The rebel heart

Chapter 2

First Week of June, 1598 London

It was the simplest question of all, and for months it had been sounding like a death knell inside Henry Gresham's head.

Why create this wondrous piece of work, this extraordinary triumph of a creature called man, and bless it with sensitivity, creativity and imagination? Why go to all this trouble, and then allow that sensitivity to be corrupted and turn into a beast who could enjoy the screams of the man on the rack? Why plant creativity when all too often it soured into the creativity of murkier, ambition and politics? Why bless man with imagination and the capacity to learn so much when, in a few brief years, it all ended up as rotting matter — the flesh of the dead pig as indistinguishable on the spoil heap as the flesh of sensitive, creative and imaginative man?

Many less fortunate than Gresham might have commented, had they been privy to his thoughts, that to be one of the richest men in the kingdom, to be still young and handsome and to be acknowledged as one of the best swordsmen in the country, was not a bad position from which to be unhappy. Yet even that, the reprimand Gresham was honest enough to administer to himself, was having less and less effect on the black melancholia of his mood.

Cecil's summons had lifted his mood, but the sudden realisation that, through his own stupidity, he was now fighting for other lives than his own had plunged him even further down a black pit of depression. A strange melancholy, a sapping misery that rose like a fog over a fenland field, drained away all happiness, light and — colour. He fought it, as he had fought any threat to his survival all his life. Yet each day the grey mist advanced a little further into his soul, like a tide that would not be held back. And what would happen when it reached the core of his soul?

It was early morning in the Library of The House, the great mansion in the Strand erected by Sir Thomas Gresham and largely neglected by his bastard son. The day looked to be set fair, a brisk wind whipping up the Thames, but only the occasional, scudding white cloud marking the deep blue of the sky. Outside, most of London seemed to be thronging the street, wasps around the jam pot of the rich houses lying conveniently between the City and Whitehall, all with easy access to the river. With the return of the warm weather, the flies had returned. There seemed to be a plague of them this year, and their angry buzzing filled the houses of the great noblemen and the hovels of lesser men with impartial infestation.

There were worse places to be unhappy in. The early morning sun streamed in through the latticed windows, which stretched almost from floor to ceiling, giving a sweeping view out across the Thames. The blustery wind creamed the occasional white blur on top of the wrinkled surface of the water. Any boat that had one was under sail, the wind ideal for pushing up against the tide. Blue sky, blue water and white sails. It was so pretty. Yet the blue water held the filth of the thousands who crowded London, the seething mass of humanity that filled its streets with noise, discord and the rank sweat of assembled humanity. If God had not decided to make the River Thames tidal, sweeping the filth out to sea every day, London would have died of its own stench in a week.

That bloody girl, Jane, had got her claws into the Library, though God knew what business it was of hers, thought Gresham. Or when she found the time, given the amount of that precious commodity she spent in self-imposed exile locked in her room. She had spent the past two days there, the result of some perceived insult from her guardian. He was damned if he could remember what it had been. The Library held one of the largest collections of books in London, and the girl's interfering meant that some half of the books were now free from their coating of dust. Well, at least it kept her out of his way.

Mannion stood by the door, his huge bulk silent, watchful. Gresham was toying with a paper Jane had handed him, in silence for once. She had found it in a book she had been cleaning. It was a half-written letter from Sir Thomas Gresham to a business acquaintance, a Jew working from Paris. It was meaningless in itself, a business communication that presumably had put even more money into Thomas Gresham's vast pockets. Gresham was surprised at the shock he felt on seeing the handwriting after so many years, as cold and crabbed as the writer.

Father. What a strange, evocative word. A word with so many different meanings.

A great clattering in the courtyard and a great noise announced the arrival of Gresham's closest friend, and a promise that the edge of his loneliness at least might be dulled. George Willoughby — now Lord George Willoughby since the death of his father — had been out of sorts himself recently, worn down by the cares of the badly run estate his father had left him, but he was still a welcome diversion. Or had been, until Cecil had made it clear that George's friendship with Gresham might leave him surveying his own guts on a scaffold. There was always a great noise, wherever George went, and things to be bumped into. George never saw doors, and walked into them before opening them. The Library door decided to resist him — it was of stout English oak and had been there far longer than George — with the result that there was much bashing at handles and bad language before it swung open.

'Bloody door!' said George. 'Surprised a man of your wealth can't have a decent handle fitted!'

In more cheerful and youthful days this would have been said with a booming laugh. Now it was said with a rather morose glum-ness, perhaps even a tinge of jealousy. George's pride had refused Gresham's offers of money, however tactfully they had been presented. Still, there was enough good cheer left in the man for him to smile at Gresham. 'How very good to see you!'

George was married to Alice; this had been a condition set by George's father for his inheriting the estate. She was the daughter of his father's favourite hunting companion and had supplied him rather joylessly with two children, conceived on a thoroughly businesslike basis. His increasingly frequent visits to London from his vast inherited estate and its debts were an escape for him. Like so many people, he was drawn to the Court in the hope of picking up some crumbs of patronage. Unfortunately, his scrabbling for patronage left him less and less time to see Gresham.

