The galleon's grave

Chapter 1

March, 1587 The Queen's Court, London

They had ridden the first part of the journey as if the Devil was on their tail, for no other reason than Gresham's love of speed and danger. He had fresh horses waiting every twenty miles, at the various staging posts between Cambridge and London.

'It was easier in the meadows’ Gresham had muttered when the messenger delivered the summons to attend the Queen's Court. It was a week since he had killed his man. 'At least there I knew who the enemy was.'

The hard riding had driven some of the devils out of Gresham, yet he was still looking glum as he and Mannion rode companionably side by side, some four or five miles before London.

'There's thousands who'd die for a summons from the Queen to attend her at Court,' said Mannion, who hated Cambridge. There's no pleasing some people.'

'There's more men who've died through obeying the summons,' said Gresham glumly. 'I go to Court, amid all the fawning and the sycophancy, and it's like I'm walking through a forest I don't know, at night, and maybe there's an enemy behind every tree. Yet I don't know and I can't see, and the first I'll know is when a knife or an arrow lands in my back.'

'Bit like Cambridge, then,' said Mannion.

At the best of times the Court of Queen Elizabeth was a vicious, competitive and back-biting arena. It was increasingly decadent, a shifting maelstrom of new broken loyalties and bitter feuding laid on top of the long-standing clashes. The loyalty was lessening and the hatred increasing by the second as the news of a possible Spanish invasion became more and more threatening. It was clear that the Queen was past child-bearing age, even had she begun to find a husband she could tolerate. Who would be the next King of England? Or even, God help the country, its next Queen? The old order was soon to die. There were factions fighting for power within the Court, factions outside of it. To talk of who would succeed the Queen was to risk an ear lopped off or worse, yet those who formed the Court talked of little else. And recently there had been something else. Something personal against Gresham, an animosity, people turning away as he walked near. Or was it just an overactive imagination?

'That's part of why you go,' said Mannion. ‘You like the smell of danger. And you like the sense of power. And the girls,' he added finally.

'I could do without the attention of the oldest girl of the lot’ said Gresham. As the Queen visibly aged her desire to surround herself with well-formed young men increased. To his great alarm, Gresham had found himself one of her new menagerie.

They smelled and saw London long before they entered it. The sea coal that Londoners were addicted to had a deeper, heavier smell than the woodsmoke of Cambridge and seemed to leave an oily, cloying after-taste. Then there was the rotting stench of waste from hundreds of thousands of living creatures, man and beast, their only common denominator ownership of bowels and a bladder dominated by the need to empty themselves. The great city was built on filth, not just the manure of its living creatures but the mangled bones of beef and fish and chicken, the filthy water from washing and cooking. The river took as much as it could, of course, and it had its own smell: dank, rotten yet strangely sweet. And for all of that, in the middle of London, a sudden change of wind could replace the stench of massed humanity with the clear and sweet breath of countryside from the fields of Highbury and Islington, from where the milk was brought in every morning. At night the blazing lights of torches, of lanterns and of candles challenged the darkness with a frail gesture of protest from humanity. In daylight, it was the pall of smoke hanging over the city that first drew attention, with the silver ribbon of the Thames seeming to stand out in stark clarity, however obscured the sky. And then the noise, the deafening, crucifying noise! All the world had something to sell in London and was bellowing the news to anyone who cared to listen and to all those who did not. The traffic in the streets was like a river in torrent suddenly forced into a narrow gorge, men, women, boys, oxen, sheep, horses, clumsy farm carts and lumbering carriages moving, fighting, squabbling, all at full volume.

Coming from Cambridge, Gresham and Mannion had to enter by Eastgate and cross all of London to reach The House, the palatial and neglected mansion on the Strand that Gresham had inherited from his father. It would have been easier to leave the horses by the Tower, and get one of The House's boats to row them upstream. Yet Gresham felt the need to let London and its madness soak back into his spirit, remind him of the days when, as a child, he was penniless and free to wander these wild, narrow streets as he wished, remind him of the days when friendless and alone he had learned to rate survival as the only virtue, and learned how to survive.

He waited now in the Library, his favourite room in The House, dressed in all his finery for Court. Mannion sat with him. The high, mullioned windows looked out directly on the Thames, seemingly more crowded every visit he made. Would Spanish sails fill the view next time he came to London, thought Gresham, their cannons smashing to splinters the ludicrously expensive glass in the windows of his library? There was no hint of impending destruction in the soft, dark glow of the lovingly polished panelling, the even sorter gleam of the leather bindings on the books. Suddenly a commotion in the yard broke the peace, the clattering of hoofs, the sound of a loud, jovial man's voice. The Honourable George Willoughby, soon to become Lord Willoughby when his increasingly aged father died, was incapable of going anywhere incognito.

