Martin Stephen - The galleon's grave

'My Lord…!' Gresham was aghast, confused. He had never seen Walsingham express any sign of humanity, never mind physical weakness. 'Sit… sit…' Gresham sensed that Walsingham needed to be placed back in the chair. He lay there, gasping two or three times as spasms crashed through him. Then it seemed as if the pains were easing. Walsingham opened his eyes.

'Stones. There is nothing that can be done. The pain is acute, but it passes. Its cruelty is that it comes without warning. Go!' he said, eyes only half-open. 'Go now. It is important that the Queen sees you there when she appears to welcome the Ambassador. More important than if I remain here…'

As the door closed Walsingham stood up straight, all signs of pain gone. The real pain would come later, he knew. As it was, his knowledge of that pain allowed him to act it out with utter conviction when it was useful and he needed to rid himself of someone. The old man moved to the side of the room. 'We are alone,' he called out. 'You may safely emerge.'

Robert Cecil swung back the arras from behind which he had witnessed Walsingham's conversation with Gresham. A small, slightly hunched figure, he moved awkwardly to a chair, nodded his acknowledgement to Walsingham and received the old man's permission to sit.

‘Well, sir,' said Walsingham. 'Did you see what you wished to see?'

'I am grateful to you, Sir Francis,' said Cecil. 'I- ' 'I ask no questions, Robert Cecil,' said Walsingham, waving a hand to cut Cecil short. 'And, to be frank, I would not believe your answers. Your father asks me to repay a past favour by my seeing you. I agreed. You asked to be given the chance to view and to meet one of my… young men. It does not interfere with my plans for that young man. I agreed. My debt is paid. You have what you wished for. If only all life could be so simple.' There was silence for a moment.

'I confess to being surprised that you do not wish to know more of my reasons, my Lord,' said Cecil, finally.

'Why?' said Walsingham. 'You will certainly have a reason to give me, but quite frankly, it is as likely to be a lie as it is to be the truth.'

'Sir!' said Cecil, outrage in his surprisingly strong voice, a voice with a rasp in it as of something dragged over gravel, at odds with his slight frame. 'I take offence at the accusation of being a liar!'

Walsingham looked at Cecil, an ironic, humourless smile playing on his lips. 'Then you take offence too easily, and will not last long in the world of the Court! I know what you are,' said Walsingham. In those few words Walsingham had somehow crammed the experience of all his years, the idiocy of human life, its vanities, its foibles and its deceits.

'Sir?' Cecil was confused now.

'You were born into power, have grown up with power and expect power as your right. You drank in power at your mother's breast and at your father's table. And now the source of your power, your father, is failing, as I am failing, because time is the one enemy we cannot defeat, your father with his skills and me with mine.' 'I seek to serve Her Majesty in whatever humble capacity-' You are not humble, Master Cecil. And the god you serve is your own position and influence. Don't worry,' said Walsingham, holding up his hand to stop another outburst and speaking now almost in sympathetic tones, 'there is many a man who has given good service to his monarch when actually serving only himself. You are such, I suspect.'

Cecil had recovered now. There was ice in his reply. 'You seem to know a very great deal.'

'I know what you are. That you will twist and turn seeking every advantage, sniff the wind of favour like a beast in the field, scent where danger and advantage are. You are different from myself, from your father even. God knows I have ambition enough. Yet always I have known that I served first my God, second my country and third my Queen. You are the future, I fear. You may do good service to all three, yet the person you really serve is yourself.'

'The Queen might be interested to hear your order of priorities,' sneered Cecil.

'She is not ready to hear them from you, not yet’ said Walsingham. 'There are many rungs to climb on your ladder of success before you reach that level of confidence with her.'

There was silence between the two men.

'And in answer to the question you do not dare to ask, you will have reasons for getting to know Henry Gresham, reasons that I have no doubt will rebound to your own advantage. I see no obstruction to my plans for that young man in whatever you might wish of him, not yet at least. But you may find that he is a young man who has ideas of his own. So be it. And good day to you, Robert Cecil.'

Obligation. Entrapment. Robert Cecil was the new order, or a possible variant of that new order. Yet Walsingham was ready to die only when God gave the command. In the meantime, let the new order be in his debt, in his vision. He doubted that Cecil planned anything good for Gresham. But who knew how valuable the knowledge of Cecil's plans would be when Walsingham finally acquired it, as acquire it he surely would.

'Just checking you came out alive!' whispered George, who appeared by Gresham's side as soon as he stepped into the Hall. Mannion was there too, playing his usual trick of sticking up against the wall so that people thought him to be a royal servant. 'Well, tell me! What did he want?'

'To have me blown to death in Lisbon or hung from a tree as a spy there!' said Gresham bitterly, then angry at himself for taking his depression out on his friend. Further conversation was denied them. The musicians in the Gallery stirred. The Queen's famous parsimony may have been evident elsewhere in her reception, but not in the dress of her players, resplendent in Tudor green. They stood, and a blare of trumpets rolled out through the rafters and rattled the windows of the ancient building. It was a dramatic opening, but not as dramatic as the appearance of the Virgin Queen herself.

The cynic in Gresham noted that a particularly fine chandelier had been hung at the back of the hall, over a narrow, empty dais cloaked at the side with fine hangings. It seemed to serve no purpose, until the Queen stepped out from a door hidden by one of the hangings, two cherubic page boys flinging the door open and standing aside, bowing to let her pass. Every jewel sewn into her dress, on her fingers and round her neck seemed to blaze into fearsome light, as if a glittering portion of the sun had exploded into the Hall. She was not a particularly tall woman, and her hour-glass figure was threatened by matronly wadding. The worth of the fine black and russet-brown cloth of the dress alone, with its intricate filigree stitching on the huge puffed sleeves, would have fed a small town for a year. And the jewels! Apart from the gem stones, some even placed on the vast halo-like ruff that framed her face, there were vast, sweeping strings of pearls around her neck and crowning her hair.

'That,' whispered Gresham to George, 'is an entrance.'

There was an indrawn gasp of breath as she moved to the front of the dais, and a spontaneous round of applause. It was easy to forget how fragile was her hold on power in the face of her magnificence. She gazed down at her adoring Court and a thin smile of triumph crossed her lips. She extended her hand to the Ambassador, the huge emerald ring on her finger looking like a vast open mouth, the light shooting in and out of its facets. The poor man was quite overwhelmed by events. He could not see the short stairs leading up to the dais, yet could not reach Her Majesty's hand without climbing on to the stage with her. A quick glance from the Queen and a courtier jumped to take the Ambassador's elbow and lead him to the steps. Yet he stumbled as he climbed them. The Queen, her hand still extended, looked down disdainfully at him.