ignored.
'Your own idea! Very good, very good! Your own idea!' Was Walsingham barking or speaking?
‘Is it good, Sir Thomas, that a man can forge his Queen's wishes? Offer her crown to another Prince? That an upstart can forge a letter giving away a crown!' asked the Queen, angry, venom in her voice.
'It is undoubtedly better if it is done without her knowledge, Your Majesty,' said the old man. 'As it is better that sometimes you do not know many things that have been done in your name. But most of all, better if it means the Duke of Parma is still in Ghent rather than laying siege to London and Your Majesty's person.'
There was silence after that.
'And remarkable,' said Walsingham, 'if it was done by a stripling who far from being rewarded for it was likely to end up here. He was indeed meant to tell Parma that the number of Dutch fly-boats was far in excess of his estimates. That his invasion barges would be swamped by them. Those were my orders to him.'
'Wouldn't have worked,' mumbled Gresham. 'Man like that, sees overwhelming odds as a challenge. Made him fight even harder. Needed more.' How strange that as well as being ferociously thirsty he also felt extraordinarily sick. 'Please,' said Gresham, 'I'm very sorry, Your Majesty, but I think I am about to be sick. Could you please start the torture now before I disgrace myself?' Dignity. After all, it was all one had.
There was a very long silence.
'Cut him free,' said the Queen.
The jailer was even more nervous, rubbing his hands together, bowing and scraping. 'I'd rather not cut the ropes, Your Majesty, as it means so much work threading new ones through the ratchets, and no little expense to replace all that rope. You see, you can't use them again if…'
'Cut that man free now,' said the Queen in an icy tone, 'or you will be the first person to test the new ropes through the ratchets.'
A knife appeared from nowhere, and suddenly the stretched figure of Gresham slumped amid a tangle of rope.
The agony of returning circulation was pain enough to send a man mad, as if white hot needles were being pushed through every vein and artery. He rubbed at his arms, could not stand up, did not know if he was allowed to.
Walsingham's voice cut through the thick air of the chamber. 'Your servant told us that you believed I was dead. Apparently the Spanish ambassador responded rather too enthusiastically to a report that I had succumbed to my illnesses, and sent a message to Parma.' Another stool had appeared, and Walsingham was seated on it, like a father by the bedside of his poorly child.
'Has my servant been tortured?' asked Gresham hurriedly.
‘I think he had received a few blows before we reached his cell. The man who gave them has a broken leg and a broken arm. A remarkable man, your servant. He said you were the biggest fool in Christendom because I was the only person who knew the truth and the only person who could bail you out, and still you went forward on your mission believing me dead. Yet he stayed with you.'
'He lacks sophistication, and beauty,' said Gresham, smiling slowly for the first time in days. The pain was easing now. It was simply agony, rather than unbearable agony.
'This man sought to offer your throne to a Catholic' Cecil's voice was higher-pitched than normal, his body seeming even more hunched, drawn in on itself.
‘I did so to stop a Catholic ruling over England,' said Gresham simply. She was bound to kill him. Even if only to stop the story getting out.
The Queen hated any talk of death, had banished courtiers for seeming even to hint at it. It was the Queen who spoke next. The tone was harsh, condemnatory.
'Why did you risk your life? Your honour? You had been set up as a spy for Spain. Only one man knew the truth. With him dead, as you thought, you lose your lands, your wealth, the respect of your countrymen, everything a man lives for. Why did you go on?'
'I…' Gresham hunted desperately for the words. 'Your Majesty, you have brought peace to this country. There would be no peace in England under a Catholic King. And if I needed further persuasion, I saw the bodies of ordinary people, half-eaten by wolves, outside the walls of Ostend. I met the Duke of Parma, a great man, a great Prince and a great leader, and spending his whole life plotting the death and destruction of fellow men, turning the country he fights for into a desert.' He paused, trying to roll all his half-understood feelings into one tight ball of words. 'Sometimes a person has to take a very great risk, if he is to achieve a very great reward.'
'You took an unpardonable risk in offering my Crown to another, Henry Gresham. An unpardonable risk. A treasonous risk.'
Well, that was that. There was no jury in the bowels of the Tower of London. And no justice. Suddenly the tiredness hit him, his mind started to dissolve, his eyelids pressing as if a ton weight was forcing them to close. From somewhere he heard his own voice. 'So be it, Your Majesty. What's done can't be changed. Yet 1 acted for what I believed to be the best. I betrayed none of my countrymen. I beg your mercy to grant me a clean death. Give me my dignity, if I can't have my life.'
'Fetch me a sword.' There was a peremptory bark in the Queen's voice. A darkened blade was hurriedly pulled off the wall, a sword of a design that had been fashionable fifty years ago. Yet for all its dullness, the blade was sharp, Gresham saw. Heated until red hot and the flat of the blade placed on human flesh? Forced into men's bodies to tear and gnaw? There was only one reason for a sword in a room such as this.
He felt the blade prick into his neck, tensed himself. A moment of pain, and then blessed relief. Would they bury him here, under the stones of the Tower, he wondered, or bury him in the light and good soil?
The sword lifted, and touched one shoulder. It lifted again, and hung poised. It was heavy, but for all her age the Queen seemed to feel no discomfort with its weight. Why was her face blurring and the image of Henry VIII seeming to impose itself on her face?
'If this sword descends on your other shoulder, you are Sir Henry Gresham. The first to be knighted thus in this desperate place.' For a moment the Queen's hatred of where she stood showed clear, and then it vanished. 'Yet if it bites into your neck, then you are indeed the dead man you have thought you were these many weeks. The choice is yours. Do you give me your word that you will speak of these events to no one while I live, and to no one for the term of your life, howsoever long it might be, regarding your offer of my crown to the Duke of Parma? Do you give me your word that there is no written record of these events? And do you give me your solemn word that if you believe that servant of yours, who clearly knows all of your secrets, is ever likely to tell anyone then he will die at your own hand?'
'Of course,' said Gresham. What need had he to tell others? And Mannion would commit suicide rather than betray his master and his friend.
'And do you give your solemn oath that despite your hatred of my little pygmy here, you will not pursue him in vengeance but rather will work with him for my greater need if and when I so command it?'
That was harder. Far harder. Too hard to justify a life? 'I do so swear.'
The silence stretched into eternity.
'Then you are Sir Henry Gresham.' The sword touched his other shoulder, with intense lightness. 'I will forgive you for not standing. Yet you may kiss my hand.'
He struggled to get himself upright. No one offered to help. All those present could sense the importance of his doing it himself. Gasping, weary beyond belief, he found himself sitting on the edge of the rack, that foul thing of torture. He bent his head, and kissed the cold, white hand of the Queen. She nodded, matter of factly, and turned to Cecil.
'Your time will come, Robert Cecil. You have a usefulness for me, and before you protest your loyalty, I know it. Your loyalty is based on your seeing me as the route to power and influence. His…' she gestured to Gresham, swaying gently, 'is based on something different. Together, your hatred binds you to me. I can and will use that unity of opposites. And as I have bound Sir Henry to swear, so do I you. You will cease to pursue this man with your vengeance, and will work with him for my greater need if I so command it. Do you so swear?'
'I swear, Your Majesty.' Cecil knew when to shut up as well, thought Gresham with a strange, sneaking admiration. It sounded as if he was the one who needed the water now.
'Remember,' said the Queen, who had been declared illegitimate on the execution of her mother, looking appraisingly at Gresham, 'there is need in the world for bastards. And as for you, Robert Cecil,' she said, turning finally to him, 'it was not Henry Gresham who first called you my little pygmy. It was your own father.'
