by Alan Judd
I believe he had as little natural affection for me as I for him. His charm did not work on me. We never had hard words, still less came to blows, but he was wary of me because I enjoyed Mr Secretary’s confidence. He knew too that while he dealt in the secrets men told him, I knew what they told others and knew too what they secretly wrote, including what they wrote of him. His wariness probably protected me from his outright enmity.
I told Christopher of my meeting with Dr Norgate and Dr Copcot and what the Privy Council letter had said.
‘That will be an arrow in Dr Norgate’s eye,’ he said. ‘It is not just for my absences that he is against me. Others have been absent for as long but their degrees were not threatened.’
‘He thought you were defecting to Rheims to become a Catholic.’
‘They say that of anyone they don’t like. No, the good doctor has taken against me because he thinks I mock true Godliness and because I mix with players here in Cambridge. The authorities here think plays and players bring disrepute upon the town and would like to ban them. Also, they know that my Tamburlaine has great success in London and there is nothing our tutors resent more than the worldly success of their scholars. We suffer a plague of religious caterpillars here, crawling over us, hypocrites all. Was it so in your day?’
The Puritan influence in Cambridge was certainly growing. Riding in, I had observed shoals of sober, solemn, surly young men walking slowly with heads bowed, their gowns wrapped about them like so many beetles. In my day, which was only ten years before, scholars were more boisterous and often far from sober. ‘Not like this. But you are not against the true religion, surely?’
He hesitated. ‘How could I be?’ His tone was playful and I had the impression he had considered a different reply.
‘It is the Puritans you dislike?’
‘Evangelists, I dislike all evangelists and all evangelising.’
‘Even those who evangelise what you yourself believe?’
‘I’ve never met anyone who believes what I believe.’
I did not then ask what that was. In those years Puritans and other dissenters were vigorously pursued by Archbishop Whitgift. He hanged a couple of Christopher’s Cambridge contemporaries because they would not accept the settlement under Queen Elizabeth. Mr Secretary also vigorously pursued dissenters and extremists, despite himself being an evangelist of the Protestant cause. His target was anyone who threatened the security of the state, Protestant or Catholic or free-thinker. If he asked me what Christopher believed, as he had of others whose loyalty he probed, I should have been compelled to tell him that I did not know but that Christopher sometimes appeared to reject all religion. Better therefore that I really did not know, so I didn’t push Christopher to explain. But I wanted to know. This wasn’t the first time we had had this kind of conversation but I had never known him so explicit. I fingered the papers on his table. ‘So this is your Devil play?’
‘Notes and sketches, small beer. A German scholar sells his soul to the Devil for worldly riches and triumphs. Hell awaits but he cannot bring himself to repent. Not a new story but mine will be like no other.’
‘Prodigal of ink and paper.’
‘They’ll pay for themselves.’
‘Not heretical, is it? If you write of heresies you’ll be accused of believing them.’
‘In which case I shall simply ensure that the heretics in my plays are woefully punished.’
‘I hear your Tamburlaine is a fine and bloody play. Much spoken of in London.’
He told me he had a new manner of writing verse for players and enthused about the ancients, particularly Ovid. He always came back to Ovid or Lucan, mainly Ovid. I encouraged such talk because it brought out another side of him, a side I liked, a fine disinterested passion. Christopher’s usual manner was quiet, often distant, sometimes mocking and disdainful, or coldly scornful when provoked. But when it came to Ovid and the ancients his speech gained in pace and warmth as if they were close friends. I think they were; for him, all literature was contemporary. He delighted in anyone who showed interest, his brown eyes moistening and brightening. Showing interest was all I could do, sadly, having forgotten most of what I learned of the ancients in favour of my own passion for numbers and symbols. But he would ask about that and I would try to convey the purity of their appeal, their cleanliness, logic and mystery, uncontaminated by the detritus of humanity. I confessed I could never read slowly enough to relish poetry.
