The galleon's grave

Chapter 7

September, 1587 London; Lisbon

Has it crossed your mind how dangerous this jaunt you're planning to Lisbon is?' asked George. 'And just how many games do you think you can play at the same time? Agent, double agent, dammit, even triple agent? At times even I don't know what side you're on!'

Gresham chose to respond only to the first part of the question. 'I'm on my own side. And is it more dangerous than being in a rowing boat fired at by cannon from a Spanish galley?'

'About the same, I reckon,' said George. 'In fact, I'm starting to think I'd rather be back on the boat. At least there we knew who the enemy was.'

'There's an invasion coming,' said Gresham almost dreamily. 'I can feel it in my bones. And that invasion, once it touches these shores, could act like a fuse and trigger every sect, every family and every person who's ever lusted after power… and all we have between us and chaos are a few ships who've never worked as a fleet… wouldn't the real danger be to do nothing?'

They were walking in the Long Gallery of The House, an expanse of polished panelling hung with the very best of Sir Thomas Gresham's paintings and tapestries. It was cool there, despite the long line of windows and the slanting, late-summer sunlight streaming through, creating alternate pools of light and dark along its length. The Queen had demanded a price for licensing Henry Gresham to travel to Lisbon: that he formally present Anna to her at Court. It was unusual for the Queen to be in London in the summer. She preferred to go on progress then, bankrupting her nobles and saving herself a small fortune in the upkeep of the Court. It was the continuing uncertainty surrounding the Armada, which some said was ready to sail despite the damage of Cadiz, that kept the Queen in London. Old fox that she was, she knew perfectly well that if Philip came knocking on her door London was the place for her to be, not out in the sticks being fawned on by an ageing Lord presenting her with endless poems written by someone else praising her eternal beauty.

'I don't know what it is with you,' said George. 'You just can't keep it simple, can you? What do you do with a young man who gets caught up in all this spying business! This double and treble agent stuff! When you should have been doing normal things like chasing girls and drinking yourself stupid!' He paused for a moment. 'Mind, to be fair, you have done those as well. Anyway, my guess is you'll get a knife in your gut the minute we land in Lisbon. From one side or the other.'

There was a crash from a room nearby, a wail and a torrent of rapid English. Gresham flinched, confused. Anna was telling her maid to hurry up, and doing so by hurling a rather fine ceramic pot of pins at the nearest wall. Pots cost money. So did maids, for that matter. He hoped it was only the pot that was broken. In front of him, apart from her obvious excitement in the stables, he had never seen anything except cool control. Had he missed something? Whatever was going on next door was from a very different person to the one he thought he knew.

'Well,' said Gresham, wrenching his mind back to his conversation with George, 'You know the argument. You disguise yourself one of two ways — you hide what you are, or you tell everyone what you are. The girl's fiancй is based in Lisbon. I'm her guardian. It's perfectly reasonable for me to want to fulfil my word to her dying mother. And by getting permission from the Governor General and the Queen to make the visit, by doing it in the highest possible profile, they'll think only a madman would make such a noise about a visit when he's actually come to spy.'

'I agree with the madman bit,' said Mannion.

'And I'm coming with you,' said George..

'You!' said Gresham. 'You can't…'

'Shut up,' said George. 'Firstly, you can't stop me. I've got my licence from the Queen — and a pretty sum" father had to pay for it — and secondly, I'm superb cover for you, second only to the girl. People think I'm just a big buffoon, and they'd think Walsingham had lost his roof timbers and his slates if he was using me as a spy.'

He had a point, Gresham conceded reluctantly, though he was not prepared to concede just yet. He knew his real objection; he was fearful that George would come to harm. Why was it so much easier to contemplate risk for oneself than contemplate it for those one loved? It was another reason for loving no one. They waited for Anna to appear.

Gresham was dressed in a deep, lustrous black doublet, slashed through to reveal the silver silk lining, the black finely embroidered in raised stitching. Some people wore a ruff as if it were a simple irritant; Gresham wore his as if it were simply an extension of his beard. The doublet seemed to emphasise the broad shoulders, the narrow hips, while any young male courtier would have died for the line of his leg and calf in the superb silken hose. Many of the other young men there would have extravagant, high hats, in the full flush of fashion. Gresham's was flatter than the fashion, a thin brim and small top no higher than his head cut from the same material as his doublet. He wore little jewellery; the single diamond on his ring finger, set in a simple setting, alone was worth all the gold and jewels worn by three or four of the wealthiest courtiers. It had been one of the few luxuries his father had allowed himself, and had never left his hand. It reassured the bankers and money lenders with whom he negotiated, he had used to say, to know that he had collateral at his finger tips.

There was another rattle of English from deep within, another crash.

'Should I go and sort it out?' asked Gresham.

'No,' said George, 'leave 'em to fight it out. Women have their own ways of doing these things. You wait. She and that maid'll come out in a minute or two as if they were best friends.'

Minutes later the maid flung a door open as if the Queen had come to The House. In some respects she had. The vision that was Anna stepped forth, and even Mannion wondered where his breath had gone for a fleeting moment. The deep blue of her eyes seemed to be echoed in the equally deep, vivid royal blue of her dress, picked out with so many pearls that at least one ocean must have felt denuded. Her hair had clearly been done by some goddess temporarily on loan from Olympus, the cap not containing but rather complementing it. Her perfect figure was somehow emphasised by the huge sweep of the dress out from her hips, the glorious billows of the sleeves done in some lighter, dancing material that still man-aged to match the colouring of the whole. God knows how they had got the dress ready in time. It could take a year for a good dressmaker to produce such a work of art, and the cost of a Court dress was staggering. But money talked, a fact Gresham recognised as much as sometimes he felt revolted by it, he who had carefully been deprived of money at a crucial time in his youth, left to fend without it and so learn its value.

'I think your goods have packaged well, is it not so?' asked Anna, making a polite curtsey to Gresham. It was the same cool, infuriating creature, but there was an excitement to her that even her self-control could not hide.

'Did you break all of Mary's limbs, or just selected ones?' asked Gresham cuttingly. She bridled, stifling the movement halfway through and instead drawing herself up to her full height.

'Sometimes you are a stupid man, and this is a surprise for someone who is so rich. Mary is a very good maid and we are friends of best,' replied Anna primly. 'Girls do not talk to each other in the same way as silly men.'

The tone was that of a monarch reprimanding the lowliest of servants. Gresham suddenly realised he was being dismissed as a person of no importance. He found it strangely annoying. It was alright on a deck or where men were in control. Here it was different.

