Martin Stephen: The rebel heart

The tiny, open service door was hidden behind the hangings. The two fell awkwardly through the tapestries, tumbled down the stairs in almost comic silence, the only real noise the clatter of the pistol as it slipped from the man's hand and followed them, bouncing on the stairs.

The assassin was stunned for a moment. The thin man had only a few seconds. Guards, someone must have seen the squabble, would be charging down the stairs in seconds. Like a lithe snake, the man stood up and, placing his boot full on the assassin's neck, pushed with all his strength. In almost the same movement he pulled out his dagger and plunged it through the assassin's eye, feeling it grate on the back of the skull as a fountain of blood and tissue leapt out to stain the lace on his sleeve. Three, four guards were at the top of the stairs now, clumping down them.

Had only the sharp-eyed guards seen the fracas? He hoped so. It would make life so much easier.

The thin man leant back against the cold stone wall.

'He had a pistol,' he said by way of explanation to the guards. 'Meant for the Queen, I think. His anger was indescribable. I had to kill him before he blew my head off. Now, take me to the Master-at-Arms.'

Uncertainly, unsure of whether they had a saviour or a suspect, the guards surrounded the thin man, escorted him away. Two of them held up the grotesque body of the dead man, his eye socket a blackened hole, leaving a trail of blood behind him as his feet dragged over the slabs, flap-flapping.

Damn him! the thin man was thinking. Damn the dead man! How dare he act before his time, before the due orders had been given!

Last Week of May, 1598 London

‘My master demands your presence,' the man had said. Few people walked into the palatial house of Sir Henry Gresham and made demands, if they valued their skins.

But of course this was the messenger to Sir Robert Cecil, the Queen's Chief Secretary. It was late afternoon, and all over the country men would be tramping back from the fields, their limbs aching, to the damp hovels with bare-arsed and mud-stained children. In London, those with respectable jobs were setting up the shutters, and the light was in the eyes of those who plied their trade by night.

'This evening. At the Palace.' The messenger's boots were dripping mud on the floor, and his chin was thrust back arrogantly. Mannion, Gresham's body servant, chose that moment to slip out of the room.

Cecil liked to summon Gresham at night and conduct his business in secret. That much was normal. So was the size of the messenger. Cecil's messengers were always huge, surly men who seemed to sneer rather than speak their message from their master. Perhaps Cecil, part hunchback as he was, chose his servants to compensate for his own ugliness.

'Your master is a servant to the Queen and to God, as are we all. Neither he, nor you, are God,' said Gresham coldly. He could feel the sharp sense of fear beating at his heart, yet knew not a sign of it would show outwardly. 'You've failed to address me correctly,' he carried on. 'You've failed to use any of the words a child would have been beaten for neglecting — such key words as "please" or "if it please you". You have the opportunity to repeat your request, in language more suited to that of a servant addressing a gentleman. If you fail to take advantage of my generosity, I'll have you beaten. Like a child.'

The tone was flat, cold and intensely threatening. The man blanched, but his arrogance went very deep. He was servant to a man who created the law, not one who obeyed it.

'You would beat the servant of Robert Cecil? The Queen's Chief Secretary? I think not.' His lip was curled in scorn. The initial fear he had felt at Gresham's icy tone was leaving him as quickly as it had come.

'I would not dirty my hands,' said Gresham very quietly, glancing up and looking into the eyes of the servant. Cecil's man could not hold the gaze, looked away. There was a strange intensity in the startling blue of Gresham's eyes so at odds with his dark hair. The look was chilling in its inhumanity. Yes, the servant thought, this is a man who is capable of doing terrible things. They would.' Gresham nodded at someone behind the man, who turned to see Mannion grinning at him from the door. Three lusty porters stood beside him, the first with the flattened nose that bespoke a lifetime of drunken brawls. All three carried stout wooden cudgels.

'Now,' said Gresham, 'you wished to make a request of me?'

Conflicting emotions flickered across the man's face. He chose the path of least pain. He turned again and looked at Mannion. Mannion smiled at him. That was enough.

'Sir Henry…' he faltered, clearly hating it, clearing his throat. 'My master commands-'

Gresham raised an eyebrow.

'My master requests..’

Gresham would go, of course. He always did. Like a mouse who could not resist the cheese in the trap. Why did he insist oh playing these silly games?

It was late enough to be dark. The streets were treacherous with mud and slime. A horse at night had no way of knowing if the puddle on the road was one inch or two feet deep, until it trod in it and threw its rider. The tide was on their side, so Gresham opted to go upstream to Whitehall, rowed by four men in Gresham livery all of whom grinned at him and seemed pleased to have been hauled out of their beds.

The torches fore and aft in the boat guttered and threw an oily reflection on the black water. Gresham sat at the stern, pensive yet excited, feeling the surge of the water as the oars bit deep. He heard the sucking smack-smack of the blades, his ears attuned to the sound of other oars, other boats. The river was dangerous at night, as were the streets, even for a short journey. There were crossbows and boat axes on board, and it was part of the household routine to check them every day. The lights of the Palace glittered on the waters, fewer and fewer of its windows flaring into the night nowadays as the Court seemed to die a little each week alongside its Queen.

Robert Cecil's room was richly panelled, with a line of stone-mullioned windows down the left-hand side, full of very old, diamond-shaped panes of glass. The light did not so much pass as ripple through them. There were three ornate hangings on the right-hand wall, concealing a series of doors. Or, as it was Cecil, more likely stone seats where men could sit unseen and take notes of the conversation. In browns, greens and russet reds, the hangings illustrated scenes from the Bible. Apparently Cecil had a sense of humour: one of them showed the massacre of the innocents. He had made no attempt to cover the bare, stone floor, and the fire in the huge, stone fireplace decorated with Henry VIII's coat of arms had only a few meagre spluttering logs in it. At least it gave out more heat than its master.

Cecil was dressed in an unfashionably long gown with fur-trimmed collar, and the huge ruff that helped to hide his one shoulder that was higher than the other. Older than Gresham, he always looked half-starved; small and hard black eyes in his pale face, emotionless except for an occasional flash of the extraordinary intelligence that had got him so far. He sat in a high-backed chair at the head of a long table. Table, chairs and panelling looked to have been cut almost from the same tree, their surfaces polished to perfection, hard, glittering. The guest of the moment was clearly meant to sit at the other end of the table, on what was little more than a stool. The fifteen or so other, high-back chairs that Gresham knew could be ranged on either side of the table had been put away somewhere, presumably to make Gresham feel discomfited. Instead he picked up the stool, and walked with it up the length of the table, plonked it down and sat beside Cecil. On his right-hand side, of course. It was done purely to annoy, and it succeeded. A little tic of displeasure flickered on Cecil's cheek.