They were heading to a play commanded by the Queen, at Greenwich. It would be a comedy, Gresham knew. Her Royal Rotten Teeth would not contemplate a history or a tragedy, which would inevitably mention death. And probably a bad, anodyne and totally silly comedy, as that was the way the tastes of the old lady seemed now to be set.
The boat bit into a wave, and the oarsmen rocked back slightly in their seats.
'Cecil's set us up,' Gresham said bluntly. Better the truth. Better to let those who loved him see how stupid their love and loyalty were. 'You, me and Willoughby. We're over a barrel. I'm sorry. It's my fault for not seeing it coming.'
Gresham looked at Mannion who, to his surprise, grinned at him.
'Maybe. But I bet.'e ain't seen what you'll chuck back. You'll think o' something.'
Everything humanity didn't want went into the Thames, and it was unusual for Gresham to think of it as pure. Yet in comparison with the politics of Queen Elizabeth's Court, it seemed pure beyond belief.
'Still, I don't like it,' Mannion rumbled on. 'If ever you thinks you understands something Cecil's doing, it's the sign you've got it wrong. It's never simple, with that bastard. You missing a trick, are you?'
'Almost certainly,' said Gresham, 'but that's part of the game, isn't it?'
They were within sight of Greenwich now, its flags flapping in the brisk wind. It had always been one of the better Palaces. It held a special place in Gresham's memory. He had not lost his virginity there. That had gone a lot earlier, in a back alley near St Paul's. Instead he had lost something rather more important: his heart, making love to a girl who, for a brief moment, he had fooled himself into thinking he had fallen in love with. Now, in his dotage, he knew he had only ever been in love with one girl. And she had been a Spaniard who had chosen to reject him and marry a Frenchman. Still was happily married to the Frenchman, as it happened, with five children, three of them boys. He paid someone to report to him on her, though he knew he would never see her again. Did Anna ever think about him? He doubted it, yet she had chosen to give him her virginity when she had already decided to marry her Frenchman.
Gresham's mind was churning, and with more than the memory of puppy-fat romances. Mannion was right, of course. Cecil's plans were never simple. His only weakness was that the more complex his machinations, the more he believed that no others could penetrate their complexity. Cecil's Achilles heel was his deep-seated belief, sometimes hidden even from himself, that he was the cleverest man alive.
'Ever watched a fish in a net?' asked Mannion innocently. The river was passing them by at a satisfying speed. Mannion had once been a galley slave. He said it meant that watching other people row was one of his greatest pleasures.
'What?' said Gresham, his train of thought interrupted.
'Thrashes around, don't it?' said Mannion. 'Gets itself tangled more and more. Well, us, we're in that right bastard's net. We thrash around, we'll lose it. Clever thing is to stay calm. There ain't a net made that hasn't got a weak bit in it. We got to wait, that's all. Stay calm. Find the weak bit. And swim out through it.'
'Thank you,' said Gresham, his voice laced with irony. 'Exactly what I was thinking.'
As it had been, actually. As he so often did, Mannion had put into simple terms what Gresham worked out by a more tortuous and self-denigrating route. Gresham was in Cecil's net, and moaning about it would help him and his friends no more than it would help the fish. And, unlike the fish, they would need to think them-, selves out of this net.
There was always a way out! There always was!
The oarsmen were happy because they were well paid, well fed and well clothed. There was no comparison between being a boatman for Sir Henry Gresham and the back-breaking tedium of a peasant's life. No labourer who bent over to pluck a weed received a cheer from passers-by, as Gresham's oarsmen had just received a cheer for their fine appearance from an Alderman and his whole family. But perhaps the eight lusty men who rowed Henry Gresham's boat and the Alderman with his fat wife and two fat children rowed by two sweating journeymen, shared one thing. They were going to the play. The sense of excitement was uncontrollable, one reason why the authorities frowned on the theatre so much. They claimed that the theatres were breeding grounds for the Plague, but it was the plague of ideas spawned by the players, their living pictures of Kings overthrown and rebellion unleashed, that they were most scared of.