George Willoughby was the ugliest man on earth. A face that looked as if it had been slammed into a stone wall at a formative time in babyhood was further pock-marked by the deep, dark craters of smallpox. A mistake by the midwife had given George a slant to his face, the left side of his mouth pulled down in a permanent grimace, the lid on his left eye — a dark, muddy-brown eye — forever doomed to droop half-closed. He was also a big, burly man prone to knock over anything in his path.

'You're such an ugly bastard!' said Gresham, smiling affectionately at the only friend other than Mannion he had on earth.

A small table with a pewter mug on it went flying as George entered the Library.

'Oh, damn! So sorry!' said George. A lifetime of knocking things over had neither accustomed him to it, nor diminished the pain his clumsiness caused him Only two things were certain about George. He would barge into everything, and be torn apart by remorse when he did so. Then a smile lit the crags and valleys of his face. 'Wrong again, Mr Fellow of Granville College.' His gaze, impossibly frank and honest, met Gresham's. 'At least on one count. I'm ugly. You're the bastard!'

They advanced and hugged each other, Gresham's eyes dancing with fire and life. There were only two men alive who could call Gresham a bastard. And only one other who could call George Willoughby ugly.

'Ignore the servant,' said Gresham. 'He's getting ideas above his station again.'

George released Gresham, rather like a vast bear releasing its mate, and turned to Mannion. 'Been telling his Lordship the truth again, have you? Warned you about that,' said George, wagging a finger at Mannion. With both men in the room it seemed somehow shrunk, dominated by their bulk. 'I've known him even longer than you. I've told you often enough. Flatter him! Men with great fortunes can't take the truth. Particularly young men who think with their hips!'

George stuck out a vast paw, and Mannion grasped it in return. He looked approvingly at George. A person's appearance had never bothered Mannion. He judged a man by his heart. And George Willoughby's heart was as big as they came.

'There'll be flattery enough this evening,' said Gresham, as the three of them settled down to a bottle of rather fine Spanish wine brought cobwebbed from the cellars of The House. If there was anything odd about two gentlemen and a servant sharing a bottle, none of the three seemed to notice it.

'But of course!' said George. 'The Queen will be told she dances divinely and that she's the only paragon of human beauty, and several sonnets in her favour will be written on the spot. Despite the fact that she's self-evidently an old cow with a complexion like a distempered wall.'

'You'll be telling Her Majesty that tonight, will you?' said Gresham in a tone of innocence. 'Just imagine how you'd feel if she served up your head on a pewter salver and not a gold one…'

'My head's safer on my shoulders than yours is, Henry,' said George. There was a sudden sharpness in his tone that made Gresham look up. 'I tell you, you're playing with fire. There'll be no flattery of you tonight Only jealousy. Hatred, even. Are you wise to stay as one of Walsingham's men? These are dangerous times.'

Walsingham was Elizabeth's spy master. By now elderly and riven by serious illness, Walsingham had funded from his own income the greatest and the most malevolent network of informers in Europe. He had recruited Gresham as a spy in his first year at Cambridge, when Gresham was still an impoverished student. When Gresham's wholly unexpected inheritance turned his life from penury to fabulous wealth, he had stayed with Walsingham. Danger and risk were a drug to which young Henry Gresham had become addicted.

'Life's dangerous,' commented Gresham idly.

For all his foolish exterior, George Willoughby had a sharp brain. It was also one strangely acclimatised to the world of the Court Just as Gresham only really felt at home in Cambridge and its tiny battles, who was in favour and who was out of favour, who was a rising star and whose star had fallen were meat and drink to George. It was odd that a man so simple could take so much pleasure in charting the shifting sands of the Court.

'But rarely as dangerous as this. And doubly so since we decided to execute Mary Queen of Scots.'

Gresham said nothing.

Mary Queen of Scots. A Queen in her own right twice over — of France and of Scotland. With sufficient English royal blood in her veins to make her not only the obvious successor to Queen Elizabeth, but her present rival for the throne. She had fled to England when Scotland had rebelled against her, and found herself imprisoned for her pains by her cousin Elizabeth, yet remained the centre of continual plotting. And now she was dead, at last. Executed farcically at Fotheringay Castle in February. One Queen murdered on the order of another. A Catholic Queen murdered on the order of the bastard Protestant Elizabeth. The executioner had botched his job. Only at the third attempt had he severed the woman's head from her body. Mary had worn a wig to her execution. When the executioner bent down to grab hold of her mangled head to show it to the audience he had been left with the false hair in his hand, while the obscene, bald coconut of the Queen's head bounced and rolled off the staging. And Henry Gresham would regret to the end of his days the part he had played in that death.

'Apart from your personal involvement,' continued George, emptying half the remainder of the bottle into the delicate Venetian glass cradled in his vast hand, 'there's many who say executing Mary Queen of Scots was a disastrous move. Politically speaking, that is.'