The two men embraced fondly, the one tall, muscled and lithe, the other bulky and running now ever so slightly to fat, one eyebrow pulled permanently down in a droop. George's craggy face had been marked by the smallpox, and his nose looked as if a fat priest had knelt on it at his christening. It had not rained for a week in the country, and every movement that George made seemed to prompt a fine spurt of dust from his clothes. His boots were grey, as if he had just walked through the cold ashes of a fire. George turned to Mannion.

'He won't tell you to fetch the wine. I will. And an extra flagon for you. He won't order that, either.'

Mannion, who was standing at the back of the room, grinned. George was drinking too much, Gresham reflected, on the increasingly infrequent times he visited him.

'It's wasted on him,' grumbled Gresham. 'You might as well pour decent wine into a cesspit. Feed the great lump Thames water with some alcohol in it and he wouldn't notice.' Grudgingly he nodded to Mannion. Baiting him by keeping him waiting for a drink was one of the few things to lighten Gresham's dreary life at present. Mannion nodded to George, and left to get the wine. He moved surprisingly lightly for someone so thick set and visibly muscled. He was older than Gresham, that much was clear, but by how much? Difficult to tell. Mannion's craggy face gave away few secrets, least of all his real age.

George seemed incapable of being jolly for long.

'I know you delight in ignoring all my warnings,' he said as soon as he had his fist closed comfortably round his goblet, 'but will you take one now?'

‘I know,' said Gresham, 'Mannion drinks too much and any minute he's likely to run amuck and rape all the women in London. I've tried to warn as many as possible myself, but there are just too many of them.'

'Will you be serious?' said George, annoyed.

'I am,' said Gresham in a serious voice. 'I found out the truth. He's already done it. There isn't a woman in London he hasn't bedded.'

'Ain't raped none, though,' said Mannion. His speed of return suggested the wine was stored nearby. His preferred drinking vessel was a tankard. A large tankard. 'Wouldn't do that, would I? No need. They keeps running at me.'

'Look,' said George, and this time something in his tone made even Gresham look at him, 'the both of you. This is serious. I keep my ear to the ground at Court, you know, though I doubt any of them know my name.'

No fortune could be made and no fortune sustained unless it fed at regular intervals from the Court, the trough from which all sustenance was sucked. All patronage and wealth had as its source the monarch. George had devoted a lifetime to who was in and who was out, who rising and who falling, loving to chart the extraordinarily treacherous shoals of Court fashion and favour.

'And what do you hear?' Gresham's tone betrayed no interest whatsoever in the answer.

'I hear the name of Henry Gresham,' said George, 'and rather too often — from people who hate you.'

'And why should they talk about me?' said Gresham. 'I haven't had an affair with a Court lady for… weeks. Unlike the Earl of Southampton. I hear he's got Lizzie Vernon pregnant. Or Kissie Vernon, as some of her female friends call her.'

'It's no joke!' said George sharply, taking a long pull at his goblet and motioning to Mannion to refill it. 'The vultures are gathering over the throne of England. It's a positive feeding frenzy. Old Burghley's been on his last legs for months. More important, the Queen can't be far off joining him. Forty years on the throne, for heaven's sake! Only a handful of people in England remember life without Elizabeth as Queen. There's no heir-'

'But there's lots of choices!' said Gresham, with mock enthusiasm. 'Our dear Queen has merely sought to make life interesting for her loyal subjects by leaving the issue of her succession so open! Imagine how boring it would be if she had children and we knew who our next ruler was to be! This way, there's a huge variety for us to choose from.'

George refused to be moved by humour.

'Good God, man!' he snapped. 'You can joke about this? When one heir is the King of our oldest enemy, and the other the heir of our bitterest one?'

King James of Scotland and the Infanta of Spain were two claimants to Elizabeth's crown.

'I can joke about those two. I admit my sense of humour is stretched by the Lady Arbella. No, you're right. I can't joke about her. That face of hers! And those dresses!' He raised his hands in mock horror.

It was a measure of the chaos that threatened an England with no heir that such a milksop was even talked about as a possible successor. Lady Arbella Stuart was a drab girl whose only claim to fame was a massive injection of royal blood in her thin veins.

'Look, I'm telling you,' said George, clearly angered by Gresham's. flippancy, 'I've had people name you in plots to put all three on the throne. And the same for plots to put Derby and Essex there as well! Not to mention the Kings of Spain and of France! You're everyone's favourite conspirator.'

So Cecil had been doing his work.

Gresham had been recruited to the vast network of spies paid for personally by Walsingham when he had been a penniless under-graduate at Cambridge. His deep involvement in the underworld of Elizabeth's England had not ceased when he had inherited a fortune, and it had survived even the death of Walsingham.

All around them were the noises of a great household, cushioned by the thick oak doors and the sealed windows, but audible like a low, deep current of sound. The clattering of hooves out in the courtyard as the grooms exercised Gresham's fine stable of horses, the cheerful insults of the stable boys and occasional sound of water as they slopped out the vacated stables. Soft footfalls as maids went about their business; the creak of floorboards. A tide of humanity, each locked in their own world, each viewing themselves as the most important person within it And all the time The House talked to them, its brick and timber frame expanding with the heat of the day, as if it was taking in a great breath of summer.

