of his sword.
'Is this wise, my lord?' The thinly veiled arrogance in Coke's voice was like the flick of a whip across Cecil's words. Yet Cecil's authority held, just.
'We agreed that I would approach Sir Henry with a certain proposal. I wish to dp so, in these my last few days, on this earth, in private. You will lose no information that you need to know. And you will gratify the whims of an old man to whom you have some cause to be grateful.'
Coke stood for a moment, as if wondering whether to challenge Cecil. Finally he gave a curt nod to Gresham, ruder than no bow at all, and clattered towards the door. He was wearing a sword, probably for no other reason than to show off to the citizens of Bath. Yet he was clearly no swordsman, and like all men who did not understand the weapon they wore he had no knack of controlling it when he moved suddenly. The scabbard swung as Coke wheeled round, and as he reached the door the sword and scabbard jammed across the entrance, bringing him to a sudden halt. The leather of his belt was too strong to tear, but Coke's boots skittered out from under him and he fell forwards to scrabble on the floor. His sword landed at his feet, the hilt towards Gresham.
'I accept your surrender, Sir Edward,' Gresham murmured, 'though I am accustomed to rather more of a fight beforehand…'
Coke's eyes blazed pure hatred. He still favoured the huge ornate ruffs that had been fashionable in Queen Elizabeth's time, and his fall had skewed one side of it so that it hung by his ear, ludicrous. He flung himself to his feet, picked up his sword and thrust it back into his scabbard, and left, slamming the door behind him. Dust shot from the hangings and danced in the putrid light that came through the windows.
'Well, Sir Henry,' said Cecil, voice almost back to its old strength, 'you have a quite extraordinary capacity to make men hate you.'
'Thank you, my lord. We share that at least. To be hated by certain people is a privilege. And is there any man who Sir Edward likes except himself?'
Cecil started what might have been a laugh but turned instantly into a cough, a tearing, searing cough that seemed to pour acid from the depths of his belly to his lungs and out through his thin lips. Gresham moved to help him, but he was waved feebly away until the fit ceased.
'Ring the bell, for the servant. He has medicine…' For a moment Gresham thought Cecil was going to die there and then. He rang the bell and the servant who had been waiting outside the door entered quickly. From a pocket in the side of the chair he brought a stoppered bottle, and forced some of it down his master's lips. It settled Cecil. At the merest nod, the servant left.
'I will be ready to speak in a few moments,' Cecil gasped, and paused. God knows what this is costing him, thought Gresham. He is shortening his life by every sentence he speaks.
'You are aware of my lord the King's affections towards young men?' Cecil's voice was clear again.
'The whole country could hardly be unaware of them.'
'And do you know Viscount Rochester?'
'My lord, I am in Court on occasion. Who does not know of Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester? I believe also that the good lord was given some property belonging to a friend of mine.' Carr had a special place in Gresham's catalogue of sinners. King James had taken away Raleigh's beloved estate at Sherborne to give to his lover, on whom it was wasted.
Robert Carr, a lowlands Scot with the body of an angel and the brain of a sheep, had been King James's favourite for several years, dominating his company and, it was said, his bed. With Cecil's impending death there would be no barrier to Carr becoming the sole source of favour at Court.
'I understand Viscount Rochester was recently made a privy councillor?' Gresham said, as if it were a point of no real consequence. It was known that Cecil had bitterly opposed the appointment. As his illness had grown, so Cecil's power over the King had been slipping. King James had a morbid fear of death, and the smell of death was all over Cecil.
Cecil ignored the jibe. Gresham knew him too well to believe that he had not noticed it.
'I will be blunt with you. It appears that letters exist between my lord the King and Robert Carr — or Viscount Rochester, as he now is — that are of a compromising nature.'
'How so?' Gresham's interest quickened.
Cecil coughed again and Gresham waited for the spasm to pass.
'I have not seen these letters. I am given to believe they are… specific… perhaps even… highly coloured… concerning relationships between men. The physical nature of relationships between men. And between two men in particular.'
'Ah,' said Gresham. There was silence for a few moments. 'I take it that in effect these are love letters between the King of England and his male lover. Specific love letters.' Cecil said nothing. 'And,' Gresham continued, 'that were these letters to become public it would not help the status of the monarchy?'
Cecil's eyes turned up towards Gresham. There was more in them than the pain of a terminal illness.
'Help? It would destroy all I have worked for in these years of trial! The Church would condemn the King instantly. The Puritans in Parliament would call out the hunt of the self-righteous upon him. The saner element in Parliament would look at the uncontrolled expenditure they are increasingly asked to fund and call foul on a sodomite king. And England would laugh at its monarch! Do you hear me? The country would laugh at its monarch. Monarchy can withstand many things — corruption, abuse of power, immorality. Ridicule it finds hardest to survive.'
Cecil had feared ridicule more than anything else in his life. A cripple, the runt of the litter yet brought up as a great man's heir, he had more to fear than many in an age which mocked deformity. Gresham thought for a moment. He settled on a poor stool, one of four by the scarred and battered table in the room.
'There must be more,' Gresham said. 'No monarch has been laughed out of power. The executioner's axe cuts short laughter alongside life.'
This time it was Cecil's time to pause.
'Yes, there is more. The King increasingly withdraws from political life, seeking only to hunt obsessively and spend time with his young men, Robert Carr in particular. Yet this is not the time of Queen Elizabeth, when the only alternative to her was rule by Spain or Civil War.'
'Prince Henry?' Gresham interrupted.
'Yes. Prince Henry.' Cecil's voice was so dry and wasted that Gresham had to lean forward to hear it, like a rustle of dead leaves on the earth. 'We have a brilliant young prince, an heir to the throne who promises more than any other in living memory. A statesman, a man of faith, a man of intelligence and skill — and still only a child! O dear God in heaven! Had I had such material to work with! What a world we might have made!'
The intensity in the whispered voice was all the more frightening because of its fragility, the impression of a man clinging on by willpower alone.
'Well, it is not to be. But there are those, not least of all the Prince himself, who see the way things are going with King James in charge, and who seek a change now, before the monarchy rots beyond redemption. These letters could be just the cause they need — not to kill the King or rise up in rebellion but to force him to step aside for his eldest son and heir.'
''Had I had such material to work with.' My lord Cecil,' said Gresham, 'if the disclosure of these letters would bring about such events, why should you or I oppose them? You yourself have praised the heir. Why not King Henry IX? Why should he not take over?'
'Because they must not learn how to depose a king and replace him with another! Do you not see? Parliament, the Puritans, the country
… once they are given the right to choose a king, they will never lose it.'
'Would it be such a bad thing?' mused Gresham.
'It would be a terrible thing!' hissed Cecil. 'Politics can never look at the man. It must always look at the principle. They rid themselves of a king they do not like, justifying it on the basis that the heir is different. Then what follows? What if the heir turns rotten? If he dies? If he offends one of the great noble families, who then turn to one of their own nominees? Then turn to the next best, or the most promising, and do so time and time again. This way is madness. It must not be allowed to happen!'
'And do you think these letters could depose a king?'
'I think a king can depose a king, if the king is a sensual fool whose instinct for survival lessens with every month that goes by. King James is indolent, and confident. It is a dangerous, dangerous mixture. The letters could
