would allow me to pose as a spy for Spain. And also, I did it for excitement!'

'And not for money, of course!' said Cecil trying to sound scornful. Why was the Queen here? How was it that she was here? The questions were clearly screaming in Cecil's brain, so loud as to interfere with his control.

'Those who have money from birth confuse it with blood,' said Gresham. 'Only those who've known what it is to live without money realise that there are things more important.'

'Such as?' sneered Cecil. It was his first mistake.

'Such as excitement, the thrill of living, when one is young and life seems to offer bleak prospects elsewhere. Such as honour. Such as love of one's country, when one feels no love for any fellow human being. Such as doing what is right'

'Yet you spied for Spain!' Cecil taunted, playing his trump card.

'I appeared to spy for Spain.' Gresham's left arm was shooting agonising barbs of pain into his whole body. Why only the left? Why not the right? Reluctantly, Gresham wrenched his mind back to the main issue. 'They received information from me that seemed to be true. Bits of truth, sanitised so as to do as little damage as possible, passed on to me by Walsingham so that I could pass them on to the Spanish.'

'So you had access to the Court of Spain, did you?' said Cecil, the disbelief in his voice almost visible. *No,' said Gresham. How long could an arm cry out in protest before it became gangrenous? 'Access only to a courier. A courier in Cambridge who found out the truth about me, that I was no spy but a double agent A man I had to kill, early the next morning, in the meadows round Grantchester, before he could tell his masters the truth and ruin years of preparation.'

There was another rasping of a door. Strain as he might, Gresham could not force his head back far enough to see who had come into the chamber. There was a ringing in his ears now, blotting out hearing. His throat had dried, his voice becoming hoarser by the word. Something moved in the room, and blessed clear, fresh water was being held to his lips, passing down like an iceberg to his throat and stomach. The jailer stank, Gresham noticed, of rank sweat and stale piss.

'So you say!' snarled Cecil. How had Gresham heard the door open, staked out as he was, and Cecil been oblivious to it? 'Yet you forced your way on to Drake's great expedition to Cadiz. A true spy of Spain!'

The other arm was starting to shriek pain now. There was a strange comfort in the balance. The legs were not feeling too good either. He had to concentrate! He had to beat the pain! 'A spy for Spain only on the evidence of a forged letter and a planted prayer book. A letter forged by you, Robert Cecil,' said Gresham. 'You never knew that Walsingham had set me up as someone who could infiltrate Spain. So you set up your separate path to damn me to

Drake, as a Spanish spy. So that you could dispose of me as a man you disliked, but more importantly so that when I died, conveniently far away at sea, you could deliver my fortune to the Queen, as a traitor and a man with no heir. You arranged my death to buy credit with the Queen, and no doubt with your father as well.' He thought better of mentioning Mary Queen of Scots in front of the Queen. Of course Cecil had wanted to blame Gresham for the delivery of the death warrant, and take some of the blame off the Cecil family. But as Gresham had come perilously close to doing just that it did not seem wise to raise it.

'You are feeble,' scoffed Cecil. Where was the Queen? If Cecil's nervous glances were to go by, at Gresham's feet, below his line of vision. 'Where is your evidence?'

How extraordinary that a man stretched out on the rack could have his interrogator on the defensive. 'Evidence? Well, there is a tiny bit, actually,' said Gresham.

A bar of pain had started now across his midriff, threatening to outweigh his arms and legs in the stridency of its signal of pain.

'You see, Robert Leng kept the letter damning me as a Spanish agent. He would do, wouldn't he? And I… acquired it from him.' It had not been difficult to take the letter from a man with a broken leg. 'The extraordinary thing about that letter is that it reads correctly, it's even got a passing imitation of the right seal, but the writing… it's in the hand of your chief clerk. You could have given the letter over to my old friend Tom Phelippes to forge, if you'd been prepared to pay his price. But you're a mean man, aren't you? Unwilling to spend where you don't deem it necessary? Drake wouldn't know your clerk's hand. You gambled on forging that letter in house. Used one of your own men because it was cheaper. Gambled on Drake taking your bait. Gambled on that letter never surviving, never being subjected to scrutiny.'

