It was possible, simple robbery, yet it stuck in Gresham's gullet. Shadwell's killing was a professional's work. Someone had wanted Will Shadwell dead, and had been willing to follow him to Cambridge to see it done. Will had never worked in Cambridge, and had never been there long enough to make an enemy want him dead. That argued for a bigger secret than a debt or the wrong woman bedded. Had he sluiced a rich man's wife or daughter? Or had he latched on to something that the new government in London had decided should remain secret? Or was it the Catholics he had offended, the same Catholics who still carried huge power and influence for all that their faith was unfashionable?
The time was when a self-respecting assassin would never have travelled beyond Deptford. Yet these were troubled times, so early in the reign of King James I. How could they be otherwise? It was Scotland's King who now ruled England, and Scotland was England's oldest enemy. To add spice to the novel situation, the mother of the new King, Mary Queen of Scots, had been put to death on the order of the previous holder of the English crown, Queen Elizabeth, only a few years earlier. Men still alive had signed the death warrant of King James's mother. Henry Gresham had been in that business up to his neck and, in the final count, her neck as well. It was best to hope that King James had not been told of that side of his mother's death, for all that there had been no love lost between them.
A bird flew up from under the horse's hooves, with a sudden clatter of wings. Well trained, the mare took stock for a second of the irritating thing, decided it posed no threat and went calmly on its way. Gresham's hand, which had instinctively moved to his sword, relaxed halfway along its travel and returned to his side, his left hand continuing to take loose hold of the reins.
There had been a strange optimism two years ago when the new King had ascended the throne. It was already fraying at the edges, with mutterings in the streets and at Court. His Royal Highness s retinue of Scots Lords were as willing to take any money on offer as they were unwilling to wash, and their rapaciousness was becoming as legendary as their stench. James had offended the Puritans by having a Popish wife, and offended the Papists by declaring them excommunicate and appearing to go against his early promises of tolerance. The majority of the country, who wished nothing more than to be left in peace to procreate and earn a decent living, increasingly went in fear of a Catholic uprising, or a rebellion from the English establishment against the Scottish upstart.
Gresham almost found himself yearning for a return to the days of Good Queen Bess, the arch-bitch. Gresham had learnt the art of survival in part from her. She was an actress of unequalled power, and a ruthless whore who would have murdered her own mother without even a momentary qualm if need dictated it. She was also a Queen who would have wept bitter tears in public afterwards, whipped herself with barbs that, strange to say, seemed to leave no mark and provoked numerous plays as a result, as well as more sonnets than there was paper on which to print them. Queen Elizabeth I may have been so corrupt as to make Beelzebub turn in his grave, but somehow that corruption had never broken through the facade of the Virgin Queen, the pure preserver of the State. It had been true of her chief minister as well. Old Lord Burghley had made enough money to buy the Armada whilst producing an English fleet so decrepit that it might as well have farted as fired at the Spanish. With the Devil's own luck, the wind had farted instead, bringing Burghley the victory his ships could never have done. As one of Gresham's old informers had cheerfully stated, old Burghley may have knifed you in the back, but somehow you always felt it was being done by a gentleman. Burghley's son and successor, the wizened Robert Cecil, had a corrupted body that told all too well the tale of his corrupted soul. The double-dealing, the murders and the struggle for power might still be the same. The sense of style had gone, and there was a rawness to the brutal world of 1605 that had not been seen since Good Queen Bess had herself ascended the throne half a century ago.
Gresham's scalp itched, under his hat. He had a full head of hair, as yet not ravaged by the pox, and it was well washed. It always itched when there was trouble around. He had endured a lifetime of trouble. He neither feared nor welcomed it. It was simply a part of life, like the footpad on the road, the poison in the wine or the first spot that signified the plague. The particularly virulent itching suggested significant trouble. Well, trouble was a normal part of Gresham's life, and had been so for as long as he could remember. What was unusual was his inability to explain his chronic sense of foreboding, his inability to trace the sense of danger to its source.