'Walsingham was very firmly of the other opinion. He believed having a Catholic queen with a legitimate claim to the throne was to invite the overthrow of Elizabeth, "to nurture a canker in our breast",' said Gresham. 'I think I'm quoting him direct.'

'Quote him all you like,' said George, 'but remember, fewer and fewer people are listening to him now.' George stood up, endlessly restive, as if the ideas in his head could not be contained while his body was sitting. 'You've never understood the Court,' he said to Gresham, like a father admonishing a child. 'And what's been certain for so long is dying, uncertain. The Queen is old, Henry, for all that saying so is instant death for a courtier! Burghley is old…'

An outsider would have been surprised to see Gresham rise and the two young men make a formal, deep bow to each other. It was their ritual whenever they mentioned Lord Burghley, Chief Secretary to the Queen. Of worthy rather than noble stock, Burghley had the exaggerated respect for protocol and formality that came with nouveau status.

'Laugh on,' said Mannion to the pair of them. 'But just remember the man you're laughing at, is the most powerful man in England.'

'Is? Or was?' said George. 'Rumour has it he's losing his wits. Let's face it, the old guard are dying. Walsingham's seriously ill, doubled up by pain sometimes. The Queen has no heir, there's no clear succession… is it any wonder the Court's in turmoil? We've enough threats from within without adding more from outside!'

'Adding?' asked Gresham, interested despite himself.

'By executing a Catholic Queen! There's real panic in the Court,' answered George. 'It's odds on executing Mary will tip Spain over the edge.'

King Philip of Spain had once reigned in England as husband to Queen Mary in her disastrous time as Queen. That, and the tortuous Tudor lineage, gave Spain several claims on the English throne. More important to Philip, who had countries enough to rule, was the standing outrage of a Protestant England defying the one rule of Roman Catholicism.

George roared with laughter at a remembered joke. The plaster just about remained attached to the brickwork. 'The Bishops are shitting themselves! Apparently one of them fainted when someone burned some meat on the fire. Said it reminded him of the smell of human flesh burning!'

'Rumour has it that half the Bishops have started to learn Spanish,' said Gresham, grinning.

'Most of 'em can't speak bloody English!' growled Mannion. Clergy and Spaniards were his two least favourite breeds.

'What are the serious minds at Court saying about the succession?' asked Gresham. George would know the latest word if anyone did. Elizabeth had resolutely refused to marry. The nearest thing to an heir was probably James VI of Scotland, son of the executed Mary Queen of Scots.

'Very divided. Some say Spain. Some say the King of Scots. Others want the Queen to marry an English nobleman, even now, someone younger than herself so we get a King.'

'Wonderful!' exclaimed Gresham. 'What a choice! Our' next monarch is either Spanish, which means the country torn apart by religious war, or the King of our oldest and bitterest enemy — oh, and someone whose mother we've just had executed! — which means civil war. Or it's Leicester, Essex or even Walter Raleigh, any one of whom would guarantee the other two and every other noble family at Court launching immediate civil and religious war!'

The Earl of Leicester was the Queen's old favourite, increasingly being put in the shade by the young and extremely handsome Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. Sir Walter Raleigh was a permanent joker in the pack.

'Never mind the danger the country's in,' said George. 'Think about the danger you're in.'

"E's right,' said Mannion. 'I know bugger all about the politics, but even I can see they're mad jealous of you. Jealous of your money. Jealous of your looks. Jealous of how you do with women. Jealous o' the Queen taking notice of you. And you haven' exactly been… discreet with some o' those girls you've serviced, 'ave you?'

A slight grin crossed Gresham's face, infuriating the two other men. He had never hurt a woman in his life. But he had had an awful lot of mutual pleasure with them. 'What the eye doesn't see, the heart can't grieve for…' he said.

'Mebbe not,' said Mannion, 'but there's three or four Lordships with young wives who're putting one and one together and seein' you in bed with their women!'

It was George's turn now. 'It's known that you've meddled on Walsingham's behalf. Not the details, of course, or you'd be dead in a side alley. Walsingham's old, dying. His star's on the wane. No one knows what'll happen when his empire collapses with his death. But for too many at Court you're a young upstart who's been too involved in every shady activity of the past few years. And now you've caught the fancy of the Queen. God knows what you might be whispering to her. On all counts, you're a nuisance. And a nuisance with no friends except me and this man mountain here, God help us.'

'So what's your advice?' asked Gresham, swilling a residue of wine around in the bottom of his goblet. 'Thanks for telling me all the dangers. Now tell me a way to get out of them!'

'Kill yourself!' said George. 'At least then you can make it quick and clean and get there before they do!' he added cheerfully. A beaming grin lit up his face, followed by another great, booming laugh. One of the things about George was that at a certain level of stress his brain cut out, and he retreated from serious matters to the solace of the bottle and friendship. 'Except you'll think of a way, one I couldn't have dreamt of, and I'll stand back in wonder at your achievement! You see, I'm really good at working out the odds. Funny, really. Most people think I'm a fool, except you. Problem is, when I've worked out the odds, I believe them. You… well, you decide to get the better of them. Betting man's nightmare, you are.'