'Your Majesty!' Was there the slightest hint of squeak in Cecil's voice? From the direction of Cecil's bow, Gresham had got it right. The Queen was seated at the end of the rack, beneath his line of vision. 'It is clear this man is a traitor!'

Another rustle, another waft of that perfume and the stink of bad breath. A face like that of the Queen appeared in his vision, swimming in and out of his consciousness.

'Walsingham told me nothing of you,' she said, her voice cold, the eyes unfeeling. 'You had a miraculous escape from the hands of the Spanish galleys, Drake tells me. Escape? Or free passage when they realised they were firing on a spy? You were in Lisbon before the Armada sailed. You were welcomed aboard the Spanish ships that fought my fleet. And you have been consorting with the daughter of a Spanish nobleman. There seems more in favour of Spain in your actions than of England!'

'The girl was an accident,' Gresham said, repeating himself. She would love being called that. It would confirm everything she had ever thought of him. Well, there would be little for her to admire after the rack had done its work. Was there another man alive — albeit barely — who had said the same words to Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Queen of England? At least he would carry that small distinction to his painful grave. 'I went to Lisbon with my credentials as a spy already established, sent ahead of me. I knew I would be allowed to roam free, or nearly so, and the Spanish girl was a simple bonus. Yet at all times I was under Walsingham's orders.'

'And what were those orders?' the Queen barked.

'To suborn the head of the Lisbon armouries. To bribe him to miscast his cannon, to bring his shot too early out of the heat so that his guns would shatter when they were fired, his shot also shatter when it emerged from the barrel.'

'What evidence have you of this?' Cecil was barking now, dangerously close to ignoring the presence of his Queen.

'I left the San Martin, flagship of the Armada and of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a battered hulk with barely a whole plank of timber to its name. I was bundled aboard the Revenge, one of the San Martin's main attackers, which in comparison was fresh out of the builder's yard.'

'You claim the credit for this!' exclaimed Cecil.

'No,' said Gresham. His heart was beginning to strain against his chest now, hurting as did his arms and legs. Was it too about to burst, before a real ratchet had been tightened on the rack? If this was the pain now, what would it be when the torture started? ‘Not all of it. Perhaps not even most of it. The Spanish guns were clumsy, slow to load, their command structures all wrong. Yet I swear as the San Martin fired on the English ships coming up in line to fire on her, not once did I see a shot of hers hit the enemy… the English ships. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the San Martin had shared her load of shot through the Armada, taken on a new load from the Lisbon armouries.' Gresham stopped, looked up, said nothing. The jailer brought the water again. This time he was nervous, spilling some on to Gresham's chest. His skin seemed on fire, the water scalding his skin with cold. 'And there was more. In Lisbon.'

'More?' Cecil was scathing. 'More lies.'

'The Marquis of Santa Cruz was a bad administrator, the worst man to keep the Armada fed and maintained over winter. So we… Walsingham wanted him there. Yet he could have been a perilous commander, might have done what Medina Sidonia's caution stopped him from doing and attack the English fleet in its base, make a landing in the Solent. So we killed him. We knew his replacement would be more cautious.' Gresham was amazed by how calmly he said the last words.

'You killed the Marquis of Santa Cruz?' Was there, for the first time, the slightest sense of fear in Cecil's voice?

'I didn't kill him. Mannion did. My servant. He'd been sent by Santa Cruz to the galleys as a captured English sailor. He had a reason. More than anyone else. He got into dalliance with one of the Marquis's cooks, became used to visiting her in the kitchens and waited until the Marquis's favourite food was to be served before sprinkling it with an odourless and taste-free poison. We were surprised at how easy it was, though he was an ill man anyway.' The pain was now affecting Gresham's brain, sending sharp lances of red-hot iron into his head, splintering his thoughts like a sharp stone shattering the flat reflections of a pond.