It was all most irksome, and most inconvenient. Gresham flicked at his reins. The horse picked up a little speed, then deciding its rider's heart was not in it slowed down again to an easy amble. Gresham had lost a good worker in Will Shadwell. Will Shadwell had been Henry Gresham's creature. An attack on Will Shadwell was an attack on Henry Gresham, yet the reason was a mystery. Gresham did not like mysteries. They disturbed him. They cried out in the night to be explained. They threatened his survival. Survival, Henry Gresham had decided long ago, was all one had. Ruthlessness was required to survive. That, and a sense of humour, a dash of loyalty and a measure of courage.
The mystery was still crying out in his brain as he rode into the inner courtyard of Granville College. He had time still to go to his room, change from his riding clothes into suitably sombre doublet and hose and don the long gown of the MA or Master of Arts.
They gathered in the Combination Room, Gresham and the fifteen other Fellows, before going in to High Table. It was panelled, as was the Hall they were about to enter, very much in the new fashion. Gresham loved the depth of the wood, the changing pattern of its rich colour, but a part of him yearned for the ancient stone that lay behind it. The contrast of rough stone with rich hangings draped over it, hard against soft, wild colour against sombre grey, warmth against cold seemed an emblem for life. Contrast, change, the clash of ideas, these were what made Cambridge breathe and live.
'Well met, Sir Henry,' said Alan Sidesmith, the President Gresham had placed in nominal charge of the unruly crowd that went to make up Granville College. 'Was your ride restorative?' Gresham had never seen Alan Sidesmith drunk, nor ever seen him without glass or even tankard in his hand. Alan knew more of Gresham's other business than Gresham had ever told him, but Sidesmith was one of the few men in whom Gresham had complete trust.
'I've a good horse, good health and will soon have a full stomach. And it's summer in Cambridge… how could I not be restored?' Gresham replied lightly.
'That would depend, I suppose,' said Sidesmith equally lightly, 'whether a certain miller who sent you a message this morning was wishing to display to you his corn, or whether he had something else in mind.'
Gresham knew better than to be drawn.
'Yes,' he said, as if debating a matter of great significance, 'that would depend, wouldn't it?' He grinned at Sidesmith, who grinned back.
'Now, Sir Henry,' announced Sidesmith in a businesslike tone. 'Those newly knighted such as yourself are best placed to advise me on a tricky question of etiquette. Over there…' he pointed to a large and prosperous man whose desire to show off expensive clothes had overcome his reluctance to boil alive in the summer heat, '… we have a rich London merchant, a Trinity man, who wishes to transfer allegiance for his son to Granville. However, over there, we have a new Scottish Lord from Court who claims to have a degree from Europe. Who shall have the seat of honour on my right-hand side — Mr Money In The Bank and a good degree, or My Lord Influence At Court and probably not much else?'
'There is no choice, old friend,' announced Gresham. 'The Scottish Lord already smells to high heaven, whilst the merchant will take a good hour or so to do so despite all he sweats now.'
'Thank you, Sir Henry,' said Sidesmith. 'So helpful, as ever. Perhaps you would care to tell the noble Lord that he has been relegated because he stinks?' He moved off with a smile. The merchant gained the seat of honour on the President's right-hand side, the given reason being that he had his degr
ee from Cambridge.
The great gong struck, and they processed into the Hall. Gresham's money had refounded Granville College, one of the most ancient and derelict in the University, yet he took his place on the High Table in strict order of seniority and the timing of his Fellowship, making him one of the most junior. The students in their gowns shuffled to their feet, benches scraping on the cold floor, as the President and Fellows entered. A student, a thin-faced boy with a face pockmarked from smallpox, came nervously forward, bowed to the President, and recited the long Latin grace. There was a subtle chorus of shuffling and, from somewhere among the depths of the student body, a hurriedly suppressed squeal as an arm was pinched. More bowing, and the business of the meal was allowed to continue.
Gresham's companion sniffed as he sat down.
'Out of sorts, Hugo?' asked Gresham, taking his own linen napkin from his sleeve.
