Martin Stephen: The Desperate remedy

How could you live and not be excited by London? It was eternal damnation, a smoke-filled Hell and a cauldron for the plague. And it was deliriously, amazingly and ecstatically exciting. The stench of the shite on the streets and the heavenly smell of a fresh-baked loaf. The waft of the wind bringing the sweet-fresh smell of meadows from outside the city boundaries, and the stink of the open sewer they called the Thames. Everywhere people screaming their wares, a city turned into a multitude of salesmen. A heaving, sweating multi-coloured multitude with their feet in mud and their eyes raised towards the stars. It was a raw, violent and often brutal melting pot, but with all the filth and the putrid vapours of too many people and animals crowded on top of one another came an unequalled excitement. The city had grown in recent years out of all control, the higgle-piggle of streets growing more dense and narrow by the week, spilling out beyond the old walls. Yelling builders and ramshackle scaffolding seemed to clog the routes, fighting with the men, the women and the horses, the sheep and cattle on their way to slaughter, and the open-eyed yokels so busy looking up that they could not see the midden at their feet.

For all the excitement, a nagging question bit at the mind of Henry Gresham. Why was he here? It was not his time to be in London. Yet he had answered the summons, knowing he had no choice.

He had ridden hard. He was a very rich man whose wealth was spent very carefully. One of its objects was horseflesh. Another was Mannion. Mannion, good soldier that he had been, oversaw the stables between Cambridge and London that kept a good horse on permanent standby for Henry Gresham. Mannion also kept an eye on the men who would take Gresham's windblown mount from him, wash it down and give it the love that Gresham, already on his next mount, could not.

He need not have hurried so. Robert Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, soon to be Earl of Salisbury and the youngest man ever to be sworn in as a Privy Councillor, would have waited. As the inheritor of Europe's largest and most efficient network of spies and informers, Cecil spent his life waiting, like a spider at the centre of his web, and watching.

Yet riding as if life depended on it, feeling the rush of wind through his hair, knocking the startled farm traffic aside, the pounding of the horse beneath him on the rough tracks… this was life itself, this was oblivion and fulfilment all in the one moment. Cecil could control elements of Gresham's life. No-one could control that wild, rough ride to London.

Previous meetings between Gresham and Robert Cecil's kind had resulted directly or indirectly in Henry Gresham being shot at or lunged at with sharp metal on innumerable occasions, seriously wounded on two occasions and shipwrecked, mercifully only once, on the wild Irish coast. Cecil's instructions had also resulted in Gresham being sentenced to be hung (twice), sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered (once) and, on another memorable occasion, actually being roped to the rack in the Tower of London.

Yet Gresham kept coming back.

How on earth had he got himself involved in this lunatic world where power was the only morality, and where nothing was as it seemed? It was as if it had been that way for ever, from the moment when as little more than an overgrown boy he had been dragged in to play such a deciding role in the tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots. He had made no conscious choice to become involved. In Gresham's experience, Fate did not consult with humans before deciding the course of their lives, or if they were to have life at all. Falling initially in the way of the Queen's spymaster, old Sir Francis Walsingham, Gresham had increasingly found himself taking his orders from Robert Cecil, the self-appointed heir apparent to Walsingham's vast complex of spies, agents and informers. Gresham and Cecil had loathed each other from the first moment of their meeting. Yet the danger, the excitement and the risk were a heady mixture, and Gresham had carried on, playing the great game until it had seemed that he had pushed his life to the edge and that by then he owed God a death. Then Cecil had summoned him, years ago, wanting him to go on some pitiful and dreary expedition to see informers in Spain. Gresham had refused. Cecil had looked at him, and drawn out of a wallet a piece of writing, carefully copied in a clerk's hand.

'You might care to read this, Master Gresham, before you make any final decision regarding your acceptance of my request.'

Cecil was cool, calm, measured as he always was.

Gresham read it. In a lesser man the colour would have drained from his face and the hand reading the paper shaken. Instead Gresham made himself read it once, twice and a third time, his hand rock steady.

'Yes?' he had said, gazing calmly, matter-of-factly into Cecil's eyes, revealing none of his inner sickness.

Cecil had stolen Walsingham's papers, the complete record of his spy network. Somewhere in those papers had been details of the affair that had blighted Gresham's life, the only thing he had done of which he was ashamed. Cecil had found it out. It was there, written in a neat hand on the paper.

'It would be a pity if this paper were to become known, would it not?' asked Cecil, in a silky voice. 'Known to a wider public, I mean.'

'Why, sir,' Gresham replied, no sign of his fear in his voice, 'the truth will always out. The Bible tells us so, does it not? And what is one man's vanity and reputation against the call of truth?'

'Will it suit you to go to Spain, Master Gresham, as I have asked?' Was there the tiniest hesitation in Cecil's voice, along with the aggression?

It was a deciding moment, Gresham knew. If he conceded the power of Cecil's paper against him now and obeyed, he would never be his own master again. Yet if he resisted, Cecil could provoke his ruin. It was folly to resist, madness. And so because he was who he was, he chose to fight.

'No, my Lord, I cannot go.' Cannot, he was careful to say. 'Cannot', not 'will not'. 'I have the strongest personal reasons for requiring to be here in England at the moment. Of course, were the matter more urgent, or were your Lordship's life to depend on it, then I would go at your Lordship's command, without hesitation. I ask to be relieved of this duty, by your gracious mercy.'

By your gracious mercy. That made it Cecil's decision to absolve him from the mission, a favour granted from on high. Yet it also meant that he, Gresham, had not bowed to pressure, had not given in to blackmail

Gresham carefully took the paper and placed it on the table, among the mass of papers that always surrounded Cecil, midway between them. He had given a form of words that allowed Cecil to save face. Would he take it?

There was a long silence.

Genuine thought, Gresham wondered, or enjoyment of the pain he knew he must be inflicting, for all the calm of the young man before him?

Cecil finally moved, taking the piece of paper carefully with forefinger and thumb, as if it was something faintly distasteful.

'A pity, sir. You would have been an excellent choice. Yet there will be other opportunities, that I do not doubt. Ones you will be more advised to accept, as I choose to exercise my "gracious mercy". As you so gallantly describe it.'

'Your Lordship is indeed most merciful,' replied Gresham, and seeing the expression in Cecil's eyes of the hawk looking down on the mouse, 'most merciful.'

Gresham had not won a victory, that much he knew. The sword was poised, hung over his head, not back in its scabbard. He had merely negotiated an armed truce, and risked being played with by Cecil, as a boy tortures a fly. So Gresham had accepted with enthusiasm several other requests from Cecil, all of them dangerous. As he had done so he had made notes not only of those missions with Cecil, but of his involvement going back years to the days of Walsingham.