'Did you-' he started to ask.
'Did I place your proper seal, after taking it off your actual letter, put it on a clean version of this forgery and hand it to James? No. That would have been too easy.'
'So what did you do?' asked Cecil, his voice that of the snake.
'I took your original letter, the one I'd lifted your seal off, and re-sealed it with the best forgery I had of your seal. King James of Scotland got your original letter, right enough, albeit with a false seal. As I said, the forged seal isn't perfect. But it was probably good enough to fool the King of Scotland. After all, the letter you wrote does a good job of exonerating you from blame, actually makes a strong case for your not being either a sodomite or a Devil-worshipper. Why would anyone bother to forge a letter that in all probability puts you back in King James's good books? You can relax about that at least. The King of Scotland received the letter you wrote him, as you had written it to him. The only difference was that the seal was a forgery. A forgery he is unlikely to notice.'
'And my original seal? The one you tell me you lifted off my letter? To what use did you put that?'
'Well, I had to find a good use for it, didn't I? It's not every day I get the chance to make a letter look as if it came from you. That went onto a fair copy of this splodged letter. Same text, more or less. Except no blot this time. The one that protests undying love for King James, deep resentment at Queen Elizabeth and sufficient treasonous comments to have you hung. If not drawn and quartered.'
'And its whereabouts?' asked Cecil.
'In safe keeping. A treasonous letter with an apparently unbroken seal. A seal that matches in every line and whorl your seal, because it is actually your seal. A treasonous letter, written in your hand. A letter which the loyal Henry Gresham was tasked to deliver, but through loyalty to the Crown refused to do so.'
Gresham paused for a moment.
'The scene is positively tear-jerking. I really don't know why someone hasn't put it in a play. This loyal servant of the Crown, the humble Sir Henry Gresham, is blackmailed by the evil Robert Cecil, into taking a message to the King of Scotland. Knowing that the letter will inevitably be traitorous and disloyal, he is far too terrified to open it. Instead he uses his vast wealth to substitute it for a letter that merely protests my Lord Cecil's innocence of accusations of sodomy and Devil-worship, sealed with a hastily forged copy of my Lord's seal that only the King of Scotland would be fool or drunk enough to accept. He achieves his mission. My Lord Cecil seems happy with the delivery of the letter, and his threat to Gresham is placed at the least on hold. King James seems happy enough with what he has read. Everyone is happy. Including Henry Gresham, who of course has retained the original letter in the certainty that it is treasonous, who can produce it unopened, who now knows that the altered content is quite explosive. So Henry Gresham can now blow Robert Cecil out of the water on demand, at least while the Queen lives.'
The silence was long enough for a competent spider to have built a significant web.
'And where does this leave us?' asked Cecil. His composure never left him for long.
'Equal, I think,' said Gresham. 'You hold the mortgages on my friend's land and forged letters that will send me to the block. I now hold the equivalent on you. Touche.'
'And the Earl of Essex?'
Cecil was nothing if not consistent.
‘I’ve been asked by him to go on his Irish expedition. As a captain, with my own troop. At my own expense, of course. I said yes.'. Did Cecil's expression change?
'It's quite ironic, really. You see, the dashing Earl knows I work for you, and it would flatter his ego hugely if he could seduce me into his service. You have very few secure sources of information on Essex — for all his faults, those who serve him do tend to be very loyal — and you're equally desperate for me to go with him as your spy. Well, I am going, but not in answer to your threats or to his entreaties. I'm going because I have chosen to go.' 'Why did you do so?' asked Cecil.
'Ever since I met Essex I've had this sense about him. A sense that he is a mover and shaker, a sense that he is someone who will make and change history. There are two types of people in the world: those who simply live, and those who make a difference. Essex has the power to make a difference — for better or worse. And my sense is that his time is now. And because I'm beginning to realise that what's driven me to dirty my hands in the filthy game of power is the desire to make a difference, I'm drawn to him. Have you ever watched a good swordsman at work?'
The question threw Cecil.
'Violence is the last resort of the intellectually incompetent,' he rasped as if his saliva was acid. 'I despise it as a waste of resources. Why on earth should I watch a swordsman?'
'Because if you had,' said Gresham, 'you'd see that a huge part of his skill is to go with the flow, let the weight and mass and momentum of the blade do most of his work for him. So it is with me. I'm fascinated by Essex. I'm also frightened by his power to influence people — frightened because he himself does not realise how much he can use that power for good or evil. If you wanted me to spy on Essex, all you had to do was to use my natural inclination, my fear of Essex, and for once I'd have been a willing partner, matching your very different fear. As it is, and because you chose to enlist me by a crude threat, you've lost me as an ally. I go to Ireland as a free agent who might choose to report back to you, but who is under no compunction to do so.'
'I think you lie to yourself,' said Cecil. 'I think the Earl of Essex has cast his spell over you as he has cast it over so many others. I think you are his creature.'
'Your lack of imagination catches you out. One can observe a spell without falling under it. I go to Ireland, knowingly, because Essex intrigues me. He's Icarus. He'll fly too near the sun, and it'll destroy him. And I go because I care for peace in England, and his raving ambition's a threat to England. And because as I quite like him I might be able to stop him doing the stupid thing. But most of all I will go to Ireland because I can sense things happening, great, momentous things. Things that might change history. Oh, I know you see yourself as the spider, sitting at the centre of the web, controlling everything and everyone. But I tell you, there's more afoot than even you can imagine. The Earl of Essex is somehow at the heart of it all so if I am to find out what's going on, I need to be with Essex.'
Gresham left Cecil's presence a great deal happier than he had left it the last time. He had not destroyed the threat posed by Cecil, but he had offered a counter balance, and the two were now in the state of an immovable object up against an irresistible force. It was good enough. It would have to do.
'This,' said Mannion, 'is a right bugger's mix.'
One end of the Library faced out onto the Thames. The other overlooked the courtyard, where what appeared to be a minor battle was raging.
Gresham had put word about that he wished to recruit a company of men. As a result the house had been besieged since dawn. There were 'captains' in their hundreds out there, big, swaggering burly men with huge moustaches and extravagant hats whose brims nearly bridged the Thames, some of them with weather-lined faces marked by smallpox, others with battle scars, one with a huge black eye patch that seemed to make his other eye glare even more. There was a man with a wooden leg, seeming to move faster than his two-legged companions, and one with a hook instead of a left hand. Rather than the sharp end pointing back to the user, it pointed upwards in a grotesque U-shape, the better to rest the shaft of a musket on.
It was late January, and bitterly cold. Braziers had been set up in the yard and, on Gresham's orders, on the street as well, the red-hot coals roasting the fronts of those who huddled near them while the raw wind froze their backs.
Many of the men knew each other, veterans of endless campaigning in the Low Countries. They accosted each other with hollow fellowship or rich insults, their wary eyes glancing round all the time. The cold of winter held no threat for them; they were the survivors. They had overcome bad food, sweating fevers that had swept through the camps in winter, dysentery, heat and cold. They were the ones who the musket balls and the cannon balls had missed, the ones who had scrambled ashore when their transport sank off the Scheldt, the ones who had brought their mounts under control when they bolted and looked set to run straight at the enemy. It was luck, of course, more so than skill or judgement. Warfare took no account of morality, cared nothing for character, for wife or for family. The good died, the bad lived on, or the other way round. Attendance at communion before the battle was a primitive, primeval act, designed to placate an angry God just in case he did exist, to grab the luck to oneself even if it meant taking it away from someone else.
Among their number were the young ones, some dressed in the height of fashion, some in rags, second, third or fourth sons whose only inheritance would be a small annuity. Men who had been conceived as insurance in case