She was passionate, the girl was, Mannion reckoned. It had taken him some while to sense it. Sometimes beautiful women were like alabaster pots, marble, made of a material that somehow you could never warm up. But this one, though it was a real good coating of alabaster, there was fire in her belly alright, though she hid it. She was young enough even not to recognise it for what it was. Virgin? He reckoned so. You could tell. But it was only a matter of time.

They were arguing now, again.

'It's "best of friends",'said Gresham.

'Exactly. That is what I said.'

'No, you said "friends of best".'

'I did not!'

'Why do you always deny things that are the truth?'

'I do not always deny things that are the truth.' Anna paused for thought. George's jaw had still not returned from the floor where it had dropped on first sight of her, and the obviously nonplussed man had tickled her vanity. 'I sometimes do this, but only when it is necessary. And with you it is often necessary, because you are often very pompous and talk to me like an old man, when in fact you are still a boy and hardly older than me.'

'I think I'll take Edmund Spenser's parakeet to Lisbon instead of you. The one he got from the Indies? It's more beautiful than you, and when you want to shut it up you just put a blanket over its cage,' said Gresham. Gresham and Spenser the poet had long been friends.

'Oh yes! So now you want me to climb under your blanket, is that it?'

'I never said…'

So they had moved from a rather strange formality in their dealings into bickering like an old married couple. Mannion decided to block it out, but was vaguely aware that the pair of them kept it up all the way to the Palace. God help them if this went on all the way Lisbon.

He knew that he had to go and see Walsingham. He both dreaded it and, if he was being honest with himself, felt real fear.

'I hear your… ward's admission to the Court went very well,' said Walsingham, no hint of tension in his voice.

'If by that, sir, you mean that she was made several offers of marriage that night, and rather more offers for shorter-lived relationships, then the evening was certainly a success,' said Gresham, who had found himself ignored more and more as Anna had taken the floor and the hearts of several young men and not a few old enough to know better.

'My Lord,' said Gresham, who presently felt unable to engage in idle chit-chat, 'I need to know if you ordered my death at sea.' Well, Gresham had never asked a question quite so directly before. The only sign of surprise was a slightly raised eyebrow. Yet even that from Walsingham was the equivalent of a heart attack from another man.

'And why would you think I had done so?'

He had not denied it! Something came near to cracking in Gresham's heart. He could handle any man, even the Queen. Yet of all men, Walsingham was the one who he felt least able to defend himself against. Briefly Gresham explained what had happened, the lethally incriminating evidence planted on him.

Walsingham gazed in silence out of the window for several minutes after Gresham had finished. From far away came shouts of children playing in the Thames, risking their death of cold. It had been a tiresome ride out to Hammersmith and then on to Barnes. Finally he turned to Gresham.

'Welcome to your rite of passage. You are familiar with the phrase? It is when a young man is set a task, or faces one, that defines his move from child to adult.'

'I don't understand,' said Gresham, floundering.

'As a child, you could ask a question such as you have asked of me and expect an answer that would either put your fears to rest or give them cause. I suggest that if you analyse your own feelings, you will be responding now as a man. As a man, you will know that were I to deny having issued your death warrant it could just as easily be a lie as the truth. The answer, therefore, serves no meaningful purpose. A few simple words of denial do not mean you can afford to ignore the possibility that I might be seeking your death. You will have to guard against that as a possibility whatever, from now on, if you wish to survive — and you, Henry Gresham, have a finely developed instinct for survival. It is the realisation that there are no easy answers that distinguish a child from a man.'

Gresham knew the truth of what was being said even as Walsingham spoke, knew that he could never again have total trust in this man just as he fought against that realisation.

'As it happens,' said Walsingham, 'I did not arrange for that commission from Spain to be forged or found. It irritates me that someone sought to kill one of my agents. Yet you will be ill-advised to take comfort from my words.'

'Why so, My Lord?' asked Gresham sensing the answer before it came.

'Because I could be lying. Because it would have been simpler for you to identify clearly your enemy, and because you must know that even if this time I did not seek your death I would do so, ruthless, remorselessly and without a pang, of conscience if I thought that by your death I would serve the better interests of the Protestant religion, of England and of the Queen. There you have it. I claim not to have sought to kill you. Yet I will do so if sufficient need arises.'

'I thank you for your candour,' said Gresham. Such a ludicrous situation! Could this really be happening? Did people have such conversations? Or had he in fact not woken up that morning? 'And of course, My Lord, I would ruthlessly, remorselessly and without a pang of conscience seek your death were I to truly believe that you sought mine.' Except you're probably rather better at it than I am, thought Gresham.

'If that is indeed so,' said Walsingham, 'then you have truly become a man.' Something like a thin smile creased one of Walsingham's lips.

" 'I doubt that I've made the whole of that journey,' said Gresham. 'Yet the journey I wish to make now is to Lisbon. You may remember,' said Gresham, 'certain points you made about Lisbon.' Walsingham remembered everything. 'You believed that there were central weaknesses there for Spain, in the event of a decision to invade England.'

'I still believe so. Though it cannot and never will be the whole answer.'

'And you believed the Duke of Parma and his army in the Netherlands to be the crucial factor.' 'An opinion I have not changed.'

'I had planned to address both issues,' said Gresham simply. 'In my own way.'

'I have been made aware of that,' said Walsingham, 'as I understand you have already discussed a visit to Lisbon and a visit to the Netherlands with Master Robert Cecil.'

Gresham's heart froze. Walsingham and Cecil were in regular conversation! Were both allied against him?

'You will remain aware that you are still working for me,' said Walsingham, ice in his voice. 'We discussed the usefulness of your visiting Lisbon and the Duke of Parma. The situation has not changed. You will indeed make both trips, God willing. But be clear that you will do so on my orders, and under my orders. Is that clear?'

It was clear.

'You might care to include a new issue in your plans. An issue we did not discuss earlier,' Walsingham continued.

'A third issue?' He really must stop sounding like a parrot. 'The Marquis of Santa Cruz is resident in Lisbon.' 'The Spanish High Admiral?'

'The one and only. The victor of Lepanto, and one of the cruellest and most savage commanders alive in Europe at the present time. And the best ally we have.'

'The best ally. Gresham was shocked. Was the Spanish High Admiral in Walsingham's pay? 'But Santa Cruz is a brilliant, inspirational commander. Santa Cruz is to Spain what Drake is to England — except Santa Cruz knows how to command a fleet.'

'Quite,' said Walsingham. 'Santa Cruz is a brilliant commander. He is an appalling administrator. Ships are piled into Lisbon harbour almost lying on top of each other. Some have a full supply of cannon but no shot. Others are loaded with shot but have no powder. There are vessels with spare cannon, some with no cannon at all. Meanwhile, pay is in arrears for the sailors, and men are dying of illness. Food newly taken on board ships is being eaten first, with the result that the older stock is left to rot. Either the sailors become ill through eating it, or they starve. I repeat, while the ships of King Philip's Armada lie in harbour, Santa Cruz is our best ally.'

