He prided himself that none of his true feelings showed as she arrived a full ten minutes after what was reasonable. He turned, and nodded formally to her.
She prided herself that none of her true feelings showed as she arrived, desperately wishing she had had time to put at least the tiniest smidgeon of powder to her face and neck.
Well, the stick insect he had picked up as a child from the side of a muddy pond was no stick insect now, thought Gresham. No wonder she turned heads wherever she went. She was a fine crop to be harvested by some suitable young man, and the sooner he arranged it the better: for her and for him. Though God knew how you organised such things. Bess Raleigh would know, must know. In the meantime, he needed her. Please, God, if you are there, just this once, make her do what I want…
He had written a fine speech in his head, but he looked at her and gave up. His conversations with Cecil and with the Queen had contained very real threats of death and ruin, and he sensed danger in his relationship with Essex. And these were threats he had failed to see coming! A sudden wave of tiredness swept over him, like the water closing over the head of a drowning man. He looked at her.
'I need your help.'
It was as simple as that. For a fleeting moment he appeared vulnerable, rather like a brave little boy who had lost his parents and was standing in the market place determined not to show his fright.
'I need you to do something for me which will undoubtedly be uncomfortable and… and which might even be dangerous, perhaps.'
If he failed in his mission for Cecil or for the Queen he would be ruined and Jane cast back onto the streets at best, and at worst hacked to pieces for the edification of the mob. And he had a growing sense of dissolution, of impending terror. Was England about to be plunged into civil war? Would the four horsemen be unleashed on England? Whatever the answer, it lay in the Queen, in King James, in Cecil and in Essex, all of them interwoven into the fabric of this bizarre journey he was required to make.
And then one of the most surprising moments of Henry Gresham's life happened.
'I will do as you ask,' she said, looking him in the eye. Not sulky. Not reluctant. Matter of fact, no argument.
What had gone wrong?
He started to gabble, 'We must travel to Scotland by sea. In my barque, the Anna. Though it's summer, such a voyage always has risks. And… I need you to pretend.'
He was struck by her extraordinary eyes, wholly dark but with tiny flecks of light in them.
'What is it you wish me to pretend, my Lord?' Again, matter of fact. As if this conversation was the most normal thing in her life.
Gresham sighed. 'The real reason for my journey is difficult to explain. No. I'll be more honest with you: it's better that you don't know. If things go wrong, which of course I'm almost sure they won't, it's vital that people think you know nothing. If they think that, they'll leave you alone. If you know nothing about the real reason, it's far easier to give that impression.' He looked at her, and saw her intelligence. 'I'm not trying to patronise you,' he said simply. 'It really is that ignorance is your best defence. But I need an excuse, and the one I have arrived at is to invent some Scottish ancestry for you, make the reason for the trip a search for your real parents. The Queen's agreed to grant us a passport on that basis.' Unconsciously, he let his humour show. 'It's usually a good thing to agree with the Queen.'
He realised as he said it how insulting his suggestion was. Jane must have cared about who her parents were. And now he was proposing to use what was central to her concept of self as a mere cover for other, more important things which at the same time she was not allowed to know. He waited for the explosion.
'I'll find it difficult to summon a Scottish accent.'
He started to formulate an answer, and then realised just in time that she was making a joke. And in making it, saying yes to the whole thing. He allowed himself to grin.
'You and me both,' he said. 'There are certain sacrifices I wouldn't ask anyone to make.' He paused for a moment. 'Oh… there is one other thing. Before granting the passport, the Queen wants to meet you, tomorrow. If she's seen-' At his words Jane's control vanished. She squeaked, and put a hand to her mouth in shock. Well, it was almost like a squeak. It was a noise that clearly she wished she had not started to make, and which she tried to stifle from somewhere around stomach level, where it appeared to begin. It lost a little momentum as it progressed from stomach to breast, from breast to neck, from neck to throat and from throat to mouth, but there was still enough left of it to burst out in what could only be described as… a squeak.
'My Lord!' she said in desperation. 'I have nothing to wear!'
Oh God! How could he have forgotten? Even a man such as he could not fail to recognise that honour, reputation and life itself for a woman depended on the dress she wore to meet the Queen. It was entirely reciprocal. How could he have forgotten that to present a young girl to the Queen in the wrong dress was as if to present her naked?
A sudden calm descended on him. This was a life or death crisis. He was good at those. It was only young girls for whom he was responsible who threw him. This was different. He looked Jane up and down, and a separate part of his brain noted the startled and even rather fearful effect this produced on her. He was undressing her in his mind, right enough, but not for that reason. Not yet, anyway. This was business.
Lady Downing. Sarah. Married at around Jane's age to a semi-senile suitor, she had enjoyed her husband's wealth and compensated for what he could not provide by starting an affair with Gresham, one of his very first acquaintances with a lady-in-waiting. Except that Sarah had been very bad at waiting. Their physical relationship had lapsed when she had married her second husband, but they had stayed good friends. Sarah had married a mere stripling of forty-six after her first husband died, and been plunged into mourning when he too had died of a canker some three years later. They were about the same height* Sarah and Jane, and seemed to push out against their dresses in more or less the same places. Sarah would help. Thank God they had remained the best of friends when the business between the sheets had ended. As for seamstress, alterations, ribbons and… and things girls cared about, it was still daylight, and money talked.
'MANNION!' Gresham bellowed. In time of need… Mannion was never far away from Gresham, but this time the old fool must have been hovering outside the door.
Gresham turned to Jane. 'I'm sorry… I should've thought. There's an answer. Lady Sarah Downing. She's an old friend of mine.' To his credit, Mannion kept a straight face. 'She's got a stock of Court dresses a mile high.' Did Jane's face lift a little at this? 'She's about your size. We'll go there now in the coach. You — ' he turned to Mannion — 'find me three seamstresses and two jewellers. Get them here, the first with their kit and the second with their wares. Tell the seamstresses they'll be working through the night and most of the morning. Tell 'em why — it'll make them more committed — and offer them three times the going rate. This is a crisis.'
He turned to Jane. 'I hope…' What he saw with his intuitive instinct for reading faces was the most extraordinary kaleidoscope of emotions he had ever witnessed. In business mode now, he was detached, needing to cut to the quick and to identify what the quick actually was. 'Please tell me what it is you want to say?'
Jane appeared almost in despair. 'My Lord,' she said, 'I have never appeared before a Queen. Never dreamed that I would be presented at Court. I have nothing to prepare me for this. But…'
'But what?' said Gresham, impatient.
'But Lady Sarah Downing? Two jewellers?'
She waited. Gresham said nothing.
‘I am a person of no breeding!' she said at last. 'I can't appear before the Queen in rags. But at the same time I can't appear as mutton dressed as lamb! Overdress me and I'm as humiliated as if I was under- dressed.'
A number of memories of Sarah floated before Gresham's eyes. Some were unprintable. All were happy.
'Sarah's a great Court lady,' he said, 'but she's human, and surprisingly normal. Try to trust her, if you can. Tell her just what you've told me.'
Mannion had left, and the yard was full of the noise of a great house being woken up.
'Thank you,' said Gresham, still in business mode, 'for making something I was dreading surprisingly easy.'
'Thank you,' said Jane, 'for letting a girl of no breeding meet the Queen of England.'
Why had it all gone so easily?
Gresham had not heard the brief conversation that had preceded her meeting with him. By some strange
