Overbury advanced into the room. He ignored Gresham completely. 'Your servant is insolent, Sir Edward,' said Overbury, peeling off his fine-fitting gloves and flinging them carelessly upon the table. 'He presumed to question the time of my arrival. I've been deep in matters of state. I disciplined him, as you saw. It were better, of course, to come from his master.'
Well, well, well, thought Gresham. This one is very special. He looked with amusement to Sir Edward Coke.
It must have been Overbury who supplied details of the theft of the compromising letters to Coke. Why else was he here? The loss of these letters must be truly embarrassing. For all that he had made a show of his entry, and been deliberately late to make a point, the fact remained that Overbury was here, and at Coke's bidding. Rescuing the letters would therefore give Coke huge credit in Overbury's eyes and, in all probability, the eyes of Robert Carr and King James himself. It would also give Coke a huge moral advantage in his dealings with the King should he choose to act as saviour, and, the cynic in Gresham noted, an equally huge opportunity for blackmail.
Were the letters in King James's own hand? wondered Gresham. If they were, and Coke recovered them, he held the whip-hand over James. If they were in Carr's hand they could be more easily dismissed as forgeries. Either way, Carr could lose huge favour with the King if he was responsible for the permanent loss of such damaging letters. If Carr's reputation was at stake, then Overbury would be involved.
Yet how on earth was Sir Edward Coke, a man of no small vanity himself, going to rein in his tongue in the face of this wholly offensive, reeking apology of a man? This is going to be more fun that it first seemed, thought Gresham.
Overbury sat down without invitation and knocked a few papers aside to show his superiority. His gaze wandering round the room, he finally allowed it to fall on Gresham.
'Gresham,' he said flatly, with a raised lip, an expression of total scorn and without so much as the merest nod of his head. It was extraordinarily ill-mannered. Duels had been fought and lives lost on the basis of lesser insults. Good manners were not simply outward courtesy. They were the measure of the respect in which a man was held.
Overbury swivelled his eyes round the room once more, then brought them back to rest on Gresham. Just at that moment Gresham's pupils seemed to enlarge. It was as if Gresham's gaze had decided Overbury was of no importance and looked through him in search of something of significance. Along with the eyes that did not seem to see him, Overbury was aware of the queer, sardonic half-smile on Gresham's face. It was as if he was being mocked and ignored at the same time.
'Gresham!' Overbury's venom reinforced the insult. 'Why do we need a… spy to help us in this matter?' Overbury spoke to Coke. His tone was scornful, dismissive.
Gresham did the one thing Overbury found it hardest to cope with. He ignored him completely. His eyes turned from the window at which he had been gazing, through Overbury without registering his presence and on to Coke's own eyes.
'As I was saying, shall we get down to business?' Gresham asked of Coke, outwardly thoroughly relaxed.
Overbury's mouth dropped. 'Cease your petty games, Gresham!' he announced, 'or I'll have to break your pate as I broke the servant's!'
Do I let it take its course now, or do I back down? This man would never bend, thought Gresham. So let it take its course.
Gresham waited politely for Overbury to finish, then carried on as if Overbury's words had never been spoken. So strong was the impression given by Gresham that there was only he and Coke in the room that Overbury almost had to shake himself to confirm he was actually there.
'Cecil was of the opinion that these incriminating and embarrassing letters must have been stolen from Carr or Overbury. If we're to do business, we really do need to stop playing games. I'm assuming that the letters were stolen from Overbury.' Gresham's tone made for no recognition whatsoever that Overbury was in the room with them. 'Overbury's clever enough to know how potentially explosive and destructive such letters would be. He's treacherous enough to keep them for future use against either his friend Carr or the King. He's arrogant enough and fool enough to lose them, and hated enough for any of his servants to risk stealing them if they thought that by doing so they could harm their master.'
There was a moment's silence while the enormity of what Gresham had said sank into Overbury's mind. He exploded. He leaped to his feet with a roar.
'You cur! You dog! You whore's whelp!' His sword was half out of its scabbard and he was rushing to fall upon Gresham…
… and suddenly he was flying through the air, landing to the sound of a sickening crunch followed by the sharpest stab of pain and then blissful unconsciousness.
The pain was the first thing he remembered as he came to, the sharp, red-hot pain and the bubbling noise as air tried to pass to and fro between the blood from his nose and mouth. Dimly he heard a voice. It was Gresham.
'… so all in all there's little likely to result from our investigating the point at which the letters were taken. Whoever did it will cover their tracks. Equally, whoever took them will want to make either political or financial advantage out of them. They'll have to make themselves known. This Cambridge bookseller might do just that. Cecil's spies will have prided themselves on the fact they found this man out as having some involvement. It's more likely he made sure they knew what was going on. It has to be this bookseller. Here's where we'll have our chance to retrieve the letters. The real question is whether we do it on his terms, or invent terms of our own.'
Sir Edward Coke was frozen to his chair, eyes passing rapidly between Gresham speaking fluently and clearly to him and the tumbled heap of Overbury lying on the floor. It was not so much the fact that Sir Thomas Overbury had been knocked out and bloodied while launching an assault on Gresham. It was the sheer clinical speed with which it had been accomplished that had silenced Sir Edward, and provoked real fear in him for the first time he could remember in many years. He had almost forgotten the taste of fear. Things had happened in a blur of movement. Overbury, goaded, had embarked on a mad rush towards Gresham. Gresham had hardly seemed to move, merely sway to one side. The momentum of Overbury's forward rush was such that it carried him onto Gresham's outstretched foot, tumbling him over and forward across the floor to crash into the far wall, head and nose first. In a blur of movement, Gresham had resumed his seat almost before Overbury had ceased moving — surely it could not have been so? — and carried on talking to Coke as though nothing had happened. The servants had rushed through the door. Gresham had ignored them. Even the one with the broken head who might just have been smiling as he saw the mess that was Overbury on the floor. Coke had motioned them away.
They both became aware that Overbury was stirring back into a painful consciousness in the corner.
'You must interview Overbury's and Carr's servants to find out as much as you can about how the letters went missing. I will interview Master Shakespeare. It's almost certainly a waste of time. Yet it has to be done.'
Coke spoke sharply. 'The manuscripts are secondary. Plays are not our concern. Letters are.' Coke was showing that phenomenal capacity to take unpleasant facts and sideline them, lock them away so that they did not interfere with his management of the moment's business. Yet was the tone just a little too urgent in dismissing these plays? Gresham immediately racked them up to a higher priority.