me as an agent in Your Majesty's interests on numerous occasions. Such summonses usually came late at night, latterly in the form of one Nicholas Heaton.' The air froze for a moment. 'These calls were peremptory and always involved me risking my life. For some reason, it always seemed to be my life and never Cecil's. I grew accustomed to accepting the challenges, but not without noting with whom lay the danger.'
It was there! Something that was unequivocally a smile, albeit briefly, had passed over James's face.
'But you cannot deny that you were summoned, and that you were given instructions?' Coke bored in, only half-realising that he had given away most of his game plan. He was harsh, aggressive. This should have come later. Somehow Gresham had managed to jump the hearing forward.
'But of course.' Gresham was now all sweet reason. Yet he should have been nervous, on edge, and Coke the voice of calm. 'Of course I was summoned, as in countless times past. And, as in countless times past, I went. I went, Your Majesty,' and as Gresham spoke he turned again to the King, 'to meet Robert Cecil, your Chief Secretary. To my surprise, I found the meeting was with Robert Cecil and with Sir Edward Coke. And later, after he had beaten up a servant and tried to attack me, with Sir Thomas Overbury.'
'Ye met Overbury? And he was violent?' James had let his head sink into his vast ruff, but now he straightened up. Had Coke been stupid enough not to tell the King of Overbury's presence? Yes, by the look on his face! Before Coke could interject, Carr jumped in.
'Your Majesty,' he said, 'this slander against Sir Thomas is unfair, without Sir Thomas here to prove it false. Might I ask to summon him.
'No, sir, you may not.' The King cut off his favourite with a sharpness Gresham had never seen before. That tightening across James's brow — James tolerated Overbury because he loved Carr, and Overbury made it so that the one had to come with the other. Yet even James was not insensitive to the awfulness of the man. 'And did it surprise you, Sir Henry? To find Sir Edward there?' It was the King who spoke, to Coke's obvious annoyance. Coke had raised his hand to respond as well.
'Yes, Your Majesty,' replied Gresham candidly. 'And horrified me.'
Was he prepared to take the greatest gamble of his life? A gamble that would risk not only his own life, but the lives of those he loved? One throw of the dice to decide it all?
He threw the dice.
'You see, Your Majesty,' he explained carefully, 'I despise Sir Edward.'
Robert Carr sucked in his breath so hard as to make it ricochet in the half-empty chamber.
'I do so,' Gresham flung into the silence that followed his bomb blast, 'because I believe he helped betray the man I see both as my early patron and hero, Sir Walter Raleigh.'
There was a gasp from Carr. Walter Raleigh, locked up for years now on the King's orders after a show trial led by Coke. Walter Raleigh, his estate at Sherborne ripped from him and given to Carr. To protest his case before the King and to claim an allegiance to Raleigh was to appear before God and declare a pact with Satan. Double jeopardy. Was Gresham intent on suicide? An expression of glee crossed Coke's face. An expression of distaste flickered on James's brow. Before it could take seat, Gresham spoke on.
'I beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty, for my feelings towards that man. I know that in speaking of my belief in him I risk forfeiting my own life, and that of my wife and children. I know you believe he has done you grievous wrong.'
King James loathed Raleigh, saw him as the last of the great Elizabethans and one of the greatest threats to the monarch who had succeeded Elizabeth. Gresham's friendship with Raleigh was widely known. Coke had hoped to introduce it perhaps two-thirds of the way through the interrogation, and use it to damn Gresham. However, it seemed Gresham was going to use it to damn himself.
'And do you challenge that he is a threat to me? Do you challenge that he has sought to do me grievous wrong?' King James leaned forward as he spoke, aggressive, almost violent in his tone.
'I know you believe him to be so. I know you have the power to make that belief a lasting judgement. I would plead with you, as others have pleaded with you, to review that judgement, though at a different time and hopefully in a different place. Yet I give you my word that at no time have I or will I ever conspire against Your Majesty, or use my friendship with Sir Walter to do so.'
