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  Gresham loathed the sea. 'What role do I have in this?' he asked.

  'I need eyes and ears abroad. I have booked you passage on Drake's expedition. He will land you ashore on some dark night so you can make your way to Lisbon, give me the information about Philip's fleet that we so desperately need. Yet after the attack, I want you also to report on the fighting qualities of our men and our ships. I need to hear at first-hand how they cope in battle. And how their leaders lead them.'

  'It won't be easy to be an Englishman in Portugal, or Spain, at this time,' said Gresham.

  'Few things that are easy are worthwhile,' Walsingham replied. 'And it is easier for you than for many. You speak Spanish like a native. And you have acquired Spanish friends. On my behalf, of course.' There was no expression in Walsingham's eyes. Was Walsingham becoming concerned about Gresham's links with Spain? 'Will you… accept this errand on my behalf?'

  'My Lord.' Gresham bowed his head. Well, well, well. How nice to be treated like a package. Gresham was glad that he was not sensitive. He did not want to go to sea. He thought he was worth more than counting ships in a foreign harbour. It was dangerous, what was being asked of him, but without the glamour or excitement that made the danger palatable. And why the mention of Cecil? 'Yet our earlier conversation? About Robert Cecil…?'

  'The matter on which you embark is sensitive. Too sensitive for your instructions to be entrusted to a messenger. Expect to be contacted by Robert Cecil in the near future. He will give you my final orders. While my illness persists, he is useful to me. You will forget your childish differences and take him as my representative.'

  Robert Cecil was a man clawing his way up the ladder of preferment, helped by his father's great power but also sometimes hindered by the enemies his father had built up over his lifetime. Which side was Walsingham on? Did he see Robert Cecil as the new order, the order George had seen as imminent?

  'We must return to await the Queen's entry. And by the way, restrain your vanity. It was not the Queen's lust for your fine legs and the rest of your body that made her summon you here. It was because I asked her to do so. I have that much influence left, it would seem.'

  As Walsingham rose a staggering pain seemed to hit him in the gut, and he doubled up. If Gresham had not suddenly been there to support him he would have crashed to the floor. The old man's lips were drawn back in silent agony, his eyes screwed shut, hands clutching at his stomach.

  'My Lord…!' Gresham was aghast, confused. He had never seen Walsingham express any sign of humanity, never mind physical weakness. 'Sit… sit…' Gresham sensed that Walsingham needed to be placed back in the chair. He lay there, gasping two or three times as spasms crashed through him. Then it seemed as if the pains were easing. Walsingham opened his eyes.

  'Stones. There is nothing that can be done. The pain is acute, but it passes. Its cruelty is that it comes without warning. Go!' he said, eyes only half-open. 'Go now. It is important that the Queen sees you there when she appears to welcome the Ambassador. More important than if I remain here…'

  As the door closed Walsingham stood up straight, all signs of pain gone. The real pain would come later, he knew. As it was, his knowledge of that pain allowed him to act it out with utter conviction when it was useful and he needed to rid himself of someone. The old man moved to the side of the room. 'We are alone,' he called out. 'You may safely emerge.'

  Robert Cecil swung back the arras from behind which he had witnessed Walsingham's conversation with Gresham. A small, slightly hunched figure, he moved awkwardly to a chair, nodded his acknowledgement to Walsingham and received the old man's permission to sit.

  ‘Well, sir,' said Walsingham. 'Did you see what you wished to see?'

  'I am grateful to you, Sir Francis,' said Cecil. 'I- ' 'I ask no questions, Robert Cecil,' said Walsingham, waving a hand to cut Cecil short. 'And, to be frank, I would not believe your answers. Your father asks me to repay a past favour by my seeing you. I agreed. You asked to be given the chance to view and to meet one of my… young men. It does not interfere with my plans for that young man. I agreed. My debt is paid. You have what you wished for. If only all life could be so simple.' There was silence for a moment.

  'I confess to being surprised that you do not wish to know more of my reasons, my Lord,' said Cecil, finally.

  'Why?' said Walsingham. 'You will certainly have a reason to give me, but quite frankly, it is as likely to be a lie as it is to be the truth.'

