The Conscience of the King hg-2 Read online

  Mannion, like a vast and ragged hen, gathered the two chickens under his arms and led them off, chattering happily. He would walk them for an hour or more through the woods, as he had done with Gresham when he was a child, pointing out to them the different notes of the birds and the names of the wild flowers. They would know how the other birds fell silent when a hawk was in the wood, spot the patches of water where the fish were to be found in the river and learn which leaf to rub on a nettle sting.

  'They're good children,' Gresham said when they were alone.

  Well, I'm glad,' said Jane. 'It'd be a little difficult to put them back from whence they came if you didn't like them.' They talked, for a while, the tittle-tattle of houses and servants. There was no mention of the sadness that joined them, the memory of the baby who had been born dead. The baby who had broken the fragile cycle of Jane's fertility. There would be no more children born to Sir Henry and Lady Gresham.

  Was he finally calming down, this husband of hers? Jane wondered. With a king secure on his throne, a brilliant heir to the Crown and the Catholics vanquished, would he cease to be Henry

  Gresham the soldier and spy she had always known? Would he increasingly be taken over by the College he had refounded, and become Sir Henry Gresham the gentleman and the academic? A part of her soul yearned for it to be so. The other, stronger part told her the truth. Yet for a moment she allowed herself to gaze on Gresham, slightly dishevelled, seemingly at peace with himself.

  It did not, could not last. It was late in the afternoon, the rooks and the men in the fields starting to head home, when they heard the sound of a tired horse, and a beating at their door.

  Cecil's messenger. Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury. Lord Treasurer and Chief Secretary to His Royal Highness King James I of England and Scotland. Cecil hated Gresham with the malice of acid on steel. It was a feeling returned with interest by Gresham. Yet each needed the other, a poisoned symbiosis that grappled both to its breast. Cecil's messengers had summoned Gresham countless times, always the harbinger of potential death and destruction, always the guarantor of trouble, and always, for some reason, coming just before or after nightfall.

  'Perhaps,' said Jane caustically, cynicism the first cover she could find for her growing fear, 'he lies waiting outside for the last two or three hours of daylight, so as to make an entrance?'

  Cecil was dying, they both knew. Those who had seen him said he stank and was rotting from within, his thin limbs no longer able to support him and racking him with pain. Jane had not expected this last summons. The fact of its coming from a man so nearly dead chilled her to her bones, made this last call from Gresham's old enemy the most terrifying of them all.

  The messenger's name was Nicholas Heaton. Gresham took care to know these things. He was muddied enough, almost as big as Mannion, sweat-stained and stinking from his ride. His hair was thinning on top, though he tried to cover it with long, lank strands plastered down over the bald patch on his pate. As if to compensate for the lack of hair on his head, he wore a huge, florid moustache that extended in two luxuriant curls beyond the side of his face. It would have been ludicrous were it not for the almost palpable sense of threat the man emanated.

  Heaton managed the merest nod of a bow to Gresham.

  'My master is dying. He requests that you might spare time from your academic pursuits to visit him on his way to Bath. He has urgent need of speech with you.'

  A man soon to be out of a job might be expected to show more respect. Gresham had too much self-respect of his own to allow Heaton's insubordination to get beneath his skin, yet he was intrigued.

  'And after his death, what fate befalls you, Master Heaton?'

  'My master has arranged for me to transfer my service. To the King.' There was pride in his voice, and arrogance.

  'I'm delighted for the both of you,' said Gresham with an unctuous sincerity that only a liar could muster. Suddenly his tone cut the air as a razor through soft flesh: 'Take care. Those who rise to greater heights have far further to fall.' Only much later was Gresham to realise the appalling irony of his words. 'As for your present and still-living master, I'll come. I've always come, haven't I? Tell him so. Where do we meet?'

  'He's left Theobalds to go to Bath. Some of his physicians believe there'll be a relief from his pain there, in the waters. The pain is constant, and agonising. You should be warned, Sir Henry. My master is not as he was.'

  'Well, that's good news at least,' said Gresham briskly. 'He couldn't be any worse, and perhaps he's improved.'