'But if and when they, leave for sea?' Gresham followed on.

'That would be a different story. King Philip will try to write a battle plan for his fleet. He is prescriptive, fearful of losing control. Santa Cruz will ignore his King's orders if by so doing he can achieve victory.'

'So it would be a good thing if Santa Cruz's health problems became… terminal?'

'It would indeed.'

'Surely you've tried to make them so?' said Gresham. 'You must have a horde of spies in Lisbon to know what you know about the state of the Spanish fleet. No man can avoid an assassin for ever.'

'No. But some men are better at it than others.'

'And you would appreciate… help in eliminating Santa Cruz, if the opportunity arose.'

'An excellent turn of phrase,' replied Walsingham. 'So will you depart for Lisbon with England's cause at the centre of your heart?' There was a sudden sharpness in Walsingham's tone. Did Walsingham suspect Gresham's loyalties? 'There are those who think your enthusiasm for the Mass is not feigned. Those who have noted your failure to condemn Spain as a proper Englishman should, your admiration for what you call parts of its culture. Nonsense, of course, but dangerous nonsense, if heard by the wrong people.'

Had one of the wrong people reached the conclusion that he was sympathetic to Spain and thus enlisted Walsingham in having him killed? 'I'll depart for Lisbon with my survival at the centre of my heart. And hope, perhaps, that from that there may be some profit for England. As for Spain, I'm honest enough to see what it does well. That doesn't mean I want it ruling here in England. And my actions so far have shown what I'll sacrifice for England.'

Did Walsingham believe him? It was impossible to know, except Gresham was certain that if Walsingham believed now he was a spy for Spain he would not have left the house alive. Walsingham's final words were ominous.

'Take care, Henry Gresham, that you do not plot the end of your own life, needing no interference from men such as me.'

Well, there was no answer to that.

Gresham regaled George and Mannion with the gist of his conversation with Walsingham. He vaguely wondered about telling Anna, but dismissed it more or less instantly. True, her life might depend on whether or not Gresham's judgement of Walsingham was sound. But these decisions were man's work. 'So do you trust him?' George asked.

'Not completely,' said Gresham. 'It's why I rather wanted to go on these two trips as my own man, and not Walsingham's. It's still conceivable that he set me up to die either in some trade-off with Burghley, Cecil or even the Queen, and he made it clear that I might be spying for Spain. I'm pretty sure he doesn't believe that. What I do think is that if he felt a need to have me killed it's passed, and for the moment he finds me useful.'

'Do spies ever have any certainty?' asked George in exasperation.

'Well, one at least,' said Gresham cheerfully. 'They always know someone wants them dead, even if they don't always know who it is.'

No English ship was foolish enough to sail into Lisbon harbour. Gresham found a ship to take them to St Malo. Even there they found the captains unwilling to sail to Lisbon, for fear of being seized for the Armada. Eventually they came across a tubby little coastal vessel that had never lost sight of land in its long life and whose sole armament consisted of four iron cannons that had probably never been fired since they came out of the foundry forty or fifty years earlier. Gresham doubted it was a ship that the Admiral of the Armada would die for, but even this captain seemed unwilling. In desperation, Gresham asked that if he would not take them for his sake, then would he consider taking them for the girl's sake, in her forlorn search for her French fiancй. He agreed then, grudgingly. He was French, which helped of course.

If Cadiz had been full of ships, Lisbon was, fourfold. If Gresham had been worried about drawing too much attention to himself, he soon realised what a false worry it had been. It was chaos in the harbour, the normal trade of one of Europe's busiest ports piled on top of the vast fleet that Philip was assembling.

'Bloody Hell!' said Mannion. ‘You could feed England with what it costs to keep this lot idle here in port!'

They eventually came to rest in a dilapidated grey stone building which had slipped its foundations, leaving a large crack in the wall, and stone window ledges that drooped down to the left like a mouth frowning out of one side. The owner was an elderly Dutch merchant, reduced to letting rooms because of the terrible impact the continuing war in the Netherlands was having on trade.

'Strange, innit?' grunted Mannion, eyeing the meal they had been brought suspiciously. 'I thought as 'ow we'd stand out here, being English. Fact is, I doubt anyone'd notice.'

The port was heaving with every nationality on earth. Walking down the street where their house was situated they had heard Italian, French, Dutch and German spoken as well as Portuguese and Spanish. And English. The speaker was an elderly man, dressed in the simple robe of those aspiring to the priesthood. The Catholic priesthood, of course. Gresham knew of the hundreds of English men who fled to France and trained for the priesthood in Allen's grotesquely named 'School of Martyrs', but he had failed to realise the numbers who came to Portugal to do the same thing. Perhaps, he grinned inwardly, they knew just how deeply Walsingham's spy service had infiltrated the seminaries in France.

'Converting the natives,' Mannion announced. He had been out scouting. 'Most of 'em training here reckon to work as missionaries, either in the New World or in Goa and round there. Bloody sight safer than being sent over to England, I bet.'

'I think a lot of these ships in the harbour are intended to convert the natives. The natives in this case being us, the English.' Gresham gazed bleakly out through the sagging stone window, the shutter thrown wide open to let what breeze there was waft through. If Cadiz had given him an overwhelming sense of the power and wealth of the Spanish Empire, then Lisbon increased the threat to a nightmare.

'Walsingham'll want to see you pretty quick once we get 'ome,' said Mannion, following his gaze. 'You'll 'ave a lot to tell him.'

'If he's still alive when we get back,' said Gresham, his depression deepening. Walsingham was clearly a dying man. 'And I bet his spies have already given him the name, tonnage and condition of every boat in this harbour.'

They presented themselves to the Governor General, out of courtesy and necessity, as it was only by his leave that Gresham had been allowed to enter Lisbon. He was a harassed, grey figure, rumoured to be in permanent conflict with the Marquis of Santa Cruz.

'These are strange times,' he muttered in passable English, 'and it is good to be reminded of matters of the heart,' he paused to smile at Anna, 'when so much other talk is of war. You and your most elegant ward must visit us. We are holding a reception. I will arrange for a card to be issued to you both.' He snapped his fingers at a servant in glorious livery, who bowed and left to attend to the matter. 'I must also apologise,' he added.

'You have been most gracious in permitting us to visit,' said Gresham, 'and I cannot conceive of any need for an apology.'

