The rebel heart

Chapter 1

Last Week of May, 1598 London

‘My master demands your presence,' the man had said. Few people walked into the palatial house of Sir Henry Gresham and made demands, if they valued their skins.

But of course this was the messenger to Sir Robert Cecil, the Queen's Chief Secretary. It was late afternoon, and all over the country men would be tramping back from the fields, their limbs aching, to the damp hovels with bare-arsed and mud-stained children. In London, those with respectable jobs were setting up the shutters, and the light was in the eyes of those who plied their trade by night.

'This evening. At the Palace.' The messenger's boots were dripping mud on the floor, and his chin was thrust back arrogantly. Mannion, Gresham's body servant, chose that moment to slip out of the room.

Cecil liked to summon Gresham at night and conduct his business in secret. That much was normal. So was the size of the messenger. Cecil's messengers were always huge, surly men who seemed to sneer rather than speak their message from their master. Perhaps Cecil, part hunchback as he was, chose his servants to compensate for his own ugliness.

'Your master is a servant to the Queen and to God, as are we all. Neither he, nor you, are God,' said Gresham coldly. He could feel the sharp sense of fear beating at his heart, yet knew not a sign of it would show outwardly. 'You've failed to address me correctly,' he carried on. 'You've failed to use any of the words a child would have been beaten for neglecting — such key words as "please" or "if it please you". You have the opportunity to repeat your request, in language more suited to that of a servant addressing a gentleman. If you fail to take advantage of my generosity, I'll have you beaten. Like a child.'

The tone was flat, cold and intensely threatening. The man blanched, but his arrogance went very deep. He was servant to a man who created the law, not one who obeyed it.

'You would beat the servant of Robert Cecil? The Queen's Chief Secretary? I think not.' His lip was curled in scorn. The initial fear he had felt at Gresham's icy tone was leaving him as quickly as it had come.

'I would not dirty my hands,' said Gresham very quietly, glancing up and looking into the eyes of the servant. Cecil's man could not hold the gaze, looked away. There was a strange intensity in the startling blue of Gresham's eyes so at odds with his dark hair. The look was chilling in its inhumanity. Yes, the servant thought, this is a man who is capable of doing terrible things. They would.' Gresham nodded at someone behind the man, who turned to see Mannion grinning at him from the door. Three lusty porters stood beside him, the first with the flattened nose that bespoke a lifetime of drunken brawls. All three carried stout wooden cudgels.

'Now,' said Gresham, 'you wished to make a request of me?'

Conflicting emotions flickered across the man's face. He chose the path of least pain. He turned again and looked at Mannion. Mannion smiled at him. That was enough.

'Sir Henry…' he faltered, clearly hating it, clearing his throat. 'My master commands-'

Gresham raised an eyebrow.

'My master requests..’

Gresham would go, of course. He always did. Like a mouse who could not resist the cheese in the trap. Why did he insist oh playing these silly games?

It was late enough to be dark. The streets were treacherous with mud and slime. A horse at night had no way of knowing if the puddle on the road was one inch or two feet deep, until it trod in it and threw its rider. The tide was on their side, so Gresham opted to go upstream to Whitehall, rowed by four men in Gresham livery all of whom grinned at him and seemed pleased to have been hauled out of their beds.

The torches fore and aft in the boat guttered and threw an oily reflection on the black water. Gresham sat at the stern, pensive yet excited, feeling the surge of the water as the oars bit deep. He heard the sucking smack-smack of the blades, his ears attuned to the sound of other oars, other boats. The river was dangerous at night, as were the streets, even for a short journey. There were crossbows and boat axes on board, and it was part of the household routine to check them every day. The lights of the Palace glittered on the waters, fewer and fewer of its windows flaring into the night nowadays as the Court seemed to die a little each week alongside its Queen.

Robert Cecil's room was richly panelled, with a line of stone-mullioned windows down the left-hand side, full of very old, diamond-shaped panes of glass. The light did not so much pass as ripple through them. There were three ornate hangings on the right-hand wall, concealing a series of doors. Or, as it was Cecil, more likely stone seats where men could sit unseen and take notes of the conversation. In browns, greens and russet reds, the hangings illustrated scenes from the Bible. Apparently Cecil had a sense of humour: one of them showed the massacre of the innocents. He had made no attempt to cover the bare, stone floor, and the fire in the huge, stone fireplace decorated with Henry VIII's coat of arms had only a few meagre spluttering logs in it. At least it gave out more heat than its master.

