The question threw Cecil.
'Violence is the last resort of the intellectually incompetent,' he rasped as if his saliva was acid. 'I despise it as a waste of resources. Why on earth should I watch a swordsman?'
'Because if you had,' said Gresham, 'you'd see that a huge part of his skill is to go with the flow, let the weight and mass and momentum of the blade do most of his work for him. So it is with me. I'm fascinated by Essex. I'm also frightened by his power to influence people — frightened because he himself does not realise how much he can use that power for good or evil. If you wanted me to spy on Essex, all you had to do was to use my natural inclination, my fear of Essex, and for once I'd have been a willing partner, matching your very different fear. As it is, and because you chose to enlist me by a crude threat, you've lost me as an ally. I go to Ireland as a free agent who might choose to report back to you, but who is under no compunction to do so.'
'I think you lie to yourself,' said Cecil. 'I think the Earl of Essex has cast his spell over you as he has cast it over so many others. I think you are his creature.'
'Your lack of imagination catches you out. One can observe a spell without falling under it. I go to Ireland, knowingly, because Essex intrigues me. He's Icarus. He'll fly too near the sun, and it'll destroy him. And I go because I care for peace in England, and his raving ambition's a threat to England. And because as I quite like him I might be able to stop him doing the stupid thing. But most of all I will go to Ireland because I can sense things happening, great, momentous things. Things that might change history. Oh, I know you see yourself as the spider, sitting at the centre of the web, controlling everything and everyone. But I tell you, there's more afoot than even you can imagine. The Earl of Essex is somehow at the heart of it all so if I am to find out what's going on, I need to be with Essex.'
Gresham left Cecil's presence a great deal happier than he had left it the last time. He had not destroyed the threat posed by Cecil, but he had offered a counter balance, and the two were now in the state of an immovable object up against an irresistible force. It was good enough. It would have to do.
'This,' said Mannion, 'is a right bugger's mix.'
One end of the Library faced out onto the Thames. The other overlooked the courtyard, where what appeared to be a minor battle was raging.
Gresham had put word about that he wished to recruit a company of men. As a result the house had been besieged since dawn. There were 'captains' in their hundreds out there, big, swaggering burly men with huge moustaches and extravagant hats whose brims nearly bridged the Thames, some of them with weather-lined faces marked by smallpox, others with battle scars, one with a huge black eye patch that seemed to make his other eye glare even more. There was a man with a wooden leg, seeming to move faster than his two-legged companions, and one with a hook instead of a left hand. Rather than the sharp end pointing back to the user, it pointed upwards in a grotesque U-shape, the better to rest the shaft of a musket on.
It was late January, and bitterly cold. Braziers had been set up in the yard and, on Gresham's orders, on the street as well, the red-hot coals roasting the fronts of those who huddled near them while the raw wind froze their backs.
Many of the men knew each other, veterans of endless campaigning in the Low Countries. They accosted each other with hollow fellowship or rich insults, their wary eyes glancing round all the time. The cold of winter held no threat for them; they were the survivors. They had overcome bad food, sweating fevers that had swept through the camps in winter, dysentery, heat and cold. They were the ones who the musket balls and the cannon balls had missed, the ones who had scrambled ashore when their transport sank off the Scheldt, the ones who had brought their mounts under control when they bolted and looked set to run straight at the enemy. It was luck, of course, more so than skill or judgement. Warfare took no account of morality, cared nothing for character, for wife or for family. The good died, the bad lived on, or the other way round. Attendance at communion before the battle was a primitive, primeval act, designed to placate an angry God just in case he did exist, to grab the luck to oneself even if it meant taking it away from someone else.
Among their number were the young ones, some dressed in the height of fashion, some in rags, second, third or fourth sons whose only inheritance would be a small annuity. Men who had been conceived as insurance in case the eldest born died young. Shuddering at the thought of a career in the Church or life as a hanger-on, they placed their faith in becoming a hanger-on to the gods of war. War offered excitement and the prospect of reward. And because they were young, they thought they were immortal, and it would be someone else who would die or be maimed. Ignoring the evidence of the older men around them, men for whom war had run its iron fingernails across the soft matter of their brains as well as their bodies, men whom war had corrupted and robbed of half their sensitivities, these young men hung around the edges of the group, the veterans deigning to notice them only if their clothing or equipment suggested they might be good for a free drink.
Gresham and Mannion chose their men finally, fifteen officers and 150 foot soldiers; it took them most of the day. A major factor was the men's kit: a rusty sword, a pistol not gleaming with oil, a leather sword belt that was torn and likely to fall off in battle, and the man was dismissed instantly. So too was anyone with a clearly new, gleaming and unused pistol which had probably been hired for the day. What Gresham and Mannion were looking for were pistols showing signs of usage, carefully oiled and cleaned. The braggadocios wore their pistols openly. The soldiers would even cover the wheel, flint or matchlock mechanism with a carefully cut piece of oiled canvas, to protect it from the weather. If in doubt, Gresham asked to look at the ammunition bag carried by each man. A number had no pistol balls or powder. An equal number had a few balk of different calibre, none of which fitted the gun they were carrying. The real soldiers had at least ten or twenty balls, all as perfectly round as the foundry allowed, and the true veterans would have cast the balls themselves. A misshapen ball could stick in the barrel, blowing up the gun, or simply roll out of it. The less round the ball, the less accurate its flight. As for the sword, it must show signs of use, be oiled and sharpened on one side only, and show no signs of a sudden application of the sharpening stone that morning. A blade that was lovingly tended every day revealed itself to an expert as quickly as some men can sense a virgin. Another key was the length of the blade and weight of the sword. The worst of the soldiers carried swords far too long and heavy for their size and build; carried it for show rather than for use. The true veterans matched their sword to their body mass, height and reach.
So much for the trappings. Then there was the man himself. There would be illness enough on the campaign — Ireland was riddled with a particularly virulent form of dysentry which seemed to eat up men's insides — so to take someone already ill or brewing a sickness was madness. Was the face pale from drink or a wasting sickness? How about the cough? Was the limp an honourable wound or a suppurating sore? Then there was the final and simplest check of alclass="underline" did the man look you in the eye?
Gresham and Mannion made their way the short route down the Strand to Essex House where there was a level of apparent chaos that made The House look positively calm. Yet it was ordered chaos, Gresham noticed. For someone so mercurial, Essex could be a surprisingly good organiser. While he was a strange mixture, he had some good officers round him, and while his command decisions had been suspect in his few real experiences of warfare, his administration had always been surprisingly good.