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  Gresham had no power to resist as he was laid on the rough planks, stained with something foul that could once have vented from a human being. He felt the ropes clutch his wrists and ankles, smelt the corrupt breath of the grinning jailer, saw the arched stone ceiling flicker in the dim light of the torches, felt his grip on consciousness loosening, knew that the first sharp stab of appalling pain would bring him back to this world.

  And from out of the gloom of the Tower, a vision came to him. Not of Christ, nor even of the Devil. A vision of a man. The Duke of Medina Sidonia.

  When all else fails, and all seems dark and bleak, it is not die judgement of the world I believe will matter to me when I pass into the vale of death. The judgement that must matter most to me, the crucial, the most scrupulous, the testing judgement must stand as my own judgement on myself.

  Was Henry Gresham to die here on this foul contraption, venting his own piss and shit as he shrieked what his interrogators wished to hear? Die before his time, die without issue, die as a traitor to England, reviled for ever more, if even he was remembered? Could a man die with dignity on the rack?

  Suddenly, the world fell into place. He was no longer in a swirling, dream-vision of hell. It was a simple, large stone chamber, with an arched ceiling and soot marks smearing the walls. The walls glistened with moisture, throwing the light of the torches back, except to his right where bricks encompassed the dull red glow of a furnace, fitted out like a blacksmith with bellows. Opposite him were manacles for feet and hands, set deep into the stone. To hang men there, until their very bones and sinews cried out for release.

  He heard the shuffling before the voice spoke. Someone was coming from behind the apparatus of the rack, now that he was secure, thrusting himself into Gresham's line of vision. 'Welcome back to England, Henry Gresham,' the voice said. Cecil. Robert Cecil. Looming above him, his pinched face outlined by the ancient stone. A beatific smile on that same sour face. A smile of triumph.

  'Robert Cecil,' croaked Gresham. 'What an immense surprise.' Gresham was surprised by his own control. 'As you undoubtedly intend to tear me limb from limb, perhaps you might arrange for some water to be given me? Not to keep me alive, you understand. Merely to let me speak clearly. Just think on it. My screams will be all the more clear when the time comes…'

  Cecil smiled, a smile of immense cruelty. Not so the jailer. He looked worried, confused even. Men on the rack did not talk about their impending pain in this matter. Particularly young men, with fine, strong bodies, bodies that would never again delight the girls.

  The water was the best thing Gresham had ever taken through his lips. He hoped they had not drawn it from the moat, though it hardly mattered. He was dead anyway. Perhaps that was why he heard the noise as of a door opening, a rustle of cloth that was unfamiliar, even a faint smell as of… perfume. In his mind, of course. 'There was this small thing between us,' Gresham managed to say in something closer to his normal voice. 'I thought we had agreed to work together.'

  'I do not work with traitors,' said Cecil. He was enjoying this. 'The Spanish fleet has been sent with its tail between its legs to weather Scotland and face the rocks of Ireland as best it can. The Armada is defeated. This business is over.' There was a crowing, exultant tone in his voice. 'The Enterprise of England has failed. As all remaining spies for Spain must fail. Preferably in as much pain as possible.'

  'You wish to destroy me?' asked Gresham. Had it been Cecil all along?

  'You have destroyed yourself. You have no need of my help. You are a declared Spanish spy. You deserted us in Flanders, using the goodwill and influence I had given you to spy for Spain. You told me the truth about you when my spy — yes, I too can employ spies! — overheard your treasonous conversation with Parma, the conversation where he hailed you as Spain's greatest asset in its war against England! You told the truth about yourself when you took ship for Spain. You confirmed it when you sailed with the Armada, were seen conversing with its commander by no less than Drake. You were captured, with your Spanish whore, by mere accident. An act of God, the true God, as was the defeat of the Armada. Now all that remains is to extract the confession from you. A traitor, proven and confessed. Your estate to go to the Crown. How wonderful that the fabled Gresham wealth will go to repay Her Majesty for her grievous expenditure in fighting off Spain.'

  Gresham was tied to the rack, and Cecil apparently in command of the jailer. And of everything else.