Cecil was dressed in an unfashionably long gown with fur-trimmed collar, and the huge ruff that helped to hide his one shoulder that was higher than the other. Older than Gresham, he always looked half-starved; small and hard black eyes in his pale face, emotionless except for an occasional flash of the extraordinary intelligence that had got him so far. He sat in a high-backed chair at the head of a long table. Table, chairs and panelling looked to have been cut almost from the same tree, their surfaces polished to perfection, hard, glittering. The guest of the moment was clearly meant to sit at the other end of the table, on what was little more than a stool. The fifteen or so other, high-back chairs that Gresham knew could be ranged on either side of the table had been put away somewhere, presumably to make Gresham feel discomfited. Instead he picked up the stool, and walked with it up the length of the table, plonked it down and sat beside Cecil. On his right-hand side, of course. It was done purely to annoy, and it succeeded. A little tic of displeasure flickered on Cecil's cheek.

Power. That was Cecil's game, his lust, his love and his meaning of life. The Queen was dying childless, and lasting power would go to the person who gambled correctly on her successor. The dark, swirling, treacherous currents of Court were more and more hurling Cecil against the Earl of Essex; a power struggle threatening to explode at any moment.

When Gresham appeared Cecil had made a vague gesture as if he might stand up, but had failed to do so. He raised his chin and looked down his nose at Gresham, but before he could speak Gresham cut in.

'Well, my Lord,' he said, 'who are you seeking to make the next King or Queen of England?'

There was a distinct colour change on Cecil's face. Good. The advantage would not last; Cecil always recovered well. And Gresham had caught him this glancing blow right at the start of the fight. It meant nothing, but he might as well enjoy the moment while it lasted. Gresham had toyed with asking how the mission to King Henry of France had gone, knowing that its failure would rankle with Cecil, but had decided being outrageous was the better hit.

'It's all the talk of the town, actually,' Gresham said, as if he were discussing the result of a cock fight rather than speaking pure treason. 'Some people believe the King of Scotland is your choice, others the Spanish Infanta. But perhaps you have another favourite up your sleeve? Perhaps you intend to bury your feud with the Earl of Essex and acknowledge him as your master? Or will you use your undoubted charms on the ravishing Arbella?'

There may have been no child born to Elizabeth, but there were enough people with enough royal blood in them to allow the French ambassador to draw up a list of twenty-seven possible contenders for the Crown when Elizabeth died.

'You are aware that the statements you have just made could lose you your head? Perhaps as you appear to have lost your senses the difference would not be noted,' said Cecil. The voice was cold, hard as frost on gravel.

'But who is there to hear us, my Lord?' asked Gresham innocently. 'I know your honour would not permit you to have us overheard.' Well, there was no sideways glance to the hangings, at least. They probably were alone.

'If things are said often enough,' said Cecil through lips that seemed to get thinner with every word, 'they are overheard. And reported. And luck mixed with an over measure of bravado are likely to prove false gods.'

'I bow to your knowledge of falsity,' said Gresham. 'In that area you're certainly my better.'

'This is nonsense,' said Cecil, implying boredom with the exchange. 'The plain truth is that it is you who are the fool. You come here at my bidding, despite the several and various dangers that you know such a summons involves, of your own free will. Only a foolish man would come.'

'Even the Devil can speak true at times,' sighed Gresham. 'And does your Lordship, who knows all things, know why this should be so.

'You think,' said Cecil, with a voice like a surgeon's knife, 'that you come driven by a thirst for danger, a craving for excitement.'

'And isn't that true?' asked Gresham more idly than he felt. The conversation was taking a strange turn, like so many of those he had had with this spider of a man.

'Perhaps in part,' said Cecil. 'But I think there is a greater reason. I think it is because you want to die.'

Damn the man! Damn him to hell! Gresham fought to keep his heart steady, to stop the colour rising in his face.

'I am quite used to your acting as my executioner, at least at one or more remove, my Lord,' said Gresham, no trace of his feelings in his voice. 'I think I prefer your unbridled malice to your concern. At least the former is more familiar.'

'Concern?' For the first time something approaching a laugh came into Cecil's tone. A laugh an undertaker might give at being overpaid for the funeral. 'I have no concern for you. I despise you and all you stand for, you and the other overgrown children who gallivant fecklessly through life. Yet I note and understand you, so I may use you for the betterment of this nation. You are too proud to take your own life, Henry Gresham. Yet you are ashamed of that life, and push yourself nearer to death on every mission you undertake in the hope that some other will do what you are too much of a coward to do and take the life which you increasingly despise.'

Gresham gazed into the malevolent glare of Cecil's eyes and did not flinch.

'I do have one advantage over you, my Lord,' he said. 'I know myself. You may indeed know more of me than I might wish. But of yourself, you know too little.'

Cecil was almost mocking now, sure of his advantage.

