He was an old man with a ludicrous sleeping cap covering his bald head. He peered through the small, square viewing panel set in the door, squinting to outline the figure outside.
‘I come with news from Cadiz, straight off a ship of Drake's squadron!'
Was the Merchant Royal the first back? Almost certainly not. But there was no chance Drake's main squadron would have returned yet, its speed dictated by the lumbering hulk of the San Felipe.
'I have vital news for Robert Cecil! I must report to him on my mission!'
Would it work? Yes! The door was opening. The man had recognised him! It would take some years yet for Henry Gresham to realise just how many people did remember him once they first set eyes on him. He followed the old man along gloomy corridors, the only light that of the lantern. 'Wait here,' the old man grunted. They were in what was little more than a slightly widened corridor, with a poor bench along one wall, inset in a window. The old man vanished, the dancing light of the lantern following him as he stumped along yet another hallway, finally turning a corner. Gresham found himself in a darkness broken only by the feeble glimmer of a single candle in a wall sconce. Heavier footsteps came down the hall, two sets of them. The men were clearly servants, thick-set and expensively dressed in the Cecil livery.
'Come with us,' said the taller of the two men, and turned away. Gresham made no move.
'In the house I own, The House, as it happens, on the Strand here in London,' Gresham stressed, 'I am accustomed to the servants addressing visitors with courtesy.'
The man coloured, seemed uncertain. He was clearly unwilling to recant his rudeness at all — after all, Gresham's dress and his body had been three months at sea — but also unwilling to detain the guest from his master.
'Perhaps the easiest thing would be to send someone with good manners,' said Gresham helpfully.
The man finally muttered something which could have been, 'If you'd care to follow me… sir', and Gresham decided to take the olive branch. Judging by the look on the man's face Gresham was likely to find the same branch sticking out of his own back later that evening.
'Do by all means sit down,' said Cecil. The room was lavishly panelled, and to gild the lily expensive French tapestries hung on two walls. They showed mythical beasts pursuing men. One of them had human flesh hanging from its bloodied fangs. Perhaps it was an emblem for the Cecil family.
Cecil's chair was high-backed, with ornately carved arms, one of the few luxuries Gresham had seen in the house. He was in full day dress, the single, fur-lined vestment of an older man rather than the fashionable doublet and hose of the gallant. The remains of a meal, simple by the look of it, lay in front of him on an oaken table, polished so that the light of the many candles reflected back from its surface. Cecil gestured, and the two ungainly men made haste to clear the table.
'Will you take some wine?' asked Cecil civilly. If he had felt any shock at Gresham's being alive he had not shown it.
The jug and goblets were of gold. Was Cecil one of those who needed to see his family wealth in order to believe in it? Or was this supposedly solitary dining simply a show to impress?
'What a pleasant surprise to see you so soon on your return. Do tell me about your mission,' said Cecil smoothly, as if asking after the progress of someone's summer vegetables in their kitchen garden. 'I have heard some news, of course. But a first-hand account always has some value.'
Gresham gazed levelly back into Cecil's eyes. There was no response there, no emotion. Just a blankness.
'A major victory was achieved.' Gresham's tone was intense, full of importance. He even leaned forward to make his next statement. 'The Battle of the Barrel Staves was well and truly won by England,' said Gresham. 'We proved ourselves the world's masters in destroying unassembled pieces of barrels. Positively ignoring the many dangers. Splinters, for example, or tripping up over the bits of wood. I'm sure you would have been proud of your sailors. And their commanders.' There was the tiniest tightening round Cecil's eyes. Anger. Not amusement. Gresham leaned back, spoke in his normal tone. 'Oh, and several hundred Spanish fishing families will die this winter as we wiped out their boats, their livelihoods. And the contents of Cadiz harbour were emptied out of Spain's pocket and into those of Sir Francis Drake. And Her Majesty, of course.'
There was silence, for what seemed a very long time.
'That is all you have to report?' said Cecil finally.
'Well,' said Gresham, examining his fingernails, much torn by rope and canvas, 'that's all the important stuff. Oh, and Drake's so-called fleet is like a pack of mad hounds with no training, and he has as much control over them as a bear over the dogs that bait him. Not much else happened, actually. He refused to let me land ashore. It's surprisingly boring being at sea for three months. Oh, and someone planted false letters in my belongings making me out to be a spy for. Spain, and arranged to have them discovered,' he said casually, as if the thought had just struck him. 'Or, to put it bluntly, someone tried to kill me. By proxy, of course.'
'Kill you?' There was no tone in Cecil's question.
'Yes. Gives a new meaning to the pen being mightier than the sword, doesn't it? But we… spies don't bother much about that sort of thing. All in a day's work, you know. In fact we get quite upset if someone doesn't try to kill us.' Gresham beamed a broad smile at Cecil. 'Can I have some of that wine now?'
'Will you still be flippant in the grave?' asked Cecil. His tone was still measured, easy, conversational.
'Well, I doubt I'll be flippant after it,' Gresham answered. 'But I'm quite keen to know who it is who's trying to send me there.'
The silence stretched to an eternity. Cecil did not move. Even with support from the high back it must hurt him to sit so still, thought Gresham. If that was so, he was hiding his pain as well as he was hiding his feelings.
'I know nothing of these matters,' he said finally.
'Quite so,' said Gresham easily. 'Though I'm forced to point out that whoever is responsible went to extraordinary lengths to cover their tracks, and so is hardly likely to admit to the fact in open conversation.'
'You show your lack of breeding by coming to a gentleman's house and accusing him, without evidence, of murder,' said Cecil carefully.
‘You show your lack of judgement by insulting a man in a manner that gives him the right to challenge you to a duel. A duel you would lose,' said Gresham flatly. 'So your comments have handed me either your life, or your honour.' Cecil realised the mistake he had made. No member of the Court would challenge Gresham's right to challenge Cecil after the comment he had made. He would lose his life if he fought Gresham, and lose his honour if he refused to fight. 'Luckily for you,' said Gresham, 'this would probably be a bad time for me to kill the son of the Queen's Chief Secretary. Or dishonour him.' If Cecil was relieved, he did not show it.
Damn! Gresham had to play this so carefully. Cecil was as attractive to him as rotten meat, but he was a prime contender for the new power in the land, could well become the leader of the pack after the death of Walsingham and his father. In the world of politics, it should be almost irrelevant to Gresham if Cecil had indeed tried to kill him. What mattered was that Gresham found out why, and that he was stopped from doing it again. With those two key facts in place, an alliance between the two men was perfectly possible. Half of the Court had tried to harm the other half at one time or another. It was part of the game they played. But still Gresham was no closer to knowing the true identity of his enemy. And if the truth be known he had come to Cecil, of all the suspects, not because he was foremost in Gresham's suspicions but simply because of all the suspects Cecil was the only one he could approach. Burghley, the Queen, Essex and Leicester's servants would provide a far greater barrier than the Cecil's relatively modest household.