on this God-forsaken expedition? I'm actually safer here than I would be in England. Or even Scotland. But I guarantee you some person in this army has been paid a tidy sum to knock me off once it becomes clear that I or someone else has performed the same favour for you.'
Gresham looked for a long moment at Cameron. His eyes gave nothing away. Cameron met his gaze with equal fortitude, neither wavering nor blinking. As a result, unconsciousness came as a complete surprise to him when Mannion came up from behind and considerately gave a massive blow to the other side of his head.
'I want the men who came with Jane to turn round and take her back to England, together with Cameron. Take seven of the very best and most loyal men from the troop and one of the sergeants, pay them a King's ransom, and get them to go as well, as extra escort. Tell them to keep an eye on Cameron at all times, as if their life depended on it. I'll explain to Jane what's happening over supper.'
'You believe 'im?' asked Mannion. 'Do you?' asked Gresham. 'No,' said Mannion simply. 'What about you?' 'Me? I'm a happy man!' said Gresham. 'All of a sudden some things are starting to become clear to me.'
A messenger rode up to the castle for Henry Gresham at the same time as a messenger for Essex. Neither recipient was cheered by the news. Sir Clifford Conyers, commanding 1,500 men, was dead when the Irish sawed his head from his shoulders and made a present of it to the fighting Prince of Donegal.
As for Gresham's message, Cameron Johnstone had waited until the ship had docked and he was on the narrow gangplank with a guard before and a guard after him, and turned viciously and without warning and knocked them both off into the foot or so of black water between the grinding hull and the stone wharf. Before anyone else could leap onto the gangplank Cameron had slithered off it, was seen for a moment amid the barrels and the goods piled high on the quay, and then vanished.
Chapter 9
August to October, 1599 Ireland
Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and the nearest thing Ireland had to a King of its own, waited silently in mid- stream at the Ford of Bellaclynth, with the waters of the River Lagan lapping at his horse's belly. Small, grey-haired and in his mid-fifties there was little sign that this was the man holding England to ransom.
Tyrone's head was bowed, in an act of submission. Behind him, on the hillside, was a detachment of his own cavalry. Behind them, out of sight, was his army. They had paraded before each other, the Irish and the English forces, two days earlier, Essex challenging Tyrone to a pitched battle. Tyrone had refused. What need had he to fight, with eight thousand men to Essex's four thousand? All he had to do was block the way.
From the middle of the small English detachment on the opposite hill a figure broke away and rode steadily forward on a magnificent grey to the water's edge. It was Essex. He was dressed in gleaming half armour, and the sunlight glittering on the water glittered on the gleaming metal that encased him. Two armies held their breath. With the exception of one soldier, who belched. 'Bloody awful stuff, this meat,' he said, in the way of an apology.
He was chewing at a strip of dried, salted beef, of the type an army lived off when on the march. Mannion was the only person in the English army who seemed to enjoy the stuff or eat it by choice.
'So what's 'e goin' to do?' asked Mannion. He and Gresham were a part of the mounted English detachment that had crested the hill and escorted Essex to the parley.
'I've a terrible fear that he's going to make a complete fool of himself and of us,' said Gresham. 'It's increasingly been his response to a crisis.'
Essex had been in an awful state when Gresham had last seen him. This time his illness was real, and despite all the precautions dysen-try had ravaged him, drained him of energy, drained him almost of the will to live. He was in the recovery phase now, which meant that he had time and just about enough energy to realise how truly awful he felt, though the damned illness never seemed really to leave a person, returning when least expected.
Gresham had taken some wine with him. It was the very last of the stores he had brought over from England, carefully preserved from Mannion, and reserved for the first great English victory. It would be a very long wait for that moment. It might be better spent on doing something for the man meant to be the architect of that victory.
'Thank you,' said Gresham. 'I think I owe you my life.' He poured the wine. 'This comes from England. From my own cellars. It was simpler when all we used to do was chase women,' said Gresham, 'and get drunk.'
'I'm a married man,' said Essex, with the faintest glimmer of the mad young man Gresham had known in what now seemed a different age. Essex was propped up in bed for all the world like an old woman. 'I deny that I ever chased women.'
'All right,' said Gresham, 'they chased you. Can your noble stomach take a drink?'
'It can try,' Essex said, and they settled into a desultory conversation, leading nowhere, saying and proving nothing.
If only the damned Queen would stop sending him vicious letters! The Queen was Essex's Achilles heel. At criticism from her he either became unspeakably angry, or descended into lacrimonious self-pity, collapsing in on himself.
Essex had ridden out to meet Tyrone as if he, Essex, were the conquering hero with Ireland at his feet, not the defeated invader clinging by his finger ends to what he held. His mood was exalted, almost spiritual, bizarre. It was as if he was seeing things others did not, could not see.
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was collapsing from within, his private devils eating him up from the inside out, as the dysentry was eating up his body's resistance. The changes that had come over him since he and Gresham had engaged in their mock combat on the Thames were terrifying. The man was a shell, a brittle, fragile shell. And the bravest, most glamorous, most headstrong member of the English aristocracy, the one who might once have taken on the Irish rebel, was now in parley with that rebel, outwardly the same man, inwardly a broken reed, saying God knows what.
He and Tyrone had been talking for an hour, and the men on the opposing hillsides had all got off their horses to stretch tired muscles. Every now and again they looked down to the ford. Tyrone was gesticulating gently, for all the world like a street trader trying to sell dodgy vegetables to a dim housewife.
Suddenly, the two men broke apart and rode back to their respective forces. There was a sudden bite in the air, the smell of fear, of expectation. The small party of men who had come with Essex, gathered round him, some on horseback, some still on foot, the careful ones looking at the opposite hillside every few seconds in case the Irish were planning to mount a surprise charge.
The Earl had a strange expression on his face, a sort of saintly, tranquil smile that Gresham had never seen before. It was almost a stupid expression, reminding Gresham of a village idiot who had been given an unexpected sweetmeat.
'It is peace!' Essex declared, as Moses might have done on bringing the tablets down for the second time from the mountain.
'Peace?' asked Blount, always the most bluff and forward of men. 'On what terms is it peace, my Lord?' He looked round him, brow furrowed and dark, seeking support from the others. He gained none. All looked as worried as he did.
'Tyrone is a gentleman, a true noble,' said Essex dreamily. 'He is not as others have represented him.'
An inkling of what had happened began to dawn on Gresham. His heart sank.
'He knows that my valour and the size of this army will mean inevitable defeat for him if he persists.'
The Earl's valour? His personal courage had never been in doubt, though it had been savaged in several of the Queen's letters in which she had accused him of cowardice. The size of the army? The army that illness and desertion and losses in hopeless battles had reduced by two thirds?
'My Lord…' One of the younger men was trying to interrupt, his expression almost comic had it not been so sad. What had the Earl said to Tyrone? What had he agreed to in the name of his Queen?
'No!' Essex raised an imperious hand, stilling the voice. There was still that same dreamy expression on his face. 'The Irish rebels are fearful of our courage. Their army is ill-trained, its outer strength a lie. They sue for peace because they know that if they do not do so, they will lose their courage and their lives. We have won peace
