Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

'Do I have to warn you again?' Jane's voice was low and so threatening that it stopped even Gresham in his tracks. Fascinated, he watched a rare insight into the hidden relationship between two of the four most important people in his life. 'That girl is in my charge. I talked to her mother, I gave my word she would be looked after. You mill not touch her.'

Mannion looked direct into her eyes.

'She's simple,' said Jane. 'She doesn't appear so. You might be forgiven for thinking her normal. And she's very beautiful. Her mother was in despair because no one would take her into service and all the men wanted to take her into bed. I said I'd help her. And if she finds her John the Ostler, who'll love her because she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and who'll forgive her a simple mind, then so be it. That will be her choice, and his. But I'll not have her spoiled by a careless and powerful man, in breach of my word to her mother.'

'Well then, mistress,' said Mannion, grinning at her. Grinning at her? Gresham was part amused, part outraged. Would he have dared grin at Jane in such circumstances? 'You're lucky to have me on your side, aren't you? There's only one real man who could put her in harm in this place, and only one real man as could protect her. And I'm both.' He ambled over to Jane, as if to put his cup down on the table at which she sat. 'You see, I'm happy to go for the willing. I've never gone for the weak.'

'I know,' said Jane.

'You want her wed to John the Ostler?'

'He needs to love someone other than a horse, and her simple nature won't stop her being a good wife to him.'

'Leave it to me,' said Mannion. And they both smiled.

'Excuse me!' said Gresham, 'and hello. Is there any possibility of my being allowed back into this conversation?'

It was rare for Jane to flush, but she did so. It was left to Mannion to resurrect the conversation.

'We were talkin' about Sir Edward Bloke, weren't we?' asked Mannion innocently.

'Sir Edward Coke, you blunt-wit ignorant peasant!' shouted Gresham, his patience at an end.

There was so much he did not know, the clinical part of Gresham's brain was telling him. Well, inaction would find nothing out. That sense of total concentration that Jane and Mannion knew so well came over his whole body.

'London. All of us. To meet Sir Edward. And to visit the theatre.'

26th May, 1612 Sir Edward Coke's Home, London

Five o'clock every morning in order to extend his working day. It was an easy story to circulate and, thought Gresham, easy to maintain once it was established, without actually having to get out of bed.

They set out at noon. It was only a relatively short walk from The House, with its favoured position on The Strand, to Chancery Lane. Gresham and Mannion could have taken a boat, ridden or taken the vast coach that Gresham's father had had built when those cumbersome contrivances had been fashionable. Today Gresham felt the need to walk, to get back in touch with London's ebb and flow, feel its pulse.

It had been dry for weeks and within seconds a thin layer of dust covered Gresham's boots. The clouds hanging loose in the sky threatened rain, had done so for days. At least they were spared the sucking, clinging mud, but not the steaming piles of horse shit littering the road or the stained yellow and brown earth where night soil had been thrown carelessly into the street. The smell of grass still blew in from the green fields visible past the houses on the northern side of The Strand, to mingle with the stench of the river and the open sewer that occasionally the street was allowed to become. Then there was the endless, richest smell of all: the smell of humanity. The perfumes and scents worn by the wealthy men and occasional lady; the nosegays of sweet orange or apple designed to ward off evil vapours; the sudden, intrusive, raw stench of sweat from the carters or porters carrying huge loads on their bending backs; the stale, warm, sickly sweet smell of the men and women who could neither afford clean linen nor to have what linen they owned washed every day.

The nearer they came to the old City walls, the closer together the houses grew, the more cramped and crammed the streets. The steep-pitched roofs almost touched their opposite neighbours. When it rained an avalanche of water poured from the roofs on to a few yards of street below, digging a trench with sheer force of water. You could sink deeper than your knees into the mud of a London street, and leave your boots in the sucking mire when your friends dragged you out. The noise was incessant. The cries of the street traders were everywhere, raucous, yelling, insistent.

Coke may or may not have stinted on his sleep but he certainly did not stint on the furnishings he allowed himself. Mannion had been left in an ante room with a sniffing and disapproving clerk. Coke's study was vast, with crimson taffeta curtains and a turkey foot carpet laid over polished boards. The wall hangings on three walk were particularly fine. Coke must have had them commissioned. One showed Solomon giving judgement, another Moses damning the Jews for their worship of a golden idol, with a smoking mountain in the background. Very judicious. At a guess, Sir Edward Coke wanted to be Solomon and thought he might be Moses. It was only a short step for him to believe that he was God.

'Good morning, Sir Henry.' Coke spoke as if to a rather poor and badly behaved Ward of Court. He gave Gresham the merest glance and continued to inscribe a careful signature on the document in front of him. 'I am, as you see, most busy, most busy indeed…' The table at which Coke sat was littered with papers and bound volumes. He had not risen as Gresham entered, an act of extraordinary rudeness. Gresham adopted a solicitous expression and sat "down on one of the ornately backed and armed chairs on the other side of the table, without being asked. From the slight stiffening of Coke's body Gresham knew he sensed the return discourtesy. Touchi. One all. Gresham's eye was caught by not one but two fine portraits of Sir Edward, posing magisterially, adorning the wall over the vast fireplace, and a third showing him with what Gresham assumed was his first wife and vast brood of children.

'It's a pleasure to come and meet you, Sir Edward,' said Gresham in his most understanding and sympathetic voice. 'Unlike your busy self, I've nothing at all to do with my time.' Coke did not look up. He was too much in control for that. But he had, Gresham noticed, managed to ruin one of the letters by the jerk his hand had given in response to Gresham's remark. He had done it just as he was forming the 'o' in his name, so that one missive was now apparently signed 'Ed. Cqke'. Gresham carried on. 'It's also always a pleasure to meet someone so exalted who is yet so… humble, so… well-mannered and lacking in vanity.'

Coke put down his quill, measured, making sure Gresham knew he was not hurrying. This was not a man to be underestimated, Gresham reminded himself. Coke had survived and flourished too long in the bitter, adversarial world of the law for that.

'You should know, Sir Henry, that the Earl of Salisbury is dead. He died yesterday at Marlborough.' Coke spoke solemnly, playing the part.

Cecil dead?

'Oh, good,' said Gresham, that same infuriating bland smile on his face. 'I'm so glad.'

That did get through to Coke. He had too much self control to rise from his chair but his colour roared up the scale towards red and Gresham saw his scrawny Adam's apple bobbing up and down several times as he swallowed. The skin was leathery, wrinkled, that of an old man.

'You are… gladV asked Coke, voice barely under control, rasping as if from a dry throat.