'You have been most gracious in permitting us to visit,' said Gresham, 'and I cannot conceive of any need for an apology.'
'No, no, I must,' the old man said. 'I have been intending to find details of this Monsieur… Jacques Henri? Is that his name? Yet there has been so much to do here, I fear, so many people, so many orders
… it has slipped my mind.'
'I am sure it will be no problem. We have an address…'
'Better, I think, if you allow me to send you a pair of my servants to guide you there.' The old man saw the expression in Gresham's eyes. 'No, not to keep guard over you as you might think. There is no secret about what is gathering in this harbour, and I would be most surprised to think that your Lord Walsingham was not paying a dozen men here to report back to him on every vessel that enters and leaves.'
It was an uncanny echo of a conversation Gresham had had with Mannion. How much did the Governor General know? Gresham searched the man's face, and looked to George. There was no hint of any ulterior meaning from the Governor General, and a simple shrug from George. Even his refined political sensitivity was on hold here in Lisbon.
'It is simply that the wars in the Netherlands, which many see as only lasting because of the support the English give the rebels, have damaged trade and there is much resentment. Also, El Draco destroyed many smaller vessels off this coast earlier in the year, many families are facing poverty now. Shall we say that two of my servants with you when you go out and about might dispel any… misunderstandings,' the Governor General replied. 'And of course, you will not be staying long,' he said with a tone of finality.
'As long as it takes to find the fiancй and to ensure that my ward is adequately cared for,' said Gresham, cursing inwardly. He had hoped for at least a week in Lisbon, perhaps even two or three.
The two servants, dressed in the same extravagant livery, turned out to be four, each pair working a twelve-hour shift. They dismissed with courtesy the invitation to reside inside, preferring to sit instead in the small lobby that led in from the street. It was a position from which they could monitor all the comings and goings from the house.
Anna came into Gresham's room unexpectedly, just as he, George and Mannion had laid out on the bed the robes of the trainee priest, the acolyte. The cassocks with their built-in hoods were rough-tailored, coarse. She looked from the clothes to them and reached her own conclusion.
'You are slipping out tonight. In disguise.'
George reddened in the face.
'You know who it is you have to meet. You have thought about this long ago, ordered your clothes. I was, how do you say, a bonus? If I had not agreed you will still have come to Lisbon, perhaps in disguise all the way.'
'Would still have come to Lisbon…' said Gresham.
'I do not care about English now! And you will take me with you,' announced Anna. 'You have four robes there. A few pins will hold up the hem of one of them so that it fits me. I have this right. You have been enabled to come here because of me only. I too must be involved. It is only fair.'
'But you can't come,' said George, all his honesty showing through in his face. 'This could be dangerous…'
This isn't fun,' said Gresham angrily, cutting in. 'This is playing with the fate of nations. It isn't a game.' He would make her realise that what was a game to her was life and death to him. He would make her realise.
'No?' said Anna. 'Yet that is exactly how you treat it. A game. A game where the excitement is to lose your life, the prize to value life if you survive. My life is a meaningless game. A marriage with a fat Frenchman. Why should I not play your game? Because the thing between my legs is different?'
The coarseness shocked Gresham. He looked to Mannion and George. To his astonishment, Mannion seemed to be on the girl's side.
'Look,' he said to Gresham, 'we could use her. If she's willing.'
A sudden wave of tiredness came over Gresham, and he motioned to Mannion to carry on. Mannion turned to the girl, took her by the arm and led her into the corner of the room, dust dancing in the slanting beams of diminishing sunlight. They had a whispered conversation, Anna going deep red and then recovering. Chin held high, she nodded. Mannion grinned, and nearly forgot himself, reaching out to pat her bottom in approbation before realising the potential mistake and withdrawing it just in time.
They had travelled with two maids for Anna, including the loyal Mary, and it was harder to get rid of them than it was to avoid the guards. Eventually they were sent off to a separate room, Anna pleading a headache of such intensity that even the noise of the maids sleeping in their truckle beds at the foot of her four-poster would be too terrible to bear. Stripping off down to her shift, she put the gown over her head, clamped her hair rather than pinned it and forced a cap over it, leaving the hood to be a disguise when they left the house. There was a tap on the door. Mannion. He put his finger to his lips, motioned her across the dusty hallway to Gresham's room, ushered her in. Only then did he walk to the end of the hall, click his fingers, and call up the stairs one of their servants brought from England to stand guard outside Anna's door.
'No one goes in, no one comes out. Clear?' The servant nodded.
There was a door set in the panels by the side of the vast stone fireplace, a long-forgotten crest emblazoned over it in stone. Mannion picked its cumbersome, ancient lock in seconds, and it swung open for perhaps only the third or fourth time in ten years. It was a servants' passage, leading down into the kitchens that underpinned the whole mansion, empty at this time of night and stinking of grease and burned meat. All four had put their hoods up now, and they walked carefully past the racks of hanging copper pans, careful in case by knocking one against another they rang out like a peal of bells. The dying embers of the great fire flickered on the metal, caught the three hooded figures first in shadow and then in half-light. A child seeing them would have screamed, thinking hooded Death in four forms was walking the streets of Lisbon that night. A great door led directly from the kitchen to the road outside, for ease of delivery. It was locked with another huge mechanism, and bolted top and bottom. They ignored this, and went instead to a tiny door on the left side of the cavernous room, with its arched ceiling. It too was locked, but its bolts had rusted in. Some attempt had been made to force the metal bar into its receiving half-circle of iron, but the bolt had only engaged very slightly. Easing both bolts back ever so gently, Mannion swung it open when again he picked the primitive lock. He grinned inwardly. The three hours he had spent attempting to seduce the cook and the other women in the kitchen had paid dividends, including the knowledge gained from the lazy walk he had taken out of this very door to piss in the street and making the door appear bolted on his return.
It was lighter in the south at this time of night, Gresham noticed, but the streets were almost deserted, activity seeming to be concentrated in the harbour area. They slunk through the streets, fine stone houses built high but casting even deeper moon-shadow as a result, narrow and with the heat of the day still radiating from their stone and brick facades, in contrast to the cold light of the moon. Gresham and Mannion knew where they were going. A wild sense of excitement filled Anna's heart as she followed Gresham and George, Mannion behind her, excitement tinged with terror at what she had allowed herself to become.
It took them fifteen minutes of walking, their good pace limited by the need to keep in the shadows, their heads bowed and their hands clasped humbly in front of them. Those who wished to officiate at the Mass did not run through streets at midnight. It was suspicious enough that they were out anyway. They started to climb a slight hill, the stone houses giving away to ill-built timber structures, bleached by the sun into premature age. Light was bleeding through the shutters of one, large rambling building, raucous conversation and laughter exploding from it. They ducked into a tiny courtyard, bathed in shadow, and Mannion stripped off his gown, revealing the jerkin and trews of a working man. Anna watched from under the lip of her hood, fascinated. Simple though Mannion's dress was, it was cut in the Lisbon style, a subtle difference from that which a workman in London might have worn, the material thinner, the style more loose and flowing, more generous, to cope with the heat. He ducked into what was clearly a tavern or an inn. A door opened, a shard of light cut through the gloom and suddenly Mannion was back beside them. 'Round the back.'