The rebel heart

Chapter 10

September, 1599 England

Essex's ride. The ride to hell. It could, perhaps should, have gone down in folklore, become a tale told to children by the fireside, a tale of heroism, of rash courage, of fighting for justice. Instead it became a symbol of folly, of selfishness, of time and talent wasted.

It was morning. Essex had finally fallen into a fitful sleep. Gresham had laid him carefully on the bed, covered him up and sat up all night, sleepless, pondering. Now Essex was awake and feverish. His eyes darted round the room.

'I ride for England,' he said to Gresham.*Now. Without warning.'

To meet the Queen?' said Gresham. 'Or to take her throne?'

Essex gave a harsh, brittle laugh. 'Her Majesty is surrounded by evil men, advisers who advise only evil and her own destruction. I have three hundred men, here, swordsmen all, who will ride with me. Ride with me to force Her Majesty to listen to the truth.'

'You haven't answered my question,' said Gresham. 'Do you ride to meet or to rebel?'

'Do you wish to know before deciding whether or not to ride with me?'

So it had come to this. A half-maddened Earl riding in thunderous haste half across England, dragging three hundred wild, excited hotheads along with him. If word got ahead, it would be seen as an invasion, troops would be mustered. At the very least there would be a pitched battle in London. Essex could not be King. But should he be allowed to ride like a lamb to his own slaughter, or be allowed to bring peace and good order crashing down around his ears in England?

And someone out there was wanting to murder Henry Gresham! There was a truth out there still waiting to be discovered. A truth important enough for someone to want him dead in order for it to remain buried. Someone who believed he knew something of crucial importance. His every instinct shrieked at him not to believe Cameron Johnstone. His accusation of Cecil was too clever, too convenient for it to be true.

'My Lord,' said Gresham softly, approaching Essex as one approaches a wild, slavering dog, 'three hundred men won't wrest the Crown from Elizabeth. Ride with fifty if you will. Ride with fifty, and ride into London as the Earl of Essex returned to right a wrong. Ride with any more, and you ride as the man who wants to be King Robert of England. And they'll destroy you — the Cecils, the Raleighs, the Howards, the other noble families. They'll not permit one of their kind to have precedence over them, and they'll fight you and yours to the death. Their death, your death and the death of England.' Gresham looked pityingly at Essex, whose eyes had shrunk to pinpoints. 'Don't unleash civil war in England.'

But if one was a true servant of the Devil, was not that precisely what one should do?

Essex looked long and hard at Gresham. He seemed a little calmer.

'You might not need to rebel, my Lord,' said Gresham, even more gently. 'Win over the Queen, persuade her of the rightness of your cause, and all you wish will be yours anyway.'

'Will you ride with the Devil?' asked Essex.

'I've done so all my life,' said Gresham.

And so the ride began that evening as the sun was setting over the battlements of Dublin Castle. Fifty men, Essex ordered, though seventy-five were there shouting and yelling at grooms, falling over each other. That was all right, Gresham thought. Only half that number would survive the mad dash to London.

The horses whinnied, clattered round the courtyard, rose up on their hind legs, their riders cursing and reining back hard. Last-minute orders were given to servants, too few baggage horses were loaded with too many stores. Young men were stuffing shirts, bits of food, leather water bottles and flagons into saddlebags. A servant ran to bring his young master his sword, scabbard and belt, put his foot in a pile of steaming horse dung and piss, slipped and fell headlong. The sword fell out of the scabbard, rattled along the cobblestones. The young man leant impossibly low out of his saddle, like an Irish horseboy performing tricks, scooped up the sword, left the inlaid leather belt and scabbard on the ground where another horse trampled on it, splintering it into two halves. Shouting. Everyone shouting. Yells and shrieks, tears and whoops of joy. With a rattling, groaning crash the great gates were opened, the flood of men piling out on the road to the harbour.

'You quite sure you want to be on this ride? You do want your 'ead on a pike on London Bridge, don't you?' said Mannion.

'If I can keep up with him and talk sense to him, it won't come to that,' said Gresham. 'And I'm the only one of this lot who can talk sense to him. Are you coming?'

He had not told Mannion about the child.

'Of course I'm bleedin' well coming!' said Mannion, outraged. 'I alius comes, don't I? Particularly when I think it's bleedin' madness!'

