There were worse places to be unhappy in. The early morning sun streamed in through the latticed windows, which stretched almost from floor to ceiling, giving a sweeping view out across the Thames. The blustery wind creamed the occasional white blur on top of the wrinkled surface of the water. Any boat that had one was under sail, the wind ideal for pushing up against the tide. Blue sky, blue water and white sails. It was so pretty. Yet the blue water held the filth of the thousands who crowded London, the seething mass of humanity that filled its streets with noise, discord and the rank sweat of assembled humanity. If God had not decided to make the River Thames tidal, sweeping the filth out to sea every day, London would have died of its own stench in a week.
That bloody girl, Jane, had got her claws into the Library, though God knew what business it was of hers, thought Gresham. Or when she found the time, given the amount of that precious commodity she spent in self-imposed exile locked in her room. She had spent the past two days there, the result of some perceived insult from her guardian. He was damned if he could remember what it had been. The Library held one of the largest collections of books in London, and the girl's interfering meant that some half of the books were now free from their coating of dust. Well, at least it kept her out of his way.
Mannion stood by the door, his huge bulk silent, watchful. Gresham was toying with a paper Jane had handed him, in silence for once. She had found it in a book she had been cleaning. It was a half-written letter from Sir Thomas Gresham to a business acquaintance, a Jew working from Paris. It was meaningless in itself, a business communication that presumably had put even more money into Thomas Gresham's vast pockets. Gresham was surprised at the shock he felt on seeing the handwriting after so many years, as cold and crabbed as the writer.
Father. What a strange, evocative word. A word with so many different meanings.
A great clattering in the courtyard and a great noise announced the arrival of Gresham's closest friend, and a promise that the edge of his loneliness at least might be dulled. George Willoughby — now Lord George Willoughby since the death of his father — had been out of sorts himself recently, worn down by the cares of the badly run estate his father had left him, but he was still a welcome diversion. Or had been, until Cecil had made it clear that George's friendship with Gresham might leave him surveying his own guts on a scaffold. There was always a great noise, wherever George went, and things to be bumped into. George never saw doors, and walked into them before opening them. The Library door decided to resist him — it was of stout English oak and had been there far longer than George — with the result that there was much bashing at handles and bad language before it swung open.
'Bloody door!' said George. 'Surprised a man of your wealth can't have a decent handle fitted!'
In more cheerful and youthful days this would have been said with a booming laugh. Now it was said with a rather morose glum-ness, perhaps even a tinge of jealousy. George's pride had refused Gresham's offers of money, however tactfully they had been presented. Still, there was enough good cheer left in the man for him to smile at Gresham. 'How very good to see you!'
George was married to Alice; this had been a condition set by George's father for his inheriting the estate. She was the daughter of his father's favourite hunting companion and had supplied him rather joylessly with two children, conceived on a thoroughly businesslike basis. His increasingly frequent visits to London from his vast inherited estate and its debts were an escape for him. Like so many people, he was drawn to the Court in the hope of picking up some crumbs of patronage. Unfortunately, his scrabbling for patronage left him less and less time to see Gresham.
The two men embraced fondly, the one tall, muscled and lithe, the other bulky and running now ever so slightly to fat, one eyebrow pulled permanently down in a droop. George's craggy face had been marked by the smallpox, and his nose looked as if a fat priest had knelt on it at his christening. It had not rained for a week in the country, and every movement that George made seemed to prompt a fine spurt of dust from his clothes. His boots were grey, as if he had just walked through the cold ashes of a fire. George turned to Mannion.
'He won't tell you to fetch the wine. I will. And an extra flagon for you. He won't order that, either.'
Mannion, who was standing at the back of the room, grinned. George was drinking too much, Gresham reflected, on the increasingly infrequent times he visited him.
'It's wasted on him,' grumbled Gresham. 'You might as well pour decent wine into a cesspit. Feed the great lump Thames water with some alcohol in it and he wouldn't notice.' Grudgingly he nodded to Mannion. Baiting him by keeping him waiting for a drink was one of the few things to lighten Gresham's dreary life at present. Mannion nodded to George, and left to get the wine. He moved surprisingly lightly for someone so thick set and visibly muscled. He was older than Gresham, that much was clear, but by how much? Difficult to tell. Mannion's craggy face gave away few secrets, least of all his real age.
George seemed incapable of being jolly for long.
'I know you delight in ignoring all my warnings,' he said as soon as he had his fist closed comfortably round his goblet, 'but will you take one now?'
‘I know,' said Gresham, 'Mannion drinks too much and any minute he's likely to run amuck and rape all the women in London. I've tried to warn as many as possible myself, but there are just too many of them.'
'Will you be serious?' said George, annoyed.
'I am,' said Gresham in a serious voice. 'I found out the truth. He's already done it. There isn't a woman in London he hasn't bedded.'
'Ain't raped none, though,' said Mannion. His speed of return suggested the wine was stored nearby. His preferred drinking vessel was a tankard. A large tankard. 'Wouldn't do that, would I? No need. They keeps running at me.'
'Look,' said George, and this time something in his tone made even Gresham look at him, 'the both of you. This is serious. I keep my ear to the ground at Court, you know, though I doubt any of them know my name.'
No fortune could be made and no fortune sustained unless it fed at regular intervals from the Court, the trough from which all sustenance was sucked. All patronage and wealth had as its source the monarch. George had devoted a lifetime to who was in and who was out, who rising and who falling, loving to chart the extraordinarily treacherous shoals of Court fashion and favour.
'And what do you hear?' Gresham's tone betrayed no interest whatsoever in the answer.
'I hear the name of Henry Gresham,' said George, 'and rather too often — from people who hate you.'
'And why should they talk about me?' said Gresham. 'I haven't had an affair with a Court lady for… weeks. Unlike the Earl of Southampton. I hear he's got Lizzie Vernon pregnant. Or Kissie Vernon, as some of her female friends call her.'
'It's no joke!' said George sharply, taking a long pull at his goblet and motioning to Mannion to refill it. 'The vultures are gathering over the throne of England. It's a positive feeding frenzy. Old Burghley's been on his last legs for months. More important, the Queen can't be far off joining him. Forty years on the throne, for heaven's sake! Only a handful of people in England remember life without Elizabeth as Queen. There's no heir-'