kept him alive on several occasions — he forced his muscles to relax, kept himself draped nonchalantly over his chair.
'You are kind in your concern for my past, my Lord, and for my future. As it is, I told Sir Francis Bacon of the incident to which you refer.'
The tiniest, tiniest flicker of a muscle in Cecil's eye… Always start a lie with a truth…
'And my niece and servant know everything I know and everything I have been…'
Which if I have knocked you off your guard you will not realise does not include everything I have done… Now. Now was the time. Now he signed his death warrant, or arranged a little longer life for himself, for Jane and for Mannion…
'Yet you are correct, my Lord. I know my secrets are safe with such as your Lordship, yet it would cause me grief if some were to know of what you speak. There is a further matter.'
It was vital that Gresham injected the right blend of bitterness, near-shame and worry into his voice if he was to be believed.
'I am… ill, my Lord.'
'You are?' said Cecil, coming to life, and with a gleam of hope in his voice. 'I am saddened to hear it.'
For only the briefest moment Gresham was tempted to confess to the plague, if only to see how fast Cecil could run.
'It is… a growth, my Lord, here in my side.' It was actually a penny loaf, strapped to his side whilst still warm from the kitchens, but producing a suitable lump just under his ribcage, bulging under his satin doublet. Thank God Cecil did not keep hounds in his hall. They would have sniffed at the doublet and in all probability tried to drag the bread from under his shirt.
'I am told it is serious. It would have been most interesting to pursue Sir Francis, to enact revenge for his assaults on my person, but unless I obtain total rest I am assured that I will do to myself what Sir Francis's men tried to do to me. I am leaving London, my Lord, with those closest to me. It will be difficult for Sir Francis to find me out. I am practised in hiding. Should I be pursued or harried any more I have made arrangements for the letters I mentioned to be delivered to someone who hates him, and who will guarantee sight of them to the King.'
That would set Cecil dunking. The list of men with good cause to hate him would stretch three times round Whitehall and still reach all the way to the Tower. And they did say the King liked younger men, men with straight bodies and golden hair…
'I wish you a full and speedy recovery, Sir Henry. You are master of your own affairs. But if indeed you propose to 'vanish', as you put it, I am sure Sir Francis would not over-exert himself in finding you. He will feel, I am sure, that his point has been made. Men such as he hate meddlers, do they not?'
'It would appear that men such as Sir Francis Bacon do not just hate meddlers, my Lord. It would appear they try to murder them.' Gresham drew a deep breath. 'Which leads on to my final question, my Lord.
'Why was Will Shadwell killed?'
Gresham put the ragged edge on his voice, forced the sweat to coat his forehead. A man required to control too much, a man for whom serious illness and the ordeal of a growth being hacked from his side was pushing him over the edge, a man desperate to clear his affairs in the knowledge that he might not be of this earth for too much longer — all these Gresham tried to cram into his question.
‘Shadwell?' said Cecil. 'Shadwell? I do not think I…'
'My Lord!' Gresham interrupted him, made his breathing heavy, short, let his hand creep to his side as to contain pain. 'Enough of this play-acting! It was a game I played once. I am not the person I hope to be at this time. I lack patience. Time is not my friend. Will Shadwell was murdered, on your orders. The murderer has sworn this is so. Will Shadwell was my man. Foul thing he may have been, but he was bound to me as my servant. He who kills my servant stains my honour. I have redeemed that honour by killing the man who killed Shadwell. Can we for this once speak plain? Why did my man have to die?'
There was a long, long silence. Would the fencing cease? Would he ever get a straight statement from Cecil? Cecil moved his gaze away from Gresham, the eyes seeming almost sightless, resting somewhere beyond even this room. What is passing through his mind? thought Gresham. What certainties, what agonies of decision? What happens inside the mind of such a man as Robert Cecil?
