The Desperate remedy hg-1

by Martin Stephen

  'What you were given was in all probability a much diminished potion than this you see here now,' he had lectured. 'Be warned. What is here is five, ten times the strength of what you had before. Taken in small measure, and only in time of strictest need, it will offer release from pain both of the body and of the mind. Yet- be warned. Taken too often, it will imprison the taker whilst appearing to release him.'

  So the mixture, whatever it was, was dangerous to know, should only be taken sparingly and if the dangers were ignored would destroy you. Not a bad emblem for his dealings with Cecil, thought Gresham. He forced a minimal dose down Jane's barely resisting throat, and left her. He knew that her drug-induced sleep would fade into a more natural slumber, and that the twin healers of time and sleep would allow her not to forget what had happened, but to accept it and still live on. In time. For the pain in that time he. could do little, except help her over the first hurdle.

  That done and Jane settled, he posted Martha by her bedside and took himself off to think.

  Someone had tried to kill them on the river, that much was clear. Simple robbery? Gresham doubted it. There were easier pickings on the river that night, far easier than a boat manned by six sturdy men. The attacking boat had gone straight for them. It had been well-manned, heavy-built, expensive. This was not an attempted robbery. It was an attempted assassination.

  There were too many men, and some women, who might want Henry Gresham dead. There had been a rosary bead on Shadwell's corpse, and Shadwell’s final meeting had been with the Catholic Percy. There was a rosary round the neck of the ruffian who had tried to kill Jane. Had Gresham come too close to a new Catholic plot, first through Will Shadwell and then by means of Moll, and made himself their target? Or had he offended Bacon? Did Cecil want him dead, despite the papers that Gresham's death would release? Had someone found out his role in the Essex rebellion, and sought to take revenge in the name of the dead leader? Or had one of the Spaniards flooding the Court after the peace treaty found out about his involvement in the Armada, and decided that to exact vengeance on water would be sweet revenge for the loss of so many Spaniards and so much prestige? The Spaniards were the most

  Catholic nation in Europe, with rosary beads enough to fill the Thames. Had King James discovered the role Gresham had played in the execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, so many years ago, an execution which had acted to blood the young Henry Gresham into the world of espionage and intrigue? Mary had been a Catholic…

  There were simply too many options. Once, hiding in a ditch in Norfolk in pouring rain, a young rabbit had emerged from its burrow on the side of a dried-up stream and gambolled on the bed of the old watercourse, below Gresham. He had welcomed the animal, feeling in it an unspoken companion and noting that his cover must be good if the rabbit had not realised his presence. Then, swollen with the torrential rain, a dyke had burst and a small, rumbling wall of water torn down the old path of the stream. There were four, five, perhaps even six ways up from the bed, and Gresham willed the rabbit to run up one of them to safety. Yet the number of choices seemed to confuse the animal, which was still looking, stopping and starting when the water hit it and tumbled it along in its path, sucking it against one too many boulders. Its broken, twisted body lay there until the crows had plucked half its flesh off through the wet fur. Too many choices confused a man, as they had confused the rabbit. It was not movement that killed, but staying still. Someone was forcing an issue with Gresham. Someone wanted him dead. He must decide who it was.

  Concentrate! Will Shadwell's murder had started it all and a supper with a drunken Thomas Percy. Whatever he had heard there sent him running pell-mell off to Cambridge, and triggered his killing. Percy had command over men, was ruthless and would murder in an instant if he thought it would serve his own ends or ensure his survival. Had Percy ordered Shadwell's murder, regretting what he had told him, and Gresham's murder, fearing what he might find out? Percy was newly and surprisingly appointed to the King's bedchamber. He could have wished to kill Gresham as a Catholic fearful of the exposure of some plot, or perhaps even on the orders of the King.