It was no bar between us. He could imagine, he said, the beauty of number, the delight of an elegant solution. He speculated that his new way of writing verse with few rhymes resembled the mathematic in that he made patterns from the music and rhythm of words. We were talking thus when the bell rang for dinner. He pulled his gown about him. ‘Thank you again for your help. Please pass on my gratitude and respect to Sir Francis.’
‘Shall you return to London after the ceremony on Tuesday? We might have more work for you if you are not too taken up with your plays.’ I had in mind fresh evidence of Spanish invasion plans I had recently decrypted. Already busy, we were about to become much busier.
He took my hand. ‘Thomas, you are an unlikely agent of the Devil. All the more effective for it.’
‘You think our work is the work of the Devil?’
‘Possibly, but without your knowing it.’
‘You are a Papist after all, then?’ I did not mean that seriously.
‘Worse, worse than that. Worse than you think.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I heard enough from Huguenots who fled to Canterbury to render me proof against Papism. If Her Majesty calls me to arms again, of course I should respond. You will find me in Shoreditch. Just ask among the players.’
When later Christopher was accused of free-thinking I recalled these remarks without realising I had remembered them. Around the time of his death, lines from his plays were quoted as evidence of atheistical free-thinking and Machiavellism but while he was still in Cambridge most of those lines had not then been written. However, public display of such sentiments was dangerous and I cautioned him against it, though I now think the danger was partly what attracted him. What I did not know then was the effect he would have on my own beliefs.
Could this be the reason for the King’s interest in him, sir? Of course, you cannot say, I accept that. But it would be an understandable interest. I hear His Majesty’s proper fear and love of God does not preclude him from exploring the minds of men?
Anyway, there was a more immediate sequel to that conversation. It occurred after chapel the following morning. I attended the Corpus Christi service rather than my own old college’s or the Vice Chancellor’s, partly to impress on Dr Norgate that the eye of the state was upon him and partly because I wanted to see more of Christopher. I confess to you now that I felt a fondness for Christopher, I always had. I felt drawn to him as if he needed protecting, a notion he would have scorned, of course. Not in the sense in which protection is normally understood – he was well capable of looking after himself in this world – but I felt he needed protection from himself. For all his knowingness and cleverness, for all his readiness to attack or defend with wit or blade or fists, there was something vulnerable about him. I cannot even now say precisely what it was but it had to do with honesty, honesty regardless of consequence, and a curious gap in his self-awareness. God spare us for it, sir, but I think you will agree that most of us are frequently dishonest in small things, sometimes in big things? But not Christopher. He would deceive only with deliberation, only to higher purpose such as the security of the state in the work he did for us, never to his own advantage. In himself, in his beliefs and natural reactions, he was as spontaneous and unguarded as a child. Perhaps that was why he seemed vulnerable, as if he needed saving from himself. As indeed his end proved. But why I felt I had to protect him, I cannot say. In view of that end, you might say I failed.
And so I worshipped that morning in Corpus Christi with all the scholars. The singing was lusty and Dr N
orgate preached a good sermon on obedience to God and the Queen, to our parents, to the teaching of the Bible and to conscience. He argued that submission is key, submission to God’s will, and that only in renouncing ourselves do we truly find ourselves. He could not have intended this for my benefit since he did not know I would be there, but I thought it merited favourable report to Sir Francis. Would such a sermon find favour now, sir? You think so? I hope you are right. I hear that Dr Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, preaches a goodly sermon, though I believe he has also penned some scandalous verses. He was a Catholic, you know, before repenting. I regret that my circumstances prevent me from hearing him though I fear my soul may be past benefitting now.
It was another fine morning and after the service people stood talking in the quad. I had spotted Christopher near the front of the chapel but lost him as we came out, then saw him again walking rapidly out of the college, alone. I caught up with him on the street, which was filling with dispersing congregations. He acknowledged me curtly, without slackening his pace.
‘A good sermon,’ I said.
‘Keeps the sheep happy.’ He walked on, looking straight ahead.
