Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

Rookwood brushed aside the servant hovering to take Catesby to his room, as if it was he and not Robert Wintour who was master of Huddington, and strode up the stairs himself in his eagerness to show his friend where he would be resting his head.

Catesby followed his friend up the stairs to his chamber. Once

Catesby had held a loving wife, had the fine son and the fine house warmed with love and happiness, before they were cruelly dragged away from him. Rookwood's family faced destruction and execution from the involvement Catesby brought, the friend with the viper in his pack.

That, thought Catesby, is their problem, not mine. Life dealt cruel blows. Why should Rookwood, Digby or any other body on earth have the happiness that Catesby had been denied? If there was a hint of pleasure in Catesby's damnation of his friend and all that his friend loved and cared for it was a very private emotion, one he chose not to let see the light of day.

Gresham had gone to the cellar where Cecil's spy, Sam Fogarty, was being held until he had strength enough to be carted out of London. The man had cried out in fear as Gresham had entered.

They had been ordered to kill Shadwell, he had said. He did not have to say whose orders these were. He was Cecil's man. They had cornered him finally on the outskirts of Cambridge, stalked him through the night, hurled the body into the river. No, he did not know why the death had been ordered. Why should he and the others be told? Their business was to kill, not to ask why.

By the time he had finished, the man was speaking almost confidently, believing he was useful to Gresham. Gresham looked calmly down at him.

'This is for Will Shadwell,' he said. In one swift movement he lunged with the dagger in his hand, penetrating the eye exactly in the centre of the pupil and driving upwards until the splintering sound of bone told him he had carved through the soft brain to the skull. It was the blow that had killed Will Shadwell. As the man fell he flung his arms out, hands facing up to the ceiling as if in supplication. They were still trembling. Gresham pulled the dagger away, and stood up.

Jane had woken in the night, as he had known she would. He had held her as the truth had returned, bringing on wracking sobs, imagining it to be like holding a woman through the pangs of birth. Yet it was not a child that had been born from her, but knowledge. Later, at night, they had made love, gently, in the way that she had taught him for the times when the edge was gone from their violent, urgent need for each other's bodies. It had seemed as if his whole body had poured its passion and its intensity into that one focal moment of release, met by her soft cry. For a few seconds after that moment, even sometimes for a few minutes, Gresham felt at peace, the demons inside him stilled. So it was with Jane, he suspected. A new demon was in her, a shared demon. How it would fit with the others inside her head, the restless spirits whose nature he could only guess at, only Jane would know. There would be no more tears for others to see, Gresham knew. She had killed a man. She would learn, like him, to cry inside her head.

He needed to hide, to take cover, to go to ground. Yet at the same time he needed London and the access it gave to his network of spies.

He woke with his mind clear. Breakfast over, he spoke with Jane and Mannion, his tone clipped and definite.

'Raleigh was right. We have to lie low, to hide ourselves until we can find out what all this is about. We're moving, to Alsatia,' he announced. 'Or rather, I am moving. Jane, you can stay here. If you do, you'll be well protected, as protected as money and men can make you. Even then, we can't guarantee there won't be an assault on the House, or more likely a fire to drive you out and into the arms of whoever wants purchase against me. In Alsatia we'll be on our own. Safer, for a while, until our identity leaks out. Yet more in danger, from those we'll be surrounded by. Not to mention plague and pestilence.'

He looked at her, noting her chin jut out just that little bit further as he spoke, sensing as much as seeing the head tilt upwards. 'I come with you, my Lord, if you'll have me.' 'So be it.'

Alsatia lay between Whitefriars and Carmelite Street. No constable or night watchman ever troubled the narrow streets of Alsatia, no law enforcement agency ever lightened its paths. It was a haven for any criminal escaping the hue and cry. Authority in Alsatia lay in a man's brute force and cunning. A force of order, but never law, was more or less enforced by whatever criminal warlord had dominance at any given time, but mastery could change hands three or four times in a year as rival groups and gangs fought their silent and bitter wars out of sight of any judge or jury. Unlike other areas such as Southwark, where the brothels and gambling dens could flourish until the law took notice of them, Alsatia offered little or no entertainment, merely a kennel where wild dogs could hide and lick their wounds, if they were not first killed by their own kind also in hiding. It ranked with the brick kilns of Islington and the Savoy, its distinction being that of all the human cesspits in London. Alsatia was the most foul and the most extreme, talked about with bated breath by the good citizens of London, and with the reddest flush of embarrassment if ever mentioned by a woman.

'But first I have another shorter journey. To my Lord Cecil.'

There was a gasp of breath from Jane. Mannion looked glum, and sucked at his tooth with the hole in it. Whenever Gresham took a decision Mannion thought was ill-advised, a piece of flesh or bread always seemed magically to reappear in that tooth.

'Surely not!' said Jane, emboldened by shock and fear. 'He must be behind all this! What madness is it to walk into his parlour!'

'It is madness, which is why he won't consider it, because it's something he would never do himself. That's why he's not his father's son. Oh, he'll plot and scheme and poison and murder, but he's cautious, always cautious. He thinks all men are lesser versions of himself. He's at his weakest when dealing with someone totally unlike him, someone who's never thought like him in all his life.'

Gresham took Mannion and four men with him to see Cecil. Unusually, he rode the cumbersome great coach that his father had ordered. It was a monstrous machine, and made every rut and canyon in the roadway seem three times deeper than it was. It was fit only for old men tottering their way from one visit to another, or fine ladies too fat or too well-bred to walk or mount a horse, and Gresham hated it. Yet it had solid walls and was defensible, with its very cumbersome nature turning it into a fortress on wheels when under attack.

It was fitting that a man with Imperial ambitions lived in a palace. Gresham barged his way through to the ante-chamber. With the King returned from Oxford, and happily killing as many wild animals as he could find in Royston, Gresham knew Cecil would be sitting at the centre of his web. A crowd of hopefuls were waiting kicking their heels, desperate for an audience.

Gresham approached the Clerk sitting like a little God at his desk.

'The King's Chief Secretary is far too busy to see those who come without prior arrangement,' announced the Clerk, sniffing through an elongated nose whilst looking down it at Gresham. 'If you insist I will take details of your petition,' he added in a tone that made it clear the petition was doomed never to meet his Lordship's eyes. A host of other eyes focused on Gresham, from the threadbare old man with a tattered bundle of papers clutched in his hand to the gallant in fine silk and satin but with a haunted look in his restless eyes. The place stank of fear, of despair and of lost hopes.

Gresham leant over and whispered something in the Clerk's ear. His eyebrows rose until they were entangled in his hair. The Chief Clerk to the King's Chief Secretary scuttled off to knock hesitantly on the guarded door. He emerged a short while later, looking even more flustered, and bowed to Gresham, ushering him in. Mannion remained outside, impassive.