breeding. He had the status to quell the extra proud spirits of the other commanders. Was all lost? These commanders had won and held an Empire. There was huge skill and knowledge in their ranks. They would give him the military advice he would be so desperately in need of. Yet the challenge! Not the challenge of fighting. He was born to that. It was the challenge of marshalling over one hundred ships and ten thousand troops languishing in Lisbon harbour, every month's delay costing seven hundred thousand ducats.
He wrote again, of course, two days later. Useless though he knew it was, he felt he owed it to himself. And to history, if anyone ever bothered to read his laboured offering. He was more reasoned, this time, questioning the whole wisdom of the Enterprise. The sea was a fickle battleground. A storm could destroy the whole endeavour in an hour. As Sidonia understood it, the Duke of Parma was penned in behind shallows patrolled by the infamous Dutch fly-boats, waters no ship the Spanish possessed could travel. It did no good. Don Cristobel de Moura, the most influential of King Philip's secretaries, wrote back immediately.
We did not dare show His Majesty what you have written. God will see that the Armada is victorious.
Well, so he might, the Duke thought as he mounted his horse for the journey to Lisbon. Yet in his experience, God rarely made up for man's inadequacy, and there were very many inadequacies that needed to be dealt with before the Armada could hope to succeed.
On arrival in Lisbon the first thing the Duke of Medina Sidonia saw were great sackloads of paper being carted out of Santa Cruz's administrative headquarters. All the paperwork for the Armada. Invoices, bills of lading, lists of ships, charts, all vital to an invasion. It belonged personally to Santa Cruz, of course. There was no doubt about that. History and tradition dictated it was so. Sidonia called over the most sympathetic and charming of his secretaries, gave him clear instructions. Somehow those papers had to be retained and preserved, at all costs. The Duke was starting to realise that the actual fighting would be the easiest part of this endeavour.
And so the dominoes continued to fall. Cecil called for Gresham. It was their first meeting since the night Gresham had returned from sea.
'The Queen has pushed for negotiations with the Spanish forces in the Netherlands, and the Duke of Parma has agreed,' said Cecil. 'I can tell you now that the death of Santa Cruz has just been reported.'
What a surprise, thought Gresham. Mannion will be gutted.
'The death of Santa Cruz will throw the Spanish into confusion. We leave from Dover, for Ostend, immediately, in the hope that we can profit from that confusion. I have been allowed to join the party as an observer, as you expected.' Cecil's chest seemed to swell, 'In fact I have been asked to use my best endeavours to obtain the maximum amount of information on the military preparedness of the Netherlands.'
Gresham could not repress a smile. 'I'm sure your extensive military experience will be a wonderful asset to you in that task,' he said. 'In fact, you'll be acting as a spy. Welcome to the club.'
'A spy?' Cecil sniffed. 'An ambassador with eyes is how I prefer to think of it. Spies are employees, after all, paid for their work.' Cecil realised his mistake as soon as he had spoken, but it was too late.
'Really?' said Gresham, who had less need of money than anyone. 'Fancy that. If I'd realised that someone was meant to pay me I'd have asked for the money… After all, you can never have too much, can you?' Which might well have been the motto of the Cecil family, come to think of it. Gresham doubted that the magnificent palaces Lord Burghley had built and was building were afforded from whatever allowance the Queen made to him.
'In any event,' said Cecil, moving rapidly on, 'you have the excuse of seeking your… ward's fiancй, I gave you my word that I would facilitate your access to Lisbon and to the Netherlands. You may join my party. You will be listed as an adviser, a status little above a servant. But alone. The woman cannot come with you.'
'I wouldn't wish her to do so,' said Gresham. 'The Netherlands is a war zone. There's no certainty of finding her fiancй perhaps not even a reasonable chance. What I need to do there doesn't involve her. It does, however, need your expedition, as my cover.'
Cecil's lips turned up in distaste at the word 'cover'. 'It has cost me in credibility to include you in our party,' said Cecil. Already it was 'his' party, though as the mere son of a nobleman he was the least important member of it. 'So perhaps you may feel able to tell me, following our 'agreement', what you achieved — if anything — in Lisbon.'
