The Coming of the King: Henry Gresham and James I (The Henry Gresham Series Book 3)

by Martin Stephen

‘It’s more than envy of my money, or the special status I have in being allowed to live out,’ said Gresham. ‘It’s partly religious.’

  ‘How so?’ said Jane.

  ‘Cambridge is increasingly taking a puritan, anti-Catholic line. I’ve been away from College too much. A majority of the new Fellows are fiercely Protestant, Calvinistic even. They don’t object to my religion. They object to my lifestyle. They hate me for my frivolity. I’m seen as a courtier and a rake, a drunkard and a philanderer, everything the hard-line Protestants hate. Their world is a joyless world, and they seem to despise those who have fun – or possibly their hatred is simply their envy reversing itself, damning people who seem to have what they lust after but will never get.’

  ‘Am I included in that list?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Definitely,’ grinned Gresham. ‘Everyone lusts after you.’

  ‘Be serious,’ she said.

  ‘I am,’ he replied. ‘For example, I’m lusting after you right now. But yes, my living openly with a beautiful girl, and not living in College, and my not being ordained – they all mark me out, make me hated. I can only hold the Fellowship because though I break all the rules there’s a royal decree out guaranteeing my position.’

  A royal decree that had now lapsed, of course, with the death of the Queen. The hostile Fellows must have heard that James had locked Gresham up for a while. If they were to oust Gresham, now was the time, when he had no royal protection. He rode to Cambridge.

  He strode into the room, noting the shock on the faces of those present. It was on the ground floor of the old building, rough-plastered and with not a straight line of wall in it. It was small, and too full of bodies. It would not do to hold such a meeting in a building put up by Henry Gresham’s money. The more elderly Fellows sat at a table, which almost touched the walls at either end. The younger stood. They had been clever, calling the meeting before a new Master was appointed who might conceivably have favoured Gresham, and just after he had handed the last cash over for the latest build. Furthermore, Alan Sidesmith was away with family in the south, and two of the Fellows most likely to support Gresham were ill and bed-bound. Gresham was reminded of the time on campaign in Ireland where he had walked into a room at the summons of the Earl of Essex, and unwittingly found himself instantly on trial for his life.

  Gresham could have guessed who would be prosecutor in chief. There were two candidates. One, Dr Frederick Willow, was currently out of favour with the carbuncles, the name Gresham gave to the hostile faction on the Fellowship. Willow had taken the part of Zeus in the recent play, which was bad judgement in two senses of the word. A bluff and rude Yorkshireman, his one weakness was a fondness for the drama. This annoyed the other carbuncles who had the Puritan dislike of all plays, and the play itself had been a disaster. This left the field open to William Makepeace. Where Willow was rough, Makepeace was smooth, an Eton boy who had come straight to Cambridge from Eton and never known any other world. A consummate liar, highly intelligent, he reeked sanctity and saintliness, yet had at least one illegitimate child in Cambridge. Gresham was not surprised when it was Makepeace, whose name was a complete misnomer since he was an inveterate plotter who made internal war permanently, broke the silence.

  ‘Your presence was not requested at this private meeting,’ he said icily.

  ‘I’ve a constitutional right to attend any meeting of the Fellows,’ said Gresham calmly, his heart beating fast under his doublet. It was true. He did. ‘But as I’m informed that the item on the agenda at this meeting is me, perhaps I should be here? After all, even at Raleigh’s trial, whilst they did not allow the chief witness to appear, even they allowed the defendant to be there ...’

  There was an uneasy shuffling among the Fellows. Makepeace blinked, and decided to move on, not agreeing to but de facto accepting Gresham’s presence.

  ‘The charge is that you have removed from yourself all rights to be a Fellow of this College.’

  ‘And how have I done this?’

  ‘You are not ordained, and you do not live in College as the Articles require.’

  ‘True. But there is a royal warrant excusing these omissions.’

  ‘Was a royal warrant,’ said Makepeace triumphantly. ‘That warrant must be deemed to have lapsed with the sad death of the Queen.’