'No, no, I must,' the old man said. 'I have been intending to find details of this Monsieur… Jacques Henri? Is that his name? Yet there has been so much to do here, I fear, so many people, so many orders

… it has slipped my mind.'

'I am sure it will be no problem. We have an address…'

'Better, I think, if you allow me to send you a pair of my servants to guide you there.' The old man saw the expression in Gresham's eyes. 'No, not to keep guard over you as you might think. There is no secret about what is gathering in this harbour, and I would be most surprised to think that your Lord Walsingham was not paying a dozen men here to report back to him on every vessel that enters and leaves.'

It was an uncanny echo of a conversation Gresham had had with Mannion. How much did the Governor General know? Gresham searched the man's face, and looked to George. There was no hint of any ulterior meaning from the Governor General, and a simple shrug from George. Even his refined political sensitivity was on hold here in Lisbon.

'It is simply that the wars in the Netherlands, which many see as only lasting because of the support the English give the rebels, have damaged trade and there is much resentment. Also, El Draco destroyed many smaller vessels off this coast earlier in the year, many families are facing poverty now. Shall we say that two of my servants with you when you go out and about might dispel any… misunderstandings,' the Governor General replied. 'And of course, you will not be staying long,' he said with a tone of finality.

'As long as it takes to find the fiancй and to ensure that my ward is adequately cared for,' said Gresham, cursing inwardly. He had hoped for at least a week in Lisbon, perhaps even two or three.

The two servants, dressed in the same extravagant livery, turned out to be four, each pair working a twelve-hour shift. They dismissed with courtesy the invitation to reside inside, preferring to sit instead in the small lobby that led in from the street. It was a position from which they could monitor all the comings and goings from the house.

Anna came into Gresham's room unexpectedly, just as he, George and Mannion had laid out on the bed the robes of the trainee priest, the acolyte. The cassocks with their built-in hoods were rough-tailored, coarse. She looked from the clothes to them and reached her own conclusion.

'You are slipping out tonight. In disguise.'

George reddened in the face.

'You know who it is you have to meet. You have thought about this long ago, ordered your clothes. I was, how do you say, a bonus? If I had not agreed you will still have come to Lisbon, perhaps in disguise all the way.'

'Would still have come to Lisbon…' said Gresham.

'I do not care about English now! And you will take me with you,' announced Anna. 'You have four robes there. A few pins will hold up the hem of one of them so that it fits me. I have this right. You have been enabled to come here because of me only. I too must be involved. It is only fair.'

'But you can't come,' said George, all his honesty showing through in his face. 'This could be dangerous…'

This isn't fun,' said Gresham angrily, cutting in. 'This is playing with the fate of nations. It isn't a game.' He would make her realise that what was a game to her was life and death to him. He would make her realise.

'No?' said Anna. 'Yet that is exactly how you treat it. A game. A game where the excitement is to lose your life, the prize to value life if you survive. My life is a meaningless game. A marriage with a fat Frenchman. Why should I not play your game? Because the thing between my legs is different?'

The coarseness shocked Gresham. He looked to Mannion and George. To his astonishment, Mannion seemed to be on the girl's side.

'Look,' he said to Gresham, 'we could use her. If she's willing.'

A sudden wave of tiredness came over Gresham, and he motioned to Mannion to carry on. Mannion turned to the girl, took her by the arm and led her into the corner of the room, dust dancing in the slanting beams of diminishing sunlight. They had a whispered conversation, Anna going deep red and then recovering. Chin held high, she nodded. Mannion grinned, and nearly forgot himself, reaching out to pat her bottom in approbation before realising the potential mistake and withdrawing it just in time.

They had travelled with two maids for Anna, including the loyal Mary, and it was harder to get rid of them than it was to avoid the guards. Eventually they were sent off to a separate room, Anna pleading a headache of such intensity that even the noise of the maids sleeping in their truckle beds at the foot of her four-poster would be too terrible to bear. Stripping off down to her shift, she put the gown over her head, clamped her hair rather than pinned it and forced a cap over it, leaving the hood to be a disguise when they left the house. There was a tap on the door. Mannion. He put his finger to his lips, motioned her across the dusty hallway to Gresham's room, ushered her in. Only then did he walk to the end of the hall, click his fingers, and call up the stairs one of their servants brought from England to stand guard outside Anna's door.

'No one goes in, no one comes out. Clear?' The servant nodded.

There was a door set in the panels by the side of the vast stone fireplace, a long-forgotten crest emblazoned over it in stone. Mannion picked its cumbersome, ancient lock in seconds, and it swung open for perhaps only the third or fourth time in ten years. It was a servants' passage, leading down into the kitchens that underpinned the whole mansion, empty at this time of night and stinking of grease and burned meat. All four had put their hoods up now, and they walked carefully past the racks of hanging copper pans, careful in case by knocking one against another they rang out like a peal of bells. The dying embers of the great fire flickered on the metal, caught the three hooded figures first in shadow and then in half-light. A child seeing them would have screamed, thinking hooded Death in four forms was walking the streets of Lisbon that night. A great door led directly from the kitchen to the road outside, for ease of delivery. It was locked with another huge mechanism, and bolted top and bottom. They ignored this, and went instead to a tiny door on the left side of the cavernous room, with its arched ceiling. It too was locked, but its bolts had rusted in. Some attempt had been made to force the metal bar into its receiving half-circle of iron, but the bolt had only engaged very slightly. Easing both bolts back ever so gently, Mannion swung it open when again he picked the primitive lock. He grinned inwardly. The three hours he had spent attempting to seduce the cook and the other women in the kitchen had paid dividends, including the knowledge gained from the lazy walk he had taken out of this very door to piss in the street and making the door appear bolted on his return.

It was lighter in the south at this time of night, Gresham noticed, but the streets were almost deserted, activity seeming to be concentrated in the harbour area. They slunk through the streets, fine stone houses built high but casting even deeper moon-shadow as a result, narrow and with the heat of the day still radiating from their stone and brick facades, in contrast to the cold light of the moon. Gresham and Mannion knew where they were going. A wild sense of excitement filled Anna's heart as she followed Gresham and George, Mannion behind her, excitement tinged with terror at what she had allowed herself to become.

It took them fifteen minutes of walking, their good pace limited by the need to keep in the shadows, their heads bowed and their hands clasped humbly in front of them. Those who wished to officiate at the Mass did not run through streets at midnight. It was suspicious enough that they were out anyway. They started to climb a slight hill, the stone houses giving away to ill-built timber structures, bleached by the sun into premature age. Light was bleeding through the shutters of one, large rambling building, raucous conversation and laughter exploding from it. They ducked into a tiny courtyard, bathed in shadow, and Mannion stripped off his gown, revealing the jerkin and trews of a working man. Anna watched from under the lip of her hood, fascinated. Simple though Mannion's dress was, it was cut in the Lisbon style, a subtle difference from that which a workman in London might have worn, the material thinner, the style more loose and flowing, more generous, to cope with the heat. He ducked into what was clearly a tavern or an inn. A door opened, a shard of light cut through the gloom and suddenly Mannion was back beside them. 'Round the back.'

