'If things are said often enough,' said Cecil through lips that seemed to get thinner with every word, 'they are overheard. And reported. And luck mixed with an over measure of bravado are likely to prove false gods.'
'I bow to your knowledge of falsity,' said Gresham. 'In that area you're certainly my better.'
'This is nonsense,' said Cecil, implying boredom with the exchange. 'The plain truth is that it is you who are the fool. You come here at my bidding, despite the several and various dangers that you know such a summons involves, of your own free will. Only a foolish man would come.'
'Even the Devil can speak true at times,' sighed Gresham. 'And does your Lordship, who knows all things, know why this should be so.
'You think,' said Cecil, with a voice like a surgeon's knife, 'that you come driven by a thirst for danger, a craving for excitement.'
'And isn't that true?' asked Gresham more idly than he felt. The conversation was taking a strange turn, like so many of those he had had with this spider of a man.
'Perhaps in part,' said Cecil. 'But I think there is a greater reason. I think it is because you want to die.'
Damn the man! Damn him to hell! Gresham fought to keep his heart steady, to stop the colour rising in his face.
'I am quite used to your acting as my executioner, at least at one or more remove, my Lord,' said Gresham, no trace of his feelings in his voice. 'I think I prefer your unbridled malice to your concern. At least the former is more familiar.'
'Concern?' For the first time something approaching a laugh came into Cecil's tone. A laugh an undertaker might give at being overpaid for the funeral. 'I have no concern for you. I despise you and all you stand for, you and the other overgrown children who gallivant fecklessly through life. Yet I note and understand you, so I may use you for the betterment of this nation. You are too proud to take your own life, Henry Gresham. Yet you are ashamed of that life, and push yourself nearer to death on every mission you undertake in the hope that some other will do what you are too much of a coward to do and take the life which you increasingly despise.'
Gresham gazed into the malevolent glare of Cecil's eyes and did not flinch.
'I do have one advantage over you, my Lord,' he said. 'I know myself. You may indeed know more of me than I might wish. But of yourself, you know too little.'
Cecil was almost mocking now, sure of his advantage.
'I know the death of a young man, the rather foul death, was your responsibility. And that the burden of guilt you quite rightly bear is dissolving into your soul like acid.'
It had to come to that, of course. Gresham could feel hot, biting tears trying to rise up in his eyes, to scour them. He must resist.
'I'll make my own peace with the world, and with my soul,' he said, 'and if I do it by fighting that same world and fighting my own soul, it's really no concern of yours. It's a battle that a mind like yours can never comprehend. But you, my Lord, you'll truly go to hell, unlike those of us who already think ourselves in it.'
'You have taken on spiritual duties now?' sneered Cecil. 'How odd, for someone who attends church so rarely.' Another, minor dig, of course. Failure to attend Protestant worship was a punishable offence. Ironically, the taint of closet Catholicism had clung to Gresham ever since the Armada episode. That was despite his nearly losing his life fighting for the Protestants in the Low Countries. 'And why should I prepare for hell? I who have murdered no man, and have no young man — or should I say lover — on my conscience?'
'Because you are in love with power,' said Gresham. 'And the lust after power is the greatest evil of humankind. You cloak your lust with words such as "duty" or "loyalty", yet it is all a hypocritical fraud. You are consumed by your lust, your need to control, your need to dominate. You will plot, lie, deceive and kill — though never by your own hand, of course, always through others — all to keep the power that increasingly replaces the blood in your veins. And you do it for self. Not for God, Queen, nor King. For you.'
It was Cecil who could find no instant answer this time. Finally he spoke, 'And do you not enjoy the power you have, Henry Gresham?' he asked quietly. 'The power of your physical strength, the power of your mind, the power money gives you to ignore the fashion or to follow it as you will, and to be yourself?'
'I'm sure I do,' said Gresham, 'but unlike you, I don't actually enjoy myself much, or even really approve of myself. Or of life, as it happens. I survive. That's all. In our world, survival is the only virtue of which I can be certain.'
