Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

Gresham had to answer. He started to put his brain back in gear by clearing his throat, pushing through the vapours of alcohol to reengage, and then halted. He had to sound as if he was part-drunk. It was his guarantee of honesty to the King.

'Your Majesshty,' slurred Gresham, 'it's… it's a terrible thing.' The tears formed in his eyes then. He had let the image of young

Walter and Anna come into his head, or the drink had forced it there. 'But… but… yes, it may be possible.'

The King gave a cry like none Gresham had ever heard. It was a call of pure agony, of a man into whose brain a white-hot knife-blade had entered, a knife-blade of recrimination and blame. Yet James, with his morbid fear of death, had fled to the countryside to avoid comforting his son on his deathbed. Queen Anna had locked herself up in Denmark House. How much had he loved his son?

'But sire…' Gresham spoke quickly. 'We learn in our trade that what might be is not always the same as what is. I shay… I say that a king's son may always be murdered, in Scotland as well as in England. But yet it need not be so. God knows, life is cheap enough.' Seven out of ten babies might die within months of being born, and even if a boy or girl made it to maturity, childbirth, the plague and a host of other illnesses still carried on taking their dreadful toll.

James was sitting back in his chair, eyes glazed, clutching his wine as a baby might clutch a bottle, i took scant care of him, my brave lad, scant care…' It was as if he was talking to himself. The accent was broad, pronounced. 'Too much love is nae any help to a future king. I had none of it, none of it, when I was a wean. It made me careful, it made me canny. He didna' need me.'

'Perhaps not,' dared Gresham, 'but I've no doubt he loved you.' The room had started to swirl now. He focused, hard. The room was not moving. It was still. It was only the drink. It slowed down, and the sickness that had started in his stomach abated. Why let it? He forced himself to go to the side of the room, picked up the chamber pot and vomited into it. The liquid burned his throat and tongue.

'Well, Sir Henry, the problem is this.' James's eyes were hard, bright. He had ignored Gresham's retching into the pot. The drunken man who had screamed in mental agony a few seconds ago was gone, I can no longer help Prince Henry.' The tears were still there. 'And all of a sudden I am short of people to whom I can turn.

You see, if they have killed my son… then the next step is for them to kill me.'

Was that it? Was James's cry of agony for his son? Or was it for fear of his own life?

'Why so, sire?'

To get the weakling Charles on the throne, so they can manipulate and dominate with all the more ease.'

'They?' Gresham left out any formal mode of address, always dangerous with a king or a queen. James appeared not to notice.

'All those who seek to deny a king his pleasures in hunting, or his few close friendships.' A maudlin, self-pitying tone was creeping in now. 'Or perhaps those who are friends of my few close acquaintances, and fear the loss of their influence if a man starts to listen to his son.'

There! That was it! James had more or less said what he feared. That Overbury might have acted to remove Prince Henry, fearful that the young Prince might one day find his semi-estranged father in a receptive mood and could damn Carr and Overbury as a package that could not be split. Was there real agony in James at the loss of his son? Possibly. But, as always with this complex man, there was the overriding sense of survival. Of self-interest.

Would Sir Thomas Overbury have so much evil in him as to murder the heir to the throne of England?

'Now tell me, Sir Henry, am I right in my fears? And do take a drink. You'll find it guid wine.'

The room was quite stable now, Gresham noted appreciatively, giving only the occasional lurch. 'I think Sir Robert Cecil would have appreciated your fears. As for the friend of a friend, he is capable of almost anything. Almost anything. But of this? I simply do not know. Yet, sire, if this man had done this terrible thing… it would pose no threat to your security.'

'How do you mean, man?'

Gresham was thinking himself now, his brain working on the problem, his own fear that he had been duped cutting through the alcoholic fog. 'The only reason for taking the life of the Prince would be to keep you on the throne, secure in your friendships. If there were those who wished harm to your son then, the damage done, there is every reason for them to keep you alive and well. You become the key to their continued success.'

How could this man maintain his relationship with Robert Carr-while knowing that Carr's friend might have killed his son? How could Henry Gresham be playing with his own life, talking thus freely to the King?

'I think you speak with the voice of Machiavelli, Sir Henry. That Machiavelli of whom you have some knowledge,' said James in a low voice. Again, it was impossible to gauge his mood.

'Machiavelli spoke in the true voice of courts and those who seek power,' said Gresham. And in the true voice of kings and rulers, but perhaps I'd better not say that.

'And your friendt Sir Edward Coke? Would he do this to me? Take away my son and heir?' James was not looking at Gresham but into the ashes of the fire, untended now since his arrival.

Humans plan and plot and train for their future, yet forever delude themselves into thinking that they have control over their destiny. The moments that define our lives, the moment that can affect the future of millions of people, are often hidden from sight, tiny triggers that are pulled without a noise or a sign that a threshold has been crossed, a decision taken and the future changed, for better or for worse. Gresham responded instinctively and without hesitation to the King's question. It took him only a moment to respond.

'No, he would not. If the death of your son was through anything other than natural causes then Sir Edward would have no part in it.'

'Yet he is the man who is responsible for your stay in these surroundings, the hurt to your beautiful wife, the fear in the hearts of your two children that they may never see their father again. He is the man you hold responsible for locking away your greatest friend, your saviour, your hero.'

'He is all those things, Your Majesty. Yet if I am any judge of men, he is not a murderer of the heir to the throne. For one, he is too scared. For another, though he has sold out to ambition long ago, he has lived with himself by believing that he works for and within the law. For a third, he has no advantage to gain from such a death.'

'And could the man you call Robert Cecil have planned this action, from his grave, and be reaching out to punish me even now?'

This man was no fool! Again, Gresham responded instantly.

'I had thought, for a brief moment, that it might be so. He talked about it once, indirectly. At our last meeting. He said that however great the heir to the throne, he must never be allowed to replace the King in case the people came to believe they had the power to choose a monarch. I cannot tell you what happened in Cecil's mind. My instinct, despite an appalled moment when you first spoke and I wondered if I had been misled, is no. This would be too unsubtle for Cecil.'

'Did you feel the axe brush across your neck just now?' asked the King. A cold breath ran through the drink-heated fires of Gresham's brain.

'I have felt the axe resting on my neck for most of my life, Your Majesty. The answer to your question, since you have come here in search of honesty, is no, I did not.'

'Then you should have done, Sir Henry. You are not the expert reader of men that you think you are!' There was almost an air of triumphalism in James's manner and tone. 'You see, had you sought to damn Sir Edward or my dead Chief Secretary, and to exact your private revenge on the back of my grief and loss, I would have despised you and believed that not only do you read Machiavelli but that you are him. And you would have died, by axe or by poison. But died, beyond doubt.'