The rebel heart
( Henry Gresham - 4 )
Martin Stephen
Martin Stephen
The rebel heart
Prologue
February, 1598 London
It should be more difficult to kill a Queen. The final simplicity of the act diminished it, reduced it to something mundane. The King of Spain, the King of France, the King of Scotland, all gathering like vultures over the throne of England; its aged, childless Queen surely soon to die. So what if that death were hastened? What difference in a few months? Or a year? To kill an old woman was not to go against nature, merely to speed it up a little.
The winter had been bitter, and a biting, cutting wind hacked through London, as if determined to scour the flesh off human backs. The Queen was an extraordinary sixty-five years old, and felt the cold more and more. The order had gone out to stoke up the fires. The chimneys in the Palace were badly swept, and the sharp tang of woodsmoke mixed with the smooth perfumes and acrid sweat of overdressed men. The wonderful symmetry of the dark, arched beams paraded the length of the Great Hall, impervious to the squabbling beneath.
The blustering wind caused the fires to blow back, and every so often wafted a stench of shit from some forgotten drain, or from a curtained alcove where a drunken courtier had dropped his load. Corruption. Foul bodies. They were all there, the colour of their finery lighting up the sombre hangings of the Presence Chamber at Greenwich Palace: the fat clergy and the dandified nobles, the wrinkled and the fresh-faced, united in their greed and craving for power; the parasites who fed off the dying flesh of this tired, decaying old Court, gathered like crows over rotting meat.
Three men stood out, each with his court in miniature assembled round him: Sir Robert Cecil; Sir Walter Raleigh. And the Earl of Essex. His was the largest group, the noisiest, the centre of this firmament. Tall, acknowledging his own arrogance and impossibly good-looking, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was laughing gaily as if he did not have a care in the world, a carefree young man surrounded by the youngest men at Court. As he laughed, so did others, even some who thought they hated him. It was impossible not to be drawn in, infected by his gaiety. Alone of the assembled Bishops and courtiers, nobles and servants, his eyes did not continually flick to the door, guarded by a gold-chained and velvet-clad gentleman. Was the Queen even now making her move to chapel?
Routine. Every Sunday at Greenwich the Queen exited from her private chambers and walked across the Presence Chamber over fresh hay strewn on the floor, with tiny, fragrant strands caught in the bottom of the fine tapestries hung on the walls. The door would be flung open; the procession would start. First a gaggle of gentlemen, Barons, Earls and Knights of the Garter, all richly dressed and bareheaded, puffed up with privilege and false pride, security the last thing on their minds. Then the Lord High Chancellor, bearing the seal of office in a great red purse, flanked by a man carrying the royal sceptre and another the sword of state in its red scabbard, studded with golden fleur-de-lis.
Ritual, ceremony, routine: the false gods by which false monarchs impose their power on poor and flawed mortals. Then would come the true false god: Queen Elizabeth I of England.
She knew how to make an entrance. The ladies-in-waiting were as comely and beautiful as she was ragged with age, their high chins and firm steps seeming to accentuate the line of their bodies beneath the white, virginal court dresses they wore. It took fifty men to guard the Queen on the short journey from her apartments to the chapel, each one armed with a gilt halberd, sparkling in the sunlight that drenched in through the high windows.
All this pomp and pageantry for an old, old woman in a red wig, her teeth black, with small black eyes, a hook nose and a thin mouth. At least she had not gone to fat in her dotage, but the makeup lay thick on her pasty face, threatening to run on a hot day.
