coincidence, Mannion had bumped into the hastily dressed Jane on her way to the Library.
'He needs yer to say yes to goin' with the both of us to Scotland.'
'And?' said Jane, cocking an eye to one of the very few men she had come to trust. If she had learned anything from Henry Gresham it was to mask her feelings, although her heart seemed to have speeded up to three times its normal rate.
'It's bloody dangerous,' Mannion said factually. 'But fer Christ's sake, say yes, and give 'im an easy time of it.'
Jane looked him in the eyes for a brief moment, then nodded carefully, before going to meet Gresham.
Gresham was relieved at the outcome of his request. He was staggered when, the next morning, he saw its product. The dress Jane and Sarah had chosen was of the finest dark-green velvet. It seemed to hug Jane's upper body, and then glance splendidly off her waist, cascading like a waterfall. Yet she had reserved the greatest stroke of genius for herself. Such a dress would be slashed to reveal perhaps an irridescent blue or even a pure black silk. Against the dressmaker's entreaty, Jane had insisted that the rich slashings show underneath not an oasis of blue or black, but simply more of the dark-green velvet. The only concession she had made was to ask for the openings to be lined with a modest number of small pearls. We are here, the pearls seemed to say, and if we thought we were more than we are we could be used to reveal a glow of colour that would rival a mallard's neck. But we are not so. We are simply a young girl in a borrowed dress, and we know who we are. As ever, the lack of pretension made a more powerful point than a week's artifice would have achieved.
Gresham's jaw dropped when Jane was presented to him. He had not seen this girl — this woman — before. She was extraordinarily, stunningly beautiful. It was not the dress with its cunning line, or the make-up so sparingly and skilfully applied, nor the wonders they had done with her lustrous hair. She was not made beautiful by what she wore. She made what she wore look beautiful. He looked at her for a moment, his face expressionless, sensing her yearning for his approval.
'Wait here a moment, please,' he said, and left the room. Five, ten, tense minutes passed before he returned, bearing a box.
'Something so beautiful deserves something equally beautiful,' he said quietly, as he drew forth the necklace. On a simple gold chain, the ruby was like an open heart pulsing with extraordinary colour. He moved behind Jane, slipping the necklace over her neck, feeling the warmth of her skin at his fingers' ends.
'It was my father's,' he said. 'It seems a shame for such a thing to lie in the dark. It'll be your only jewel. They'll know whence it came. And they will not call you mutton dressed as lamb.'
Well, at least he had struck her speechless for once.
He had thanked Sarah from the bottom of his heart. There had been no malice in their meeting, and when their time was done there had been no malice in their parting.
'I enjoyed it,' she had said simply. 'It made me feel young again.' She did not mention that she had no children of her own. 'Tell me, have you slept with her?'
'No I have not!' said Gresham with a vehemence partly fuelled by the thoughts he had had at the sight of Jane in her finery. Because of these thoughts, he could guess other men's reactions. As a result he felt himself aggressively protective towards Jane.
'Do you really know what you've got there in that girl? Sarah asked.
'A target for every man at Court?' asked Gresham glumly, ‘I hadn't realised she would make me act gamekeeper as well as poacher.'
'However beautiful, the body will always decay over the course of life,' answered Sarah. 'The mind,' she added gnomically, 'stays with us all our lives, God willing.'
It was difficult to say whether the radiance that lit Jane came from the superb job Sarah — and Jane — had made of an instant Court dress, or from within her own sense of well-being. Gresham never doubted that the meeting with the Queen would go well. Whatever her failings, Elizabeth had a soft spot for young girls, provided they did not marry against her will or bed one of her favourites.
'What did she ask you about?' asked Gresham, as they went back to The House in the Strand.
'Oh…' said Jane vaguely, 'woman's stuff.'
He decided to leave it at that. The real business was about to start.
