The rebel heart

'I'm sure you've heard all this before.' Essex was about to say something, but Gresham held up his hand. As he fingered the maps, Gresham seemed to grow in stature, become less of the shadowy figure of vague menace, more the commander. 'The land itself appears to be your greatest enemy. It's uneven, marshy, treacherous to foot and horse, subject to wild swings in weather, with bogs even on top of mountains. All this seems to breed a strange marsh fever. The Irish seem to be able to melt into their landscape. They've skills our soldiers haven't even begun to learn. They can shadow an army for days and give no hint of their presence, rising up out of the swamp, the bog or the grassland as if they were wraiths. So many of the ways are treacherous, fords over rivers so few, that it is folly to stray from the beaten path. Yet the Irish can find their way over bog and marsh and will adopt a favourite tactic of dropping one or two trees across a path, blocking a route, then punching in from the sides and rear, melting away if they meet fierce resistance, wiping out the party if they don't.'

'So can a campaign in Ireland ever be won?' asked Sir Christopher Blount.

'Any campaign can be won,' said Gresham. 'The Irish weakness is their lack of unity, which Tyrone is addressing; their lack of artillery, which means that forts and strongholds can be held far longer than would be the case in the rest of Europe; and their fear of our cavalry, which has always been our strongest hand in Ireland.'

'And our weaknesses?' It was Essex.

'The English Pale, our sphere of influence, is based in relatively few counties and is supported by English settlers. There's a host of Irish chieftains who will support whoever pays them most. Vast tracts of Ireland have never been actually conquered by us. There's a fierce patriotism in Ireland, and we've profited as we have only because so many of the Irish hate each other more than they hate us. Now they are starting to unite. England and its troops can command Dublin and some of the counties, working from castles and strongholds, while the Irish can command the countryside with their wild kerns. They can overwhelm our troops if they gather in sufficient number as they did at Yellow Ford. If they receive troops and artillery from Spain in large numbers, they will be able to match us in the fixed battle and take our strongholds by siege.'

Gresham was saying nothing that was new, but a part of his heart fell as he realised from the glum expressions round the table that some of it at least was new to his listeners.

'So what would your plan be?' It must have cost Essex much, with his dreams of military glory and vision of himself as a commander, to ask that question. What did he think Ireland was? A gentle version of the Forest of Arden?

'Go for the heart of the matter. Head straight for Tyrone's base in Ulster, kill him or drive him into the countryside for ever. Tyrone is the key, England can divide and rule well enough in Ireland. It is when Ireland unites that we face defeat. Tyrone is the key to Irish unity.'

'How goes your recruiting?' asked Essex, changing the subject in his infuriating mercurial manner.

'I'll bring one hundred foot, fifty horse and fifteen officers to your command. If we have until March to train them, they'll be passable.'

'And will you join my command team?' asked Essex.

'I will not, my Lord,' said Gresham. There was the hiss of indrawn breath from someone in the room. 'I will be too busy whoring my services. But I will fight for you, and for the Queen, and fight long and hard.'

'So we're off again,' said Mannion, as they walked away from Essex House, the mud frozen on the paving that made the Strand one of London's better-favoured streets.

'Does it make you unhappy?' asked Gresham.

'No,' said Mannion. 'Seems to me life's just one fight after another, always has been, always will. If yer not fightin' people, you're fighting life. I know war's bloody horrible, and from the sound of it Ireland's worse than most. But at least out there you know who the enemy is, you know who you're fightin'. Way we lead our lives, we're spending most of the time fightin' without knowin' who it is we're fighting.'

'I suspect,' said Gresham, 'that there'll be the enemy we can't see and the enemy we can see in Ireland as well as in London.'

'Well,' said Mannion with a grin, 'we'd best get down to trainin' those buggers we've just recruited to make sure when we does get shot it's at least by an Irishman!'

'Why can't I accompany you?' asked Jane.

'Don't be monstrous!' said Gresham. 'You're a woman!'

'I'm glad you've noticed,' she said tartly. 'Mannion tells me there are literally hundreds of women who follow the army. I've shown I can be useful. In medieval times Kings used to take their wives away with them on campaign. Queen Eleanor had two of her sixteen children on campaign.'

'Good God! You're not pregnant, are you?'

'No, I am not!' said Jane, going a deep red. 'I was using it as an illustration!'

'The women who follow the army are not normal. They — they are

…' How could Gresham explain to a young girl what the women who followed the army were?

'They are common-law wives,' said Jane, 'that's what Mannion told me.'

'They're whores!' said Gresham, desperately. 'Give them any fancy name you like, but they're whores for the comfort of the men. Many of them are… shared between men. I'm sorry. I can't put it any more plainly.'

Jane stood silent. It was impossible to know what she was thinking.

'Don't they cook? And wash? As well as… do the other thing?'

'What?'

'Well? Don't they?'

'Yes, I suppose some of them… look after their men, I suppose-' 'Well!' said Jane triumphantly, 'I can come as your housekeeper! I can make sure you get decent meals and clean clothes and-'

'Why on earth do you want to come?' asked Gresham. 'This is war, for God's sake. People will die, half of them from marsh fever! It is no place for a proper woman. It just isn't.'

'I want to come because… because…' her face went red again. 'I want to come because it gives me a role! If you leave me here… I'm not your wife! I'm not your mistress!' She had the grace to blush. 'I'm not even a servant! I'm a nothing! An expensive mistake who spends your money, wears the clothes you pay for, lives only through you. At least on the boat I was serving a purpose, was doing something. Here, with you and Mannion in Ireland… I'm nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.'

For almost the first time he felt a tinge of sympathy for her. But he had no option.

'Look, I'm sorry,' he said, and perhaps he was. 'I'll have enough to worry about with my own survival in Ireland and that of my men. If you were there I'd have to worry about you. And I'm not prepared to be the person who's responsible for your death.'

'But you don't think twice about being responsible for your own death? Or the men you take with you.'

'I know what I'm doing. So do they.' ' 'What if I know what I'm doing? What if it's what I want?'

'I'm sorry. Campaigning is no place for a young girl.'

There was a rebellious, angry expression on her face which carried through to the whole way she stood.

'Do you want me to be really blunt with you?'

'Aren't you always?' she retorted.

'There's no way I could guarantee to keep you a virgin on such a campaign as this is likely to be. And before you say anything' — he had seen her about to speak, to remonstrate — 'what I mean is rape. Pure, simple rape. There are men there, possibly many men, who would simply bide their time, take their chance, wait till I was out of camp. They would come to your tent — and no one I know has ever been able to lock a tent — and put a bag over your head so you couldn't identify them. Then in silence, their silence at least so you couldn't recognise their voices, they'd rape you. With a rag stuffed in your mouth to drown your cries.'