'And you're not doing yourself any good by being so friendly with the Earl of Essex!'

'I know you hate Essex,' said Gresham. 'Fine. It's your privilege. I find him amusing and good company. You don't seem to mind being entertained by him, do you? You've been to Essex House with me often enough. And when he's dined here.' And you're jealous of his wealth, his looks and above all his friendship with me, thought Gresham.

'I think the man's rotten to the core, corrupt even. The crowd he hangs around with-'

'Now there you do have a point,' said Gresham. 'I concede he chooses his other friends very badly. When we go out together I'm usually spared his friends.'

'Which makes them hate you for being his favourite,' said George, 'and gets you in even more bad odour. But the conspiracy theories — I'm telling you they're serious. And being seen with a playboy Earl who might well be a conspirator himself doesn't help.'

'They must think I've a lot of time on my hands.' Gresham stood up, and stalked moodily to the great window overlooking the river. There was even more traffic on it now, since George's arrival. The river was a quick and clean way to move round London, avoiding the dust of summer and the clinging, lethal mud of winter. Always provided one did not fall in, or look too closely at the lumps that swept by on the tide, bobbing half in and half out of the water. 'George, I've hardly been at Court these past six months.'

'That's part of what's inflamed the rumours. They talk about you behind their hands when you're there. They get even more nervous when you're not. And when has the truth ever mattered at Court? What matters is if the Queen gets to hear them: that you're involved in every plot against her? If she does, you're dead. She's ready to hang, draw and quarter any man or woman who even mentions death in front of her face, never mind anyone she thinks is plotting to put a successor on her throne.'

Gresham turned to face George, and looked him calmly in the eyes. Should he tell his oldest friend the truth? The truth that George was every bit as much under threat as himself? And all because of him?

'Black magic,' said Gresham, throwing himself down on a chair so hard that it squeaked on the floor. 'Worship of Lucifer. Ritual sacrifices. Of children. Have they mentioned that?'

'What?' said George, caught out for once.

'The latest story is that someone from the Very Top Circles is heavily into satanism.'

'Is it true?' said George. He was part irritated at a story he had not heard and part fascinated. Witchcraft was still an active and all-present evil to all bar the most educated of the populace and, as George's interest showed, to large numbers of those who were educated.

'God knows,' said Gresham. 'Or if he doesn't, presumably Satan does.' Clearly George knew nothing. Which could mean that the story had not spread widely. Or that it did not and had not ever existed except as a smokescreen to hide whatever Cecil's real message and intentions were. 'As for me, as I'm not at all sure that I believe in God it would be perverse of me to believe in Satan, wouldn't it? Northumberland's certainly been dabbling in all sorts of things, and Raleigh's been at some of the sessions more often than's good for him. I've seen nothing of it with Essex. But he compartmentalises his life, and I suspect I'm in my own compartment.'

The Earl of Northumberland was known as the Wizard Earl, gathering a group of people round him who conducted what they called scientific experiments but which others called witchcraft.

'Well,' said George, 'I haven't heard those stories.' His voice took on strength again. 'But I've heard stories connecting you to every plot in Christendom. You're in danger, my boy. You really are. This country is a powder keg poised to explode. You're in danger of being seen as a lit fuse, and of being snuffed out.'

Something in the plain simplicity of George's affection bit into Gresham's heart, though no man and only an exceptional woman would have seen it on his face.

'Thank you,' said Gresham in a flat tone. 'I mean it. I really do. But you see, I don't care very much, quite frankly, about God or Mammon. I suppose I have to admit I care just a little bit about the rather bumbling force of nature that I know of as you. And rather less — indeed, a mere tiny fraction — about that great fat lump who's just polished off a flagon of rather good wine that's wasted on him' — Mannion grinned — 'but otherwise I don't care for very much, except survival.' And perhaps I am starting to care even less about that, he thought. 'Look, I'm not a fool. I've heard the rumours. I'm trying to keep out of it, away from the whole bloody Court, spend as much time as I can in Cambridge.'

'Fair point,' rumbled George, recognising the concession Gresham had made in admitting so much, 'but the College want to tear you apart as well, don't they?'

Gresham was well on the way to refounding the decrepit Granville College where he had studied as a youth. Refounding a Cambridge College, even with all the money he had, had shown that Cambridge had just as many knives as London.

'When you've never been popular,' said Gresham with resignation, 'you learn to do without it. To be frank, I'm trying to get out of the world of spying. When I was younger and it was run by Walsingham it was more exciting. Now, most of the time it just seems dirty.'

'It always was dirty,' said George. 'It's just that you didn't want to see it like that and were quite excited by the dirt. Well, you'd better be warned of something else,' said George. 'All the rumours are that you're popular with the Earl of Essex for a different reason.'

'You mean for more than my charm, devilish good looks and cutting wit?'

'That's what it is, is it?' said George, witheringly. 'The Earl must have weak sight and hearing, as well as weak judgement.'

