James sat back in his chair, reached for his wine and took a long, appreciative slurp. 'Well, well,' he said with a sigh. 'Who would have thought such a day could provide such entertainment.' He looked at Gresham. 'I am inclined to take you at your word. In every respect. As you have guessed, your houses are being searched at this very time. I will indeed send to Cambridge. I will send a trusted man into, these vaults of which you speak. I will see if Master Heaton's clothing has been retained. In the meantime, I think a chamber can be found here for you, your wife and your man there. One with a real fire, perhaps.'
'I am thankful to Your Gracious Majesty for his hospitality,' bowed Gresham.
'One more thing,' said James, rising to leave. 'There will be guards posted at your door. For your own protection, of course. And to ensure that your close proximity to your good friend Sir Walter does not encourage you to visit him, or he to visit you.'
Gresham, Jane and Mannion bowed deeply as the King left the dank chamber. Coke waited behind.
'You-' Gresham rounded on him, cutting him short with the sheer compressed ferocity of his voice. 'You have tried to lose me my life, Sir Edward. You were unwise to make even more of an enemy of me.'
Guards came, politely enough, to march them off. Jane turned to Gresham, her eyes close to desperation. 'How could you…' she began. He knew what she wanted to say. How could you give all those hostages to fortune — the torn tunic, the scruffed brickwork, denying you have the letters when they will turn our houses over and find even your most secret of hiding places…’
He placed a finger to his lips and tried to force a world of words into his gaze. The guards would have been told to listen out for just such a conversation, and one misplaced word could cost them their lives. In their new rooms there would most likely be a hole in the wall or roof with a man or two listening for the duration of their imprisonment.
All this he tried to tell her, and more, silently. To tell her that, before pushing the body to the ground, he had rubbed the tunic arms of the dead Nicholas Heaton across the stonework and the bird shit on the roof until they were stained and one arm torn. That, for good measure, he had torn off a tiny strip from one of the letters, with a single, harmless word on it in the King's hand, and stuffed it into the pocket of the dead man's tunic. To tell her that he had descended from the roof and back into the vaults, his every nerve straining for sounds of more visitors, and carefully reached over and disturbed the dirt in every single bay in the vaults, filling his nose with dust and making his throat like sandpaper. To tell her that the secret hiding places in The Merchant's House and The House were now covered with a thick layer of sand, as if they had tried to soundproof the floors of both buildings, and that the mechanism that swung up the plank had been removed, the plank nailed to the joist just like any other. There were two other hiding places in both houses, full of trifles, designed to be found in just such a search. To find the truly secret places they would have to rip up every floorboard in both houses, and dig deep into the sand. He wanted to tell her, without words, that even if they did, both gun-metal boxes were empty. The papers were where King James could never find them. All this, he wanted to tell her, he had done just in case. That he was above all a professional, and it was because he did such things that he had lived longer than any other. To tell her that he had taken extra care to prepare his alibi this time, because he knew it was her life he was playing with as well as his own. To tell her that they were secure. To tell her that he had mentioned none of the precautions he had taken because if she did not know she could not tell others of them, even by accident.
She looked, and she looked, and she looked into his eyes. And then, the guards noticed, something almost like a smile came over her face. She held out her hand. Sir Henry Gresham, Lady Gresham and his manservant walked together into captivity in the Tower of London, smiling.
16
7th November, 1612 The Tower of London
'And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"'
However much they built up the fires, the chill of The Tower entered into their bones. Winter had come to London late but with a vengeance; a cold, dripping winter rather than a fierce, freezing winter.
'How much longer?' Even though they were outside, in a brief respite from the cheerless rain, Jane half-whispered the question to Gresham. Sir William Wade, increasingly out of love with his job and his employer, had allowed them full use of his private garden. 'What a world for our children,' Jane spoke in her low voice. 'No mother, no father, a sense of dread hanging over them every bit as real as the sentence hanging over us.'
Gresham's own spies — James's court leaked information and gossip like a boat on the rocks — told him that the alibis had been proven. Heaton's tunic, too expensive to throw away, had been kept. The scrap of letter had been found, and taken as proof that Heaton had in fact had the documents in his pocket. The searches of The House and The Merchant's House had been savage, and had led in the case of The House to a pitched battle between the soldiers undertaking the search and the servants. The servants had won, Gresham had been privately delighted to note, but someone had had the sense to call on Gresham to declare peace. He had been taken with Jane in a closed carriage to The House, where they had calmed their men down and told them to co-operate completely. They had shuddered at the ripped-up panelling and floorboards, but Jane had been stalwart in the face of Gresham's rising anger.
'Money can mend wood. Be thankful it's not more important things they've damaged.'
They had not found the gunmetal cabinet, Gresham noted, though they had found and ransacked one of the false hiding places behind a fireplace.
'How long?' Gresham answered. 'Who knows? There's no case to answer against us. I suspect the King no longer sees us as a threat. Yet he'll have Carr acting as a mouthpiece for Overbury, and arguing for us to be kept here for ever. And Coke will hardly want me on the loose.'
'Are you saying we're here for ever?' asked Jane, a plaintive note creeping into her voice. It cut to Gresham's heart, but he did no more than squeeze the warm hand that held his.
'No. I don't think so. I really don't think so, as distinct from simply telling you what you want to hear. James is indolent, above all. He takes the easy route. With Carr and Coke biting at his heels, it's easier to keep me here than to release me. It does no harm to James, and it makes a point to anyone who cares to listen that no one is above the King's law. He'll release me eventually. What a pity there isn't a crisis to provoke him into needing me.' He turned to Jane, eyes laughing despite the pallor of incarceration. 'Perhaps I ought to threaten him with those letters!'
'Sssh!' she exclaimed, horrified. The fact that her husband still held damning letters from the King to his lover, and had flatly denied doing so to the King, was the stuff of her nightmares.
She did not have to be in The Tower at all, of course. Queen Anna was a featherbrained barmaid who was as far away from Jane in appearance and personality as two human beings could ever be. Yet, from a distance, the two had struck up a perfectly servicable relationship in which both women actually seemed to quite like each other. Gresham had questioned the relationship.