  'Sir!' said Cecil, outrage in his surprisingly strong voice, a voice with a rasp in it as of something dragged over gravel, at odds with his slight frame. 'I take offence at the accusation of being a liar!'

  Walsingham looked at Cecil, an ironic, humourless smile playing on his lips. 'Then you take offence too easily, and will not last long in the world of the Court! I know what you are,' said Walsingham. In those few words Walsingham had somehow crammed the experience of all his years, the idiocy of human life, its vanities, its foibles and its deceits.

  'Sir?' Cecil was confused now.

  'You were born into power, have grown up with power and expect power as your right. You drank in power at your mother's breast and at your father's table. And now the source of your power, your father, is failing, as I am failing, because time is the one enemy we cannot defeat, your father with his skills and me with mine.' 'I seek to serve Her Majesty in whatever humble capacity-' You are not humble, Master Cecil. And the god you serve is your own position and influence. Don't worry,' said Walsingham, holding up his hand to stop another outburst and speaking now almost in sympathetic tones, 'there is many a man who has given good service to his monarch when actually serving only himself. You are such, I suspect.'

  Cecil had recovered now. There was ice in his reply. 'You seem to know a very great deal.'

  'I know what you are. That you will twist and turn seeking every advantage, sniff the wind of favour like a beast in the field, scent where danger and advantage are. You are different from myself, from your father even. God knows I have ambition enough. Yet always I have known that I served first my God, second my country and third my Queen. You are the future, I fear. You may do good service to all three, yet the person you really serve is yourself.'

  'The Queen might be interested to hear your order of priorities,' sneered Cecil.

  'She is not ready to hear them from you, not yet’ said Walsingham. 'There are many rungs to climb on your ladder of success before you reach that level of confidence with her.'

  There was silence between the two men.

  'And in answer to the question you do not dare to ask, you will have reasons for getting to know Henry Gresham, reasons that I have no doubt will rebound to your own advantage. I see no obstruction to my plans for that young man in whatever you might wish of him, not yet at least. But you may find that he is a young man who has ideas of his own. So be it. And good day to you, Robert Cecil.'

  Obligation. Entrapment. Robert Cecil was the new order, or a possible variant of that new order. Yet Walsingham was ready to die only when God gave the command. In the meantime, let the new order be in his debt, in his vision. He doubted that Cecil planned anything good for Gresham. But who knew how valuable the knowledge of Cecil's plans would be when Walsingham finally acquired it, as acquire it he surely would.

  'Just checking you came out alive!' whispered George, who appeared by Gresham's side as soon as he stepped into the Hall. Mannion was there too, playing his usual trick of sticking up against the wall so that people thought him to be a royal servant. 'Well, tell me! What did he want?'

  'To have me blown to death in Lisbon or hung from a tree as a spy there!' said Gresham bitterly, then angry at himself for taking his depression out on his friend. Further conversation was denied them. The musicians in the Gallery stirred. The Queen's famous parsimony may have been evident elsewhere in her reception, but not in the dress of her players, resplendent in Tudor green. They stood, and a blare of trumpets rolled out through the rafters and rattled the window
s of the ancient building. It was a dramatic opening, but not as dramatic as the appearance of the Virgin Queen herself.

  The cynic in Gresham noted that a particularly fine chandelier had been hung at the back of the hall, over a narrow, empty dais cloaked at the side with fine hangings. It seemed to serve no purpose, until the Queen stepped out from a door hidden by one of the hangings, two cherubic page boys flinging the door open and standing aside, bowing to let her pass. Every jewel sewn into her dress, on her fingers and round her neck seemed to blaze into fearsome light, as if a glittering portion of the sun had exploded into the Hall. She was not a particularly tall woman, and her hour-glass figure was threatened by matronly wadding. The worth of the fine black and russet-brown cloth of the dress alone, with its intricate filigree stitching on the huge puffed sleeves, would have fed a small town for a year. And the jewels! Apart from the gem stones, some even placed on the vast halo-like ruff that framed her face, there were vast, sweeping strings of pearls around her neck and crowning her hair.

  'That,' whispered Gresham to George, 'is an entrance.'