'He's got all three, and more, — ' said Gresham, 'but at least he's got a bit of life and colour to him. Essex lives life at full speed, beyond full speed. He's exhilarating. Fun. And lots of the time he doesn't give a shit, which attracts me to him.'

Essex and Gresham did not spend a great deal of time in each other's company, but various occasions spent together had gone down in the folklore of the Court.

'Essex knows how to enjoy himself,' said Gresham, thinking back to the last time he had spent an evening with the Earl. As far as he knew, or could remember, most of those involved had recovered from their injuries. But my, it had been fun. 'And even I need that sometimes.'

'You know he's locked in mortal combat with Cecil?' said George.

'Of course I do, idiot. You'd have to be blind and deaf not to know. But calm down. You loathe Essex — fine.'

Was George jealous of Gresham's burgeoning relationship with the Earl? Or was it a basic puritanical sense that rebelled against the Essex set, where one member had gambled away a fortune on the throw of one dice? Or was it simple envy of someone who seemed to have been given so much by nature?

'I'm free to like anyone I wish — even someone you hate. Essex is an occasional social companion — I'm simply a bit of rough he likes to amuse himself with every now and again. I keep out of his politics, and out of everything except his social life. Actually I don't like quite a lot of the people he surrounds himself with as servants and advisers.'

'But you must have an opinion on the battle between him and Cecil?'

'Oh, it's a fascinating contest between the pair of them, I'll grant you that,' said Gresham. 'The Queen's favourite versus her most regarded adviser, who happens to look like a rag doll that's been boiled in the wash. Noble versus commoner. Best out of twelve rounds, winner takes all and the chance to decide the next King of England. I'm best out of it. Let 'em fight it out between themselves.'

'But you say you like Essex, and you detest Cecil. And you're not taking sides?'

'I keep telling you: Essex is an amusing companion. He pulls the curtains back in a darkened room sometimes. Which is what you need, old friend — you're getting far too glum far too often.'

'Essex only believes in himself,' said George rather pompously. 'And he yearns to be seen as a soldier after Cadiz and the Azores.'

'Not much military glory there for him,' said Gresham. 'I'm amazed at how much credit he got.'

George jumped in. 'My guess is that he hangs out with you largely because you're a hero of the wars. A positive veteran! You were fighting in the Low Country long before it was fashionable. And because he's paranoid about people asking him for money, because he hasn't got any, the fact that you're a true old soldier and have more money than you need is another recommendation. Take those two supposed virtues alongside your reputation for womanising, and you're everything Essex wants in a man.'

'At least I'm not everything the Earl of Southampton wants in a man. Now that would be embarrassing.' Southampton was Essex's closest friend — the Court referred to them and their circle as the 'fantasty calls' partly because of the extravagant nature of their dress — and rumoured to prefer young boys to women.

Talking of which,' said George, 'there's another reason why Essex is interested in you.' He grinned. 'Your favourite person. Your lovely ward.'

'My lovely ward!' spluttered Gresham, caught out for once in a show of emotion. 'You mean that bloody impossible girl who's driving me mad with her nagging and tantrums!' Gresham had spent a lifetime controlling his feelings, showing no emotion to the world. It was an art he lost at the mention of Jane. 'What's Essex done to deserve her?'

'You mean that bloody impossibly beautiful girl,' said George, laughing.

'I acknowledge her beauty merely as a detached observer,' Gresham said. 'I refuse to join those who pant after her like a dog in heat.' He had inherited Jane some years earlier when riding back from a long and debilitating campaign in the Low Countries. Inherited was perhaps the wrong word. Engaging in accidental conversation with a ragged, pre-pubescent girl in a village terrifying for its dirt and poverty, her guardian had rushed out and started to beat her. Gresham had broken his arm for him. For reasons hindsight could never quite properly explain he had found himself with the stick-thin little girl riding in triumph behind him, the young lady in question having screamed long and loud at any attempt to make her ride with anyone else. If Gresham had had any thoughts at all they were along the lines of bringing the girl to London and handing her over to some family who would give her a home as a servant, but instead she had wormed her way into the affections of his servants and by the time she was seventeen was virtually running The House and rescuing it from some of the neglect that Gresham had subjected it to. Why had he hung onto her? He told himself it was because only a madman would take her as a bride. More probably he saw in her someone whose background was similar to his own, someone who had dragged themselves up, someone for whom religion and morality were replaced by that simple virtue of survival. Jane was a survivor. Though whether Gresham would survive her was another matter.

'Essex apparently thought he did deserve her. Or that she deserved him. She's turned out to be a cracker, you know. A complete stunner, in fact.'

'I've got eyes,' said Gresham, 'and balls, for that matter. They tell me certain species of spider are made very attractive,' said Gresham, 'so they can lure the male to mate with them. And then eat them.'

'Well, Essex fell into her web. You remember you took her to that party Donne held?' The servants he most trusted, and the old nurse he had placed Jane with, had remonstrated that a young girl couldn't be kept locked up all day, and had to go out some time or other. Gresham had allowed her, suitably chaperoned, to attend a few dinners and one or two literary gatherings. She had taught herself to read in The House, and seemed to have her head in a book every time he passed her by. The Essex crowd, mostly drunk, had burst in on one such gathering held by one of Gresham's oldest friends, the poet John Donne.

