Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

Gresham took a reluctant sip, tasting the fluid on his lips and mouth. There was a slightly brackish, unpleasant tang to it, but it seemed wholesome enough.

'Don't worry!' roared Raleigh in laughter, seeing the expression of distaste on Gresham's face. 'It won't kill you, or at least it hasn't killed me this week past. It's nectar, young fellow Do you know what it is?'

'Is that a question in rhetoric, or one I'm expected to answer?' said Gresham dryly.

'That fine fluid you're guzzling was once sea water. Sea water, mind! The water that taunts mariners on their longest voyages, those mariners who're dying of thirst but yet can't partake of the water that surrounds them. Imagine what it could mean for exploration not to have to take casks of water aboard, to take your very drinking water from the sea itself…'

'Is your concern the health of the mariners, or the extra looted Spanish treasure you could cram on board in place of the water casks?' asked Gresham innocently.

'Both!' roared Raleigh, rocking back on his heels with an explosion of mirth. 'It's my ability to combine the practical and the spiritual that marks me out as a great seaman!'

'It's my ability to agree with my master that makes me such a good servant,' replied Gresham. 'Even if it means lying like the Devil.'

Raleigh was in the best of moods, his huge energy refusing to be constrained. As well as writing a History of the World he had a chemistry laboratory in a room a short way off from the Bloody Tower, where he had concocted the brackish water from a sample of sea water.

'Time,' he told Gresham, 'time is what I need. The process for the distillation is not right yet — it works only one in five, six times — and the machinery is too cumbersome and yet too fragile ever to set to sea. No point in having fresh water only until the first blow lays the ship on its side. And time, time is what my Lord Cecil and His Majesty the King have given me in plenty!'

'Time is what someone is trying to take away from me…'

Gresham revealed to Raleigh what he knew, and what his fears were.

A sombre expression fell over Raleigh's face.

'You're right, there are too many names,' he said. 'And Sir Walter Raleigh is hardly the person to ask for advice in evading an enemy's clutches,' he said ruefully. 'One thing's clear, you need to get inside this Papist crew. But that'll take time. The man Fogarty — Sam, was it? — will be of no use to you. He's either Cecil's man, in which case he'll be more frightened of Cecil than you, or a Catholic, in which case he'll be more frightened of Northumberland or God. Tom Phelippes, now, he might be an answer. You say this man Barnes, this servant of his, brought you letters? Incriminating letters? Then Phelippes is your man. Try not to kill him, will you? It does seem to be getting something of a habit with you.'

'Is he a friend of yours?' asked Gresham, startled.

‘Not a friend, but a new face, and one with some interesting tales to tell. The social circle within the Tower may be very select, but it's also somewhat restricted. Prison's worst punishment isn't loss of liberty. It's the onset of boredom. Phelippes had the look of someone who might liven up more than one evening's dinner.'

'On that basis I'll try and take off only bits that aren't life-threatening. Remember it as just another sacrifice I make for my lord and master.'

'Take care, Henry Gresham.' Raleigh was suddenly serious. 'They have me in their clutches. One free spirit is enough for them. Take care not to give them, or your Maker, another one into their power.'

This time Gresham did not make straight for the gates when he had finished with Raleigh. The guards were as slack as ever, and a small bribe allowed Gresham and Mannion into the room occupied by Thomas Phelippes. Getting out of the Tower was always much harder than getting in, but for prisoners in the Tower with their own money life was akin to that in a reasonable inn with a fractious and bad-tempered landlord. The door to Phelippes' room — or was it a cell? — was unlocked, the turnkey needing only to unlock the door that blocked the end of the dank corridor.

Phelippes' accommodation was not the best, Gresham noted. The famous prisoners in the Tower, including Walter Raleigh and his accuser and friend Lord Cobham, were kept in lodgings that had some style, and could use the Warden's garden. Phelippes was incarcerated in one of the poorer towers. The window in his cell was high in the wall and heavily barred, and there was no view out on to the garden area that the best class of prisoners could use and the next best class at least gaze out on. There seemed to be little furniture in the room.

Thomas Phelippes was a small, physically unprepossessing figure with a stoop and a pockmarked face. His origins were obscure, and he had been despised by the Court for his lack of breeding, but he had risen to be one of Walsingham's espionage chiefs by virtue of his intelligence, his ability with languages and most of all his ability to create and penetrate the most obscure ciphers.

'Good morning, Tom,' said Gresham, as cheerfully as the setting allowed. He of all people had no reason to feel cheerful in the confines of the Tower, given the various humiliations and pains he had had inflicted on his person whilst within its boundaries. Yet even without his own memories it was a dreadful place. It stank from its own ditch, and the central block of the White Tower, dating back to King William, was as blunt and as cruel a statement of power as Gresham had witnessed, a building with no concessions to form or beauty and a record of cruelty within its walls second to none. The outer walls, though representing a huge span of English history, were similarly uncompromising. The Tower was a fortress, pure and simple, a blunt instrument in the wielding of total power.

It was an evil place, a place where even music would be sucked into the darkness and silenced as so many souls had screamed soundlessly within its space.

Phelippes had risen to his feet when Gresham and Mannion entered, his features lightening for a brief instant. Then his face fell back into a worried frown, though his pleasure at his visit was still clear. Gresham noted, but did not comment on, the frown.

'Henry Gresham, by God! And that walking tree trunk of a manservant who always hangs about you! How are you, sirrah? How goes the real world about its business?'

When Walsingham had died, the empire of espionage he had built up had slowly decayed without the power at its centre. Tom Phelippes had been left in the comfortable position of Collector of Subsidy, with easy bribes at hand and a comfortable house that gave him the chance to witness all those who set sail to France, and report on them to Cecil, his new master. He lived in apparent amity with Arthur Gregory, a Dorset man whose greatest ability was to open sealed letters and reseal them without the final recipient being any the wiser, and that disreputable little runt of a spy by the name of Tom Barnes. It had all seemed very happy, until of a sudden Phelippes had been whisked off to the Tower, apparently at Cecil's command, and left there.

'The world changes little, Tom,' said Gresham easily, 'and the people in it are as corrupt as ever.'

'Well, then,' laughed Phelippes, 'things don't change at all.'

He busied himself with the contents of the basket Mannion had brought with them — the best the kitchen of the House could provide, with three bottles of very speakable wine from its cellar, the best laid on top. Gresham noted the hunger with which Phelippes attacked the food.

Phelippes finished his mouthful, took a swig of wine from the cheap wooden beaker on the bare table and looked at Gresham.

'Others would talk. Ask questions. You just wait. And bring me food and wine. Why?'