‘But it’s true, is it not? That only by renouncing ourselves do we find our true selves?’
‘The truth of it doesn’t matter. So long as it stops you thinking for yourself its purpose is achieved.’
I stopped in the street. ‘You really think that is its purpose?’
He turned to me with a sigh, forcing others to step around us. ‘I am sorry, Thomas, I am not in a giving mood this morning. I’ve no time for these hypocrites. Follow me to the river if you wish. Walking by water is balm for the soul.’ He turned again and walked on.
I was surprised and affronted. It was ungracious, given what I had just done for him, and there had been nothing in the sermon to which any good Christian could take exception. But I decided he should be taken to task and hurried after him into one of those alleys leading to the river. It was busy with worshippers, mostly gowned scholars spilling like plagues of beetles from court and quad, and was too narrow to walk two abreast, so I was forced to follow until it broadened out and we could talk again. He did not acknowledge me at first but strode on, looking neither right nor left, his face set hard. It was as if he had received an insult and was on his way to give someone a beating.
‘Forgive me, Thomas,’ he declared suddenly, still without looking at me. ‘It is the Devil in me. That is all. It will pass. He will leave while we walk.’
‘The Devil possesses you? Does he visit often?’
‘Only in worship. Divine service prompts rebellion in my breast. It has since childhood. I kneel, I sing, I pray with the rest but my heart rebels within me. It is not the message but being preached at. And being expected to believe the impossible.’
‘What is impossible? You are not suggesting that Our Lord—’
‘I am suggesting that every day since God created the world the sun has risen in the morning and set in the evening. But we are asked to believe that one day it set at the sixth hour and rose again at the ninth hour, a unique event in nature coinciding with the crucifixion of Our Lord. Do you believe that, Thomas? Do you? Tell me honestly.’
He turned to face me now, his dark eyes challenging. For a few moments I was lost for an answer, which prompted him to launch a sermon of his own. He queried the age of the world as estimated by the Fathers of the Church, then said that holy scripture suggested that Jesus had a mistress, then that He had an unnatural relationship with the disciple John and finally that if we gave all our goods to the poor as the scriptures urge us then the poor would become the rich and we the poor. They would then be urged to give back to us what we had given to them and we would go on changing places for ever. ‘So the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is nothing more than a perpetual dance, a merry-go-round,’ he concluded.
We were by then at the riverside. The more eagerly Christopher spoke, the slower he walked. Expounding heresies excited him. But it also lightened his mood and by the end he was smiling at his own exuberance. I was in something of a daze, not only because such heresies were shocking but because they were disturbing. I had never suspected him of harbouring such thoughts. I perceive they still have power to shock, sir? Dare you relay them to the King? Is it this that His Majesty wishes to know about?
Christopher’s own deepest beliefs? I fear I cannot plumb him deep enough to know what he truly believed. If anything. He loved playing with ideas, you see, especially ideas with power to shock, and it was hard to know how he stood behind them, whether far or near. As I said when we began today, he was a cat that walked alone.
At the time I comforted myself by reflecting that he was at least partly in jest, a comfort reinforced when he placed his hand on my shoulder again and smiled his soft smile, ‘Forgive me, Thomas, I did not mean to burden you with troublesome fantasies. There is enough to complicate life without idle speculations. It is time we broke our fast.’
CHAPTER TWO
Cambridge? Did Cambridge change him? A shrewd question, sir, one I cannot comfortably answer. He once told me that study of the ancients taught him to question everything. But of course he had studied them at school in Canterbury so where the change began I cannot say. It may have been Cambridge, though he did not speak in this manner when I first met him some six years before the events I have just related. He was new to Cambridge when we met.
