And so she talked to Gresham. She talked of the doings of The House: the silly servant who had poured sugar instead of salt into the beef pie and the anger of the chef; that Young Tom's father and mother were both taken by an ague that looked to see them off this world and Young Tom was torn between going to see them and staying to wait out his master's vigil. And talked of how there seemed to be a dearth of good, fresh meat in the city, and the milk had come in sour yesterday, the farmer swearing it had come straight from the cow and an old woman had given the bad eye to his beasts, so she had.
And when she ran out of tittle-tattle, she told him of their children. How little Anna had asked her what rape was, and how she had tried to answer without spoiling the innocence of her little girl, and how Anna had known, as Anna always did, that she was not being told the truth but had said nothing more, choosing instead to spare her mother on an instinct that ran deeper than anything else.
She talked then of her love for him. How, as a beaten and starved little girl, this man had ridden into her village, thin and emaciated, with the trappings of a lord on his back and horse and that strange man-mountain riding beside him. How could a man so rich be so thin, and look so unhappy? she had thought. How could a man be more glamorous? He had talked to her, by the pond, and then her stepfather had come out and whipped her and he… he had broken his arm. And there had been a massive row and she, Jane, had found herself riding out of the village she hated with all her heart, seated on the saddle of the man-mountain's horse. And she had screamed and screamed and screamed until even these great men had listened, screamed that he had saved her and she was going to ride on his horse and no one else's, and so with an expression of disdain Gresham had plonked her on his saddle and they had ridden in triumph to London. How from the moment she had first seen him, her knight in grubby armour, she had decided that there would be only one man in her life. She had spurned the endless advances of other men, and even the servant boys, her contempt withering their pathetic desire even as it blossomed. She was not for them, nor for any other man. She had organised his house for him, put it straight, become his housekeeper without his knowing. And then, one evening, she had forced him to look at her as a woman.
And because she was lonely, appallingly lonely, and more terrified than she had ever been in her life of losing the man who gave meaning to her existence, she talked of that terror, the lurching, rattling moments in the coach when she had clasped the children desperately to herself, being flung from side to side and terrified that she would be hurled out on to the road. The awful silence as the coach had ground to a halt and she had been hauled roughly out, reaching down in a paroxysm of anger and fear for the knife she carried strapped to her inside leg and feeling the blow to the side of her head. She talked of the utter horrors of waking, devils beating at the side of her face, to find herself trussed and chained by the neck like a slave girl. The appalling feeling of helplessness in the face of this bloated monstrosity. The anger and the bitter recrimination… why had she not spotted something was wrong? Gresham would have seen something was wrong! She was just a weak, stupid woman, in her element checking the supply of preserves and feeble as a child when real business was in hand. And then the sickening, stomach- and brain-churning realisation that this foul, evil thing intended to have her, in front of her children, and there was nothing she could do! Without realising it, her hand tightened on Gresham's as she gazed into the fire and recreated her own hell. Could she have been born to be penetrated by this satyr? Well, many a woman had endured worse and stayed silent — but her children would know and have seen her so violated! The syphilis! The pox! To live on for a few more years in the face of her husband, diseased? And then the answer had come to her. She could bite off her tongue! And her mouth had been open at its widest, ready to clamp down hard and without hesitation, when the other boat had hit.
She was panting now, breathing heavily, her hand still clutching Gresham's.
His hand tugged at hers.
She looked down, disbelieving. His hand, gently, was squeezing hers.
She leaned over him. His eyes were closed still. Two, three huge tears dropped from her eyes and fell on his lids. 'Warm,' he said. 'Warm.'
An eye opened, blinked in her tears, and shut again. Hurriedly, she brought the cloth by her side to his eyes and wiped them. He was speaking, croaking, a half-whisper. She leaned forward, her ears nearly pressing his lips.
'I should… have been there,' he was trying to say. 'I should have been there.' Then, something else, stronger this time. Both his eyes were open. 'You must never die on me. Never…'
She screamed her happiness, screamed it out for the whole house to hear, screamed it so that Mannion leaped up as if the whole Spanish army was in his tent and The House under attack.
'If he comes back, you must hold on to him. Do not let him slip back into oblivion…' Dr Napier had said.
Her grip threatened to kill him all over again. Crying, babbling, calling out, she made him keep those eyes open, made him speak, made him live.
It was easier being dead, thought Gresham. Much calmer. Much quieter. Yet perhaps, after all, this was better. He smiled into the eyes of his wife.
23
Late March-27th June, 1613 London
'I am as true as truth's simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth.'
There was so much to do. Yet it would be months before Gresham was physically able to do it. He lay there, fretting, in his bed, knowing that the leg must be kept still at all costs in its wooden splint, knowing that on his calm depended his ability to walk again without a limp. He ordered weights, used them until his breath tore at his throat, building his upper body strength.
The arm had healed beyond his belief. There was an angry scar there, for sure, to join the others on his body, but he felt no lessening in his control, no weakening.
They had lost five men in all from the coach, and one disabled for life. John, the coachman, found in a back alley with his head broken open, a blow that should have killed him and was probably designed to do so. Two of the men had been on the river and at The Globe when they had beaten off" the attackers. Gresham felt their loss like brothers. Scars mend, but never quite heal. People die, and are never quite replaced. Young Tom he promoted to deputy coach driver. No conquering general surveyed his army with more pride than Young Tom surveyed the coach on the first morning he drove it out in all its glory. It was an ugly, cumbersome thing, but for Young Tom there was nothing more beautiful in the world. There were pistols, loaded and ready, on the coach whenever it set out, and four blunderbusses loaded with nails. Walter the boatman and three of his crew were working for Gresham now.
They had found Nicholas. With something approaching despair, Gresham and Mannion had known that Marlowe would slip again into anonymity. Walsingham's spies had received a training in the field that was second to none. Yet Nicholas was easier meat, a bought servant.
He told them everything, without torture. The thin face and bloated body of the man who had come up to him in the tavern. The bag of gold, more money than he could have hoped to earn in a lifetime. The moment when he had decided to betray a lifetime of service.
Weeks ago, there would have been no argument. An implacable Gresham would have killed Nicholas himself without thought. Instead, stuffed in his bed, he looked to his wife as Nicholas sobbed and screamed before them. She gazed at the face of the man who had betrayed her and her children, driven them to what would have been more than her death, her eternal shame, but for a chance holing of a boat and a random meeting on the river.