Strange how human life was so often cast in extremes. Light and dark. Heat and cold. Good and evil. Order and chaos. The mass confusion of their departure was met by supreme order at the quayside. With only a few hours to prepare, ships had been paid for, stored, made ready and extra vessels ordered for the horses. The calm of the embarkation did not silence the young men. All night on board ship they laughed, joked and diced, many swigging from jugs, as the sea hissed past. Essex moved among them, clapping backs, sharing jokes, laughing at things that were not funny.

Dawn. The lowest time for men, when the darkness has sapped the life from them, when the thin, cold light seems to offer no hope. More noise, more chatter.

They started to gallop through the North Wales countryside. The pounding hooves threw up huge clods of earth. Birds and animals squawked and fluttered out of their way in panic as the cavalcade rode remorselessly on, peasants and children standing back in the dreary villages of mud and looking in drop-mouthed wonder.

The first the Queen must hear of her general's return was when he walked in to confront her! Anything less and Cecil and his crew would have time to hide the Queen away, marshal troops outside her palace. Speed was essential!

Essex had never seemed braver, more sure of himself, more in command. If only they had seen this in Ireland! Single-handedly he kept up the spirits of his men, as if the force of his personality alone could drive them to London. They laughed and joked, shouted at each other as the wind tore through their hair. The tiredness crept in slowly, the bone-aching, tortured-muscle tiredness, and they talked and joked less, hunched down over their mounts more, rode on even into the darkness. Essex seemed as if he was not of this world, not possessed of muscles and sinews like ordinary men. They grabbed an hour, two hours' sleep in wayside inns, in hovels where they threw gold at the occupants, through the North Wales valleys, past the Earl's estates at Chartley without thinking of stopping. Pain, the whole journey now becoming a matter of simple endurance. They rode, savagely hard, through a history of England — the Vale of Evesham, the northern Cotswolds, the Vale of the White Horse. As their horses faded and faltered, they threw more gold in the air and took nags, anything that could bear them and had breath in its body. Through the Chilterns, London almost in their sights.

Four days and nights. Four days and nights with hardly any sleep, four days arid nights of a breathless, mindless race through England, four days and nights where Gresham wondered if they had the Devil behind them or the Devil as their leader.

Dawn on Friday. They had left Dublin on Monday. The last few days of September, the nights drawing in, the sun losing its heat. Already the smoke from the early morning fires was gathering over London, its wooden buildings creaking with the change in temperature, a thin line of condensation on the cobbles at Westminster. The Court was at Nonsuch Palace, eleven miles south of London. They had to cross the river using the Lambeth ferry. Someone saw a group of horses tethered on the other side of the river. God was on their side! They could get all of those who had survived the ride, some thirty or forty, onto the ferry, commandeer the other horses, then send it back to bring their horses along in the rear. Gresham and Mannion piled in with the others. No one looked at them with hostility. Simply by being there at the end they had proved something.

The cold and damp morning gave no relief to their aching limbs. It had rained in London overnight. The man in charge of the horses was reluctant to release them. Even gold did not sway him. One of Essex's acolytes, Tom Gerard, hit the man a sharp blow to the side of his head, knocking him over. Had anyone else passed this way? Anyone in a hurry?

Yes, the man stuttered. The great Lord Grey had ridden by only moments ago, in a great hurry.

Grey. One of Cecil's men. Had he heard of Essex's return? Was he even now riding to tell the Queen? This was no time to relax!

They piled onto the horses, Essex shouting instructions for Gerard to wait behind and bring up their other horses after them. But the road was slippery. Autumn leaves covered it, and fell on the men. Dead things, Gresham thought. Dead leaves. An omen? Mud was everywhere, the clods of earth they had thrown up in Wales matched by lumps of sodden clay and earth, besmirching them, marking their faces. A man took his hat off, wiped his brow, showing the line on his forehead where the mud had not penetrated beneath the hat. There was a clatter behind them. Troops? They swung round. It was Gerard, bringing the spare horses. He had ignored the treacherous road and the state of his mount, had ridden at full pelt to catch up. Throwing the reins to another man, he gal-loped on ahead. Minutes later, he was back.

'I caught up with Grey!' he spluttered, spitting mud out of his mouth. 'Asked him to parley with you — to wait for you. He rode on even harder. My horse is blown or I would have knocked him off his mount.'

'My Lord!' shouted another man, 'I'll ride ahead, kill Grey, get to Cecil before he can be warned!' There was a roar of approval from the others.