‘I remember Essex bursting in,' said Gresham. ‘I was rather drunk, and I have a vague recollection that I had to threaten to fight that awful steward of his, that foul Welshman… funny name, hasn't he… Blancmange or something? And his dreadful mother's got another daft name, hasn't she? Lettuce.'

'Lettice, Lady Lettice Leicester, and Gelli Meyrick,' said George, trying to keep a straight face. 'Sir Gelli Meyrick, actually. In any event, Essex apparently took one look at Jane and started to fawn round her like a dog at a bitch in heat. You know how he does.'

If Essex's sexual organ was as large as his ego then intercourse with him must be very painful, Gresham thought. It was amazing how many people fell for it. The ego, that is. Essex was rumoured to have had a child recently by one Elizabeth Southwell, and was known to be panting after and probably between the sheets with Lady Mary Howard and a girl called Russell. There was a sort of a rivalry between the two of them, though Gresham did not approve of getting women with child. As a bastard himself, he had no desire to inflict that status on anyone else.

'Anyway, Essex apparently came straight out with it.'

'Did he, by God!' said Gresham, his mind snick on one track. 'And in a public place! I know standards are slipping, but even for times such as these-'

'Not that, you fool!' said George, annoyed at the flow of his story being broken, but pleased that he knew something Gresham did not. 'Came out with how he loved her, how his love was of such an instant growth that it must have instant satisfaction, how he would die unless she would grant him her favours.'

'Sounds like a man who does too much reading,' said Gresham, 'and of the wrong type of book, too.' But he was intrigued, despite himself. He would no more mate with his ward than climb into bed with an open mole trap, but any match between two personalities as big as this had to be interesting. If he was honest, he was also annoyed that he had not found out this story himself. If Essex fancied his ward, he might have had the decency to tell him.

'So presumably his Lordship planned to give my ward a right noble seeing to, standing up against an outside wall when nobody was looking,' said Gresham enjoying the conscious use of barrack-room language, largely because he knew George found it offensive and unnecessary. Which it was, of course. That was why it was fun. 'Well, it stops them getting pregnant if you do it standing up. Or so my nurse said. Mind you, she had twelve children of her own, so perhaps she didn't speak with total authority. So what happened? Did my little fire-vixen spread her legs to a belted Earl, or rather an Earl about to take his belt and other things off?'

'She asked for a pen and paper,' said George, straight-faced.

'What?' said Gresham. 'Now I've never heard of anybody doing it with those before.'

'Pen and paper. And he was so surprised he asked someone to bring some. After all, you may not find food in Donne's house, or coal, but you'll always find a pen and ink. So eventually — and in the interim my Lordship's hot breath has put condensation on all the walk — she takes both pen and paper, writes a few lines, and hands it to him.'

'What did it say?' asked Gresham now intrigued.

'It isn't so much what it said,' replied George. 'It's what she said. Apparently she faced up to him — he's quite tall, you know, and so is she — and said, "My Lord, I may have no breeding but I am not a toy to be used by you and then discarded. I've written my polite rejection of your kind offer to copulate with me here in this letter. I've addressed it to your wife.'"

'Did she do that, by God!' said Gresham, amazed and alarmed at the same time. He suspected women had been hung from the ramparts of Essex House for less. 'What did he do?'

'He went as red as his beard, my Lord,' said Jane, 'looked as if he was going to hit me, and then burst out laughing. He has been sending me notes and gifts ever since. I came to ask if you could intervene and ask him to stop. It's getting very boring. A girl must look to her honour, even an orphan such as myself. And you are my guardian, however much you might regret it. A good guardian would be incensed at this assault on his ward's virtue and seek to protect her with all his power.'

Dammit! How much of the earlier conversation had she heard? How had this woman got the knack of entering a room in total silence?

'You need protection as much as a grown lioness needs an escort from a sheep!' said Gresham. Jane was looking very cool, her dark hair worn down as befitted an unmarried woman, her dress a working smock that did little to hide the length of her limbs or the curve of her body. He decided not to look into her eyes. They were disturbing, as deep as the darkest pool and flecked with intelligence. And sulky. Very sulky. All sorts of things would have been much, much easier if she had been stupid. And ugly. 'Are you going to make my life hell over this, as well as everything else? What do you expect me to do? Challenge Essex to a duel? If I do, everyone will think it's because I'm sleeping with you. Or want to. If I kill him the Queen will kill me. Mind you, if he kills me your problems really would be over.'

Jane's perfectly composed features did not shift at all. 'Despite a life lived largely without luxuries, prior to your kind rescuing of me,

I have never felt the need to indulge in self-pity. It's demeaning for anyone, and, if I may say so, particularly for a man.'