  They did not offer Master Nicholas Heaton lodging, and he did not ask.

  'Will you ride tonight?' Jane asked, seeing the nervous energy beginning to flow through Gresham.

  'It might be wise. If Cecil's as ill as his messenger says he is-' 'Please. We know what this summons means. Cecil's never invited you into anything other than mortal danger. Tonight, stay with me. Let's remember who we are.'

  Gresham half turned towards the door. Mannion was standing there, blocking it. No words were spoken.

  Gresham drew himself up to his full height, arms akimbo.

  'Am I the lord and master of this house? Do I have authority over my wife and my servants?'

  Jane dropped her eyes, her shoulders sagging slightly. Her normal spirit seemed to have been sucked out of her by the messenger and all that he stood for. She could cope with Gresham. Sometimes it was his life that overwhelmed her. She gave a slight curtsey, an almost involuntary reversion to a childish state. His heart went out to her in a fierce bite of love. So strong. So vulnerable.

  'You know that I'm yours,' she replied softly.

  Good God, thought Gresham, what must it have cost her fiery spirit to say that? A pang of guilt hit him like a blow to the stomach. Who was he to march like a peacock over those whose only fault was to give him their love? None of it showed on his face. Impassive, he turned to Mannion, who had folded his arms and was stood before the door like Leviathan. 'And you?'

  'Yes to the first. You're lord and master of this house. And you've certainly got authority over one of the other two, though I'm damned if I know which one…'

  'Do you defy me?' Gresham stuck his chin in the air, glaring at Mannion.

  'Only when it matters,' he replied.

  'And you?' Gresham turned to Jane.

  'I just want you to spend the night with me.'

  None of the haughtiness, the icy distance she could muster with a king and the frightening authority she could exert over the servants, was there now. He loved her, he thought, more than he had ever thought he could love anyone.

  Gresham looked from one to the other, Jane now looking directly into his eyes. He grinned. 'We ride at dawn for Bath. I sleep the night here. I have decided.'

  Mannion refrained from winking at Jane. Of course he had decided. Yet not without a little help from his friends.

  They were holding hands as they left the room, Mannion noticed. Babies. Babies. And the two people for whom he would cheerfully lay down his life.

  3

  May, 1612 Bath

  'Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure?'

  Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

  The sun was hidden behind a grey haze as he mounted his horse at dawn. The mist that had been but thin wisps yesterday was now a blanket, waist high, converting the flat landscape to a world of ghosts.

  Was this the last summons to Cecil that Gresham would ever answer? In farewell to his ancient enemy, Gresham rode as never before. The hooves of his horse hit the ground with such force that it was like a hammer to his spine, the mud and earth they flung away from their impact flying up with the force of cannon balls. The wind tugged at his hat and as the leaping, shaking, shattering world ran by his watering eyes he urged the horse on, faster and faster. It was as if his mount knew that summer had come, and felt its strong legs stretch to three times their length, the fine muscle tightening like steel and releasing again with every movement of the
insane gallop. For some wild minutes man and horse were as one, invincible, immortal in their speed and shared madness.

  It had to end, of course. Gresham was not a man to take pleasure in riding a fine horse to the ground. He allowed the beast to slow down, praised it for its strength and beauty, timing it superbly so that before too long his once fiery mount was ambling along like any farmer's hack. He waited for Mannion, cursing under his breath, to catch up, and grinned at him. Mannion stayed on a horse and with a good seat, but no one in the kingdom could catch a well-mounted Henry Gresham with the devil in him.

  Gresham was wealthy enough to have his own horses stabled at stages along the road to London from Cambridge. Each horse was ridden like the one before, so that when Gresham reached London the fine leather of his boots was in tatters, every muscle ached as if a hot iron had been passed over them and he was near dead with exhaustion. He slept for three hours. There were none of his own horses between London and Bath. Rather than trust to those he might find to hire or purchase along the way he took a string of his own animals, knowing that from there on his pace would have to be more seemly. He spurned the coaches that increasingly clogged the muddied roads and brought London traffic to a halt. He was not that old, not yet.

