Martin Stephen: The Conscience of the King

The messenger's name was Nicholas Heaton. Gresham took care to know these things. He was muddied enough, almost as big as Mannion, sweat-stained and stinking from his ride. His hair was thinning on top, though he tried to cover it with long, lank strands plastered down over the bald patch on his pate. As if to compensate for the lack of hair on his head, he wore a huge, florid moustache that extended in two luxuriant curls beyond the side of his face. It would have been ludicrous were it not for the almost palpable sense of threat the man emanated.

Heaton managed the merest nod of a bow to Gresham.

'My master is dying. He requests that you might spare time from your academic pursuits to visit him on his way to Bath. He has urgent need of speech with you.'

A man soon to be out of a job might be expected to show more respect. Gresham had too much self-respect of his own to allow Heaton's insubordination to get beneath his skin, yet he was intrigued.

'And after his death, what fate befalls you, Master Heaton?'

'My master has arranged for me to transfer my service. To the King.' There was pride in his voice, and arrogance.

'I'm delighted for the both of you,' said Gresham with an unctuous sincerity that only a liar could muster. Suddenly his tone cut the air as a razor through soft flesh: 'Take care. Those who rise to greater heights have far further to fall.' Only much later was Gresham to realise the appalling irony of his words. 'As for your present and still-living master, I'll come. I've always come, haven't I? Tell him so. Where do we meet?'

'He's left Theobalds to go to Bath. Some of his physicians believe there'll be a relief from his pain there, in the waters. The pain is constant, and agonising. You should be warned, Sir Henry. My master is not as he was.'

'Well, that's good news at least,' said Gresham briskly. 'He couldn't be any worse, and perhaps he's improved.'

They did not offer Master Nicholas Heaton lodging, and he did not ask.

'Will you ride tonight?' Jane asked, seeing the nervous energy beginning to flow through Gresham.

'It might be wise. If Cecil's as ill as his messenger says he is-' 'Please. We know what this summons means. Cecil's never invited you into anything other than mortal danger. Tonight, stay with me. Let's remember who we are.'

Gresham half turned towards the door. Mannion was standing there, blocking it. No words were spoken.

Gresham drew himself up to his full height, arms akimbo.

'Am I the lord and master of this house? Do I have authority over my wife and my servants?'

Jane dropped her eyes, her shoulders sagging slightly. Her normal spirit seemed to have been sucked out of her by the messenger and all that he stood for. She could cope with Gresham. Sometimes it was his life that overwhelmed her. She gave a slight curtsey, an almost involuntary reversion to a childish state. His heart went out to her in a fierce bite of love. So strong. So vulnerable.

'You know that I'm yours,' she replied softly.

Good God, thought Gresham, what must it have cost her fiery spirit to say that? A pang of guilt hit him like a blow to the stomach. Who was he to march like a peacock over those whose only fault was to give him their love? None of it showed on his face. Impassive, he turned to Mannion, who had folded his arms and was stood before the door like Leviathan. 'And you?'

'Yes to the first. You're lord and master of this house. And you've certainly got authority over one of the other two, though I'm damned if I know which one…'

'Do you defy me?' Gresham stuck his chin in the air, glaring at Mannion.

'Only when it matters,' he replied.

'And you?' Gresham turned to Jane.

'I just want you to spend the night with me.'

None of the haughtiness, the icy distance she could muster with a king and the frightening authority she could exert over the servants, was there now. He loved her, he thought, more than he had ever thought he could love anyone.

Gresham looked from one to the other, Jane now looking directly into his eyes. He grinned. 'We ride at dawn for Bath. I sleep the night here. I have decided.'

Mannion refrained from winking at Jane. Of course he had decided. Yet not without a little help from his friends.

They were holding hands as they left the room, Mannion noticed. Babies. Babies. And the two people for whom he would cheerfully lay down his life.

May, 1612 Bath

The sun was hidden behind a grey haze as he mounted his horse at dawn. The mist that had been but thin wisps yesterday was now a blanket, waist high, converting the flat landscape to a world of ghosts.

Was this the last summons to Cecil that Gresham would ever answer? In farewell to his ancient enemy, Gresham rode as never before. The hooves of his horse hit the ground with such force that it was like a hammer to his spine, the mud and earth they flung away from their impact flying up with the force of cannon balls. The wind tugged at his hat and as the leaping, shaking, shattering world ran by his watering eyes he urged the horse on, faster and faster. It was as if his mount knew that summer had come, and felt its strong legs stretch to three times their length, the fine muscle tightening like steel and releasing again with every movement of the insane gallop. For some wild minutes man and horse were as one, invincible, immortal in their speed and shared madness.

It had to end, of course. Gresham was not a man to take pleasure in riding a fine horse to the ground. He allowed the beast to slow down, praised it for its strength and beauty, timing it superbly so that before too long his once fiery mount was ambling along like any farmer's hack. He waited for Mannion, cursing under his breath, to catch up, and grinned at him. Mannion stayed on a horse and with a good seat, but no one in the kingdom could catch a well-mounted Henry Gresham with the devil in him.

Gresham was wealthy enough to have his own horses stabled at stages along the road to London from Cambridge. Each horse was ridden like the one before, so that when Gresham reached London the fine leather of his boots was in tatters, every muscle ached as if a hot iron had been passed over them and he was near dead with exhaustion. He slept for three hours. There were none of his own horses between London and Bath. Rather than trust to those he might find to hire or purchase along the way he took a string of his own animals, knowing that from there on his pace would have to be more seemly. He spurned the coaches that increasingly clogged the muddied roads and brought London traffic to a halt. He was not that old, not yet.

The waters of Bath had been used, so they said, in Roman times and ever after to cure the elderly and the infirm. Some of the Romans seemed never to have left, judging by the presence of} the elderly and infirm. The old Abbey dwarfed the town, almost as if by squatting over it its dead hulk took life away from the miserable place. There was an air of decay everywhere. Gresham was used to the stink of towns, but this stench had the tinge of rotting flesh in it. They brushed bugs from their sweating faces as they rode. Even this early in summer, everything in Bath was flyblown.

Mannion had taken a drumstick from one of the birds they had been served at the last inn and was now devouring it, on horseback. 'Do you want to know what I think? he asked now, a small piece of dessicated meat shooting from his mouth past Gresham's left ear as he spoke.

'You mean you can think? I'm not sure I want to go anywhere near your mind if your physical actions in any way reflect its contents. But,' Gresham sighed, '1 expect you'll tell me anyway.'