The Desperate remedy

'So why was I turned into a murderess last night?'

There was a flippant edge to her voice, as well as a dark undertone. Gresham sensed that the use of the word 'murderess' was deliberate, part of her feeling her way to an acceptance of what had taken place. He did not challenge her description of herself. Let her feel her own way to her own form of salvation. There was no simple rule.

He told about the forged letter that Tom Barnes had brought to him.

‘Why didn't you tell me about the letter?' 'I wanted to tell you when I had an answer, not just the question.'

'Is that wise? To share the information with me as it comes isn't to admit weakness, it's simply to recognise that two minds can sometimes do more than one.'

'On that basis,' said Gresham, 'I should share all my information with Mary the maid, Martha the Housekeeper and Harry the boatman. Oh, and there's young Will, Cook of course, and…'

She cut him short. 'The difference is that none of them have a mind like mine. And they may love you in their fashion, but I love you in mine. And mine is stronger.'

That shut him up, for a moment. She carried on.

'The forging of the letter was a long-term plan, anyway. Who tried to kill us? What triggered… last night?'

'I think I know now. I've been confused, ever since Will Shadwell’s murder. At one time I had Percy killing Shadwell, and organising the business on the river in case Shadwell had left a message for me. Then I thought even the King might be involved, or Bacon, or even the Spaniards. But I was wrong.'

'So who is it?'

'Cecil. It has to be Cecil who tried to kill us. I think Cecil was trying to outflank me anyway, probably before all this started. He knew I had papers that would damn him. He must have hated my having that hold over him, wracked his brains to get himself out of the trap. Letters apparently in my handwriting pleading for a Catholic overthrow of England was an idea of brilliance. It not only makes me a wholly unreliable witness, but it makes my papers coming from the Papal archive an admission of guilt.'

'All you've said is that Cecil wanted to be able to counter what you had that threatened him. Why did he suddenly decide to have us killed?'

'Will Shadwell, I'm sure. He's at the heart of it. Will must have heard something that sent the poor fool scurrying to me, and the evidence is that he was murdered by one of Cecil's men, not by Percy or anyone else. I've been too clever for my own good. I invented all sorts of reasons why Sam Fogarty could have been working for Northumberland, or perhaps for Rome and the

Catholic cause. The only two things we know for certain are that Fogarty works for Cecil, and he was involved in Shadwell's murder closely enough to have taken Will's ring. That links it back to Cecil.'

As Gresham had hoped, the chance of explaining why her horror had happened gripped Jane, drew her mind out from the depths of her depression, forced it to work.

'But Cecil didn't try to kill you after Will Shadwell. He called you back to London and sent you off after Bacon.'

'Cecil must have feared something Shadwell knew enough to have him killed. Then he must have wondered if Shadwell had got the news to me. Whatever it was, it must have been of such great importance that I couldn't be allowed to know it and to live. Cecil wouldn't want to alarm me unnecessarily in case I knew nothing, so he must have called me back to London on a wild-goose chase after Bacon to sound me out. I didn't give him any cause for suspicion when we met because I knew nothing then that linked Will's death to him. Truth is always the best defence. Cecil read me right that day. I didn't suspect him of Shadwell’s murder, or of anything other than being the slimy rat I know he is. So Cecil must have felt really pleased with himself, and sent me off after a red herring in the hope it'd keep me out of trouble and off the scent of whatever it is he wants to hide from me.'

'Then why did he then suddenly want to kill you?'

'It has to be my trip to see Moll. Cecil must have thought I'd gone to pick up a message from The Dagger. It was stupid of me to go so openly. There must have been endless numbers of Cecil's spies in that place, seeing me walk through and reporting back. Shadwell met Percy in The Dagger, and Moll puts out that she knows everything, even if she doesn't. What was to stop Shadwell leaving papers for me back at The Dagger, as insurance in case something happened to him? It's what I would have done. Poor Cecil. He must have congratulated himself that he's stopped the trail and sent me off on a wild-goose chase, and then I turn up bold as brass at The Dagger. He must have had a seizure. I sent Mannion to warn Moll. She'll go into hiding. Cecil is bound to be after her, to find out what she did know.'

'And I suppose once he'd commissioned one set of letters to prove you a traitor, he felt he could simply commission another to cover for your death. One other thing points to him,' said Jane. 'The boat that attacked us, it was new, well-found, expensive. The men on it… may have been thugs, but they were trained, after a fashion, and many of them. All that signals money, resources, the power to gather a crew and a boat at short notice. There are few people in London outside of Cecil who could call on resources to that level. But why the rosary beads?'

'Who knows? Even Cecil can't have that many thugs at his disposal. The man whose beads Shadwell broke could have been the same man you killed on the boat.'

'Do you really believe that?' said Jane. 'Or are you trying to make me feel better? I didn't kill a man, you're trying to tell me. I simply executed Will Shadwell's murderer?'

She was too clever by half, thought Gresham, too astute for his tricks even in the immediate aftermath of her grief.

'It's possible. Or it's Cecil setting a false trail, suggesting Catholics are behind the murders, putting up a smoke screen behind which he can hide. Rosary beads are cheap enough, after all'

'We may have got closer to what happened,' said Jane, 'but we still don't know why. 1

'True,' replied Gresham. 'Well, Tom Phelippes may have given us our key into these Papists. Francis Tresham, he said. A pleasant piece of work by all counts, but I'd back Phelippes to know a traitor any day. He looks at one in the glass every morning, so he should know.'

Jane rose. Her gait was tired, the movement an effort. 'I'm going to bathe and to change, and shout at a few servants to stop them sympathising with me and treating me like a sick woman.' The

House knew what had happened on the river, of course. Gresham doubted if his own boat crew had stopped telling the story even now downstairs in the kitchen. It was a good story. Let them tell it. It bred a pride in his servants and it made sure that the crossbows in the boat would be well oiled. 'But just one thing more. You've warned Moll. Yet won't Cecil be suspicious of Tom Phelippes, if you walk up to him as you walked up to Moll? Won't you have signed Tom Phelippes's death warrant, as you nearly signed Moll's?'

'Will I?' said Gresham carelessly. 'Well, now, there's a thought.'

'Is that all you care?' said Jane. -

'Yes,' said Gresham, 'it probably is. He betrayed me. And it'll be interesting to see if someone tries to take his life, won't it? If they do, it will prove Cecil's involvement. No-one else has the key to let an assassin into the Tower, do they?'

Raleigh hated most of all the time when the bell tolled and the Tower was emptied of all its visitors. In the day he could lose himself in the bustle of the King's prison, in his laboratory and in his writing. At night too he could turn, in the silence, to his books. Yet in the late afternoon, when the people hurried to leave the Tower, then it came upon him that he could not leave, that he was truly a prisoner.

He had freedom to walk in the inner ward, though a warder would trail him quietly if he did so. The image of Robert Cecil haunted his mind. Cecil's power had destroyed Essex, and was now set to destroy Raleigh himself. In a strange way, it was probably not personal at all, Raleigh mused. He believed that Cecil had been, probably still was, genuinely fond of him. Affection had never stopped Robert Cecil ordering a man's death. Why would he do it?