In those days I did my secret work for Sir Francis in a private study in Whitehall Palace called the New Library, although it held more maps than books. Sir Francis and Lord Burghley were keen geographers and spent much time studying maps, Lord Burghley especially when he feared the Queen apt to be persuaded by some handsome sea-captain to pay for voyages in distant seas. He was parsimonious with the Queen’s money, as I now know to my cost, and his broad, hunched figure would stand as if turned to salt before a map. Sometimes he wrote on the maps or altered them according to what returning sea-captains – those who did return – reported. Sir Francis too would study them for hours on end until he knew all foreign countries and regions. But his chief study was a map of English counties on which were marked the houses of recusant Catholic families suspected of harbouring priests and other seditious men. This was the map he later removed to his house in Seething Lane, along with the large globe.
None apart from those two men and the Earl of Leicester, and those working closely with them, were allowed in the New Library. The Earl of Essex gained entry as a result of the Queen’s favour but he did not come often. As one of the few granted regular access I worked on my decipherings at a small table in the corner, locking my papers away when not engaged on them so that as few as possible should know whose letters we read.
That little room gave me the privacy and quiet I needed. And my need was great during the busy early summer of 1581. I was recently returned from Paris, whither Sir Francis had sent me to help our ambassador there, Sir Henry Cobham, with some papers that had come into his hands. They were not, it turned out, so very important, being copies of Spanish correspondence about the fate of 500 Spanish soldiers who had landed in County Kerry the year before in order to raise an Irish insurrection. They had surrendered in September and our forces had massacred all but 23 of them. It was not clear how or why they were massacred but what was clear from these papers was that the Spanish Court still did not know the fate of their expedition. That was important because it meant we could reasonably assume there was no Spanish spy in our midst.
Sir Francis was also recently returned from Paris where he had been sent by the Queen on a mission of great delicacy – negotiating Her Majesty’s possible marriage to the Duc d’Anjou. I daresay, sir, that few even now know that such a possibility was ever on the table? Or under it. Mr Secretary’s task was made even more delicate by the fact that he found it impossible to establish whether Her Majesty was serious. A further complication was that he himself was deeply opposed to it, believing that the throne of England should not be shared with any f
oreigner, especially a Catholic foreigner. But there was a point beyond which no one, not even Sir Francis, durst argue with Her Majesty. She knew his opinion and he privately hoped that she chose him as her negotiator because she wanted to show willing but did not really want the negotiation to succeed. Sir Francis appointed his young cousin, Thomas Walsingham – who later became Christopher’s patron, as you shall hear – to be his confidential courier. I was involved because correspondence carried by Thomas had to be encoded. Also, I knew more than I was supposed to because my intimate role in Sir Francis’s affairs meant that other men assumed I knew everything – which I did not – and so would discuss matters freely with or before me.
As well as all this we were dealing with serious threats on our own soil. The Pope had recently issued dispensation to Catholics to swear false loyalty to the Queen without endangering their souls. His predecessors, of course, had already granted dispensation to murder her and her advisers in order to restore England to the old faith.
Do you know whether these dispensations still stand, sir, or did lapse with the death of the Queen? No? It should be known. If anyone doubts their seriousness, remember the plot to destroy the government and parliament with gunpowder in 1605. I am sure King James will remember that business, a very close thing. I was myself called back to help with it, then abandoned again afterwards.
To return to my story: we had learned of new plots against the life of the Queen. Some were serious, others the fantasies of strange or lonely minds, others again the vengeful desires of men consumed by grievance. As always, the mad were made use of by the bad and part of my duty was to weigh the seriousness of these threats, sifting evidence in the New Library.
Even that, however, was not my main concern that summer. This was a secret Jesuit mission into our realm to recruit young men to be trained abroad as priests who would then return to fan the embers of discontent. We knew the mission was launched, we knew the English priests who led it – Robert Persons and Edmund Campion – and that at least one other priest was infiltrated with them. We knew too that they had recruited seven young men to send secretly to the seminary at Rheims. All this was from correspondence one of our spies had been entrusted with, which I had copied and deciphered. But we had no idea where in the kingdom these men were nor the names they used, though we did know that Campion passed himself off as a jeweller and Persons as a military man.