  The waters of Bath had been used, so they said, in Roman times and ever after to cure the elderly and the infirm. Some of the Romans seemed never to have left, judging by the presence of} the elderly and infirm. The old Abbey dwarfed the town, almost as if by squatting over it its dead hulk took life away from the miserable place. There was an air of decay everywhere. Gresham was used to the stink of towns, but this stench had the tinge of rotting flesh in it. They brushed bugs from their sweating faces as they rode. Even this early in summer, everything in Bath was flyblown.

  Mannion had taken a drumstick from one of the birds they had been served at the last inn and was now devouring it, on horseback. 'Do you want to know what I think? he asked now, a small piece of dessicated meat shooting from his mouth past Gresham's left ear as he spoke.

  'You mean you can think? I'm not sure I want to go anywhere near your mind if your physical actions in any way reflect its contents. But,' Gresham sighed, '1 expect you'll tell me anyway.'

  'In the past he wanted to use you, and didn't mind if you died in the process. Now he's dying, he'll want to use you provided you get killed in the process. He'll want to take you along with him to hell. You're the only one who's ever got the best of him.'

  Gresham did not challenge the conclusion. Instead, he looked at the population of Bath. 'Do people ever walk in Bath?' he asked, looking round. 'Or do they only hobble, or be carried by servants?'

  He was surprised at the address he had been given by Nicholas Heaton. It was grand enough for a successful provincial lawyer but too poor by half for the King's Chief Secretary. He said as much as his knock on the door was answered by an obsequious servant dressed in Cecil's livery.

  'I wonder at my lord of Salisbury taking such lodgings. Aren't they beneath his usual style?'

  'My lord has great pain in any movement. It's necessary for him to be as near to the baths as possible.'

  They waited in a dingy room. Its panelling had been brightly painted quite recently, in the current fashion, but the job had been badly done and paint was flaking off already. The hangings had faded almost completely into drab greyness, and only a few vague figures could be discerned among the overwhelming pattern of dust that was all that held them together. The glass in the windows was of poor quality and had a sickly yellow tinge. Everything was coated with filth, and the smell of damp in the room made it stink like something unwashed. Another servant brought in wine. He was fresh-faced, little more than a boy, with eyes wide open to the wonder of the world and his luck in being servant to such a great man.

  'Thank you,' said Gresham, whose life had been saved on more than one occasion by a servant who had noticed that Gresham called him by name and treated him as a human being. 'Your name is…?'

  The servant halted, on his way out of the room, surprised to be addressed. 'Me, sir? I'm Arthur, sir…' Arthur gazed at Gresham in total awe, unaware that his mouth was hanging open. 'Sir… sir, forgive me, I…' Arthur was clearly bursting to say something.

  'Spit it out, lad,' said Mannion.

  Arthur saw a tall, muscled figure dressed from top to toe in. black except for a white collar worked with breathtaking and exquisite skill. The clothes breathed money, despite beingalmost ostentatious in their lack of ostentation. The body they covered seemed as if it were a coiled spring, ready at any moment to break out. Yet it was the face that Arthur could not take his eyes from, a face of arrogance, of immense strength, of flickering humour yet strange vulnerability — a face that seemed to have all the humours of the world in its angularity.

  'Sir… sir…' Arthur was stuttering. 'What I wanted to know, know more than anything else was… did you meet Guy Fawkes, as they say you did?'

  Gresham looked Arthur straight in the eye. 'Yes, Arthur, I did meet Guy Fawkes. As they say I did.'

  Yes, thought Gresham, I did meet Guy Fawkes, a rather decent and honourable man in many respects, certainly more honourable than many of those who hounded him to his death. And I was responsible for stopping his escape, springing a trap upon him and delivering him to a death no animal should endure, administered by your master, Robert Cecil. And by failing to tell the truth about Guy Fawkes, quite deliberately, I helped keep your master in power and a dribbling Scottish homosexual as king. All in all, I did a brilliant job.

  'And, sir,' said Arthur, so intent and intense that he forgot to splutter, 'was he as they say? Was he the devil incarnate?'

