'So I have to apologise to someone all the time?' said Gresham. 'Say sorry because I can't guarantee being there when they want me to be? Sorry because someone claiming to love me has actually just become dependent on me? So dependent that I can't move, breathe or even live? I don't want attachments!' The passion in his voice was almost frightening. 'Don't you understand? I don't want people to depend on me! I want to be free!'
'We're none of us free,' said Mannion. 'It's just that some of us like to pretend we can be.'
Gresham looked into Mannion's eyes, for several long seconds. Then he turned away, and stormed into his living quarters. There were no dramatic gestures from Mannion. He had an attachment, one willingly entered into, though it was not with a woman. And he did not intend to depart from it.
The figure that met them several hours later was unrecognisable. Anna swept in, escorted by three women, paused to allow herself to be admired, then curtseyed to her guardian, who bowed a deep and appreciative bow back. Her hair had been brushed back to a lustrous frenzy, worn down as an unmarried girl's hair should be. The dress they had found was a deep black velvet, opened at the front with an intricate linear design picked out with tiny pearls, hugging the upper part of her figure and blossoming out gloriously in an excess of material from its high waist, the flowing sleeves seeming to emphasise rather than hide the fragility of her slender arms. Was it the looks, the perfect face, the promise of the figure beneath the velvet that made her look so hugely edible, wondered Gresham? Or was it the sense of raw energy, an uncontrolled life force that radiated from her?
'I need to talk with you.' His eyes took in the accompanying women.
'You may leave us,' said Anna regally. And then, reverting to the young girl, she flung out her arms to them. Thank you!' she said. 'Thank you for helping me!' Several hours of hugging and mutual female support then took place, most of which Gresham tried to ignore by looking out of the window. It was a pity he did not look more closely. It would have revealed a different woman to the one he thought he knew.
'Do you think of yourself as wholly Spanish? Or is there a part of you that is English?' asked Gresham. He spoke bluntly, told himself he did not care.
Anna looked at him as if he had started to burble like a madman.
'I hate Spain. It rejected my father, sent him to exile in filthy Goa and so brought about his death. My mother was taunted as a foreigner from the moment she set foot in Spain. What do I owe Spain? And England? At least Spain gave me warmth and sunshine when I was a child. England gave me nothing, except a mother whose family was rejected by their own country as my father's family was rejected by Spain. I despise them both.'
Gresham was uncertain. He was going to get no more help from her. But he plunged on.
'I need you,' said Gresham. 'I need to go to Lisbon, to spy on Spain. To do certain things that will help my country, England, survive an invasion by Spain. To destroy that invasion.'
She eyed him as a cook might eye a fish to see if the fishmonger was lying about its freshness. 'And how could I stop Spain destroying England?' The irony was so thick it could have been laid on with a trowel.
'Because I could use you as my cover. As your guardian I could claim to be visiting Lisbon to reunite you with your fiancй’
'You could,' said Anna simply. 'He is based in Lisbon, despite the fact that he is French. And what would be even more convenient for you would be that you could spend a long time finding him. He travels from June, sometimes until as late as December.'
Gresham took in her 'you could' comment. It was not an assent, merely recognition that his journey would be theoretically possible with her as cover. No surprise at his request. No shock even.
'What does he travel so long for, and part of it in the winter months?' asked Gresham.
Anna looked at him levelly.
'He is a stupid merchant. A stupid, fat merchant. He deals in spices. He sails out in June to Goa, where he spends a month, maybe two months, despatching what he ordered last year, agreeing his sordid purchases for the next year. Then he travels back by land, because he buys much wool from the far south, where they do not shear the sheep until October. And carpets. He buys carpets, from the Turks.'
The silence lay thick between them.
'Don't you still have family in Spain?'
'I have family, yes. Some very distant cousins. All my father's estates, they are gone, sold. My cousin has a large family, very many daughters. Another one will not be welcome, particularly if she already has a fiancй’ And my English family? What few of them are left cut my mother off completely.'
So the firebrand really was alone. No father, no mother, no family worth the name. In much the same situation, as it happened, as
Henry Gresham. Yet Gresham had wealth, the freedom of a man to plot his own destiny. She, in her own words, was just a package, a woman to be disposed of to the best bidder. A fat French merchant.
'Why do you want to stop this war?' asked Anna.
Why? The question, calmly asked by this ice maiden, shocked him more than anything else she had said or done. Since he was risking his life for the answer, surely he should know it? Yet he found himself having to produce an answer for the first time, fumbling with the unfamiliar words.
'Because… because we can all of us find reasons for doing nothing, for giving up. The easiest decision to take is that we're victims. I have to believe I can make a difference. That I can make things better.' He was surprised by the strength of his own passion. 'Otherwise fate makes cowards of us all, and we're little more than dumb beasts in the field who take the life they are given at birth, but can give nothing back to it. My life must be more than mere existence.'
'And?' said Anna.*You missed something out.' 'What?' said Gresham, startled.
'You are excited by the risk. By the fact that you might be found out, killed. Only when you think you might lose your life do you realise how valuable it is to you.'
'How can you say that? You who knows so little of me?'
'Because my brain works in the same way as yours!' she snapped back at him. For the first time there was raw, jagged emotion in her voice. 'Do you not think a woman fears that she is one of those beasts in the field you so despise, there to breed, with no other justification for her having been given life?'
'But… but the greatest fulfilment a woman can have, her bounden duty, is to have children…' Gresham replied in amazement.
'It may be so,' said Anna, 'but before that duty can a woman not feel she is properly alive, be inflamed by danger? Want to make a difference of her own! She swung away, looked out of the window. She spoke without turning. 'Yes,' she said suddenly. 'I will come with you to Lisbon.'
'Despite your being Spanish, in name at least? Despite the fact that your own country could execute you if we are found out? Despite the fact that you might end the trip… conjoined with your fat French merchant?'
She spun round. 'I will not ask why you do what you do, Henry Gresham. In return grant me the favour of not asking me why I do what I do!'
'As you wish,' said Gresham. There was respect in the short bow he gave her. So much the better. Mutual respect would help them do business. But who really knew what went on in a girl's mind? Wasn't it that very mystery that made them so attractive? The mystery that could appear to be present even in the most stupid? 'Do you like horses?' asked Gresham suddenly into the silence, and then wished he had not spoken. He had felt an almost uncontrollable urge to visit the one place in The House where he was fully at ease. Why on earth had he asked her to join him?
'I love horses,' she answered. Yes, thought Gresham, as so many women love horses — until they rear and bolt, or snort too close to a fine dress, or develop sores that need washing and dressing…
'Then come with me to the stables of The House,' he said, making it an order rather than a request. It would have been better if he had slept with her, he thought. Then she would have been just like all the others. Perhaps he ought to bed her, to prove to himself that she was. But he had given his word to her mother. In his arrogance and his youthfulness, he did not consider that she might not be willing to bed him.
The stables had always been a different world to Gresham. As a young boy when all else had failed he would come here, sometimes just to nestle in the corner of a stall, saying nothing, feeling the companionship of the animal. That strange smell of horse, part musty, part acrid, yet warm and comforting, the smell of a world without lies and deceit, a world where the boundaries were finite and understood. The scuff of a hoof, the sound of easy breath through nostrils. A horse knew what it was on earth to do.
They entered the stables as a grinning lad bowed and opened a door. The sunlight dappled the stalls, and the smell of fresh straw hit them as the light suddenly faded and became warmly encompassing. There was a wide path
