The galleon's grave hg-3 Page 34

  'More?' Cecil was scathing. 'More lies.'

  'The Marquis of Santa Cruz was a bad administrator, the worst man to keep the Armada fed and maintained over winter. So we… Walsingham wanted him there. Yet he could have been a perilous commander, might have done what Medina Sidonia's caution stopped him from doing and attack the English fleet in its base, make a landing in the Solent. So we killed him. We knew his replacement would be more cautious.' Gresham was amazed by how calmly he said the last words.

  'You killed the Marquis of Santa Cruz?' Was there, for the first time, the slightest sense of fear in Cecil's voice?

  'I didn't kill him. Mannion did. My servant. He'd been sent by Santa Cruz to the galleys as a captured English sailor. He had a reason. More than anyone else. He got into dalliance with one of the Marquis's cooks, became used to visiting her in the kitchens and waited until the Marquis's favourite food was to be served before sprinkling it with an odourless and taste-free poison. We were surprised at how easy it was, though he was an ill man anyway.' The pain was now affecting Gresham's brain, sending sharp lances of red-hot iron into his head, splintering his thoughts like a sharp stone shattering the flat reflections of a pond.

  'So you say!' snarled Cecil. 'Yet again there is no evidence, except from a hulk of a man who would say that Satan was his rather to save his life. You cannot explain your defection from our mission to Flanders, to the Duke of Parma. You deserted your English compatriots. You broke my trust, the trust I had offered you by allowing you passage with my party.'

  The Queen's party, actually, thought Gresham, but Her Majesty could read that nuance as well as he.

  'To sail to Spain. To join the Armada. On the flagship. To stand by its commander.'

  'I didn't just stand by him,' said Gresham weakly. 'I saved his ships. From the shoals. Warned him, when his own pilots couldn't see what was happening.'

  ‘You saved the ships of the Armada!' said Cecil, incredulous. He was shocked at the prospect, shocked that Gresham would own up to it.

  'Helped save them,' said Gresham through his pain. ‘Why should more men die? More fine ships be sunk? The Armada wasn't the point. It never was.' As he paused for the breath he really did need, he realised how feeble it sounded.

  'Wasn't the point?' said Cecil, again in what seemed to be genuine disbelief. Perhaps he was sorry that his victim had gone mad before the rack had done its work. 'If the Armada wasn't the point, what was?'

  'The Armada itself, the ships, could only have made a difference if it'd landed its troops, taken the Isle of Wight, gone into Plymouth. Then it might have achieved something. I had to make sure it didn't stop. That's why I saved it. If they'd lost half their ships on shoals they'd have had to be defensive, cut their losses, might well have landed, stopped their advance. They only kept on to Calais because they were more or less intact.' Gresham stopped again. His breath was coming in rasping grunts now, and he was having to pause in mid-sentence to fill his lungs. It was as if the potential of the rack was squeezing them to half, a quarter of their capacity. 'The ships weren't important, as long as they didn't land the troops they had on board. The ships were only ever half of what might happen. It was the army, Parma's army, that was all that mattered. Without Parma's army, the whole thing was useless. Wouldn't work.' Gresham saw Cecil's throat move, saw him about to speak. Mustering all his strength, he cut in. 'I went to talk to the Duke of Parma,' said Gresham. 'That was all it was about. That was all it was ever about. To meet with Parma. To stop him sending his troops to join the Armada..'

  'I know you met with Parma. One of my men heard you confess yourself to him as a Spanish spy! Hid under the floor! You were greeted by him as a long-lost friend!'

  A wave of exhaustion had appeared on his horizon, rolling on to the beach where some enemy had pegged him out. There were no flowers on a sailor's grave. He would die shouting his pain under the water, unheard even by the fish. When would this farce end? He had done what he had to do. Now it would end in a tearing and wrenching of limbs. Make it now, dear God, let it start now so that it might end the sooner. 'I've told you,' said Gresham, 'Parma thought I was a spy working for Spain.'

  'And all this on Walsingham's orders, of course!' said Cecil scornfully.

