'Oh, shut up,' said Gresham unconvincingly. 'I'm paying enough in bribes to the Vatican as it is.' The Pope would be a crucial factor in validating any claim by a Catholic to the English throne. It was an area where Gresham needed the fullest possible knowledge.
The annoying thing was that Mannion was probably right. Gresham always knew when he was in the wrong, and then fought hardest to try and ignore what he knew. Usually, when the storm was over, he realised his mistake and owned up to it. Gresham never realised that for a man of power to be capable of admitting he is wrong is a truly endearing feature to those who work and live with him, even more so if they can see the struggle he has to face to meet the truth.
'Oh, shut up!' he said again to Mannion, and sighed. The fight had gone out of him once Jane left. 'And make sure to go tomorrow and negotiate a proper price.'
'Can I take the girl along with me? Old Armytage'll do anything for 'er, and she knows 'er business. 'E'll melt in 'er 'and when she flutters 'er eyelashes at 'im.'
And have her see him admit that he had been wrong? To hell with it!
'Oh, for heaven's sake! Take her if you really have to, on condition I don't have to see her. Just make sure her eyelashes are all she flutters.' He hated himself for making the concession. 'And make it clear that if she crows about this I'll wring her neck. Or, better, send her with a little red bow tied round a part of her that sticks out to Essex House, a gift courtesy of Henry Gresham. Except I'm not sure I dislike Essex enough for that.'
'Which takes us back to where we started,' said George. 'Essex. He's the key to all these rumours. Him and his battle with Cecil.
The Queen's failing, we all know that. Essex and Cecil are fighting it out for the Crown. Well, for control of it.'
The Earl of Essex moved in wild company. Gresham knew that. He was a major reason for it being wild.
'It may not be a prize worth having,' said Gresham. The row with Jane had left him tired and irritated, as meeting her always did. Why was he fighting on so many fronts? Was that all life held for him?
'What do you mean?' said George.
'You worry about the goings-on at Court. It's typical of the arrogance of Essex to think the only contenders for the throne are English. France, Spain and the Pope are actually more of a threat. And do you know the real problem? All these powerful men playing with countries and with crowns just as if they were chess pieces on a board! I worry about the country, and about London. You remember the three bad years in the 1590s when it seemed to rain for eleven and half months each year, and the crops just rotted in the ground?'
'Remember?' said George. 'I can hardly forget. We had people dying, children starving. I had to mortgage farms to feed some of the worst-off families. I'll be paying for those three bad years for twenty more years, and some families paid with their lives.'
'Your people were lucky. They had a master who was willing to pay to see them fed.' A master who mortgaged the estate more than it could bear, Gresham now knew to his and George's cost. 'Most didn't. Something snapped in England when it was clear the third year was going to be like the others. Remember all the preachers going around talking of the seven lean years? People really believed there'd be no good harvest for four, five more years.'
'So? said George. 'Bad harvests and famine are as old as farming, as old as mankind itself.'
'Yes,' said Gresham, 'but it's always at its worst when things combine. It wasn't just three disastrous years. It was the fact the years came at the time when everyone had realised there'd be no heir, realised Elizabeth'd never marry, there wouldn't even be a husband to call King when she died.'
'Most of my people working on my lands don't know or care who's Queen. Or King.' George was getting glum now, the wine depressing rather than lifting him. 'It's always been about survival for them.'
'They care in the Low Countries,' said Gresham. 'I've seen a dead family outside the gates of a big city, their eyes eaten out by the birds and their arms chewed off by wolves. They know what happens over there if there's no strong leadership, no one person in charge. And I think people are starting to turn on Gloriana, to hate her for her selfishness in having no heir, in naming no successor.'
'Evidence?'
'The talk in College is always a good guide. Every Cambridge College is full of men with shoulders looking for a chip to sit on them. But look round here in London: they no longer cheer when she drives through the city. The boatmen just about pull aside for her barge. They don't shout or cheer, or even put their oars up in salute. Sometimes they don't even look in her direction. They look away. And row on.'
'So?'
'They cheer when Essex rides past, cheer as if there was no tomorrow. And that's dangerous, don't you see? Essex has stood up to the Queen. He's handsome, he's dashing-'
'And 'e knows it!' said Mannion decisively. 'Don't 'e just love the attention! Not clever to love it so much, and to show it.'
'He's new!' said Gresham. 'The Court's like a musty old sheet that's been in the chest far too long. He's a breath of fresh air, not an old wrinkled lady with a Court that smells of lavender and cedar. A lady whose top servant is Robert Cecil. You know what someone painted on the walls of his home? Cecil's home?'
'Decorate me? said George, who was dangerously close to getting drunk. 'Give me a new coat of paint?'
'No. Toad,' said Gresham. 'Toad. Is that a country happy with its leadership?'
'Sure you didn't paint it yourself?' asked George, giggling.
'Wake up, George!' said Gresham. 'There's things going on out there that worry me too, unsettling things. Not just my survival. That's minor. Who'll care if I end up dead in the Tower? You and a servant. But if we unleash civil war in England? That has to be more important than you, or me. We may be coming to the end of an era. But we don't know what's going to replace it.'
'So?' said George. 'Do mere mortals ever know that sort of thing?'
'But what if we replace it by what's happening in the Low Countries? Twenty, thirty years of rival armies fighting over ordinary people's bodies for a power no one can ever truly win. What if the wolves become so bold as to come up to your door?'
Perhaps, thought Gresham, the wolves are here already, just dressed in sheep's clothing.
They had talked on, until George fell asleep by the fire. Gresham had left him, snoring gently, though it was only noon.
'You goin' to tell 'im the truth? About Cecil?' said Mannion. Gresham had told Mannion immediately.
'No,' said Gresham. 'At least, not yet.'
Chapter 3
Mid June, 1598 London
The extravagant and luxurious trappings of Essex House were a lie, of course, albeit a very pretty lie. A hundred tradesmen had been ruined by Robert Devereux's extravagance and his inability to pay for what he used.
'It must be Ireland, my Lord,' said Gelli Meyrick. 'It's been your destiny from birth. It's your chance for the future.'
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, did not glance in the direction of Sir Gelli Meyrick, his secretary. The Earl was stretched out on cushions, his long legs apparently carelessly cast in front of him, but not so carelessly as to fail to reveal either the fine silk of his hose, or the magnificent shape of the legs it hugged so closely. He was in his shirt, a goblet clutched in his hand. Dark sweat marks showed under his arms and across his back. He had come from the fencing master, whose session he had extended by nearly three quarters of an hour. Essex was good, and he knew it.
'Ireland,' he mused, the lilt of the Welsh accent he had never quite lost clashing with the more refined Court accent. 'You say is my destiny. Isn't it more accurate to describe it as my family's fatal attraction? Or perhaps you believe in kill or cure?' He tossed back what wine was left in his goblet.