'Wake up,' he said to her, more gently. 'Wake up, or give in. You never let that stinking village kill your spirit. You never let me kill your spirit. Now choose. Are you going to let a ruffian who wanted your life take it from you, even though you killed him?'
Something like a tiny flicker of fire, as if from a grate where the embers had been left overnight, came into her gaze.
'It was…' She was about to collapse into sobs again, Gresham could see. He spoke, sharply, unkindly.
'It was indeed. It happened. You can't change that. Either let it destroy you, or conquer it. There's no halfway house.'
Instead of shouting at herself she did what Gresham had hoped, and shouted at him.
'How can you stand there so calmly? How can you let the blood wash off your hands so easily? How can you forget? These were men last night, not animals. We were so happy, and then from nowhere… this awfulness came and hit us and I… I had to…'
'You had to kill!' He was shouting now. 'Do you hear? You had to kill! Do you think you alone of God's creatures have a special existence? Do you think in this Godforsaken world God would come back to give you a special exemption from reality. Wake up, woman!' He moved close to her, kneeling down to breathe in her ear. 'And never tell me that I forget. You don't have that right. I remember, all of the times, all of them. And I do not forget. I learn to hide the memories.'
He knew then he had won, and he knew then why he loved her for her courage, for her independence and for her strength. She sat for a moment head bowed, then looked up at him. There was no extra line on her face, no extra wrinkle or grey hair, yet she had aged in a way that no physical mark would ever show. She would never be the same again, but she would be stronger, more able to survive. What she had lost to gain that victory he did not know. It was the price for survival.
'I'm sorry,' she said, with a slight sniffle still in her voice that made her pathetic, still vulnerable. 'I was rapt in my own grief. It's as you say. Do you remember it, on that horse all those years ago, me with your cloak over my village filth?'
'Remember what?' Gresham was confused.
'What you said then. I don't think you knew much about little girls. You spoke to me very solemnly, as you might your bride taking her home in splendour on their wedding day. You said, 'Your life starts here. We wipe out the history of every day as we live it, and if we're brave we can start it all over again with every new day. This is your new day.' I thought you were mad, and very, very handsome and dashing. No-one had ever spoken to me like that before.'
'Was I really that pompous?' If the truth be known, he did remember it.
'And still are. But I'll forgive you. I'll try very hard to make it a new day. But you must be kind to me. There'll be times when it's hard, and when I'll need loving, and not shouting at, to keep me from falling into the abyss.'
In the imperceptible way that it is with people, something in them had meshed again, and moved forward with an unspoken, unseen power.
'So why was I turned into a murderess last night?'
There was a flippant edge to her voice, as well as a dark undertone. Gresham sensed that the use of the word 'murderess' was deliberate, part of her feeling her way to an acceptance of what had taken place. He did not challenge her description of herself. Let her feel her own way to her own form of salvation. There was no simple rule.
He told about the forged letter that Tom Barnes had brought to him.
‘Why didn't you tell me about the letter?' 'I wanted to tell you when I had an answer, not just the question.'
'Is that wise? To share the information with me as it comes isn't to admit weakness, it's simply to recognise that two minds can sometimes do more than one.'
'On that basis,' said Gresham, 'I should share all my information with Mary the maid, Martha the Housekeeper and Harry the boatman. Oh, and there's young Will, Cook of course, and…'
She cut him short. 'The difference is that none of them have a mind like mine. And they may love you in their fashion, but I love you in mine. And mine is stronger.'
That shut him up, for a moment. She carried on.
'The forging of the letter was a long-term plan, anyway. Who tried to kill us? What triggered… last night?'
'I think I know now. I've been confused, ever since Will Shadwell’s murder. At one time I had Percy killing Shadwell, and organising the business on the river in case Shadwell had left a message for me. Then I thought even the King might be involved, or Bacon, or even the Spaniards. But I was wrong.'
'So who is it?'
'Cecil. It has to be Cecil who tried to kill us. I think Cecil was trying to outflank me anyway, probably before all this started. He knew I had papers that would damn him. He must have hated my having that hold over him, wracked his brains to get himself out of the trap. Letters apparently in my handwriting pleading for a Catholic overthrow of England was an idea of brilliance. It not only makes me a wholly unreliable witness, but it makes my papers coming from the Papal archive an admission of guilt.'
'All you've said is that Cecil wanted to be able to counter what you had that threatened him. Why did he suddenly decide to have us killed?'
'Will Shadwell, I'm sure. He's at the heart of it. Will must have heard something that sent the poor fool scurrying to me, and the evidence is that he was murdered by one of Cecil's men, not by Percy or anyone else. I've been too clever for my own good. I invented all sorts of reasons why Sam Fogarty could have been working for Northumberland, or perhaps for Rome and the
Catholic cause. The only two things we know for certain are that Fogarty works for Cecil, and he was involved in Shadwell's murder closely enough to have taken Will's ring. That links it back to Cecil.'
As Gresham had hoped, the chance of explaining why her horror had happened gripped Jane, drew her mind out from the depths of her depression, forced it to work.
'But Cecil didn't try to kill you after Will Shadwell. He called you back to London and sent you off after Bacon.'
'Cecil must have feared something Shadwell knew enough to have him killed. Then he must have wondered if Shadwell had got the news to me. Whatever it was, it must have been of such great importance that I couldn't be allowed to know it and to live. Cecil wouldn't want to alarm me unnecessarily in case I knew nothing, so he must have called me back to London on a wild-goose chase after Bacon to sound me out. I didn't give him any cause for suspicion when we met because I knew nothing then that linked Will's death to him. Truth is always the best defence. Cecil read me right that day. I didn't suspect him of Shadwell’s murder, or of anything other than being the slimy rat I know he is. So Cecil must have felt really pleased with himself, and sent me off after a red herring in the hope it'd keep me out of trouble and off the scent of whatever it is he wants to hide from me.'
'Then why did he then suddenly want to kill you?'
'It has to be my trip to see Moll. Cecil must have thought I'd gone to pick up a message from The Dagger. It was stupid of me to go so openly. There must have been endless numbers of Cecil's spies in that place, seeing me walk through and reporting back. Shadwell met Percy in The Dagger, and Moll puts out that she knows everything, even if she doesn't. What was to stop Shadwell leaving papers for me back at The Dagger, as insurance in case something happened to him? It's what I would have done. Poor Cecil. He must have congratulated himself that he's stopped the trail and sent me off on a wild-goose chase, and then I turn up bold as brass at The Dagger. He must have had a seizure. I sent Mannion to warn Moll. She'll go into hiding. Cecil is bound to be after her, to find out what she did know.'
'And I suppose once he'd commissioned one set of letters to prove you a traitor, he felt he could simply commission another to cover for your death. One other thing points to him,' said Jane. 'The boat that attacked us, it was new, well-found, expensive. The men on it… may have been thugs, but they were trained, after a fashion, and many of them. All that signals money, resources, the power to gather a crew and a boat at short notice. There are few people in London outside of Cecil who could call on resources to that level. But why the rosary beads?'
'Who knows? Even Cecil can't have that many thugs at his disposal. The man whose beads Shadwell broke could have been the same man you killed on the boat.'
'Do you really believe that?' said Jane. 'Or are you trying to make me feel better? I didn't kill a man, you're
