‘WHAT'S THIS DAMNED POISON THESE OAFS KEEP SERVING ME?'
Without warning she hurled the tankard at the head of the man nearest the door. It smashed against his forehead, leaving a deep cut. A second later a knife flashed out and caught the sleeve of his jerkin as he raised it towards his wounded head, pinning his arm by the cloth to the door.
That's how to fight,' she said with satisfaction, as blood dripped on to the boards from the man's head. 'Quick. Unexpected. Sharp. That's how a man should fight.'
There was no debate about travelling to the Palace of Whitehall for the King's masque. The finery worn by both Gresham and Jane would have died on the streets and suffered a seizure on horseback. Jane's gown was not as diaphanous as the fashion now worn by many of the Court ladies, but was of the deepest emerald green, trimmed with pearls. The necklace she wore had belonged to Lady Gresham, and had at its centre a diamond as perfect as any the King owned. Gresham wore a doublet of black, as was his custom, but of such fine satin that it seemed to breathe with a life of its own, flowing with his body as he moved and accentuating rather than hiding the muscularity of his body. On his-finger was the one ring, at its centre the Gresham emerald, another stone to make King James, who was obsessed with jewels, turn as green as the gem with envy.
Four men manned the barge, the edge of each oar tipped in gold. A small house hung on the stern of the barge, with the richest of hangings that could be drawn back to allow a view of the passing river, or closed to give privacy to the occupants of the two gilded seats, almost like thrones in the finery of their embellishment. The larger vessel required eight crew, but Gresham hated the ostentation that would have shown in his use of it for so public an arrival.
A string of vessels was making its way upriver to Whitehall, having to beat against tide and current. The feasting and merry' making had been going on all day, but most guests who were not actually resident at Court would come simply for the climax of the revels, the grand dinner and the masque written by Ben Jonson.
Gresham gazed out over the river, oblivious to the excitement of Jane by his side. A heavy, ornate boat with an inexperienced crew had lurched out of line as an oarsman missed his stroke, and slewed round into a plain wherry, splintering part of its bow. The two boats lay dead in the water, being swept downstream, the boat-man's grapple firmly embedded in the hull of the rich barge. A shouting match was underway between the boatman and the leading servant in the fine barge, the fat alderman in the barge trying to retain his dignity and pretend he was above the demeaning spectacle.
Limitless wine had been available all day at court — Spanish wine, French wine, the sweet white wine so beloved of the King, Alicante, Rhenish, Muscatel, sack, Madeira, fine sherries and even ale and beer — and would continue to flow all night. Every creature that walked, flew or swam God's earth would be skinned, plucked or scraped, roasted, boiled, tossed in oils, pickled or jellied and served up to the throng. Every matter that grew in or on the ground would be harvested, peeled and diced or sliced, placed into pastries or set into jellies, covered in creams and decked with spices, to go alongside the honeyed sweetmeats and the cakes. On the last such event Gresham had attended, a groaning trestle table had given way under the mountain of food, and collapsed with such weight as to break both the legs of the serving-man who had placed the last huge side of beef upon it. As darkness came on, torches, lamps and candles would seek to turn the night into day, and the light would glitter on the vast jewels that the men and the women wore to show their wealth and their status. The plate on the King's table would be all gold, and nothing less than silver would grace even the furthest table. Meanwhile in the sweated, smoking kitchens greasy cooks slipped, slithered and yelled for the attention of their underlings and aimed swipes at the kitchen boys with their ladles and heavy spoons. Even by the time they made their landing, Gresham knew that men and women would be spewing in the corners of the court' yards, and sometimes even in the rooms. Increasingly drunken men would piss where they stood, and even some of the women would hardly wait to walk into a shadow before pulling up their skirts and doing likewise, the more brazen shrieking with hilarity at their party as they did so.
