Martin Stephen: The galleon's grave

George stuck out a vast paw, and Mannion grasped it in return. He looked approvingly at George. A person's appearance had never bothered Mannion. He judged a man by his heart. And George Willoughby's heart was as big as they came.

'There'll be flattery enough this evening,' said Gresham, as the three of them settled down to a bottle of rather fine Spanish wine brought cobwebbed from the cellars of The House. If there was anything odd about two gentlemen and a servant sharing a bottle, none of the three seemed to notice it.

'But of course!' said George. 'The Queen will be told she dances divinely and that she's the only paragon of human beauty, and several sonnets in her favour will be written on the spot. Despite the fact that she's self-evidently an old cow with a complexion like a distempered wall.'

'You'll be telling Her Majesty that tonight, will you?' said Gresham in a tone of innocence. 'Just imagine how you'd feel if she served up your head on a pewter salver and not a gold one…'

'My head's safer on my shoulders than yours is, Henry,' said George. There was a sudden sharpness in his tone that made Gresham look up. 'I tell you, you're playing with fire. There'll be no flattery of you tonight Only jealousy. Hatred, even. Are you wise to stay as one of Walsingham's men? These are dangerous times.'

Walsingham was Elizabeth's spy master. By now elderly and riven by serious illness, Walsingham had funded from his own income the greatest and the most malevolent network of informers in Europe. He had recruited Gresham as a spy in his first year at Cambridge, when Gresham was still an impoverished student. When Gresham's wholly unexpected inheritance turned his life from penury to fabulous wealth, he had stayed with Walsingham. Danger and risk were a drug to which young Henry Gresham had become addicted.

'Life's dangerous,' commented Gresham idly.

For all his foolish exterior, George Willoughby had a sharp brain. It was also one strangely acclimatised to the world of the Court Just as Gresham only really felt at home in Cambridge and its tiny battles, who was in favour and who was out of favour, who was a rising star and whose star had fallen were meat and drink to George. It was odd that a man so simple could take so much pleasure in charting the shifting sands of the Court.

'But rarely as dangerous as this. And doubly so since we decided to execute Mary Queen of Scots.'

Gresham said nothing.

Mary Queen of Scots. A Queen in her own right twice over — of France and of Scotland. With sufficient English royal blood in her veins to make her not only the obvious successor to Queen Elizabeth, but her present rival for the throne. She had fled to England when Scotland had rebelled against her, and found herself imprisoned for her pains by her cousin Elizabeth, yet remained the centre of continual plotting. And now she was dead, at last. Executed farcically at Fotheringay Castle in February. One Queen murdered on the order of another. A Catholic Queen murdered on the order of the bastard Protestant Elizabeth. The executioner had botched his job. Only at the third attempt had he severed the woman's head from her body. Mary had worn a wig to her execution. When the executioner bent down to grab hold of her mangled head to show it to the audience he had been left with the false hair in his hand, while the obscene, bald coconut of the Queen's head bounced and rolled off the staging. And Henry Gresham would regret to the end of his days the part he had played in that death.

'Apart from your personal involvement,' continued George, emptying half the remainder of the bottle into the delicate Venetian glass cradled in his vast hand, 'there's many who say executing Mary Queen of Scots was a disastrous move. Politically speaking, that is.'

'Walsingham was very firmly of the other opinion. He believed having a Catholic queen with a legitimate claim to the throne was to invite the overthrow of Elizabeth, "to nurture a canker in our breast",' said Gresham. 'I think I'm quoting him direct.'

'Quote him all you like,' said George, 'but remember, fewer and fewer people are listening to him now.' George stood up, endlessly restive, as if the ideas in his head could not be contained while his body was sitting. 'You've never understood the Court,' he said to Gresham, like a father admonishing a child. 'And what's been certain for so long is dying, uncertain. The Queen is old, Henry, for all that saying so is instant death for a courtier! Burghley is old…'

An outsider would have been surprised to see Gresham rise and the two young men make a formal, deep bow to each other. It was their ritual whenever they mentioned Lord Burghley, Chief Secretary to the Queen. Of worthy rather than noble stock, Burghley had the exaggerated respect for protocol and formality that came with nouveau status.

'Laugh on,' said Mannion to the pair of them. 'But just remember the man you're laughing at, is the most powerful man in England.'

'Is? Or was?' said George. 'Rumour has it he's losing his wits. Let's face it, the old guard are dying. Walsingham's seriously ill, doubled up by pain sometimes. The Queen has no heir, there's no clear succession… is it any wonder the Court's in turmoil? We've enough threats from within without adding more from outside!'

'Adding?' asked Gresham, interested despite himself.

'By executing a Catholic Queen! There's real panic in the Court,' answered George. 'It's odds on executing Mary will tip Spain over the edge.'

King Philip of Spain had once reigned in England as husband to Queen Mary in her disastrous time as Queen. That, and the tortuous Tudor lineage, gave Spain several claims on the English throne. More important to Philip, who had countries enough to rule, was the standing outrage of a Protestant England defying the one rule of Roman Catholicism.

George roared with laughter at a remembered joke. The plaster just about remained attached to the brickwork. 'The Bishops are shitting themselves! Apparently one of them fainted when someone burned some meat on the fire. Said it reminded him of the smell of human flesh burning!'

'Rumour has it that half the Bishops have started to learn Spanish,' said Gresham, grinning.

'Most of 'em can't speak bloody English!' growled Mannion. Clergy and Spaniards were his two least favourite breeds.

'What are the serious minds at Court saying about the succession?' asked Gresham. George would know the latest word if anyone did. Elizabeth had resolutely refused to marry. The nearest thing to an heir was probably James VI of Scotland, son of the executed Mary Queen of Scots.

'Very divided. Some say Spain. Some say the King of Scots. Others want the Queen to marry an English nobleman, even now, someone younger than herself so we get a King.'

'Wonderful!' exclaimed Gresham. 'What a choice! Our' next monarch is either Spanish, which means the country torn apart by religious war, or the King of our oldest and bitterest enemy — oh, and someone whose mother we've just had executed! — which means civil war. Or it's Leicester, Essex or even Walter Raleigh, any one of whom would guarantee the other two and every other noble family at Court launching immediate civil and religious war!'

The Earl of Leicester was the Queen's old favourite, increasingly being put in the shade by the young and extremely handsome Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. Sir Walter Raleigh was a permanent joker in the pack.

'Never mind the danger the country's in,' said George. 'Think about the danger you're in.'

"E's right,' said Mannion. 'I know bugger all about the politics, but even I can see they're mad jealous of you. Jealous of your money. Jealous of your looks. Jealous of how you do with women. Jealous o' the Queen taking notice of you. And you haven' exactly been… discreet with some o' those girls you've serviced, 'ave you?'