Watch the Lady (31 page)

“You are right. I will be more measured. Good as gold.” He kisses her cheek, looking at her with puppy eyes. “Don't be angry with me, Sis, I cannot bear it. It makes me feel I have lost your love.”

Her rage towards him subsides, turning inward, and she feels suddenly filled with shame, as if she had put the noose around the man's neck with her own hands. She cannot deny that her ambition to secure the Devereuxs' future is as great as her brother's; it is like a demon that inhabits them both. Without it they could live in contentment. She could have run away and wed beneath her station as Dorothy had, settling for a life in obscurity. But the truth is that even for Dorothy there is no such thing as obscurity, for she is a widow now and Essex is making an attempt to broker an illustrious match for her. Escape is only ever temporary if you are born into a family like theirs, even for dear reckless Dorothy, who hasn't a political hair on her head.

Besides, Penelope knows well enough that she could no more stay away from the heart of things than her brother. He has never had the choice, wouldn't have two pennies to rub together otherwise—the poorest earl in England, that was what they used to say. Families like theirs, if they don't move upwards, they die. So Essex must rub around the Queen's ankles like a cat, batting his paws engagingly at the trifles she dangles over him, constantly seeking patronage to keep the Devereux name alive. And she must help him.

“You have not lost my love, Robin.”

Was there a moment, she wonders, looking back into her own past, in which she turned from the simple girl she was, when the egg became the oyster? It began with Rich. She remembers the delicious feeling of power when she struck her deal with him. If it began with Rich, then it crystallized when she came to understand that even if you do your duty and keep your word, circumstances will not always do your bidding. It was Sidney's death that changed her; she does not feel sadness any longer but there is a quiet well of rage at the root of her that must always be kept in check. But rage has a formidable potency, and one day she may want to draw on it.

There is a loud crash and a shattering of glass, followed by a
thwump
as a heavy object comes into contact with the side of his coach. His immediate thought is that the exterior has only just been repainted, at great expense, but a panicked shout from one of the coachmen—“We are done for if we remain here. To the river! To the river!”—makes Cecil realize that this is no accident. “Hold hard. Turn the horses.”

The coach lists on the turn and there are more battering sounds. A cold sweat takes hold of Cecil's body as the vehicle begins to rock violently.

“Get your filthy hands off!” cries another coachman. A whip whistles and cracks. Scraping together a ration of courage, he opens the curtain an inch, afraid of what he will find beyond the sanctuary of the cabin. There is a man with his face pressed up to the glass, fingers gripping the lip of the door. His mouth opens in a gap-toothed howl as the knotted tail of the coachman's whip meets his back. Cecil flinches. The man has hold of him with a look of unadulterated loathing. He is saying something—“See the likes of us go hungry, would you, in your fancy coach, while all of London starves?”—then spits on the glass.

Cecil shrinks back, dumb with horror, and becomes aware of a distant chanting:
Honest day for honest pay; honest day for honest pay; honest day for honest pay
, and another:
Come all workers, with us stand, England for the Englishman
. The gob of spittle trails in a fat drip down the pane and the man, still with his eyes locked onto Cecil's, begins to fumble with the latch. There is a scuffling to the other side of the coach; there must be more than one of them. Cecil's hands are quivering like a drunkard's and he cannot help but imagine being dragged out and having the life beaten out of him, seeing himself, as if from outside his body, cowering in the mud as men kick at his crouched form.

The sudden earsplitting crack of a pistol being fired takes his breath away. His ears hollow out, ringing painfully. The man turns tail, leaving only the imprint of his loathing on Cecil's mind. The coach moves off fast in the direction of the river, flinging Cecil hard back into the upholstery, cricking his neck. It seems only moments until they are at the pier. The door is flung open and one of his men is helping him out, explaining that he fired into the air. “No one was harmed, sir.” The thought had not crossed Cecil's mind as to the fate of their assailants. “It was close. I feared we might have been—”

“Yes,” interrupts Cecil, at last coming to his senses as he is hustled down the pier to the waiting barge.