'Imagine a land,' said Cecil, getting to his feet, 'a troubled land. A very troubled land.' His voice was soft, whispering almost, a tone Gresham had never heard. Cecil walked slowly, almost limping, to a portrait hanging on the wall opposite the window. He is in pain, thought Gresham. He finds it hard to walk. He hides this pain, but now for a moment he has forgotten to hide. The portrait was of a young woman. The old Queen, Queen Elizabeth, Gresham saw.
'Imagine a land,' said Cecil, looking up at the portrait, 'that deludes itself into a sense of its greatness. A poor land with powerful neighbours, threatened always from without and from within. A land with no obvious ruler to take over. Let us imagine that a ruler is found, at last. An experienced ruler, a ruler who has survived in a colder and even bleaker land, a ruler who offers some hope of peace and stability. Such a ruler is a treasure, to be guarded and preserved. Yet all things come at a price. In this imaginary land this imaginary ruler is… troubled by women. His upbringing has not left him at peace with women. He prefers the company of men. And it is rumoured, in the vile way that such rumours will grow, the company of boys.'
'And Will Shadwell?' Gresham's voice had also dropped almost to a whisper.
'Scum. The scum who for countless ages have greased and oiled the wheels of power with their rank sweat, and their blood. And let us imagine that one of these scum, a perverted, evil creature, a creature who lies with women and yet who lies with boys and men, believes he has found a boy… hurt by this ruler. Found him, lain with him, and now wants money to silence him.'
Cecil moved back to the table, and sat down, heavily. His hooded eyes looked at Gresham, with the nearest thing to passion in them Gresham had seen in him.
'A Minister to a King may be threatened, and he may fence, parry and lunge, may battle with his wits against his enemies. But a King, a King is different. No man, be he scum or be he noble, can challenge a King. No man who threatens a King can live. The King's health is the nation's health. Whatever threatens that health must itself die.'
Gresham spoke softly. 'There is no threat to a King from me. Nor ever has been.' He paused. 'There would have been no threat even had Will spoken with me. Will never spoke. He had no time. And you were worried about a note, or some secret letter from Will to me? Was that why my rooms were ransacked in the House?'
Cecil was silent. Both men took the silence as meaning yes.
'Well now, there's an irony would have appealed to Will. You see, I know my men. I know those who work for me. And I know that Will Shadwell could neither read nor write to save his life.'
He stood up, remembering to make it look painful, and left without ceremony given or received. Cecil was standing by the window, motionless, as the great door closed.
He had told the truth about Will Shadwell to Cecil, at any rate. If Cecil had bothered to check, instead of simply ordering Shadwell and Gresham murdered, he would have found Shadwell could neither read nor write. As for Cecil's tale, it could be true, or it could be another lie. Thomas Percy was a newly appointed Gentleman of the Bedchamber, better able than most to supply details of who entered the King's inner chamber. Cecil probably did think he was protecting the realm from its enemies by all he did, that he was the saviour of the nation.
Mannion was waiting for him. The crowd of hopefuls had not diminished.
'Now for Alsatia?' enquired Mannion, expressionless. 'Now for Alsatia,' confirmed Gresham, remembering to limp slightly as if in pain from the load strapped to his belly until they were well away from Cecil's lair, and sure they were not being followed.
There was no Watch to call out the hour in Alsatia. No constable or serjeant-at-arms entered Alsatia to serve his warrant. There were no walls around Alsatia, yet its boundaries excluded friends of the state just as the iron walls of the Tower excluded its enemies. If London was a fine ship, Alsatia was its bilges, the lowest sump where all that was foul-smelling gathered and stank. Gresham's spies, his scum, came to the various meeting places in ones and twos, draped and cloaked not against the cold but against discovery and recognition. No-one walked straight in Alsatia. All skulked along in the shade of the leaning, stinking buildings, all sought to walk in shadow.
The House lay shuttered, many of the servants sent home to the country to help with the harvest. The dust gathered in Gresham's rooms at Granville College, his place on High Table empty.
