'An advantage?' said Essex, sensing an insult but not sure what it was. 'What do you mean by that?'
'You were born a nobleman, born to lead, born to see yourself as a cut above other men. Brought up in the household of the most powerful man in England.'
Where apparently you learnt black magic and sodomy, thought Gresham, though this is probably not the best time to mention it. Except there was no sense of any great evil emanating from this man, unlike Cecil. Essex was surprisingly likeable. Spoilt, selfish and certainly arrogant, but no one brought up as the heir to an earl-dom could ever totally avoid that. He was a philanderer and probably a depressive, and his mood swings were renowned. Yet underneath was a genuine power, allied to that strange vulnerability.
'I was born a bastard,' Gresham continued, 'to a merchant who happened to make the greatest fortune in England but who had no birth and no breeding. If I seem at ease with my men, and they with me, it's because we both recognise how similar we are. We're no different, really. I've just had more luck.'
Without realising he had done it, or why, Gresham's last words pushed Essex instantly into a different persona. Gresham saw at first hand one of those famous, meteoric mood changes in Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
'And if you can do what you have done without the power that breeding brings, how much should I do, who have had all that advantage, had the ear of the Queen… I, who love the Queen more than any other of her subjects!'
Dark, black melancholia, a bottomless pit of sadness and hopelessness into which one could only dive, helpless. It was a mood Gresham recognised from himself.
The ear of the Queen? It was probably one of her more attractive bits, thought Gresham, but you're welcome to it and the rest of her body. Love the Queen? It was entirely possible that Essex did. Royalty had that effect on some people, robbed them of their senses, made proud men obsequious, filled them with a slavish devotion. Perhaps Jesus had had the same effect on his disciples.
Essex's mood had swung totally in the space of a second. He was angry now, hauled up out of the black dog pit, on his feet, his face reddening, almost shouting at Gresham. Did the man have a dose of the clap, as many said? The disease was endemic in Court, and Essex a known philanderer. These sudden mood changes, often followed by plunges into mad depression were a feature of syphilis. Yet Essex showed none of the outward physical symptoms.
'I was born to power!' he was shouting now, like a lunatic. 'God gave me the breeding, the body and the brain!'
But not, thought Gresham, the modesty to go with it. Nor, as it happened, the money.
'And what have I done with it? Done with my precious ration of time? The gift we are given only once?'
Was this an act? No. There was real insanity lurking behind the Earl's frothings. Yet at the same time there was something else, the strangest sense of a different, almost an alternative intelligence at work, observing and assessing while all the time the outer person gave a very convincing performance as someone who had lost not just the marbles but any sense of the rules of the game.
'You've become Earl Marshal of England,' said Gresham, deciding not to pander to the rage or the self-pity. The appointment had been announced in December of the previous year. This was new in their relationship. They had never talked like this before. 'You've certainly had your ups and downs in Court politics, but as things stand you're the favourite of the Court. You're also, gratifyingly but dangerously, the man the people cheer as he rides through the street. Oh, and you're Master of the Queen's Horse, and holder of her monopoly of sweet wines. Not bad, even for an Earl.'
'Pah!' The scorn in Essex's voice was tangible, a tearing, terrible thing. 'I am mocked for my failure in the Azores, my Lord of Effingham made Earl of Nottingham and so to walk ahead of me at the opening of Parliament!'. Essex was conveniently forgetting that his appointment as Earl Marshal had restored his precedence over Effingham. 'To be sponsored by me for any post at Court is to have the kiss of death on one's prospects! The Queen ignores my nominations. Laughs at me, even.''
The expedition to the Azores in 1597 had been a disaster, the feud between Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh shaking and eventually breaking the whole mad-cap adventure.
'If naval engagements were subject to common sense and logic, or influenced by the effectiveness of their commanders, Spain would be King of England now and the leader of the Armada, Duke Medina de Sidonia, probably Earl of Essex, for all I know.'
It did not make sense under normal circumstances to remind a reigning monarch how many such had lost their thrones or their lives, nor to remind a proud Earl that his power was to all intents and purposes in the gift of the reigning King or Queen. Yet it seemed to have worked. Essex's head snapped round, his headlong descent into self-pity not stopped, but certainly slowed down. *You were there, not just with the Armada, but on it? You've never talked of it It was one of the great scandals of the time. They said you were a spy for Spain. They still do say so, some of them.'
‘I was there,' said Gresham simply, this time looking into his own soul, rather than trying to fathom that of Essex. 'On board the flagship of the Armada, by the side of its commander. I was a young man then, and already a spy, that most despised of all things. On a fleet led by the person who I still think of as the greatest commander of all. By the side of that man a petty tyrant deliberately stranding his men on mud flats to teach them a lesson is nothing. Nothing at all.'
'And was Medina de Sidonia so good a commander?' whispered Essex, his mood changed yet again. 'They say he was a coward, that he failed in his leadership.'
'He's the best man I've ever served with or under.' Except Sir Walter Raleigh, but given the relationship between Essex and Raleigh it was probably not tactful to mention that now.
'Why? Why was he so good?'
Essex was driven by what he knew in his heart he would never attain: military glory. It was one of the ways he would rescue his life, give it meaning. It was simple. You fought and won, or lost If you were lucky you lost your life in the latter case, and gained sweet oblivion from the mess of life. Did Essex share with Gresham a wish for death, to end the struggle, the fighting for position, the endless pursuit of ill-defined goals?
'Medina de Sidonia had lands, estates, position. A happy marriage, children. When he was summoned, without warning, to take charge of the Armada, he knew it would fail. Too much damage had already been done, and his intelligence told him that this outwardly great fleet was like a child damaged beyond repair in the mother's womb. His King had given him binding orders that crippled his freedom of action.'
'So he served an ungrateful monarch,' breathed Essex, 'and yet he still took the duty on?'
'Of course he did!' said Gresham, scornfully and stung for once into an entirely open response. 'He was a grandee of Spain, wasn't he? In Spain, nobility justifies itself by sacrifice. He knew he would lose his honour by leading a fleet that was destined to fail. And his honour is the only thing a Spanish nobleman has that matters. Our poor noblemen…'
Careful! Essex was poor, his extravagance paid for by a monopoly on sweet wines.
'… our poor noblemen hang round like hungry dogs outside the doors of the Court, destroyed if they cannot don a new doublet. In Spain the poorest noble thinks himself rich if he has his honour. Yet his King had called for Sidonia to do something that he knew would lose him his honour if he accepted and lose if he refused. He knew he would lose. Yet still he sailed, because he had sworn his fealty to his King. He knew that when he lost he would lose his own honour and reputation, the things more important to him and his ancient family than life itself. Yet in losing his own honour he would ensure that the real villain, his King, preserved his. It was a conscious choice, don't you see?' Gresham was getting carried away. He decided to let it happen. 'Forgive me, my Lord Earl. Do you know how many times he led his own flagship into the heat of the battle, exposed himself to every sharpshooter in England? A cannon ball does not stop in mid-air and bow to noble blood. So I sink a little when I hear you bemoan your own lack of advancement. The noblest commander I've ever met sacrificed his own reputation for a higher end, the reputation of his monarch. In my mind, true nobility consists of sacrifice as much as self-advancement.'