He lurked at the back of the crowd, almost leaning against the tapestried wall in his desperate desire to seem calm. Yet it was wrong to be calm. No one here was calm, when fortunes could be made by a word from the Queen; or whole careers vanish in an instant by the absence of a glance. To be nervous was to be normal in this strange circus of dreams. He had to time this perfectly. Yet now the moment had come he was calm, almost unnaturally so. The greatest desire of those present was to speak to the Queen, kneel before her and pray that they might be one of the privileged few she invited to stand, or perhaps even one of the extraordinarily lucky men for whom she took off her glove and invited to kiss her jewelled, liver-spotted hand. It was known that she rarely noted anyone before she had progressed the first five or six yards, so the courtiers would rush for the middle ground. When the door crashed open, the crowd would surge forward, the noise would rise to the rafters, the petitioners would move through them or go round the side to take up their positions on either side of the Queen. Bustle, movement, noise: the courtiers half expecting to be brushed aside by the guards. Twenty seconds to burst through to where the Queen stood by the newly opened door, soaking up the attention, before she started to walk. The Lord High Chancellor would be way ahead of her by then, her ladies-in-waiting still gathered behind her in the private apartments and the guards not yet formed up.
That was the moment when a man with faith could kill a Queen.
The pistol had been loaded, primed and checked ruthlessly. It was hidden in the servant's tunic which he would rip open as he lunged forward. Its fastenings were loosened, hanging by only one or two threads in preparation. The head. It had to be the head. God knew what corsetry and whalebone the old lady had on under her gown and mantle to turn aside a blade. With his left hand he would tear open his mantle and bring out the pistol, put it to her head and pull the trigger, while with his right hand he would grab the dagger also hidden under his clothing. If, God forbid, the pistol misfired he would plunge the dagger into her right eye, the one nearest to him.
He would die; he knew that. He prayed he would have time to do it by his own hand. If not, and before they laid him on the rack, he would bite his own tongue off and bleed to death.
Obsessed with his mission, he hardly noticed the thin, slight figure standing a little distance behind him, a man in his mid-thirties with a thin scar running from his chin to just below his right ear. He was drab in appearance, nondescript, looking like one of the lawyers who sometimes acted as clerks to the great men in Court, and who occasionally, as a treat, were allowed into one of the Anterooms so they could tell their families they had seen the Queen. He was the only person hanging back at the rear of the crowd. The assassin dismissed him. He looked to pose no physical threat, and by the time he realised what was happening the Queen would be dead.'
He tensed. Was that a scuffling behind the great door? Yes! It was opening, scraping on the floor as a small stone in the freshly strewn hay caught under its bottom edge. The advance party moved forward, the sceptre seeming to capture the light and hurl it back. Then he saw Gloriana, dressed in white with a black silk mantle, gazing imperiously, almost petulantly, at the assembled horde. Please, dear God! Allow this act in your name! Now!
A great silence descended inside his head. His tunic came undone with effortless ease. He saw a button fly off and bounce one, two, three times on the stone floor. His hand grasped the familiar smoothness of the pistol's butt. He took his first step forward, the weapon already halfway out.
The thin, nondescript man leapt forward, clutched the assassin. It was as if two iron pincers closed round his upper body, the pain and shock so sudden that he lost all his breath. His arms pinioned, the pistol hung from his immobilised hand, half jammed in his doublet. Instinctively he tried to twist round, to face whoever had attacked him, his movements forced by frenzy. The slight man did not loosen his grip but turned
with him. Off balance, the hugging couple collapsed on to the wall where there was a gap between two tapestries. And vanished.
The tiny, open service door was hidden behind the hangings. The two fell awkwardly through the tapestries, tumbled down the stairs in almost comic silence, the only real noise the clatter of the pistol as it slipped from the man's hand and followed them, bouncing on the stairs.
The assassin was stunned for a moment. The thin man had only a few seconds. Guards, someone must have seen the squabble, would be charging down the stairs in seconds. Like a lithe snake, the man stood up and, placing his boot full on the assassin's neck, pushed with all his strength. In almost the same movement he pulled out his dagger and plunged it through the assassin's eye, feeling it grate on the back of the skull as a fountain of blood and tissue leapt out to stain the lace on his sleeve. Three, four guards were at the top of the stairs now, clumping down them.
Had only the sharp-eyed guards seen the fracas? He hoped so. It would make life so much easier.