  ‘Must it so?’ said Gresham. ‘It is a fine point of law. Does the warrant stand in the name of the monarch, or of the monarchy? Is it personal to the monarch at the time, or is it simply a royal writ that can only be revoked by another royal writ? My opinion is that it is the latter.’

  Actually, he was pretty convinced it was the former, but he did not intend to let Makepeace know that.

  ‘It is indeed a point of law, on which we can no doubt take an opinion, but there is much, much more,’ said Makepeace. A mutter of approval went round the carbuncles. ‘You flaunt your relationship with a whore, and by so doing bring this College’s reputation for Godliness into disrepute.’

  ‘Wrong on all counts,’ said Gresham. ‘I do not flaunt my relationship. Actually, the woman keeps a very low profile. Secondly, the woman is not a whore. I took her virginity, with her consent, and she has bedded no other man. She does not and never has sold her body. Even when you offered her money yourself for it.’

  Makepeace’s composure left him briefly. He went deeply red, and started to shout.

  ‘Monstrous! Monstrous! What evidence do you have for this rash and vile accusation?’

  ‘The word of the girl concerned.’

  ‘And who would believe the word of a whore?’

  ‘As many as would believe the word of a man who preaches godliness but who has a bastard daughter living even now with a ploughman’s family in Trumpington. Sarah Goodchild is how she is known.’

  Makepeace went from red to white as the blood left his face. Gresham knew more about what was happening in London than any man alive, but he had never even started the same network of spies and informers in Cambridge. Yet even though he had largely neglected his own security, he thanked his guardian angel that he had done some research on the private life of the carbuncles. It had revealed Makepeace’s by-blow, and a number of other interesting facts. One other of the Fellows had an insatiable desire for young boys. Sodomy was illegal, and cruelly punishable. Gresham swivelled his eyes round until they found those of the man in question. The man blanched, and turned away. He knew Gresham knew. That was one vote at least that would not go against Gresham.

  Damn! Gresham had remembered something. Wasn’t Makepeace by birth a member of one of the leading Livery companies? Gresham was so little interested in them that the knowledge had been buried away in a deep corner of his brain, only now working its way to the surface. What was the involvement of the Livery companies in what was going on?

  There was another angry mutter that went round the carbuncles. Was it anger at Gresham? Or anger at Makepeace? Makepeace was so discomfited that another Fellow had to take over. Now this was interesting. Howard Walter was a decent old man, one of the dons who had been quite kind to the young, impoverished undergraduate Gresham. He was not a carbuncle. If he was joining in the fray, things were even more serious than Gresham thought.

  ‘Sir Henry,’ said Howard, always unfailingly polite, ‘I feared it would turn into this. But your or my colleagues antics in bed are not the issue here. Would you wish to know why I, who you might reasonably see an ally and even a friend, agreed to be at this meeting, and came to it with a fearful dread in my heart that I might have to vote for your dismissal?’

  ‘I would indeed,’ said Gresham.

  ‘Throughout your life, you have been at the centre of some of the greatest power struggles this country has ever seen. You were absent from this College when Mary Queen of Scots was convicted of plotting against the Queen, and executed. You were seen at that execution, and it is rum
oured that in one of the last sentences the Queen of Scots spoke she mentioned your name. You are associated with a host of strange stories of the war in the Low Countries. It is known you sailed with the Armada, and that in a single meeting in the Tower of London the Queen changed from wanting to execute you to knighting you. Recently you were at the heart of the rebellion led by the Earl of Essex, on which side no-one is sure. Now there are a host of rumours that you have fallen out with King James or are plotting with Spain.’

  Gresham said nothing.

  ‘I came both to like and admire you as an undergraduate. Yet the winds blow fickle at the centre of power. Our Master has died a suspicious death. The College has been beset by trials and tribulations unprecedented in its history. I believe too many of those trials have been caused by this College’s relationship with you. Your generosity saved this College.’

  There was a muttering of discontent.

