'That I do not know. Yet it would not surprise me. Henry Gresham is a rather deep young man, who may know more than even I suspect.'
Cecil had emphasised 'distantly related', Walsingham noticed. Good. He suspected that Cecil already resented Gresham's good looks and fine body, as well as the independence his money brought him. Only in intelligence were they a match for each other, Cecil's superiority resting simply on his awareness of Gresham being a bastard. And now Walsingham had taken that away, and as well as unsettling him had perhaps gained an inch more of Cecil's trust.
'Are there others who know the truth about his birth? Others at Court?' asked Cecil.
There! Walsingham had sensed it. The tremor, the flicker of something behind the words. Walsingham sensed that for Cecil much rested on this answer.
'It is possible,' said Walsingham, appearing to think the question over for a few seconds, as if it had never occurred to him before. 'But if you were to ask me to guess, I would say… no.'
Cecil visibly relaxed. His parting was as quick as he could make it, only just the right side of civility.
So what did Walsingham now know, he mused as the dust settled after Cecil's departure? Cecil was involved in a plot of some sort or another, and Henry Gresham was probably little more than a pawn in it. Yet for Gresham to play his part it was necessary for those who wielded power in the Court not to know that Gresham had been born not just on the wrong side, but on the wrong side of a very expensive blanket. Well, Walsingham was a long way from an answer, but in the slow, measured and remorseless manner that had served him so well over the years he was gaining a little more information all the time. And Henry Gresham? Walsingham had no doubt that he had lessened Gresham's chances of survival, but Gresham had been a volunteer to join the murky world of espionage. He would sink or swim, as plain luck and merit dictated. Just as Walsingham had had to do when he was a young man.
*
The Merchant Royal had mercifully sailed to London, berthing at Deptford. Gresham felt as if the journey from Plymouth to London would have succeeded where a Spanish galley and Drake and his enemies had failed, and killed him at last. He had pleaded with the Captain to be first off. Their arrival on deck would be the talk of every tavern in London the first minute one of the Merchant's sailors made it ashore. He had tried to explain the situation to Anna, felt that he owed her that at least.
'Someone wanted me killed on Drake's ship. I can't be certain of who it is. The minute the ship docks the story will be out in London, and for all I know whoever wants me dead will try again. I can't use my own house in case it's being watched, and George's house in London will be as well watched as my own. We have to smuggle ourselves to an inn, and not even a good one. It has to be one where people don't always want to be recognised…'
'What death warrant is out on me?' asked Anna. 'Apart from the social death of having nothing to wear, no servants to care for even my basic needs and no home to go to. Nor any parents to find in this nonexistent home!' Her tone was cold. 'You tell me that my… guardian is rich, a person who speaks with the Queen of England.' She gave a sharp laugh. ‘Yet he and his ward have to disguise their passage through London as if they were criminals. I believe this is a rich person,' her voice was loaded with scorn, 'a friend of the Queen!' She cursed the hot tears she felt rising up in her eyes, turned her back on both of them quickly before they could see.*1 think you are both criminals, and liars.' Her voice was steady.
Gresham was losing what little patience he had. Mannion looked as if any moment he would take the girl and put her over his knee.
'My being made your guardian and your stupid coming aboard the Daisy means that we are now associated, seen as being together. Any enemy of mine will be an enemy of yours!'
'This is a poor country, where honest women cannot safely walk the streets,' she said scornfully.
'It's a country fighting for its existence,' said Gresham, 'and I'm sorry you've been caught up in that fight. Either way, my life is at risk if when we leave this ship I am recognised, or if I am recognised by your presence. We're lucky. We'll land after the sun's gone down. We can shroud you in a cloak…'
'There is a simpler way,' said Anna in a matter-of-fact voice.