The thin man leant back against the cold stone wall.
'He had a pistol,' he said by way of explanation to the guards. 'Meant for the Queen, I think. His anger was indescribable. I had to kill him before he blew my head off. Now, take me to the Master-at-Arms.'
Uncertainly, unsure of whether they had a saviour or a suspect, the guards surrounded the thin man, escorted him away. Two of them held up the grotesque body of the dead man, his eye socket a blackened hole, leaving a trail of blood behind him as his feet dragged over the slabs, flap-flapping.
Damn him! the thin man was thinking. Damn the dead man! How dare he act before his time, before the due orders had been given!
Part 1
The Road to Scotland
Chapter 1
Last Week of May, 1598 London
‘My master demands your presence,' the man had said. Few people walked into the palatial house of Sir Henry Gresham and made demands, if they valued their skins.
But of course this was the messenger to Sir Robert Cecil, the Queen's Chief Secretary. It was late afternoon, and all over the country men would be tramping back from the fields, their limbs aching, to the damp hovels with bare-arsed and mud-stained children. In London, those with respectable jobs were setting up the shutters, and the light was in the eyes of those who plied their trade by night.
'This evening. At the Palace.' The messenger's boots were dripping mud on the floor, and his chin was thrust back arrogantly. Mannion, Gresham's body servant, chose that moment to slip out of the room.
Cecil liked to summon Gresham at night and conduct his business in secret. That much was normal. So was the size of the messenger. Cecil's messengers were always huge, surly men who seemed to sneer rather than speak their message from their master. Perhaps Cecil, part hunchback as he was, chose his servants to compensate for his own ugliness.
'Your master is a servant to the Queen and to God, as are we all. Neither he, nor you, are God,' said Gresham coldly. He could feel the sharp sense of fear beating at his heart, yet knew not a sign of it would show outwardly. 'You've failed to address me correctly,' he carried on. 'You've failed to use any of the words a child would have been beaten for neglecting — such key words as "please" or "if it please you". You have the opportunity to repeat your request, in language more suited to that of a servant addressing a gentleman. If you fail to take advantage of my generosity, I'll have you beaten. Like a child.'
The tone was flat, cold and intensely threatening. The man blanched, but his arrogance went very deep. He was servant to a man who created the law, not one who obeyed it.
'You would beat the servant of Robert Cecil? The Queen's Chief Secretary? I think not.' His lip was curled in scorn. The initial fear he had felt at Gresham's icy tone was leaving him as quickly as it had come.
'I would not dirty my hands,' said Gresham very quietly, glancing up and looking into the eyes of the servant. Cecil's man could not hold the gaze, looked away. There was a strange intensity in the startling blue of Gresham's eyes so at odds with his dark hair. The look was chilling in its inhumanity. Yes, the servant thought, this is a man who is capable of doing terrible things. They would.' Gresham nodded at someone behind the man, who turned to see Mannion grinning at him from the door. Three lusty porters stood beside him, the first with the flattened nose that bespoke a lifetime of drunken brawls. All three carried stout wooden cudgels.
'Now,' said Gresham, 'you wished to make a request of me?'
Conflicting emotions flickered across the man's face. He chose the path of least pain. He turned again and looked at Mannion. Mannion smiled at him. That was enough.
'Sir Henry…' he faltered, clearly hating it, clearing his throat. 'My master commands-'
Gresham raised an eyebrow.
'My master requests..’
Gresham would go, of course. He always did. Like a mouse who could not resist the cheese in the trap. Why did he insist oh playing these silly games?
It was late enough to be dark. The streets were treacherous with mud and slime. A horse at night had no way of knowing if the puddle on the road was one inch or two feet deep, until it trod in it and threw its rider. The tide was on their side, so Gresham opted to go upstream to Whitehall, rowed by four men in Gresham livery all of whom grinned at him and seemed pleased to have been hauled out of their beds.