With a quick look to left and right, they crossed the narrow street, unpaved and little more than a path, through an open side gate and into what had clearly once been a stable yard but which was now weed-strewn and derelict. Evidently guests who stayed the night at this inn came on foot and brought no horses with them.

'For God's sake, George,' said Gresham, 'whatever you do, don't start knocking things over now.'

The tiny room had probably once been a stable, but was rough-plastered now, a small table at each end. By the door were two country stools, three-legged and with the wood hardly smoothed. Two candles were on the furthermost, equally crude table, with a chair behind it, facing the door. Gresham placed the candles carefully together. He took one of the stools and placed it behind the table at the far corner of the room where a chunk of plaster had fallen off some two or three feet up from the earth floor, revealing a patchwork quilt of reeds or straw.

'Sit there,' said Gresham to Anna. He was angry with her for her insistence on coming. He would show her tonight what being a spy meant. She had asked to come, so let her taste the reality of it.

He arranged her hood so that it threw a deep shadow over her face, concealing it. The hoods of the cassocks were unusually deep, she noticed as only a woman would, extending far further forward than was normal. Gresham seated himself in the centre of the table furthermost from the door, the candles half blinding anyone who came in from the night, obscuring the face and figure of the man behind the table. George was seated, as invisible as a man his size could be, by the door.

There was a slight scuffling noise from outside, and Mannion stepped aside from the half open door to allow a bulky figure to duck into the room. He stood there, blinking, trying to acclimatise himself to the half light and the two sinister hooded figures seated behind the far table.

'Sit down,' said Gresham. He was speaking in perfect Italian. Anna knew just enough of the language to follow the conversation. You cannot understand a human unless you understand his language, her father had said. Spanish she had spoken all her life, English she had learned from her mother and French and Italian she had been taught in the schoolroom. What would her father have thought if he had known where his daughter's future lay, here in a stinking room in Lisbon helping an English spy defeat a Spanish fleet?

The man looked shocked. 'You are Italian?' he stuttered. He was not drunk, but had been drinking. The veins on his nose and the bloodshot eyes suggested this had been a lifelong hobby.

'I'm the Englishman you were told to expect,' said Gresham, continuing the effortlessly fluent Italian. He had first learned the language because of an overwhelming desire to read Machiavelli in the original. 'A very unimportant Englishman, an expendable Englishman whose betrayal by you would bring few tears to the eyes of any in Government in England. Indeed, someone chosen because they were expendable. Someone without title or status, yet with access to a great deal of money. A very great deal of money. For the right service.'

The man looked round the small room, nervous, licking his lips. Something flew through the air, a flickering blur of darkness from behind the table. The man swung round, exclaiming, ready to leap out of the door. He found it blocked by Mannion, holding the bottle of wine Gresham had just tossed to him. Grinning, Mannion reached down to the bag at his feet, never taking his eyes off the man, and brought out a simple pewter goblet. He reached down by the side of the man, placed the goblet on the table. Then, grasping the top end of the bottle in one great meaty paw, he placed the neck end in his mouth and yanked down. There was a crack, and the top half of the neck sheared off, smoothly down one side but jagged glass on the side facing the man. Mannion raised the bottle up, almost threatening the man with the jagged glass. He reared back, collided with the wall, struggling to grab the dagger in his belt. Before he could do so, Mannion had, in one seamless movement, plonked the bottle down on the table, reached forward to yank the dagger out of the man's hand and stepped back, plunging the dagger into the cheap soft wood of the table so that it sank in a full inch, and left it quivering slightly there. He motioned the man to sit.

'Bartolome de Somorriva,' said Gresham. 'Italian, chief gun-founder at the Lisbon armouries.'

Bartolome slumped onto a stool, his pulse beating heavily in his thick neck. The skin was stretched over one side of his face. Had it come too close at some stage to one of the great furnaces the gun foundries depended on for their business? He grabbed the goblet, poured wine into it so that it splashed over the side, took a great gulp. Mannion reached over, took the bottle and swigged at it from the sheared glass. He wiped his lips. And held on to the bottle.

'That is my position. And my craft. You know it well.'

'I also know that you've a wife and family in Italy, and two mistresses here in Lisbon, neither of whom is aware of the other.'

Bartolome went pale for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.

'What matter if one whore does not know of another?'

‘No great matter,' said Gresham, 'unless it becomes known that one Bartolome de Somorriva contracted the pox some three months ago, and has continued making the beast with two backs with his mistresses ever since, despite that knowledge. One of the women is also sleeping with several of the most important men in Lisbon, and has therefore in all probability infected those men as well.'

Bartolome recoiled as if slapped in the face. 'How did you know?' he asked.*You would not, you could not tell these people…'

'I require payment for my silence,' said Gresham in icy tones.

'Payment?' said Bartolome, genuinely confused and totally off balance. 'I am not a rich man. I…'

'The payment I require is different,' said Gresham. He had still not pulled back his hood, and the voice came from the black, ill-defined space shrouded by the folds of its cloth. 'Indeed, if you do what we ask, you'll be paid, most generously.' Gresham reached into his gown, drew out a purse and tossed it casually onto the table. It hit with a heavy thump. 'Go on, open it. Count it,' Gresham said.

The gold coins fell onto the table in an avalanche of wealth. One rolled off the edge, and Bartolome scrabbled for it in the dust.

'This is… most generous,' he said, looking up, the candlelight catching the sweat on his brow.

'It's a simple down payment,' said Gresham. 'There's five times as much if you do what we ask.'

An expression of knowing evil came into Bartolome's eyes. His assurance was seeping back, and clearly he was starting to feel on home ground. Carefully he fed each coin back into the purse, closed it, placed it somewhere amidst his considerable girth.

'And what is it that you ask of me? I am a simple man. I am a mere maker of guns, a working man.' He held the empty goblet up high, not looking at Mannion, staring at the hooded figure seated in front of him. The silence stretched out. He began to feel foolish, arm outstretched, empty goblet in hand. He turned to look at Mannion, intending to gesture to him to fill his cup. Mannion held his eyes, swirled his tongue round his mouth and very slowly allowed a string of spit to dribble from his mouth into the goblet. Then, carefully, he filled it to the brim with wine, and stepped back.