Meanwhile, as the torches lit the sweating faces and threw shadows into the corners of the beautiful building, as the light glanced off' the jewels and the silver and the gold, just beyond the reach of the light, there lay the ordinary men and women of England. Most would be lying on a pallet if they were lucky, on an earth floor with a leaking roof and walls little more than mud. Their meal would have been some portion of a rough baked loaf, with more sand than flour in it if the miller was up to his trade, some scraps of filthy meat, a fresh-caught fish if Fortune had smiled on them. Their children would be bare-footed, and if the family had a poor animal it would be there in the room with them, its stink just another stench to go with that of the bodies for which soap was a ludicrous luxury.
Contrasts, clashes; the peace of the Church and the violence it caused among men; the beauty of the music echoed by the retching of the drunk and pampered guests; the wildest perfumes alongside the stink of piss. It was all summed up by the person of the King, thought Gresham. The jewels bedecking his body would be worth hundreds of thousand of pounds, never mind those on his wife's flesh, his clothes worth an Emperor's ransom, yet the man himself was unkempt, unwashed and stank to high heaven. What matter the show, if the inside was rotten?
As the four men pulled strongly towards Whitehall and the King's Landing, Gresham asked, not for the first time, how a just God could let such a world exist. The answer was obvious. There was no justice. There was no logic in creation. There was no God.
There was simply survival. The measure of a man was not how he seemed before his maker, but how he seemed before himself. To live long was to succeed; to die young was normal; to die was to cease to exist, and so life was to be lived to the fullest and to the utmost while it was there to be savoured. It was a joke, a joke so vast that no one human could ever properly understand the cosmic scale of its laughter.
He gazed fondly at Jane, her girlish excitement palpable. She had spent the last stages of the voyage excitedly demolishing the dress sense of the other guests as they hove into sight. Immediately they came in earshot she became a haughty and silent presence, stepping daintily from the boat and causing all eyes to turn in her direction.
It did not take him long to find out that he had missed Bacon's speech of welcome — only one of many, Gresham heard, and rather too intellectual and rambling for the taste of most of the early revellers and the Court. Gresham felt a momentary pang of annoyance.
Already casting around and looking for Sir Francis Bacon, his eyes lit on Cecil. He was huddled in a corner with a small entourage of cronies. Or perhaps he was standing straight, but just looked huddled. The air seemed to darken around Cecil and his cronies wherever they stood, as they moved through the quadrangle, and become more chill. Cecil's eye caught Gresham's. He raised an eyebrow by the tiniest height, and gave the slightest possible nod of his head, before returning his gaze to his own company.
'Bastard!' muttered Gresham, cheerfully, and sought about him for someone important to torment. Then he remembered Jane, feeling a conscience pang that he must see to her amusement, and was rescued by the sight of Inigo Jones and John Donne with his wife. Jones was a bag of nerves on this night, as his design for the 'machinery' of the masques which Queen Anne loved so much was to receive its first test after the banquet. As for poor Donne, banished from Court for marrying his patron's wife and sent for a time to the Fleet prison, he was allowed back occasionally so the King could pester him into accepting high office in the Church. He could not give up the wife he loved, which stopped him from one area of preferment, and he was at heart a Catholic, which barred him from accepting the preferment offered by the King. Donne was threadbare, but surprisingly cheerful, and the love he showed for his wife was pathetic.
There was a tap on Gresham's shoulder. A servant, plainly dressed, spoke softly in his ear.
'My master requests a brief interview with you, sir. Would you be so kind as to spare a few moments of your time?'
'Your master's name?'
'He would prefer to announce himself.'
Gresham flicked a finger at Jane, muttered a few words in her ear, and left her with Donne who was rewriting the opening of Genesis to suggest how the new King came to be created, to the credit of neither the Holy Book nor King James. He motioned to Mannion, who emerged from out of the shadows where he had ensured a plentiful supply of food and drink.
The servant led them to a small room on the first floor of a nearby quadrangle. He opened it, and invited Gresham to enter. A figure sat in a tall chair, back to the door, in front of a small table and a blazing fire. There were no hangings for a man to hide behind that Gresham could see. He smiled at the servant, who was holding the