'There is no simpler way,' said Gresham. Needle shafts of pain were beginning to shoot through his head, and he had never felt more tired, the exhaustion a physical presence pressing down on him. 'I've already-'
'Dress me as a man,' said Anna simply. 'Or as a ship's boy. They have clothes on board, clothes that will fit. What news is there in a ship's boy leaving a ship? Particularly if his hair is crammed under a cap and his face blackened with dirt.'
There was a stunned silence. Gresham and Mannion looked at each other aghast.
'Don't be ridiculous!' exploded Gresham. 'Young girls can't go around in trousers, for Heaven's sake!'
'Please stop talking like a father when you are only the age of a son. And a very young son at that,' said Anna, her voice as sharp as a sword being taken out of its sheath. Why were these men so… stupid. How long did it take them to see the obvious? 'If you really think we're in danger, two seamans and a boy going ashore will attract far less attention than two men and a woman.'
'Seamen. Not seamans.' Gresham looked her over. He guessed her hips were quite boyish, pleasantly rounded for sure but nothing like the vast, child-bearing mountains some women carried. But her breasts
… even under a loose-fitting linen shirt…'
'Now you've inspected the goods at length, do you want to buy?' Anna's voice was acid, stinging, having been insulted by the mental undressing to which her body had been subjected. 'Shop can't stay open all day…' It was a phrase her favourite nurse had used. Gresham controlled the flush that threatened to creep into his face. Damn! Had he been that obvious?
'I was thinking…' How do you tell a well-brought-up seventeen-year-old female Spanish aristocrat that her breasts were too big? Mannion interrupted.
'It's not as daft as it sounds. She's right, it'll be less dramatic if we're just a lad and two men. And we sure ain't going to get a woman's dress on board this ship. Getting some clothes for a lad'll be a doddle.'
Feeling that he was being ganged-up on, Gresham faltered, losing the battle with the redness in his cheeks. 'But what… what about concealing… how do we hide… you know…' He felt like cupping two imaginary breasts to his chest. To Hell with it! 'You know your… female bits?'
Was there the faintest glimmer of amusement in the girl's eyes at Gresham's discomfiture? Mannion had turned to the tiny window. Why was he silently shaking?
'They can be strapped back, wound with tape, as a long as it's not too long,' she said, as if discussing her breasts with a man was an everyday commonplace. Perhaps it was, thought Gresham, for all he really knew about the girl.
Gresham found himself stirring, against his will, at the prospect of someone taking on that job, and brought himself round by imagining that he was jumping into the cold, clear water of the Cam on a winter's day. Sex was like food. It was an appetite. You didn't let it touch your heart.
Leng had been useless in providing them with information. Gresham and Mannion had bided their time, then cornered him one evening aboard the Merchant Royal.
'All I did was look in your belongings! As I was told to do!' he gabbled. His nervousness was not surprising. Mannion was holding a dagger none-too-gently to his throat. 'And make what I found public! I was told if I agreed they could get me passage with Drake — a real chance to make my name.'
'And so have me killed?' asked Gresham, a total lack of emotion in his voice. Something froze in the heated cauldron of Robert Leng's mind at the tone of that voice.
'Well, perhaps not so… in reality not so!' Leng's spirit picked up a little as he realised what he was saying. 'EvidentlyDrake didn't kill you, even when I did what I did. In fact he damned nearly killed me…' That wasn't a helpful path to go down, Leng saw immediately.
'The only reason I stayed alive was that no one had instructed Drake to hang me. If they'd squared that with him, he'd have done it to a Spanish spy without a thought. That and the fact the girl touched something in Drake, and he'd given his word. And he spotted you as a mercenary, of course. Someone whose only loyalty is to his own self-interest. You lied to him, you see, which is more than I ever did. You didn't tell him why you were on board, not the real reason. So he left us both to God. So before I send you to Satan,' said Gresham, his voice like a pistol shot, 'tell me! Who gave you your instructions1.'
'A clerk! A stupid clerk! At Whitehall!' gibbered Leng. 'He gave me a letter guaranteeing a passage on
