‘It was certainly uncharacteristic. But I think two things happened. Firstly, he was really shocked by what James was. Cecil’s shrewd enough to see that James is trouble. This must have seemed like a good opportunity for someone else to take the risk and get rid of him. Secondly, I think that just for once Cecil let his ambition dominate his intellect. I think he really did see himself as being able to take advantage of events to make himself King in all but name. But I also think he was starting to have cold feet, and was over half way to bailing out when I saw him.’
‘How would he have done that?’
‘Simple. Call off the troops. Contact the Livery Companies and tell them to pull the funding plug and send the soldiers home, or be exposed.’ Jane thought for a moment.
‘You think there’s a chance he’d already called off the troops when you saw him, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ replied Gresham. ‘In which case he’s rubbing his little paws together in glee, and reminding himself just how much rental income Aldgate brings him annually.’
‘You don’t seem to mind,’ said Jane, snuggling up to him. ‘I’m surprised.’
‘No,’ said Gresham, ‘I don’t mind. I meant what I said to him about wealth being a bad thing at times; the College is actually better off without Aldgate. And if he thinks he’s got one over me, my best guess is that he’ll retreat into a sort of suspended hostility towards me, rather than the active one he was pursuing before he rescued my Fellowship.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘To bind me to him in debt. And to force me to spend more time in Cambridge, less in London, with a corresponding decline in my ability to meddle.’
Silence.
‘You were right about Raleigh,’ Gresham said.
‘I know,’ said Jane.
‘He was using me,’ said Gresham. ‘He peddled me that line after the trial, that he hadn’t implicated me because of you. It was rubbish, of course. He kept me out of it because he intended to set me up as the leader of a failed Spanish invasion, make me a scapegoat.’
‘I know,’ said Jane. ‘What will you do?’
‘Nothing,’ said Gresham. ‘I’ll never see him again. I’ve written to tell him so, without saying why. He knows why.’
What agonies must Raleigh have gone through waiting to be released by the non-existent Spaniards. How his heart must have leapt at the ragged volley of musket fire, his mind straining to understand what was happening.
He was still awake an hour later. He could not get out of his mind the dying Queen, obsessed with her belief that the vengeful spirit of Mary Queen of Scots burned in her son, and would bring England to ruin. There was something in James that seemed to reinforce all that, an indefinable something that Gresham could sense without fully understanding it. What had Queen Elizabeth said? That he must look to his children? No sign of that, he thought, and instinctively turned to look fondly at Jane’s head on the pillow.
Who knows what the future held? He felt sleep swirling up like a mist at long last, and as he let it envelop him he felt himself wondering just what rabbit Cecil would bring out of his hat to reverse the headlong rush of James into unpopularity. Well, that was Cecil’s problem, not Gresham’s.
Gresham did not realise how, in due course of time, it would become Gresham’s problem, yet again in a way that threatened his own life and the lives of those he loved.
Historical Note
The peace meetings between England and Spain that became known as the Somerset House Conference started in May 1604. The treaty ending the war was signed in August 1604.
The area we now know as Aldgate, and which Henry Gresham would have known as Aldersgate, was transferred to the ownership of a certain rising family by means of an annuity paid during their lifetime to certain Fellows of a Cambridge College, exactly as described here. The historical event took place a few years before the fictional one described in this novel.
For those who know Cambridge, the fictional Granville College is sited on the opposite side of the River Cam from the very real Magdalene College, Cambridge.
No recorded historical events have been distorted in the writing of this novel.
The Coming of the King: Henry Gresham and James I (The Henry Gresham Series Book 3) Page 32