  As if to confirm his power, Cecil motioned to the man standing by the great wheel at the head of the rack. Ropes creaked, and suddenly Gresham's arms, lying loose at his side, were pulled taut, not yet painful, merely at full stretch.

  That faint whiff of perfume again. And something rotten, corrupt. Was it angels with bad breath come to take him to his rest? Yet he knew he would have to pass through Hell before he came to Heaven.

  'I'm no spy for Spain,' said Gresham, thinking Christ must have felt such as this, stretched, exposed, before the first nail was hammered in. 'And you, you've no fear for Elizabeth Brooke? Your fiancйe?'

  'I spit on your feeble threat!' said Cecil, ignoring his denial. And he did spit, the globule landing on Gresham's cheek. 'With you dead, your man dead, the name of Gresham a stench on the lips of every decent Englishman, will your henchmen carry out your contract? No! With you dead, they will take their money and laugh at you for thinking it worth their while to offend a man such as myself!'

  'A man such as you might be,' said Gresham, surprisingly gently given his condition. His arms were beginning to ache now, the blood supply contorted. 'But are not yet. Anyway, there never was a threat. I have no quarrel with women. I set no men to murder your fiancйe.'

  'You mean there were no men set to murder or disfigure my… future wife?'

  'Of course not,' said Gresham. 'Only a man who would consider such a thing himself might believe it in another man. It was a threat to frighten a child. What use is vengeance to me after I'm dead? I'll never savour its taste!'

  Cecil had believed it. He had believed that Gresham would kill his fiancйe. That much was clear from his rising colour, visible even in the light of torches and from the viewpoint of a man spread-eagled on the rack. 'And so you have nothing left with which to threaten me, Henry Gresham?' Cecil was crowing now, exulting in his victory.

  'Only the truth,' said Gresham. 'I was no spy for Spain. I fought for England.'

  'And who will believe you?' asked Cecil, actually shaking his head in his own disbelief.

  'The Queen of England might believe me,' said Gresham simply. 'That same Queen who entered by the far door, outside my limited range of vision, some minutes ago, and has stood there in silence ever since. Yet I pray to her to be allowed to state my case.' He had known it from the perfume. And the stench of bad breath.

  Cecil smiled across his lips, and turned towards the door, arm outflung in a gesture of disbelief. The arm hung for a moment, dropped, became part of a bow that somehow transfigured him into a man on his knees, dropping below Gresham's line of vision.

  Why had the Queen come here? She hated the Tower. Loathed it for the memories of her voyage into it through Traitors' Gate, never visited it unless absolutely necessary. And as well as visit it, come to its darkest and most painful chamber? It was inconceivable. And with Walsingham dead, there was no one to tell her of the complex double and triple betrayal he had been engaged in these past three years, three years where under Walsingham's guidance he had worked his way up to becoming Spain's most trusted spy in England. In that position he had fed Spain the information Walsingham wanted Spain to hear, always with enough truth to give it the smack of reality.

  The Queen swam into Gresham's view, her pasty white face peering- down clinically at Gresham. She stepped back, motioning to Cecil. He rose from his knees, head still inclined towards the Queen.

  'Your Majesty!' Cecil made as if to kneel again, confused, perhaps even appalled, his world falling about his ears.

  'Get up!' she said, 'and cease your
fawning! And you,' she glanced down at Gresham, 'you can stay there. You!' The voice was a snarl, directed at the jailer, its rasp the killing edge of Henry VIII. 'Get your Queen a seat! And do so now.'

  A stool appeared as if from nowhere. She sat.

  Gresham considered a clever comment that he would bow if his circumstances allowed it, but thought better of it. His limbs were really aching rather seriously now.

  'So, my little pygmy, you propose to interrogate a man you tell me is a very great traitor, without my knowledge. Nor, indeed, my consent for torture.' She looked towards the rack and its splayed occupant. In theory and in law, the consent of the monarch was required for torture to be used. 'Yet I am ever generous as Queen. I grant you my permission. Carry on your interrogation. Now.'

  Gresham's heart failed him. The Queen had just commanded his torture.

  Cecil was ever quick to recover, Gresham noticed. Clearly the presence of the Queen had not been part of his plan, had shocked him to the core, yet already he had adapted, mutated to meet present circumstance.

