'Imagine being married to a wet frog!' was all Jane had said. There was a language that passed between women that Gresham did not understand.
Queen Anna had interceded with the King, on one of the rare times they actually met, and spoke to each other nowadays. She had swept into Gresham's rooms in The Tower, nodded dismissively to Gresham and removed Jane to an adjoining room. Half an hour later they had returned.
'You are very blessed,' Queen Anna had announced regally, 'with your wife.'
'As indeed is the King,' Gresham had bowed low, 'with his consort and mother of his children.'
The two women had looked at each other and shrugged. Queen Anna swept out again.
The results of the meeting were immediately clear. Jane no longer had to remain in The Tower and was free to return to either of her homes. Equally, it was decreed, should she wish to move her children in with herself and her husband, accommodation would be found. She had compromised, staying in The House from Monday evening to Fridays, joining Gresham for the weekends. She had drawn the line at introducing her children to The Tower. Its air was frequently foul and always dank, the rooms cheerless and damp, and the atmosphere of the place was one of pain, suffering and terror.
'They're too young for this,' she had declared. 'When we have to, we'll cope, as Raleigh's family have coped. Until we have to, let the children have their freedom. Even without their parents.' Yet she missed her babes on her Saturdays and Sundays with Gresham, missed them desperately. Gresham heard her sobbing in the small hours when she thought he was asleep.
'How reassuring,' Gresham had said, 'that you assume periodic sojourns in The Tower are doomed to be our lot.'
‘I know who I married,' she replied dryly. There had been a near disagreement over the children's nurse on the Saturdays and Sundays when Jane was ministering to her master.
'Mannion?' Gresham had exclaimed. 'Mannion.' My young children lose their mother two days out of seven to Mannion1. If fish drank like him there'd be no water left in the oceans. His manners make a pig look respectable. Given half a chance, he spends every evening in the stews. He's a threat to anything on two legs, and for all I know anything on four! Whilst I'm languishing in The Tower, my children are being brought up by an ageing lecher with a drink problem and no education.'
'Who brought you up?' Jane asked simply.
Gresham rocked back on his heels, thought for a moment, and grinned. 'Mannion,' he replied, remembering his loveless childhood and the rough affection that Mannion had lavished on him.
'Well,' said Jane, 'don't deny your children the same opportunities.'
There were times when this woman really annoyed him.
For all that, he wished she were there when a bedraggled King James of all England and Scotland walked unannounced into his chambers that evening.
Gresham had heard the news. Setting up a decent information system had been almost his first priority when he had been consigned to The Tower. Sixth November, 1612. Prince Henry, the eldest son of King James I, heir to the thrones of England and Scotland, had died. The most brilliant, the most perfect and the most promising heir England had had in many a year. Handsome, intelligent and with a charismatic flair that lingered long after he had left a room and its inhabitants. A young man with a sense of occasion, but also with a sense of justice. A man in love with martial arts. A prude, some said, blessed with too great a sense of his own righteousness. A boy obsessed with warfare said others. A king for all seasons said the majority. A real king at last. For many, of James's subjects, surveying the decadence and expense of his Court, it was easy enough to tolerate King James when the prospect of King Henry lay on the horizon.
And now Henry was dead. Dead of a flux and a fever, despite the best efforts of every London doctor.
Gresham had heard of the illness, and of the death, and his heart had sank. Prince Henry was a future king for whom spies would be willing to die. Now all that was left was Charles. Weak, vacillating, desirous to please Charles. What would the future hold for England under King Charles I?
King James stumbled into his rooms long after the bell signalling the closing up of The Tower. There was a clattering outside, muttered words, scurrying feet. Then James walked in through the door, unannounced. He did not knock, Gresham noted.
There was more than the usual filth on the extravagant clothing of England's king. The jewels around his neck and sewn into his garments would have fed a city for months. More extraordinary were the marks of tears down his cheeks. His doublet was unlaced. He sat down in Jane's chair. Gresham had spent a lifetime training his mouth not to drop — had he not done so, it would have dented the floor. And, by the by, his eyebrows would have become permanently entangled in his hairline.
'Drink!' the King of England roared to someone outside the room. There was a hurried scuffling and a terrified footman brought in a wooden tray with five bottles on it. Wine of the most tremendous value. With two extraordinarily beautiful goblets of pure gold.
'Open!' said the drunken King. 'No! Not for us both. That bottle' — he pointed firmly to one pillar of dark glass — 'for me. The other bottle, that one there, for Sir Henry. For him alone.'
The King turned to Gresham. 'In vino Verit a s, Sir Henry
Gresham. You'll drink that bottle there as fast as you can. And when you've drunk your fill, we'll talk. Man to man. Drunken man to drunken man. Drunken father to drunken father.' It was then the tears started to fall. Huge globules of water forming in the King's eyes and dropping from them down his cheeks, as if every liquid he had ever drunk was turned to tears.
And so it was that the strangest drinking session in English or Scottish history began and ended, in a set of rooms in the Tower of London in the late evening, with the King of England present and a prisoner his drinking companion.
Gresham took the bottle his monarch had gestured to and poured himself a full measure. He brought it to his lips. The wine was Rhenish — powerful, potent, intoxicating. He drank it in one single gasp. The King looked on, nodded approvingly and motioned to continue.
In the space of a few minutes, Gresham sank a bottle of wine from the King's cellar.
He had always had an extraordinarily good head for wine. Would it hold up tonight? The excitement, the unexpectedness, the sheer maniac improbability of the evening began to take hold of him.
'And now we'll bide our time awhile,' the King stated, sipping at his own goblet, the tears still flowing. He wanted Gresham drunk before they talked. As drunk as he was. Or even drunker. 'You!' the King yelled to the servant again. 'That other bottle! There! Open it for my guest. You'll keep drinking, Sir Henry, if you please. Not whole bottles. But keep drinking.'
James and his son had been in frequent disagreement, Gresham reminded himself. Prince Henry had been polite, prurient and careful with money. The young man, only recently named Prince of Wales, had made no secret of the extent to which he disagreed with his father's lifestyle. Perhaps for this reason, Queen Anna had preferred her next son, Charles.
Yet the drinking contest had to be entered in to. James had not asked him to drink a whole bottle of wine, he had commanded it.
First the lancing of thirst, then the tremors of excitement. Then the power of alcohol, the growing self-belief. Then the vainglory, the assumption that anything was possible. Then the tiredness, the overwhelming urge to sleep. Then the loss of consciousness. And then the payment, in pain and sickness, for the days to follow. Gresham knew all these. James thought he was the first person to have ensured truth with drink. Well he would, wouldn't he? Roman spies had used the trick as a matter of course. Roman spies, and spies for King James I of England and Scotland, had learned ways to cope. There was no point in denying the physical power of the alcohol. The trick was in learning to keep a part of the mind separate from it all.