  ‘No!’ Howard held up his hand. ‘It is true. Without the Gresham money this College would have failed. We do ourselves no honour to deny it. Yet I fear, Sir Henry, that those same winds that blow around you, have done so all your life, are now at such a strength as to threaten its destruction. You have ceased now to be the saviour of this College. You may have become its destroyer.’

  And the problem was, thought Gresham, that the good old man could well be right. He pulled himself together.

  ‘May I speak on my own behalf?’

  Howard nodded. Gresham had spoken for his life before, never for his Fellowship. He realised the one meant as much to him as the other.

  He told them, simply and honestly, how much the College had meant to him as, little more than a child, he had started to study and find acceptance there. He had never spoken so personally before, never mind in front of his enemies. Somehow, he did not know why, it seemed the right thing to do. It silenced them; there is a power in sincerity. He doubted it would win them over. He continued, ‘And, yes, it is true I have worked for others.’

  ‘You’re a spy!’ spat a Fellow. It was clearly not intended as a compliment.

  ‘I started to work as one of Walsingham’s ... agents when I was sixteen years old.’ The Fellows drew in breath. That young! That long! ‘I did so to earn money to buy food. My late father gave me nothing, then. And yes, it is true. I have been involved in many ... affairs and events. I was useful to Walsingham, and when he died I did not realise how much I had become ... addicted to the way of life. But I have never made any money from what I have done. And it has cost me.’

  ‘What has it cost you?’ asked a young Fellow with scathing sarcasm, dressed all in black, whose theology Gresham had questioned. The man was a Calvinist, and Gresham had challenged him that Calvinists were men who believed everyone was damned to Hell except themselves. It had not made a friend of the man.

  ‘It has cost me my two closest friends, and the first woman I truly loved, who was not willing to marry a spy. But you should know, and I pledge my word, I have never done anything that I knew would harm England, or its ruler. Or indeed, this College which I love.’

  ‘But you sailed with the Armada!’ another Fellow hissed.

  And so Gresham told them the full story. The real story. The one only Mannion, Jane, a girl called Anna, a dead Queen and a dead friend knew. Told them how he had helped save England. And of his near-execution by Queen Elizabeth. It was outrageous, fantastical. Yet they believed him.

  Would any of this make a difference? Gresham doubted it. But at least what would be remembered of him in College might be nearer the truth.

  ‘And Essex?’ It was Howard this time, prompting him, fascinated.

  So he told them that too, or most of it, confessed what he had done. He took advantage of the silence which followed to speak again,

  ‘And you are right that the attempt to burn this College down and the attempt to blacken its name by farcical accusations of black magic would not have happened were I not a Fellow here.’

  Murmuring.

  ‘Yet in my defence, if indeed I got this College into those predicaments, I also got it out of them, without damage or harm. We are not a well-connected College. I have shown I can protect the College: who else do you have who can do so? I move at Court. Who else does the College have who does so, and can speak up for it at the feeding-trough that is Whitehall?’

  It was true. The College had looked as if it was closing for a decade. As a result no wealthy parents had chosen it for their sons, no nobles adopted it. It lacked influence in the corridors of power to an alarming degree.

  Gresham could see it was the latter point that really hit home.

  ‘You do not mention ... money?’ It was Howard again.

  What if Gresham were to play the ace up his sleeve now, the chance of the College gaining back Aldgate? Would the Fellows not flock to him, kill this nonsense of his losing his Fellowship? Even years later, he could not explain what instinct, what intuition held him back. Whatever it was, it was the same instinct that seemed to drive him to a fit of madness.

  ‘Money? Let me tell you how much I had planned to give this College, before I knew of this meeting.’ He named a figure, and the Fellows gasped.

  ‘And I swear to you now, on all things holy, that I shall honour that pledge even if this meeting removes me from the Fellowship.

  Madness. Conversations broke out all around the room. Did he mean it? Why was he giving up his strongest card?

  ‘Why?’ It was Makepeace, recovered now, who asked the question they all wanted answered.

