Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

'I beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty, for my feelings towards that man. I know that in speaking of my belief in him I risk forfeiting my own life, and that of my wife and children. I know you believe he has done you grievous wrong.'

King James loathed Raleigh, saw him as the last of the great Elizabethans and one of the greatest threats to the monarch who had succeeded Elizabeth. Gresham's friendship with Raleigh was widely known. Coke had hoped to introduce it perhaps two-thirds of the way through the interrogation, and use it to damn Gresham. However, it seemed Gresham was going to use it to damn himself.

'And do you challenge that he is a threat to me? Do you challenge that he has sought to do me grievous wrong?' King James leaned forward as he spoke, aggressive, almost violent in his tone.

'I know you believe him to be so. I know you have the power to make that belief a lasting judgement. I would plead with you, as others have pleaded with you, to review that judgement, though at a different time and hopefully in a different place. Yet I give you my word that at no time have I or will I ever conspire against Your Majesty, or use my friendship with Sir Walter to do so.'

'Words are fine things,' said the King after a pause. It was impossible to judge his feelings from his face. 'Sir Edward here for one deals with them very finely. But words are not always the truth, are they, Sir Henry?'

'That certainly is true,' replied Gresham, feeling his way, 'but I would ask Your Majesty to consider one thing.'

'Which is?'

'Sir Walter Raleigh saved my life. I am indebted to him. It would have been easy for me to cut off from him when Your Majesty's disfavour became clear, to dissemble, to lie about my feelings in order to worm my way into Your Majesty's favour. To become a fawning courtier. As so many have sought to do.' He turned pointedly to Coke, who had the decency to flush. 'My loyalties are worn on the outside of my body for all to see. They are to Your Majesty, to my friend and to my wife and children.' Though in reverse order, as it happens, thought Gresham, bearing in mind that it would not be tactful to tell that particular truth at this particular moment. 'I suppose I am asking Your Majesty to see my declared love for Sir Walter as proof of something else. I am no dissembler. I am no liar. I am no threat. It may well be that I am a devil of sorts. At least I am the devil that is known.'

'Well, you have my eldest son and my heir on your side, Sir Henry, that much is true…' Prince Henry visited Raleigh, talked to him. Some said he viewed Raleigh as more of a father than James, admired him far more. It would not necessarily be of any help to Gresham. Indeed, it was rumoured that Prince Henry's affection for Raleigh increased his father's wrath against him.

'But yet…' King James's face lit up. Gresham had seen it do so once before, when he had paraded bishops and clergymen before him for a debate, and for a few brief moments the matter had gone beyond its tedious script and a real dialogue had taken place. It had been between James and Andrewes, Gresham now remembered.

'… this is the issue Sir Edward brings to me! He does believe you are a threat, Sir Henry. A most serious threat.'

Gresham felt the dryness in his throat, the tension rising in his neck.

'How might that be so, sire?'

Sir Edward leaned forward, eager to state his authority and his case. James waved him into silence, to an apoplectic response all the more fearsome for the fact that Coke could not vocalise it. Was he going to blow up? thought Gresham. It seemed Coke's fate to be told to shut up in Gresham's presence, either by the late Robert Cecil or by the King.

'I have a man called Marlowe in my care, Sir Henry. A dead man already, who from the wound in his arm is lucky not to have been killed twice over.'

Damn! How had Marlowe of all people gained sanctuary from the King?

'I understand that you were instrumental in "arranging" the death of this man many years ago. Testimony that despite your words, Sir Henry, there is much that you do and have done that is not worn on the outside, and about which the truth is not known.'

'Certainly, sire, I helped arrange for his escape. The fake death was Marlowe's idea. He never could distinguish between high drama and reality.'

'More importantly, I understand that this man had papers of mine that I wished to regain possession of. Sir Edward acted as my agent in this matter. You may speak now, Sir Edward.'

Coke needed no second bidding. Gresham could see he was straining to stand up, desperate to pace the courtroom. 'This man Marlowe approached me after you, Sir Henry, failed in your attempts to track him down.'

So that was how Marlowe had broken through into the King's hearing. He had gone directly to Coke this time, as he had gone to Overbury before.

'With His Majesty's permission, we arranged for the return of the papers. I even sent one of His Majesty's servants with Marlowe to supervise the collection of this material, hidden, I believe, in a strange place…'

Gresham could sense what was coming.

'Nicholas Heaton was the servant. He seemed suitable for these… underhand dealings, as he had gained experience under his former master. And lo and behold, what is the outcome?'

Coke was now well in his stride, declaiming, almost roaring. Gresham had seen the mood and the delivery once before, at Raleigh's trial. Its presence now, triumphalist as it was, did not bode well.

'We find that after weeks of apparent ignorance about this man Marlowe, the man whose false death you orchestrated all those years ago, all of a sudden you are there at the very time and in the very place these papers are being retrieved! An extraordinary coincidence, is it not? We find these papers are taken off Marlowe — stolen from him — by you. Marlowe is grievously injured — by you. His servant is crippled — by you. And Nicholas Heaton ends up a bloodied lump at the foot of King's College Chapel — murdered, we must assume, by you!’

Put like that, thought Gresham, it did not sound as if he had a terribly strong case for the defence.

Coke was in his element. 'Do you view it as your right to murder the King's servants? And why, when you are so contrite about posing no threat to His Majesty, do you continue to hold papers that you know could be damaging to him?'

'Your Majesty,' said Gresham. 'I do not believe it is my right to murder your servants.'

Though I would like to ask why it is that they seem to consider they have a right to murder me.

A few precious seconds to think. Some things at least were clearer now. Marlowe had some other hold over James. He had used it to strike a bargain — money? His life? Even a performance of his play? Heaton had been sent along as his minder. With the

King's backing it became clear why the route into King's College Chapel that night had been so effortless, why so many doors that should have been locked had been opened. Gresham wondered whether the intended finale for the evening would not have been the death of Marlowe anyway.

'The story is a simple one,' Gresham said. Well, probably it was. The problem was that he had not yet written it. Gresham looked again to the King.

'Your Majesty, Sir Edward is correct in that I had failed to trace Marlowe. He despises me, by the way. I was instrumental in getting him over to France, but for whatever reason things went wrong for him after that and I became an object of his hatred. He attempted to murder me and my wife at The Globe theatre. By means of several vagabonds and a crossbow bolt. I'd even greater desire than Sir Edward to find Marlowe. He was a personal threat to me and my dearest, as well as to my ruler.'

James was clearly interested now. He had not sipped at the wine for minutes, was leaning forward with his head cupped in his hands, his eyes fixed on Gresham. James had enjoyed interrogating witches in the past, Gresham remembered, and had seen himself as a skilled cross-examiner. Unfortunately the witches had ended up being burned alive.