'I know the death of a young man, the rather foul death, was your responsibility. And that the burden of guilt you quite rightly bear is dissolving into your soul like acid.'

It had to come to that, of course. Gresham could feel hot, biting tears trying to rise up in his eyes, to scour them. He must resist.

'I'll make my own peace with the world, and with my soul,' he said, 'and if I do it by fighting that same world and fighting my own soul, it's really no concern of yours. It's a battle that a mind like yours can never comprehend. But you, my Lord, you'll truly go to hell, unlike those of us who already think ourselves in it.'

'You have taken on spiritual duties now?' sneered Cecil. 'How odd, for someone who attends church so rarely.' Another, minor dig, of course. Failure to attend Protestant worship was a punishable offence. Ironically, the taint of closet Catholicism had clung to Gresham ever since the Armada episode. That was despite his nearly losing his life fighting for the Protestants in the Low Countries. 'And why should I prepare for hell? I who have murdered no man, and have no young man — or should I say lover — on my conscience?'

'Because you are in love with power,' said Gresham. 'And the lust after power is the greatest evil of humankind. You cloak your lust with words such as "duty" or "loyalty", yet it is all a hypocritical fraud. You are consumed by your lust, your need to control, your need to dominate. You will plot, lie, deceive and kill — though never by your own hand, of course, always through others — all to keep the power that increasingly replaces the blood in your veins. And you do it for self. Not for God, Queen, nor King. For you.'

It was Cecil who could find no instant answer this time. Finally he spoke, 'And do you not enjoy the power you have, Henry Gresham?' he asked quietly. 'The power of your physical strength, the power of your mind, the power money gives you to ignore the fashion or to follow it as you will, and to be yourself?'

'I'm sure I do,' said Gresham, 'but unlike you, I don't actually enjoy myself much, or even really approve of myself. Or of life, as it happens. I survive. That's all. In our world, survival is the only virtue of which I can be certain.'

Cecil allowed another pause.

'Even if this fallacy of my… obsession with power was true, do you not contribute to it by doing what I ask? How can you criticise my supposed wielding of power when you help me, albeit in a minor way, to preserve it?'

'Because Machiavelli was right,' said Gresham. 'Rulers need to be evil. We need the power-mad, such as yourself. How often in this country has a good King led his people to defeat and suffering? The saintly Edward the Confessor? While he was confessing, I wonder how many of his subjects he condemned to death, rape and pillage through his innocence, his lack of worldly wisdom? The by-product of your lust for power and the way it has perverted your soul is that you work for stability, for peace, because stability and peace preserve your power. You do the right things for completely the wrong reasons.'

'The wrong reasons? The Spanish have no cause to love you, Henry Gresham. Would you wish to serve under a Spanish monarch? You know of course that only last month thirty-eight fly-boats and five thousand Spanish troops sailed up the Channel, and were only stopped when my Lord of Cumberland sank eighteen of them in Calais?'

True, thought Gresham, but they had never been intended for England. They were Spanish reinforcements for the war in the Netherlands.

Cecil was not to be stopped. 'And you know we face disaster in Ireland, with Tyrone attacking the Blackwater even as we speak? With the Lord Deputy of Ireland dead and no one in his place? We are besieged by enemies, without and within. You suggest that at this time there should be no power in the land?'

I do not question your belief that the power in the land should be you, thought Gresham. Out loud he said, 'I question one thing, my Lord.’

'What might that be?'

Had he got to Cecil? This time it was difficult to tell. 'You mention your wielding of power. I was under the impression you were fighting for power. The power to defeat Spain. The power, even, to defeat Ireland. But to wield external power you have to secure your foundations. Inner power. That long and, to be frank, exceedingly tedious feud between yourself and the Earl of Essex does seem to be coming to a head, with the Queen as she is. I assume that's why you asked to see me? Some dirty work to give you an advantage over Essex? Who, as you know full well, is a companion of mine?'

Cecil gazed flatly at Gresham, then surprised him by standing up, slowly and as if in some pain, and going over to the sideboard parked in isolation between two of the windows. A fine Venetian decanter and two matching glasses stood on it. Cecil turned to look at Gresham, motioning to the decanter. Gresham shrugged non-committally, and Cecil poured a single glass, bringing it over to Gresham.

Good God! This was an unusual day! The wine was actually quite drinkable. Cecil usually only offered cat's piss to visitors.

'My congratulations on the wine, my Lord,' said Gresham.

'Someone important was here before you,' said Cecil.

Ouch, thought Gresham. That put me firmly in my place. It never did to underestimate Cecil. Or to cease attacking him, for that matter.