The Fellow in question was a huge man, slobbering rolls of fat hanging over his neck and bulging out his thick arms into rotund sausages of flesh.
'I approve of tradition,' the man replied, grabbing at the warm bread that had already been placed on the platters in front of the Fellows. 'If three tables was good enough for this College in all its history, it's good enough for me.' He was already looking hungrily for the servant to bring in the first trenchers of food, and a glass of wine had already gone into the cavern he called his stomach.
'Ah,' said Gresham, 'but you didn't have the task of telling the eminent citizen of this town that he was good enough only for the second table, or telling that same to a man with an excellent degree who sees some jumped-up favourite of Court dining here on high.' It was an old argument, and Gresham did not offer it to convert, but merely to annoy. It worked. Hugo spluttered and sent dangerously large lumps of bread firing from his mouth across the table.
'It is a nonsense! A nonsense. I firmly believe…' Dinner at High Table was started, and would proceed along its normal path. Gresham had insisted that Granville College have a High Table for Fellows, guests and those with BAs and above, and the remaining tables for those studying for their first degree or those with no degree. He had proposed the abolition of the second, intermediate table to the President.
Alan Sidesmith had smiled.
'It'll cause a rumpus, you know,' he had said, with no sign that it concerned him at all. 'The young men of pleasure we seem to be receiving at this University in such large numbers will dislike a College where they can't buy their way into higher fare, and out of the company of the poor students.' Under the old system, the third table had been reserved for 'people of low condition'.
'What a great pity,' Gresham had replied. 'We'll just have to make do with taking students who wish to learn, instead of those who simply wish to play tennis, get drunk and swagger that they've done their study in Cambridge.'
'Now that would be something new,' Alan had responded, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. 'But I do hope it won't restrain you personally in pursuing those noble aims.'
In fact the young and the rich had flocked to Granville in its new foundation. Its High Table was frequently extended to several tables as it was besieged by the rich and the famous, its simple rule that no man without his Bachelor of Arts could sit there giving it an unexpected prestige. The fact that the rule had been waived only once, for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, had added to rather than taken away from the distinction.
The heady smell of fresh-baked bread and roast meat mingled with the sharper tang of the wine on High Table and the ale and beer cheerily being consumed by the students. Granville College ate a good dinner, the platters loaded with meat and fish and the game pies being offered first to High Table, and then taken down to vanish into the gaping mouths of the students. A senior student was reading aloud from the Bible, one of many monastic traditions the Colleges had absorbed. The difference was that whilst total silence would have greeted the reading in the monastery, here a burble of conversation was allowed to accompany it.
Hugo was denouncing the decline of logic in favour of rhetoric to his other neighbour at table. Gresham turned to the man on his left. A man after Gresham's own heart, he had been fighting for a greater musical element in the Cambridge course.
'How goes the new material?'
Edward smiled at Gresham.
'Slowly, but surely. Master Byrd presents challenges to those who try to do justice to his music'
'Musical challenges, or other challenges?' Gresham asked innocently. William Byrd was widely believed to be a committed Papist. He had published a book of sacred songs in 1575 which had circulated among Papists and found their way into Gresham's hands, and from thence to the man who ruled over the choir of Granville College.
'Challenges of all types,' answered Edward, with no sign that he wished to relinquish any of them. 'Firstly, it's a matter of debate whether or not the songs should be performed in a chapel at all. Secondly, singing them seems tantamount to declaring an allegiance to Rome. Thirdly, it's the Devil's own job deciding if they need an organ alongside them.'
'So in summary,' Gresham answered, 'their forthcoming presence in our order of service will result in the musical director being excommunicated for singing secular work in God's chamber, burnt alive for being a Papist and beaten by the Chapel organist for doing him out of a job?'
'Sir Henry,' answered Edward with a mock bow of his head, 'how can I challenge the wit and judgement of one so distinguished?'
'Not at all, if you know what's good for you,' said Gresham cheerfully, draining his glass. He was looking forward to the performance. 'But I wonder you bother with that music. There must be easier pieces.'