  ‘You deny you have been a spy for Spain, here in England? A regular attender at illegal and illicit Mass?'

  Were his ears still ringing from the drubbing the San Martin had received? His eyes still weak from his incarceration in the bowels of the Revenge? His wits addled by weeks of poor food and continual stress? What other condemned man had to speak in his defence strapped onto the rack, with no advocate to plead his cause? No matter. This was here and now. The next few words would decide his fate. And how tall he was at burial.

  'I deny I've been a spy for Spain. As for an attender at Mass, I've been so for three years, God preserve my soul. An attender in Her Majesty's Service, as instructed and advised by my Lord Walsingham.' That same Lord Walsingham who was now dead, and his only alibi.

  Cecil was nearly spitting now. 'Attending Mass in Her Majesty's Service? How can it be?' Cecil raised his hand to order the jailer to tighten the rack.

  'Hold.' It was the Queen. The man dropped his hands from the wheel. 'Let him speak before the pain fogs his judgement.'

  'In Her Majesty's Service. On the orders of Walsingham. When I was sixteen, seventeen years old. A student. An impoverished student. I was offered money. To seek out a priest, attend his secret Mass. Present myself as a Catholic'

  'And you sold your soul for money?' asked Cecil managing to make his voice sound incredulous.

  'No,' said Giesham. The pain in his limbs had ceased to be an ache, was a real, sharp pain. 'I kept my soul and its Protestant heart I did it because it would allow me to pose as a spy for Spain. And also, I did it for excitement!'

  'And not for money, of course!' said Cecil trying to sound scornful. Why was the Queen here? How was it that she was here? The questions were clearly screaming in Cecil's brain, so loud as to interfere with his control.

  'Those who have money from birth confuse it with blood,' said Gresham. 'Only those who've known what it is to live without money realise that there are things more important.'

  'Such as?' sneered Cecil. It was his first mistake.

  'Such as excitement, the thrill of living, when one is young and life seems to offer bleak prospects elsewhere. Such as honour. Such as love of one's country, when one feels no love for any fellow human being. Such as doing what is right'

  'Yet you spied for Spain!' Cecil taunted, playing his trump card.

  'I appeared to spy for Spain.' Gresham's left arm was shooting agonising barbs of pain into his whole body. Why only the left? Why not the right? Reluctantly, Gresham wrenched his mind back to the main issue. 'They received information from me that seemed to be true. Bits of truth, sanitised so as to do as little damage as possible, passed on to me by Walsingham so that I could pass them on to the Spanish.'

  'So you had access to the Court of Spain, did you?' said Cecil, the disbelief in his voice almost visible. *No,' said Gresham. How long could an arm cry out in protest before it became gangrenous? 'Access only to a courier. A courier in Cambridge who found out the truth about me, that I was no spy but a double agent A man I had to kill, early the next morning, in the meadows round Grantchester, before he could tell his masters the truth and ruin years of preparation.'

  There was another rasping of a door. Strain as he might, Gresham could not force his head back far enough to see who had come into the chamber. There was a ringing in his ears now, blotting out hearing. His throat had dried, his voice becoming hoarser by the word. Something moved in the room, and blessed clear, fresh water was being held to his lips, passing down like an iceberg to his throat and stomach. The jailer stank, Gresham noticed, of rank sweat and stale piss.

  'So you say!' snarled Cecil. How had Gresham heard the door open, staked out as he was, and Cecil been oblivious to it? 'Yet you forced your way on to Drake's great expedition to Cadiz. A true spy of Spain!'

  The other arm was starting to shriek pain now. There was a strange comfort in the balance. The legs were not feeling too good either. He had to concentrate! He had to beat the pain! 'A spy for Spain only on the evidence of a forged letter and a planted prayer book. A letter forged by you, Robert Cecil,' said Gresham. 'You never knew that Walsingham had set me up as someone who could infiltrate Spain. So you set up your separate path to damn me to

  Drake, as a Spanish spy. So that you could dispose of me as a man you disliked, but more importantly so that when I died, conveniently far away at sea, you could deliver my fortune to the Queen, as a traitor and a man with no heir. You arranged my death to buy credit with the Queen, and no doubt with your father as well.' He thought better of mentioning Mary Queen of Scots in front of the Queen. Of course Cecil had wanted to blame Gresham for the delivery of the death warrant, and take some of the blame off the Cecil family. But as Gresham had come perilously close to doing just that it did not seem wise to raise it.

