attackers' plan. Without the sudden drop in the wind's noise the dagger would have been plunged into Gresham's back, the first he knew of it the sharp, sudden agony and the drawing down of the blinds in his eyes. As it was he turned to see his enemy, the hand, with the dagger in it held high, was already descending. The man with a ragged beard and pock-marked face, teeth drawn back in a grin of concentration, a strangely incongruous pink tongue poking out between the misshapen teeth. A second figure was close behind, already starting to swing a huge cudgel at Mannion's head.
Some instinct made Gresham lunge forward, not pull back as most men would have done, and tuck his head down. He collided with the man, his head burying itself in the stinking woollen tunic. He was under the blow now, and the man tried to pull his arm back, redirect the dagger into Gresham's heart. With one hand Gresham grabbed the man's arm, while bringing his head up with a savage jerk under the man's chin. Gresham's hat was in the mud now, so bone met bone. The man's jaw snapped shut. There was a gurgling scream, and the arm Gresham was grasping suddenly flopped. His attacker had bitten off his tongue. Gresham flung the man away from him, directly in the path of the third man to emerge from the jennel. They were brave, or starving and made desperate by their hunger. There was another gurgling scream, and the first attacker slumped to the ground. From his stomach the tip of a blade poked through. The third attacker must have held his sword out before him, and Gresham had inadvertently thrown the first man back on to its point, impaling him on his friend. This attacker was a slight figure, dressed in a billowing cloak, close-shaven and with a wide, dark hat that hid his face. He placed a foot on the now dead body of his accomplice, sought to drag his sword out of the body. Then his hat went flying, and a startled expression lit his face, before he toppled forward, hand still clutching the embedded sword. Mannion had killed the second man, taken his vast cudgel and swung it into the back of his head with massive force, crushing bone and brain in an explosion of blood. The two Englishmen stood, panting slightly. Gresham had not even taken his sword out of its scabbard.
'Thieves?' he gasped to Mannion.
Mannion put his foot out, rolled over the body of the third attacker. It was clear he was of a different class, his clothing breathing wealth, his complexion clear. And there was his sword, of course. Mannion bent down, withdrew it from the body with a sickening sucking sound. It was immaculate except where it was now stained with blood, the hilt finely decorated.
'Spanish,' said Mannion, taking in both the sword and the dead man. He used the tip of the sword to part the man's doublet. There was a gleam of gold. With the delicacy of a surgeon, Mannion let the sword blade pull on the precious chain, revealing the top of a crucifix. 'Not thieves,' said Mannion. 'Hungry, desperate local men — look how thin they both are — probably hired by this one here, who chooses to lead from behind, with his sword out and ready in case anything went wrong.'
'Damn!' said Gresham.
'Damn right,' said Mannion. 'This wasn't Walsingham, or Cecil. Or the Queen. You've got up everyone's nose, haven't you? It was Spain as wanted you dead tonight.'
The street was empty, the fight almost silent, apart from two gurgling, blood-stopped screams, the greatest noise the weight of their own breathing. They' hauled the three bodies roughly back into the jennel. Gresham tried not to think about the starving dog and what it would do to the bodies.
The others had gone to bed when they returned to the inn, with the exception of Cecil. A cloak clutched round him, he was huddled in front of what little was left of the fire. He glanced suspiciously at Gresham.
'Taking the air?' he asked, the irony thick in his voice. 'You might as well yell a challenge out for someone to kill you, to walk these streets at night! Or did you have someone you needed to see?'
Sometimes the truth was the best weapon. 'Someone did try to kill us, as it happened. Three of them. And one of them a Spaniard, a gentleman by the look of him.'
Cecil blanched, his thin hands giving an involuntary tug at the thick cloak. 'A Spaniard, you say? Are you sure?'
The surprise in Cecil's voice was unmistakable. Gresham doubted even he could counterfeit it.