The obvious thing was for Gresham to ask who the important person had been. The amusing thing therefore was not to ask. As he had hoped, Cecil was eventually forced to provide the answer.

'The important person was one of my family's oldest friends. He brought me news. Disturbing news.'

'Good God!' said Gresham. 'Don't tell me someone told the Queen how much Burghley House cost your father?' Lord Burghley may have done noble service to the Queen, but he had also done noble service to himself, a service fully witnessed in the size of the mansion he had erected to his own glory.

Cecil's eyes actually closed for a brief moment, in the manner of someone having to restrain the strongest of all possible urges, but he carried on calmly enough.

'Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, fourth Earl of Southampton. Your puerile insults have at least one germ of truth. Both are… crucial. And both have links to my father, Lord Burghley.'

What man referred to his father by his title, thought Gresham?

'Both men were taken into your father's care as boys,' said Gresham. A spy who hoped to survive needed a secure grasp of facts, living as he did amid so many fictions. 'They became his wards when their fathers died. As one of the richest and most influential people in the country, he was flooded with requests to take on the aristocratic children whose parents had been stupid enough to die. He made an exception to his normal rule in their case. Indeed, you must have met them as children yourself. Rather, after you were a child yourself — if ever you had a childhood.'

'Yes, I had a childhood,' said Cecil. For a brief moment, the tiniest of flickers, something fell from his eyes, and a huge sadness came into their hard, undecipherable depths. 'You were taunted because you had no father. I was taunted because of who my father was. And, of course, because I was a cripple.'

Gresham had learnt that there were times when silence was the best answer.

Eventually, Cecil carried on. Brisk. Businesslike.

'And yes, I did meet them in my father's houses. And saw them for what they were. Children reveal themselves even more easily than adults.'

'And what was it you saw?'

'Two young minds unfettered, controlled by no sense of duty, no sense of loyalty, no sense of a higher good. Controlled rather by their own vainglory, their own sense of self. Two minds controlled by their bodies, driven by physicality, devoted solely to the pursuit of their own gratification,' Cecil replied, unable to control the curl of his lip that spoke of his disgust.

'Sounds wonderful fun to me,' said Gresham. 'You should have tried it. I find Essex highly amusing.'

'I know of your relationship. It is an advantage to me in what I wish, not a disadvantage.'

'Ignoring my friendship with Essex for a moment, what do two children pulling the wings off flies in wanton cruelty have to do with a man hoping to take control of the new kingdom as he and his family have controlled the old kingdom? And how is your dear father, by the way?'

'My father continues to be unwell,' said Cecil briefly. 'And as for the two children, they have nothing to do with that man,' said Cecil, the grammatician in him revealing itself. 'They may have an unfortunate amount to do with that man in the future.'

'Why so?' said Gresham. 'Two wanton souls bent on destruction, as you see them, are surely only of concern to themselves and the few who truly love them.'

'Such "wanton souls", as you describe them, rarely satisfy themselves with self-destruction. They are only happy when they carry others along with them.' Cecil's tone was full of loathing.

'Which, for someone whose vision of the world is dominated by his place in it, must mean that you perceive in these two a threat to yourself,' said Gresham.

Cecil carried on as if he had not heard him.

'Essex is the leader of the pair, always has been, even in their childhood. Southampton is rotten to the core, a vehicle merely of his own pleasure. It was always so.'

'But what have they done in their adulthood,' asked Gresham boring in now to the core of the issue, 'to arouse your very evident concern?'

'It is not what they have done. It is the perception of what they are doing.'

Gresham jammed his goblet down on the table. 'Clearly, you need me. And if I'd wanted an oracle I could have sailed to Delphos. Tell me.'

Cecil looked distastefully at Gresham.

'It is rumoured that both men are involved in satanic rituals. Black magic. Rituals that involve child sacrifice.'

Gresham paused for thought. So this was where the rumours came from.

'So what if they are?'

'The rumour does not stop there. It is said that they learnt such satanic observances in the household of my father. Not just in the house of my father. From his second son. From myself.'

Cecil took another sip from his wine. This was indeed an historic night.

'They say, apparently, that my father was so disappointed with his first son that he entered into a pact with Satan.' Burghley's first son was a buffoon. 'That in exchange for his soul, his sons and heirs would hold power in England.'

It is a rare moment in the life of a human being to feel that one is looking straight into the soul of a fellow man. For a moment, Gresham felt he saw into the heart of Robert Cecil.

'The rumours say that the Devil granted my father his wish. That he gave power in England to him and to his children. That he marked me with the Devil's mark, hunched my back, commanded my nurse to drop me in childhood to remind my father that Satan's gifts come at greater than the asking price, to remind him of who the True Lord was. And that, being born unto the Devil, I recruited the boys in my father's care to that same false faith.'

