'What did she ask you about?' asked Gresham, as they went back to The House in the Strand.
'Oh…' said Jane vaguely, 'woman's stuff.'
He decided to leave it at that. The real business was about to start.
Gresham and Mannion dismounted at the quayside, handing the horses over with a pat to the grooms who would ride them home. The cobbled wharf was littered with the debris of the sea, and stank of tar and foul water, thick in the heavy air that barely flapped a sail. The tiny Waves were slapping angrily yet ineffectively at the hulls, as if warning the ships of their bigger brethren waiting out at sea. Jane was due to come in the huge coach that Gresham's father had adopted in his later years. Already the arrival of the fine gentleman and his baggage was causing a stir, with men turning from the mending of sails or the lugging of stores to watch the new entertainment and relieve the boredom of their working lives.
How did you train your men? Essex had asked Gresham. With great difficulty and at great length, was the answer. Only two of those same men were with Gresham now, Jack and Dick, to act as porters for the luggage. Other men would have taken servants to care for their clothes or shave them on such a trip. Gresham chose to take two people who knew how to handle themselves in a fight.
The same was not true of the crew of the Anna. The master was a competent seaman, in part-retirement now. His crew were no better and no worse than many of their type — jobbing mariners who moved from one boat to another as work came up — and who would stay only a few months or even weeks when it became clear that the Anna would only leave her berth for short trips to shake out her sails and stretch her hull. Some three or four, the more permanent ones, were members of the master's own family. Gresham's instinct had been to use the Anna for the trip to Scotland rather than take passage on a boat of which he had no previous knowledge. At least he knew that good money had been spent on her rigging, that her timbers were sound and the vessel in exceptional repair. He would sell her afterwards, he reasoned, and buy another escape route in another mooring.
But he had not trained the Anna's men. Her crew did not know him, had no particular loyalty towards him. The elements were only one of the dangers for a sailing ship.
What if his enemies were watching him, even now? How much would Cecil's letter, or that from the Queen, be worth to someone angling for the Crown? How much was the Queen's ring worth? Anyone bringing it to James would be granted private access. On a secret mission, how would James know whether or not the bearer was the man to whom the Queen had handed her token, or the man who had murdered the initial bearer? Worst of all, was Essex skilled enough to hear of Cecil's rebuttal and try to intercept it?
Nagging at the back of his mind was the way he had been tricked by Cecil. Was he losing his touch? Was using his own boat another sign of the decaying mental powers of someone who had lived on the edge for so long that he was now taking the easy route? And all the time the sense was growing in him of the importance of what he carried. A letter from Cecil to James was bad enough, possible proof of treachery. Yet even that was insignificant by the side of a secret letter from Queen Elizabeth of England to King James of Scotland. How many of those fighting over the flesh of the English crown would give a fortune to know the contents of that letter?
He cast his eyes over the roadstead, from the bits of rough timber, fish scales and assorted unidentifiable lumps of matter washing up against the strand, to the boats with the precious berths by the shore out to the less fortunate moored in the tideway. Would one of these nondescript, assorted vessels, the lifeblood of England's coastal and near-continental trade, drop its sails as the Anna set out, and follow it silently out to sea? How many of the seamen and rabble on the quayside were in the pay of Gresham's and the Queen's enemies? Was the spy being spied upon at this very moment?
Mannion was oblivious to Gresham's fears, casting a professional eye over the Anna and grunting in satisfaction at what he saw. Mannion had been a ship's boy, groomed to be a captain, until the owner of the vessel had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition and been burned alive as a heretic in front of his wife and crew. Just as Gresham hated oil lamps, so Mannion would never stay in a room where pork had been overcooked. The similarity to the smell of human flesh burning was too close.
The master of the Anna was standing on her tiny quarterdeck, and hurried over to greet Gresham. Old now, every storm he had weathered had left a wrinkle on his face, but he had a toughness that Gresham found reassuring. What was less reassuring, and what Gresham had not seen when he had interviewed the man, was his tendency to move sideways all the time like a restless crab, and to rub his gnarled hands together like a moneylender striking a deal. Nor would he look Gresham in the eye. Interesting. Alarm bells began to ring in Gresham's head. The man was sweating, nervous. What had scared him so much?
'You seem to have a full crew,' said Gresham noting more men than he remembered scurrying round the deck. They ranged from another wizened old man who the captain assured Gresham was the best ship's carpenter sailing from London, to a boy for whom a razor seemed an impossible dream.
'I hope I haven't acted out of turn, sir,' the man was now saying. As well as not looking at Gresham his rheumy eyes flickered left and right, as if expecting someone to rescue him. 'The voyage to Scotland is long and sometimes treacherous, even in summer. It would be greatly in our interest for us to have two watches, but that means doubling the crew. Trade's not good at present, and there's plenty of good men around, so I took the liberty of hiring another watch. I know it's more expensive, but it will be safer, and with the lady on board…' He nodded obsequiously towards Jane, who had just arrived and whose trunks were being lugged on board by a cheerful Jack and Dick, and kept his eyes on her for longer than was strictly necessary. 'I've also taken on board a sailing master. He can navigate and con the ship, let me have a little sleep every now and then.'
Damn! Damn! Any one of the original crew might have been paid by one of Gresham's enemies, though as a safeguard Gresham had instructed the master wherever possible to recruit from his extended family. But the new men? Recruited in a hurry from the taverns that served as employment exchanges along the river, they could be anyone's man. Damn! Why had he not thought of this beforehand? For someone who liked above all to be in control, too much of his life was out of his hands at present.
'Master,' said Gresham, 'I do mind.' The man's face fell, and Gresham worked outwardly to reassure him. 'No, the responsibility is mine. I didn't explain to you the reality of what it is we do. The voyage we are embarking on is… sensitive. It's possible my enemies may have tried to place someone on board.' Had he hit a spot? Or was the old man simply angry at the implicit accusation. God! What a way to start off with someone who might at some stage in the voyage have their lives in his hands. In any event, the man showed anger, started to bluster. Genuine? Difficult to tell. Patches of his face were dead, unmoving, the nerves perhaps atrophied by too many stormy days and nights gazing head on into the wind and the spray.
'Sir Henry! I'm an honest man and I ply an honest trade!' Why, when a man felt the need to tell you that he was honest, did it always mean the opposite? 'The idea that I would allow — a spy — on board my ship — your ship,' he hastily corrected himself, 'is a deep insult.' Did he realise what Gresham was? If he did, he was about to allow the deepest insult he had ever met board his ship. For money of course. Which would be why he would have let others on board of the same type, if that was what he had done. Gresham let him rant for a while longer, then cut in.