Why did it cut him to hear her speak the name of the one woman he had loved with all his heart as well as with his body? Jane waited for Gresham to comment. Something in her voice had stayed him, hooked him onto her story. He remained silent.
'I heard the other boat coming alongside!' she said, the memory clear as if it were happening now. 'I don't know how and I don't know why, but locked down in that dreadful cabin I heard the waves in a different way, and I heard a change. I just knew it was another boat. You'd warned us things might happen, but not shared your plans. I expected shouting, alarms. There was just silence. So I worried that no one else had seen this other boat, that you hadn't spotted it, so I tried to come on deck to warn you. I had my hand on the latch of the door when you fired the cannons. The light was like little, red-hot iron bars showing through where the caulking had gone between the planks of the door.'
'What did you do then?' asked Gresham.
'I pushed the door open,' said Jane. 'I don't know why. I've never been so scared in my life, but for some reason I wanted to see what was happening on deck. And I saw him.'
'Him?' asked Gresham, confused. 'You mean George?'
'No,' said Jane. 'Not George. Not Lord Willoughby. On the other boat. Directing the enemy men. The man he'd been talking to in St Paul's. The small man, with the goatee beard. I swear to you, it was the same person.'
A chasm opened up under Henry Gresham. And he felt himself falling, screaming, down into the abyss. It would be so easy not to believe her. So less hurtful.
'So why have you waited this long to tell me?' His outward manner continued urbane, controlled. Inside, every nerve ending had flames licking at it.
'Because my heart wanted it not to be true, not to acknowledge what my head told me I had seen.' Her tone was frantic now, pleading. 'If those men were the same, it must mean that George was a traitor to you, had conspired against his greatest, his oldest friend. And I was scared, of what it would do to you, and I suppose to me as well.'
Gresham turned to Mannion.
'Was this why you wanted her here, at our meeting? Did she tell you before she told me?'
'Just for once,' said Mannion, glaring at him as he had not done since Gresham was a youth, 'as you're the one who's meant to 'ave the brains, use 'em, will you? Of course she bloody well told me! Or rather, she didn't. She said she 'ad something to say about George that only you could hear, but she was frightened to tell you.' Mannion seemed to be having difficulty getting the words out. 'If you want to know the truth, I thought 'e'd made a pass at 'er. After all, all 'e gets from that wife of 'is is the sharp side of her tongue. Shows 'ow much I know.' Mannion paused. 'You know why this 'as 'appened, don't yer? Why we've had to wait so bloody long to hear somethin' we ought to 'ave 'eard ages ago? It's 'cos you're so pig 'eaded! Every time she's told you the truth you've told 'er she's bein' bloody impertinent, 'aven't you? It's a bloody wonderful recipe for getting someone to tell you what you needs to hear.'
An old Fellow of Granville College, a rather lovely man who had died a year after Gresham had joined as a poverty-stricken undergraduate, had once confided in him and said that friendship was like a loaf: the more thinly you carved it and handed it round, the less sustenance it gave and the less it was worth. You gave a part of yourself to a true friend. The smaller the part, the lesser the friendship. Gresham had only had three real friends in all his life: George, Mannion and, for a brief moment, Anna. And of course there was Jane. Not a friend, but someone whose life had become inextricably woven with his, by accident.
Anna he would never see again. Now the girl, who for all her irritating ways had become part of the fabric of his existence, had proved his greatest friend a traitor to him. And Mannion, who was friend and father, was agreeing with her, and telling him that it was his manner and attitude that was at fault for him not finding out the truth earlier.
At one stroke, Jane had cut through one of the certainties in Gresham's life. He felt sick, physically sick, as if at any moment his stomach would hurl out its contents, as his mind wished it could hurl out what it had been told.
'I must talk to George,' said Gresham flatly.
'He's in London now,' said Jane in a tiny voice, 'or at least, it's rumoured so very strongly in St Paul's.'
'Well,' said Gresham with an irony that would have cut through iron, 'if it's rumoured so in St Paul's, it has to be true.' Despair was a deadly sin, because by its nature it meant one gave up on the prospect of redemption
'You go to 'im?' asked Mannion. 'Or we bring 'im to you?'
'Bring him here!' said Gresham explosively. And in issuing the order for his old friend to be brought to him, Gresham knew that he had accepted the truth of what Jane said. Too many things, too many small gestures had fallen into place as she had spoken. The clinical part of Gresham's brain had seen the truth long before his heart would ever accept it.
'No!' he said suddenly, jumping to his feet, making Jane nearly fall off her stool. 'I'll not have my oldest friend dragged here like a felon, even if he is one! Does St Paul's say where George is to be found?'
Jane whispered something, looking down at the floor. She was crying. 'Speak up.'
'The Duck and Drake. In Cheapside.'
Gresham and Mannion looked at each other. It was a highly respectable inn, so respectable that very few of the informers on Gresham's payroll would ever dream of going there, and hence excellent cover. But why would any of those Gresham paid to spy on London deem it worth reporting to him that his best friend was in town?
'My Lord,' Jane was still looking down, great tears dropping to the floor, 'I am… I am sorry… I…'
There was an icy calm in his heart now. He touched her on her shoulder, and felt the flesh jump under his fingers.
'Look at me,' he said. Two huge, tear-rimmed eyes raised themselves up to his gaze. 'Whatever arguments we might have had, this isn't your fault.' There was no emotion in his voice, no sympathy, not the warmth of a guttering candle. 'It's his fault, and to a far lesser extent my fault for not seeing what should have been clear to me. You
… you're just the agent of tragedy. Not its cause.'
January was at its coldest, and the thin, fashionable gloves Gresham had donned did little to keep him feeling the ends of his fingers. What small warmth the sun had given died with the sunset. Decent people were hurrying home. London handed itself over to a different breed of citizens when darkness fell. The cold seemed to freeze Gresham and Mannion's cheeks, forced water into their eyes. A blast of hot, fetid air hit them as they pushed open the door to the Duck and Drake. The babble of noise dropped slightly as Gresham's saturnine, elegant figure and that of his bulky manservant entered, but only for a moment. This was a respectable inn. So what if one of the gentry had decided to come slumming, to take their drink undiluted before summoning up courage to cross the city to the stews of Shoreditch?
There was no sign of George.
'What we do now? Ask if he's staying?' said Mannion.
'He'll have taken another name,' said Gresham. His calmness was more unsettling than a full-scale rage. A thought came to him. 'Go and ask the landlord if there's an Andrew Golightly staying.' Mannion raised an eyebrow, but did as he was bid. At school George and Gresham had fooled a young and permanently drunk usher that there was a boy called Andrew Golightly in the class, blaming everything they did on him. It had taken weeks for the deception to be revealed, to the huge amusement of the other boys; the whipping he and George received had been deemed well worth the fun.
Mannion returned. 'Sir Andrew Golightly is staying for two nights. He's booked supper for one in a private room. Up there. Servants took it to 'im ten minutes ago.'
They mounted the creaking stairs, ingrained with the smoke from lamps and candles and the cheap coal on the blazing fire, which periodically belched fume, smoke and sparks out into the main room as the wind started to get up outside.
Gresham lifted the simple latch on the door, and walked in. George was coming to the end of his meal, hacking at some hard cheese with his knife as the door opened. He hardly looked up.
'Ten minutes more,' he said, 'and bring me another flagon while-' He looked up. The colour drained instantly from his face, and he stood up.
'Henry! I was just about to come and see you… sudden call to London… business…'
He looked at Gresham, who gazed back expressionless. Slowly his words slowed, and stopped. The two men