'You know what Walsingham's made me do,' said Gresham. 'You and Mannion. Are you telling me I should have refused him?' 'I don't know,' said George. 'I wish I did. Do I think it's clever to attend secret Masses, on Walsingham's instructions? Of course not! Not in this climate. It's madness! Particularly as I've never been sure how much your affection for the Catholics was an act, or whether it's the reality.'

'I've told you,' said Gresham. 'My first nurse was a Catholic. When I couldn't suck her breasts I sucked her rosary beads. It leaves a mark on a man, you know…'

'I could tell you how extraordinarily irritating your flippancy is,' said George, 'but as you do it in order to be extraordinarily irritating it would only add to your pleasure. I'm just telling you to take care. Too many people of power go silent when your name's mentioned. And there's new talk. Can I ask you a question?'

'Of course,' said Gresham.

'Are you taking Spain's money? To be frank, rumour is that you're a Spanish spy. I know you'd never betray England,' said George gamely, 'but I can see you'd get involved with Spain just for the excitement of it. Well? Are you?'

'Am I what? You asked two questions. Whether I was a Spanish spy? Or taking Spanish money?'

'Stop playing games! I'm your oldest friend. I deserve an answer.'

'Well, now,' said Gresham, after a moment's thought. 'The answer is yes to one and no to another. It's more fun to leave you to work out which answer fits which question.'

George roared in exasperation, and within seconds the two men were rolling on the floor like two schoolboys in a fight.

'Well,' said Mannion. 'I'm just a working man.' He was used to conversations between George and Gresham ending in blows. Sometimes they actually hurt each other. 'But I don't doubt if your head goes on the block, mine will too. And I just wish you'd tell My Lord Bloody Black Arts Walsingham to bugger off. Then I'd feel safe.' Having got George in a neck hold, Gresham declared himself the winner.

They went by boat to Whitehall, eight liveried oarsmen making light of the Thames. The landing area was ablaze with torches, their light spearing out like fiery lances onto the rippling, black surface of the water.

'Is this wise?' asked Gresham as they were about to disembark.

'Your being here?' asked George.

‘No, you great idiot. This whole event.'

'If you mean is it wise for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth to host a Grand Reception for a very minor noble from the Netherlands who calls himself Ambassador and doesn't have enough money to put linen and cloth between his arse and the wind… probably not. After all, it makes it perfectly clear that we are supporting a rebellion in a country claimed as his own by King Philip of Spain. That same King Philip who, by all accounts, is set to invade England and end its Protestant heresy once and for all… No, it's probably not wise. But you have to admit, it does require guts.'

The Protestant Low Countries had been in revolt for years against Catholic Spain, which claimed them as a province. English money and English troops — neither of which were in plentiful supply — had stopped Spain from winning total domination over the Netherlands. Yet Spain had the most powerful army in Europe stationed in the Low Countries, under the command of the undefeatable Duke of Parma, an invincible army that many thought King Philip of Spain would send to invade England once his patience finally ran out. And now Elizabeth was holding a grand reception for an Ambassador from the Protestant part of the Netherlands. Kicking Spain in the crotch, or taunting the bull to charge at you when you had nothing with which to kill it? Was it brinkmanship on the part of the Queen, or stupidity?

Nothing was as it seemed in the Court of Queen Elizabeth. The light from candle, lamp and lantern seemed to laugh at the dark until one realised that significant areas of the Palace were blacked out. The food seemed to offer course after course after course, until one looked and realised that there were really very few examples of each, and that the Chamberlain had relied on announcing a late serving of the food so that guests would have eaten at least something before they left their homes. Choice was great, the quantity of each choice meagre. As for the wines, the servants promised the best, but pleaded they had just emptied the bottle. Would the honoured guest accept something a little less impressive as a stop-gap?

Gresham gazed ruefully at the cat's piss in his goblet, having to decide whether or not he wanted to get drunk at all costs, or whether he still had some standards. The Queen had refrained from slobbering all over him, though presumably that treat was reserved for the dancing.

As they moved into the Great Hall for the speeches and the dancing, they were surrounded by a throng of people desperate to be seen and to see who else was there.

'That's the Earl of Leicester who cut you dead, and Essex tried to walk over you as if you were a dog's turd,' said George.

'They're jealous, that's all,' said Gresham, who was not drunk but starting to feel detached in a merry enough sort of way. 'Jealous the Queen'll find out what a lover I am in comparison to them.'

He had just decided that his aim for the evening would be to get historically drunk when he became aware of someone standing by his shoulder.