  Shadwell’s ring linked Sam Fogarty to the murder, and because he was Cecil's creature linked it directly to Cecil himself. Yet it could be dangerous to draw too many conclusions from that. Gresham knew at least two nobles who were taking money from both the Spanish Catholics and the Lowland Protestants, and a rogue such as Sam could have two, three or four masters. Sam Fogarty was a Northumbrian. Was he in the pay of the arch Catholic, the Earl of Northumberland, as well as in Cecil's pay? Or was Sam Fogarty's true master the Catholic faith, and was he a spy in Cecil's household for that faith, as well as a spy for Cecil in Gresham's household? If Fogarty was a religious fanatic then the chances of Gresham getting the truth out of him were slim indeed. Men who were prepared to die on a bonfire for their faith, and who feared the fires of Hell if they betrayed it, often could not be broken even by torture.

  If Cecil wanted Gresham dead he would have been better off leaving him in Cambridge, where his only servant was Mannion and where a drunken student could climb into College under cover of dark, never mind an assassin. Yet Cecil had called him to London, to live in the well-guarded House, and where even on the river he was guarded by sturdy and loyal men. Cecil had much to lose by Gresham's death and too many secrets that risked exposure, but how much did he have to lose if the King his master had ordered Gresham's death? Now there would be a conundrum for his Lordship! Ordered to kill Gresham and out of favour if he failed, but very much out of favour if he succeeded and Gresham's papers became public knowledge. Cecil was devious enough to try and satisfy his master and keep Gresham alive by arranging a murder attempt, but ensuring that it failed. Yet if his assailants on the river had been in any way uncommitted to their task, Gresham had seen no sign of it.

  One coincidence struck Gresham as too obvious to be dismissed.

  Shadwell and Percy had dined in The Dagger. Shortly afterwards, Shadwell had been murdered. And where had Gresham chosen to go almost as soon as he could after seeing Cecil? To The Dagger, to meet the most notorious purveyor of information in London. Shortly afterwards, someone had tried to murder him. Visits to The Dagger were clearly very unhealthy propositions at present, and not only because of the quality of the ale. If Thomas Percy was behind the murder of Shadwell, Gresham's visit to The Dagger must have sounded every alarum bell in the man's head. What if Percy believed Shadwell had left a message for Gresham, writing down secretly whatever it was as insurance in case he never reached Gresham? What if Shadwell had told Moll whatever it was he had learnt, knowing it was only a matter of time before she met Gresham? It was time Moll left town, even if only as a precaution. She and The Dagger were too close to this fire for it not to burn her sooner or later, and he had too much affection and need for Moll to want to see her share Shadwell's fate.

  Gresham roused Mannion, who slept on an old army mattress by Gresham's bedroom door. Hastily he scribbled a note by the flickering light of the candle.

  'Here, take this to The Dagger, to Moll. Don't leave before you see it in her hands. Go armed, and wake three men to go with you.'

  It was two o'clock, with not even the bakers nor the milkmaids stirring, but Mannion did not question his orders. He gave a simple nod, and left. If Moll Cutpurse had any sense she would be gone from London by dawn, or hidden in some rat-infested warren in the City where even the King or a Catholic God could not find her. She would know when to emerge. Her kind always did. Would whoever the murderer was have gone for her already? He doubted it. A killing on the river, shrouded in fog, was one thing. It would take longer to flush Moll out of her den, cunning vixen that she was, and longer even than that to mount an assault on The Dagger, with Moll's private army of ruffians around her.

  He was no nearer an answer, though if Moll took his advice he might at least have stopped another murder.

  Should he have kept one of his attackers alive? In terms of Gresham's code of c
onduct the answer was clearly no. Life was the cheapest of all commodities. There was a simple rule for such piracy, as there was for the footpads who preyed in gangs on many roads: kill, or be killed. From the moment that prow had appeared out of the fog every person on board both boats, except poor Jane, knew that no quarter would be given. He killed only those who sought to kill him. It was life and the nature of death. In terms of information, would preserving one have helped? Probably not, he mused. Of course one of them could have been persuaded to talk. Any man could be persuaded to talk, given time. Yet torture could easily make men talk not the truth, but what they thought their interrogator wanted to hear. Under torture truth became less important than the release from pain. Gresham doubted any of the men even knew who their employer was. The boat would have been picked up from an anonymous wharf, the leader of the men recruited by a nameless nonentity in a back room in some ordinary or cheap tavern, and the leader then left to recruit his crew. Whoever had planned this attack was no amateur.

