'Were they?' said Gresham wondering if this was a dream. They seemed to be in the dining hall still, the fire half banked up and flickering, candles and lamps around the room, some of them out. There were men asleep, snoring, round the walls. That would be why George was whispering, so as not to wake the men. Gresham had not lost his hearing after all. 'How is that so?' he managed to mumble.
'Cameron made me the go-between with Smith. Oh, don't worry. Cameron's working for Cecil still. Actually, he's working for James, but Cecil wants James as King, so it's the same thing. But Cameron's clever enough to make Essex think that James is on his side. I wasn't tarnished, you see, with any of the Court intrigue. People thought I hated Essex so I could see Smith without any suspicion being raised. Cameron told Essex I was a double agent — that he'd cultivated me for years. That's why I'm here. Essex thinks I'm one of his men! Cameron hates Essex as well. So does James. Essex thinks Cameron and James love him. Do you understand?'
Gresham managed to move a little this time, and get his head above his chest. Maybe if there was a little less blood going to his head it might hurt just a little less.
'I'd have difficulty understanding that even if my head were unbroken,' said Gresham.
'Look, it's simple,' said George, continuing to cradle Gresham, 'Cecil hates Essex. James of Scotland hates Essex. Cameron hates Essex, and I hate Essex. All of us have been working against him, except that James and Cameron and myself have made it look as if we were on his side.'
'I see,' Gresham managed to say. The pain went through his head and into his jaw, making it extraordinarily painful to speak. 'It's simple. James sees Essex as a threat. Cameron works for James. The best way to deal with a threat is to get it to trust you, rely on you even. Essex is so desperate for the approval of the next King, for influence with the next King, that he'll believe anything of Cameron. All the time Cameron seems to be working for Essex he's working against him.'
'That's it!' said George, so happy that Gresham had got the message at last that his voice became dangerously loud. A man muttered in his sleep, turned over, reached out for his sword then fell back into a disturbed slumber. 'You've got it! Except you've gone and spoilt it! That was why Cameron was so angry. Why he laid you out. He told me so. I'd already told Sheriff Smith not to call the men out. I'd already ensured there'd be no men at Essex's call tomorrow. But Essex needed to think there would be — to make him rebel, so he could destroy himself. And you nearly spoilt it.'
'Nearly?' croaked Gresham. 'And as you've been rubbing at the same spot for five minutes, do you think I could suck on the cloth, even if half the liquid's my own blood?'
George reached for a pitcher of water on the floor, and offered it to Gresham.
'Just pour it over my bloody head.'
It was water in the desert. Cold snow on the burn from the fire for a few seconds. Then the pain returned.
'Yes, nearly,' said George. 'Cameron explained to Essex that you'd be bound to say what you did, that you must have found out about the thousand men and decided the only way to stop the rebellion, the only way for Cecil to preserve his power, was to persuade you that the thousand men didn't exist. Cameron said he'd had direct word from Smith that the men were still there. So it's all right. It really is! Essex will go to the City tomorrow, expecting a thousand armed men to turn out for him. And they won't be there! And Essex's followers will lose heart, lose faith in him and evaporate. The rebellion'll be over! And no one will die except Essex and some of his foul cronies.'
'Why am I alive?' asked Gresham. He had just enough strength to reach out for the pitcher, drink, roll the stale fluid round his mouth and dried-out lips.
'Because of me,' said George. 'They were going to kill you. I said I'd done good service for the Earl, and that you and I'd been good friends, and that I only asked for one thing from him: your life. I said he could decide what to do with you when he was King, but that all great Kings started their reigns by acts of mercy. I gave him my word you'd stay tied up here, and I'd guarantee you wouldn't be released. I think Cameron wanted you dead. Essex wouldn't have it, though I think he was tempted.'
Cameron would have hated seeing Gresham live. Essex probably had enough shreds of decency left in him to respond to George's plea. Gresham probably did owe his life to George. How ironic.
'What's their plan for tomorrow?' asked Gresham. He was strong enough to inch himself up a little more now. He only saw two images of George instead of three.
