'It's wasted on him,' grumbled Gresham. 'You might as well pour decent wine into a cesspit. Feed the great lump Thames water with some alcohol in it and he wouldn't notice.' Grudgingly he nodded to Mannion. Baiting him by keeping him waiting for a drink was one of the few things to lighten Gresham's dreary life at present. Mannion nodded to George, and left to get the wine. He moved surprisingly lightly for someone so thick set and visibly muscled. He was older than Gresham, that much was clear, but by how much? Difficult to tell. Mannion's craggy face gave away few secrets, least of all his real age.
George seemed incapable of being jolly for long.
'I know you delight in ignoring all my warnings,' he said as soon as he had his fist closed comfortably round his goblet, 'but will you take one now?'
‘I know,' said Gresham, 'Mannion drinks too much and any minute he's likely to run amuck and rape all the women in London. I've tried to warn as many as possible myself, but there are just too many of them.'
'Will you be serious?' said George, annoyed.
'I am,' said Gresham in a serious voice. 'I found out the truth. He's already done it. There isn't a woman in London he hasn't bedded.'
'Ain't raped none, though,' said Mannion. His speed of return suggested the wine was stored nearby. His preferred drinking vessel was a tankard. A large tankard. 'Wouldn't do that, would I? No need. They keeps running at me.'
'Look,' said George, and this time something in his tone made even Gresham look at him, 'the both of you. This is serious. I keep my ear to the ground at Court, you know, though I doubt any of them know my name.'
No fortune could be made and no fortune sustained unless it fed at regular intervals from the Court, the trough from which all sustenance was sucked. All patronage and wealth had as its source the monarch. George had devoted a lifetime to who was in and who was out, who rising and who falling, loving to chart the extraordinarily treacherous shoals of Court fashion and favour.
'And what do you hear?' Gresham's tone betrayed no interest whatsoever in the answer.
'I hear the name of Henry Gresham,' said George, 'and rather too often — from people who hate you.'
'And why should they talk about me?' said Gresham. 'I haven't had an affair with a Court lady for… weeks. Unlike the Earl of Southampton. I hear he's got Lizzie Vernon pregnant. Or Kissie Vernon, as some of her female friends call her.'
'It's no joke!' said George sharply, taking a long pull at his goblet and motioning to Mannion to refill it. 'The vultures are gathering over the throne of England. It's a positive feeding frenzy. Old Burghley's been on his last legs for months. More important, the Queen can't be far off joining him. Forty years on the throne, for heaven's sake! Only a handful of people in England remember life without Elizabeth as Queen. There's no heir-'
'But there's lots of choices!' said Gresham, with mock enthusiasm. 'Our dear Queen has merely sought to make life interesting for her loyal subjects by leaving the issue of her succession so open! Imagine how boring it would be if she had children and we knew who our next ruler was to be! This way, there's a huge variety for us to choose from.'
George refused to be moved by humour.
'Good God, man!' he snapped. 'You can joke about this? When one heir is the King of our oldest enemy, and the other the heir of our bitterest one?'
King James of Scotland and the Infanta of Spain were two claimants to Elizabeth's crown.
'I can joke about those two. I admit my sense of humour is stretched by the Lady Arbella. No, you're right. I can't joke about her. That face of hers! And those dresses!' He raised his hands in mock horror.
It was a measure of the chaos that threatened an England with no heir that such a milksop was even talked about as a possible successor. Lady Arbella Stuart was a drab girl whose only claim to fame was a massive injection of royal blood in her thin veins.
'Look, I'm telling you,' said George, clearly angered by Gresham's. flippancy, 'I've had people name you in plots to put all three on the throne. And the same for plots to put Derby and Essex there as well! Not to mention the Kings of Spain and of France! You're everyone's favourite conspirator.'
So Cecil had been doing his work.