  There was an indrawn gasp of breath as she moved to the front of the dais, and a spontaneous round of applause. It was easy to forget how fragile was her hold on power in the face of her magnificence. She gazed down at her adoring Court and a thin smile of triumph crossed her lips. She extended her hand to the Ambassador, the huge emerald ring on her finger looking like a vast open mouth, the light shooting in and out of its facets. The poor man was quite overwhelmed by events. He could not see the short stairs leading up to the dais, yet could not reach Her Majesty's hand without climbing on to the stage with her. A quick glance from the Queen and a courtier jumped to take the Ambassador's elbow and lead him to the steps. Yet he stumbled as he climbed them. The Queen, her hand still extended, looked down disdainfully at him.

  'Fear not, sir!' she exclaimed in a voice strangely deep for a woman, 'this is the hand of friendship I extend to you, not the fist of war.'

  A gale of laughter swept the Court, far more than the feeble joke deserved. So it was not her best. Yet the Court knew of old that a rough earthiness could cut into the formality and pretence of Court life at any moment, as the spirit of her father, Henry VIII, possessed her. They might hate her when she was not there, blame her increasingly for not leaving England with a clear heir, but here, in the splendour of her own Court, it was not difficult to see why she had survived so long and so well.

  Gresham found himself dancing with the Queen before he realised it. The intricate moves had required his whole attention, and it was not until he felt the stink of the Queen's foul breath behind him that he realised the next round would place him in partnership with her. They swept towards each other, the Queen still excellent in the slower dances. Her face was unnaturally white, the pancake-layer of make-up beginning to loosen like bad plaster as the sweat and exertion of the evening wore on. Her eyes were small, narrow, as they had been on the portraits of her father, Gresham noted. She had favoured the Earl of Essex all evening, to the discomfiture of Leicester. Now she fixed her eye on Gresham, still coping apparently effortlessly with the intricacies of the dance.

  'Have you spent all that money yet, Master Gresham?' she asked. She never met him without referring to his wealth, nor let an hour pass without referring to her own poverty. 'Have you spent your inheritance on the things young men spend their money on?'

  'I would willingly spend it on gifts for Your Majesty,' said Gresham, a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was not the moment to cannon back into the Earl of Somerset or step on the most powerful set of toes in England, 'were it not for the fact that the greatest fortune on earth could not improve on the beauty that nature and providence gave Her Majesty.'

  They moved back in stately movement for a moment, then came together again. The dance required them to walk between the other couples, fifteen or twenty in number, in two separate stages. Gresham was vaguely aware of several glances of hatred directed at him as he escorted the Queen up the line.

  'Your words are impressive, young man,' said the Queen, 'and even more so because there is even a slight chance you thought of them yourself.'

  Ouch; It never did to underestimate the Queen, whose capacity for flattery was only equalled by her ability to perceive when she was being flattered.

  'Have care, young man,' the Queen added, her face expressionless. The dance had brought them face to face for a brief moment. 'There are those who despise you as an upstart in my Court.'

  And there are those who despise you, Your Majesty, thought Gresham, as the bastard daughter of the whore Anne Boleyn, who many thought a witch. Nonetheless…

  'Thank you, Your Majesty,' said Gresham humbly, in the few seconds remaining. 'Yet sometimes upstarts are better survivors than those whose entry into life was made easy for them.'

  My God! What had he said! He might as well have told her that bastards should stick together! The Queen's eyes were fathomless, unreadable. They parted with the brief, formal bows the dance demanded, his deep and low, hers conventional, neither so brief as to be rude nor so long as to excite attention.

  'Well, that was interesting.' George had grabbed a table in a room off the Hall, found from somewhere some scraps of food and a half-decent bottle. No servant could sit at table with their master and so Gresham had sent Mannion off to scour the kitchens, where past experience suggested he would find far better food and drink, and probably ruin a kitchen-maid in the bargain. There were plenty of available women above-stairs, for that matter, but the encounter with the Queen had rather knocked the stuffing out of Gresham.