'Something. Perhaps nothing. Not enough. As I said previously, it's better you do not know. Particularly as we're heading into a country ravaged by war where even the best-escorted parties can't be guaranteed safety from brigands.'
Cecil blanched slightly. 'I am sure it will not come to that.'
He returned to The House and Anna. She had had a wonderful time over the twelve days of Christmas, though she would never admit it to Gresham, and was glowing as a result. The glow turned to frost when she saw him. The chaperone looked more miserable by the minute.
Cecil was not his only reason for being in London. Gresham very much wished to attend a party hosted by Edmund Spenser, who seemed about to give birth to his own baby, a lengthy poem called 'The Faerie Queene'. It was the least glamorous of the events Anna and Gresham had been invited to, but Spenser was a true friend, and a true poet, so the event was worth dragging him away from Cambridge. Anna refused to talk to Gresham, but had softened towards George and talked to him with some animation, seemingly with complete trust. At an earlier soirйe the Earl of Essex had made a pass at her.
'It was appalling!' she said, clearly not at all appalled. 'He is such a handsome man, a favourite of the Queen and they tell me he is a bolted Earl. Yet he dresses so carelessly!'
'It's belted Earl actually,' said Gresham later, as they walked the Long Gallery of The House, 'and yes, he's deemed to be the most handsome of the lot.' George had left to go home, his face long. His elderly parents were about to arrive in London on one of their increasingly rare visits, and spoil his bachelor life.
Anna looked at him. 'I do not listen in to your conversations. I fail to see why you should listen to mine. It is probably unsafe for me to even be near you. The girls at Court, they say you are dangerous.'
Well, dangerous to one or two of their husbands, perhaps. What was a young man to do if a girl flung herself at you? It would be impolite to refuse. 'Not as dangerous as the Queen will be to you, if she thinks you're stealing the attentions of her latest young man. So what happened?' His curiosity overrode his distaste for this foreign creature.
'The Earl — Robert Devereux is he not? — danced with me for the first time, and then took the second dance and even the third. I know he had ladies for the second and third dances waiting for him. I saw, because they were most upset.' There was no sign that Anna had been upset on their behalf. 'And then, in the third dance, he whispered in my ear!'
Gresham paused, and looked at the girl. Why had she not flung herself at him? There was more control to her than he had given her credit for, Gresham realised. The pan might be boiling, as Mannion had insisted to his laughter, but the owner was managing to keep the lid on tight. Now he thought about it, this must be the first really beautiful girl who had not flung herself at him. Did he mind? Of course not. 'And what did he whisper?'
'What men always whisper,' Anna said simply. 'To go to bed with him.'
'So what did you do?' asked Gresham, despite himself.
'I told him that I was a virgin,' she answered simply. 'And more than that, I was a Catholic virgin. So that I could only go to bed with a man who would guarantee me an Immaculate Conception.'
Despite himself, Gresham burst out laughing. 'And his response?' he found himself asking.
'He burst out laughing, like you. Men are all the same. He said that great though he undoubtedly was he was not yet ready to be the father of Jesus.'
Good on him, thought Gresham, his respect for the Earl of Essex reluctantly increasing. Then the bleakness of his situation forced itself into his mind. Once, as a child, he had seen a flock of pigeons scatter up from the roof of The House, winging up towards the clouds. Then, suddenly, one of the pigeons had crumpled in the air, as if shot. Yet there was no man with a gun nearby, no archer trying the impossible task of killing a bird on the wing. The dead bird, transformed in an instant from a thing of beauty to something inert and lifeless, had plunged like lead to earth, landing with a soggy thump on the roof, dislodging two of the tiles by its impact. The still-warm flesh lay motionless, the tiles skittering down the length of the roof to tumble and smash into pieces on the hard ground below. So it was with Gresham's mood at present, as he remembered the bleak reality of his future, the gaiety of the moment crumpling like a dead bird. ‘I must leave,' said Gresham. 'I have to go to Flanders.'
To find Jacques Henri?' asked Anna.
'That's part of my excuse. If this damned man of yours exists, which I'm beginning to increasingly doubt. But it's not my real reason. And I can't take you with me. It's a war zone there, out of control. It's going to be difficult