  'Yes, Arthur,' said Gresham solemnly. He felt the mischief in his soul bubble and startto rise. 'He was the devil incarnate. And I tell you what very few other people know, a secret you must vow at all costs to keep to yourself. Do you vow, on your soul and all that you hold holy?'

  'I do, sir, I do, I do…' Arthur was transformed by a paroxysm of yearning.

  'When he was examined, it was proven that he had a cloven foot!'

  There was a moment of extraordinary silence.

  'Sir!' said Arthur, standing to attention, real tears in his eyes. 'I shall never tell a soul! And… thank you!' He rushed from the room.

  'Well,' said Mannion, 'that'll be round the servant's hall in five minutes flat. Still, at least you made him leave the jug.' Mannion helped himself. Cecil's wine had always been cat's piss, served in golden goblets, a strange emblem for the man. Mannion would have drunk real cat's piss quite cheerfully if it had been proven to be alcoholic.

  There was a noise of carriages outside, in surprisingly short time, and much shouting and apparent confusion. The Earl of Salisbury had made haste back from the baths. He was bustled in to the room in a chair carried by four men, another man by his side.

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Cecil was shrouded in blankets, a thin, emaciated version of his former self, shrunken, wizened and dried out. The skin on his face was drawn tight over his skull like a death's head, only the hard, dark eyes recognisably the same as ever. One hand protruded slightly from the blankets, shaking uncontrollably. This was a wreck of a man, thought Gresham, a pitiful caricature of what had once been. A stench of something foul and rotten came from within the blankets. There was scant dignity in death, and what little that there was had been taken away from Robert Cecil. And what good to you is it now, thought Gresham, that you are the First Earl of Salisbury, that you have held power beyond the desire of monarchs? You have no power over this ignominy, this humiliation that leaves the vision of a demented cripple as your memorial.

  'Good day, Sir Henry,' said Cecil. The voice was thin, wavering, but still recognisably the same. It reeked with the same insincerity. 'As ever, it is a pleasure to see you.'

  'My Lord Salisbury,' said Gresham urbanely. 'And Sir Edward Coke.' He nodded to the figure beside Cecil. 'Not only the normal pleasure, but a pleasure almost doubled.'

  C
ecil's companion was a surprise. After Cecil himself, Sir Edward Coke was the man Henry Gresham most loathed above all others. Old now — he must be sixty — Coke exuded a youthful energy, a magnetism that all near him felt. Setting himself up as England's leading legal expert, and of ferocious, icy intelligence and application, Coke had been chief prosecutor at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh. A charade, the trial had turned Raleigh from one of the most hated men in England into a folk hero, by virtue of its palpable unfairness and the dignity with which Raleigh had defended himself. Denying Raleigh any legal representation, Coke had not even allowed him to call his chief accuser as a witness, and had made a mockery out of justice. Every reason for hating lawyers, and for hating men with no principles except their own vainglory, was summed up for Henry Gresham in the figure of Sir Edward Coke. And now both he and Cecil were facing him.

  'Have you both had a pleasant day?' asked Gresham solicitously. Cecil was dying in agony. Coke's idea of a pleasant day was finding yet more reason to hate papists, sodomites and his own daughter, not to mention anyone the King needed convicting at short notice. In Gresham's experience, being nice to such people caused them more agonies than anything else.

  'I am lowered into the baths, Sir Henry,' said Cecil in a parody of his former voice, but still with a practical, factual tone to it.

  'They do it in a strange contraption of a chair they have built spe-cially for me. The ropes snag on occasion, which is not pleasant. My numerous physicians tell me it is important I go no deeper than waist height.' indeed, my lord,' replied Gresham easily. 'I must attempt to be present the next time they hoist you over the watery void, and see if I can cut the rope-'

  'My lord. Is this… impertinence necessary?' Coke spoke with chilling calm.

  Cecil turned to Sir Edward Coke with an effort that cost him dear. The lawyer held Cecil's gaze, then only reluctantly dropped his eyes. A tall, forbidding man with a long, oval face, Coke was ill at ease, unhappy and uncertain with this fencing between the two men. He lusted for control, for power, and hated any situation where power seemed to be ceded to others. Coke had become too used to being both judge and jury, Gresham thought.