Gresham left them in the breakfast parlour and moved through the corridors with a greeting, by name, to the servants who bobbed, curtseyed or doffed their caps to him. He went to his private study, at the centre of The House and guarded by its stoutest door. Lifting the extravagance of carpet that lay on the floor, he revealed the planking. He gave a sharp tap on the end of a join, indistinguishable from the others. The plank-end jumped up, and settled down a half inch or so higher than its neighbour. Gresham lifted it, revealing that it was hinged at its other end. The cavity exposed as the plank swung back had a dullish sheen to it. Gunmetal. There was a metal box beneath the floor, with its own lock. Gresham swung back the heavy door with a key from his golden keyring. No money lay there, as might be expected in a rich man's house, a rich man who had gone to the expense of constructing a special metal box hidden beneath the floor of the most secure room in his property. Nor were there deeds of land, or sureties, or any of the paperwork beloved of the lawyers. Rather, there were letters. Letters and papers. Of no apparent significance or value to the idle viewer. Gresham smiled inwardly as his eyes lit on some of the papers. Monarchies, kings and queens were compromised by those innocent-looking documents.
Men have to tell their secrets, to prove that they are men. Great men merely have to know great secrets, and tell no one.
Gresham found the two letters he had come for and closed his private store. Would it survive a fire? he thought. For a while, perhaps. It was gunmetal, after all. More likely, the survival of it and its contents would depend on him or one of his very few trusted servants making the gunmetal box their only priority in the case of a fire. Nothing was certain, Gresham thought, except death. The readiness is all. You cannot predict. You can only prepare.
He brought the two letters back into the room. Mannion had replenished his tankard, Gresham noted.
Two letters,' he said to Jane, 'three months apart. Both from Marlowe. June and August 1602. Someone had just tried to kill him, he said. I hadn't saved him at all, he said. I'd set the whole thing up on Cecil's orders, so Cecil wouldn't be embarrassed by the revelations Marlowe would have made at any trial.'
'They weren't planning any trial!' said Mannion with a guffaw.
'No, but Marlowe'd obviously imagined one, with himself playing the heroic role. He'd been meant to go to France, but went to Spain instead and sold himself as a spy to them. Worked with them for years, as I understand it. Then he fell out with them, and blamed me and Cecil for poisoning the Spanish against him.'
'Had you?' said Jane.
'God help us, no,' said Gresham. 'To be frank, I'd more or less forgotten about him until these letters came. He'd have been better off dying in The Tower, he said. There, you can read it. He was in poverty. He'd never had the recognition he deserved… and more. And, of course, the accusation that it was Cecil and I who'd tried to have him killed.'
'Had you?' asked Jane again.
'I hadn't, of course not,' said Gresham, shrugging his shoulders. 'There was no need, no reason. He was just history as far as I was concerned. I suppose I hoped he'd write things abroad, under another name, set up theatres in Europe… I remember feeling quite shocked when we heard he had actually been killed, after he'd written to me. It was in September, I think. I also found something out later that convinced me Cecil had done it.'
'What was that?' asked an intrigued Jane.
'For a long while I don't think Cecil knew Marlowe was alive. He took over Walsingham's spy service but he never ran it properly. Preferred to work through ambassadors, official people. Well, the letters make it clear someone tried to murder Marlowe in 1602, in Spain. I think it was Cecil. I think that's when Cecil found out Marlowe was alive, and who he was working for. It must have been the biggest shock of his life.'
'Why the biggest?' said Jane. 'We know he had quite a few shocks in his life, even before 1605.' She could not help smiling at the memory of the Gunpowder Plot, and the exact nature of the shock administered by Gresham to Cecil.
'Because in 1602, when it was clear Elizabeth was dying, when everyone thought Robert Cecil had chosen King James I as the new King of England, and when Robert Cecil himself was writing away to James and declaring himself his most loyal servant, all the while the bloody man was plotting with the Spanish to get the Spanish Infanta on the throne in place of James! He was riding both horses, wasn't he?
'Well, Cecil is fearful of the Queen finding out he's been writing to James in Scotland, and fearful of her and James finding out he's been trying to ride two horses and back Spain as well. Then, lo and behold, what does he discover? That Marlowe's been an agent for the Spanish for years! Marlowe, who hates him! Marlowe, who's privy to all the Spanish secrets — might even have seen some of his cursed letters. He must have ordered Marlowe knocked off as soon as he heard. Obviously Marlowe got away, if it was him you saw this afternoon…' Gresham glanced at Mannion, who nodded.
'Are you sure Cecil was riding both horses? Backing the King and the Infanta?' asked Jane. 'It's absolutely explosive if it's true. Elizabeth could have had him killed for it, and James could never have let him run the country for him.'
'Oh, I'm sure, right enough,' said Gresham with the grin of a devil on his face. 'You see, I've got two of his letters to the Spanish! I've held them as a bargaining counter for years. It's one of the main reasons Cecil didn't have me killed long ago.'
Jane's head was reeling. 'Are you telling me you could have proved Cecil a traitor since 1602? And I know you could have done it again in 1605 with the Gunpowder Plot? If you hated the man so much, why didn't you topple him?'
'You know why,' said Gresham. 'Power is a filthy business. It dirties all those who wield it. There's no room for a good man in government. We've had peace for years now, haven't we, over the land of this country at least? No babies killed, no villages razed to the ground, no women raped, no harvesting of all the best young men to die stupidly in battles no one understands. If the price we pay for that peace, that stability, is to have the anti-Christ on the throne, I'll take it. Cecil's evil, the fact he had no morals, the fact he would assassinate without thinking to keep the peace — we need someone like that as our ruler. And if he damned himself in the process, why should I care?'
'So you're saying Marlowe got away some'ow, and buggered off somewhere to lie low? When he knew people was trying to kill him?' said Mannion.
'Must have done. The Americas* perhaps? Or Russia? That's where I'd have gone. Wherever it was, it must have turned his brain. Not that it ever needed much turning. And now, all of a sudden, he turns up in England again,' said Gresham, 'and I bet I could dictate the letter he sends to Cecil. "I'm going to get my revenge on you at last," he says, "and on that arch-villain Gresham who helped you ruin my life.'"
'Oh dear God!' said Jane. 'I see it now… it's so simple.'
'Isn't it?' said Gresham.
Mannion, whose face was screwed up like a cow's, was clearly not finding it simple at all. Gresham carried on.
'Cecil sets me, his best agent, on to finding Marlowe, carefully not telling me it is Marlowe, of course, just to add a bit of spice to it. So I'm moving about with the highest possible profile, more or less guaranteeing that Marlowe's going to come screaming out of a side alley and try to kill me. If I kill Marlowe, which is the best option of all, then what a joke for Cecil from his grave. He's got his oldest and bitterest enemy to preserve his reputation, pure and unsullied, for all of history. That would appeal to Cecil's sense of humour. And if Marlowe kills me — the second best option — what a joke as well! Cecil's oldest enemy follows him to the grave with a helping hand from Cecil, 'and the killer is the person whose escape I arranged twenty years ago partly to spite him! Poetic justice and the wheel come full circle, isn't it, if Marlowe kills me?'