'Words are fine things,' said the King after a pause. It was impossible to judge his feelings from his face. 'Sir Edward here for one deals with them very finely. But words are not always the truth, are they, Sir Henry?'
'That certainly is true,' replied Gresham, feeling his way, 'but I would ask Your Majesty to consider one thing.'
'Which is?'
'Sir Walter Raleigh saved my life. I am indebted to him. It would have been easy for me to cut off from him when Your Majesty's disfavour became clear, to dissemble, to lie about my feelings in order to worm my way into Your Majesty's favour. To become a fawning courtier. As so many have sought to do.' He turned pointedly to Coke, who had the decency to flush. 'My loyalties are worn on the outside of my body for all to see. They are to Your Majesty, to my friend and to my wife and children.' Though in reverse order, as it happens, thought Gresham, bearing in mind that it would not be tactful to tell that particular truth at this particular moment. 'I suppose I am asking Your Majesty to see my declared love for Sir Walter as proof of something else. I am no dissembler. I am no liar. I am no threat. It may well be that I am a devil of sorts. At least I am the devil that is known.'
'Well, you have my eldest son and my heir on your side, Sir Henry, that much is true…' Prince Henry visited Raleigh, talked to him. Some said he viewed Raleigh as more of a father than James, admired him far more. It would not necessarily be of any help to Gresham. Indeed, it was rumoured that Prince Henry's affection for Raleigh increased his father's wrath against him.
'But yet…' King James's face lit up. Gresham had seen it do so once before, when he had paraded bishops and clergymen before him for a debate, and for a few brief moments the matter had gone beyond its tedious script and a real dialogue had taken place. It had been between James and Andrewes, Gresham now remembered.
'… this is the issue Sir Edward brings to me! He does believe you are a threat, Sir Henry. A most serious threat.'
Gresham felt the dryness in his throat, the tension rising in his neck.
'How might that be so, sire?'
Sir Edward leaned forward, eager to state his authority and his case. James waved him into silence, to an apoplectic response all the more fearsome for the fact that Coke could not vocalise it. Was he going to blow up? thought Gresham. It seemed Coke's fate to be told to shut up in Gresham's presence, either by the late Robert Cecil or by the King.
'I have a man called Marlowe in my care, Sir Henry. A dead man already, who from the wound in his arm is lucky not to have been killed twice over.'
Damn! How had Marlowe of all people gained sanctuary from the King?
'I understand that you were instrumental in 'arranging' the death of this man many years ago. Testimony that despite your words, Sir Henry, there is much that you do and have done that is not worn on the outside, and about which the truth is not known.'
'Certainly, sire, I helped arrange for his escape. The fake death was Marlowe's idea. He never could distinguish between high drama and reality.'
'More importantly, I understand that this man had papers of mine that I wished to regain possession of. Sir Edward acted as my agent in this matter. You may speak now, Sir Edward.'
Coke needed no second bidding. Gresham could see he was straining to stand up, desperate to pace the courtroom. 'This man Marlowe approached me after you, Sir Henry, failed in your attempts to track him down.'
So that was how Marlowe had broken through into the King's hearing. He had gone directly to Coke this time, as he had gone to Overbury before.
'With His Majesty's permission, we arranged for the return of the papers. I even sent one of His Majesty's servants with Marlowe to supervise the collection of this material, hidden, I believe, in a strange place…'
Gresham could sense what was coming.
'Nicholas Heaton was the servant. He seemed suitable for these… underhand dealings, as he had gained experience under his former master. And lo and behold, what is the outcome?'
Coke was now well in his stride, declaiming, almost roaring. Gresham had seen the mood and the delivery once before, at Raleigh's trial. Its presence now, triumphalist as it was, did not bode well.
'We find that after weeks of apparent ignorance about this man Marlowe, the man whose false death you
