The rebel heart

'But there's lots of choices!' said Gresham, with mock enthusiasm. 'Our dear Queen has merely sought to make life interesting for her loyal subjects by leaving the issue of her succession so open! Imagine how boring it would be if she had children and we knew who our next ruler was to be! This way, there's a huge variety for us to choose from.'

George refused to be moved by humour.

'Good God, man!' he snapped. 'You can joke about this? When one heir is the King of our oldest enemy, and the other the heir of our bitterest one?'

King James of Scotland and the Infanta of Spain were two claimants to Elizabeth's crown.

'I can joke about those two. I admit my sense of humour is stretched by the Lady Arbella. No, you're right. I can't joke about her. That face of hers! And those dresses!' He raised his hands in mock horror.

It was a measure of the chaos that threatened an England with no heir that such a milksop was even talked about as a possible successor. Lady Arbella Stuart was a drab girl whose only claim to fame was a massive injection of royal blood in her thin veins.

'Look, I'm telling you,' said George, clearly angered by Gresham's. flippancy, 'I've had people name you in plots to put all three on the throne. And the same for plots to put Derby and Essex there as well! Not to mention the Kings of Spain and of France! You're everyone's favourite conspirator.'

So Cecil had been doing his work.

Gresham had been recruited to the vast network of spies paid for personally by Walsingham when he had been a penniless under-graduate at Cambridge. His deep involvement in the underworld of Elizabeth's England had not ceased when he had inherited a fortune, and it had survived even the death of Walsingham.

All around them were the noises of a great household, cushioned by the thick oak doors and the sealed windows, but audible like a low, deep current of sound. The clattering of hooves out in the courtyard as the grooms exercised Gresham's fine stable of horses, the cheerful insults of the stable boys and occasional sound of water as they slopped out the vacated stables. Soft footfalls as maids went about their business; the creak of floorboards. A tide of humanity, each locked in their own world, each viewing themselves as the most important person within it And all the time The House talked to them, its brick and timber frame expanding with the heat of the day, as if it was taking in a great breath of summer.

'And you're not doing yourself any good by being so friendly with the Earl of Essex!'

'I know you hate Essex,' said Gresham. 'Fine. It's your privilege. I find him amusing and good company. You don't seem to mind being entertained by him, do you? You've been to Essex House with me often enough. And when he's dined here.' And you're jealous of his wealth, his looks and above all his friendship with me, thought Gresham.

'I think the man's rotten to the core, corrupt even. The crowd he hangs around with-'

'Now there you do have a point,' said Gresham. 'I concede he chooses his other friends very badly. When we go out together I'm usually spared his friends.'

'Which makes them hate you for being his favourite,' said George, 'and gets you in even more bad odour. But the conspiracy theories — I'm telling you they're serious. And being seen with a playboy Earl who might well be a conspirator himself doesn't help.'

'They must think I've a lot of time on my hands.' Gresham stood up, and stalked moodily to the great window overlooking the river. There was even more traffic on it now, since George's arrival. The river was a quick and clean way to move round London, avoiding the dust of summer and the clinging, lethal mud of winter. Always provided one did not fall in, or look too closely at the lumps that swept by on the tide, bobbing half in and half out of the water. 'George, I've hardly been at Court these past six months.'

'That's part of what's inflamed the rumours. They talk about you behind their hands when you're there. They get even more nervous when you're not. And when has the truth ever mattered at Court? What matters is if the Queen gets to hear them: that you're involved in every plot against her? If she does, you're dead. She's ready to hang, draw and quarter any man or woman who even mentions death in front of her face, never mind anyone she thinks is plotting to put a successor on her throne.'

Gresham turned to face George, and looked him calmly in the eyes. Should he tell his oldest friend the truth? The truth that George was every bit as much under threat as himself? And all because of him?

'Black magic,' said Gresham, throwing himself down on a chair so hard that it squeaked on the floor. 'Worship of Lucifer. Ritual sacrifices. Of children. Have they mentioned that?'

'What?' said George, caught out for once.

'The latest story is that someone from the Very Top Circles is heavily into satanism.'

'Is it true?' said George. He was part irritated at a story he had not heard and part fascinated. Witchcraft was still an active and all-present evil to all bar the most educated of the populace and, as George's interest showed, to large numbers of those who were educated.

'God knows,' said Gresham. 'Or if he doesn't, presumably Satan does.' Clearly George knew nothing. Which could mean that the story had not spread widely. Or that it did not and had not ever existed except as a smokescreen to hide whatever Cecil's real message and intentions were. 'As for me, as I'm not at all sure that I believe in God it would be perverse of me to believe in Satan, wouldn't it? Northumberland's certainly been dabbling in all sorts of things, and Raleigh's been at some of the sessions more often than's good for him. I've seen nothing of it with Essex. But he compartmentalises his life, and I suspect I'm in my own compartment.'

The Earl of Northumberland was known as the Wizard Earl, gathering a group of people round him who conducted what they called scientific experiments but which others called witchcraft.

'Well,' said George, 'I haven't heard those stories.' His voice took on strength again. 'But I've heard stories connecting you to every plot in Christendom. You're in danger, my boy. You really are. This country is a powder keg poised to explode. You're in danger of being seen as a lit fuse, and of being snuffed out.'

Something in the plain simplicity of George's affection bit into Gresham's heart, though no man and only an exceptional woman would have seen it on his face.

'Thank you,' said Gresham in a flat tone. 'I mean it. I really do. But you see, I don't care very much, quite frankly, about God or Mammon. I suppose I have to admit I care just a little bit about the rather bumbling force of nature that I know of as you. And rather less — indeed, a mere tiny fraction — about that great fat lump who's just polished off a flagon of rather good wine that's wasted on him' — Mannion grinned — 'but otherwise I don't care for very much, except survival.' And perhaps I am starting to care even less about that, he thought. 'Look, I'm not a fool. I've heard the rumours. I'm trying to keep out of it, away from the whole bloody Court, spend as much time as I can in Cambridge.'

'Fair point,' rumbled George, recognising the concession Gresham had made in admitting so much, 'but the College want to tear you apart as well, don't they?'

Gresham was well on the way to refounding the decrepit Granville College where he had studied as a youth. Refounding a Cambridge College, even with all the money he had, had shown that Cambridge had just as many knives as London.

'When you've never been popular,' said Gresham with resignation, 'you learn to do without it. To be frank, I'm trying to get out of the world of spying. When I was younger and it was run by Walsingham it was more exciting. Now, most of the time it just seems dirty.'

'It always was dirty,' said George. 'It's just that you didn't want to see it like that and were quite excited by the dirt. Well, you'd better be warned of something else,' said George. 'All the rumours are that you're popular with the Earl of Essex for a different reason.'