  The key was a series of names, the names provided by Moll: Thomas Percy had in some way to be the key, and his name led to the others: Tom Wintour, Robert Catesby, Kit and Jack Wright. They were all Catholics, all members of the ill-fated Essex rebellion. Something one of them knew had caused someone, possibly one of them, to mount one murder and try another. What was the cause on which they were meeting? What did they know that had to be kept at all costs from Henry Gresham?

  He needed a way in to that group. He needed a lever, a way of prising open the door to this group and letting his ears and eyes into their dealings. He waited in silence, allowing the candle to gutter and die, until the first flush of dawn streaked the sky and he heard Mannion return.

  'She's not a woman that likes to be woken up, master, that's for sure!' Mannion seemed undisturbed by being awakened in the small hours, and sent halfway across London with no breakfast.

  'If she takes my warning she won't be going back to bed tonight. She's at the root of all this, or at least The Dagger is…' Gresham explained briefly his thinking and the conclusions it had led him to.

  'This pack of Catholics is the key, the names she gave us. I must find out what they know. Every cutpurse and vagabond, every spy and traitor, every whoremonger we know -1 want them all on the trail of these names. I want to know when they launder their linen and where they throw the piss from their chamber pots… and work through those few we know we can trust. We mustn't be linked to these enquiries. And we must move fast!'

  Mannion nodded. This vast trawling for information looked as if it might be the biggest they had undertaken, but its principles and its urgency were not new. Yet despite that urgency, he did not move immediately.

  'Master?' Mannion was unusually hesitant. Gresham turned to him, expectantly. Mannion spoke slowly, as if he had given the matter much thought.

  'She's young. She's strong. She's more than in love. She's given herself to you. She'll survive anything. Except your despair.'

  Gresham thought for a moment.

  Must I forever hide, he thought for a brief moment. Then the moment passed.

  'Thank you,' he said, simply. The two men, divided by age and by breeding, locked eyes with each other. Words and thoughts for which no language had been invented passed between them in an instant. It was all that was needed.

  Gresham became brisk, businesslike. He gazed at Mannion thoughtfully, and spoke with a light-heartedness he did not feel.

  'I've no doubt you'll have been bragging about the twenty men you killed on the river?'

  For once, Mannion did not respond with a grin. Too serious for that, master. I've been in fights enough, you know as well as I. But it was a close-run thing last night, too close. Someone wants us dead, and they don't mind who else they kill in doing it. It was different, seeing her involved.'

  'Who wants us dead? Who is it this time?'

  Mannion did let a grin light his face, then. 'Why, there's no shortage, is there? It's a fine job you've done of offending just about everybody, in this country and half of Europe, and you not halfway through your natural life as yet.'

  'Be serious, old man. You must have your thoughts, as I've mine.'

  'I don't think,' said Mannion firmly. 'I just do. That's what I'm best at. I leave the thinking to you.'

  'But you have a nose on you, don't you? Who do you smell in all this? Percy and his Catholic brood? The King? Cecil? Spaniards?' Gresham issued the names as if he was punching the air with them.

  'My nose tell me this one stinks to high heaven. And there's only one person I know who stinks that much. Cecil. He's in it somewhere, I'll warrant.'

  'If Cecil's the one who wants me dead, he must think he can bear exposure from the papers I have lodged in Rome. Does that bring any of our recent visitors to mind?'

  'Tom Barnes?' responded Mannion.

