'Shut up,' said George. 'Firstly, you can't stop me. I've got my licence from the Queen — and a pretty sum' father had to pay for it — and secondly, I'm superb cover for you, second only to the girl. People think I'm just a big buffoon, and they'd think Walsingham had lost his roof timbers and his slates if he was using me as a spy.'
He had a point, Gresham conceded reluctantly, though he was not prepared to concede just yet. He knew his real objection; he was fearful that George would come to harm. Why was it so much easier to contemplate risk for oneself than contemplate it for those one loved? It was another reason for loving no one. They waited for Anna to appear.
Gresham was dressed in a deep, lustrous black doublet, slashed through to reveal the silver silk lining, the black finely embroidered in raised stitching. Some people wore a ruff as if it were a simple irritant; Gresham wore his as if it were simply an extension of his beard. The doublet seemed to emphasise the broad shoulders, the narrow hips, while any young male courtier would have died for the line of his leg and calf in the superb silken hose. Many of the other young men there would have extravagant, high hats, in the full flush of fashion. Gresham's was flatter than the fashion, a thin brim and small top no higher than his head cut from the same material as his doublet. He wore little jewellery; the single diamond on his ring finger, set in a simple setting, alone was worth all the gold and jewels worn by three or four of the wealthiest courtiers. It had been one of the few luxuries his father had allowed himself, and had never left his hand. It reassured the bankers and money lenders with whom he negotiated, he had used to say, to know that he had collateral at his finger tips.
There was another rattle of English from deep within, another crash.
'Should I go and sort it out?' asked Gresham.
'No,' said George, 'leave 'em to fight it out. Women have their own ways of doing these things. You wait. She and that maid'll come out in a minute or two as if they were best friends.'
Minutes later the maid flung a door open as if the Queen had come to The House. In some respects she had. The vision that was Anna stepped forth, and even Mannion wondered where his breath had gone for a fleeting moment. The deep blue of her eyes seemed to be echoed in the equally deep, vivid royal blue of her dress, picked out with so many pearls that at least one ocean must have felt denuded. Her hair had clearly been done by some goddess temporarily on loan from Olympus, the cap not containing but rather complementing it. Her perfect figure was somehow emphasised by the huge sweep of the dress out from her hips, the glorious billows of the sleeves done in some lighter, dancing material that still man-aged to match the colouring of the whole. God knows how they had got the dress ready in time. It could take a year for a good dressmaker to produce such a work of art, and the cost of a Court dress was staggering. But money talked, a fact Gresham recognised as much as sometimes he felt revolted by it, he who had carefully been deprived of money at a crucial time in his youth, left to fend without it and so learn its value.
'I think your goods have packaged well, is it not so?' asked Anna, making a polite curtsey to Gresham. It was the same cool, infuriating creature, but there was an excitement to her that even her self-control could not hide.
'Did you break all of Mary's limbs, or just selected ones?' asked Gresham cuttingly. She bridled, stifling the movement halfway through and instead drawing herself up to her full height.
'Sometimes you are a stupid man, and this is a surprise for someone who is so rich. Mary is a very good maid and we are friends of best,' replied Anna primly. 'Girls do not talk to each other in the same way as silly men.'
The tone was that of a monarch reprimanding the lowliest of servants. Gresham suddenly realised he was being dismissed as a person of no importance. He found it strangely annoying. It was alright on a deck or where men were in control. Here it was different.
She was passionate, the girl was, Mannion reckoned. It had taken him some while to sense it. Sometimes beautiful women were like alabaster pots, marble, made of a material that somehow you could never warm up. But this one, though it was a real good coating of alabaster, there was fire in her belly alright, though she hid it. She was young enough even not to recognise it for what it was. Virgin? He reckoned so. You could tell. But it was only a matter of time.
They were arguing now, again.
'It's 'best of friends','said Gresham.
'Exactly. That is what I said.'
'No, you said 'friends of best'.'
'I did not!'
'Why do you always deny things that are the truth?'
'I do not always deny things that are the truth.' Anna paused for thought. George's jaw had still not returned from the floor where it had dropped on first sight of her, and the obviously nonplussed man had tickled her vanity. 'I sometimes do this, but only when it is necessary. And with you it is often necessary, because you are often very pompous and talk to me like an old man, when in fact you are still a boy and hardly older than me.'
'I think I'll take Edmund Spenser's parakeet to Lisbon instead of you. The one he got from the Indies? It's more beautiful than you, and when you want to shut it up you just put a blanket over its cage,' said Gresham. Gresham and Spenser the poet had long been friends.
'Oh yes! So now you want me to climb under your blanket, is that it?'
'I never said…'
So they had moved from a rather strange formality in their dealings into bickering like an old married couple. Mannion decided to block it out, but was vaguely aware that the pair of them kept it up all the way to the Palace. God help them if this went on all the way Lisbon.
He knew that he had to go and see Walsingham. He both dreaded it and, if he was being honest with himself, felt real fear.
'I hear your… ward's admission to the Court went very well,' said Walsingham, no hint of tension in his voice.
'If by that, sir, you mean that she was made several offers of marriage that night, and rather more offers for shorter-lived relationships, then the evening was certainly a success,' said Gresham, who had found himself ignored more and more as Anna had taken the floor and the hearts of several young men and not a few old enough to know better.
'My Lord,' said Gresham, who presently felt unable to engage in idle chit-chat, 'I need to know if you ordered my death at sea.' Well, Gresham had never asked a question quite so directly before. The only sign of surprise was a slightly raised eyebrow. Yet even that from Walsingham was the equivalent of a heart attack from another man.
'And why would you think I had done so?'
He had not denied it! Something came near to cracking in Gresham's heart. He could handle any man, even the Queen. Yet of all men, Walsingham was the one who he felt least able to defend himself against. Briefly Gresham explained what had happened, the lethally incriminating evidence planted on him.
Walsingham gazed in silence out of the window for several minutes after Gresham had finished. From far away came shouts of children playing in the Thames, risking their death of cold. It had been a tiresome ride out to Hammersmith and then on to Barnes. Finally he turned to Gresham.
'Welcome to your rite of passage. You are familiar with the phrase? It is when a young man is set a task, or faces one, that defines his move from child to adult.'
'I don't understand,' said Gresham, floundering.
'As a child, you could ask a question such as you have asked of me and expect an answer that would either put your fears to rest or give them cause. I suggest that if you analyse your own feelings, you will be responding now as a man. As a man, you will know that were I to deny having issued your death warrant it could just as easily be a lie as the truth. The answer, therefore, serves no meaningful purpose. A few simple words of denial do not mean you can afford to ignore the possibility that I might be seeking your death. You will have to guard against that as a possibility whatever, from now on, if you wish to survive — and you, Henry Gresham, have a finely developed instinct for survival. It is the realisation that there are no easy answers that distinguish a child from a man.'
Gresham knew the truth of what was being said even as Walsingham spoke, knew that he could never again have total trust in this man just as he fought against that realisation.
'As it happens,' said Walsingham, 'I did not arrange for that commission from Spain to be forged or found. It irritates me that someone sought to kill one of my agents. Yet you will be ill-advised to take comfort from my words.'