Cecil allowed another pause.
'Even if this fallacy of my… obsession with power was true, do you not contribute to it by doing what I ask? How can you criticise my supposed wielding of power when you help me, albeit in a minor way, to preserve it?'
'Because Machiavelli was right,' said Gresham. 'Rulers need to be evil. We need the power-mad, such as yourself. How often in this country has a good King led his people to defeat and suffering? The saintly Edward the Confessor? While he was confessing, I wonder how many of his subjects he condemned to death, rape and pillage through his innocence, his lack of worldly wisdom? The by-product of your lust for power and the way it has perverted your soul is that you work for stability, for peace, because stability and peace preserve your power. You do the right things for completely the wrong reasons.'
'The wrong reasons? The Spanish have no cause to love you, Henry Gresham. Would you wish to serve under a Spanish monarch? You know of course that only last month thirty-eight fly-boats and five thousand Spanish troops sailed up the Channel, and were only stopped when my Lord of Cumberland sank eighteen of them in Calais?'
True, thought Gresham, but they had never been intended for England. They were Spanish reinforcements for the war in the Netherlands.
Cecil was not to be stopped. 'And you know we face disaster in Ireland, with Tyrone attacking the Blackwater even as we speak? With the Lord Deputy of Ireland dead and no one in his place? We are besieged by enemies, without and within. You suggest that at this time there should be no power in the land?'
I do not question your belief that the power in the land should be you, thought Gresham. Out loud he said, 'I question one thing, my Lord.’
'What might that be?'
Had he got to Cecil? This time it was difficult to tell. 'You mention your wielding of power. I was under the impression you were fighting for power. The power to defeat Spain. The power, even, to defeat Ireland. But to wield external power you have to secure your foundations. Inner power. That long and, to be frank, exceedingly tedious feud between yourself and the Earl of Essex does seem to be coming to a head, with the Queen as she is. I assume that's why you asked to see me? Some dirty work to give you an advantage over Essex? Who, as you know full well, is a companion of mine?'
Cecil gazed flatly at Gresham, then surprised him by standing up, slowly and as if in some pain, and going over to the sideboard parked in isolation between two of the windows. A fine Venetian decanter and two matching glasses stood on it. Cecil turned to look at Gresham, motioning to the decanter. Gresham shrugged non-committally, and Cecil poured a single glass, bringing it over to Gresham.
Good God! This was an unusual day! The wine was actually quite drinkable. Cecil usually only offered cat's piss to visitors.
'My congratulations on the wine, my Lord,' said Gresham.
'Someone important was here before you,' said Cecil.
Ouch, thought Gresham. That put me firmly in my place. It never did to underestimate Cecil. Or to cease attacking him, for that matter.
The obvious thing was for Gresham to ask who the important person had been. The amusing thing therefore was not to ask. As he had hoped, Cecil was eventually forced to provide the answer.
'The important person was one of my family's oldest friends. He brought me news. Disturbing news.'
'Good God!' said Gresham. 'Don't tell me someone told the Queen how much Burghley House cost your father?' Lord Burghley may have done noble service to the Queen, but he had als
o done noble service to himself, a service fully witnessed in the size of the mansion he had erected to his own glory.
Cecil's eyes actually closed for a brief moment, in the manner of someone having to restrain the strongest of all possible urges, but he carried on calmly enough.
'Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, fourth Earl of Southampton. Your puerile insults have at least one germ of truth. Both are… crucial. And both have links to my father, Lord Burghley.'
What man referred to his father by his title, thought Gresham?
'Both men were taken into your father's care as boys,' said Gresham. A spy who hoped to survive needed a secure grasp of facts, living as he did amid so many fictions. 'They became his wards when their fathers died. As one of the richest and most influential people in the country, he was flooded with requests to take on the aristocratic children whose parents had been stupid enough to die. He made an exception to his normal rule in their case. Indeed, you must have met them as children yourself. Rather, after you were a child yourself — if ever you had a childhood.'