Gresham and Mannion dismounted at the quayside, handing the horses over with a pat to the grooms who would ride them home. The cobbled wharf was littered with the debris of the sea, and stank of tar and foul water, thick in the heavy air that barely flapped a sail. The tiny Waves were slapping angrily yet ineffectively at the hulls, as if warning the ships of their bigger brethren waiting out at sea. Jane was due to come in the huge coach that Gresham's father had adopted in his later years. Already the arrival of the fine gentleman and his baggage was causing a stir, with men turning from the mending of sails or the lugging of stores to watch the new entertainment and relieve the boredom of their working lives.
How did you train your men? Essex had asked Gresham. With great difficulty and at great length, was the answer. Only two of those same men were with Gresham now, Jack and Dick, to act as porters for the luggage. Other men would have taken servants to care for their clothes or shave them on such a trip. Gresham chose to take two people who knew how to handle themselves in a fight.
The same was not true of the crew of the Anna. The master was a competent seaman, in part-retirement now. His crew were no better and no worse than many of their type — jobbing mariners who moved from one boat to another as work came up — and who would stay only a few months or even weeks when it became clear that the Anna would only leave her berth for short trips to shake out her sails and stretch her hull. Some three or four, the more permanent ones, were members of the master's own family. Gresham's instinct had been to use the Anna for the trip to Scotland rather than take passage on a boat of which he had no previous knowledge. At least he knew that good money had been spent on her rigging, that her timbers were sound and the vessel in exceptional repair. He would sell her afterwards, he reasoned, and buy another escape route in another mooring.
But he had not trained the Anna's men. Her crew did not know him, had no particular loyalty towards him. The elements were only one of the dangers for a sailing ship.
What if his enemies were watching him, even now? How much would Cecil's letter, or that from the Queen, be worth to someone angling for the Crown? How much was the Queen's ring worth? Anyone bringing it to James would be granted private access. On a secret mission, how would James know whether or not the bearer was the man to whom the Queen had handed her token, or the man who had murdered the initial bearer? Worst of all, was Essex skilled enough to hear of Cecil's rebuttal and try to intercept it?
Nagging at the back of his mind was the way he had been tricked by Cecil. Was he losing his touch? Was using his own boat another sign of the decaying mental powers of someone who had lived on the edge for so long that he was now taking the easy route? And all the time the sense was growing in him of the importance of what he carried. A letter from Cecil to James was bad enough, possible proof of treachery. Yet even that was insignificant by the side of a secret letter from Queen Elizabeth of England to King James of Scotland. How many of those fighting over the flesh of the English crown would give a fortune to know the contents of that letter?
He cast his eyes over the roadstead, from the bits of rough timber, fish scales and assorted unidentifiable lumps of matter washing up against the strand, to the boats with the precious berths by the shore out to the less fortunate moored in the tideway. Would one of these nondescript, assorted vessels, the lifeblood of England's coastal and near-continental trade, drop its sails as the Anna set out, and follow it silently out to sea? How many of the seamen and rabble on the quayside were in the pay of Gresham's and the Queen's enemies? Was the spy being spied upon at this very moment?
Mannion was oblivious to Gresham's fears, casting a professional eye over the Anna and grunting in satisfaction at what he saw. Mannion had been a ship's boy, groomed to be a captain, until the owner of the vessel had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition and been burned alive as a heretic in front of his wife and crew. Just as Gresham hated oil lamps, so Mannion would never stay in a room where pork had been overcooked. The similarity to the smell of human flesh burning was too close.
The master of the Anna was standing on her tiny quarterdeck, and hurried over to greet Gresham. Old now, every storm he had weathered had left a wrinkle on his face, but he had a toughness that Gresham found reassuring. What was less reassuring, and what Gresham had not seen when he had interviewed the man, was his tendency to move sideways all the time like a restless crab, and to rub his gnarled hands together like a moneylender striking a deal. Nor would he look Gresham in the eye. Interesting. Alarm bells began to ring in Gresham's head. The man was sweating, nervous. What had scared him so much?