'So you say!' snarled Cecil. 'Yet again there is no evidence, except from a hulk of a man who would say that Satan was his rather to save his life. You cannot explain your defection from our mission to Flanders, to the Duke of Parma. You deserted your English compatriots. You broke my trust, the trust I had offered you by allowing you passage with my party.'

The Queen's party, actually, thought Gresham, but Her Majesty could read that nuance as well as he.

'To sail to Spain. To join the Armada. On the flagship. To stand by its commander.'

'I didn't just stand by him,' said Gresham weakly. 'I saved his ships. From the shoals. Warned him, when his own pilots couldn't see what was happening.'

‘You saved the ships of the Armada!' said Cecil, incredulous. He was shocked at the prospect, shocked that Gresham would own up to it.

'Helped save them,' said Gresham through his pain. ‘Why should more men die? More fine ships be sunk? The Armada wasn't the point. It never was.' As he paused for the breath he really did need, he realised how feeble it sounded.

'Wasn't the point?' said Cecil, again in what seemed to be genuine disbelief. Perhaps he was sorry that his victim had gone mad before the rack had done its work. 'If the Armada wasn't the point, what was?'

'The Armada itself, the ships, could only have made a difference if it'd landed its troops, taken the Isle of Wight, gone into Plymouth. Then it might have achieved something. I had to make sure it didn't stop. That's why I saved it. If they'd lost half their ships on shoals they'd have had to be defensive, cut their losses, might well have landed, stopped their advance. They only kept on to Calais because they were more or less intact.' Gresham stopped again. His breath was coming in rasping grunts now, and he was having to pause in mid-sentence to fill his lungs. It was as if the potential of the rack was squeezing them to half, a quarter of their capacity. 'The ships weren't important, as long as they didn't land the troops they had on board. The ships were only ever half of what might happen. It was the army, Parma's army, that was all that mattered. Without Parma's army, the whole thing was useless. Wouldn't work.' Gresham saw Cecil's throat move, saw him about to speak. Mustering all his strength, he cut in. 'I went to talk to the Duke of Parma,' said Gresham. 'That was all it was about. That was all it was ever about. To meet with Parma. To stop him sending his troops to join the Armada..'

'I know you met with Parma. One of my men heard you confess yourself to him as a Spanish spy! Hid under the floor! You were greeted by him as a long-lost friend!'

A wave of exhaustion had appeared on his horizon, rolling on to the beach where some enemy had pegged him out. There were no flowers on a sailor's grave. He would die shouting his pain under the water, unheard even by the fish. When would this farce end? He had done what he had to do. Now it would end in a tearing and wrenching of limbs. Make it now, dear God, let it start now so that it might end the sooner. 'I've told you,' said Gresham, 'Parma thought I was a spy working for Spain.'

'And all this on Walsingham's orders, of course!' said Cecil scornfully.

'Talking to Parma was Walsingham's idea,' said Gresham dreamily, a strange peace starting to settle over him, anaesthetising his limbs. 'That was the whole point of my being set up as a Spanish spy. So I could talk to Parma. I think the Spaniards surrounding Parma must have got wind of what I was being sent to do. They tried to kill me. Just before we met Parma.'

'How can that be? You tell us that the Spanish think you are a spy for them, and then that they tried to kill you?'

'Very few people in Spain knew that I was meant to be a spy on their side. You don't broadcast these things. Other Spaniards, the ones keeping watch on Parma, didn't know. They must have suspected the truth. That I was one of Walsingham's men, smuggled in with a diplomatic mission. To suborn Parma. You see, I didn't obey Walsingham's orders. I was only meant to tell Parma about the fly-boats. But I had an idea. What I said to him was my idea.' He heard himself give a strange giggle.