There was a long silence. The frightening thing was that Gresham was entirely inclined to believe the whole story. He had never believed that hell was warm. Fire could burn, true enough, as he had cause to know. Yet warmth, light and heat were also the source of life. No, hell was cold. Burningly, bitterly cold, the cold of death, of exhaustion. And throughout his life he had sensed that cold in Robert Cecil, ice to Gresham's fire.

'I can see,' said Gresham, 'that such a story might be politically embarrassing. And, by the way, I've seen no hint of any such behaviour in Essex. As for that whingeing little turd, Southampton, I can't speak for him.'

Cecil looked at him, almost pityingly.

'I do not need a vote from the populace to carry on in my role,' he said scathingly, telling a lesser man the obvious truth. 'I do not care what stories go round the taverns, or even the Church. And I am close enough to the Queen to defend myself should she hear these rumours.'

'So what part do I play in all this?' asked Gresham. 'If what you want is for me to sell my soul to Satan and use my newly acquired powers of access to visit him and plead your case, I'm afraid the answer is no. You see, I'm not sure he really exists. At least, not as an outside figure. If he is there at all, he is there as part of everyone. Rather a central figure, actually, in anyone claiming humanity.'

Gresham did not shiver. He had trained himself better than that. Nevertheless, the fact remained that a cold wind blew down the room as he spoke, fluttering even the heavy hangings and causing the fire to billow and smoke to come out into the room.

'I do not require you to visit that gentleman. I do require you to take a secret message to another,' said Cecil.

'Who?' said Gresham, suddenly bored with the game. He sensed this was why he had been brought here.

'King James of Scotland,' said Cecil, calmly. 'To deny these rumours. To show him they are false.'

Damn it! Gresham knew he must have registered his shock on his face! Cecil had just announced his own death sentence. No wonder he had placed no listeners behind the hangings. Cecil wished to communicate with the King of Scotland, the most likely heir to Elizabeth's throne. If it were known he was writing secretly to James his comfortable lodgings would be exchanged instantly for the lowest and darkest dungeon in the Tower.

And that would be a kindness compared with what would happen to the messenger entrusted with such an embassy. Elizabeth had just sent off a foul and abusive letter to James, reprimanding him for making it known in Europe that he would be the next King of England.

'My Lord,' said Gresham, his manner now composed, 'can I with my poor muddled wits try to make some sense of this? You've just admitted to me, someone who's admitted that they hate you, that you wish to communicate secretly with the King of Scotland. Such an admission is sufficient to lose you your job and probably your life, and to condemn me, were I fool enough to act as your messenger, to a very painful and probably very sordid death. So you've given me on the one hand a chance to destroy you, and on the other a death warrant for myself.'

'I have told you the truth. As in so many cases, the truth does not justify itself. It is justified by its surroundings. If you left this room and said I wanted to communicate with James of Scotland, no one would believe you — you, who are implicated in every plot, and rapidly becoming an eminence noir in all who seek to replace our present Queen. Instead, they would believe you to be the person working for King James, and damn you accordingly for trying to bring the Queen's minister into disrepute. You know the truth of what I need. For once, that truth will remain with you. People might believe I am secretly in correspondence with James of Scotland. They will not believe it if their source of information is you.'

Gresham sighed. 'What you're saying is that I'm your only safe messenger. Anyone else you asked could use the information against you. I'm the only person no one would believe if I betrayed you. No one believes or trusts in me. I'm damaged goods. What a brilliant idea! How on earth would anyone believe that you would trust a damning message to someone who clearly hated you so much and was inherently untrustworthy?'

Cecil was silent.

Gresham spoke again. 'You're making me your messenger because no one believes you'd be stupid enough to do so. You've instant deniability. I can perfectly see what's in it for you. I'm rather less clear as to what's in it for me.'

'The survival of your friends,' said Cecil.

Gresham's heart missed a beat. He said nothing, always the greatest challenge to an interrogator. Cecil fell into the trap. People always did.

'You have only three true friends. I discount Essex — a drinking companion and a mere amusement. You care truly for only three people: that man-mountain of a servant you seem to have afforded the role of a father; Lord Willoughby, your friend and ally since you were at school; and that peasant girl you picked up on your way home from the wars.' Cecil paused for effect.

A tornado was raging in Gresham's head. He of all people should know the cost of loving another person. As the dying screams of someone he had loved had torn into his soul, just as the red-hot metal had torn into his friend's body, he had vowed never again to expose himself to this terrible pain. Jane, his ward, he could live without. Yet life without Mannion or George…

'So,' said Gresham, in the quietest possible voice, 'it's actually come to this, has it? No politics, no manoeuvring for position, no wheels within wheels. A simple, straightforward threat. Serve me, and work against a lesser friend, or be the agent of the destruction of those who are my real friends.' There was almost pity in Gresham's voice, behind the hatred. 'You must be truly desperate.'

