Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

They both became aware that Overbury was stirring back into a painful consciousness in the corner.

'You must interview Overbury's and Carr's servants to find out as much as you can about how the letters went missing. I will interview Master Shakespeare. It's almost certainly a waste of time. Yet it has to be done.'

Coke spoke sharply. 'The manuscripts are secondary. Plays are not our concern. Letters are.' Coke was showing that phenomenal capacity to take unpleasant facts and sideline them, lock them away so that they did not interfere with his management of the moment's business. Yet was the tone just a little too urgent in dismissing these plays? Gresham immediately racked them up to a higher priority.

Sir Edward Coke glared balefully at Gresham. He had thought Gresham an irritant and an inconvenience when Cecil had insisted on informing him of the missing letters and manuscript, but necessary if the one thing that Cecil and Coke needed to happen was to take place. He had agreed to Gresham's involvement because he had believed that Gresham was being used as livebait. Now the bait had revealed himself to be an extraordinarily dangerous figure. A dreadful fear crossed Coke's heart. Was he using Gresham? Or was Gresham using him?

'Do 1 have your attention, Sir Edward?' Gresham's tone was solicitous. Coke had done something he had spent a lifetime training himself not to do, drifted away from a conversation. Cursing inwardly, he dragged himself back. 'We must understand one thing, Sir Edward.'

'And what exactly is that "one thing"?' asked Coke, his voice almost a hiss. i don't for a minute believe that I've been told the whole truth. But as Robert Cecil might have found time to tell you before he died, I usually do find the truth eventually.'

'What do you believe?' snapped Coke. i believe I've been told some of the truth. I believe in these letters, and I believe both they and some play scripts have been stolen. I believe both items have the capacity to get someone important into deep trouble. I believe there is a hidden agenda which means you need me to flush out the thief because you can't or daren't do it yourself.'

This was so close to the truth that even Coke could not stop a tiny tremor from crossing his face.

'Quite,' said Gresham, noting the tremor. 'I repeat: I do usually find the truth. You and Cecil believed I was an arrow that you could shoot in the direction you wanted. Your arrow has become a hawk, a lethal weapon with a mind of its own.'

Coke had always hated hawks. The total, unflinching, single-mindedness of their eyes, their utter focus on the prey, their inability to be distracted or diverted both undermined and angered him in a way he did not understand and could not therefore control.

Overbury groaned, rubbed his face and threw up as he felt and saw the blood on his hand. He tried to get to his feet, but fell on all fours.

'But don't worry too much,' Gresham said to Coke, almost sym-pathetically. 'Hawks get killed too. Who knows? Perhaps this is when my luck will run out.'

Coke tried not to show on his face just how very much he hoped that Gresham's luck would truly run out.

'By the way, Sir Edward,' Gresham said as he rose to leave, 'there's a foul stench in this room.' By the merest movement of his head he seemed to gesture towards Overbury. 'A stench of some-thing rotten. Perhaps one of your hounds is so old or ill that it can't stop itself from breaking wind.'

There were no hounds in the room. Coke viewed them as un-hygienic and anarchic.

'Such animals are dangerous. For all that they're useful, they can infect their masters with their own corruption.' Gresham flicked a speck of dust off the arm of his glorious velvet and silk doublet. 'If for pity's sake you can't have them put down, then you're well advised to keep them at a distance.'

Two sets of eyes directed glares of undiluted hatred at Sir Henry Gresham as he left the room.

Overbury dragged himself to the table. 'I…' he began to bluster.

'Will you be silent for once?' hissed Coke. And, for once, Sir Thomas Overbury remained silent. 'Gresham is dangerous. Above all, he's dangerous. You saw how dangerous. God knows why you seek to taunt and antagonise everyone you meet.'

Overbury flushed, and lowered his bloodied head. 'Why do we need Gresham?' he mumbled through bloodied lips. 'If he is so… dangerous, why welcome this viper to our bosom?'

Do you ever listen, Sir Thomas Overbury? thought Coke. Have you ever listened in your life?

'We need Gresham,' Coke explained patiently, as if to a child, 'because the Cambridge bookseller is Christopher Marlowe. Kit Marlowe. Diseased, syphilitic. Returned from the grave with homicidal mania for all those who wanted him dead, and for all those who conspired in his exile.'

Sir Thomas Overbury vomited over the table, the thin yellow spume staining a multitude of papers on Coke's desk. It seemed to make him feel better. He sat up, ready to speak through his battered lips. Coke decided to get in before he did so. The acid, sweet smell of the vomit filled his nostrils.

'Marlowe simply wants to destroy: the King, the monarchy, you, me. He came back into the country with enough information from his past to do very, very serious damage. He stole those damned letters — from you, Sir Thomas! — so now he has even more powder in his gun. And he has the manuscripts. He wants to see his damned play-'

The Fall of Lucifer? croaked Sir Thomas. For some reason he had remembered that.

'Yes,' said Sir Edward, looking at his own fallen and bloodied Lucifer, 'The Fall of Lucifer. He wants to see his damned play performed, and is convinced it will provoke a revolution.'

'Nonsense!' said Sir Thomas, learning how to speak again and fingering his lips. 'Plays don't provoke rebellion!'

'No?' said Coke, stung to a response. 'And when my good, and very dead, Lord Essex mounted his. rebellion, didn't he inspire it by commanding a performance of Richard II by that upstart crow Shakespeare? The rebellion failed. The provocation worked very well.'

'Oh God!' said Overbury, 'I'm sick at heart.' He sank down in his seat.

'I think, Sir Thomas,' said Coke, 'that you're sick everywhere. "We need Gresham because we can't find Marlowe. Cecil believed that if we set Gresham on to Marlowe, Marlowe will rush at him like an old man at a whore.'

Overbury raised his head again. 'And kill him?' His tone was almost lascivious.

'Possibly,' said Coke. Good God! he thought. Overbury was now tracing patterns on the wood of the table with the yellow fluid of his own vomit. 'But more likely draw him out and be killed himself. Safely killed, with no direct government involve-ment.'

'So we hope that Marlowe goes at Gresham like an old man at a second, young wife?'

Coke had recently married again, to a young girl who was leading him a merry dance. Suddenly Coke knew why so many people wanted to kill Sir Thomas Overbury. I will ignore this, he thought. That foul fiend Gresham has shown me the way. Ignore him.

Overbury's finger paused in the middle of an intricate pattern. Most of the patterns had arrow-point heads, Coke noted. Overbury lifted his head once more. The effect was spoiled by the blood that smeared his whole face and had dried into his beard. Yet it was not spoiled for Overbury. For he had hot just been bloodied and beaten by an opponent. It had never happened. It had been wiped out of his mind. Perhaps he even had the power to force his mind to cut off the signals of pain. All the old arrogance returned, his beating dismissed. It was a pity Gresham was not there. He would have noted the short-term effect of hitting someone and pointed it out to Mannion. Mannion. believed in things that could be eaten, drunk and slept with. In addition, he believed anything that did not work properly, particularly human beings, responded to a careful, cautious and judicious thumping.