Martin Stephen: The rebel heart

Gresham remembered the pathetic figure of Dr Lopez, the Queen's physician, who when an old and harmless man had been hung, drawn and quartered on a trumped-up treason charge. The Earl of Essex had led the prosecution, and the fact that Lopez was a Jew had helped Essex greatly in securing the conviction. It had not been Essex's finest hour. Gresham had no doubt that if Essex were forced to choose between his own profit and the death or mutilation of someone else, selfishness would win. That was how blue blood stayed blue. It also made Essex, if anything, just a little more exciting. Like a warming fire that could at the same time burn a man alive.

'I have also bribed a minor official of the Court of Spain to testify that you have indeed been acting on behalf of the Infanta for these six months past.'

'And why should such a man put his own life at threat?' asked Gresham.

'Because he is dying, and he cares little if he dies a few months early if my money supports his family,' answered Cecil, as if betrayal, lies and perjury were the bread of his daily life. Which, come to think of it, Gresham pondered, they probably were.

'So you are telling me, my Lord,' said Gresham, 'that if I do not agree to be your messenger you will destroy me and my few friends by implicating us in a Spanish plot against the Queen.'

'Precisely,' said Cecil. 'And it will work, because of your past history and the cloud of suspicion that hovers around you in the Court and beyond.'

'A cloud of suspicion no doubt fostered greatly by you in recent weeks and months?' asked Gresham.

'Of course,' said Cecil, as if surprised by the question. 'Hanging, drawing and quartering is the preferred punishment for traitors. You will not be offered the axe — you are not sufficiently noble. Nor will Lord Willoughby, nor your lesser friends. A pity to see the beautiful body of your ward so treated.'

There were two sources of anger eating at Gresham's soul. The first was at himself. He had let himself be manoeuvred by his old enemy into this position of extreme vulnerability. The second was not useful now. It was a mere distraction to survival: it was anger against Cecil. It would have its day. But not now. Not yet.

'You must need me very much as your messenger,' said Gresham, 'to go to all this trouble.' The only way he could unsettle Cecil was to appear unnaturally calm.

'I need you as my messenger,' said Cecil, 'not merely because if you are caught with my message you will be disbelieved. I need you because my enemies will seek to find and kill my messenger. For that reason he must go alone or with a small party. I do not need a puffed-up servant paying lip service to loyalty until the first sight of an implement of torture; or a minor noble desperate for advancement and caving in to the highest bidder. I need someone skilled enough not to be caught in the first place, someone ruthless enough to fight off opposition and, in the final count, someone with enough to lose to keep his mouth shut if the worst happens. I need a killer who will kill riot to protect me but to survive.'

Gresham gave a mock bow. 'I'm flattered you rate my skills so highly. But all you do is raise my curiosity about the nature of this message. It doesn't startle me that you'll ruin me or anyone else to ensure your survival. It startles me that something so threatening to your existence has happened as to make you take the risk of employing me, and by so doing revealing your desperation,' He sat back in his chair and smiled at Cecil. 'You see, I won't accept your mission unless I know exactly what the threat is to you, and what the message I carry actually says.'

Cecil smiled a thin, victorious smile.

'You have no threat to bring against me,' he said, with the slightest trace of smugness.

'Do I not?' said Gresham with the same infuriating smile.

There was a blur of movement, and Cecil found his neck being rammed forcibly against the carved wood of his chair, an arm choking the breath out of him and the blade of a dagger actually piercing the loose, wrinkled skin around his scrawny neck.

'You never were a spy, my Lord!' whispered Gresham in Cecil's ear. 'With one brief tightening of my arm here you are dead, or with one brief stab of this dagger up through your warped back.' As if to emphasise the point, Gresham tightened the grip of his arm for a moment. A single strand of dribble left the corner of Cecil's mouth, ran over his chin and landed on the fine velvet of Gresham's dark doublet. 'I leave you here, seated, stiffening in your chair. I have at least five minutes to make my exit, time enough for a poor spy such as me. You see, your message was so damning to us both that you could not afford a servant to listen to it. And your followers, when you are discovered? There is the shock of finding you dead, the confusion, the chaos. I've no doubt you will have left instructions for the revelation of the plot I am meant to have sponsored. Men such as you seek their revenge even in death.'

Cecil appeared to be suffocating. Gresham allowed a tiny relax-ation in his grip, whispering close in the man's ear as he might to a lover. 'Yet a dead man is never obeyed as rapidly as one who is living, a man whose patronage is at an end is never obeyed as is a man who still has favours to hand out. And me? One hour. One single hour. That's all I need to vanish, to disappear where you and yours will never find me. I've money put aside to satisfy ten men's wildest dreams. I've horses for me, my servant and anyone eke I care to take, even a trunk packed for just this very moment. I've a ship whose only job is to wait for me, to take me overseas if my world collapses around me. And every horse, every sailor has been planned for a time when there's no time, when speed means the difference between life or death.'

This time it was Gresham who paused for effect. He was surprised by the thinness of Cecil's body as he grasped it. The man was all skin and bone.

'So tell me your message. Or face my putting my plan into action, not yours.'

Cecil vomited. A pity, thought Gresham, allowing Cecil's head to crane forward so that no sick lodged in his throat and suffocated him. You lost respect if you wet or filled your pants, or threw up the contents of your stomach in front of another man. And you hated the man who saw or caused it even more. Or perhaps Cecil could not hate Gresham any more than he did?

'Let me go!' Cecil croaked. The arm relaxed, but as Cecil sucked in air and allowed his head to sink forward he saw the dagger poised in front of his eyeball. He started back, and the blade followed, its point almost touching his eye.

'Tell me now,' said Gresham, 'what your message is, or you lose an eye shortly before you lose your life.'

'The Earl of Essex has written to King James of Scotland,' said Cecil. Gresham sensed he had taken a decision. He relaxed his hold, moved the dagger and saw Cecil sag forward, retching.

Gresham was still by his side. Both men knew what would happen if Cecil cried out for help. 'Saying what?' said Gresham.

Cecil's breathing was returning now, and he was gaining control of himself.

'King James has heard the rumours associating Essex, Southampton and his crew with satanism and with sodomy. James loathes satanism before all other human evils. He prosecutes accused witches personally, testifies to the evil of Devil-worship. He is also a sodomite, and denies that sin with all the passion of a man who wants to throw the first stone.' The breathing was almost back to normal. 'Essex has told James that he, Essex, and the other ward, Southampton, were asked to bow to satanism and to sodomy in their youth. By me. And told him how they have denied it, and how I, the son of their guardian, is the anti-Christ.'

Gresham leant back, and the dagger went silently into its hidden sheath.