Martin Stephen: The Conscience of the King

In the event, it was made easier for them. Overbury's closest servant, the chamberlain to his household, proved willing enough to-talk. A man had come, he said, demanding to see his master, late at night. He had seen him before, had let him in several times for drinking sessions with his master. A strange figure, with a small head and a bloated body and a high-prancing step. He had papers his master would pay a king's ransom for, the man had said imperiously. Almost against his better judgement, knowing the violence of his master, the chamberlain had let him in. Overbury had drawn his sword at the sight of the man, buffeted him and pinned him against the wall. 'Thief!' he had screamed. 'Betrayer of my trust!'*No,' the man had replied, calm despite the sword pinned to his throat, 'perpetrator of your sweet revenge!' There was a moment when he thought his master would have pierced the man's neck. Then Overbury dropped the sword. Ordered the chamberlain to leave, peremptory. Scuttling to the embrasure that should have been bricked in when the new building was made but somehow had never been done, the chamberlain sat and listened. Revenge. That was the theme. Overbury had been beaten, humiliated by this man Gresham, had he not? He, the speaker, had the most foolproof plan for revenge, a revenge that Gresham could never scrub from his body or his brain had he access to all the waters of Lethe. All it needed was gold to bribe servants and to hire men and boats. And in return, as well as the most beautiful spoiling revenge, there were papers! Papers that could be most damaging to the King, to his bishops and his ministers! Papers Overbury could use. Papers in exchange for the letters the man had stolen. And then, as the details of the plan to despoil this Gresham's wife had emerged in the strange, high-pitched voice of the man, a mixture of terror and fascination had overwhelmed the chamberlain, huddled behind the embrasure. He was primed to tell, hating his master, fearing the man who had visited him, out of his depth.

Revenge was enacted in another place. In April, a grinning Mannion came to tell Gresham that Sir Thomas Overbury had been required to undertake an embassy to Russia. Refusing the offer, the King had consigned him to The Tower, and was showing no signs of intending to release him. The two men's laughter shook the house.

Gresham had thought it fit to tell the King of the night on the river. At first, buttressed up in his bed and with the quill feeling strange in his hand, he had been tempted to get a secretary to write the note. Then he had rebelled against his own weakness and persisted. Four lines into his carefully penned manuscript he had crumpled the paper into a ball and hurled it from him. Then he had settled again, taken new paper, recharged the quill. He told the story simply; his wife's kidnap, Marlowe's plan, the frantic evening when His Majesty had been dismissing the evening's events as a damp squib and men had been dying on the river beneath him. He made no mention of Overbury.

He had thought there would be no response, had written simply to explain his own inaction, pinned to a bed with a leg in timber. The King's messenger caught him by surprise, arriving in a blare of trumpets. The messenger was obsequious, emphasised the gift was to Lady Jane Gresham. They opened it together. A jewel, a ruby of immense size and beauty. Set in a simple gold ring, the more to show off its extravagance.

'It's worth a thousand… two thousand pounds!' Jane gasped. The note with it was on the finest possible paper. 'For your pains', it read, with a simple 'J' scrawled at the bottom.

'Wet frog?' asked Gresham dryly. lRich wet frog!' said Jane in delight, pushing the jewel on to her finger.

Then came the morning that he walked for the first time. They took the wood off his pale, shrunken leg. It was strange to feel the air breathing against the flesh after so long. He sat up and tried to swing his leg off the bed. It did not move. He ordered it, more firmly this time. It obeyed.

Jane looked at him. Mannion looked at him. Dr Napier, the long-suffering, pedantic, marvellous Dr Napier, looked at him.

He stood up. Carefully, it was true; painfully, even. Yet he stood, on both his legs, and remained standing.

They clapped him, and he grinned back at them.

But still no sign of Shakespeare, and Marlowe lurking out there in the shadows. Jane felt a sickness to the pit of her stomach at the thought of him. The security measures they were now forced to take were more and more burdensome, the toll of so many seem' ingly endless nights and days sitting by Gresham's bedside mounting up. At times she felt like screaming with frustration.

Perhaps it was this frustration, the pent-up energy of a mind without enough to do, that turned the final key and made clear what had been muddied for so long.

Gresham needed to sleep less and less during the day, but in payment for the strenuous exercise he insisted on undertaking to rebuild the strength in his leg Dr Napier made him rest for an hour at noon. Jane sat by the window. She had gone for her copy of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.

‘It's beautiful,' she said. 'What a pity they never really let him write his own plays.'

It was as if she was gazing into a full-length mirror when all of a sudden the whole length of it shattered, as at one single blow, and the world dissolved. And she was left staring at the truth.

'Quick! Quick!' She rushed to her feet, so urgent as to grab Gresham by the arm. 'The papers you took from Marlowe! The writings that were with the King's letters! Where are they? I must have them, now!'

'Are you mad?' he asked, grumbling, his thoughts disturbed. 'Bits of a play in two different hands, two hands we cannot recognise. That's all they are!'

'But don't you see? They were important enough for Marlowe to put them in the pouch! Get them for me, please! Now!'

He swung his feet off the bed, noting with satisfaction the strength in his legs and through his whole body. When he came back, minutes later, she had been to the library and was clutching a dusty volume.

'You're lucky,' he said. 'Most of my papers are still hidden elsewhere from when it seemed we were going to be searched. I've only brought back a few papers, and those the ones that seemed likely to do the least damage. Here they are, for all they're worth.'

He handed her the sheets of paper, watched as she sat back in her chair, eyes devouring the handwritten manuscripts. She delved into the book she had brought, scrambled through the pages until she found the passage she wanted.

'Yes!' she breathed, 'yes! Can't you see it?'

'See what?' asked Gresham, now totally confused.

'Do you remember Hamlet? she said. 'We've seen it several times, here and in Cambridge. Do you remember?'

'You know I remember it. We've talked often enough.' Lines from Hamlet had stuck and resonated in Gresham's mind. 'The readiness is all. The rest is silence.'

'Do you remember that speech about death?'

'Of course I do. "The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns".'

'Then look at this.' Her excitement was so great she nearly dropped the book as she thrust it into Gresham's hand. It was titled Hamlet, and claimed the play had been shown at Oxford and at Cambridge.

'There!' she said, her finger pointing. 'Read!'

He read.

To be or not to be. I, there's the point,

To Die, or sleep, is that all? I, all.

No, to sleep, to dream, I marry there it goes…

He looked up at her, laughing. '"Ay, marry, there it goes!" This is gibberish. It's comic! This isn't the speech we heard…'

'Read on!' she said. Reluctantly, he let his eyes return to the page.

For in that dream of death, when we awake,

And borne before an everlasting Judge,

From whence no passenger ever returned,