'Avoid drinking too much this evening,' said a gravelly voice, as if someone had read his thoughts. 'You may find that you need your wits about you.'

Sir Francis Walsingham was an old man now, but the intensity in his dark black eyes had not diminished, nor the sense of raw energy held back within the confines of polite behaviour. Gresham was shocked. Walsingham had no time for frivolities such as this evening, preferring to spend his time in the quiet of his house in Barnes.

'Sir Francis!' Gresham sought to cover his confusion, bowed his head. George had melted away subtly, Mannion withdrawn to where he could see but not hear what was happening. A giggling lady-in-waiting with a young man in hot pursuit thrust between the two men, then saw Walsingham and turned pale, stuttering an apology as she backed away, eyes suddenly downcast. Few men had such a reputation as Walsingham. Few men could inspire such fear.

The Ambassador had entered now, as ragged as George had pre-dieted, and was standing awkwardly with a stupid smile on his race as a lackey gave a formal speech of welcome.

Walsingham speared Gresham with a glare. 'Come,' he said. 'The speeches will drag on for ever. Her Majesty will not appear for another half an hour at the least, when for all our sakes we ought to be here.'

Walsingham motioned to a door. Once through, another door opened into a small room furnished with a blazing fire, candles, and a small table with two chairs. Clearly Walsingham had made plans in advance. He drew his old-fashioned, long, fur-lined cloak round about — how thin the man was looking, thought Gresham — and motioned the young man to sit down.

'I thank you for what you have done; For what you are doing. It is not without danger.'

There was mulled wine on the table, steaming hot, though no sign of the servant who must have placed it there only minutes before. Walsingham took a goblet, claw-like hands stretching round to draw out the warmth.

'The danger I accept, my Lord,' said Gresham. 'What concerns me is how little I know about why I'm asked to do what I'm asked.'

'I have spent my whole life acquiring knowledge, believing it to be the root of all real power,' said Walsingham.*Now I realise that sometimes ignorance is a great safeguard. Too much knowledge can cloud our judgement, make us think too much. Restrain your youthful impatience, to know everything. If indeed any of us can ever know everything.'

Gresham was clearly getting no further. One did not debate with Walsingham. One listened to his reasoning, and either did what he asked or failed to do so. And rather too many of those who refused his instructions were washed up face down in the Thames a couple of days later for any of Walsingham's agents ever to feel secure about their freedom of choice.

'My reason for seeing you tonight is this. We have at last begun to move against our enemies with the death of that damned charlatan.'

Walsingham's voice was calm, but Gresham knew the depth of his hatred for Mary Queen of Scots. Not for Walsingham the fear that her death would provoke Spain to invade England. For him, Mary had been a glaring invitation for every Catholic in England and Europe to rise up against Elizabeth and Protestantism. 'One does not deal with the canker in one's body!' he had once said to Gresham. 'One cuts it out!' Throughout his life he had been an implacable champion for the three things he most believed in: the Protestant faith, England and Queen Elizabeth, in that order.

'However, the Queen suspects my involvement and I am out of favour, as are all who sought the death of Mary.'

Walsingham out of favour? One of the men who had most bolstered Elizabeth's reign?

What passed for a smile crossed Walsingham's lined face. 'It is in the nature of ministers to lose the favour of their monarch at times. It is a show. The Queen fears for her own survival when a fellow Queen is executed, but it will pass. The Queen is a realist above all. Yet temporarily my access to Her Majesty is reduced. Also, I am ill. Her Majesty does not like to be reminded of mortality.' He turned to Gresham, brisk and business-like. 'How much do you understand the politics of the Court?'

'Very little, my Lord, if the truth be known.' It was like being lectured by George, only far more threatening.

'Then take a hurried lesson,' said Walsingham. 'My Lord Burghley has been the dominant presence in the Queen's Court since her accession — and if you were considering stupid flattery, do not embark on it. I know and have accepted from the outset my secondary role. Yet he and I are both old. Our days are limited, mine more than Burghley's. The Earls of Leicester and Essex see themselves as taking over Lord Burghley's role, as perhaps might even that pirate Raleigh.'

'Surely a recipe for civil war?' blurted out Gresham.

'Quite,' said Walsingham. 'Yet Burghley hopes his second son, the cripple, Robert Cecil, will succeed him as the Queen's Chief Minister. The battle between Essex and Cecil is intriguing. Breeding against ability. Extreme physical beauty against a deformed body.'

Why was Walsingham telling him this? And whatever this unfathomable man's unfathomable reasons, Gresham's heart sank. Despite Robert Cecil being older than Gresham, they had crossed swords at Cambridge and at Court. Cecil, Gresham sensed, was not his natural ally, nor even a friend.

‘I’m not favoured by Robert Cecil,' he said.

'Cecil believes you were responsible for suggesting the nickname by which the Queen refers to him,' said Walsingham. 'Not a wise move, if it were true.'