Cecil said nothing. This time Gresham chose to fill the gap.

'George. It must be George,' he said. 'I don't care a rat's arse for the girl, and knowing how and where Mannion spends his spare time it's always a gamble whether he'll ever come home.'

Cecil remained silent.

'George told me someone was buying up the bills he had taken out on some of his land to feed his peasants through the famine years. Would that person be you, my Lord? And would it perhaps be the case that poor, soft old George over-extended himself to keep his miserable tenants alive, and mortgaged nearly all his estate, rather than the small portion he has always owned up to?'

'Lord Willoughby inherited an estate that was already two-thirds promised to the moneylenders,' said Cecil, in a calm, passionless voice. 'His father was a pleasant man, and wholly incompetent at managing his estates.' There was a shout from beyond the thick wooden door, a servant calling. Cecil's eyes flickered briefly towards it, as if expecting to see the door burst open and reveal a rampant Mannion. Gresham's eyes never left Cecil's.

'So you could ruin my friend at a moment's notice? Cast him, and his wife, and their screaming brood out onto the streets?'

Gresham hunched forward a little, the academic starting to study the question in depth. It was as if he was playing a game. 'But surely that's not threat enough? You know I've enough money for the both of us, if needs be. No, there must be something else.'

'There is,' said Cecil smugly. 'I needed evidence to show that Willoughby was so desperate for money he would do anything to get it. As for you, it is known, has been known for thirteen years, that you sailed aboard the Armada, were actually seen on its flag-ship, standing alongside its commander. Since then, you have been tainted by Spain. Indeed, many saw your military involvement in the Low Countries simply as a way to wash from your reputation your link with Spain. I will be clear with you, Henry Gresham.'

'Well,' said Gresham, 'that would be novel.' Cecil ignored the flippancy.

'I have prepared papers over many months past to incriminate you, your ward, your idiot servant and your clumsy friend in a plot to place the Spanish Infanta on the throne of England. I have also arranged for various equally incriminating items to be placed in the household of three people, each of them on the fringe of every shady business in London, each regular travellers to the continent, and each foreign. One is a Jew, which will, of course, help greatly in any accusations of guilt against him.'

Gresham remembered the pathetic figure of Dr Lopez, the Queen's physician, who when an old and harmless man had been hung, drawn and quartered on a trumped-up treason charge. The Earl of Essex had led the prosecution, and the fact that Lopez was a Jew had helped Essex greatly in securing the conviction. It had not been Essex's finest hour. Gresham had no doubt that if Essex were forced to choose between his own profit and the death or mutilation of someone else, selfishness would win. That was how blue blood stayed blue. It also made Essex, if anything, just a little more exciting. Like a warming fire that could at the same time burn a man alive.

'I have also bribed a minor official of the Court of Spain to testify that you have indeed been acting on behalf of the Infanta for these six months past.'

'And why should such a man put his own life at threat?' asked Gresham.

'Because he is dying, and he cares little if he dies a few months early if my money supports his family,' answered Cecil, as if betrayal, lies and perjury were the bread of his daily life. Which, come to think of it, Gresham pondered, they probably were.

'So you are telling me, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'that if I do not agree to be your messenger you will destroy me and my few friends by implicating us in a Spanish plot against the Queen.'

'Precisely,' said Cecil. 'And it will work, because of your past history and the cloud of suspicion that hovers around you in the Court and beyond.'

'A cloud of suspicion no doubt fostered greatly by you in recent weeks and months?' asked Gresham.

'Of course,' said Cecil, as if surprised by the question. 'Hanging, drawing and quartering is the preferred punishment for traitors. You will not be offered the axe — you are not sufficiently noble. Nor will Lord Willoughby, nor your lesser friends. A pity to see the beautiful body of your ward so treated.'

There were two sources of anger eating at Gresham's soul. The first was at himself. He had let himself be manoeuvred by his old enemy into this position of extreme vulnerability. The second was not useful now. It was a mere distraction to survival: it was anger against Cecil. It would have its day. But not now. Not yet.

'You must need me very much as your messenger,' said Gresham, 'to go to all this trouble.' The only way he could unsettle Cecil was to appear unnaturally calm.