'No, you may not say so!' said Gresham. Was it a shout? Of course not. He would never lose his dignity in such a manner. How this woman had acquired the capacity, not only of silent movement, but of breaking through his lifelong self-control was quite beyond him. Once, when she was younger and being equally outrageous, he had moved towards her fully intending to put her over his knee. For the first time in his life Henry Gresham had been halted by a look. He would not try that again. This was ridiculous. He had been shot at, pierced several times by sword and dagger blades, blown up by gunpowder, near-drowned and once actually stretched out on the rack in the Tower of London (most incidents, now he came too think of it, connected in some strange way with Sir Robert Cecil) — and managed to keep his self-control. Yet now he was losing his temper, yet again, with a chit of a girl. It was nonsense. With a massive effort he calmed himself down.

'Please knock before you enter a room,' Gresham said, in as mild a tone as he could muster.

'Yes, my Lord,' said Jane, dropping her eyes from his gaze, but looking up at him for a moment from under her dark, deep eyelashes. 'I was about to when your body servant opened the door and let me in.'

Gresham directed a look of pure hatred at Mannion, who gazed back imperturbably and simply shrugged his shoulders. In answer to the question Gresham had not asked he said, 'Only being polite, wasn't I?'

Damn the both of them! A more unlikely combination than Mannion and Jane could not be imagined in the wildest writings of the stage, yet Gresham had never seen the pair exchange a cross word. There was some deep, unspoken level of communication between them that he could dimly sense but not understand. It annoyed him, because he valued Mannion more than any other person alive, more even than George. He resented her relationship with Mannion, was jealous of it. Mannion thought most women were like a meal, a necessary pleasure to be enjoyed at regular intervals. Yet never for a moment had Gresham sensed anything of that sort between the pair of them. Whatever their relationship was, it was beyond sex and, for that matter, beyond him.

If someone had suggested that what drew them together was a very full understanding of their joint master, Henry would have laughed in their face. No one understood Henry Gresham, not even himself. It was a matter of great pride to him.

'Well,' said Gresham trying not to be rude and managing to be so, 'I'll mention to my friend the next time we meet that you're off limits. Will that do?'

'Thank you for treating it so urgently,' said Jane, the sarcasm dripping like honey from a comb. Acid honey. 'Perhaps you might take care to mention it early on in the evening?'

'What's important about the timing?' asked Gresham before he had thought properly and saw the hole in the road opening up before him.

'Having seen you come home after an evening with the Earl of Essex, I'd have some reservations about your memory after the first hour.'

That was her going too far!

'You've no right to comment on what your master does either in his business or his social life. You are impudent and impertinent.'

She flushed at that, and bowed her head. It was a minor victory for Gresham. He decided to capitalise on it.

'I doubt you came here to discuss the Earl of Essex. Now that you're here what can I do for you?'

'I was hoping to request some money from you,' said Jane simply.

'More fripperies for yourself?' asked Gresham nastily, and regretted it the moment he spoke. Whatever her faults might be, and her continual nagging, she was scrupulous over money. She virtually ran The House and the accounts were superb. She never asked for money for clothes or jewellery. Indeed, it was the old nurse who came to Gresham every now and again and pointed out that even the poorest girl occasionally needed some money spending on her clothes. He had remembered the humiliation of his own childhood in the shadow of St Paul's, when the other boys at school had picked on the poor boy dressed in cast-offs, and had immediately handed Jane a purse that would have bought three gowns for the Queen. She had looked at him very oddly, and a week later had paraded herself in front of him with a sombre day dress in a cheap, dark-green material. At the same time she had given him the purse back, virtually all the coin still in it, together with an invoice for the paltry sum the dress and one other of similar economy had cost. After that he had gone to Raleigh's wife, got a figure out of her of what might be a suitable monthly allowance for a young girl to spend on clothes, and given it to her regularly. He suspected she spent most of it on books, but that was her choice. At least his ward looked presentable and did not disgrace him.

His jibe had gone home. Jane coloured up again, but she still had guts enough to respond.

'Not money for myself, my Lord. Money for the Library.'

'More money for the Library?' said Gresham. The realisation that he had been unfair to her was making him even more annoyed and vindictive. 'You have a small fortune to spend on this cursed house as it is. What need have you of more?'

Gresham hardly needed the money. He was one of the richest men in London, thanks to his father who had built The House. And he paid nothing to Jane for acting as housekeeper and saving him a steady fortune.

'I believe, my Lord, that I save a small fortune on this house.' Good God! She was reading his mind now. 'Unless you were happy with your servants feeding every vagabond in London and half the villages around it!' Jane was getting angry now.

Here we go again, thought Mannion. They're off. It was better than a play. Gresham could make another fortune by charging for tickets to watch.

'Well, you of all people should know about poor villages. And vagabonds.'

Her face registered the unfairness of the comment, but she clung to her point.

'My Lord! That is so unjust! This Library, the state of so many of the books in it, is… is a disgrace.*

'As you now claim to run The House, why have you allowed this to happen? If indeed it is true.'

'It is true, my Lord,' said Jane. 'Just look, here!' She turned to one of the dark, oak shelves and pulled out a book, one of those still with dust all over it. A small cloud shot forth in the beams of sunlight, as if angered to have its rest disturbed. 'See? The binding is going here… and here… and here… if I open this work fully the spine will crack and the pages will fall out. It will be ruined.'