'Yes, I had a childhood,' said Cecil. For a brief moment, the tiniest of flickers, something fell from his eyes, and a huge sadness came into their hard, undecipherable depths. 'You were taunted because you had no father. I was taunted because of who my father was. And, of course, because I was a cripple.'
Gresham had learnt that there were times when silence was the best answer.
Eventually, Cecil carried on. Brisk. Businesslike.
'And yes, I did meet them in my father's houses. And saw them for what they were. Children reveal themselves even more easily than adults.'
'And what was it you saw?'
'Two young minds unfettered, controlled by no sense of duty, no sense of loyalty, no sense of a higher good. Controlled rather by their own vainglory, their own sense of self. Two minds controlled by their bodies, driven by physicality, devoted solely to the pursuit of their own gratification,' Cecil replied, unable to control the curl of his lip that spoke of his disgust.
'Sounds wonderful fun to me,' said Gresham. 'You should have tried it. I find Essex highly amusing.'
'I know of your relationship. It is an advantage to me in what I wish, not a disadvantage.'
'Ignoring my friendship with Essex for a moment, what do two children pulling the wings off flies in wanton cruelty have to do with a man hoping to take control of the new kingdom as he and his family have controlled the old kingdom? And how is your dear father, by the way?'
'My father continues to be unwell,' said Cecil briefly. 'And as for the two children, they have nothing to do with that man,' said Cecil, the grammatician in him revealing itself. 'They may have an unfortunate amount to do with that man in the future.'
'Why so?' said Gresham. 'Two wanton souls bent on destruction, as you see them, are surely only of concern to themselves and the few who truly love them.'
'Such "wanton souls", as you describe them, rarely satisfy themselves with self-destruction. They are only happy when they carry others along with them.' Cecil's tone was full of loathing.
'Which, for someone whose vision of the world is dominated by his place in it, must mean that you perceive in these two a threat to yourself,' said Gresham.
Cecil carried on as if he had not heard him.
'Essex is the leader of the pair, always has been, even in their childhood. Southampton is rotten to the core, a vehicle merely of his own pleasure. It was always so.'
'But what have they done in their adulthood,' asked Gresham boring in now to the core of the issue, 'to arouse your very evident concern?'
'It is not what they have done. It is the perception of what they are doing.'
Gresham jammed his goblet down on the table. 'Clearly, you need me. And if I'd wanted an oracle I could have sailed to Delphos. Tell me.'
Cecil looked distastefully at Gresham.
'It is rumoured that both men are involved in satanic rituals. Black magic. Rituals that involve child sacrifice.'
Gresham paused for thought. So this was where the rumours came from.
'So what if they are?'
'The rumour does not stop there. It is said that they learnt such satanic observances in the household of my father. Not just in the house of my father. From his second son. From myself.'
Cecil took another sip from his wine. This was indeed an historic night.
'They say, apparently, that my father was so disappointed with his first son that he entered into a pact with Satan.' Burghley's first son was a buffoon. 'That in exchange for his soul, his sons and heirs would hold power in England.'
It is a rare moment in the life of a human being to feel that one is looking straight into the soul of a fellow man. For a moment, Gresham felt he saw into the heart of Robert Cecil.
'The rumours say that the Devil granted my father his wish. That he gave power in England to him and to his children. That he marked me with the Devil's mark, hunched my back, commanded my nurse to drop me in childhood to remind my father that Satan's gifts come at greater than the asking price, to remind him of who the True Lord was. And that, being born unto the Devil, I recruited the boys in my father's care to that same false faith.'
There was a long silence. The frightening thing was that Gresham was entirely inclined to believe the whole story. He had never believed that hell was warm. Fire could burn, true enough, as he had cause to know. Yet warmth, light and heat were also the source of life. No, hell was cold. Burningly, bitterly cold, the cold of death, of exhaustion. And throughout his life he had sensed that cold in Robert Cecil, ice to Gresham's fire.
