be the push that topples him over the edge of his own making. I do not know what will come to pass! I would know, if God had only allowed me to live, and I had been able to advise and perhaps even influence the outcome for the better. Now others must do it for me.'
'What role does Sir Edward Coke play in all this?'
'It was reported to him that the letters had been stolen, from Sir Thomas Overbury. I suspect Overbury sees Coke as powerful enough to take action, lawyer enough to relish the intrigue and self-serving enough to realise how much credit the safe recovery — and destruction — of the letters would bring him with the old King. In any event, Overbury will work with Coke to regain the letters, which is more than that most impossible of men will do with any other.'
Sir Thomas Overbury was Robert Carr's dark angel. They were inseparable. Intelligent, ruthless, determined and arrogant almost beyond belief, Overbury was seen by many as Carr's manager, providing him with the intelligence he himself lacked. If any incriminating letters existed, Overbury would want their power and be most aware of what the loss of it would mean.
'However, these letters are not all. You are a playgoer, I believe, Sir Henry?'
'I frequent the playhouses when I am in town, yes.'
'Two manuscripts were stolen recently from The Globe theatre. Both were plays, both written by the man they call Shakespeare. You know Master Shakespeare.' It was a statement, not a question.
The air thickened between the two men. There was a long pause. Finally Gresham spoke..
'I know him, though I knew him first by another name. William Hall, was he not? Or at least that was the name he used when he travelled abroad on state business and claimed his thirty pieces of silver.'
'You overestimate Hall's part in your friend Raleigh's downfall. As does Raleigh himself.'
'I doubt it,' Gresham replied. 'But what I do accept as truth is that Mr William Hall — whose company of players, I seem to recall, suddenly became The King's Men and the most favoured actors in the land very shortly after Sir Walter Raleigh's conviction and imprisonment — has hung up his spying boots and become Master William Shakespeare. Actor, poet and play-maker, no less. He's done very well since Raleigh was imprisoned on a false charge. Very well indeed. Was that the reward you chose for him? To make his disorderly crew The King's Men? And, yes, I know his plays. They are very good, unfortunately. Outstanding, even, better perhaps than any others. Surprisingly so for those of us who knew him when he was doing a different job.'
'You will know what price is placed on these manuscripts, and what security surrounds them.'
There was an insatiable demand for plays for the theatre as companies were putting on sixteen or seventeen shows a season. Any company with a hit on its hands kept the manuscript as secure as a prized daughter's maidenhead. It did not stop rival companies from putting shorthand writers in the audience to scribble down the text of a hit, or bribing leading actors in a company to dictate a verbatim account of their parts — and what they could remember of other people's parts. To lose a manuscript was to give your play to your rivals. Apart from reasons of security, the expense of copying out whole texts meant that full versions of a play often only existed in at most three copies. Actors were given their own lines and cues on separate sheets for rehearsal and learning, and these were counted out and counted in as if the paper they were written on was twenty-four-carat gold.
'Difficult for the players if a manuscript is stolen,' mused Gresham, 'but hardly life-threatening for the King, I would have thought?'
'Life-threatening for the porter who was murdered to gain the manuscripts,' croaked decil. 'Yet the players are The King's Men, are they not? They see this theft as an insult to the King himself — or so they say, in asking for his help. But the importance is that our information suggests the same person who stole the manuscripts may also have stolen the letters. A Cambridge bookseller, we think — another reason to call on you and your local knowledge. Identify the man who stole the manuscripts and we believe you will identify the man who stole the letters.'
'So what is my role in all of this?' asked Gresham, frantically working to process the information he had received.
'Sir Edward Coke is a lawyer, not a spy or a diplomat. Whoever has these letters needs to be found, then killed or bought off. Coke would kill readily enough, but he only knows how to do so by means of the law. He lacks the skill to find a secret package, and lacks the experience of dealing with its owner once found. Skills you have in plenty, Sir Henry. And you, of course, know Cambridge very well.'
Gresham's use of his father's wealth to refound Granville College in Cambridge was widely known.
'I am to mind Sir Edward? One of the people I despise most on earth?'
'You have worked with me plenty of times. In comparison, your hatred of Sir Edward is mere flash-frying, while mine has lingered long in the oven.'
'And why should I help?'
'Firstly, because for all your oft-expressed selfishness and lack of faith in anything, you know that peace, continuity and stability are the most important things for this country. These letters threaten all three. Secondly, because Sir Edward needs watching. He is a man of overweening self-importance and ambition. In his heart he does not believe in the absolute power of the king, but in the absolute power of the law — the law as defined and exercised by himself, of course. As things stand, he wishes to find these letters and destroy them. It would take little for him to use them instead to destroy the King. I think you would not wish your enemy to have such power.'
'So I am to find some letters that could blow the present King into hell, but do so while allowing a man I hate above all others to think that it is he who has found the letters. Then I am to watch him, and if needs be kill one of the country's leading lawyers in order to allow a sodomite king uninterrupted access to his pleasures for the remainder of his natural life. And at the same time I am to find stolen manuscripts of plays written by a man who betrayed the one man I truly love.'
'An admirable summary, Sir Henry,' muttered Cecil. 'You miss the final point, however. And by so doing, preserve peace and the reputation of the monarchy.'
'And do you trust me to do all this?'
'I trust you to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons. I trust you to take this whole sorry mess on board because it has the raw smell of danger, and for no other reason. I trust you to think it through after you have taken the decision, and to discuss it with your beauty of a wife and your clod of a servant, and then through the red haze of your excitement see some sense to it. And I trust you to survive, Henry Gresham. For that is your code, is it not? Survival as the prime virtue? For as long, that is, as God decides to spare you an illness such as mine.'
The raw hatred of Gresham, and of his own plight, that burned out of Cecil's eyes would have heated an ocean to beyond boiling.
Gresham took the decision that Cecil had known he would.
Til assist Sir Edward. It will be amusing to see how long he can cope with help from someone he loathes.'
'Sir Edward loathes everybody. And he would work with Satan if he thought Satan would help him win his case.'
'Well,' said Gresham lightly, 'you'll soon have the edge on us all. You'll be able to ask Satan yourself, face to face.'
'At least I believe in God, Sir Henry,' grated Cecil. 'At least I may intercede with Him. You, who have no belief, will surely go to hell.'
'If there is a God, He and not you will decide that. As for death, I prefer Master Shakespeare's vision of an 'undiscovered country'. Perhaps I'll be able to present the record of my life to an unbiased judge when I die. Perhaps, and God forbid, I'll meet the reincarnation of Sir Edward Coke. Perhaps I'll sense nothing except sweet oblivion. You're right, I've no certainty. I echo a line from Hamlet: 'The readiness is all.' There, you see, I do know Master Shakespeare's work.' He paused for a moment. 'I'm ready for whatever I meet, Robert Cecil. Are you?'
For a long moment Gresham thought he had killed Cecil. His head had slumped forward, his breathing had become inaudible. Just as Gresham was about to test to see if there was a pulse in Cecil's neck, Cecil raised his head.
''The readiness is all'? We are ready in our different ways, I think, and I am certainly ready for what I will meet after death.' Cecil's voice seemed increasingly to be coming from a pile of stinking blankets and not a human being.
Gresham rose to his feet. 'I'll arrange to meet Sir Edward in London,' he said lightly. 'Goodbye, my lord. We
