Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

'Perhaps the thief was disturbed,' said Jane. 'You can't base anything substantial on the number of plays they took.'

Gresham stopped his pacing and sat down abruptly. The library had a view out on to the river and its peaceful, meandering summer mood, a band of blue winding its quiet way through the green of the pastures. 'And Shakespeare is a traitor. As well as a genius.' 'Are you sure?'

'Shakespeare was as rough as they come when he first arrived in town, and ready for anything. He was a natural recruit for Cecil. The players get everywhere, into Court and into the taverns. They travel the country — Europe even. And they drink and womanise too much and'U do anything for ready cash. Many took different names when they were paid. Shakespeare was always William Hall. Some Stratford link, I think. Raleigh believes it was Shakespeare — in the days when he was William Hall — who hit lucky and betrayed him in the Bye Plot. I've no proof, but straight afterwards Shakespeare's crew were made into The King's Men, and Shakespeare bailed out of the game. Raleigh's sworn to kill Hall, or Shakespeare. By his own hand. He was most insistent it should be by his own hand.'

'Was?'

Gresham turned to his wife, his hand resting lovingly in her hair for a brief moment, running it through his fingers. 'I was on my way to do it myself. Raleigh stopped me. I've his order to kill the man if Raleigh dies in the Tower. If he's ever released, Raleigh will do it as his first act.'

'That much hatred…' mused Jane, considering the brave, tragic, foolhardy figure of Raleigh, his heart being eaten out every day by hatreds from his lurid past. Raleigh frightened her, not for what he was but for what he was allowing himself to become.

'That much betrayal. Raleigh'd helped the man get a place with the actors in the first place.'

'The theatre's always been trouble, hasn't it?' said Jane.

'It's a new art form,' said Gresham, 'come screaming and yelling into the world. Come to London to be born. Sometimes I think it was conceived by God, like poetry and music. Cecil thinks it was conceived by Satan. He could never see its beauty. Only its power.' Gresham's own sonnets had been published anonymously to wide acclaim.

'What's an art form?' asked Mannion, finger in mouth and digging in his tooth for something dead.

'It's when you paint a bottle of wine instead of drinking it,' said Gresham.

'Doesn't sound much fun to me,' said Mannion, adding, with gross illogicality, 'I like the theatre.'

'The Puritans think it's Satan's doing,' said Jane. 'They frighten me, much more than Catholics ever have.'

'We took away the Puritans' natural enemy when the Gunpowder Plot blew the Catholics into-limbo,' said Gresham. 'They've no one to hate now, except people who like cakes and ale, and the theatre. Or anyone who has fun!'

'The last time I was at the bookstalls,' said Jane, 'I saw a man with one of those stupid black hats they wear come and let loose a tirade against a bookseller who had play texts on his shelves. It was frightening. His eyes were rolling and half the time all you could see was the whites. He was shrieking, and there was white stuff round his mouth. The bookseller kept having to clean the man's spit off his precious covers. He was scared. So was 1.1 thought the man was going to do a clearing out of the Temple, and scatter all the books.'

'Men who think God's on their side often have trouble realising they're not God.'

'There's one other bit of stage gossip,' said Jane.

'Yes?' said Gresham, part intrigued and part wanting no more complications.

'They say there's a lost play by Marlowe that surfaced recently. The Fall of Lucifer. Apparently it's too dangerous to perform, so wild and heretical that it could shake governments. No one's seen it, though there's lots of talk.'

A strange, unfathomable expression flitted across Gresham's face at the mention of Marlowe's name. Jane carried on. 'If this lost play is so dangerous, and the sort of thing that causes a riot, could it have been this manuscript that the murderer was looking for? On

Cecil's orders? You know how frightened he is of the theatre and its power over the common people.'

'So you think Cecil's real wish might be for me to find this lost play? Hide from me what it is? It's tempting, but it doesn't really work. If whoever murdered to steal these two manuscripts was in Cecil's pay, Cecil doesn't need me to hunt them out. I can't see a link between the letters and these two stolen manuscripts, never mind a play written by a dead man that no one's seen.'

A young serving lad must have pinched a maid laden with bed' ding as they walked past the door. An outraged but part-pleased shriek was muffled in to silence as the pair realised their master and mistress lay behind the door.

'What do we know about Shakespeare?' asked Gresham. 'What's the gossip about him?'

'No one really seems to know him. He keeps a very low profile in town, and they say that back in Stratford, where he spends most of his time now — he owns half the town, apparently — they think of him as a grain dealer and hardly anyone knows about his plays! He's stopped writing, they say, and wants to sell his share in the company.'

'Well,' said Gresham, 'I suppose I'd better renew my acquaintance with him, as the new man he is rather than the person I knew. I see Sir Edward Coke in London four days from now and I'm not feeling as if I'm going there knowing much more than I did when I left Cecil.'

'I'd be happier steering clear of this Sir Edward Poke,' interrupted Mannion.

'Sir Edward Coke,' said Gresham patiently. Mannion had taken an instant dislike to the man.

'Whatever,' said Mannion dismissively. 'He's trouble. I've got a nose for these things.'

'Be thankful your nose can't smell your own breath, old man,' said Gresham. 'As for Coke, you know I'm no friend of his.'

'No. But you ain't had to fight him before. Not direct. And I bet Sir Edward Joke can stop being funny right quick.'

'Coke..Gresham started to say limply, and then gave up. He turned to Jane.

'Be careful,' said Jane in a sombre voice, before he could speak. Why waste her words? Henry Gresham could act almost all things except being careful. 'You've a weakness. This is the man who gave Raleigh a show trial, who preaches the law and then suspends justice when a king wants a man condemned. You hate him before you know him. Your hatred could blind you.'

'Well, we know more about Coke than we do about Shakespeare.' Gresham was pacing the room again, head down, hardly seeing the others.

'Top lawyer,' said Jane, 'but…'

'Go on?' said Gresham.

'The legal booksellers say that he trades on that reputation, and sometimes gives outrageous judgements which no one eke dares challenge because of his reputation with the other lawyers.'

'What about the clash with Bacon?' Gresham asked. Sir Francis Bacon had brushed across Gresham's life as an academic author but never as a political opponent. There were very many who disliked Bacon intensely. Gresham had always found him human, amusing and able. He had a brain the size of a Spanish galleon, but much nimbler and faster. Of course he had no morality at all, except to his own self interest, but had freely confessed as much to Gresham with an engaging wit and honesty that somehow robbed his amoral-ity of its venom.

'You know more than I do,' said Jane. Bacon was homosexual, tied to a wealth-generating but loveless marriage.

'I know he's locked into bitter battle with Coke over who'll be the next Attorney General. The popular bet has to be Coke. He's got himself the image of a legal god, he's done James's dirty work for him in court time after time and Bacon can be his own worst enemy.'

Jane prepared to reply, then noticed Mannion looking with excessive interest out of the window. Alice was the newest and youngest of the servants recruited to The Merchant's House, sent to work in the kitchens. A rather bewitching, fair-haired girl, she had been ordered into the kitchen garden to beg herbs for the cook from the gardener. Did she know how her hips swung as she walked into the garden, basket clutched before her? Or was it mere innocence?