'When I meet music in which I hear God's hand,' said Edward sombrely, 'I'll risk the judgement of God's emissaries on earth to hear it played.'
There would be another stir when Edward believed he had the music to his standard, and allowed it to be sung. Accusations would fly back and forth, perhaps even the odd pate would be broken. Gresham ran his eye over the Fellowship of Granville College. One Fellow was a sodomite, making a play at every pretty boy who joined the College. Two others were bedding every serving girl who offered herself. Times being hard, there was no shortage of offers of either kind. Another had the pox, and had been seeing a local quack to little effect. Dipping the genitals in a mess of white vinegar was one of the least painful remedies, and the Fellow in question had been coming to dine for weeks smelling like a barrel of wine that had been allowed to go off in the sun. The newest Fellow was involved in a ruinous lawsuit, chasing an inheritance that an older brother would grab, at dreadful cost to the younger sibling. Two of them were Catholics to the core, two of them fierce Puritans. They sat at opposite ends of the table, and a pair of them had nearly come to blows in a recent public debate.
Opposites attract, thought Henry Gresham, and from the clash of opposites comes new ideas. He gazed contentedly, as much as his restless spirit could ever be content, over his High Table and the college he had refounded. He had no children that he knew of. He seemed destined to be barren. In the meantime, the 135 students and Fellows made a contented burbling noise in the Hall Gresham had built. It could hold two hundred with ease, and would do so before too long. His children? Possibly. His Foundation? Certainly.
The meal over, he had two reasons to retire to his rooms. The first was a letter written in his best handwriting, a letter which had been returned to him a few days previously by a man called Tom Barnes. Its style was faultless, and Gresham could only marvel at the sharp logic and intelligence that shone through the written words. There were only two problems with the letter. Firstly, Gresham had never written it, despite what seemed to be his handwriting and signature, and secondly, its content was sufficient to have him hung, drawn and quartered were it ever to reach any member of the Government. There could be many reasons for the existence of such a forgery, and Gresham needed time at least to eliminate from his mind some of the least likely. When that reading was over, he had his copy of the English transl
ation of Machiavelli's The Prince, obtained from St Paul's for a King's ransom on his last visit to London. He had read it in the original Italian, of course. He was fascinated to compare the original with the translation. It was not to be.
The knock on the door was loud, insistent. Gresham slipped the letter through the gap in the floorboards beneath his feet, and shouted for the visitor to enter.
The courier stank of horse piss and sweat. He had arrived long after supper, his leathers stained with mud up to his armpits. Cambridge was at its most dank and dark, the Fenland mist swirling round the gates of the Colleges like a miasma of plague, waiting to strike. The feeble flicker of candle from the latticed and barred windows in the inner court hardly dented the blackness. The courier had arrived after nightfall. Every tongue would wag in the morning. Gresham called away 'On His Majesty's business', again. Some would snigger, nod knowingly, and gaze down in their tankards as he strode past to his place at table in the morning.
The Porter ushered the courier into Gresham's rooms. They were on the first stairway, built in the fourteenth century. He was Cecil's man, of course, and exuded a sense of menace. Silently he handed a package to Gresham. The Porter hovered over his shoulder, drunk, inquisitive.
'Time you kept your watch, old Walter,' said Gresham to the grizzled old man. 'Who knows how many fresh young virgins are queuing by your gate to test if men are like wine, better when they're old?'
Old Walter grinned, and clumped down the stairs. Gresham could just as easily have kicked him down the stairs, or snarled at him to mind his own damned business. As it was, Gresham saw nothing but an accident of birth in their different station in life. He treated Walter as he treated all people. God persistently refused to treat all people as equal until they proved otherwise, but that was no reason for Gresham to follow suit. As a by-product, old Walter would continue to tell Gresham everything that went on in the College. As far as most of the Fellows and the students were concerned, old Walter, the drunken sot, was invisible. Gresham had been using his sharp eyes and ears for years.
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