  Tom Barnes was a devious, sideways-looking rat of a man, servant to one of the greatest villains in London, Tom Phelippes. Phelippes was a forger, code-breaker and general villain to the Government, who had tried one intrigue too far against his masters, and was now residing in less than comfort in the Tower of London. He had been betrayed by his servant Barnes, who had a disturbing habit of turning up on his master's business at midnight and banging on the downstairs shutters of the house he was visiting, instead of the door. Gresham had received just such a visit shortly before his departure to Cambridge, and shortly before Barnes had betrayed his master. Barnes had brought with him, and demanded a pretty price for, one letter in particular which he had stolen from his master's desk. That same letter was still under the boards in Gresham's Cambridge rooms. Gresham had been about to take the matter up with Phelippes himself when the man had suddenly been removed to the Tower.

  'Well now,' mused Gresham, 'I think Mr Barnes and his papers are suddenly explained to me, in a way that was not clear before.'

  'Are we going to the Tower?' asked Mannion.

  'Yes,' said Gresham simply. 'We must.'

  'Can we have breakfast first?' asked Mannion.

  The Tower of London stood guard grimly over the eastern section of the City walls, where they joined with the Thames. They went by boat, the only sensible way to travel such a distance. Gresham had four armed men come with him. He had not won a pitched battle on the river to be wiped out in some street skirmish. Rather than using one of the House's own vessels, with no Harry fit to take command, Mannion stood by the House's jetty and cried, 'Eastward Ho!' Knowing Gresham's mind, he dismissed several boats, vying for the rich trade of the great houses on the Strand, until one with a young head came in sight.

  'Do you land, or do you shoot the arches?' enquired the young man, grinning at his passengers. The hundreds, thousands of men who plied their trade on the river were as filthy with their mouths as they were with their clothes and bodies. This one looked almost healthy. Most people landed before the bridge, picking the boat up again if needs be after it had leapt through the narrow stone arches of London Bridge.

  'We go the fast way,' said Gresham firmly. Young as he was, the boatman was both strong and skilled. There were feet on either side of them as they shot through one of the narrow arches of London Bridge, the speed and the danger as exhilarating to Gresham as it always was.

  They smelt the Tower before they saw it. A permanent dispute existed between the Lord Mayor and the Lieutenant of the Tower over the City's draining of the town ditch into the Tower ditch. The dispute had been raised to a new level when the City had opened the sluices that let all the sewage from the Minories into the town ditch and so into the Tower ditch. The stink was vile, and even the hardened inhabitants of the Tower were gagging for sweet water. He left the four men to await his return by the postern gate, and took Mannion in with him.

  He remembered the first time he had gone to see Raleigh after his farcical, trumped-up trial. Here was the man who had taken on the might of Spain and defeated it, a man with the mind of a scholar, the tongue of a poet and the heart of a lion. A lesser person would
have been in tears, and Gresham knew that Raleigh had already tried to take his life. Yet there was no sign of that in the man sitting quietly at his writing desk in the Bloody Tower where he was lodged, still dressed in Court finery. He had raised an eyebrow as Gresham had entered the room.

  'Well, my friend, how goes the world with you?'

  'I'd thought rather to ask the question of you,' Gresham had replied.

  'With me? Why, as you can see, all is well. The thickest walls in England protect me from my enemies…' he motioned to the environs of the Tower around them, 'and I have my wife and son at my side.'

  He called out and Bess, the early cause of his troubles with Queen Elizabeth, came into the low-ceilinged room, wiping her hands. She was pale and hollow-eyed, but her face lit up as she saw and greeted Gresham. Bess Raleigh had mothered many more men than her own son, and saw Gresham as a favoured, albeit wayward, stepson.

  'My Lord,' said Gresham, 'how can this be?' Raleigh gave a dry, gentle laugh.

  'How can it be that I'm accused of being a traitor in league with Spain after having spent all my life fighting that country? How can it be that I'm convicted in a trial where the only evidence is retracted and I'm never allowed to confront my accuser? How can it be that one of my oldest allies and friends seems to be my chief accuser, the man whose sickly child my own dear wife helped to nurture and feed?'

  Bess smiled at the mention of the boy she had treated as her own. Cecil's sickly son had been welcomed into the warmth of Bess Raleigh's household and brought up alongside her own bawling bundle of extreme good health.