The Desperate remedy hg-1 Read online

  'I talk. The antidote…'

  'Comes when you've finished speaking. First the letters. Why?'

  'Because Cecil commanded — why else do you think? And because he paid. You know the loyalties in our game. To money and to preservation. Friendship comes a long way third.'

  'Your honesty does you credit. A pity it didn't come earlier. Here, you may drink from the one bottle.' Gresham tossed the glass towards him. Phelippes grasped at it convulsively, ripped the stopper out and crammed the fluid down his throat. 'It takes two bottles to stop the work of the poison. The second is there when you finish. These names. Tell me what you know. All that you know.'

  Gresham tossed a piece of paper to Phelippes. On it were the names given him by Moll Cutpurse.

  Tom Wintour, Robert Catesby, Kit and Jack Wright and Thomas Percy.

  Phelippes looked up, startled, his professionalism temporarily overcoming his fear. 'Catholics, one and all. A set of brothers. All related, by birth or by marriage. Catesby and the Wrights were held in the Tower together in '96.'

  'Tell me about each one.'

  'Why, do you think I've a clerk to hand?' Gresham held the glass bottle over the flagged stone floor. 'This has to come from my head, you know! Peace, peace, I'll try.'

  Phelippes rocked back and closed his eyes.

  'Catesby… old Catholic family, handsome devil of a man. Good swordsman too, by all accounts. Caught up with Essex, wasn't he? You would know better than I…' He gazed slyly at Gresham, who returned his look unmoved. 'Wife died, so I believe; thick with the priests. House in Lambeth, or used to have one there. Also lodgings in the Strand… A hothead, powerful, many friends. One to watch, definitely, one to watch…

  'The Wright brothers… Catholics to the core, good swordsmen both

  … reckoned some of the best in the country. Up to their necks with Essex and his song and dance, with their friend Catesby. Travellers to Europe, both of them, up to no good. It was me who tipped off Walsingham about them…

  'Tom Wintour… Wintours of Huddington Court, sitting on a fortune with the saltpans at Droitwich — God knows what they have to rebel about with their money. Another known Catholic, younger brother. Restless, fiery, Witty, fond of the women and the wine… another traveller, up to no good I would guess…

  'Percy… now there's a man of piss and wind. Does Northumberland's dirty work for him, went to negotiate with good King James for Northumberland, angry, vainglorious… King seems to like him… hates Cecil… nettles in his arse and an ambition that burns him dry. Wild, wild, to be steered clear of… master of no-one yet servant to none in his heart as well… For God's sake, man, will you give me that bottle’

  'Eventually,' said Gresham calmly. 'One more thing. You're a professional traitor, Tom, aren't you? So who's my lever into opening the lid of this affair?' Gresham's eyes could have pierced through the timbers on a ship's side as they looked at Phelippes. 'Who can be bribed into betraying their friends from this group? Who is there of your kind amidst these men?'

  Phelippes looked longingly at the bottle. Gresham made no move.

  'Tresham,' he croaked. 'Francis Tresham. I know he's not on your list, but he's been in bed all his life with those who are. He's a thieving, violent, angry little runt, and if his friends and relatives are up to mischief you can bet Francis Tresham won't be far away.'

  'More,' said Gresham. 'I want more.'

  'Big Catholic family.' The sweat was now running in small beads across the cavities on Phelippes' face. 'Father a patriarch, big builder, big spender. Had to bail the boy out endless times. Had to bribe him out of here, the Tower, after the Essex rebellion. Young Tresham's lucky still to have his head. He's a wild one, out of control — for God's sake give me that bottle’

  'Here.' He tossed the second bottle to Phelippes, who fell upon it and managed nearly to swallow the bottle as well as its contents.

  'Don't betray me again, Tom,' said Gresham as he took his leave of the miserable cell and its occupant. 'In an hour or so you'll start to feel ill, and then your body will seek to expel the poison you fed it, by venting your bowels and your stomach. It'll be forcible, and it'll hurt, I'm pleased to say. A lot. You'll be able to take no food for three, four days, perhaps even a week, and your gut will hurt all that time as if it had been fed molten lead. But you'll recover, unless you catch the plague in the meantime. And by the way, the other wine is pure.'