'More water. Now.' It was the Queen's voice, coming as if from far away. Something splashed in his face. He turned sharply away, found fluid forced into his mouth. He gulped, drank, suddenly grateful for the cool flow down his throat. 'Your idea?' Something had happened in his brain, and he could not tell if it was the Queen's voice or Cecil's.

'The Duke of Parma… he was the key, all along. I knew it. I knew it.' How many times had he said that? if his army didn't move, there was no invasion, no Spanish rule in England. The Armada, everything… it was just a joke! A great big joke! A terrible joke, an awful joke, a joke at the cost of human lives…' He was crying now, he noticed, writhing under the grip of the ropes. What a waste of fluid tears were. He would need that fluid soon, to cope with the rack tearing his body apart. Or would its absence ease the pain? 'So I had Tom Phelippes forge a seal. Paid him a King's ransom to forge a letter. Unlike you. I pay for proper forgeries. A Queen's ransom…' Suddenly it was overwhelmingly important for Gresham to get this right. 'The Queen's seal. And a letter under that seal. A secret letter.' Who was it giggling in the basement of the Tower? Surely it could not be Henry Gresham, who had spent so long gaining control of his body? 'A letter from the Queen offering him the throne of the Netherlands. If he let the Armada pass him by. If he let it swimmy swim swim…'

Something slapped hard across his face. Again. There was no doubting the hand this time or the voice. It was the Queen of England. One of the rings on her fingers had cut into his chin.

' You offered the Duke of Parma the throne of the Netherlands in my name?' she bellowed.

'Yes,' said Gresham simply. Despite the slap, the world was shifting softly in and out of focus. 'And I did a bit more than that, your Majesty.' He was very proud of himself for remembering the correct mode of address. Very, very very proud. Very, very very… I offered him your throne, actually. As it happens. The throne of England, in your name. Under your seal… If he left the Armada to its own devices. Well, not your seal actually, but your forged seal.' It was so important to get these things right. The room was starting to swing round again.

He was glad he could not see the Queen's face at that particular moment. She would probably be quite cross at the thought of a young nobody offering her throne to a foreign general.

'I thought he might like that. To be King of the Netherlands. It was only English support stopping him from winning for Spain. So if England came in on his side, he'd be bound to win. For himself. Then if he ran the Netherlands, a Catholic running a Protestant country, why not England? Rubbish, of course. Should never have a Catholic on our throne again. Too much trouble. But he wasn't to know that. Seemed a good idea at the time. So I gave him a letter he thought was from the Queen, offering to name him as her successor if he agreed not to invade. Don't worry. I bribed a secretary to steal the letter back and destroy it once Parma had read it. They lose a lot of things on campaign, you know,' he said stupidly.

Gresham turned his head, searching for the Queen. He wanted to see his death sentence in her eyes. Her face appeared from somewhere. From several somewheres. It looked venomous, angry beyond belief. Gresham meant to apologise. But it did not quite come out like that.

'I didn't do it for you, you know,' he said very seriously. 'Well, not exactly. I did it for peace. For the peasants. To stop the burning. I don't believe in war, you see,' he gabbled. 'It kills people. And I want them to live. If they can. Though a lot die anyway, don't they?'

He fell back, his head thumping on the bare wood. It hurt. How strange that he should notice that among all the other pain. The slight noise seemed to echo round the silence of the chamber. A hoarse, gravelly laugh came from the corner. A laugh Gresham knew. The laugh of a dead man.

Walsingham looked half dead, but whatever his body was telling him was clearly denied by a brain that had lost none of its edge. He could only walk with a stick, and a wide-eyed servant boy hovered near him, torn between fear of his master falling and fear for where he was and who also was in the chamber. And, perhaps, fear of what happened in that chamber. Walsingham laughed again. He bowed to the Queen, who nodded back. Cecil he ignored.