  'You are feeble,' scoffed Cecil. Where was the Queen? If Cecil's nervous glances were to go by, at Gresham's feet, below his line of vision. 'Where is your evidence?'

  How extraordinary that a man stretched out on the rack could have his interrogator on the defensive. 'Evidence? Well, there is a tiny bit, actually,' said Gresham.

  A bar of pain had started now across his midriff, threatening to outweigh his arms and legs in the stridency of its signal of pain.

  'You see, Robert Leng kept the letter damning me as a Spanish agent. He would do, wouldn't he? And I… acquired it from him.' It had not been difficult to take the letter from a man with a broken leg. 'The extraordinary thing about that letter is that it reads correctly, it's even got a passing imitation of the right seal, but the writing… it's in the hand of your chief clerk. You could have given the letter over to my old friend Tom Phelippes to forge, if you'd been prepared to pay his price. But you're a mean man, aren't you? Unwilling to spend where you don't deem it necessary? Drake wouldn't know your clerk's hand. You gambled on forging that letter in house. Used one of your own men because it was cheaper. Gambled on Drake taking your bait. Gambled on that letter never surviving, never being subjected to scrutiny.'

  'Your Majesty!' Was there the slightest hint of squeak in Cecil's voice? From the direction of Cecil's bow, Gresham had got it right. The Queen was seated at the end of the rack, beneath his line of vision. 'It is clear this man is a traitor!'

  Another rustle, another waft of that perfume and the stink of bad breath. A face like that of the Queen appeared in his vision, swimming in and out of his consciousness.

  'Walsingham told me nothing of you,' she said, her voice cold, the eyes unfeeling. 'You had a miraculous escape from the hands of the Spanish galleys, Drake tells me. Escape? Or free passage when they realised they were firing on a spy? You were in Lisbon before the Armada sailed. You were welcomed aboard the Spanish ships that fought my fleet. And you have been consorting with the daughter of a Spanish nobleman. There seems more in favour of Spain in your actions than of England!'

  'The girl was an accident,' Gresham said, repeating himself. She would love being c
alled that. It would confirm everything she had ever thought of him. Well, there would be little for her to admire after the rack had done its work. Was there another man alive — albeit barely — who had said the same words to Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Queen of England? At least he would carry that small distinction to his painful grave. 'I went to Lisbon with my credentials as a spy already established, sent ahead of me. I knew I would be allowed to roam free, or nearly so, and the Spanish girl was a simple bonus. Yet at all times I was under Walsingham's orders.'

  'And what were those orders?' the Queen barked.

  'To suborn the head of the Lisbon armouries. To bribe him to miscast his cannon, to bring his shot too early out of the heat so that his guns would shatter when they were fired, his shot also shatter when it emerged from the barrel.'

  'What evidence have you of this?' Cecil was barking now, dangerously close to ignoring the presence of his Queen.

  'I left the San Martin, flagship of the Armada and of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a battered hulk with barely a whole plank of timber to its name. I was bundled aboard the Revenge, one of the San Martin's main attackers, which in comparison was fresh out of the builder's yard.'

  'You claim the credit for this!' exclaimed Cecil.

  'No,' said Gresham. His heart was beginning to strain against his chest now, hurting as did his arms and legs. Was it too about to burst, before a real ratchet had been tightened on the rack? If this was the pain now, what would it be when the torture started? ‘Not all of it. Perhaps not even most of it. The Spanish guns were clumsy, slow to load, their command structures all wrong. Yet I swear as the San Martin fired on the English ships coming up in line to fire on her, not once did I see a shot of hers hit the enemy… the English ships. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the San Martin had shared her load of shot through the Armada, taken on a new load from the Lisbon armouries.' Gresham stopped, looked up, said nothing. The jailer brought the water again. This time he was nervous, spilling some on to Gresham's chest. His skin seemed on fire, the water scalding his skin with cold. 'And there was more. In Lisbon.'