Gresham had been recruited to the vast network of spies paid for personally by Walsingham when he had been a penniless under-graduate at Cambridge. His deep involvement in the underworld of Elizabeth's England had not ceased when he had inherited a fortune, and it had survived even the death of Walsingham.
All around them were the noises of a great household, cushioned by the thick oak doors and the sealed windows, but audible like a low, deep current of sound. The clattering of hooves out in the courtyard as the grooms exercised Gresham's fine stable of horses, the cheerful insults of the stable boys and occasional sound of water as they slopped out the vacated stables. Soft footfalls as maids went about their business; the creak of floorboards. A tide of humanity, each locked in their own world, each viewing themselves as the most important person within it And all the time The House talked to them, its brick and timber frame expanding with the heat of the day, as if it was taking in a great breath of summer.
'And you're not doing yourself any good by being so friendly with the Earl of Essex!'
'I know you hate Essex,' said Gresham. 'Fine. It's your privilege. I find him amusing and good company. You don't seem to mind being entertained by him, do you? You've been to Essex House with me often enough. And when he's dined here.' And you're jealous of his wealth, his looks and above all his friendship with me, thought Gresham.
'I think the man's rotten to the core, corrupt even. The crowd he hangs around with-'
'Now there you do have a point,' said Gresham. 'I concede he chooses his other friends very badly. When we go out together I'm usually spared his friends.'
'Which makes them hate you for being his favourite,' said George, 'and gets you in even more bad odour. But the conspiracy theories — I'm telling you they're serious. And being seen with a playboy Earl who might well be a conspirator himself doesn't help.'
'They must think I've a lot of time on my hands.' Gresham stood up, and stalked moodily to the great window overlooking the river. There was even more traffic on it now, since George's arrival. The river was a quick and clean way to move round London, avoiding the dust of summer and the clinging, lethal mud of winter. Always provided one did not fall in, or look too closely at the lumps that swept by on the tide, bobbing half in and half out of the water. 'George, I've hardly been at Court these past six months.'
'That's part of what's inflamed the rumours. They talk about you behind their hands when you're there. They get even more nervous when you're not. And when has the truth ever mattered at Court? What matters is if the Queen gets to hear them: that you're involved in every plot against her? If she does, you're dead. She's ready to hang, draw and quarter any man or woman who even mentions death in front of her face, never mind anyone she thinks is plotting to put a successor on her throne.'
Gresham turned to face George, and looked him calmly in the eyes. Should he tell his oldest friend the truth? The truth that George was every bit as much under threat as himself? And all because of him?
'Black magic,' said Gresham, throwing himself down on a chair so hard that it squeaked on the floor. 'Worship of Lucifer. Ritual sacrifices. Of children. Have they mentioned that?'
'What?' said George, caught out for once.
'The latest story is that someone from the Very Top Circles is heavily into satanism.'
'Is it true?' said George. He was part irritated at a story he had not heard and part fascinated. Witchcraft was still an active and all-present evil to all bar the most educated of the populace and, as George's interest showed, to large numbers of those who were educated.
'God knows,' said Gresham. 'Or if he doesn't, presumably Satan does.' Clearly George knew nothing. Which could mean that the story had not spread widely. Or that it did not and had not ever existed except as a smokescreen to hide whatever Cecil's real message and intentions were. 'As for me, as I'm not at all sure that I believe in God it would be perverse of me to believe in Satan, wouldn't it? Northumberland's certainly been dabbling in all sorts of things, and Raleigh's been at some of the sessions more often than's good for him. I've seen nothing of it with Essex. But he compartmentalises his life, and I suspect I'm in my own compartment.'
The Earl of Northumberland was known as the Wizard Earl, gathering a group of people round him who conducted what they called scientific experiments but which others called witchcraft.
'Well,' said George, 'I haven't heard those stories.' His voice took on strength again. 'But I've heard stories connecting you to every plot in Christendom. You're in danger, my boy. You really are. This country is a powder keg