A warning? Was this a warning? The Queen referred to Cecil as her pygmy. With a crooked back, short build and warped body, Cecil's smile when the Queen used the term was painful to behold.

'I swear I didn't do so,' said Gresham. It was true, though he might have done if he had thought of it. Yet out of such stupid misunderstandings came the hatreds and feuds that filled the tiny, claustrophobic world of the Court.

'In any event, we are ready to strike a second blow at the Catholics,' said Walsingham. ‘Despite my being in disfavour, I have managed to persuade her Majesty to authorise Drake to strike at Lisbon or Cadiz. It is our only hope. We have no army to resist Spain if they land the Duke of Parma and his forces on these shores. Our only strength is our ships, and we must strike at the Spanish vessels before they can launch an assault on us.'

Gresham loathed the sea. 'What role do I have in this?' he asked.

'I need eyes and ears abroad. I have booked you passage on Drake's expedition. He will land you ashore on some dark night so you can make your way to Lisbon, give me the information about Philip's fleet that we so desperately need. Yet after the attack, I want you also to report on the fighting qualities of our men and our ships. I need to hear at first-hand how they cope in battle. And how their leaders lead them.'

'It won't be easy to be an Englishman in Portugal, or Spain, at this time,' said Gresham.

'Few things that are easy are worthwhile,' Walsingham replied. 'And it is easier for you than for many. You speak Spanish like a native. And you have acquired Spanish friends. On my behalf, of course.' There was no expression in Walsingham's eyes. Was Walsingham becoming concerned about Gresham's links with Spain? 'Will you… accept this errand on my behalf?'

'My Lord.' Gresham bowed his head. Well, well, well. How nice to be treated like a package. Gresham was glad that he was not sensitive. He did not want to go to sea. He thought he was worth more than counting ships in a foreign harbour. It was dangerous, what was being asked of him, but without the glamour or excitement that made the danger palatable. And why the mention of Cecil? 'Yet our earlier conversation? About Robert Cecil…?'

'The matter on which you embark is sensitive. Too sensitive for your instructions to be entrusted to a messenger. Expect to be contacted by Robert Cecil in the near future. He will give you my final orders. While my illness persists, he is useful to me. You will forget your childish differences and take him as my representative.'

Robert Cecil was a man clawing his way up the ladder of preferment, helped by his father's great power but also sometimes hindered by the enemies his father had built up over his lifetime. Which side was Walsingham on? Did he see Robert Cecil as the new order, the order George had seen as imminent?

'We must return to await the Queen's entry. And by the way, restrain your vanity. It was not the Queen's lust for your fine legs and the rest of your body that made her summon you here. It was because I asked her to do so. I have that much influence left, it would seem.'

As Walsingham rose a staggering pain seemed to hit him in the gut, and he doubled up. If Gresham had not suddenly been there to support him he would have crashed to the floor. The old man's lips were drawn back in silent agony, his eyes screwed shut, hands clutching at his stomach.

'My Lord…!' Gresham was aghast, confused. He had never seen Walsingham express any sign of humanity, never mind physical weakness. 'Sit… sit…' Gresham sensed that Walsingham needed to be placed back in the chair. He lay there, gasping two or three times as spasms crashed through him. Then it seemed as if the pains were easing. Walsingham opened his eyes.

'Stones. There is nothing that can be done. The pain is acute, but it passes. Its cruelty is that it comes without warning. Go!' he said, eyes only half-open. 'Go now. It is important that the Queen sees you there when she appears to welcome the Ambassador. More important than if I remain here…'

As the door closed Walsingham stood up straight, all signs of pain gone. The real pain would come later, he knew. As it was, his knowledge of that pain allowed him to act it out with utter conviction when it was useful and he needed to rid himself of someone. The old man moved to the side of the room. 'We are alone,' he called out. 'You may safely emerge.'

Robert Cecil swung back the arras from behind which he had witnessed Walsingham's conversation with Gresham. A small, slightly hunched figure, he moved awkwardly to a chair, nodded his acknowledgement to Walsingham and received the old man's permission to sit.

‘Well, sir,' said Walsingham. 'Did you see what you wished to see?'

'I am grateful to you, Sir Francis,' said Cecil. 'I- ' 'I ask no questions, Robert Cecil,' said Walsingham, waving a hand to cut Cecil short. 'And, to be frank, I would not believe your answers. Your father asks me to repay a past favour by my seeing you. I agreed. You asked to be given the chance to view and to meet one of my… young men. It does not interfere with my plans for that young man. I agreed. My debt is paid. You have what you wished for. If only all life could be so simple.' There was silence for a moment.

'I confess to being surprised that you do not wish to know more of my reasons, my Lord,' said Cecil, finally.

'Why?' said Walsingham. 'You will certainly have a reason to give me, but quite frankly, it is as likely to be a lie as it is to be the truth.'

