'They still talk of Raleigh, of course. Aren't people strange and fickle? The mob used to hate him when Essex was alive, but now they say Raleigh was the first Englishman to be tried and sentenced before the charge was heard.' Raleigh's trial, conducted by the irascible and lickspittle Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, had been a farce.
Gresham growled his response. 'Do they talk of how Raleigh was betrayed by the man who protested to be his deepest friend? By the man whose son Raleigh helped to bring up? Do they talk of Cecil so?'
'They talk more of the numbers in the King's service at Whitehall,' said Jane truthfully, 'and how they grow by the day. It's the talk of town that soon every gentleman in the country will be paid a pension to be in His Majesty's Chamber, and every working man in the whole country employed in the King's palaces. The
Scots Lords offend everyone. It's said that they stink, that to sit next to them is to get their fleas, that they've no breeding and that they rut like stags when they're not too drunk to know what they're doing.'
Gresham knew that over a thousand men worked to serve the King in his palace at Whitehall. It was a far cry from the days of Old Bess, for whom each coin she parted with was like a drop of blood.
'The merchants see what the King spends, and worry about their profits and yet more taxes.'
'There's more, though — talk of a Popish plot, now the treaty with Spain is signed. The Catholics are angry. They had high words of promise from the King, and had great hopes of his Catholic wife. It all seems to have turned sour, and the fines are bleeding some of the great families to death, they say.'
'It's not just talk, the first bit,' said Mannion. 'It's true.' He spoke with an air of total finality. 'The girls in the stews hear the pillow talk. The young merchants are full of the Government costing too much and doing too little. And they say the Papists are restless.'
'Well,' said Gresham with heavy irony, 'that has to be it, then. If the girls in the stews say it's true who can deny it?'
Jane carried on, ignoring Gresham. 'Any Papists who heard my Lord Archbishop preach his sermon at St Paul's Cross on Tuesday last will be more than restless. They'll be scared. He damned all. Papists to Hell. He said the King would pour out the last drop of blood in his body to defend the Protestant faith.'
So, thought Gresham, there is anger in the country. Three angers, in fact. The anger of the Catholics, the anger of a disappointed people in their profligate King and the increasing anger of the King against the Pope's followers. Yet when had there not been anger in the country? And none of what he had heard explained Will Shadwell’s death, or his intuitive sense of unease.
Jane and Mannion were waiting expectantly. He looked at Jane, his expression unfathomable. She wondered what thoughts were hidden by those dark eyes. For all that she believed she knew Gresham better than anyone except Mannion, there were times when she was frightened by her inability to read his mind and his soul. Had she known the image in his mind she would have been saddened and horrified in equal measure.
Gresham was thinking of blood. Its smell and its look. There is no smell like fresh human blood, as there is no smell like rotting human flesh. The first is warm, salty yet strangely thin, the latter so vile as to make a man retch into his boots. Gresham had seen so much blood shed, smelt so much dead flesh. It was so bad at times that even as he looked at Jane, flushed with all the fires of youth and excitement at the joy of living, he saw the blood pumping beneath her fair skin, saw her raped and mutilated by a troop of soldiers as he had seen so many young girls, smelt the rank odour of her death. Gresham saw the skull beneath the skin.
Would there be rebellion so soon again? Had people learnt nothing from the waste, the torment and the agony of the Essex rebellion, so short past? Were fine young men to be butchered on the pikes of mercenaries, their reeking guts to be torn out and shown to their wives? Were the Catholics to launch yet another blood bath in the vain hope that the country would join their rising?
'May I speak?' It was Jane, reluctant to interrupt his reverie.
'Madam,' replied Gresham with a short bow, 'the Four Furies have left for their supper after a hard night riding people down and I am temporarily without my wand of power, or a standing army, so I fear I lack the means to stop you talking.'
Jane waved her hand dismissively, as she would to a rather silly child. 'My Lord, I'm worried that you should become involved between Bacon and Cecil. There's danger in going on to any ground where there's no map. How do we know what argument might exist between the two of them? How can we know that you're not simply being used in some way to gain advantage for Cecil, perhaps at great cost to you?'
'She's right,' said Mannion. 'I'm as good a swimmer as anyone, but even I wouldn't swim certain stretches of the river, where I don't know what the current's doing.'
Gresham thought for a moment. He stood suddenly. Something had sealed in his mind as he listened. He felt a fear and an uncertainty, but now he knew where it sprang from and what he intended to do about it.
'I agree, it almost certainly is dangerous. But I won't know how dangerous until I find out more. Cecil rarely tells the whole truth when he briefs one of his men. He likes to keep his spies in the dark, just as much as he likes to keep everyone else in the dark. Men like him distrust the light.'
He walked over to Jane, pulled her up gently by her wrists and stood gazing at her.
'I see my lawyers this morning.' The vast fortune left to Gresham by his father carried title to thousands of acres of land and numerous properties, and with it continual detail of tenancies and rents. When in London Gresham's lawyer was always desperate to see him, the pile of documents that needed signing stretching from St Paul's to the river.
'After that, I visit Moll Cutpurse this evening. If there's knowledge to be had, Moll will have it. And tomorrow, we see the King.'
Jane gave a squeal of excitement, clapping her hands together.
'Have you no shame, girl, to be so carried away from your wits by an evening of over-bred drunkards and whores cavorting at the expense of the nation?'
'But, sir — I've so little chance to meet either! My life here is quite matronly and respectable. And how can a girl resist drunkenness and envy and pride and greed and gluttony and lechery and sloth and all those other terrible things unless she can learn to recognise them? And this is not ordinary sin. This is royal sin. It's positively my duty as a loyal subject to witness it! Where are we going? What is it His Majesty celebrates?'
Mannion grunted. 'His Majesty celebrates a cow farting in a field, as long as he can drink to it.' He took a swig of beer.
Jane appeared perfectly content without a social life in Gresham's absence. Such a life was hers for the asking. Money and fame mattered more than morality in the London of King James I, and the beautiful 'niece' of the wealthy and mysterious Henry Gresham would be a catch for any hostess, and a fine chase for any man in town. She never appeared tempted, but it did not mean that the young woman in her failed to enjoy hugely the opportunities when they arose.
'His Majesty, for once, is being economical. He kills two birds with one stone. The masque is both to welcome the ambassador from the Emperor, one Prince George Lodovic, and to bid farewell to the Spanish Ambassador,' announced Gresham.
Mannion had grabbed a crust which the maid had missed from the table, and was chewing on it with his few remaining teeth. 'They do say as the noble Prince' — no-one could put more loathing into the word Prince than Mannion — 'comes with his baggage overstuffed.'
'He brings three Earls,' piped up Jane, eagerly, 'one Baron, twenty-four gentlemen, twelve musketeers and one hundred servants. It's the talk of St Paul's,' she said, with great authority.