Suddenly Essex was aware of a figure by his side. Through the caked mud he could just make out the features of Henry Gresham, calmly taking a swig from a water bottle. He offered it to Essex, who shook his head.

'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?' muttered Gresham, and let his horse fall back.

It was a gamble; Essex was an educated man and knew the story of how rash words from King Henry had sent rough knights off to murder Thomas a Becket, the crime from which Henry's reign had never quite recovered.

'Hold!' said Essex, the old Essex now, flamboyant, alive, radiating energy and command. 'Let the old man warn the little man! My business is with the Queen!' He dug his spurs into his horse, and the exhausted beast picked up its feet and lumbered into an apology for a gallop.

They thundered into the courtyard of Nonsuch. There was no sign of Sir Edward Grey. Essex jumped off his horse, threw the reins to an astonished soldier and barked at him, 'Show proper respect to an Earl!'

The pikeman drew up his pike, stood to attention, his other hand holding the reins.

Essex half walked, half ran into the Palace. He simply walked through two startled guards on the main gate who were unsure whether to cross their pikes to bar the intruder or bring them to attention. Everyone who served in a royal palace, and most of London, knew the Earl of Essex. Sweat had drawn little rivulets of white through the mud caking his forehead, and patches of mud marked his path through the Palace.

On he went without halting, his spurs jangling, sword scabbard flapping against his thigh. He stormed through the Presence Chamber, a dark expression of determination on his face. Again he brushed the guards aside. He grasped the rough wooden handle of the door at the end of the Presence Chamber, swung it down and to one side. The double doors crashed open. He was in the Privy Chamber. Facing the Earl was the door to the royal bedchamber. If any man had ever been invited in there, the world had never been told.

'Stand aside!' roared the Earl of Essex, and the two guards fell back. Essex raised his foot, with its mud-stained and blackened fine leather boot, and kicked at the door. It flew open with a great crash and rending of wood.

The Queen was standing by her bed, looking as if she had just got up. Without her wig, her head was nearly bald, some thin, wispy strands of grey marking all that was left of her once pride and joy. With no make-up, her face was like a sand beach across which the wind has blown, ridged and wrinkled with the scars of time. Her neck was like a plucked chicken's, and her breasts hung down inside her nightdress like the drooping dugs of a worn-out sow.

Essex advanced towards her. She could not know his intentions, must have assumed that a man who broke into her room might easily be there to kill her. Yet to her credit, she did not flinch.

Essex flung himself to his knees before her, bowed his head, and reached out for her hand. He smelt foully of the road, of mud and sweat and of horse. His clothes were dank, dripping, and like a slug he had left a trail across the floor where he had advanced towards her.

'Welcome, my Lord,' she said without a trace of irony. Essex started to babble, some speech of mixed excuse and self-justification that could hardly be heard as he sought to cover his Queen's hand with kisses.

Incredibly, Essex had not realised there was a man standing in the doorway. Henry Gresham, the colour of earth, stood there, outstretched sword in one hand, the other hand clutching a dagger with which he was warding off the guards.

If there is a noise, if he thinks he is being attacked, I do not know what he will do. Could he kill the Queen? Yes, in extremis. Best by far if he was not given an excuse.

The Queen looked up at Gresham. Still unflinching, she raised the poor ruin of what had once been an eyebrow at him. 'Am I safe?' she said wordlessly to Gresham.

He nodded twice, very carefully. Glancing quickly behind him, he saw the two guards being bundled off by Essex's men, who had gathered now in the Privy Chamber. Gresham carefully eased the door shut as best he could. Half the Court would be here in minutes. They should not see the Queen in this state, for the sake of her dignity and that of the country. Gresham touched his sword to his forehead, and stood back, half shrouded by a tapestry.

The Queen was cradling Essex's head in her hands, with him still kneeling at her feet. Minutes, was it? Gresham was keeping no count of time. He heard the Queen speaking softly to Essex, overriding his protestations, like a mother gently chiding a child. He heard her suggest they might meet 'at a better time', when they had both washed and dressed. Stumblingly, almost in tears, Essex agreed, rose to his feet and bowed low to Elizabeth, retreating backwards. Hurriedly, Gresham realised that if Essex banged his arse on the door Gresham had just shut, it might reduce the poignancy of the event. He moved over to ease the door open. There was an expectant hush in the chamber outside. As soon as Essex had gone, Gresham closed the door again, and bowed to his Queen.

