Boyle looked at me, but did not venture an answer.
“You know as well as I,” I continued, “that the one thing a soldier does which others do not do is kill people. And one man cannot kill many. The fewer who die, the more important they must be to make an impact.”
I lay out this conversation—in abridged form, for we talked many hours on the matter—to demonstrate that my fears were not the product of a mind suspicious of everyone and seeing dangers in mere shadows. No other hypothesis fitted the case as exactly, and so no other should be considered until it was discredited. This is the rule of experiment, and applies to politics as much as it does to mathematics or medicine. I presented my argument to Boyle and not only did he fail to come up with an alternative explanation, he was forced to concede that my own hypothesis was by far the one which best fitted the available facts. I did not believe I had reached certainty; only a scholastic would claim such prowess. But I could claim a probability more than strong enough to justify my concern.
Strike at the body, and the wound soon heals even though it may be a great gash. Strike only one small blow at the heart, and the effect is catastrophic. And the living, breathing heart of the kingdom was the king. One man, indeed, could bring all to ruin where an entire army would be ineffective.
Lest this seem incredible, and my fears fantastic, I beg you consider the number of such murders in recent history. Only half a century before, that great man Henry IV of France was stabbed to death, as were the Prince of Orange and Henry II before him. Under forty years ago the Duke of Buckingham was murdered by his own servant; judicial murder had ended the lives of the Earl of Strafford, Archbishop Laud and the blessed martyr Charles. I myself had encountered many plots to murder Cromwell, and even the Lord Chancellor in exile condoned the murder of the Commonwealth’s ambassadors at The Hague and Madrid. Public life was steeped in blood, and the murder of a king aroused no more repugnance in the breasts of many than did the slaughter of a domestic beast. We had become inured to the most horrendous of sins, and thought of them as instruments of policy.
I knew now that this plot I had detected was not the work of the fanatics, whose role, I suspected, would be merely to take the blame for any atrocity committed for the benefit of others. Those others had to be the Spanish, and the ultimate aim would be to detach England from its freedoms and bring our country back into Romish subjection. Kill the king, and his brother, an avowed Catholic, succeeds to the throne. His first act is to swear vengeance on the assassins of his beloved Charles. He blames the fanatics and swears to extirpate them all. Moderation is thrown to the winds, and the men of extremes take power once more. The result would be war, of course, in which Englishman would be pitted against Englishman once more. This time, though, it would be more terrible still, for the Catholics would call on their Spanish masters for aid, and the French would be bound to intervene. The nightmare of all princes since Elizabeth, that this land should become the cockpit of Europe, was fearsomely close.
For this last speculation I had no direct evidence, yet it was a reasonable projection from the evidence to hand; for logic allows us to see the future, or at least its likely development. Just as in mathematics when we can imagine a line, and then imagine it projected out farther, even to infinity, through the exercise of rational thought, so in politics we can consider actions and calculate consequences. If my fundamental hypothesis was granted—and it stood up to Boyle’s criticism as well as to my own dispassionate querying—then certain results would follow. I have laid out those possibilities to ensure my fears are understood. I admit that I was wrong in detail and will, at the appropriate moment, lay out my errors pitilessly; but nonetheless I claim the overall structure of my hypothesis was sound, in that it was capable of accepting modification without having to be abandoned.
Matthew would not, I was sure, make any more progress in The Hague. He had become foolish through Cola’s attentions and could not see the evidence which, I knew, was in front of his eyes. More, I was concerned about him, for he risked placing himself in peril and I desired him away from Cola as swiftly as possible. Nor was this concern misplaced, for the Lord granted me the most frightening of dreams which proved my worries had foundation. On the whole I do not greatly attend to such things, and indeed I dream only rarely; but this one was so clearly spiritual in origin, and so clearly foresaw the future, that even I resolved to take note.
Though I had not yet received Matthew’s letter about the feast, yet it was in my vision and, I later discovered, that was the very night the feast took place. For it was on Olympus, and Matthew was servant to the gods, who plied him with all manner of food and wine until he was drunk and silly. Then one man at the table, whom I knew to be this Cola though I did not know his face, crept up and took him from behind, plunging a sharp sword into his belly again and again, until Matthew cried out with the greatest of pain. And I was in another room, seeing it all but unable to move, telling Matthew to get away. But he would not do so.
I woke up in great fear, knowing that the greatest danger threatened; I hoped Matthew was safe, and worried without end until I knew he was unharmed. I thought Cola was on the way to England, but could do little to discover his whereabouts, so meagre were my resources. I also had to decide whether I should pass a warning to His Majesty, but decided against because I knew it would not be taken seriously. He was a courageous, not to say foolhardy, man and had lived so long in the expectation of sudden murder that it no longer swerved him from his devotion to pleasure. And what was I to say? “Highness, a plot exists to kill you so your own brother might take your place”? Without proof, such a statement would at the very least mean a swift end to my pensions and places. I do not accept that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its sides because someone tells me; I accept it because it can be demonstrated to be so and, in this matter, while I could advance a theory better than any other, I could not yet demonstrate it.
A week later, Matthew returned to England and told me that Marco Da Cola had indeed left the Low Countries, and that he did not know where he had gone. What was more, the man had near a ten day start, for Matthew had been unable to find a boat which would take him to England for some days after this farewell feast of his and (I suspect) had so convinced himself of the man’s harmlessness he had not hurried to return to my side.
Disappointed and concerned though I was, Matthew’s very presence in the room lifted my heart. The intelligent gaze which gave his face such beauty rekindled the warmth in me which was extinguished in his absence; it was no surprise to me that Cola had taken to him, and kept him by his side. I thanked God for his safe return, and prayed that all my fears had been merely phantasms of a disordered and worried mind, with no substance to them.
But I was swiftly disabused of that, for when I chastised him for his laxness, and told him he was most certainly in error about the Italian, for the first time in our acquaintanceship he refused to bow to my superiority, and told me frankly I was wrong.
“What do you know?” he asked. “You who have never met the man, who have no proof but only suspicion? I tell you, I do know him, have spent very many hours in the most pleasant conversation, and he is no danger to you or any other man.”
“You are deceived, Matthew,” I replied. “You do not know what I know.”
“So tell me.”
“I will not. These are high matters of state, which are no concern of yours. It is your duty to accept my word, without question, and not be deceived into thinking a man harmless because he pays you compliments and gives you presents.”