Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

There was a long, long silence. Would the fencing cease? Would he ever get a straight statement from Cecil? Cecil moved his gaze away from Gresham, the eyes seeming almost sightless, resting somewhere beyond even this room. What is passing through his mind? thought Gresham. What certainties, what agonies of decision? What happens inside the mind of such a man as Robert Cecil?

'Imagine a land,' said Cecil, getting to his feet, 'a troubled land. A very troubled land.' His voice was soft, whispering almost, a tone Gresham had never heard. Cecil walked slowly, almost limping, to a portrait hanging on the wall opposite the window. He is in pain, thought Gresham. He finds it hard to walk. He hides this pain, but now for a moment he has forgotten to hide. The portrait was of a young woman. The old Queen, Queen Elizabeth, Gresham saw.

'Imagine a land,' said Cecil, looking up at the portrait, 'that deludes itself into a sense of its greatness. A poor land with powerful neighbours, threatened always from without and from within. A land with no obvious ruler to take over. Let us imagine that a ruler is found, at last. An experienced ruler, a ruler who has survived in a colder and even bleaker land, a ruler who offers some hope of peace and stability. Such a ruler is a treasure, to be guarded and preserved. Yet all things come at a price. In this imaginary land this imaginary ruler is… troubled by women. His upbringing has not left him at peace with women. He prefers the company of men. And it is rumoured, in the vile way that such rumours will grow, the company of boys.'

'And Will Shadwell?' Gresham's voice had also dropped almost to a whisper.

'Scum. The scum who for countless ages have greased and oiled the wheels of power with their rank sweat, and their blood. And let us imagine that one of these scum, a perverted, evil creature, a creature who lies with women and yet who lies with boys and men, believes he has found a boy… hurt by this ruler. Found him, lain with him, and now wants money to silence him.'

Cecil moved back to the table, and sat down, heavily. His hooded eyes looked at Gresham, with the nearest thing to passion in them Gresham had seen in him.

'A Minister to a King may be threatened, and he may fence, parry and lunge, may battle with his wits against his enemies. But a King, a King is different. No man, be he scum or be he noble, can challenge a King. No man who threatens a King can live. The King's health is the nation's health. Whatever threatens that health must itself die.'

Gresham spoke softly. 'There is no threat to a King from me. Nor ever has been.' He paused. 'There would have been no threat even had Will spoken with me. Will never spoke. He had no time. And you were worried about a note, or some secret letter from Will to me? Was that why my rooms were ransacked in the House?'

Cecil was silent. Both men took the silence as meaning yes.

'Well now, there's an irony would have appealed to Will. You see, I know my men. I know those who work for me. And I know that Will Shadwell could neither read nor write to save his life.'

He stood up, remembering to make it look painful, and left without ceremony given or received. Cecil was standing by the window, motionless, as the great door closed.

He had told the truth about Will Shadwell to Cecil, at any rate. If Cecil had bothered to check, instead of simply ordering Shadwell and Gresham murdered, he would have found Shadwell could neither read nor write. As for Cecil's tale, it could be true, or it could be another lie. Thomas Percy was a newly appointed Gentleman of the Bedchamber, better able than most to supply details of who entered the King's inner chamber. Cecil probably did think he was protecting the realm from its enemies by all he did, that he was the saviour of the nation.

Mannion was waiting for him. The crowd of hopefuls had not diminished.

'Now for Alsatia?' enquired Mannion, expressionless. 'Now for Alsatia,' confirmed Gresham, remembering to limp slightly as if in pain from the load strapped to his belly until they were well away from Cecil's lair, and sure they were not being followed.

There was no Watch to call out the hour in Alsatia. No constable or serjeant-at-arms entered Alsatia to serve his warrant. There were no walls around Alsatia, yet its boundaries excluded friends of the state just as the iron walls of the Tower excluded its enemies. If London was a fine ship, Alsatia was its bilges, the lowest sump where all that was foul-smelling gathered and stank. Gresham's spies, his scum, came to the various meeting places in ones and twos, draped and cloaked not against the cold but against discovery and recognition. No-one walked straight in Alsatia. All skulked along in the shade of the leaning, stinking buildings, all sought to walk in shadow.

The House lay shuttered, many of the servants sent home to the country to help with the harvest. The dust gathered in Gresham's rooms at Granville College, his place on High Table empty.

Gresham had set up camp on the first floor of a foul-looking three-storey house with mildew rotting the outer timbers. Inside it was a different story. Stout new doors blocked the way into the first-floor rooms, which were newly floored. The shutters of seasoned timber had had paint loosely splashed on them to make them look old, but underneath the mess were also clearly new.

'You've had these rooms prepared?' asked Jane. She looked thinner, and there was still a slightly haunted look to her eyes, but her spirit was returning.

'Of course,' said Gresham, genuinely startled. 'This isn't the first time I've had to vanish.'

The pile of books in the corner was one antidote to boredom. Disguise was the other. Mannion adorned himself in the rough jerkin and cowl of the stonemason, tools strapped to his belt. Gresham wrapped himself in a poorer version of Mannion's costume, setting himself up as apprentice to the older man. Jane they put in a filthy smock. She could be a common-law wife, a whore or even a sister to Gresham. In Alsatia no-one cared, and in the wider streets of London no-one had time to notice.

Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the information dribbled in, often as tattered and piecemeal as those who brought it. It was three weeks of boredom, of trudging through the filthy streets, of keeping two eyes in the back of their heads, of disturbed nights when a scream or a howl sent Gresham and Mannion grasping for their swords. Three weeks before a real picture began to emerge. Most of it came from servants, of course. There was no house where the servants did not know more than their Lord and mistress about what was going on.

Sharpy Sam was one of Gresham's most valuable sources. An elderly, grandfatherly figure, he was a wandering tinker who would sell you an occasional pot or pan and sharpen your knives, or sing you the latest ballad over supper, and was tolerated by the authorities in his illegal wandering life simply because he was useful. Many an unsuspecting scullery maid had taken pity on Sharpy Sam and invited him for a morsel of food and a warm by the fire, to find herself left a short while later with a memory of pleasure and a bastard in her belly.

Gresham knew Sam's annual progress. The Midlands and the west in high summer, London in late autumn and the south coast for the winter months. He had sent one of his own men, a young, lusty recruit with a love of horseflesh and women, to ride hard after Sam and brief him with the same names Moll had given him. Catesby. Kit Wright. Jack Wright. Tom Wintour. Thomas Percy. And Francis Tresham, of course. Even before Sam presented himself to talk to Gresham there was news enough, so much news indeed that Gresham marvelled at even Cecil's not finding it out. The men had been meeting regularly. They were all Catholics, all linked by blood or by marriage, and frequently by both. Then, out of the blue, a greasy John at one of the taverns in the Strand reported another name. Guido or Guy Fawkes, an armourer and mercenary.