'I can see,' said Gresham, 'that such a story might be politically embarrassing. And, by the way, I've seen no hint of any such behaviour in Essex. As for that whingeing little turd, Southampton, I can't speak for him.'
Cecil looked at him, almost pityingly.
'I do not need a vote from the populace to carry on in my role,' he said scathingly, telling a lesser man the obvious truth. 'I do not care what stories go round the taverns, or even the Church. And I am close enough to the Queen to defend myself should she hear these rumours.'
'So what part do I play in all this?' asked Gresham. 'If what you want is for me to sell my soul to Satan and use my newly acquired powers of access to visit him and plead your case, I'm afraid the answer is no. You see, I'm not sure he really exists. At least, not as an outside figure. If he is there at all, he is there as part of everyone. Rather a central figure, actually, in anyone claiming humanity.'
Gresham did not shiver. He had trained himself better than that. Nevertheless, the fact remained that a cold wind blew down the room as he spoke, fluttering even the heavy hangings and causing the fire to billow and smoke to come out into the room.
'I do not require you to visit that gentleman. I do require you to take a secret message to another,' said Cecil.
'Who?' said Gresham, suddenly bored with the game. He sensed this was why he had been brought here.
'King James of Scotland,' said Cecil, calmly. 'To deny these rumours. To show him they are false.'
Damn it! Gresham knew he must have registered his shock on his face! Cecil had just announced his own death sentence. No wonder he had placed no listeners behind the hangings. Cecil wished to communicate with the King of Scotland, the most likely heir to Elizabeth's throne. If it were known he was writing secretly to James his comfortable lodgings would be exchanged instantly for the lowest and darkest dungeon in the Tower.
And that would be a kindness compared with what would happen to the messenger entrusted with such an embassy. Elizabeth had just sent off a foul and abusive letter to James, reprimanding him for making it known in Europe that he would be the next King of England.
'My Lord,' said Gresham, his manner now composed, 'can I with my poor muddled wits try to make some sense of this? You've just admitted to me, someone who's admitted that they hate you, that you wish to communicate secretly with the King of Scotland. Such an admission is suf
ficient to lose you your job and probably your life, and to condemn me, were I fool enough to act as your messenger, to a very painful and probably very sordid death. So you've given me on the one hand a chance to destroy you, and on the other a death warrant for myself.'
'I have told you the truth. As in so many cases, the truth does not justify itself. It is justified by its surroundings. If you left this room and said I wanted to communicate with James of Scotland, no one would believe you — you, who are implicated in every plot, and rapidly becoming an eminence noir in all who seek to replace our present Queen. Instead, they would believe you to be the person working for King James, and damn you accordingly for trying to bring the Queen's minister into disrepute. You know the truth of what I need. For once, that truth will remain with you. People might believe I am secretly in correspondence with James of Scotland. They will not believe it if their source of information is you.'
Gresham sighed. 'What you're saying is that I'm your only safe messenger. Anyone else you asked could use the information against you. I'm the only person no one would believe if I betrayed you. No one believes or trusts in me. I'm damaged goods. What a brilliant idea! How on earth would anyone believe that you would trust a damning message to someone who clearly hated you so much and was inherently untrustworthy?'
Cecil was silent.
Gresham spoke again. 'You're making me your messenger because no one believes you'd be stupid enough to do so. You've instant deniability. I can perfectly see what's in it for you. I'm rather less clear as to what's in it for me.'
'The survival of your friends,' said Cecil.
Gresham's heart missed a beat. He said nothing, always the greatest challenge to an interrogator. Cecil fell into the trap. People always did.
'You have only three true friends. I discount Essex — a drinking companion and a mere amusement. You care truly for only three people: that man-mountain of a servant you seem to have afforded the role of a father; Lord Willoughby, your friend and ally since you were at school; and that peasant girl you picked up on your way home from the wars.' Cecil paused for effect.
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