'I need you as my messenger,' said Cecil, 'not merely because if you are caught with my message you will be disbelieved. I need you because my enemies will seek to find and kill my messenger. For that reason he must go alone or with a small party. I do not need a puffed-up servant paying lip service to loyalty until the first sight of an implement of torture; or a minor noble desperate for advancement and caving in to the highest bidder. I need someone skilled enough not to be caught in the first place, someone ruthless enough to fight off opposition and, in the final count, someone with enough to lose to keep his mouth shut if the worst happens. I need a killer who will kill riot to protect me but to survive.'

Gresham gave a mock bow. 'I'm flattered you rate my skills so highly. But all you do is raise my curiosity about the nature of this message. It doesn't startle me that you'll ruin me or anyone else to ensure your survival. It startles me that something so threatening to your existence has happened as to make you take the risk of employing me, and by so doing revealing your desperation,' He sat back in his chair and smiled at Cecil. 'You see, I won't accept your mission unless I know exactly what the threat is to you, and what the message I carry actually says.'

Cecil smiled a thin, victorious smile.

'You have no threat to bring against me,' he said, with the slightest trace of smugness.

'Do I not?' said Gresham with the same infuriating smile.

There was a blur of movement, and Cecil found his neck being rammed forcibly against the carved wood of his chair, an arm choking the breath out of him and the blade of a dagger actually piercing the loose, wrinkled skin around his scrawny neck.

'You never were a spy, my Lord!' whispered Gresham in Cecil's ear. 'With one brief tightening of my arm here you are dead, or with one brief stab of this dagger up through your warped back.' As if to emphasise the point, Gresham tightened the grip of his arm for a moment. A single strand of dribble left the corner of Cecil's mouth, ran over his chin and landed on the fine velvet of Gresham's dark doublet. 'I leave you here, seated, stiffening in your chair. I have at least five minutes to make my exit, time enough for a poor spy such as me. You see, your message was so damning to us both that you could not afford a servant to listen to it. And your followers, when you are discovered? There is the shock of finding you dead, the confusion, the chaos. I've no doubt you will have left instructions for the revelation of the plot I am meant to have sponsored. Men such as you seek their revenge even in death.'

Cecil appeared to be suffocating. Gresham allowed a tiny relax-ation in his grip, whispering close in the man's ear as he might to a lover. 'Yet a dead man is never obeyed as rapidly as one who is living, a man whose patronage is at an end is never obeyed as is a man who still has favours to hand out. And me? One hour. One single hour. That's all I need to vanish, to disappear where you and yours will never find me. I've money put aside to satisfy ten men's wildest dreams. I've horses for me, my servant and anyone eke I care to take, even a trunk packed for just this very moment. I've a ship whose only job is to wait for me, to take me overseas if my world collapses around me. And every horse, every sailor has been planned for a time when there's no time, when speed means the difference between life or death.'

This time it was Gresham who paused for effect. He was surprised by the thinness of Cecil's body as he grasped it. The man was all skin and bone.

'So tell me your message. Or face my putting my plan into action, not yours.'

Cecil vomited. A pity, thought Gresham, allowing Cecil's head to crane forward so that no sick lodged in his throat and suffocated him. You lost respect if you wet or filled your pants, or threw up the contents of your stomach in front of another man. And you hated the man who saw or caused it even more. Or perhaps Cecil could not hate Gresham any more than he did?

'Let me go!' Cecil croaked. The arm relaxed, but as Cecil sucked in air and allowed his head to sink forward he saw the dagger poised in front of his eyeball. He started back, and the blade followed, its point almost touching his eye.

'Tell me now,' said Gresham, 'what your message is, or you lose an eye shortly before you lose your life.'

'The Earl of Essex has written to King James of Scotland,' said Cecil. Gresham sensed he had taken a decision. He relaxed his hold, moved the dagger and saw Cecil sag forward, retching.

Gresham was still by his side. Both men knew what would happen if Cecil cried out for help. 'Saying what?' said Gresham.

Cecil's breathing was returning now, and he was gaining control of himself.

'King James has heard the rumours associating Essex, Southampton and his crew with satanism and with sodomy. James loathes satanism before all other human evils. He prosecutes accused witches personally, testifies to the evil of Devil-worship. He is also a sodomite, and denies that sin with all the passion of a man who wants to throw the first stone.' The breathing was almost back to normal. 'Essex has told James that he, Essex, and the other ward, Southampton, were asked to bow to satanism and to sodomy in their youth. By me. And told him how they have denied it, and how I, the son of their guardian, is the anti-Christ.'

Gresham leant back, and the dagger went silently into its hidden sheath.

'And James will believe it?' he said.

'The King of Scotland is most likely to succeed our present Queen. I have told him for years past to beware of Raleigh. I warned him of the wrong man.'

Well! That was a message for Gresham to bear to the man who had saved his life, to Sir Walter Raleigh.

