Two men took the boat back to the boathouse, bobbing their heads as they passed Gresham, a thousand questions in their minds which would never pass their lips. There was still a fair crowd left gathered on the jetty, gazing in awe at Gresham and Mannion. Gresham wanted to dismiss them, to walk back to The House with
Mannion as he had walked with him after so many battles, fights and feuds.
Then, all of sudden, he saw what neither he nor Jane had noticed before. The nurse had brought out little Walter and Anna to watch the return of their parents. They had stood at the back, and not «ven Jane's huge sensitivity to the presence of her children had alerted her before she was whisked off. What on earth happened to children when they saw their parents come back bloodstained from a battle? Surely it was too early in their poor, innocent lives for them to realise that their parents, and the whole damned world, were mortal? And why the hell wasn't their mother here to sort this dreadful finale out? Women knew about these things! Men were… men were there to do the fighting, not the explaining!
His son and his tiny daughter were standing either side of their nurse, hands in her hands. Both tiny figures gazed at Gresham with eyes as round as full moons.
'Well,' said Gresham, eyes locking on those of his children. It was, of course, entirely in his imagination that the other servants drew back to let him speak to the children, 'the truth is, some nasty men…' He felt, rather than saw, a flicker rumble through Mannion's body as he tried to stop the laughter inside him. 'Some nasty men… decided to be… not nice to me and to… Mummy.' Was Mannion about to spontaneously self-combust with hilarity? Or was it Gresham's imagination? 'Then some nice men…' If he didn't stop this now, Mannion would certainly die. 'Oh, bugger it!' said Gresham to his children. 'Some bastards tried to kill your mother and me. We won. They lost.'
There was a huge cheer from the servants.
'And I was wounded a bit, but not badly.'
Gresham's children were still looking at him as if he was the eighth wonder of the world.
'And the truth is, I'm really tired, and I wouldn't mind a helping hand from you both to get me back to the house and into a warm bed.'
The children ran to him instantly.
'It's all right, Father,' said Walter. 'We knew you needed to swear.'
'Are you really not hurt?' piped up little Anna.
'Look, little one,' said Gresham, picking her up and cradling her. He pointed to his chest. 'A scratch. No more than you do when you fall over a stony path. Less, probably.' He put her back down on the ground, hiding his pain as he did so.
Walter was trying to push his father's hand so far upwards to support him that it threatened to imbalance Gresham. Anna was content to hold his hand lightly, taking care to match her step with his so that she did not jar his arm. At the same time, she did not let go of Mannion, who was holding her other hand with a gentleness that belied his size.
'Jesus Christ!' said Gresham as they both collapsed inside the first doorway that offered itself after the children had been detached from them. 'Can we go to bed?'
'No!' said Mannion, firmly. 'At least, not before we've washed and cleansed that wound across your chest.' Body-servants had, after all, a duty to the body of their master.
11
July, 1612 The House, The Strand, London
'To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light'
The shock had set in for Jane, as it always did, when it was no longer necessary for her to cope, to keep a good face in front of others.
She had tried to take up some needlework. It was a task she hated above all others, but a strange sense of duty drove her to try, believing it to be a proper accomplishment for a lady. She stabbed and hacked at the poor backing cloth, her stitching for all the world like the work of a mad doctor on an open wound. She sucked in her lips, muttering as the needle went where it wished. This morning her normally erratic results were self-evidently unspeakably bad.
Gresham watched her in silence. How extraordinary that a woman's body, the same size more or less as a man's, could achieve so much more. That slim body, perhaps a half inch shorter than his own, needing all the organs his body needed, had managed to grow and nurture two children, house, home and feed them within the confines of one flesh for nine months apiece. If so great a portion of her body was given over to childbirth, wondered Gresham, how about the mind of a woman? Was the child to her mind in its life as it had been to her body in pregnancy? Would her love for him persist, or would it drain away silently into the love of her children? Men loved themselves, thought Gresham. So much so that many failed to see when love in others had died.
Jane spoke, eventually, as he had known she would. That was… appalling,' she said, with a catch to her voice. She was white-faced, and the fingers of her left hand were trembling very slightly, Gresham noticed. It made the stitching even worse. To go to the play, and to be set upon by a bunch of murdering oafs… Is there nowhere safe?' She was clean, sweet-smelling and outrageously beautiful. In the privacy of the room, her black hair was loosely gathered above the nape of her neck, like a sweeping, swooping coil of ebony. The remnants of breakfast had been cleared, and she and Mannion were grouped round the table with Gresham.
They looked expectantly at Gresham. He had been distant all morning, not hostile but rather withdrawn. They knew the mood of old. His mind had gone deep, weighing up what was known and what was not known, trying to draw the map of where they were and where they should be. He got up and started to pace the room.
'Safe? It's not a word I can recognise. Not when the plague or an ague could rip any one of us out of life and into oblivion at the flip of a coin. At least in the theatre there was an enemy you could see, an enemy you could fight.!
'An enemy you could fight!' said Jane. 'An enemy gathered in your business! All I can do is run, not fight. All I can do is receive the hatred of the enemies you make.'
There was no answer Gresham could utter that would deny the truth of what she said. He stopped pacing for a moment and looked at her. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Truly sorry.'
'So am I,' she said, holding his eyes. 'Sorry for what happened. And sorry if I seem to blame you for the evil of others. And I never said thank you. For saving my life.'
The emotions that flickered across Gresham's brow were too complex for words, but she saw them all the same, and understood. Gresham's tone became businesslike.
'The man with the crossbow has to be this Cambridge bookseller Coke was so concerned about. The description fits too well. What's new is that he wants to kill us as well as sell some papers — and no, I don't know why. He could be working independently, or with Overbury. I humiliated Overbury. He was there at the theatre. Though he took no part in the fight.' Gresham was pacing again. 'For once it's not why that bothers me. It's howl There are a thousand ways to kill a man if that's what you really want. Slip a servant in and drop some poison into the man's wine…'
'That couldn't happen. now. We take too much care over who we hire as servants,' Jane said. Years earlier Cecil had slipped a spy into Gresham's house.
'It's less likely to happen now,' corrected Gresham. 'The minute you allow yourself to think it's impossible you're placing yourself at risk. Bribing a servant would still be the easy option for this bookseller, or for Overbury. Or there's a knife in your back while walking down a dark street, or a crossbow bolt from a deserted alley. Poison, knife, arrow, gun — if you want to kill someone, why do it in front of two. thousand spectators at the theatre, for God's sake?'