'Does he have an army with him?' The tone was clipped, almost ferocious, so totally at odds with the soft, cooing tones she had used a few seconds earlier that Gresham wondered if it was the same woman speaking.

'No,' said Gresham not raising his eyes from the floor, head still bowed in respect, 'he has no army. Just the usual suspects — Southampton, Rich, Rutland, Mountjoy — who have ridden with him. In four days. My Lord of Essex is… exhausted, Majesty.'

'You make excuses for this man?' The tone was peremptory, sharp. 'You encouraged him in this… this extraordinary intrusion? You were responsible for it, perhaps?'

Gresham was very, very tired, and his body ached ferociously in parts he never knew it had.

'I hope I'm in part responsible for the fact there's no army outside, Your Majesty, only a weeping Earl and some of his sycophants. And I entered after the Earl simply to protect you. I keep my word.'

'I think you do,' said the Queen. 'And, by God, I will keep mine. As you will keep your counsel over what you saw this early morning, if you wish similarly to keep a head on your shoulders. Here, there is a private door at the back. It leads to the dressing room, and thence out into more public areas. It will do neither of us good if you are seen to leave my room.'

So there was a secret door into the Queen's bedchamber at Nonsuch.

'Two guards saw me enter, Your Majesty.'

'Two guards who will not speak of the matter.' She paused. 'Would the Earl of Essex have come with an army? If you had not spoken to him?'

'It is easy to overrate one's influence, Your Majesty. The honest answer is, I do not know. Yet I think it was never his intention to rebel against you. To win your favour, yes. I do not think the Earl is your enemy. I think he needs you too much as his friend.'

He could not tell the Queen that Essex loved her. Not as a man loves a woman who excites him. As a man loves his mother.

'Leave now. Leave the Court.' Gresham's shoulders must have sagged. Damn! How dare his body disobey his mind! 'You are not banished. By your absence I need to make it clear that you are not part of Essex's clan. You lose usefulness for me if you are seen that way. We shall talk again when I have decided what to do with my turbulent Earl.'

Essex was outside, holding Court. His men were smiling, laughing. Their Lord had been well received by the Queen. They had talked. All would be well. The liars and the slanderers would be put in place. The true significance of the Irish treaty would be realised, the appalling difficulties of any Irish campaign understood. Essex cut a dramatic figure, still dripping and covered in mud from his four day journey.

'I have suffered much trouble and many storms abroad,' he announced to the mass of people who had now gathered in chattering excitement. 'But I find a sweet calm at home.'

With that he left to spruce himself up and prepare for the meeting at eleven o' clock he had arranged with the Queen. Clearly he had a store of clothes at Nonsuch as well as at other palaces. His audience lasted for over an hour and a half. His followers were elated, all the more so when the Earl came out smiling, happier than many of his men had seen him for months, if not years. At the meal which followed, men and women crowded round Essex. It was as it had always been — the Earl the candle around which the others flocked, the centre of attention.

Cecil attended the meal. The babble of talk dropped in volume as he appeared, then picked up again. There were a few derisory cheers and groans. Cecil was impervious. He nodded courteously enough to Essex, but seated himself as far away as the table arrangement allowed. Soon he was joined by Raleigh, Grey, Cobham, Howard and Shrewsbury.

And then the Queen asked for a second audience, later that afternoon.

‘We got a new neighbour.' Mannion had burst into where Gresham was seeing if stretching his limbs increased or decreased the pain of his recent ride. It had seemed to leave Mannion unaffected.

'And who might that be?'

'The Earl of Essex. 'E comes out of his meeting with the Queen, the one in the afternoon, looking like thunder. Before anyone can think, the order comes out that 'e's confined to his chamber. Then the Queen calls the whole of the Privy Council to Nonsuch. They 'old an 'earing. Six charges against 'im, from busting into the Queen's bedchamber to makin' a right mess o' things in Ireland. Next thing is 'e's banished from Court and 'e's in the custody of the Lord Keeper — kept in the Lord Keeper's house, in fact, right 'ere in the Strand. Two servants, that's all 'e's allowed. No visitors, not even his wife. Can't even walk in the garden. I reckon 'e's done for this time.'

'I've got an awful feeling,' said Gresham, 'that this isn't the end of anything. In fact, I wonder if things aren't just starting.'