Martin Stephen - The rebel heart

'Your father tried and failed,' said Meyrick, unabashed, 'partly because he was never the soldier you are, partly because he went to Ireland for wealth.'

'God knows,' said Essex, 'I could do with the wealth! Is there no more money to be got from my lands?'

No, thought Meyrick, remembering the screams of the three men he had had whipped in front of their wives and children for hiding a few sacks of oats, there is not. However, the Earl should not be bothered with such trivia as the bleeding backs of his peasants. Indeed, he was soft enough to be moved by their sub-human wailing.

'We do all we can, my Lord. But Ireland is your Holy Grail. Take it. Drink from it. You'll be immortalised.'

'You flatter me,' said Essex, a faint smile crossing his lips. It was the smile that so helped him with women, suggesting as it did great sadness allied to great vulnerability. It was no lie. The Earl was a far more melancholic and vulnerable man in his own mind than he hoped his friends ever saw. 'And I know you flatter me. I'm like the child desperate for the nurse to tell him the same old story, the story that comforts not because of its content but because of its familiarity. So, carry on. Let me be the child I am. Tell me about immortality. My immortality.'

'Ireland is in turmoil. Tyrone is fighting to throw the English out of Ulster; has gone back on all his agreements. The Lord Deputy is dead and the Queen will appoint no new person. Our forces are weak and badly led, and one of our prime strongholds at Blackwater is under siege. Ireland awaits a true soldier. A man whose valour and leadership will finally wrest it from its warlords. And when Ireland finds its hero, so will England. It'll hail you as a saviour, as the man who finally marked out the greatest expansion to English rule since the loss of Calais.'

'Now tell me why all this will make me immortal?' whispered Essex, his voice dropping to almost inaudible levels.

'Because the Queen is dead!' hissed Meyrick. 'Not dead quite yet in her body, but nearly so. Dead in her mind. Dead in her leadership. Dead in her capacity to inspire the love and affection of her subjects. When you return victorious from Ireland, London and the whole country will be yours for the taking! This country has had Regents acting for the very young, when such a one has become King. It's a small jump for it to accept a Regent for the very old.'

'Or mount a rebellion,' said Essex. Some physical change had come over him, a hardening of the muscles in his face. His voice had changed as well, the rural Welsh lilt more pronounced now, yet the words more clipped. Essex did not like people to come close to him. Perhaps because he himself never quite knew what personality he would wear on any day, or even in the course of any one hour. He liked drink to act as a buffer between himself and those to whom he offered friendship.

'Crowns are taken by force of arms! Henry the Seventh felt no need to act as Regent for a failing King! To rebel against the Queen would be no rebellion at all. It would be a succession. A right and proper succession.' Essex's eyes were ablaze now and he swung himself off the couch, stood to his full height.

Was he as handsome as his admirers always claimed, Meyrick wondered? Probably not, but the combination of the clean body, the wide and handsome face and the money to dress it properly made for a powerful appeal, fired as it was by a mind that soared and crashed in an infuriatingly unpredictable manner.

Well, there had been no other career option for Meyrick when he had hooked his hungry claws into the handsome young noble-man, hoping against hope that this man would be the means of lifting him out of grinding, humiliating poverty. And it had worked, had it not? Sir Gelli Meyrick now ran the Earl of Essex's Welsh estates with a rule and a rod of iron that made him the most feared man in the Marches. Would this man, his master, become King of England? It was no more fanciful than the prospect of Meyrick gaining a knighthood had been ten years ago. Why not? How many of Bolingbroke's followers, when they had joined his service, had expected to end up wearing the King's livery?

'There is a tide in the affairs of men…'

Meyrick looked blankly at Essex.

'Shakespeare. Julius Caesar. It's spoken by one of the men who kill Caesar, and then try for his crown.'

It was typical of Essex that in the broad sweep of the idea he had forgotten that Caesar never had a crown, had been killed because he seemed about to claim one. He had also apparently forgotten the moment when old Lord Burghley had drawn a prayer book out of his pocket and pointed to the 55th psalm with trembling fingers, 'Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days.'

Essex had been arguing passionately against peace with Spain at the time. But Essex was not finished.

'For each man there comes a moment, a moment of destiny, a moment of truth. It appears, it is there to be grasped… and then it goes, like a shooting star in the heavens. Grasp the right moment, and mere men become Kings and Kings become Emperors. Choose the wrong moment, and vaunting ambition turns into dust. Or kills the conspirators, as it did those who rose against Caesar. But who knows when that moment is?'

This was not Meyrick's strength. Intellectual debate bored him. Essex liked to patronise those around him, careful to keep his drinking companions to soldiers and bluff men of the world, or play-actors who would sell their souls for another jug and one good line. If he had attracted a circle of true artists, perhaps they might have challenged the sense of intellectual superiority he seemed to need so much. There was only that turncoat Francis Bacon perpetually whispering in his ear. Damn him! thought Meyrick. My life rests with this man, yet he can wear so many personalities in the space of one hour that he would tire out the very Devil himself. Which Robert Devereux, of the many available, am I talking to now?

'Am I Brutus?' asked Essex. 'Tumbling to my own destruction because I know my monarch is wrong, and simply clearing the way for Octavius Caesar to step in and take over the crown I should have won? Or am I Bolingbroke, making one strike because I know that all the fabric of government is rotten to the core, rotted from within, waiting merely for the one, savage blow to bring it all tumbling down in my favour?'

Or are you simply a vain, bloody and deceitful man who, for all that he seems to talk about others, can only talk about himself? thought Meyrick, and then dismissed the thought. It was not helpful to someone who had no other cause, and whose role was to stiffen in its determination the one cause he had.

Essex was standing by the window, victim of another sudden mood change. He spoke aloud, but Meyrick knew the words were private. He often did this, speaking out private thoughts apparently oblivious to the fact that others were hearing him. Essex was like a child, a fatherless child in desperate need of someone to tell him what to do.

'So little time!' he said. 'All that awaits the slow is the plague, or decrepit failing old age. So little time!'

'Make time your friend by grasping it,' said Meyrick, almost desperately, 'or lose it by delay!'

There was no answer. Meyrick waited, for seconds, for minutes. It was as if the Earl had frozen. Sensing something he did not understand, Meyrick bowed briefly, and left.

The image of a small boy swam before Essex's eyes. Eight or nine, perhaps, with unusually fine features, startling blue eyes and. a mop of blond hair. Why? Why had he given in? Some were granted time. Others had it ripped away from them.

How could one decision so change a life? It was as if the vast, open plain that he had strode so confidently was narrowing down to a dark tunnel that led only to one destination. Could the Devil speak true?