'They had a terrible argument,' whispered George. 'Davies had a brilliant plan to take over the Court, capture the Queen and go from there. Then that terrible man Gorges poured cold water over it, said that unless we captured the Tower and the City first we'd simply be besieged in Whitehall, particularly as we don't even know if Cecil and Nottingham and all the rest of the power brokers are actually at Whitehall. All we know is that we march at dawn. Cameron's doing everything he can to make Essex march to the City. He says if Essex goes to Whitehall — Essex has nearly four hundred men here already, you know — he might actually capture the Queen and the Court, that the rebellion might succeed.' George looked down at Gresham. 'Look, I'm really sorry. Sorry for all of it. I didn't mean to get you in danger. Cameron swears you'd have been spared on the boat. But I did save your life, tonight, here. They'd have killed you if I hadn't stood up. Now I can untie your legs, but only if you give me your word you won't run off. You see, if you're not here tomorrow, I'm well and truly dead.'
Gresham looked at George, and wondered if he could tell him the truth. He had to. He had no option.
'George,' he said, 'you've been fooled. You've been sold a line.'
'Oh, not that again!' said George. 'You just can't bear it that for once I've been cleverer than you.'
'George,' said Gresham, 'those thousand men exist. Or five hundred of them at least, and about fifty others who arrived in a merchant ship last week, moored up-river. They're there now. They're battened down below in the day, but they take them ashore to walk and breathe a bit at night, when no one can see them.'
No one except the father of one of Gresham's men, who was a poacher, and had seen strange men exercising on the shore at a time when no law-abiding man was about. That had been the message which had been causing him so much thought, just before Jane had told him about Richard the Second being performed at the Globe.
'Men? On a boat? But I don't understand!'
'Nor does the poacher who heard those dozen men talking on the shore in Spanish. Nor did anyone else when a man with a goatee beard yelled at two of his men not to kill me on board the
Anna. Or perhaps only I heard. When he called out first of all, he shouted Spanish for 'Hold off!' Then he shouted in perfect English. It happens to people in the heat of battle. They revert to type.'
'But I still don't understand-'
'No, you don't That's the whole point. Cameron doesn't work for Essex, or for Cecil, or even for James.'
A wave of nausea hit Gresham. He recognised it as a result of minor concussion, the almost inevitable result of a bad blow to the head.
'Cameron works for Spain. Has done all along.'
'Spain?. Spain?' George's brow was furrowed. 'But that's impossible! I don't see-'
'Keep your voice down! Can't you see it's the only explanation? Do you think Spain's given up its ambition for the English throne when it has a perfectly good claim to it, one that stands up in any court? One that even Cecil has to acknowledge? When countless thousands of its men and countless millions of its gold have been poured into a string of Armadas, only one of which ever got within sight of our shores? When it's funded ten or more assassination attempts on the Queen? When it pays a 'pension' to half the influential people in the Court, including Cecil? When the Queen, and Cecil, and Essex, and Raleigh, and for all I know even bloody James himself, have seen James as the heir apparent, thought the threat from Spain was only from Spanish invasion and dismissed it, been lulled into a sense of false security? And all the while Spain's been working on the real plot, the one way it can guarantee to get the Infanta on the throne of England.'
'But how? I just don't see-'
'Think!' said Gresham. 'For years Spain's been working on Cecil to isolate Essex, to get rid of him. Essex — the only one who wouldn't take a Spanish pension. And Cecil does their job for them, because he thinks he can play them and King James off against each other, and he wants rid of Essex — the only man with more influence with the Queen than he has — as much as they do. So Essex is first of all put in a position where he can't refuse to go to Ireland, and as a direct result is forced into rebellion. After that, it's simple. It only takes two men to get Spain on the throne of England: Grey is one. Bastard that he is, I'll bet my inheritance he's been in the pay of Spain for years. So he launches an attack on Essex's closest friend, Southampton, guaranteed to provoke Essex, be the last straw, act like a glove slapped across his face. The famous Sheriff Smith is the second man. Pay him to be on Essex's side, raise these men. And pay him to look the other way when his militia are reinforced in the morning by fifty extra
