worry into the exquisite release of action. How terrible for her, condemned by the way men and women lived to be the passive recipient of his actions. His step did not falter. His eyes did not flicker. He would act, and speak to that fear. Later.
'Let's start with the incriminating letters. Would James be fool enough to write in explicit terms to his lover?' Gresham was acting as devil's advocate.
'Yes,' said Jane firmly. 'The ladies at Court say he kisses this Robert Carr full on the lips in public. They also say he fingers his codpiece as he walks along with him. Quite openly. That's not just a man taking his pleasure. It's someone who wants to fling what he's doing in people's faces, or who's simply forgotten to be discreet. Either way, it's hardly more of a risk writing letters. It's like when he fingers his codpiece, only he's getting pleasure from his pen.'
'Did you say his pen?' asked Mannion, confused.
'Yes,' said Jane with a look that would have frozen hell. 'Pen.'
'Ah…' said Gresham thoughtfully. 'Well, let's concede that King James could be so… blown away by passion as to put his experiences into writing.' He grinned at Jane, which annoyed her. As this had been his aim, he carried on with renewed vigour.
'But how damaging would such letters be?'
'Very damaging,' said Jane. She was in her stride now, given a role, certain of herself. She knew she was Gresham's eyes and ears, knew his total trust of her judgement. 'The Puritans get louder and louder as the Court gets more and more openly sinful. The Puritans are increasingly powerful in Parliament, and James needs Parliament to approve the money to fund his goings-on.' Jane listened to all the Court gossip and reported back, to Gresham. Just as importantly, she listened to the gossip among the booksellers at St Paul's, with whom she had long been a favourite and was almost a mascot. 'The Puritans are looking to Prince Henry to bring a new age of goodness and purity to Court. I suppose they could always try to speed things up and get James to abdicate.' 'So where does that leave us?'
'The manuscripts.' Jane was away now, allowing her mind free rein. 'The stolen play scripts. They have to be more important than Cecil's owning up to, however damaging these letters might be. That's how Cecil's mind has always worked. Always give a dog a bone, and hide the butcher's shop from him.'
'You know how crucial these manuscripts are to the players.' Gresham was unconvinced. 'It's not unreasonable for The King's Men to put in a plea to the King's Chief Secretary to get them back, particularly if the thief is linked to the letters. Yet their value only holds good for other players or rival companies — and the actors might get drunk and brawl but they've never killed each other before for a stolen manuscript. What's so important about these plays? I know there's a power in the theatres Cecil's scared of, something he can't control for once, something that could challenge his law and order.'
'We don't know,' said Jane. 'But Cecil did, and that's what matters. There has to be something we're not being told. They're always is with Cecil.'
'There's something else that bothers me. Why steal only two manuscripts? If you're going to go as far as to murder an old man for them, you may as well take the whole lot.'
'Perhaps the thief was disturbed,' said Jane. 'You can't base anything substantial on the number of plays they took.'
Gresham stopped his pacing and sat down abruptly. The library had a view out on to the river and its peaceful, meandering summer mood, a band of blue winding its quiet way through the green of the pastures. 'And Shakespeare is a traitor. As well as a genius.' 'Are you sure?'
'Shakespeare was as rough as they come when he first arrived in town, and ready for anything. He was a natural recruit for Cecil. The players get everywhere, into Court and into the taverns. They travel the country — Europe even. And they drink and womanise too much and'U do anything for ready cash. Many took different names when they were paid. Shakespeare was always William Hall. Some Stratford link, I think. Raleigh believes it was Shakespeare — in the days when he was William Hall — who hit lucky and betrayed him in the Bye Plot. I've no proof, but straight afterwards Shakespeare's crew were made into The King's Men, and Shakespeare bailed out of the game. Raleigh's sworn to kill Hall, or Shakespeare. By his own hand. He was most insistent it should be by his own hand.'
'Was?'
Gresham turned to his wife, his hand resting lovingly in her hair for a brief moment, running it through his fingers. 'I was on my way to do it myself. Raleigh stopped me. I've his order to kill the man if Raleigh dies in the Tower. If he's ever released, Raleigh will do it as his first act.'
'That much hatred…' mused Jane, considering the brave, tragic, foolhardy figure of Raleigh, his heart being eaten out every day by hatreds from his lurid past. Raleigh frightened her, not for what he was but for what he was allowing himself to become.
'That much betrayal. Raleigh'd helped the man get a place with the actors in the first place.'
'The theatre's always been trouble, hasn't it?' said Jane.
'It's a new art form,' said Gresham, 'come screaming and yelling into the world. Come to London to be born. Sometimes I think it was conceived by God, like poetry and music. Cecil thinks it was conceived by Satan. He could never see its beauty. Only its power.' Gresham's own sonnets had been published anonymously to wide acclaim.
'What's an art form?' asked Mannion, finger in mouth and digging in his tooth for something dead.
'It's when you paint a bottle of wine instead of drinking it,' said Gresham.
'Doesn't sound much fun to me,' said Mannion, adding, with gross illogicality, 'I like the theatre.'
'The Puritans think it's Satan's doing,' said Jane. 'They frighten me, much more than Catholics ever have.'
'We took away the Puritans' natural enemy when the Gunpowder Plot blew the Catholics into-limbo,' said Gresham. 'They've no one to hate now, except people who like cakes and ale, and the theatre. Or anyone who has fun!'
'The last time I was at the bookstalls,' said Jane, 'I saw a man with one of those stupid black hats they wear come and let loose a tirade against a bookseller who had play texts on his shelves. It was frightening. His eyes were rolling and half the time all you could see was the whites. He was shrieking, and there was white stuff round his mouth. The bookseller kept having to clean the man's spit off his precious covers. He was scared. So was 1.1 thought the man was going to do a clearing out of the Temple, and scatter all the books.'
'Men who think God's on their side often have trouble realising they're not God.'
'There's one other bit of stage gossip,' said Jane.
'Yes?' said Gresham, part intrigued and part wanting no more complications.
'They say there's a lost play by Marlowe that surfaced recently. The Fall of Lucifer. Apparently it's too dangerous to perform, so wild and heretical that it could shake governments. No one's seen it, though there's lots of talk.'
A strange, unfathomable expression flitted across Gresham's face at the mention of Marlowe's name. Jane carried on. 'If this lost play is so dangerous, and the sort of thing that causes a riot, could it have been this manuscript that the murderer was looking for? On
Cecil's orders? You know how frightened he is of the theatre and its power over the common people.'
'So you think Cecil's real wish might be for me to find this lost play? Hide from me what it is? It's tempting, but it doesn't really work. If whoever murdered to steal these two manuscripts was in Cecil's pay, Cecil doesn't need me to hunt them out. I can't see a link between the letters and these two stolen manuscripts, never mind a play written by a dead man that no one's seen.'
A young serving lad must have pinched a maid laden with bed' ding as they walked past the door. An outraged but part-pleased shriek was muffled in to silence as the pair realised their master and mistress lay behind the door.
'What do we know about Shakespeare?' asked Gresham. 'What's the gossip about him?'
'No one really seems to know him. He keeps a very low profile in town, and they say that back in Stratford, where he spends most of his time now — he owns half the town, apparently — they think of him as a grain dealer and hardly anyone knows about his plays! He's stopped writing, they say, and wants to sell his share in the company.'
'Well,' said Gresham, 'I suppose I'd better renew my acquaintance with him, as the new man he is rather