The torches fore and aft in the boat guttered and threw an oily reflection on the black water. Gresham sat at the stern, pensive yet excited, feeling the surge of the water as the oars bit deep. He heard the sucking smack-smack of the blades, his ears attuned to the sound of other oars, other boats. The river was dangerous at night, as were the streets, even for a short journey. There were crossbows and boat axes on board, and it was part of the household routine to check them every day. The lights of the Palace glittered on the waters, fewer and fewer of its windows flaring into the night nowadays as the Court seemed to die a little each week alongside its Queen.
Robert Cecil's room was richly panelled, with a line of stone-mullioned windows down the left-hand side, full of very old, diamond-shaped panes of glass. The light did not so much pass as ripple through them. There were three ornate hangings on the right-hand wall, concealing a series of doors. Or, as it was Cecil, more likely stone seats where men could sit unseen and take notes of the conversation. In browns, greens and russet reds, the hangings illustrated scenes from the Bible. Apparently Cecil had a sense of humour: one of them showed the massacre of the innocents. He had made no attempt to cover the bare, stone floor, and the fire in the huge, stone fireplace decorated with Henry VIII's coat of arms had only a few meagre spluttering logs in it. At least it gave out more heat than its master.
Cecil was dressed in an unfashionably long gown with fur-trimmed collar, and the huge ruff that helped to hide his one shoulder that was higher than the other. Older than Gresham, he always looked half-starved; small and hard black eyes in his pale face, emotionless except for an occasional flash of the extraordinary intelligence that had got him so far. He sat in a high-backed chair at the head of a long table. Table, chairs and panelling looked to have been cut almost from the same tree, their surfaces polished to perfection, hard, glittering. The guest of the moment was clearly meant to sit at the other end of the table, on what was little more than a stool. The fifteen or so other, high-back chairs that Gresham knew could be ranged on either side of the table had been put away somewhere, presumably to make Gresham feel discomfited. Instead he picked up the stool, and walked with it up the length of the table, plonked it down and sat beside Cecil. On his right-hand side, of course. It was done purely to annoy, and it succeeded. A little tic of displeasure flickered on Cecil's cheek.
Power. That was Cecil's game, his lust, his love and his meaning of life. The Queen was dying childless, and lasting power would go to the person who gambled correctly on her successor. The dark, swirling, treacherous currents of Court were more and more hurling Cecil against the Earl of Essex; a power struggle threaten
ing to explode at any moment.
When Gresham appeared Cecil had made a vague gesture as if he might stand up, but had failed to do so. He raised his chin and looked down his nose at Gresham, but before he could speak Gresham cut in.
'Well, my Lord,' he said, 'who are you seeking to make the next King or Queen of England?'
There was a distinct colour change on Cecil's face. Good. The advantage would not last; Cecil always recovered well. And Gresham had caught him this glancing blow right at the start of the fight. It meant nothing, but he might as well enjoy the moment while it lasted. Gresham had toyed with asking how the mission to King Henry of France had gone, knowing that its failure would rankle with Cecil, but had decided being outrageous was the better hit.
'It's all the talk of the town, actually,' Gresham said, as if he were discussing the result of a cock fight rather than speaking pure treason. 'Some people believe the King of Scotland is your choice, others the Spanish Infanta. But perhaps you have another favourite up your sleeve? Perhaps you intend to bury your feud with the Earl of Essex and acknowledge him as your master? Or will you use your undoubted charms on the ravishing Arbella?'
There may have been no child born to Elizabeth, but there were enough people with enough royal blood in them to allow the French ambassador to draw up a list of twenty-seven possible contenders for the Crown when Elizabeth died.
'You are aware that the statements you have just made could lose you your head? Perhaps as you appear to have lost your senses the difference would not be noted,' said Cecil. The voice was cold, hard as frost on gravel.
'But who is there to hear us, my Lord?' asked Gresham innocently. 'I know your honour would not permit you to have us overheard.' Well, there was no sideways glance to the hangings, at least. They probably were alone.
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