'Here. Give it to me.' He took the book rather less gently than she had handled it. He opened the cover, suddenly remembering and slowing down so that he did not rip the binding from the pages. He had no intention of proving her point. The Revenger's Tragedy. There was no author. It was a cheap, hurriedly put together edition. Gresham knew. He had paid for it. The author, Thomas Kyd, now long since dead, had been one of nature's victims, subjected to torture and caught up with the truly dreadful Marlowe. Gresham had helped him out by paying for the book to be published, to give Kyd something to sell. He baulked at giving the man money, which would simply be converted straight to drink. Would the world suffer if this new pot-boiler was lost to posterity? Well, people were now producing new editions of Kyd's plays, claiming they had written them. But this book, with no author listed, would not solve that problem. And it would have fallen apart in five years, anyway.

'It's just a play,' said Gresham. ‘Not even a very good one. All blood and thunder and not much poetry. What will it cost to repair and preserve this… light reading?'

'A few pence. The content of the book isn't the point. Books are

… for posterity.' She was prim now, like a schoolboy reciting a passage he had learnt by heart. 'What we discard, later generations might revere or worship. We mustn't judge. We must preserve so others can judge.'

'Fine speech,' said Gresham cuttingly. 'Where did you read it? But if later generations worship rubbish like this you won't find me going to church.'

'You don't, actually,' said Mannion from the doorway. 'Go to church, that is. At least, not as when you can avoid it.'

'Did I ask for your comment?' Gresham whirled round and glared at him.

'You never do,' said Mannion.

'Though it never stops him giving it!' guffawed George, who was clearly failing to see how serious the situation was.

Jane was not backing off. 'Please, my Lord', she said, though it clearly cost her deep, 'the worms will have these unless we do something soon. It would be an act of blasphemy to let so much knowledge go to waste.'

Now was the time to play his trump card.

'You had Armytage, the old bookseller, in here last week? Yes?'

Jane was caught unawares. Was this a criticism? What had she done wrong? Did he think she was selling her favours to the old man in order to purchase more books?

'Yes, my Lord. I-'

'I need no explanation. I passed him as he was leaving, invited him up here. These continual requests for money for the Library have to stop. So I asked him to estimate how much it would cost. For the whole lot. To get them mended, de-wormed or whatever you have to do. I've agreed a figure with him. He will do the work. And now will you stop pestering me with these requests? You have what you wanted. You may leave us.'

'My Lord, how much did Armytage ask?'

Gresham had hoped she would ask. The size of the figure proved conclusively how generous Gresham was, the lengths to which he would go to meet his ward halfway. He named the figure, trying not to sound smug.

Her response caught him totally unawares. Jane turned scarlet, and exploded, 'That's outrageous! A ludicrous sum! A third of that and Armytage will be able to repair all the volumes here and keep his wife and children in state for a year!'

'Are you complaining at my generosity?' Gresham yelled, pushed now beyond his limits.

'I'm complaining at your stupidity!' Jane shouted back. She thought about adding 'my Lord' but decided not to. 'It's criminal to waste money! It's amazing you have any to spend if you can be fooled by an old man!'

'How dare you talk to me like that!' roared Gresham. 'What's happened now to the "my Lord" this and the "my Lord" that? Well?'

'You told me not to call you "my Lord" because you were only a knight and not a proper Lord at all,' said Jane, She was still flushed, but back in demure mode now, hands joined in front of her, eyes downcast.

'Then why do you still carry on doing it?' asked Gresham boring in for the kill. 'Except, that is, when you're being grossly impertinent?' God, what must it be like to be a father like George, and have more than one of these wild young animals to cope with.

She looked up then.

'Because whether I choose it or not, you are my Lord,' she said simply. Then she burst into tears, and left rapidly.

Damn! That was her in her room for another two days at least! False tears? Genuine tears? How in heaven was a man meant to know the truth behind a woman's tears? Did she know the difference? And what did it matter? And what did this stupid girl matter to him anyway? He had actually been quite proud at getting the brooks sorted out. Despite the front he put up, the scholar in him hated to see a book being ruined by time. The trouble with these books was that they had belonged to his father. At one stage he had half decided to move the whole library to the new one he was funding at Granville College, Cambridge, the recipient of more and more of his time and money. Had it been the thought of the effect on the girl that had stopped him? No. Of course not. It had been the thought of his favourite room in The House lying bereft of the books that were its true furniture.

'She's right,' said Mannion, moving forward to pour the second flagon of wine he had brought. 'That old bugger Armytage must 'ave seen you coming. You could buy the Vatican Library, and get the Pope thrown in as a free gift, for that much.'

'Oh, shut up,' said Gresham unconvincingly. 'I'm paying enough in bribes to the Vatican as it is.' The Pope would be a crucial factor in validating any claim by a Catholic to the English throne. It was an area where Gresham needed the fullest possible knowledge.

The annoying thing was that Mannion was probably right. Gresham always knew when he was in the wrong, and then fought hardest to try and ignore what he knew. Usually, when the storm was over, he realised his mistake and owned up to it. Gresham never realised that for a man of power to be capable of admitting he is wrong is a truly endearing feature to those who work and live with him, even more so if they can see the struggle he has to face to meet the truth.