As if marking it as a forbidden pleasure, the playhouses were largely outside the boundaries of the old city, one wall of which was the River Thames. Situated on the south bank, beyond the control of the City Fathers, they stood side by side with the string of brothels that everyone knew were owned by the Bishop of London. Visiting a play held at one of the royal Palaces was a different kind of excitement, though Gresham often thought that the only difference between sex from a whore and sex from a lady-in-waiting was that the whore told you how much it would cost beforehand.
'Funny thing, isn't it?' said Mannion, who liked nothing better than a good play, preferably with a horrible murder in the opening scene. He was reading Gresham's mind again. 'The bloody authorities'll close a theatre down at the drop of a sneeze, yet if 'er 'Ighness invites any one of 'em to a show they'll be there in their finery quicker than an 'are in March.'
He glanced back to where the Alderman's boat was bobbing in the swell, falling rapidly behind. His fat wife was starting to complain that she had known all along it was too rough to go by boat.
Judicious use of Gresham's money had secured them an empty slot on the jetty that fed the Palace, by the simple practice of parking a wherry there four or five hours earlier. As the wherrymen caught sight of the Gresham livery they backed neatly out, the larger of the two men grinning at Gresham and doffing his cap.
Gresham's men started to edge the boat into the vacant space; the jetty overflowing with boats and people, the boatmen concerned about their fine paint, the men and women far more concerned about their fine velvets, silk and satins. Amid the chaos, a ragged-arsed little boy stood gawping at all the fine folk, thumb in his mouth, one of the human flotsam and jetsam of the river. Half an hour either side of this particular rush hour and a guard would have moved him on, but now no one had time or energy.
There was a shout from behind them, and Gresham and Mannion turned instantly. A huge boat, eight oars a side and more like a royal barge than a private vessel, was charging full ahead into the space reserved for Gresham, seemingly oblivious to the smaller boat that was already halfway to the spot. At its stern and on its mast flew the proud pennant of the Earl of Essex, the rowers dressed in the tangerine-coloured livery that the family favoured. The Earl himself sat languidly on a throne at the stern, talking to a man whose appearance would have made a peacock feel underdressed, oblivious to the chaos his men were about to cause.
'CLEAR THE WAY THERE! CLEAR THE WAY FOR THE EARL OF ESSEX!'
The man at the front of Essex's battleship was yelling at the top of his voice, and smaller boats were scurrying out of his way like ants, Essex's oarsmen not letting up as they raced to the jetty; if anything seeming to row even harder. It was a neat trick, if you could do it, to row for home as if chased by the Devil and then dig the oars in hard at the last moment and halt the boat before it splintered itself and the landing stage. Whether this lot were good enough to do it remained to be seen.
There was an outward civilisation in Elizabeth's England, but it ran only skin deep. The place at the jetty was clearly Gresham's. Essex was equally clearly trying to take it. Duals were fought for less. Honour was at stake, and reputation. Essex chose that moment to look up, casually, as if by accident, and his eyes locked on to Gresham's. He smiled, and waved a hand. It was a clear challenge.
He is enjoying this, thought Gresham. He has no need to fight for this poxy little mooring, except that it is a battle of wills and more exciting than the river on a normal day.
Gresham's men had not yet shipped their oars. There was time enough, just, for them to dip the blades into the muddy water and reverse out of the path of the Goliath heading at speed towards them. Most men would have done just that, if only to save their skins. Few who used the river, and even fewer sailors could swim. But Gresham's men were different. The river was a dangerous place, and they had to do more dangerous things on it following his orders than many liveried servants would have dreamt of.
Ramming. For all the social niceties of this situation, this was ramming. It was the best way of making a quick kill on the river. Head for the enemy, smash into their side, hole their boat, jump on board, grab whatever you wanted and back off to leave the evidence to sink behind you. Gresham's men were trained for this. He did not need to look at Mannion, or speak to him. It was at times like this that their intuitive understanding paid dividends.
'Fend off to stern.'
Gresham spoke in what seemed a quiet voice, but it carried to his men, to whom it was a familiar order, and