  'Talking to Parma was Walsingham's idea,' said Gresham dreamily, a strange peace starting to settle over him, anaesthetising his limbs. 'That was the whole point of my being set up as a Spanish spy. So I could talk to Parma. I think the Spaniards surrounding Parma must have got wind of what I was being sent to do. They tried to kill me. Just before we met Parma.'

  'How can that be? You tell us that the Spanish think you are a spy for them, and then that they tried to kill you?'

  'Very few people in Spain knew that I was meant to be a spy on their side. You don't broadcast these things. Other Spaniards, the ones keeping watch on Parma, didn't know. They must have suspected the truth. That I was one of Walsingham's men, smuggled in with a diplomatic mission. To suborn Parma. You see, I didn't obey Walsingham's orders. I was only meant to tell Parma about the fly-boats. But I had an idea. What I said to him was my idea.' He heard himself give a strange giggle.

  'More water. Now.' It was the Queen's voice, coming as if from far away. Something splashed in his face. He turned sharply away, found fluid forced into his mouth. He gulped, drank, suddenly grateful for the cool flow down his throat. 'Your idea?' Something had happened in his brain, and he could not tell if it was the Queen's voice or Cecil's.

  'The Duke of Parma… he was the key, all along. I knew it. I knew it.' How many times had he said that? if his army didn't move, there was no invasion, no Spanish rule in England. The Armada, everything… it was just a joke! A great big joke! A terrible joke, an awful joke, a joke at the cost of human lives…' He was crying now, he noticed, writhing under the grip of the ropes. What a waste of fluid tears were. He would need that fluid soon, to cope with the rack tearing his body apart. Or would its absence ease the pain? 'So I had Tom Phelippes forge a seal. Paid him a King's ransom to forge a letter. Unlike you. I pay for proper forgeries. A Queen's ransom…' Suddenly it was overwhelmingly important for Gresham to get this right. 'The Queen's seal. And a letter under that seal. A secret letter.' Who was it giggling in the basement of the Tower? Surely it could not be Henry Gresham, who had spent so long gaining control of his body? 'A letter from the Queen offering him the throne of the Netherlands. If he let the Armada pass him by. If he let it swimmy swim swim…'

  Something slapped hard across his face. Again. There was no doubting the hand this time or the voice. It was the Queen of England. One of the rings on her fingers had cut into his chin.

  ' You offered the Duke of Parma the throne of the Netherlands in my name?' she bellowed.

  'Yes,' said Gresham simply. Despite the slap, the world was shifting softly in and out of focus. 'And I did a bit more than that, your Majesty.' He was very proud of himself for remembering the correct mode of address. Very, very very proud. Very, very very… I offered him your throne, actually. As it happens. The throne of England, in your name. Under your seal… If he left the Armada to its own devices. Well, not your seal actually, but your forged seal.' It was so important to get these things right. The room was starting to swing round again.

  He was glad he could not see the Queen's face at that particular moment. She would probably be quite cross at the thought of a young nobody offering her throne to a foreign general.

  'I thought he might like that. To be King of the Netherlands. It was only English support stopping him from winning for Spain. So if England came in on his side, he'd be bound to win. For himself. Then if he ran the Netherlands, a Catholic running a Protestant country, why not England? Rubbish, of course. Should never have a Catholic on our throne again. Too much trouble. But he wasn't to know that. Seemed a good idea at the time. So I gave him a letter he thought was from the Queen, offering to name him as her successor if he agreed not to invade. Don't worry. I bribed a secretary to steal the letter back and destroy it
once Parma had read it. They lose a lot of things on campaign, you know,' he said stupidly.

  Gresham turned his head, searching for the Queen. He wanted to see his death sentence in her eyes. Her face appeared from somewhere. From several somewheres. It looked venomous, angry beyond belief. Gresham meant to apologise. But it did not quite come out like that.

  'I didn't do it for you, you know,' he said very seriously. 'Well, not exactly. I did it for peace. For the peasants. To stop the burning. I don't believe in war, you see,' he gabbled. 'It kills people. And I want them to live. If they can. Though a lot die anyway, don't they?'

  He fell back, his head thumping on the bare wood. It hurt. How strange that he should notice that among all the other pain. The slight noise seemed to echo round the silence of the chamber. A hoarse, gravelly laugh came from the corner. A laugh Gresham knew. The laugh of a dead man.