'Sir!' said Cecil, outrage in his surprisingly strong voice, a voice with a rasp in it as of something dragged over gravel, at odds with his slight frame. 'I take offence at the accusation of being a liar!'

Walsingham looked at Cecil, an ironic, humourless smile playing on his lips. 'Then you take offence too easily, and will not last long in the world of the Court! I know what you are,' said Walsingham. In those few words Walsingham had somehow crammed the experience of all his years, the idiocy of human life, its vanities, its foibles and its deceits.

'Sir?' Cecil was confused now.

'You were born into power, have grown up with power and expect power as your right. You drank in power at your mother's breast and at your father's table. And now the source of your power, your father, is failing, as I am failing, because time is the one enemy we cannot defeat, your father with his skills and me with mine.' 'I seek to serve Her Majesty in whatever humble capacity-' You are not humble, Master Cecil. And the god you serve is your own position and influence. Don't worry,' said Walsingham, holding up his hand to stop another outburst and speaking now almost in sympathetic tones, 'there is many a man who has given good service to his monarch when actually serving only himself. You are such, I suspect.'

Cecil had recovered now. There was ice in his reply. 'You seem to know a very great deal.'

'I know what you are. That you will twist and turn seeking every advantage, sniff the wind of favour like a beast in the field, scent where danger and advantage are. You are different from myself, from your father even. God knows I have ambition enough. Yet always I have known that I served first my God, second my country and third my Queen. You are the future, I fear. You may do good service to all three, yet the person you really serve is yourself.'

'The Queen might be interested to hear your order of priorities,' sneered Cecil.

'She is not ready to hear them from you, not yet’ said Walsingham. 'There are many rungs to climb on your ladder of success before you reach that level of confidence with her.'

There was silence between the two men.

'And in answer to the question you do not dare to ask, you will have reasons for getting to know Henry Gresham, reasons that I have no doubt will rebound to your own advantage. I see no obstruction to my plans for that young man in whatever you might wish of him, not yet at least. But you may find that he is a young man who has ideas of his own. So be it. And good day to you, Robert Cecil.'

Obligation. Entrapment. Robert Cecil was the new order, or a possible variant of that new order. Yet Walsingham was ready to die only when God gave the command. In the meantime, let the new order be in his debt, in his vision. He doubted that Cecil planned anything good for Gresham. But who knew how valuable the knowledge of Cecil's plans would be when Walsingham finally acquired it, as acquire it he surely would.

'Just checking you came out alive!' whispered George, who appeared by Gresham's side as soon as he stepped into the Hall. Mannion was there too, playing his usual trick of sticking up against the wall so that people thought him to be a royal servant. 'Well, tell me! What did he want?'

'To have me blown to death in Lisbon or hung from a tree as a spy there!' said Gresham bitterly, then angry at himself for taking his depression out on his friend. Further conversation was denied them. The musicians in the Gallery stirred. The Queen's famous parsimony may have been evident elsewhere in her reception, but not in the dress of her players, resplendent in Tudor green. They stood, and a blare of trumpets rolled out through the rafters and rattled the windows of the ancient building. It was a dramatic opening, but not as dramatic as the appearance of the Virgin Queen herself.

The cynic in Gresham noted that a particularly fine chandelier had been hung at the back of the hall, over a narrow, empty dais cloaked at the side with fine hangings. It seemed to serve no purpose, until the Queen stepped out from a door hidden by one of the hangings, two cherubic page boys flinging the door open and standing aside, bowing to let her pass. Every jewel sewn into her dress, on her fingers and round her neck seemed to blaze into fearsome light, as if a glittering portion of the sun had exploded into the Hall. She was not a particularly tall woman, and her hour-glass figure was threatened by matronly wadding. The worth of the fine black and russet-brown cloth of the dress alone, with its intricate filigree stitching on the huge puffed sleeves, would have fed a small town for a year. And the jewels! Apart from the gem stones, some even placed on the vast halo-like ruff that framed her face, there were vast, sweeping strings of pearls around her neck and crowning her hair.

'That,' whispered Gresham to George, 'is an entrance.'

There was an indrawn gasp of breath as she moved to the front of the dais, and a spontaneous round of applause. It was easy to forget how fragile was her hold on power in the face of her magnificence. She gazed down at her adoring Court and a thin smile of triumph crossed her lips. She extended her hand to the Ambassador, the huge emerald ring on her finger looking like a vast open mouth, the light shooting in and out of its facets. The poor man was quite overwhelmed by events. He could not see the short stairs leading up to the dais, yet could not reach Her Majesty's hand without climbing on to the stage with her. A quick glance from the Queen and a courtier jumped to take the Ambassador's elbow and lead him to the steps. Yet he stumbled as he climbed them. The Queen, her hand still extended, looked down disdainfully at him.