'Oh, shut up!' he said again to Mannion, and sighed. The fight had gone out of him once Jane left. 'And make sure to go tomorrow and negotiate a proper price.'

'Can I take the girl along with me? Old Armytage'll do anything for 'er, and she knows 'er business. 'E'll melt in 'er 'and when she flutters 'er eyelashes at 'im.'

And have her see him admit that he had been wrong? To hell with it!

'Oh, for heaven's sake! Take her if you really have to, on condition I don't have to see her. Just make sure her eyelashes are all she flutters.' He hated himself for making the concession. 'And make it clear that if she crows about this I'll wring her neck. Or, better, send her with a little red bow tied round a part of her that sticks out to Essex House, a gift courtesy of Henry Gresham. Except I'm not sure I dislike Essex enough for that.'

'Which takes us back to where we started,' said George. 'Essex. He's the key to all these rumours. Him and his battle with Cecil.

The Queen's failing, we all know that. Essex and Cecil are fighting it out for the Crown. Well, for control of it.'

The Earl of Essex moved in wild company. Gresham knew that. He was a major reason for it being wild.

'It may not be a prize worth having,' said Gresham. The row with Jane had left him tired and irritated, as meeting her always did. Why was he fighting on so many fronts? Was that all life held for him?

'What do you mean?' said George.

'You worry about the goings-on at Court. It's typical of the arrogance of Essex to think the only contenders for the throne are English. France, Spain and the Pope are actually more of a threat. And do you know the real problem? All these powerful men playing with countries and with crowns just as if they were chess pieces on a board! I worry about the country, and about London. You remember the three bad years in the 1590s when it seemed to rain for eleven and half months each year, and the crops just rotted in the ground?'

'Remember?' said George. 'I can hardly forget. We had people dying, children starving. I had to mortgage farms to feed some of the worst-off families. I'll be paying for those three bad years for twenty more years, and some families paid with their lives.'

'Your people were lucky. They had a master who was willing to pay to see them fed.' A master who mortgaged the estate more than it could bear, Gresham now knew to his and George's cost. 'Most didn't. Something snapped in England when it was clear the third year was going to be like the others. Remember all the preachers going around talking of the seven lean years? People really believed there'd be no good harvest for four, five more years.'

'So? said George. 'Bad harvests and famine are as old as farming, as old as mankind itself.'

'Yes,' said Gresham, 'but it's always at its worst when things combine. It wasn't just three disastrous years. It was the fact the years came at the time when everyone had realised there'd be no heir, realised Elizabeth'd never marry, there wouldn't even be a husband to call King when she died.'

'Most of my people working on my lands don't know or care who's Queen. Or King.' George was getting glum now, the wine depressing rather than lifting him. 'It's always been about survival for them.'

'They care in the Low Countries,' said Gresham. 'I've seen a dead family outside the gates of a big city, their eyes eaten out by the birds and their arms chewed off by wolves. They know what happens over there if there's no strong leadership, no one person in charge. And I think people are starting to turn on Gloriana, to hate her for her selfishness in having no heir, in naming no successor.'

'Evidence?'

'The talk in College is always a good guide. Every Cambridge College is full of men with shoulders looking for a chip to sit on them. But look round here in London: they no longer cheer when she drives through the city. The boatmen just about pull aside for her barge. They don't shout or cheer, or even put their oars up in salute. Sometimes they don't even look in her direction. They look away. And row on.'

'So?'

'They cheer when Essex rides past, cheer as if there was no tomorrow. And that's dangerous, don't you see? Essex has stood up to the Queen. He's handsome, he's dashing-'

'And 'e knows it!' said Mannion decisively. 'Don't 'e just love the attention! Not clever to love it so much, and to show it.'

'He's new!' said Gresham. 'The Court's like a musty old sheet that's been in the chest far too long. He's a breath of fresh air, not an old wrinkled lady with a Court that smells of lavender and cedar. A lady whose top servant is Robert Cecil. You know what someone painted on the walls of his home? Cecil's home?'

'Decorate me? said George, who was dangerously close to getting drunk. 'Give me a new coat of paint?'

'No. Toad,' said Gresham. 'Toad. Is that a country happy with its leadership?'

'Sure you didn't paint it yourself?' asked George, giggling.

'Wake up, George!' said Gresham. 'There's things going on out there that worry me too, unsettling things. Not just my survival. That's minor. Who'll care if I end up dead in the Tower? You and a servant. But if we unleash civil war in England? That has to be more important than you, or me. We may be coming to the end of an era. But we don't know what's going to replace it.'

'So?' said George. 'Do mere mortals ever know that sort of thing?'

'But what if we replace it by what's happening in the Low Countries? Twenty, thirty years of rival armies fighting over ordinary people's bodies for a power no one can ever truly win. What if the wolves become so bold as to come up to your door?'

Perhaps, thought Gresham, the wolves are here already, just dressed in sheep's clothing.

They had talked on, until George fell asleep by the fire. Gresham had left him, snoring gently, though it was only noon.

'You goin' to tell 'im the truth? About Cecil?' said Mannion. Gresham had told Mannion immediately.

'No,' said Gresham. 'At least, not yet.'