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 conduct 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 Molclass="underline" 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.'