A little girl was squatting by the roadside, rough shift drawn up over her scraggy knees, peeing into the dust with her thumb firmly stuck in her mouth. Her eyes were wide, transfixed by the sight of the two beautiful ladies and the handsome man.
'Have I just met the Queen of England?' asked Anna, who appeared to be standing upright but was actually leaning against the bulk of Triumph, exhausted. It was a dangerous thing to do with a horse, but Triumph seemed resigned to being used as a leaning post.
'It's amazing how quickly it changes from being a matter of excitement to something to be avoided at almost all costs,' said Gresham. He turned to Mannion. 'Did she try to kill me?'
'You wouldn't know if she had,' said Mannion.
They rode back to The House.
The others, the outsiders, thought that the plottings and the machinations of Sir Francis Walsingham were concerned with the overthrow of monarchs, the sowing of discord and the undermining of states. How wrong they were. He had only ever sought to bolster and confirm one state, the England of Queen Elizabeth. He had chosen her from the outset. The Protestant Queen. How could any thinking man make any different choice? He was aware of his innate homosexuality, aware how men of his kind were prone to worship powerful women as icons. Yet it was not his sexual urges, as much under control as the rest of him, that had driven him, but something altogether more logical. He had seen the vanities, the arrogance, the corruption and the decadence that was Rome and its religion. He had fled to Padua when Queen Mary, in a bungled succession, had tried to impose on Englishmen the Catholicism they had learned to do without. He had shuddered as the news of the burnings reached him, known that the true heir of Henry VIII, and the best man in the country, was Elizabeth. He had thrown his weight behind her from the outset, given his fortune to the support of her monarchy, given her information to counter the troops that the wealth of the Spanish and the French enabled them to have. Well, Elizabeth had reigned for twenty-nine years now, and Walsingham thanked his Protestant God that he had been spared this long, to enter into his final battle for the continued reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Pinpricks, Walsingham thought as he gazed unseeing through the mullioned window, the servant clearing the remnants of his solitary meal at noon. That was all that he had managed so far, pinpricks, important, but in the final count little more than that. He would have to strike harder and deeper, not just at the Armada, but at the whole concept of the Enterprise of England, as his spies told him it had now been christened. But how to do it?
Then there was that damn fool Burghley, as if he did not have enough to worry about. The Queen's long-term ally was increasingly deaf, suffering from gout and losing his edge. What had Burghley said when they had met the Queen? That her vessels should, must be cut down as soon as possible, skeleton crews only, to save money. 'Two thousand, four hundred and thirty-three pounds, eighteen shillings and fourpence!' the old fool had intoned, as if it were 'some magic catechism instead of the sum the Queen would save by reducing the Navy to half-manning over the winter. 'Two thousand, four hundred and thirty-three pounds, eighteen shillings andfourpence’ he had repeated, saying the figure with all the pride of a midwife holding up the first-born male child. The King of Spain could launch his ships at any time, was fanatic enough to take even the mad risk of sailing in winter. And if he did? If his vessels got through? With even five thousand soldiers he could hold a decent town, even somewhere such as the Isle of Wight, and either advance from there in the Spring or hold it until Parma's troops could be ferried over. There was nothing to stop them, except those ships. If Burghley had his way, would it be the first time that, a country had been sold for two thousand four hundred and thirty-three pounds, eighteen shillings and fourpence?
I will die with my mind as sharp as the pains that afflict me, vowed Walsingham. The irony of the situation hit him then, perhaps for the first time. We are all of us ill and dying, he thought, the men playing this great game for the survival of a country, what the religion and the philosophy of the world will be for the next hundred, two hundred or even five hundred years. King Philip of Spain is sixty-six years old, his circulation failing, Walsingham thought, an age which would make him a mythical, almost God-like figure in any English village. The Marquis of Santa Cruz, commander of the fleet, was spitting blood if Walsingham's informants were to be relied upon, though not fast enough. Recalde of Spain was sixty-two, the same age as Santa Cruz. Burghley was a failing sixty-seven, Elizabeth herself fifty-four. Parma, he thought. The Duke of Parma. The youngest of all the players, on the Spanish or the English side. Was it his youth that made Parma the greatest threat to England?
In the final count, it might all depend on his throw of the dice with Parma. Walsingham was well aware that the prize was not just the sovereignty of England, not just his own life, which would soon be forfeit anyway, but his honour, perhaps even his place in history.
Chapter 7
September, 1587 London; Lisbon
Has it crossed your mind how dangerous this jaunt you're planning to Lisbon is?' asked George. 'And just how many games do you think you can play at the same time? Agent, double agent, dammit, even triple agent? At times even I don't know what side you're on!'
Gresham chose to respond only to the first part of the question. 'I'm on my own side. And is it more dangerous than being in a rowing boat fired at by cannon from a Spanish galley?'
'About the same, I reckon,' said George. 'In fact, I'm starting to think I'd rather be back on the boat. At least there we knew who the enemy was.'
'There's an invasion coming,' said Gresham almost dreamily. 'I can feel it in my bones. And that invasion, once it touches these shores, could act like a fuse and trigger every sect, every family and every person who's ever lusted after power… and all we have between us and chaos are a few ships who've never worked as a fleet… wouldn't the real danger be to do nothing?'
They were walking in the Long Gallery of The House, an expanse of polished panelling hung with the very best of Sir Thomas Gresham's paintings and tapestries. It was cool there, despite the long line of windows and the slanting, late-summer sunlight streaming through, creating alternate pools of light and dark along its length. The Queen had demanded a price for licensing Henry Gresham to travel to Lisbon: that he formally present Anna to her at Court. It was unusual for the Queen to be in London in the summer. She preferred to go on progress then, bankrupting her nobles and saving herself a small fortune in the upkeep of the Court. It was the continuing uncertainty surrounding the Armada, which some said was ready to sail despite the damage of Cadiz, that kept the Queen in London. Old fox that she was, she knew perfectly well that if Philip came knocking on her door London was the place for her to be, not out in the sticks being fawned on by an ageing Lord presenting her with endless poems written by someone else praising her eternal beauty.
'I don't know what it is with you,' said George. 'You just can't keep it simple, can you? What do you do with a young man who gets caught up in all this spying business! This double and treble agent stuff! When you should have been doing normal things like chasing girls and drinking yourself stupid!' He paused for a moment. 'Mind, to be fair, you have done those as well. Anyway, my guess is you'll get a knife in your gut the minute we land in Lisbon. From one side or the other.'
There was a crash from a room nearby, a wail and a torrent of rapid English. Gresham flinched, confused. Anna was telling her maid to hurry up, and doing so by hurling a rather fine ceramic pot of pins at the nearest wall. Pots cost money. So did maids, for that matter. He hoped it was only the pot that was broken. In front of him, apart from her obvious excitement in the stables, he had never seen anything except cool control. Had he missed something? Whatever was going on next door was from a very different person to the one he thought he knew.
'Well,' said Gresham, wrenching his mind back to his conversation with George, 'You know the argument. You disguise yourself one of two ways — you hide what you are, or you tell everyone what you are. The girl's fiancй is based in Lisbon. I'm her guardian. It's perfectly reasonable for me to want to fulfil my word to her dying mother. And by getting permission from the Governor General and the Queen to make the visit, by doing it in the highest possible profile, they'll think only a madman would make such a noise about a visit when he's actually come to spy.'
'I agree with the madman bit,' said Mannion.
'And I'm coming with you,' said George..
'You!' said Gresham. 'You can't…'
