Martin Stephen: The rebel heart

True, thought Gresham, but they had never been intended for England. They were Spanish reinforcements for the war in the Netherlands.

Cecil was not to be stopped. 'And you know we face disaster in Ireland, with Tyrone attacking the Blackwater even as we speak? With the Lord Deputy of Ireland dead and no one in his place? We are besieged by enemies, without and within. You suggest that at this time there should be no power in the land?'

I do not question your belief that the power in the land should be you, thought Gresham. Out loud he said, 'I question one thing, my Lord.’

'What might that be?'

Had he got to Cecil? This time it was difficult to tell. 'You mention your wielding of power. I was under the impression you were fighting for power. The power to defeat Spain. The power, even, to defeat Ireland. But to wield external power you have to secure your foundations. Inner power. That long and, to be frank, exceedingly tedious feud between yourself and the Earl of Essex does seem to be coming to a head, with the Queen as she is. I assume that's why you asked to see me? Some dirty work to give you an advantage over Essex? Who, as you know full well, is a companion of mine?'

Cecil gazed flatly at Gresham, then surprised him by standing up, slowly and as if in some pain, and going over to the sideboard parked in isolation between two of the windows. A fine Venetian decanter and two matching glasses stood on it. Cecil turned to look at Gresham, motioning to the decanter. Gresham shrugged non-committally, and Cecil poured a single glass, bringing it over to Gresham.

Good God! This was an unusual day! The wine was actually quite drinkable. Cecil usually only offered cat's piss to visitors.

'My congratulations on the wine, my Lord,' said Gresham.

'Someone important was here before you,' said Cecil.

Ouch, thought Gresham. That put me firmly in my place. It never did to underestimate Cecil. Or to cease attacking him, for that matter.

The obvious thing was for Gresham to ask who the important person had been. The amusing thing therefore was not to ask. As he had hoped, Cecil was eventually forced to provide the answer.

'The important person was one of my family's oldest friends. He brought me news. Disturbing news.'

'Good God!' said Gresham. 'Don't tell me someone told the Queen how much Burghley House cost your father?' Lord Burghley may have done noble service to the Queen, but he had also done noble service to himself, a service fully witnessed in the size of the mansion he had erected to his own glory.

Cecil's eyes actually closed for a brief moment, in the manner of someone having to restrain the strongest of all possible urges, but he carried on calmly enough.

'Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, fourth Earl of Southampton. Your puerile insults have at least one germ of truth. Both are… crucial. And both have links to my father, Lord Burghley.'

What man referred to his father by his title, thought Gresham?

'Both men were taken into your father's care as boys,' said Gresham. A spy who hoped to survive needed a secure grasp of facts, living as he did amid so many fictions. 'They became his wards when their fathers died. As one of the richest and most influential people in the country, he was flooded with requests to take on the aristocratic children whose parents had been stupid enough to die. He made an exception to his normal rule in their case. Indeed, you must have met them as children yourself. Rather, after you were a child yourself — if ever you had a childhood.'

'Yes, I had a childhood,' said Cecil. For a brief moment, the tiniest of flickers, something fell from his eyes, and a huge sadness came into their hard, undecipherable depths. 'You were taunted because you had no father. I was taunted because of who my father was. And, of course, because I was a cripple.'

Gresham had learnt that there were times when silence was the best answer.

Eventually, Cecil carried on. Brisk. Businesslike.

'And yes, I did meet them in my father's houses. And saw them for what they were. Children reveal themselves even more easily than adults.'

'And what was it you saw?'

'Two young minds unfettered, controlled by no sense of duty, no sense of loyalty, no sense of a higher good. Controlled rather by their own vainglory, their own sense of self. Two minds controlled by their bodies, driven by physicality, devoted solely to the pursuit of their own gratification,' Cecil replied, unable to control the curl of his lip that spoke of his disgust.

'Sounds wonderful fun to me,' said Gresham. 'You should have tried it. I find Essex highly amusing.'

'I know of your relationship. It is an advantage to me in what I wish, not a disadvantage.'

'Ignoring my friendship with Essex for a moment, what do two children pulling the wings off flies in wanton cruelty have to do with a man hoping to take control of the new kingdom as he and his family have controlled the old kingdom? And how is your dear father, by the way?'

'My father continues to be unwell,' said Cecil briefly. 'And as for the two children, they have nothing to do with that man,' said Cecil, the grammatician in him revealing itself. 'They may have an unfortunate amount to do with that man in the future.'

'Why so?' said Gresham. 'Two wanton souls bent on destruction, as you see them, are surely only of concern to themselves and the few who truly love them.'

'Such "wanton souls", as you describe them, rarely satisfy themselves with self-destruction. They are only happy when they carry others along with them.' Cecil's tone was full of loathing.

'Which, for someone whose vision of the world is dominated by his place in it, must mean that you perceive in these two a threat to yourself,' said Gresham.

Cecil carried on as if he had not heard him.

'Essex is the leader of the pair, always has been, even in their childhood. Southampton is rotten to the core, a vehicle merely of his own pleasure. It was always so.'

'But what have they done in their adulthood,' asked Gresham boring in now to the core of the issue, 'to arouse your very evident concern?'

'It is not what they have done. It is the perception of what they are doing.'

Gresham jammed his goblet down on the table. 'Clearly, you need me. And if I'd wanted an oracle I could have sailed to Delphos. Tell me.'

Cecil looked distastefully at Gresham.

'It is rumoured that both men are involved in satanic rituals. Black magic. Rituals that involve child sacrifice.'

Gresham paused for thought. So this was where the rumours came from.

'So what if they are?'

'The rumour does not stop there. It is said that they learnt such satanic observances in the household of my father. Not just in the house of my father. From his second son. From myself.'

Cecil took another sip from his wine. This was indeed an historic night.

'They say, apparently, that my father was so disappointed with his first son that he entered into a pact with Satan.' Burghley's first son was a buffoon. 'That in exchange for his soul, his sons and heirs would hold power in England.'

It is a rare moment in the life of a human being to feel that one is looking straight into the soul of a fellow man. For a moment, Gresham felt he saw into the heart of Robert Cecil.

'The rumours say that the Devil granted my father his wish. That he gave power in England to him and to his children. That he marked me with the Devil's mark, hunched my back, commanded my nurse to drop me in childhood to remind my father that Satan's gifts come at greater than the asking price, to remind him of who the True Lord was. And that, being born unto the Devil, I recruited the boys in my father's care to that same false faith.'

There was a long silence. The frightening thing was that Gresham was entirely inclined to believe the whole story. He had never believed that hell was warm. Fire could burn, true enough, as he had cause to know. Yet warmth, light and heat were also the source of life. No, hell was cold. Burningly, bitterly cold, the cold of death, of exhaustion. And throughout his life he had sensed that cold in Robert Cecil, ice to Gresham's fire.