Mannion was wearing something that looked more like a tarpaulin than a cloak. He drew it aside, and tossed the dead Spaniard's sword onto the rough trestle table that was set back from the fire. Spanish steel was renowned throughout Europe, their swords the best. The intricate working of the hilt was unmistakable. A man's sword was as accurate a guide to his breeding as his clothing, and told the viewer as much about him.
'It's not just his weapon,' said Gresham, flinging off his own cloak and settling by the fire, reaching out his hands to its thin warmth. 'Clothes, appearance. And this.' He tossed a purse onto the table. Cecil looked at it, reached for it, fingered the coins inside. 'Spanish money,' said Gresham.
'But this is in breach of our immunity. No one, no one attacks a member of a diplomatic mission!' Cecil breathed. 'In political terms it is the equivalent of blasphemy.'
'Then we have some unbelievers in our proximity,' said Gresham. He noted Cecil's care for his and Mannion's safety. Or, rather, the complete absence of any such care.
'Do you have an explanation for this attempt?'
No, thought Gresham, I do not. Or at least, not yet. Nor will I find one until you cease your prattling and I am allowed to think. 'Welcome to Walsingham's world,' he said to Cecil. 'There's no diplomatic immunity in our world. The enemy don't wear a certain uniform to tell you they are your enemy. The knife can come as easily from the back as from the front.'
Cecil still seemed deeply offended at the perceived insult to English diplomacy. If Cecil ever came to real power, he would deal with ambassadors and not spies, thought Gresham.
Their problem was that they seemed to be dealing with no one. Finally, when they were reduced to despair, they were allowed their first meeting with Parma himself. Cecil was scornful in his despatch to his father, and the rather more formal one to the Queen; The room was full of poor, battered furniture, hardly better heated than their foul lodging, too small for the assembly gathered there. Gresham thought differently. This was a soldier's meeting. Parma would hardly notice the decorations or the fittings of where he met, he who had destroyed so many towns and cities. Meetings for Parma, Gresham thought, were not about gilded chairs, or precedence. They were business. Or was he clever enough to realise that by holding his meeting in such a poor room he disarmed the diplomats he met, put them off balance?
The ambassadors droned their formalities and Parma's intelligent eyes flicked between them as if measuring their worth. The chair he sat in was ornately carved, but across the back, on the left hand side, there was a blackened, circular indent six inches or more long, as if someone had lain a red-hot poker there and let it eat into the wood.
Within minutes Parma had chosen Derby as the real leader of the party, as well as its designated leader, taking him by the arm, pouring his wine himself. And he paid attention to Cecil as well, the man there simply because of his father's name. But the man tasked by the Queen, as Gresham had found out, to write to her daily on the progress of the negotiations.
Gresham received the merest of passing nods, despite a warm introduction from Derby. An hour? Two hours? They had waited so long for this meeting) yet such conversation as there was seemed trivial, meaningless. Gresham lost track of the time. Finally, the delegation bowed out, their eyes stinging. No peat. On this fire, but damp wood, so that their clothes would smell for months of the slightly rancid stink of smoke from wet timber. The tap on the shoulder came as the others were ushered to separate rooms to wash before the dinner Parma had organised.
‘You have a labour of love to conclude, I believe?' It was Count d'Aremberg, one of Parma's closest advisers. He was smiling. How typical of his master, the smile said, to consider the hunt for a missing fiancй in the midst of considering the fate of nations. 'The Duke can spare you a few minutes, before the formalities, to discuss your search, and report on your initial findings.'
Gresham was ushered back into the conference room, through an arras and into a small back room with furniture no better than in the main hall. The Duke of Parma, General in Chief of His Most Catholic Majesty's Army in the Netherlands, looked calmly at Henry Gresham. They were alone.
'Are they genuine?' he asked, with no preamble, 'these two wise men and these five or six fools they have sent to negotiate with me?'
'They're genuine, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'in that they truly wish for peace. England is by far the weaker combatant. And they'll remain so while they think there's still hope, though in their hearts they don't believe you'll make peace or even that you have the power to do so.'
