silence. She was too old for there to be tears in her eyes. Yet the tears were there in her voice. 'Those plays that seemed so magical to me, they were nothing more than the playthings of noblemen too cowardly to admit their art, noblemen playing at writing plays, posturing beneath an adopted disguise. Well, my thanks to you, Master William Shakespeare. I used to think there was artistry and beauty and magic in the world of the theatre, even when it was stripped away from the world I actually lived in. Now I find it's just the same as everywhere else, just a little more dressed over. Thank you for educating me. Now 1 know there's no art. No magic. Only self-interest. How silly of me to need a reminder.'
She stood up and left the room, passing through the door to Shakespeare's sitting room, there presumably to commune with her own ghosts.
There were tears in Shakespeare's eyes, Gresham saw. One actually dribbled over his eyelid and fell down his cheek. It was a truism Gresham had heard countless times that a man could not counterfeit tears. His age respected emotion, not as something womanly in a man, but as a sign of genuine feeling. How good an actor was William Shakespeare? Gresham thought. Were his tears the burning mark of truth? Whatever the answer to that, Shakespeare was clearly a man who was down and out. Which, of course, was exactly the time for someone more ruthless to hit him twice as hard.
'How many plays. did Sir Francis Bacon and Bishop Lancelot Andrewes write under your name?'
It had to be that! To hell with love letters! It wasn't those that Andrewes had asked him to destroy if he found them! It was plays! Bacon was too clever ever to put down in writing his love for another man. Andrewes would sooner burn his balls off' with an altar candle than succumb to carnal temptation, if Gresham was any judge. But both men were prime candidates for the play-writing urge. They had fearsome intellects, the willingness to dare to be wise and the desire to try their hand at this new art form while knowing that their station and ambitions forbade them from so doing.
Gresham had never seen a man reduce in size before his eyes. Shakespeare seemed to wilt and shrink as he spoke his words. 'How much do you know?'
Gresham could have driven home then, taken all the advantage possible from his inspirational guesswork. Instead, remarkably, he decided to be merciful. Was it because the infinite compassion of Lancelot Andrewes had touched him to his soul? Or because he had seen his wife bid farewell to magic? Or was it because, all of a sudden, he was tired of the world, its double and treble deceptions?
'Far less than you might imagine,' he confided to Shakespeare. 'Yet I'd be willing to bet that Bacon and Andrewes were two of the men who submitted to your play-writing factory. Bacon wishes to be Attorney General. Andrewes wishes to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Neither would be helped in their ambitions by the realisation among the general public that they'd also wished to be stars at The Globe. Yet they're both writers of some brilliance. Both have minds that are incredibly active. Catch them at the right time and I doubt either could resist the chance to try their hand at this whole new world of plays. Like lambs to the slaughter, I imagine they were.'
'I…' Gresham had a sense that something had slipped in Shakespeare's mind, that at long last the truth was going to emerge. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
There was a ferocious clatter of hooves outside and shouted orders. Jane came in almost immediately. Soldiers rushed up the stairs — the King's soldiers. Gresham's men would have been powerless. Their leader was Sir William Wade, the gruff Keeper of The Tower.
'Sir Henry. I am bidden by the King to bring you to his presence.'
To Whitehall?' enquired Gresham mildly.
'No,' said Wade. 'To the Tower of London.'
Gresham would have expected a look of exultation on Shakespeare's face as they were led out. His victors vanquished. Instead, all he caught was a look of infinite sadness. William Shakespeare and Henry Gresham had stared into the same abyss, and were doing so even now.
15
September, 1612 The Tower of London
'Come, let's away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage'
Damnation. This was bad. 'And is my wife also to be blessed with the privilege of meeting His Royal Highness?' asked Gresham.
'My instructions are that if she is with you, then yes, she also must… she also is invited.'
Jane had retained most of her colour. The eyes were at their darkest. He alone could read the tension in her body.
'My lady, we have the honour of an audience with the King. Shall we proceed?'
They left the house and entered the carriage Wade had brought along with him, watched by a small and silent crowd. Why were two masons and a housewife being whisked off to king's arrest?
The Tower was a royal residence right enough, but no king or queen had lived there for years. It was bleak, forbidding and not infrequently stinking, and its main use was as a royal prison. It had a dreadful reputation, a building erected to symbolise raw power where hundreds more had died within its walls than had been executed on its green, and even more than that had screamed under its torture. The summons to The Tower was a signal. A signal of extreme disfavour.
God knew how Mannion had managed to be allowed to ride in the coach along with his master and mistress.
'He's trying to frighten us.' Gresham spoke tersely to Jane.
'It's worked,' said Jane, shivering inside her cloak. 'And there's me,' she said with a wry smile, 'with not a thing to wear.'
'Stay calm. Let me think.'
There was no point feeling fear at moments such as these. It was simply a diversion and a distraction. Nor was there time for tears or for talk. Focus. Focus. Become as hard as the stone of The Tower, as slippery as the eels in the river. On his ability to handle this situation rested his own fate, and that of Jane, his children and Mannion.
The bulk of The Tower and its grim curtain walls squatted over the Thames. First was the drawbridge leading over the moat, which was coated with scum and full of noisome lumps that did not bear close examination. The heavy wheels rattled over the wooden planking; they heard shouted instructions. A sharp left turn, the carriage groaning, under the Lion Tower, across the moat again and over the second drawbridge. The two round, squat forms of the Middle Tower stood in their way. More shouted instructions, a rattling as of chains, and the coach lurched forward again. Yet another drawbridge, and then the taller, round form of the Byward Tower. Under its rusting portcullis. Into the prison, with three vast towers and their gates blocking the route to freedom. At least they had not stopped even earlier and been put in a boat to be taken to The Tower through Traitors' Gate. Gresham's heart sank as it always did when he entered this desperate place, even on the weekly visits he made to see Raleigh. This time his wife was alongside him. Stop it! Don't divert! Don't weaken!
They were not to be sent pell-mell into some dripping, foul dungeon. James had hurriedly made a room in the White Tower available. It smelled of damp and decay, and there were bruised lumps on the wall where plaster had fallen off. The marks of the servant's brush were still on the floor. There was a vast fireplace in the echoing room, unlit, and one large window high in the wall. An ancient oaken table had obviously been retrieved from somewhere, behind which James had ranged seats. In front of the table were two poor stools. The judge facing the accused.
