with his hand on the hilt of his sword.
'It is as I explained it to you,' said Cameron, not turning his head, concentrating on the turnings, 'I work for the King on occasion, and for Northumberland on occasion. And, on occasion, for others. And, on this occasion, for you.'
'And on occasion for yourself?' asked Gresham.
'Always for myself,' answered Cameron succinctly, but said no more.
They came to a door with a huge lintel, so low they had to bend to enter. Before they did so, Cameron turned to both Gresham and Mannion. 'Leave your swords by the door. And any daggers or other blades you may have. When the King was in his mother's womb she saw a group of armoured noblemen knife her music teacher, Rizzio, the man many thought was her lover, to death in front of her. It's left him with a horror of bare steel. He'll sense if you have a blade. Remove them all. Even the hidden ones.' Cameron looked meaningfully at Mannion, who stared back impassively.
'Do it,' said Gresham. 'But if there are armed men in that room, or armed men enter,' he said to Cameron, 'I'll break your neck as my last act on earth.' He realised what a small threat it was to a man who had professed to welcome death.
'Please do,' said Cameron. 'But do look inside the room first.'
He swung the door open. It was small, sparsely furnished with a crude table and four stools. Two torches flared in the ubiquitous cast-iron sconces, guttering and sending out dirty smoke that stained the walls even more and made the eyes sting. An unarmed man in Stuart livery, dirty and grease stained, was in the room, his back to an unlit fire. He greeted Cameron briefly and with no evident affection, and left through another low door on the opposite end of the room. It measured perhaps twelve foot by twelve, and cheap tapestries adorned two walls.
'Don't sit down,' hissed Cameron, after Mannion had unloaded a small armoury and Gresham his sword and dagger, leaving them by the door. They were still horrendously vulnerable, Gresham realised. A rush of men to either door and they were effectively defenceless. They waited.
The door opened suddenly, and a man entered the room. He was of medium height, though slightly hunched in his back, his head seeming almost too thin for his body. His tunic and hose were dotted with jewels and pearls, but like his retainer the fine material was greasy and marked with stains. Cameron bowed low, and Gresham and Mannion followed. This presumably was James VI of Scotland; perhaps shortly to be James I of England.
'Your Highness,' said Cameron, 'Sir Henry Gresham, from the Court of England, asks your gracious permission for an audience.'
James did not return the bow, but plonked himself down on a stool. He did not ask the others to sit.
'Has the man no tongue in his own head?' he asked. The tone was perfectly polite, the content distinctly aggressive. The accent was thicker than Cameron's, on the edge of intelligible.
'Your Majesty,' said Gresham, 'my tongue is constrained by my being in a foreign country and at a foreign Court, and in the presence of a King. I intended no disrespect in allowing your countryman to speak for me.'
'That was well said, enough,' conceded James. 'So now you've started, what else is it you have to say to me, now that you've dragged me down here.' Gresham was getting the feeling that the King had not had a good day.
'Your Majesty,' Gresham said, 'I would be grateful if it were possible for us to speak alone.'
'Alone, then,' answered the King, 'except for my servant here. You may trust his capacity to bide his tongue. Or, to put it the other way, with him present to guard me if need be you may hold a conversation with me. Without him, your conversation will be with yourself.' The King seemed very bored, listless even.
Gresham bowed low, accepting the deal. Cameron and Mannion backed out of the room. Mannion banged his head on the stone lintel, and Gresham gritted his teeth, waiting for him to swear. The only noise was the door shutting.
Gresham pulled the Queen's ring out of the sealed pocket he had been carrying it in, and placed it on the table. It gleamed dully in the torchlight.
The King leant forward, suddenly interested.
He looked up at Gresham, and Gresham saw the flash of intelligence in his small, dark eyes.
'There is something to go with this token? Something from the Queen your mistress?' There was an eagerness in his voice now, an almost childish excitement.
Gresham bowed again, reached inside his tunic and brought out the sealed package that Elizabeth had given him. He placed it on the table. The King looked at it for a moment, and then nodded to his servant. The servant leant forward, picked up the sealed document, put it in his pocket.
Why was the King not reading it? It was almost as if it he already knew its content, was patting himself on the back without having to read it.
'Your Majesty,' Gresham said, hoping to capitalise on the King's evident good mood. 'I have another letter for Your Highness, if you will care to receive it.'
'Another letter?* said the King. There was even a hint of humour in his voice now. The man was dirty, Gresham realised, ingrained muck in his fingernails and in the creases on his forehead. There was a strange smell around him, a musky, musty smell, not the sharp and acrid tang of sweat but something older, rather like a maturing cheese. 'You've been a very busy man, Sir Henry Gresham.'
'Others have wished me to be busy on their behalf, Your Majesty,' said Gresham.
'You've been kind enough to call me Your Majesty four times now,' said James. Gresham checked through his memory: James was right. ''Sir' will do right enough from now on. Tell me about this other letter.'
Then a crashing realisation dawned in Gresham's head. James was drunk. He was in the first stage of drunkenness, when the drunkard knows the state he is in and almost over-compensates in the exactness of his language. Gresham had known a host of men, and women, who were far better at conducting their business drunk than sober. The realisation of King James's state did not shock so much as intrigue him. It was only early evening.
'Sir,' said Gresham, 'it comes from Sir Robert Cecil. As with the Queen, he has asked for it to be treated as most secret. I should add that he does not know of the letter from Her Majesty, any more than Her Majesty knows of his letter.'
'You would be wise not to make too many assumptions about what Her Majesty may or may not know. But you will tell him, as his man?' said James.
'Sir, I will not tell him.' Gresham had almost said 'I will no tell him', his brain already picking up the Scottish idiom. 'I am not his man. I have merely agreed to deliver this letter for him.'
'And what does it say?' Was James toying with him now, implying that he had opened the letter? And therefore perhaps implying that he had opened the letter from the Queen? Oh God! Gresham was on trial again for his life. Was it thus with all monarchs, or only those bounded by the North Sea? Well, if in doubt, try the truth. It was such a rare commodity in Courts that it had rare healing powers as well as shock value.
'Sir,' said Gresham, 'it is true that once before I opened a letter from Robert Cecil that I was carrying while sailing with the expedition by Sir Francis Drake to Cadiz. I found that it ordered my death. Since then I have tried to avoid reading anything penned by him and placed in my trust.'
'Well, you clearly survived,' said James, 'unless it's a ghost I see before me now. But I guess you may have an inkling of what this second letter contains.'
'I believe it reassures Your… you, sir, that Robert Cecil is neither a sodomite nor a servant of the Devil.'
James's hand had started to rise to his chest, as if to make the sign of the cross, at the word 'Devil', before he corrected it.
'And am I right to accept that reassurance?'
Robert Cecil had tried to have Gresham killed on several occasions and was holding him to ransom even now. He loathed Gresham, had done so for years. Just as his father had been the strength behind Elizabeth's throne, so the son hoped to be the strength behind James's throne when he came to be King of England. A word now from Gresham that Cecil was either a sodomite or a Devil-worshipper could remove Cecil from the power he lusted after, do him irreparable damage.
But would it? Or would it damage Gresham more? Well, the truth had worked so far. Try it again.
'Sadly, sir,' Gresham said and watched James lean forward, as if desperate to hear the bad news, 'you are right to accept that reassurance. At least as far as I am in a position to judge.'