For a moment it seemed as if he would rise and try to strike Mannion, but it was fleeting. Instead he sat back in his seat, gazing bleakly at Gresham.

'I came here because I was told there was a man who had something I would be interested in. Is that something merely a pack of insults?' He almost succeeded in hiding his fear.

'It's simple’ said Gresham. 'King Philip's great fleet is short of cannon and shot Far too many of its vessels are armed either with ancient iron guns, or cannon designed to cut a swathe through cohorts of men, not to cut through the thick and seasoned wood of an English galleon. Too many of its ships have a mere five or ten rounds per gun.'

'This I know’ said Bartolome, simply. 'This all Lisbon knows.'

'And you also know that it wasn't until last month that your foundry obtained enough raw materials to start seriously the business of casting new brass cannon, the large cannon the Armada so desperately needs, and the shot to go with them. And that Spain is relying on Lisbon to provide a hundred new, large guns, a hundred and fifty even, and the attendant shot.'

Bartolome spluttered, falling into the caricature he had previously adopted with Santa Cruz's harassed emissaries.

'A hundred cannon! A hundred and fifty! It is nonsense! The God of war himself could not make so many guns in so little time…'

'Spare me the drama’ said Gresham calmly. 'There are master gun-makers in France and craftsmen in Scotland who could come here to Lisbon for a price, men of experience and expertise, Catholic men with no love for England. Not only gun-makers, but the underlings, those other men who're so important in seeing that the mix of the metal is correct, that it cools at the right speed, that the bore is true… they too are there in Europe and in Scotland. But you've not sought to gain the services of these men.'

'And why should I not do so?' blustered Bartolome. 'I have all sorts of men tormenting me every day to produce more guns. More guns! It is like a litany of hell in my ears! Do you not think I would stop at anything to reduce it?'

'Yes’ said Gresham, 'for two reasons. Firstly, every master gun-maker brought here to Lisbon means less profit for you, who wish to have a monopoly in this most profitable of ventures. Secondly, you're not actually a very good master-gunner.'

Bartolome bridled, tried to rise to his feet. A pressure akin to an earthquake pressed on his shoulder. It was Mannion. He sat down.

Your record wherever you have worked is bad. Explosions in the casting, explosions in the test-firing, explosions in the guns you've made when fired in earnest. In Italy they called you the widow-maker. You fled to Lisbon, telling them here that you sought more responsibility, and wished to make guns that would fire God's word as well as shot! Fine words, and fine forged testimonials from men in Italy with long titles but who unfortunately don't exist.'

'This is untrue! I…'

'Be silent.' Gresham had not raised his voice. The threat in its quiet tone silenced the Italian. 'My requirements are simple. You'll carry on making bad guns for the Spanish fleet. Instead of a hundred and fifty, you'll make no more than fifty, and they'll prove at sea to be more of a threat to the men who fire them than they are to the enemy they are fired at. And the round shot you manufacture, it'll be flawed. You'll ensure that it's cooled too quickly, unevenly, so that each shot will contain flaws. Flaws that mean when it's fired it'll fragment into splinters as soon as it leaves the barrel, and not smash whole into the hull of a good English ship.'

Anna found that she had been holding her breath, for how long she could not guess. She had been to sea, could imagine the Spanish soldiers and sailors putting the linstock to the priming pan of their great cannon, could hear the screams as cut and fragmented men saw their cumbersome weapon blow up in front of them, see the incomprehension on the faces of the men as round after round seemed to have no effect on the weaving, dancing English ships. What futures, what horrors and what lives were being decided here in this filthy room? What a reckoning there was here. Was it Death who had become her guardian?

'And my reward? My reward for betraying my faith as well as my profession? My reward for facing persecution, for being reviled, perhaps even for being exposed?'

'Gold,' said Gresham flatly. 'Exactly five times what you have there in that purse. Not quite a King's ransom, but perhaps a Duke's at least. A passport for you to a life of ease. And the good burghers of Lisbon not realising that their sudden dose of the pox comes as a present from you, of course, nor your wife hearing the good news. And, of course, the King of Spain not being given the truth about the skills of his master gun-maker in Lisbon. I think you'll do rather well out of it. Better than the soldiers and sailors you'll cause to be cut to ribbons by their own guns.'

They were clearly not an issue for the Italian. 'And what guarantee do I have that you will not betray me when you have used me? You come, Englishman, with a remarkably high profile to Lisbon. Carrying a beautiful girl, so they say in the wine shops, a Spanish Princess. Am I wise to place my life in the hands of a man so much in the public gaze?'

'Meet my ward,' said Gresham, reaching over and flipping back Anna's hood.

She was surprised to be revealed. She had had no warning. Her golden curls fell down as the gold had fallen on the table earlier, and in the face of her beauty it was as if the number of candles in the room had been quadrupled.

Gresham let him look at her for a suitable time. 'She's a whore,' he said flatly. 'A Spanish whore, and a very beautiful one, but a whore for all that. She was servicing the Captain of the San Felipe when we captured it. I knew then that she was my passport to Lisbon.'

Gresham let the Italian's eyes devour Anna. She was shivering, her eyes downcast. She had never felt so shocked. It was as if she had been stripped naked and paraded before this evil man, like a slave. In the face of the raw power exercised by Gresham, any words she might call up seemed pathetic trivia.

'And she's yours, when all this is over, if you want her,' said Gresham. 'Another part of your payment.'

'Mine?' said the Italian. 'How can that be? She knows I'm poxed. Soon no girl will sleep with me, unless they too are diseased.'

His face wrinkled in distaste. Not at the thought of a diseased girl lying with him, Gresham knew, but at the thought of the treatments he would have to undergo to see if he could be cured. They were all painful and one, Gresham knew, required the surgical use of an instrument rather like a corkscrew.

'She knows nothing,' said Gresham. 'She speaks only Spanish and a little English. She's mine to dispose of as I please. Do this job for me and she's yours.'

It was probably the gold that did it, Gresham knew, not the offer of the girl, though he wondered. His fear had been that the man would turn them in to the authorities after the first purse, reckoning this to be the lesser of two evils. He had needed a distraction, something to stop Bartolome using his brain. What better way to stop him using his brain than making him think with his groin? The man had a voracious sexual appetite, that they knew. Yet no women, not even the whores, would look at him if it was known he had the pox. He could not keep his pox secret for long. Soon he would either have to be chaste, or spread his thinning seed between the thin legs of the women who were already poxed, a despairing pathetic group in any seaport or city whose closest relations in history were the members of a leper colony. To have his own whore, and one of such beauty, while he tried to fight free of the French malaise, now there was something even money would not buy him. And, if he chose to tell Anna what he had offered, it would bring her in touch with the reality of spying. And it would stop him thinking. The hot hunger for sex would override his brain, stop him from taking the money and betraying Gresham.

