'Is he a friend of yours?' asked Gresham, startled.
‘Not a friend, but a new face, and one with some interesting tales to tell. The social circle within the Tower may be very select, but it's also somewhat restricted. Prison's worst punishment isn't loss of liberty. It's the onset of boredom. Phelippes had the look of someone who might liven up more than one evening's dinner.'
'On that basis I'll try and take off only bits that aren't life-threatening. Remember it as just another sacrifice I make for my lord and master.'
'Take care, Henry Gresham.' Raleigh was suddenly serious. 'They have me in their clutches. One free spirit is enough for them. Take care not to give them, or your Maker, another one into their power.'
This time Gresham did not make straight for the gates when he had finished with Raleigh. The guards were as slack as ever, and a small bribe allowed Gresham and Mannion into the room occupied by Thomas Phelippes. Getting out of the Tower was always much harder than getting in, but for prisoners in the Tower with their own money life was akin to that in a reasonable inn with a fractious and bad-tempered landlord. The door to Phelippes' room — or was it a cell? — was unlocked, the turnkey needing only to unlock the door that blocked the end of the dank corridor.
Phelippes' accommodation was not the best, Gresham noted. The famous prisoners in the Tower, including Walter Raleigh and his accuser and friend Lord Cobham, were kept in lodgings that had some style, and could use the Warden's garden. Phelippes was incarcerated in one of the poorer towers. The window in his cell was high in the wall and heavily barred, and there was no view out on to the garden area that the best class of prisoners could use and the next best class at least gaze out on. There seemed to be little furniture in the room.
Thomas Phelippes was a small, physically unprepossessing figure with a stoop and a pockmarked face. His origins were obscure, and he had been despised by the Court for his lack of breeding, but he had risen to be one of Walsingham's espionage chiefs by virtue of his intelligence, his ability with languages and most of all his ability to create and penetrate the most obscure ciphers.
'Good morning, Tom,' said Gresham, as cheerfully as the setting allowed. He of all people had no reason to feel cheerful in the confines of the Tower, given the various humiliations and pains he had had inflicted on his person whilst within its boundaries. Yet even without his own memories it was a dreadful place. It stank from its own ditch, and the central block of the White Tower, dating back to King William, was as blunt and as cruel a statement of power as Gresham had witnessed, a building with no concessions to form or beauty and a record of cruelty within its walls second to none. The outer walls, though representing a huge span of English history, were similarly uncompromising. The Tower was a fortress, pure and simple, a blunt instrument in the wielding of total power.
It was an evil place, a place where even music would be sucked into the darkness and silenced as so many souls had screamed soundlessly within its space.
Phelippes had risen to his feet when Gresham and Mannion entered, his features lightening for a brief instant. Then his face fell back into a worried frown, though his pleasure at his visit was still clear. Gresham noted, but did not comment on, the frown.
'Henry Gresham, by God! And that walking tree trunk of a manservant who always hangs about you! How are you, sirrah? How goes the real world about its business?'
When Walsingham had died, the empire of espionage he had built up had slowly decayed without the power at its centre. Tom Phelippes had been left in the comfortable position of Collector of Subsidy, with easy bribes at hand and a comfortable house that gave him the chance to witness all those who set sail to France, and report on them to Cecil, his new master. He lived in apparent amity with Arthur Gregory, a Dorset man whose greatest ability was to open sealed letters and reseal them without the final recipient being any the wiser, and that disreputable little runt of a spy by the name of Tom Barnes. It had all seemed very happy, until of a sudden Phelippes had been whisked off to the Tower, apparently at Cecil's command, and left there.
'The world changes little, Tom,' said Gresham easily, 'and the people in it are as corrupt as ever.'
'Well, then,' laughed Phelippes, 'things don't change at all.'
He busied himself with the contents of the basket Mannion had brought with them — the best the kitchen of the House could provide, with three bottles of very speakable wine from its cellar, the best laid on top. Gresham noted the hunger with which Phelippes attacked the food.
Phelippes finished his mouthful, took a swig of wine from the cheap wooden beaker on the bare table and looked at Gresham.
'Others would talk. Ask questions. You just wait. And bring me food and wine. Why?'
'Why wait? Or why bring you food and wine?' Gresham asked. He eased himself forward on the three-legged stool on which he sat, one of the few pieces of furniture in the cell. 'I wait because you're a crafty old fox who'll tell me what you wish to tell me when you wish to tell me, and not before. I bring you food and wine because it costs me little, and because that crafty old fox helped me once in the past, and, who knows, may help me again now.'
'And what help do you need, Sir Henry, with your fine fortune, your fine house and your fine lady? What use can a crafty old fox be, if he's been locked in his lair and looks likely never to leave?'
Gresham spoke softly, without self-pity, as if relating a simple matter of fact: 'They are trying to kill me, Tom.'
A sudden silence descended in the dark, damp room. Was there just too little surprise on Phelippes' face?
'Not for my fine house, I think, nor my fortune, not even for my fine lady. I don't know why, and I don't know who. And you will know that for us, knowledge is all.'
'Aye, I know well enough,' replied Tom, his first hunger assuaged and the lure of the wine taking over. 'Or at least, I used to know. They've tried to kill you before, and will no doubt do sq again. And one day, Sir Henry Gresham, they'll succeed, as they will with all of us.'
'Why, Tom,' exclaimed Gresham cheerfully, 'if they don't succeed, God or the Devil certainly will. But before that I'd like to think I'll give them a run for their money.'
'How many have died so far?' asked Phelippes glumly, looking at Gresham with eyes that had not lost their shrewd cutting edge.
'On my side, just the one. Poor Will Shadwell. Remember Will — the plague in human form, with more illnesses than a trugging house, but loyal in his own way, and worthy of a better death than drinking too much river water. As for the others, hired men, on the river, at night. They won't be the last, on present form.'
'I remember Will Shadwell. He would have died happy if he drank himself to death, but not on water. So what can this poor prisoner do for you?'
'First, tell me how you come to be here in this pit. I thought things were going well for you, before this business. Why has the wheel of fortune cast you down so readily?'
'I became idle, too comfortable. I relaxed — the one thing you have never done. I'd wind of a Papist storm brewing abroad. Too many comings and goings, from the wrong sort of people. I wrote to that damned villain Hugh Owen, calling myself Vincent, pledging myself to whatever cause he was espousing, hoping he'd reveal himself to me, and write back with something I could show to Cecil. There was no reply.'
Phelippes took another swig of wine. The bottle was already half gone.
'So I replied to my letter myself.'