'Water,' mumbled Gresham.
Mannion took over. 'Wooden ships, they're funny. You see, the wood really wants to float. It's what it was designed to do. Seen ships like this stay afloat for days. There's another thing, both bad news and good news. Load of them barrels they gave us when we set off. They're empty. Found that out too, soon after we set off. 'Bout half of them. That's what you can hear now.'
There was a constant bumping and crashing from within the hold as the ship rose and fell uneasily in the swell.
'They're helping us keep afloat, I reckon.'
'Raft,' said Gresham. 'Build a raft.'
They were dead in the water. Miraculously the two tops'ls were still largely intact, but flapping uselessly as the last savage swing of the storm had severed the ropes that hung at their foot, tensioning them and holding the wind. Leng had crept out from whatever corner he had been gibbering in, calmer now, just looking as if someone had held him underwater for half an hour.
'We have to build a raft,' said Gresham. 'Got some water left, got some food not spoilt. Use the empty barrels to build a raft, while the old Daisy's still got some life in her. Rig a sail as a shelter. Keep Anna out of the sun. You can survive for weeks, if you can keep out of the water. That's what kills you, staying in the water.' He was almost raving, feeling his control leaving him.
'Can I ask just one question?' asked Anna.
'You just have. Now will you shut up and let us get on with it?'
Why had he rounded on the girl, thought Gresham? Because he was exhausted, because crisis after crisis was piling up in his life, and most of all because he had not asked for her to be there as an extra burden, a burden demanding he think about someone other than himself. He liked being selfish, he had decided. It was safer, simpler, far less complicated. And deep in his soul, he was beginning to think that he would never set foot on land again.
The girl ignored him.
'Why are you going to build a raft?'
Gresham sighed, deeply and long.
'Because this ship is sinking. And because unless we're to sink along with it, we need something on which we can float. Can we carry on now?'
'Certainly,' she said. 'But it would be easier, would it not, to go to wherever we're going on that very big boat that's been in sight for nearly ten minutes now?'
The men turned, their jaws dropping. The Merchant Royal, one of the London ships that had separated from Drake's fleet what seemed a lifetime earlier. Scouring the ocean for Drake, blown off course in the same storm that had nearly killed them. The wonderful sight of the ship bore down on them, the two little flapping sails having let her see them before even Anna's sharp young eyes had picked out her bulk on the ocean.
Chapter 6
July, 1587 London
‘I came as soon as I received your message,' said Robert Cecil. Well, that was true at least, thought Walsingham. Cecil had come by boat to Barnes from Whitehall, against the tide if the sheen of sweat on his boatmen was anything to go by. The journey would have pained Cecil, Walsingham knew. His warped back made no travel easy, not even by boat. It was intentional, of course. The more pain Cecil underwent before their interview the more Walsingham might catch him off guard.
The room was small, but overlooked the garden at Barnes through a long, latticed window that was disproportionately large. Walsingham had avoided the garish decoration that was suddenly the fashion, and stayed with sombre, dark panelling, while a feeble fire gagged in the grate and gave out no heat.
'How may I be of assistance?' asked Cecil. He was young still, thought Walsingham. In a few years he would shear his last comment of the slight note of ingratiation it now contained, but in his inexperience, he managed to make a straightforward comment ever so slightly patronising.
His family had no breeding. Walsingham was sure that in some way this was Cecil's weak spot. He needed to know for certain.
Insurance. Knowing where this man was vulnerable was important if Walsingham was to be allowed to bow out of power, instead of being kicked out The vicious battle for power that was taking place at Court was between breeding and ability. Men like Cecil had wits enough for ten, and a supreme sense of politics derived from always having to guard their backs. Their opponents, Essex in particular, had breeding, charm and the easy nonchalance of those bred to power.
'It is possible that I might be of assistance to you' said Walsingham, with a smile neither of them believed. 'I learned long ago that men of sense acknowledge debt, and ensure that it is always repaid. I am a poor man.' Well, that was true. What money he once had had gone into financing his network of agents. Therefore I can give only knowledge, in the hope that one day those to whom I give it might be in a position to return something I need in payment back to me.'
Cecil had to think about that one. Undoubtedly he was thinking that he should beware the Devil bringing gifts. Yet he was a young man, and the curiosity and rashness was there in him, even if it was not vented in wine, women or gambling like most young men. Cecil would take the bait.
'What knowledge is it that you have, and think might be of interest to me?' asked Cecil carefully.
There! He would swallow the bait! 'I can hardly help but be aware of your interest in the young man Henry Gresham,' said Walsingham. Was there a slight colour come into Cecil's face? A slight tightening of the skin round the lips? Only the most suspicious person would have thought so. 'I wonder if you are aware of a most amusing story regarding that young man?'
Cecil shook his head, his leaning forward betraying his interest.
'You know his background?' asked Walsingham.
'I believe so,' said Cecil, on firmer ground now. 'His father was immensely rich, a fortune made largely through moneylending. He apparently conceived a bastard. It was not until quite late in the bastard's life that it was realised his father had left him a vast fortune, having neglected him while he was alive.'
True, as far as it goes,' said Walsingham. 'But have you ever wondered why such a highly respected man should acknowledge a by-blow at all? A bastard may be a… a regrettable fact of life for such a man. Yet we both know the river hides many such secrets. I wonder why Gresham's father took the trouble to acknowledge him? And, moreover, why he chose to make him such a wealthy bastard?'
'I had assumed… a sense of duty,' said Cecil. 'And the father died childless, after a boy born in wedlock departed this life, did he not? Perhaps the father felt it preferable that the line continue, even from such flawed seed, rather than it die out…'
'It may well be so,' said Walsingham. 'It may well be so indeed. Yet the birth of a bastard was not the only extraordinary thing to happen in the life of Sir Thomas Gresham. You are too young to remember, yet some years ago, he was made guardian to a young lady. A quite extraordinary young lady. The reasons are lost in time. Perhaps they were as simple as a young woman needing a guardian and an old, wealthy man being deemed the most suitable candidate.'
'And the outcome?' asked Cecil, engrossed.
'The young lady in question was a nightmare. Beautiful, independent, possessed of a will entirely of her own. And of very bad judgement. They clashed, violently, from the outset. The servants recollect him complaining that unlike most men he had been made to suffer Hell here on earth by this woman placed in his care, instead of waiting until after his death. In any event, the lady left his household after a period of time.'
'Is that all?' asked Cecil, disappointed.
'In public?' said Walsingham. 'Yes. Except if one listens to the servants, a very different story emerges. A story of a wild young girl deciding to make an old man rather happier than he claims to have been. Of a child born some six months after the lady I have mentioned left Sir Thomas Gresham's house. Born, I might add, in conditions of strictest secrecy. A child later acknowledged by Sir Thomas as his own, and named Henry Gresham. With no mention, now or then, of the mother, her origins, her background or who she was.'