'How will… how will you get the girl to me?' Bartolome asked.

'We've spies everywhere in Lisbon,' said Gresham. Well, Walsingham did. 'I'll hear how the work in the Foundry goes. In Spring, if those reports are what I wish to hear, I'll return with the remainder of your money. And with the girl. She's clean from disease. I'll ensure she remains so. Until I deliver her to you, that is.'

He left then, confused and elated, frightened yet reassured. Under his management Gresham doubted that the cannon and shot produced from the Lisbon armoury would have been of the highest quality. Now he felt certain of it.

'What were you saying to the Italian?' asked a nonplussed George, who despite all the attempts of his tutors spoke only English.

'How dare you,' said Anna, cutting in. Her voice was cold, the authority of her mother suddenly appearing on the young girl's face. Yet she spoke from despair. He felt shocked. Damn! He had not realised she spoke Italian. 'How dare you! To offer me as a whore to that foul man. Is this the way you treat those placed in your protection?'

'It's the way I treat those who ask to come with me when I'm acting as a spy. The way I treat silly, empty headed girls who think what I do is simply exciting with an ever-so-slight risk. Just enough to arouse them! The way I treat people who think what I do is about amusement. The way I show them that it's about slime, and dirt, and filth. And about killing people who don't want to die. You had to justify your coming along tonight. That was how you paid for your passage.' The image of the Spaniard in the meadows swam before his eyes. Was this what Henry Gresham was reduced to?

The two young people looked at each other in mutual hatred.

'And will you give me to that diseased man?'

'Of course not! It was a ruse! I won't return here. It was all a lie. A way of diverting his mind. I had to inflame him, stop him realising the stupidity of taking an English bribe.'

'And you were kind enough to tell me of this, before you offered me to him.'

No. He had not been kind enough. Because he had used her, as people had used him, and because he had become accustomed to seeing people as mere bargaining points. And the more he hated himself for doing it, the more he refused to admit that he was wrong, and the more he hated her.

'In this spying,' said Anna, with sarcasm that would have cut through granite, 'is it always so that the women have to stay silent and flutter their eyelashes while the men do all the talking?' *No,' said Mannion, from somewhere beneath a tangled robe that he was having trouble getting over his head, 'sometimes they have to lie on their backs and flutter their…'

'Enough!' said Gresham. 'You forget your place!' he hissed in embarrassment. Mannion's head emerged at long last, grinning.

She directed a look of cold superiority towards Mannion, who was too busy laughing at his own joke to notice. Yet his laughter did more to reassure her than anything Henry Gresham had done. Mannion made it clear that it was all a game. A hurtful, ludicrous and even shameful game, but a game nevertheless. But was it a game for Henry Gresham? Or had he allowed it to become his life? At the back of her mind was a nagging question. If his 'mission' had depended on it, would he have given her to this foul man?

'I'm not happy with this,' George mumbled to Gresham, confused and with his sense of decency on high alert. Gresham ignored him.

They doused the candles in silence, waited five minutes for their eyes to acclimatise, listened for the padding sound of feet outside that would tell them of men gathering. Going to the back of the room, Mannion kicked sand and dust aside off the floor to reveal a wooden trapdoor. Lifting it, careful to make no noise, they could just about make out wooden steps leading down into darkness.

'Five steps down, missy,' whispered Mannion, close to her ear. She jumped, startled. Then, her anger still filling her veins, she decided that to show weakness would be to give in to the farce that her life appeared to have become. She stood up, straight. 'Six steps straight ahead,' said Mannion, 'bending low like. By then you'll see the stars.'

They descended, and before she had time to start fearing the rats there was a gentle scuffling and another trapdoor was being lifted up from the inside revealing, as Mannion had promised, the stars. They were in another courtyard, also weeded over, leading from the back of the room they had just been in. Noises still came from the tavern, but less so now, muffled. There was no sign of any welcoming party. Gresham and Anna were just feet apart, yet it could have been miles. The cold tension between them crackled invisibly. George stood between them, frantically trying to understand what was beyond his comprehension.

They were nearly back at the house, in ample time before the servants rose to build the fires in the kitchen, skulking through alleyways, when they heard the sound of footsteps coming up the hill towards them. It was one of the servants of the Governor General, off-duty but still resplendent in his livery and clearly very drunk. He was weaving from side to side, singing gently to himself, a child's lullaby, a bottle clutched in his hand. He did not seem to realise that the bottle was empty, nor care very much, raising it every now and again to his lips and smiling happily at the night sky. Drink makes some men quarrelsome. Others it sends to sleep. It had made this man simply happy, an overwhelming sense of being at peace with the world radiating from him.

The four hooded figures froze into the side of a house, but it was too late. The man ground to a halt, his eyes rolling until they focussed. He giggled.

'Religious men bringing blessings to the taverns!' he chortled. 'Or is it to the ladies of the night?' he giggled, swaying gently. 'Or maybe such men using the taverns and the ladies of the night!' he said, chortling and hugely amused at his joke. 'Here!' he said, more loudly, 'bless me! Aren't I of the night? And one of God's children?' He meant to fling himself onto his knees, but instead cannoned into Anna. His outflung arm caught the hood of her cassock. She flung her own hand up just in time and held the hood in place. The man collided with the wall, slid down it with his back, ended squatting on the floor, gawping vacuously up at them. Then his whole body language changed, and he seemed to be trying to sink back into the stone. ‘I know who you are,' he said in a small, frightened voice. 'I know who you are.'

They were still hooded, still shadowed by the night, but it was entirely possible for the man to have caught enough of a sight of one or all of their faces. Mannion reached inside his sleeve for the dagger he carried there, but it was too late. Gresham had already folded his arms, and Mannion knew that meant he had a hand on his own dagger.

'I am Death,' said Gresham softly, in Latin, the language of the Mass, and for a moment the man seated drunkenly on the ground was as good as dead, the cold blue light of the killing frenzy settling behind Gresham's eyes, the hand tightening on the hilt of the dagger. The slightest of sobs came from the guard. He had to die. He had said the fatal words, ‘I know who you are.’ There was too much at stake for the life of one man to stand between Gresham and his mission. Then Gresham remembered the man a few minutes ago. A man singing gently to himself, a nursery song, a man happy within himself. Walking to his home, harming no man. He thought of the way death had come to the sailors in Cadiz harbour, the way death would come to the men whose cannons would explode in their faces. Was this to be just another casual death in a back alley, another death that showed how cheap life had become to Gresham?