  ‘Pride,’ said Gresham. ‘I do not wish to buy my Fellowship. I wish to earn it.’

  Had he done enough? He had won some hearts and minds, but Gresham reckoned there were enough die-hard carbuncles still to win the day. After all, he had promised them his money. He really must be losing it.

  A black wave started to sweep in to engulf him when the door opened, forcing a shaft of afternoon sunlight across the boards. Gresham had his back to the door, could not see who it was had come in. Someone wholly unexpected, judging by the shock on the face of the Fellows.

  Gresham turned.

  Robert Cecil stood in the doorway.

  Oh God. What little chance he had had surely gone now. Cecil could only be there to tell them the royal edict was revoked. What a triumph for Cecil to trample Gresham into the ground on his home turf, to strip from Gresham the one thing he had earned on merit. What a sweet victory for Robert Cecil.

  ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ said Cecil carefully drawing thin gloves off each hand, finger by finger. He made a slight bow. ‘May I presume you all know who I am?’

  It was supreme, understated arrogance. He was, after the King, the most important man in the country. They knew who he was.

  ‘My Lord,’ said Makepeace, the first to recover, ‘to what do we owe this ... honour?’

  ‘You will be aware that there is a royal warrant from the late Queen, ordering that your Fellow, Sir Henry Gresham, be allowed his Fellowship without ordination and without the usual requirement to reside in College?’

  ‘We are aware,’ said Makepeace. Was he smacking his lips in anticipatory pleasure? It was widely known that the hatred between Gresham and Cecil was mutual, albeit that most struggled to understand why if this was so they appeared at times to work with each other.

  ‘And you are that the College was specifically commanded not to remove the Fellowship that same Henry Gresham for reason of his absences on the Queen’s business?’

  They were. Gresham shared the privilege with only one other man, the extraordinary and ill-fated little runt Christopher Marlowe, who’s College had been summarily ordered to grant him his degree.

  ‘I am here to inform you that the College will shortly be receiving a command from the Privy Council that these privileges shall be renewed for the reign of the
King’s Majesty, James I.’

  There was a stunned silence. Gresham wanted to shake his head. Had he died and shifted unknowingly into some fantasy world where Cecil was his long-lost friend?

  ‘As I was in Cambridge, and knowing of the delay the roads between here and London can occasion in the delivery of letters, I thought I would do you the service of notifying you of His Majesty’s Privy Council’s ... command.’

  Command it was. There was no gainsaying a direct order from the Privy Council.

  ‘I am sure we all ...thank you, my Lord, for your courtesy and consideration. We are all grateful to know.’

  ‘And, as loyal subjects, to obey, I am sure,’ said Cecil airily. ‘Sir Henry? As we meet by this happy coincidence, and the business of your meeting is complete, may we have a quiet moment together?’

  They walked to Trinity, across the road, where Cecil had been afforded not just a room, but a suite of rooms. They walked in silence. The room they ended up in was finely-panelled, with a well-built fire. Cecil felt any cold.

  For the first time in their knowing each other, Cecil opened the conversation. Not with words, but with a peal of laughter. A rolling, rollicking peal that shook his whole, thin body.

  ‘Sir Henry!’ he roared. ‘I simply cannot tell you how funny you look! Like a dog that has lost a bone and is expecting to be whipped at the same time!’

  ‘I am confused, I’ll admit,’ said Gresham. ‘As someone who has sought to place order and meaning into a lost life by knowing more than anyone else, and using it to control events. I confess. I’m nonplussed. I simply cannot see why you would act to preserve my Fellowship. Or, indeed, how you knew the meeting we have just left was scheduled to take place.’

  ‘The former is easier,’ said Cecil. He was more relaxed than Gresham had ever seen him. Almost ... jolly. Sir Robert Cecil. The Little Pygmy. Jolly. ‘I knew of the meeting because your erstwhile ward, the girl you deflowered and keep with you, came to see me to tell me of the meeting.’