Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

'I was never ill. It was merely a ruse designed to divert your Lordship's unwelcome attentions away from me, while I discovered what you so clearly wished to keep from me,' Gresham answered, in a brisk tone.

'Indeed?' Cecil raised an eyebrow, maintaining his icy control. 'And did you discover this great secret?'

'Yes, my Lord, I did,' said Gresham.

'Which was?' asked Cecil, not entirely able now to keep the tension out of his voice.

'Guy or Guido Fawkes, otherwise known as the servant John Johnson, was a double agent, supposedly working with Catholic forces in Europe for some years, but in practice working for you. Robert Catesby, the true leader of the Gunpowder Plot or whatever you will choose to call it, either stumbled into him, or was directed his way by another of your agents, when Catesby and a group of Catholic hotheads needed someone who could lay a slow train of powder. You knew about the Gunpowder Plot from the start. You used Fawkes as one of your inside men for the whole duration of the plot, allowing it to ripen so that you could discover it amidst the greatest public attention and so win a lasting popularity for you, and for the King. I believe — though I have no evidence for it — that you let it blossom also in the hope that it would reveal a leading noble as one of its leaders, perhaps one you saw as posing a threat to yourself. Did you hope to implicate Raleigh? Or was it simply Northumberland? In any event, you encouraged another of your double agents, Thomas Percy, to become involved and to work again on the inside of the plot on your behalf. Fawkes, I suspect, was to be bribed with money and a free passage out, perhaps even to go back to Europe as a hero and remain on the inside of the

Catholic rebels over there. Percy was to be bribed, perhaps even with the Earldom itself.'

'And how do you know all this… fantasy? This… invention?'

Cecil's eyes had never seemed more dangerous, his hunched body more ready to pounce.

'I have had my own man on the inside of this plot. I wrote that letter you have on your desk, to splinter and disperse the plot before harm was done. I brought Knyvett out an hour early, so that Fawkes could be found. It was I who caused the powder to ignite at Holbeache House. Oh, and by the way, I shot Thomas Percy.'

'You dared to challenge my will?' Cecil was roaring now, the first time Gresham had ever seen him lose his control.

'Challenge your will? Are you God, as well as Secretary to His anointed?'

'You have no evidence of this. No evidence at all.' Cecil's voice had dropped, his body fallen back into the chair.

'I have a story that men will believe, because it fits so many facts and fits the hatred and suspicion they have of you. I have the drafts of that letter you have in front of you — and a devil of a time it took, I can tell you — in the same hand and in a manner that progresses so convincingly that all will believe the authorship. And I have a plotter. Francis Tresham, to be exact, kept where you will not find him.' Gresham doubted that last comment, personally. If Cecil pulled out all his resources he could find anything, even a clean spot on the King's body. 'And several signed accounts by Tresham, undeniably in his hand, and witnessed, hidden also where you will not find them.'

'What is it that you want from me?' hissed Cecil.

'A chair would be pleasant,' said Gresham, with a polite smile. He was still standing. Angrily, Cecil motioned him to sit, never once taking his eyes off him.

'Do you hate me, Henry Gresham?'

It was an odd question, coming from the source it did, but Gresham paused to answer it.

'Yes, most certainly. More so than perhaps any man alive or dead.'

'Then you wish to destroy me?'

'Oh, no!' Gresham's laugh so startled Cecil that he fell back a little, and blinked owlishly. 'You see, only a person whose soul stinks like the foulest sewer could run a country such as this. A murderer, a torturer, an abuser, a liar, a cheat and a lost soul before God. These are necessary in a ruler. Some people have to die, of course, some have to meet the rack and some have their guts sawn out in front of crowds to make peace happen. Some, it is true, have these things happen to them who do not deserve them, or who are unlucky, or who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but all things come at a price. Peace and stability carry a higher price than many. And they carry the highest price of all for the ruler, the leader of that midden we call politics and human life. They carry the price of a lost soul, and eternity spent in Hell. Yes, I hate you, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. Because I hate you, I am happy for your soul to be the price of peace in this country. I would like to kill you, to see you suffer and writhe in front of me as you have seen so many others. But I must make Machiavelli's choice, and go for the greater good at the expense of some of the lesser pleasures.'

The silence extended for a minute, perhaps more.

'So what it is that you want from me?'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?’

'Well, nothing really. I wanted to have the pleasure of your knowing what I knew, that your attempts to gag and mislead me had failed, as well as your pathetic attempts to blackmail me. I suppose I ought to have your oath that you will take no steps to harm me, or those closest to me. No strange deaths in alleyways, or long decaying illnesses from poison.'

'Is not the Papal archive enough?' asked Cecil, his hatred of Gresham beginning to infect his voice.

'I thought it might be, but you proved me wrong. And it's not just the Papal archive where I keep papers, believe me. But you see, there is something strange about you, rotten and corrupt as you are. I have never known you go back on an oath you have sworn. Quite extraordinary. But this oath will be special. You will swear it on the life of your son.'

'On the life of my son… but I…' Cecil was almost speechless, grabbing for words.

'You had better pray for a long and peaceful life for me, my woman and my servant. Because if we die, in any way that might lead back to you in any way, your son will die.'

'You would not…'

'Yes, I would. You cannot lock a child away from life. Unless you can hide it away completely you cannot lock it away from the reality of death. Look at me, Robert Cecil. And then tell me if you think I lie.'

Unwillingly, Cecil found himself looking straight at Gresham.

'You have sought to bring your full power against me. You have failed. You will swear to do everything in your power to ensure that no harm of any kind comes to Henry Gresham and those nearest and dearest to him. And if you break your oath, your son will die.'

There was no lie in Henry Gresham's eyes. There was a look that told of all the innocent children those eyes had seen slaughtered, the women raped, the babies with their throats slashed. There was a look that told of the plotter Kit Wright, fighting for his religion, leading a mad, hopeless and courageous charge into the yard at Holbeache. Kit Wright, the stolid, dependable Kit Wright, the man who thought quite genuinely that if one believed in something then one had to be prepared to fight and to die for it. Kit Wright, who could in many respects have been Mannion, if Mannion had chosen to give his total loyalty to Catholicism instead of to Gresham. Brave and foolish Kit Wright, lying in the filth of the courtyard, with a rough soldier frantically yanking at the silk stockings on his dead legs for booty.

Yes, thought Robert Cecil, my son will die at this man's hands if I break my oath. The hatred gleaming in his eyes, with every word dragged out of him as if by red-hot pincers, Robert Cecil swore his oath.

'Well, that was good,' said Gresham lightly. 'Every good boy deserves favour, and so I'll give you something else for your pains, and as a gesture of my goodwill. I wouldn't have you deposed, Chief Secretary. It amuses me to have that in my power, but it's a power I won't exercise. Someone less evil might come along to run the country, and perhaps if you were deposed you might have time to take a part of your soul out of the Hell it so richly deserves.'