  Walsingham looked half dead, but whatever his body was telling him was clearly denied by a brain that had lost none of its edge. He could only walk with a stick, and a wide-eyed servant boy hovered near him, torn between fear of his master falling and fear for where he was and who also was in the chamber. And, perhaps, fear of what happened in that chamber. Walsingham laughed again. He bowed to the Queen, who nodded back. Cecil he ignored.

  'Your own idea! Very good, very good! Your own idea!' Was Walsingham barking or speaking?

  ‘Is it good, Sir Thomas, that a man can forge his Queen's wishes? Offer her crown to another Prince? That an upstart can forge a letter giving away a crown!' asked the Queen, angry, venom in her voice.

  'It is undoubtedly better if it is done without her knowledge, Your Majesty,' said the old man. 'As it is better that sometimes you do not know many things that have been done in your name. But most of all, better if it means the Duke of Parma is still in Ghent rather than laying siege to London and Your Majesty's person.'

  There was silence after that.

  'And remarkable,' said Walsingham, 'if it was done by a stripling who far from being rewarded for it was likely to end up here. He was indeed meant to tell Parma that the number of Dutch fly-boats was far in excess of his estimates. That his invasion barges would be swamped by them. Those were my orders to him.'

  'Wouldn't have worked,' mumbled Gresham. 'Man like that, sees overwhelming odds as a challenge. Made him fight even harder. Needed more.' How strange that as well as being ferociously thirsty he also felt extraordinarily sick. 'Please,' said Gresham, 'I'm very sorry, Your Majesty, but I think I am about to be sick. Could you please start the torture now before I disgrace myself?' Dignity. After all, it was all one had.

  There was a very long silence.

  'Cut him free,' said the Queen.

  The jailer was even more nervous, rubbing his hands together, bowing and scraping. 'I'd rather not cut the ropes, Your Majesty, as it means so much work threading new ones through the ratchets, and no little expense to replace all that rope. You see, you can't use them again if…'

  'Cut that man free now,' said the Queen in an icy tone, 'or you will be the first person to test the new ropes through the ratchets.'

  A knife appeared from nowhere, and suddenly the stretched figure of Gresham slumped amid a tangle of rope.

  The agony of returning circulation was pain enough to send a man mad, as if white hot needles were being pushed through every vein and artery. He rubbed at his arms, could not stand up, did not know if he was allowed to.

  Walsingham's voice cut through the thick air of the chamber. 'Your servant told us that you believed I was dead. Apparently the Spanish ambassador responded rather too enthusiastically to a report that I had succumbed to my illnesses, and sent a message to Parma.' Another stool had appeared, and Walsingham was seated on it, like a father by the bedside of his poorly child.

  'Has my servant been tortured?' asked Gresham hurriedly.

  ‘I think he had received a few blows before we reached his cell. The man who gave them has a broken leg and a broken arm. A remarkable man, your servant. He said you were the biggest fool in Christendom because I was the only person who knew the truth and the only person who could bail you out, and still you went forward on your mission believing me dead. Yet he stayed with you.'

  'He lacks sophistication, and beauty,' said Gresham, smiling slowly for the first time in days. The pain was easing now. It was simply agony, rather than unbearable agony.

  'This man sought to offer your throne to a Catholic' Cecil's voice was higher-pitched than normal, his body seeming even more hunched, drawn in on itself.

  ‘I did so to stop a Catholic ruling over England,' said Gresham simply. She was bound to kill him. Even if only to stop the story getting out.

  The Queen hated any talk of death, had banished courtiers for seeming even to hint at it. It was the Queen who spoke next. The tone was harsh, condemnatory.

  'Why did you risk your life? Your honour? You had been set up as a spy for Spain. Only one man knew the truth. With him dead, as you thought, you lose your lands, your wealth, the respect of your countrymen, everything a man lives for. Why did you go on?'