'Your own idea! Very good, very good! Your own idea!' Was Walsingham barking or speaking?

‘Is it good, Sir Thomas, that a man can forge his Queen's wishes? Offer her crown to another Prince? That an upstart can forge a letter giving away a crown!' asked the Queen, angry, venom in her voice.

'It is undoubtedly better if it is done without her knowledge, Your Majesty,' said the old man. 'As it is better that sometimes you do not know many things that have been done in your name. But most of all, better if it means the Duke of Parma is still in Ghent rather than laying siege to London and Your Majesty's person.'

There was silence after that.

'And remarkable,' said Walsingham, 'if it was done by a stripling who far from being rewarded for it was likely to end up here. He was indeed meant to tell Parma that the number of Dutch fly-boats was far in excess of his estimates. That his invasion barges would be swamped by them. Those were my orders to him.'

'Wouldn't have worked,' mumbled Gresham. 'Man like that, sees overwhelming odds as a challenge. Made him fight even harder. Needed more.' How strange that as well as being ferociously thirsty he also felt extraordinarily sick. 'Please,' said Gresham, 'I'm very sorry, Your Majesty, but I think I am about to be sick. Could you please start the torture now before I disgrace myself?' Dignity. After all, it was all one had.

There was a very long silence.

'Cut him free,' said the Queen.

The jailer was even more nervous, rubbing his hands together, bowing and scraping. 'I'd rather not cut the ropes, Your Majesty, as it means so much work threading new ones through the ratchets, and no little expense to replace all that rope. You see, you can't use them again if…'

'Cut that man free now,' said the Queen in an icy tone, 'or you will be the first person to test the new ropes through the ratchets.'

A knife appeared from nowhere, and suddenly the stretched figure of Gresham slumped amid a tangle of rope.

The agony of returning circulation was pain enough to send a man mad, as if white hot needles were being pushed through every vein and artery. He rubbed at his arms, could not stand up, did not know if he was allowed to.

Walsingham's voice cut through the thick air of the chamber. 'Your servant told us that you believed I was dead. Apparently the Spanish ambassador responded rather too enthusiastically to a report that I had succumbed to my illnesses, and sent a message to Parma.' Another stool had appeared, and Walsingham was seated on it, like a father by the bedside of his poorly child.

'Has my servant been tortured?' asked Gresham hurriedly.

‘I think he had received a few blows before we reached his cell. The man who gave them has a broken leg and a broken arm. A remarkable man, your servant. He said you were the biggest fool in Christendom because I was the only person who knew the truth and the only person who could bail you out, and still you went forward on your mission believing me dead. Yet he stayed with you.'

'He lacks sophistication, and beauty,' said Gresham, smiling slowly for the first time in days. The pain was easing now. It was simply agony, rather than unbearable agony.

'This man sought to offer your throne to a Catholic' Cecil's voice was higher-pitched than normal, his body seeming even more hunched, drawn in on itself.

‘I did so to stop a Catholic ruling over England,' said Gresham simply. She was bound to kill him. Even if only to stop the story getting out.

The Queen hated any talk of death, had banished courtiers for seeming even to hint at it. It was the Queen who spoke next. The tone was harsh, condemnatory.

'Why did you risk your life? Your honour? You had been set up as a spy for Spain. Only one man knew the truth. With him dead, as you thought, you lose your lands, your wealth, the respect of your countrymen, everything a man lives for. Why did you go on?'

'I…' Gresham hunted desperately for the words. 'Your Majesty, you have brought peace to this country. There would be no peace in England under a Catholic King. And if I needed further persuasion, I saw the bodies of ordinary people, half-eaten by wolves, outside the walls of Ostend. I met the Duke of Parma, a great man, a great Prince and a great leader, and spending his whole life plotting the death and destruction of fellow men, turning the country he fights for into a desert.' He paused, trying to roll all his half-understood feelings into one tight ball of words. 'Sometimes a person has to take a very great risk, if he is to achieve a very great reward.'