'I underestimated Essex, saw him as a popinjay, a plaything for the Queen. He has stolen a march on me, poisoned the likely heir to the throne against me. Unless I can reach James in time, the poison will bite. Instead of simply reading what he has been sent, the King of Scotland will start to believe it.'

'So you wish me to betray Essex?' asked Gresham.

'No,' said Cecil. 'I wish you to protect those you care for most, and put right a wrong. I also expect you to see that the greatest disaster that could befall this country would be to have the Earl of Essex as its King, or in a position of real power in its governance.'

'You're at your weakest with a man such as Essex. You are correct: he would make an appalling King. But Essex thinks with his heart. Much of the time he thinks wrongly. But at least his decisions are based on blood flowing through his veins.' 'Essex will not defeat me,' said Cecil.

'No?' said Gresham. 'Yet you don't see what Essex has. You are the cold intellect who is never wrong. You command through fear. Essex is the passionate fool, who is usually wrong — but who commands through love.'

'Love does not decide the fate of nations. Love creates scandals, not power. It is fear that rules.' Cecil was now fully back in control of himself.

'To a point, my Lord. Yet you forget one thing. Any prison only operates because the inmates cooperate with the jailers. There are always fewer jailers than there are prisoners. True, there are locked doors. But those doors have to be opened sometimes: food has to be given; access with lawyers has to be afforded. If every prisoner decides to rise up against his jailers, the jailers die. You rule by fear. The prisoners cooperate through fear. But give them a leader they love, and they have an antidote to their fear.'

'Sentimental nonsense!' spluttered Cecil.

'Is it?' said Gresham. 'This country is ruled by fear. London Bridge displays the heads of traitors on pikes over its main gateway. The people are invited to see traitors hung, drawn and quartered. But what if they find someone they love as they love Essex? At what stage does love conquer fear? They cheer Essex in the streets. They scrawl 'Toad" on your walls. You don't understand popularity, because you've never experienced it. Indeed, you scorn it because you don't understand it. But rebellion happens, and it happens in the moments when love and passion break through fear and repression.'

'So you tell me that you love the Earl of Essex?' Gresham heard the scorn and fear that Cecil put into the naming of his enemy and his title. 'That you will betray me and my message to Essex, and the power of love will triumph?' *No,' said Gresham, 'and your question reveals not only how little you understand men such as Essex, but how little you understand men such as myself. Essex can command the mob. He has the power of love — blind, unthinking, living only for the moment Yet he's a fool, for all his intelligence. A rather special fool. A brave, handsome, rather dashing and rather glorious and all-too-human fool, but a fool nevertheless. Essex is passion, romance and glamour. Essex is in love with himself. And he yearns for the simplicity, as he sees it, of a soldier's life. All this means he is bound for destruction, because nations do not run on passion, romance and glamour. I could love Essex as I hate you. That doesn't mean to say I could ever serve him.'

4I do not care how you justify taking my message to King James. I care only that you do so.'

Gresham's mind was churning. Cecil's wife was probably the only person who had loved him, and she had died eighteen months earlier, leaving his two children motherless. It would be simplicity itself to have them killed. There were men in every tavern in Southwark who would jump at the chance. Should he threaten Cecil with this?

No!

He had been out-thought by his old enemy, and such a threat would be simple vainglory. He could have killed Cecil tonight and got away with it. He knew it and Cecil knew it. That was the important thing: Cecil knew it. The advantage Cecil had over Gresham had been ripped away from him for a moment, a moment that Cecil had not planned for. That was enough. The seed had been sown: the idea that Gresham could never be entirely controlled. No harm in leaving a seed of doubt, though. As for Gresham, those who struggled frantically in the net caught it even more firmly around them. The man who got out was the man who took his time, found his knife and ever so gently made his escape.

And Essex? Gresham had always refused to be drawn into Essex's political ambition. Affording Cecil a right of reply would not kill Essex.

'My best regards to your dear children,' said Gresham. 'I'm delighted you've two friends at least.'

No more. No less. It was enough. Was there a brief flicker of alarm in Cecil's eyes?

Gresham moved forward. How satisfying to note Cecil drawing back, as if in fear. Gresham drew out his handkerchief, a fashion' able linen flag so vast as to substitute for a tent on campaign. Carefully, he wiped Cecil's vomit from the table, and threw the cloth into the fire, where it sizzled and spat before turning to black ash.

'Send me your instructions,' said Gresham. 'You're right, of course. I'll do what I can to avoid hurting my friends, not least of all because of what happened to another young man who claimed that dubious privilege of me. But pray I survive your mission. I'm also quite good at laying traps.'

And with that, he left.