  It took them an interminable time to move through the various gates that let them out to the Thames, twice as long as it had taken them to enter.

  "You've not used poison before, master,' said Mannion. There was no accusation in his carefully guarded tone. 'I haven't this time,' said Gresham.

  But I was sorely tempted. Forman gave me the bottle of poison that is here still in my purse. I was ready to pour the wine into the goblets we brought in the basket, and slip the poison in by sleight of hand. I wanted him to die, to suffer for what he had done. And I don't know why I stopped in time.

  'There was no poison?' asked Mannion incredulously. Gresham's act had clearly convinced him.

  ‘No poison in the wine. The last bottle contained a potion that Forman assures me will give Thomas Phelippes a gut-ache that he'll remember for the rest of his misbegotten life.'

  Mannion started to laugh, his hilarity causing his whole body to shake so that he had to grasp one of the rotting wooden stakes by the jetty.

  'In dosing him I did no more than my civic duty. A change gives as much peace as a rest, and those who tend Phelippes will soon have a new stench as a change from that of the ditch!'

  Gresham laughed alongside Mannion. In his laughter was a sense of release. Without conscious thought on his behalf, he now knew who his enemy was.

  Jane had awoken when they returned to the House. Traces of the drug were still in her. She was sitting in a back room overlooking the river, thin and drawn, with a blanket over her shoulders despite the summer's day.

  Gresham was brusque with her. 'I think I know why someone tried to murder us on the river last night.'

  She turned to look at him, the fire in her eyes dead.

  'Wake up,' he said to her, more gently. 'Wake up, or give in. You never let that stinking village kill your spirit. You never let me kill your spirit. Now choose. Are you going to let a ruffian who wanted your life take it from you, even though you killed him?'

  Something like a tiny flicker of fire, as if from a grate where the embers had been left overnight, came into her gaze.

  'It was…' She was about to collapse into sobs again, Gresham could see. He spoke, sharply, unkindly.

  'It was indeed. It happened. You can't change that. Either let it destroy you, or conquer it. There's no halfway house.'

  Instead of shouting at herself she did what Gresham had hoped, and shouted at him.

  'How can you stand there so calmly? How can you let the blood wash off your hands so easily? How can you forget? These were men last night, not animals. We were so happy, and then from nowhere… this awfulness came and hit us and I… I had to…'

  'You had to kill!' He was shouting now. 'Do you hear? You had to kill! Do you think you alone of God's creatures have a special existence? Do you think in this Godforsaken world God would come back to give you a special exemption from reality. Wake up, woman!' He moved close to her, kneeling down to breathe in her ear. 'And never tell me that I forget. You don't have that right. I remember, all of the times, all of them. And I do not forget. I learn to hide the memories.'

  He knew then he had won, and he knew then why he loved her for her courage, for her independence and for her strength. She sat for a moment head bowed, then looked up at him. There was no extra line on her face, no extra wrinkle or grey hair, yet she had aged in a way that no physical mark would ever show. She would never be the same again, but she would be stronger, more able to survive. What she had lost to gain that victory he did not know. It was the price for survival.

  'I'm sorry,' she said, with a slight sniffle still i
n her voice that made her pathetic, still vulnerable. 'I was rapt in my own grief. It's as you say. Do you remember it, on that horse all those years ago, me with your cloak over my village filth?'

  'Remember what?' Gresham was confused.

  'What you said then. I don't think you knew much about little girls. You spoke to me very solemnly, as you might your bride taking her home in splendour on their wedding day. You said, "Your life starts here. We wipe out the history of every day as we live it, and if we're brave we can start it all over again with every new day. This is your new day." I thought you were mad, and very, very handsome and dashing. No-one had ever spoken to me like that before.'

  'Was I really that pompous?' If the truth be known, he did remember it.

  'And still are. But I'll forgive you. I'll try very hard to make it a new day. But you must be kind to me. There'll be times when it's hard, and when I'll need loving, and not shouting at, to keep me from falling into the abyss.'