'You took an unpardonable risk in offering my Crown to another, Henry Gresham. An unpardonable risk. A treasonous risk.'

Well, that was that. There was no jury in the bowels of the Tower of London. And no justice. Suddenly the tiredness hit him, his mind started to dissolve, his eyelids pressing as if a ton weight was forcing them to close. From somewhere he heard his own voice. 'So be it, Your Majesty. What's done can't be changed. Yet 1 acted for what I believed to be the best. I betrayed none of my countrymen. I beg your mercy to grant me a clean death. Give me my dignity, if I can't have my life.'

'Fetch me a sword.' There was a peremptory bark in the Queen's voice. A darkened blade was hurriedly pulled off the wall, a sword of a design that had been fashionable fifty years ago. Yet for all its dullness, the blade was sharp, Gresham saw. Heated until red hot and the flat of the blade placed on human flesh? Forced into men's bodies to tear and gnaw? There was only one reason for a sword in a room such as this.

He felt the blade prick into his neck, tensed himself. A moment of pain, and then blessed relief. Would they bury him here, under the stones of the Tower, he wondered, or bury him in the light and good soil?

The sword lifted, and touched one shoulder. It lifted again, and hung poised. It was heavy, but for all her age the Queen seemed to feel no discomfort with its weight. Why was her face blurring and the image of Henry VIII seeming to impose itself on her face?

'If this sword descends on your other shoulder, you are Sir Henry Gresham. The first to be knighted thus in this desperate place.' For a moment the Queen's hatred of where she stood showed clear, and then it vanished. 'Yet if it bites into your neck, then you are indeed the dead man you have thought you were these many weeks. The choice is yours. Do you give me your word that you will speak of these events to no one while I live, and to no one for the term of your life, howsoever long it might be, regarding your offer of my crown to the Duke of Parma? Do you give me your word that there is no written record of these events? And do you give me your solemn word that if you believe that servant of yours, who clearly knows all of your secrets, is ever likely to tell anyone then he will die at your own hand?'

'Of course,' said Gresham. What need had he to tell others? And Mannion would commit suicide rather than betray his master and his friend.

'And do you give your solemn oath that despite your hatred of my little pygmy here, you will not pursue him in vengeance but rather will work with him for my greater need if and when I so command it?'

That was harder. Far harder. Too hard to justify a life? 'I do so swear.'

The silence stretched into eternity.

'Then you are Sir Henry Gresham.' The sword touched his other shoulder, with intense lightness. 'I will forgive you for not standing. Yet you may kiss my hand.'

He struggled to get himself upright. No one offered to help. All those present could sense the importance of his doing it himself. Gasping, weary beyond belief, he found himself sitting on the edge of the rack, that foul thing of torture. He bent his head, and kissed the cold, white hand of the Queen. She nodded, matter of factly, and turned to Cecil.

'Your time will come, Robert Cecil. You have a usefulness for me, and before you protest your loyalty, I know it. Your loyalty is based on your seeing me as the route to power and influence. His…' she gestured to Gresham, swaying gently, 'is based on something different. Together, your hatred binds you to me. I can and will use that unity of opposites. And as I have bound Sir Henry to swear, so do I you. You will cease to pursue this man with your vengeance, and will work with him for my greater need if I so command it. Do you so swear?'

'I swear, Your Majesty.' Cecil knew when to shut up as well, thought Gresham with a strange, sneaking admiration. It sounded as if he was the one who needed the water now.

'Remember,' said the Queen, who had been declared illegitimate on the execution of her mother, looking appraisingly at Gresham, 'there is need in the world for bastards. And as for you, Robert Cecil,' she said, turning finally to him, 'it was not Henry Gresham who first called you my little pygmy. It was your own father.'

She swept out and up the stairs, the men bowing their heads.