  'I…' Gresham hunted desperately for the words. 'Your Majesty, you have brought peace to this country. There would be no peace in England under a Catholic King. And if I needed further persuasion, I saw the bodies of ordinary people, half-eaten by wolves, outside the walls of Ostend. I met the Duke of Parma, a great man, a great Prince and a great leader, and spending his whole life plotting the death and destruction of fellow men, turning the country he fights for into a desert.' He paused, trying to roll all his half-understood feelings into one tight ball of words. 'Sometimes a person has to take a very great risk, if he is to achieve a very great reward.'

  'You took an unpardonable risk in offering my Crown to another, Henry Gresham. An unpardonable risk. A treasonous risk.'

  Well, that was that. There was no jury in the bowels of the Tower of London. And no justice. Suddenly the tiredness hit him, his mind started to dissolve, his eyelids pressing as if a ton weight was forcing them to close. From somewhere he heard his own voice. 'So be it, Your Majesty. What's done can't be changed. Yet 1 acted for what I believed to be the best. I betrayed none of my countrymen. I beg your mercy to grant me a clean death. Give me my dignity, if I can't have my life.'

  'Fetch me a sword.' There was a peremptory bark in the Queen's voice. A darkened blade was hurriedly pulled off the wall, a sword of a design that had been fashionable fifty years ago. Yet for all its dullness, the blade was sharp, Gresham saw. Heated until red hot and the flat of the blade placed on human flesh? Forced into men's bodies to tear and gnaw? There was only one reason for a sword in a room such as this.

  He felt the blade prick into his neck, tensed himself. A moment of pain, and then blessed relief. Would they bury him here, under the stones of the Tower, he wondered, or bury him in the light and good soil?

  The sword lifted, and touched one shoulder. It lifted again, and hung poised. It was heavy, but for all her age the Queen seemed to feel no discomfort with its weight. Why was her face blurring and the image of Henry VIII seeming to impose itself on her face?

  'If this sword descends on your other shoulder, you are Sir Henry Gresham. The first to be knighted thus in this desperate place.' For a moment the Queen's hatred of where she stood showed clear, and then it vanished. 'Yet if it bites into your neck, then you are indeed the dead man you have thought you were these many weeks. The choice is yours. Do you give me your word that you will speak of these events to no one while I live, and to no one for the term of your life, howsoever long it might be, regarding your offer of my crown to the Duke of Parma? Do you give me your word that there is no written record of these events? And do you give me your solemn word that if you believe that servant of yours, who clearly knows all of your secrets, is ever likely to tell anyone then he will die at your own hand?'

  'Of course,' said Gresham. What need had he to tell others? And Mannion would commit suicide rather than betray his master and his friend.
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br />   'And do you give your solemn oath that despite your hatred of my little pygmy here, you will not pursue him in vengeance but rather will work with him for my greater need if and when I so command it?'

  That was harder. Far harder. Too hard to justify a life? 'I do so swear.'

  The silence stretched into eternity.

  'Then you are Sir Henry Gresham.' The sword touched his other shoulder, with intense lightness. 'I will forgive you for not standing. Yet you may kiss my hand.'

  He struggled to get himself upright. No one offered to help. All those present could sense the importance of his doing it himself. Gasping, weary beyond belief, he found himself sitting on the edge of the rack, that foul thing of torture. He bent his head, and kissed the cold, white hand of the Queen. She nodded, matter of factly, and turned to Cecil.

  'Your time will come, Robert Cecil. You have a usefulness for me, and before you protest your loyalty, I know it. Your loyalty is based on your seeing me as the route to power and influence. His…' she gestured to Gresham, swaying gently, 'is based on something different. Together, your hatred binds you to me. I can and will use that unity of opposites. And as I have bound Sir Henry to swear, so do I you. You will cease to pursue this man with your vengeance, and will work with him for my greater need if I so command it. Do you so swear?'

  'I swear, Your Majesty.' Cecil knew when to shut up as well, thought Gresham with a strange, sneaking admiration. It sounded as if he was the one who needed the water now.

  'Remember,' said the Queen, who had been declared illegitimate on the execution of her mother, looking appraisingly at Gresham, 'there is need in the world for bastards. And as for you, Robert Cecil,' she said, turning finally to him, 'it was not Henry Gresham who first called you my little pygmy. It was your own father.'