  In the imperceptible way that it is with people, something in them had meshed again, and moved forward with an unspoken, unseen power.

  'So why was I turned into a murderess last night?'

  There was a flippant edge to her voice, as well as a dark undertone. Gresham sensed that the use of the word 'murderess' was deliberate, part of her feeling her way to an acceptance of what had taken place. He did not challenge her description of herself. Let her feel her own way to her own form of salvation. There was no simple rule.

  He told about the forged letter that Tom Barnes had brought to him.

  ‘Why didn't you tell me about the letter?' 'I wanted to tell you when I had an answer, not just the question.'

  'Is that wise? To share the information with me as it comes isn't to admit weakness, it's simply to recognise that two minds can sometimes do more than one.'

  'On that basis,' said Gresham, 'I should share all my information with Mary the maid, Martha the Housekeeper and Harry the boatman. Oh, and there's young Will, Cook of course, and…'

  She cut him short. 'The difference is that none of them have a mind like mine. And they may love you in their fashion, but I love you in mine. And mine is stronger.'

  That shut him up, for a moment. She carried on.

  'The forging of the letter was a long-term plan, anyway. Who tried to kill us? What triggered… last night?'

  'I think I know now. I've been confused, ever since Will Shadwell’s murder. At one time I had Percy killing Shadwell, and organising the business on the river in case Shadwell had left a message for me. Then I thought even the King might be involved, or Bacon, or even the Spaniards. But I was wrong.'

  'So who is it?'

  'Cecil. It has to be Cecil who tried to kill us. I think Cecil was trying to outflank me anyway, probably before all this started. He knew I had papers that would damn him. He must have hated my having that hold over him, wracked his brains to get himself out of the trap. Letters apparently in my handwriting pleading for a Catholic overthrow of England was an idea of brilliance. It not only makes me a wholly unreliable witness, but it makes my papers coming from the Papal archive an admission of guilt.'

  'All you've said is that Cecil wanted to be able to counter what you had that threatened him. Why did he suddenly decide to have us killed?'

  'Will Shadwell, I'm sure. He's at the heart of it. Will must have heard something that sent the poor fool scurrying to me, and the evidence is that he was murdered by one of Cecil's men, not by Percy or anyone else. I've been too clever for my own good. I invented all sorts of reasons why Sam Fogarty could have been working for Northumberland, or perhaps for Rome and the

  Catholic cause. The only two things we know for certain are that Fogarty works for Cecil, and he was involved in Shadwell's murder closely enough to have taken Will's ring. That links it back to Cecil.'

  As Gresham had hoped, the chance of explaining why her horror had happened gripped Jane, drew her mind out from the depths of her depression, forced it to work.

  'But Cecil didn't try to kill you after Will Shadwell. He called you back to London and sent you off after Bacon.'

  'Cecil must have feared something Shadwell knew enough to have him killed. Then he must have wondered if Shadwell had got the news to me. Whatever it was, it must have been of such great importance that I couldn't be allowed to know it and to live. Cecil wouldn't want to alarm me unnecessarily in case I knew nothing, so he must have called me back to London on a wild-goose chase after Bacon to sound me out. I didn't give him any cause for suspicion when we met because I knew nothing then that linked Will's death to him. Truth is always the best defence. Cecil read me right that day. I didn't suspect him of Shadwell’s murder, or of anything other than being the slimy rat I know he is. So Cecil must have felt really pleased with himself, and sent me off after a red herring in the hope it'd keep me out of trouble and off the scent of whatever it is he wants to hide from me.'

  'Then why did he then suddenly want to kill you?'

  'It has to be my trip to see Moll. Cecil must have thought I'd gone to pick up a message from The Dagger. It was stupid of me to go so openly. There must have been endless numbers of Cecil's spies in that place, seeing me walk through and reporting back. Shadwell met Percy in The Dagger, and Moll puts out that she knows everything, even if she doesn't. What was to stop Shadwell leaving papers for me back at The Dagger, as insurance in case something happened to him? It's what I would have done. Poor Cecil. He must have congratulated himself that he's stopped the trail and sent me off on a wild-goose chase, and then I turn up bold as brass at The Dagger. He must have had a seizure. I sent Mannion to warn Moll. She'll go into hiding. Cecil is bound to be after her, to find out what she did know.'