  'What was interesting?' asked Gresham. 'Her breath curdles milk inside the cow at fifty paces, and you never know from one minute to the next if it's an axe or a glove in her hand. I-'

  ‘Not that, fool,' said George. 'Who cares about you? I mean the way the Ambassador was received. Didn't you notice, you great idiot?'

  'Notice? Notice what?' said Gresham. Perhaps he would get drunk after all, since remaining sober didn't seem to help.

  'The Queen was not there to greet the Ambassador, nor to hear the speech of welcome. All perfectly acceptable in diplomatic terms, of course, but it demotes him immediately two or three places below a Prince or equivalent. No, what it shows is that this evening isn't about the Queen listening to the Ambassador, as I feared. Rather, it's to impress him. It's a show of force — or rather a show of wealth. He's meant to go back to the Netherlands and tell them how much money England has, how brilliant its Court is.'

  'But that doesn't make sense,' said Gresham, grappling with the issues. 'All it means is that they'll ask us for more money and more men, when all the Queen can do is say that she hasn't got the income to hold body and soul together.' Spend a bit less on your dresses, lady, thought Gresham.

  'Of course it makes sense!' said George, exasperated at his friend's inability to see what was obvious. 'While the Netherlands keep on fighting the Duke of Parma, he's hardly going to want to send half his army over to England, is he? It's leaving him completely exposed. If the Protestants think England can keep pouring money and troops into their cause, they're much more likely to keep fighting and not make a deal with Parma or Spain. Don't you understand anything about politics?'

  No, thought Gresham, I do not. Or at least not enough. And as the waters get deeper and my involvement greater with every minute, I must learn. Even the most dedicated survivor needs lessons in survival

  Chapter 2

  March-April, 1587 Granville College, Cambridge

  The choir were singing in the Chapel. There were only a handful of them, a symbol of the resurgence in the fortunes of Granville College, but they were good. The beautiful, delicate soaring voices escaped the half-open door and drifted over the College like a flock of swifts.

  Things had to be bad if the music failed to move Henry Gresham. A young man who had already been hurt too often by a passion for people, he channelled the fiery avalanche of his emotions into the safe release of m
usic. But today he gazed vacantly out of the latticed window, down to the courtyard. Two rooms to himself was a great luxury indeed in Cambridge. Most Fellows shared their room with students, hiring out truckle beds. Outside, what little peace there ever was in Cambridge was being destroyed by the noise of the men building the new wing, the first sign of the money Gresham was pouring into his old College. Two weeks ago the entire scaffolding had come clattering down, with five men on it. One had broken both legs, another an arm. The students had sawn through the ropes holding the wooden poles in place the night before.

  The black mood tore at his mind, the face of the man he had murdered in the meadows returning and swimming up at him.

  'Snap out of this!' growled Mannion. He was worried. What was it in Gresham that made him bottle so much up? How many people realised the truth about the laconic, assured and confident young man who strode through Cambridge and London as if he did not have a care in the world? It was simply a mask, an imposition of outer calm over a heaving maelstrom of clashing moods and an almost gross sensitivity. And apparently it was only Mannion who was allowed to see beneath this mask.

  'What is there to snap out of it for? said Gresham, bleakly.

  Mannion was annoying. Henry Gresham did not want people to care for him. He had been born a bastard, his mother never named, a startling by-blow from the success story that was the life of the great Sir Thomas Gresham. To everyone's surprise Sir Thomas had acknowledged the child. But it had been a cold, clinical childhood. Then his father had died when Gresham was nine years old. He remembered thinking how lucky he was that he felt no urge to cry. He had seen other children cry at the death of a parent. It was a weakness to cry. Emotional attachments were a weakness. A person was better without that weakness. Stronger.

  Yet he had wanted to cry, so much.

  The child Henry Gresham, armed only with bed, board and a meagre allowance, had become feral, increasingly wild, left to fend for himself, stalking the great corridors of The House, and the cold streets which no one cared enough to stop him walking. He found his own way to school with no one to notice the huge tear in the doublet a servant had bought for him, nor the bruises from the endless fights with other boys who had somehow found out his bastardy. He had food, a roof over his head and clothes on his back. But he had no love. Nor did he allow himself to wish for it.