'Fear not, sir!' she exclaimed in a voice strangely deep for a woman, 'this is the hand of friendship I extend to you, not the fist of war.'

A gale of laughter swept the Court, far more than the feeble joke deserved. So it was not her best. Yet the Court knew of old that a rough earthiness could cut into the formality and pretence of Court life at any moment, as the spirit of her father, Henry VIII, possessed her. They might hate her when she was not there, blame her increasingly for not leaving England with a clear heir, but here, in the splendour of her own Court, it was not difficult to see why she had survived so long and so well.

Gresham found himself dancing with the Queen before he realised it. The intricate moves had required his whole attention, and it was not until he felt the stink of the Queen's foul breath behind him that he realised the next round would place him in partnership with her. They swept towards each other, the Queen still excellent in the slower dances. Her face was unnaturally white, the pancake-layer of make-up beginning to loosen like bad plaster as the sweat and exertion of the evening wore on. Her eyes were small, narrow, as they had been on the portraits of her father, Gresham noted. She had favoured the Earl of Essex all evening, to the discomfiture of Leicester. Now she fixed her eye on Gresham, still coping apparently effortlessly with the intricacies of the dance.

'Have you spent all that money yet, Master Gresham?' she asked. She never met him without referring to his wealth, nor let an hour pass without referring to her own poverty. 'Have you spent your inheritance on the things young men spend their money on?'

'I would willingly spend it on gifts for Your Majesty,' said Gresham, a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was not the moment to cannon back into the Earl of Somerset or step on the most powerful set of toes in England, 'were it not for the fact that the greatest fortune on earth could not improve on the beauty that nature and providence gave Her Majesty.'

They moved back in stately movement for a moment, then came together again. The dance required them to walk between the other couples, fifteen or twenty in number, in two separate stages. Gresham was vaguely aware of several glances of hatred directed at him as he escorted the Queen up the line.

'Your words are impressive, young man,' said the Queen, 'and even more so because there is even a slight chance you thought of them yourself.'

Ouch; It never did to underestimate the Queen, whose capacity for flattery was only equalled by her ability to perceive when she was being flattered.

'Have care, young man,' the Queen added, her face expressionless. The dance had brought them face to face for a brief moment. 'There are those who despise you as an upstart in my Court.'

And there are those who despise you, Your Majesty, thought Gresham, as the bastard daughter of the whore Anne Boleyn, who many thought a witch. Nonetheless…

'Thank you, Your Majesty,' said Gresham humbly, in the few seconds remaining. 'Yet sometimes upstarts are better survivors than those whose entry into life was made easy for them.'

My God! What had he said! He might as well have told her that bastards should stick together! The Queen's eyes were fathomless, unreadable. They parted with the brief, formal bows the dance demanded, his deep and low, hers conventional, neither so brief as to be rude nor so long as to excite attention.

'Well, that was interesting.' George had grabbed a table in a room off the Hall, found from somewhere some scraps of food and a half-decent bottle. No servant could sit at table with their master and so Gresham had sent Mannion off to scour the kitchens, where past experience suggested he would find far better food and drink, and probably ruin a kitchen-maid in the bargain. There were plenty of available women above-stairs, for that matter, but the encounter with the Queen had rather knocked the stuffing out of Gresham.

'What was interesting?' asked Gresham. 'Her breath curdles milk inside the cow at fifty paces, and you never know from one minute to the next if it's an axe or a glove in her hand. I-'

‘Not that, fool,' said George. 'Who cares about you? I mean the way the Ambassador was received. Didn't you notice, you great idiot?'

'Notice? Notice what?' said Gresham. Perhaps he would get drunk after all, since remaining sober didn't seem to help.

'The Queen was not there to greet the Ambassador, nor to hear the speech of welcome. All perfectly acceptable in diplomatic terms, of course, but it demotes him immediately two or three places below a Prince or equivalent. No, what it shows is that this evening isn't about the Queen listening to the Ambassador, as I feared. Rather, it's to impress him. It's a show of force — or rather a show of wealth. He's meant to go back to the Netherlands and tell them how much money England has, how brilliant its Court is.'

'But that doesn't make sense,' said Gresham, grappling with the issues. 'All it means is that they'll ask us for more money and more men, when all the Queen can do is say that she hasn't got the income to hold body and soul together.' Spend a bit less on your dresses, lady, thought Gresham.

'Of course it makes sense!' said George, exasperated at his friend's inability to see what was obvious. 'While the Netherlands keep on fighting the Duke of Parma, he's hardly going to want to send half his army over to England, is he? It's leaving him completely exposed. If the Protestants think England can keep pouring money and troops into their cause, they're much more likely to keep fighting and not make a deal with Parma or Spain. Don't you understand anything about politics?'

No, thought Gresham, I do not. Or at least not enough. And as the waters get deeper and my involvement greater with every minute, I must learn. Even the most dedicated survivor needs lessons in survival