  'And I suppose once he'd commissioned one set of letters to prove you a traitor, he felt he could simply commission another to cover for your death. One other thing points to him,' said Jane. 'The boat that attacked us, it was new, well-found, expensive. The men on it… may have been thugs, but they were trained, after a fashion, and many of them. All that signals money, resources, the power to gather a crew and a boat at short notice. There are few people in London outside of Cecil who could call on resources to that level. But why the rosary beads?'

  'Who knows? Even Cecil can't have that many thugs at his disposal. The man whose beads Shadwell broke could have been the same man you killed on the boat.'

  'Do you really believe that?' said Jane. 'Or are you trying to make me feel better? I didn't kill a man, you're trying to tell me. I simply executed Will Shadwell's murderer?'

  She was too clever by half, thought Gresham, too astute for his tricks even in the immediate aftermath of her grief.

  'It's possible. Or it's Cecil setting a false trail, suggesting Catholics are behind the murders, putting up a smoke screen behind which he can hide. Rosary beads are cheap enough, after all'

  'We may have got closer to what happened,' said Jane, 'but we still don't know why. 1

  'True,' replied Gresham. 'Well, Tom Phelippes may have given us our key into these Papists. Francis Tresham, he said. A pleasant piece of work by all counts, but I'd back Phelippes to know a traitor any day. He looks at one in the glass every morning, so he should know.'

  Jane rose. Her gait was tired, the movement an effort. 'I'm going to bathe and to change, and shout at a few servants to stop them sympathising with me and treating me like a sick woman.' The

  House knew what had happened on the river, of course. Gresham doubted if his own boat crew had stopped telling the story even now downstairs in the kitchen. It was a good story. Let them tell it. It bred a pride in his servants and it made sure that the crossbows in the boat would be well oiled. 'But just one thing more. You've warned Moll. Yet won't Cecil be suspicious of Tom Phelippes, if you walk up to him as you walked up to Moll? Won't you have signed Tom Phelippes's death warrant, as you nearly signed Moll's?'

  'Will I?' said Gresham carelessly. 'Well, now, there's a thought.'

  'Is that all you care?' said Jane. - />
  'Yes,' said Gresham, 'it probably is. He betrayed me. And it'll be interesting to see if someone tries to take his life, won't it? If they do, it will prove Cecil's involvement. No-one else has the key to let an assassin into the Tower, do they?'

  Raleigh hated most of all the time when the bell tolled and the Tower was emptied of all its visitors. In the day he could lose himself in the bustle of the King's prison, in his laboratory and in his writing. At night too he could turn, in the silence, to his books. Yet in the late afternoon, when the people hurried to leave the Tower, then it came upon him that he could not leave, that he was truly a prisoner.

  He had freedom to walk in the inner ward, though a warder would trail him quietly if he did so. The image of Robert Cecil haunted his mind. Cecil's power had destroyed Essex, and was now set to destroy Raleigh himself. In a strange way, it was probably not personal at all, Raleigh mused. He believed that Cecil had been, probably still was, genuinely fond of him. Affection had never stopped Robert Cecil ordering a man's death. Why would he do it?

  Because Raleigh had the two things that Cecil most dreaded in a rival; the capacity to hold a crowd, to be a popular leader, and the capacity on occasion to act on principle, and not simply through self-interest. Cecil would never make a crowd eat out of his hand, and he had always feared those who could cut direct through to the hearts and minds of the common people. Nor could he predict which way a man might jump if ever he stepped off the predictable path of self-interest, and on to the more dangerous road of principle, and Cecil hated those whose moves he could not predict. It needed only the tiniest push to separate Raleigh's head from his body, he knew. He had become a threat to Robert Cecil, a potential rival for the heart and mind of the King and the heart and mind of the people. Already with no charge to answer he was locked inside the strongest prison in the land. One slip, and Cecil would have him in his shirt on Tower Green, ready to kiss an axe in place of Bess.