“Bad trouble, sir,” says the boatman, as he helps him into the boat. “They're rioting all over the city. Word is they've ransacked a gun maker's shop and torn down the Cheapside pillories. Apprentices, too young to know better—think they can change the world. Headed for Tower Hill.”

“Take me there.” Now in the relative safety of the barge Cecil feels emboldened, as if their narrow escape has invested him with new courage and even an appetite for danger—it is not a familiar feeling but he is in its grip and is quite light-headed with it.

“I do not think it a good idea, sir.”

“It is not I who is afraid.” Cecil can hardly believe himself; it is the kind of thing Essex might say to goad a man into committing folly. “Downriver to the Tower, I said.”

“But the tide is turning. We will have to run the rapids at the bridge.”

“So be it!” Cecil can feel the admiring looks of the oarsmen, impressed by his mettle. A swell of pride catches him.

As the rowers settle into a rhythm, Cecil remains girded by his unfamiliar sense of pluck. When he thinks about, it he should have seen these riots coming. Prices have been rising out of control and a failed harvest has meant an influx of country dwellers into the city, all wanting work. But London is already filled to bursting with foreigners seeking refuge from the wars in the Low Countries and
they
need work too. He saw a gang of youths set upon a Dutchman outside the Mermaid the other day. They had him on the ground, were kicking him; one of the assailants undid his hose and pissed on the poor fellow, who was begging for mercy. Cecil sent in a couple of his men to deal with it, but curbing a single incident is futile.

He can see, from the safety of the water, a group of about fifty men running along the north bank of the river, shouting. The boat glides by the skeleton of the half-built Swan Theatre to the south, a rickety structure reaching up to the sky, higher than all the surrounding buildings except for the church. There is no stopping the playhouses, it would seem. Cecil had made a halfhearted attempt to prevent the building of this one but had abandoned his line for fear of aggravating the Queen, who is fond of the theater.

For Cecil there is something innately sinister in this burgeoning form of entertainment and its power to influence the masses; he has observed how bloodthirsty a crowd can become when they see a political injustice on the stage and fears the insidious way drama has the potential to incite a crowd to rebellion. There has been a particular play of late enacting the usurpation of King Richard II. Cecil cannot fathom why the Queen should approve such an entertainment, though scenes most likely to cause offense
had
been removed. But even so, he is convinced such things cannot fail to put ideas of dissent into men's heads. This is what happens, he thinks, when the uneducated masses are exposed to such things.

A small vessel draws up with the boatman standing, shouting, “There's a mob a thousand strong at Tower Hill!”

All of a sudden Cecil is caught up with the sense that all the fragile structures of the state are collapsing, and not only here in London. The Spanish cannot be contained in Europe; it is only a matter of time before they will be pressing at the south coast of England. But the most alarming development, news of which has lately been whispered along Cecil's lines of intelligence, is that the Spanish do intend to join forces with Tyrone in Ireland, against the English, just as Essex had feared, a sobering thought indeed. Essex is rattling his sword as usual, raring to cover himself in glory; Cecil fears the depleted coffers will have to fund a war on two fronts. His mind has been turning over it all constantly, seeking a diplomatic solution. There must be a deal that can be done without the bloodshed and the crippling expense of war. Cecil imagines achieving this, thinking of the Cecil legacy stretching gloriously out into the future.

Looking up, he is jolted out of his thoughts by the vast structure of the bridge looming above and he feels his newly discovered courage begin to seep away. What kind of madness led him to this? He has already narrowly escaped destruction today and the rapids are easily as perilous as the mob. That cold sweat returns, blossoming beneath his clothes, and his breath is shallow and trembling.