The man looked up at them stupidly from the floor. 'The Four Horsemen,' he said pathetically. 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I knew it was you.'

Gresham's hand released the hilt of his dagger. He tried not to release his breath like an explosion.

'Do you repent of your sins?' he asked the man.

'I repent of my sins,' the man gabbled, pushing himself in fear now back against the wall.'

'Then go in peace. And tell no one.'

He raised himself up from the floor, still almost paralysed with fear, and made the sign of the Cross. The four figures gazed silently at him. Gulping, he turned and ran.

'I thought you were going to kill him,' said Anna, back in the safety of Gresham's room. They had slipped back through the kitchen, the servant dismissed back downstairs before Anna was allowed out of Gresham's room. This was not how she had imagined it to be. The excitement and sense of adventure had been soiled beyond recognition. Somehow she felt dirty, mired, revulsion replacing the excitement she had felt on setting out on her adventure.

'So did I,' said Gresham. Suddenly he wanted this girl more than he had wanted any woman in his life. Wanted to fling her on her back and take her, prove who was master. That was foul! He had never taken any woman against her will in his life! What was working within him, what in this girl was getting through his impregnable defences? Tomorrow we must see if your fiancй is in Lisbon. Any longer and we will cause questions to be asked.' He sensed the savagery in his mind and marvelled at the civility of his tone. Had she been hoping he would say more? She gave no sign.

'He will not be there. I know he will not be there.' Was she trying to persuade herself? She sounded flat, exhausted, as if drained of all emotion. 'I feel it inside me. It is not yet my time.'

'Where is Mannion?' asked Anna, as they gathered to visit the house of Jacques Henri.

'He's some business to do,' said Gresham. 'It's best you don't know.'

Gresham confided everything in Mannion. At the mention of Santa Cruz something had darkened in his eyes. 'Will you give me leave to work alone for a day or two, perhaps a week, in Lisbon? To settle an old score?' Mannion had asked. He had agreed, as he knew he had to. Yet he missed Mannion, desperately. One night, tossing and turning in his bed, he had allowed the unthinkable to enter his mind. What Mannion was doing would inevitably be extraordinarily dangerous, however he set about it. Could he face life without that hulk of a man by his side? He prayed he might never have to find out.

Anna had continued talking. 'Oh, I agree,' she said. 'Women cannot be trusted with secrets. They need simply to be told what to do. Or sold to men with the pox. Or just used generally, for the convenience of a man.'

It was so close to his actual thoughts that he nearly let the colour flood into his cheeks. 'We're not out of danger. We must hurry to leave, in case the Italian changes his mind, pockets what gold he has and takes more for revealing us. If we're taken in and you're, asked about Mannion, you really won't know. There's nothing better than sincerity.'

She pursed her lips, a gesture making it clear that belief was at least suspended if not totally dismissed. George intervened.

‘I’m sure he's acting in your best interest,' he said, feebly. She flashed a brief smile at him, as if saying thank you to a big brother, and then turned again to Gresham.

'So you can lie to save a friend. I as a mere woman can do no such thing. That is fine. Now I understand.' She was clearly seething underneath.

Privately, Gresham doubted Jacques Henri was in town. Their arrival had not raised the clamour he had expected in Lisbon, there being enough clamour in that city as it was, but neither had it gone unnoticed. Jacques Henri would surely have heard of their presence by now, and come rushing to them. Either he was absent, or regretting his engagement. Anna had made it clear the matter had been arranged without her consent. Yet how clear was she whether the famous Monsieur Henri was a willing partner, or simply coerced?

The address they had been given turned out to be a vast ware-house with a presentable stone house attached. Yet it was as quiet as a mausoleum. They were quite an entourage, Gresham, Anna, two maids and seven of Gresham's servants, all on hired horses, with the two resplendent guards provided by the Governor General, and an interpreter. Several street urchins had gathered at a safe distance, offering their comments in Portuguese on the whole array, and the usual waifs and strays of any city had gathered to watch — maids out on errands, apprentice boys making a short journey last a long time, the occasional boy risking a thrashing by missing his lessons to be out in the sun. The man who had seen the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse was not one of the guards. He was on sick leave, Gresham had been told as he had enquired solicitously.

The senior guard had tried to hide his horror at Anna riding with them. Clearly he thought it desperately improper for the girl to rush so to meet her intended. Surely the men should have met first of all, agreed what to do, and only then allowed the girl to enter into the scheme of things? 'Ah!' said Gresham, 'but she's importunate to meet her intended! I can hardly hold her back. I've no heart to stem the passion of her love for this man!' he declaimed, enjoying how annoyed this made Anna. Not that an outsider would have noticed her annoyance. Gresham was becoming adept at reading the tiny flickers on her face.

It soon became clear that the problem would not have to be resolved on that day at least. Furious hammering at the door of the house produced nothing but a wizened old man, his face darkened by the sun and cut through with tiny, deep lines, who eventually emerged through a postern gate carved out of the great door into the warehouse yard. No, the interpreter established, Monsieur Jacques Henri was not in residence, had not been so for some months now. It was not known when he was expected back. The warehouse was empty. The last consignment of goods from Goa had been sold before his departure, the last rolled Turkish carpets sold, the great bales of wool disposed of at less than full price. It was believed that the merchant was seeking new markets, new outlets, new products. He had gone north in June, to the Flat Countries, the interpreter said. Flat Countries? It could only be the Low Countries, the Netherlands.

'Why would the fat merchant go to a war zone?' asked Gresham. 'The whole area's been at war for years. Parts of it are like a desert, so I'm told. What profitable trade could there be there?'

'I hope he has gone there because he has realised that it would be sinful to take me as his wife,' said Anna, 'and because he is too much of a fat coward to shoot himself he hopes that one or both of the armies in the Netherlands will do it for him.'

'Do you say that about all your friends?' asked Gresham.

'He is not my friend,' she replied. 'Any more than you are. He is a fat pig.'

They saw nothing of Mannion for the remainder of that day, or that night, when Gresham, George and Anna attended a glittering reception held by the Governor General. Gresham had half hoped to see the legendary Marquis of Santa Cruz there, but no, he was told, the Marquis had too many pressing demands on him. Nor was Mannion there the next day, when they rode out to see Lisbon and its sights, or the day after when they were permitted to leave the city boundaries and ride out in the glorious countryside surrounding the city. It was on the fourth day that Mannion reappeared, quietly and without fuss, a strange grimness in his manner.

'And where have you been?' asked Anna, her insatiable curiosity finally getting the better of her.

'Presenting a visiting card,' was all that Mannion would say.