But it is too late to go back, for the water has them in its grasp. The rowers bring in their oars and cling on tight as the force of the current begins to push the barge through the narrow arch at a pace. The men whoop and cheer, taken up by the thrill of it. With the roar of the angry water in his ears, Cecil closes his eyes, too petrified to look as they enter the shadows beneath the bridge. He grips the edge of his seat and holds his breath, trying to focus his mind on staying afloat, as if he can prevent them from capsizing by sheer willpower. The crick in his neck intensifies but he dares not let go to rub it. In his mind he is tossed from the boat, into the raging torrent, and pulled under, twisting and turning down into the depths until his lungs burst.

The barge lurches, sending Cecil's stomach into his throat, and then hangs in the air before smacking back down onto the water, listing heavily so that a wave washes over the lip. Cecil smashes his shoulder against an upright. “Lean in!” cries one of the men and they all shift across their benches, causing the craft to right itself. Cecil's feet are wallowing ankle-deep in water—his best shoes, Italian leather, tooled by an expert artisan.

Then they are through; the men cheer loudly in unison and laugh, teasing each other for being lily-livered. Cecil emits a deep sigh, sending up a silent prayer of thanks, fixes a look of nonchalance on his face, and hides his shaking hands. It wouldn't do for them to see his weakness, though he finds it hard to understand how anyone could derive pleasure from such a terrifying experience, except perhaps the pleasure of finding oneself still alive when it is over.

One of the lads begins to bail out the bilge and Cecil inspects his wet shoes. He can see throngs of men filling the narrow lanes leading up from the river. They are all bearing some kind of makeshift weapon or other and moving in a mass towards Tower Hill. The barge stops in view of the battlements, dipping and tossing in the water. Refusing help from the boy, he manages to heave himself up onto the roof of the cabin to gain a better view.

There is a man on the scaffold shouting to the crowd and waving a gun above his head. Cecil is remembering the last person he saw meet his death at that place—Doctor Lopez, a year since—feeling a heaviness in his gut, which he supposes must be shame, and wonders how he will reconcile himself with God when the time comes. He could have saved Doctor Lopez but he would have lost favor for it. He has watched an innocent man die and as a result seen his enemy rise to impossible heights. It riles him to see Essex puffed up with self-importance but it is the lesser of the two evils—to lose the Queen's trust would have been the end of it for the Cecils. Sometimes he is sickened by the things he does. But I do it for the sake of England, he reminds himself—for the Queen. And he consoles himself with the thought that, with Essex rising so high, if he falls the parts of him may be scattered too far to be recombined.

The man on the scaffold fires his gun into the air and the crowd roars. Some are throwing stones at windows; a mob near the dock has kicked in the doors of a storehouse and is making away with barrels of fish. Cecil is thinking hard about which of the men in his pay he can ask for names of the ringleaders. There is one who has contacts amongst the apprentices, he will know. A public punishment should curb the worst of it. That man posturing on the scaffold, firing his gun, will find himself back up there before long, asking forgiveness from God and watching in agony as his guts are spilled before his eyes. Cecil will recommend that the Queen impose a curfew. He wonders now why he came. It is not as if he can do anything from his floating refuge.

“Get me back to the palace,” he says to the boatman.

•  •  •

At Whitehall Cecil finds his father watching as the Queen and Essex play chess. Essex now sports a voluminous beard, lustrous and masculine like the mane of a lion. The Queen gazes at the earl as if he is a creature of her own making and she is delighted with her handiwork. Cecil feels his old envy bubbling up.

“Pygmy!” she says, turning to him. “I hear you have been at the battle front.” He wants her to make more of it, to congratulate him on his bravery, but she seems quite lighthearted and he knows that to describe his ordeal would make it look as if he were fishing for accolades.

“I did witness the events.”

“From the safety of your barge,” says Essex. He is smirking, as if to say, had it been him, he would have been in the midst of it all, dispersing the crowd single-handedly.

Cecil looks down at his ruined shoes; there is a white tidemark on his black stockings. He supposes Essex is the sort who would whoop and cheer running the rapids. How does
he
know, anyway, that Cecil was on his barge? He feels watched as much as he watches; it is not a comfortable feeling. Cecil runs through those he employs as oarsmen, wondering which of them cannot be trusted—or perhaps it was someone on another boat.