There was a tap on Gresham's shoulder. A servant, plainly dressed, spoke softly in his ear.
'My master requests a brief interview with you, sir. Would you be so kind as to spare a few moments of your time?'
'Your master's name?'
'He would prefer to announce himself.'
Gresham flicked a finger at Jane, muttered a few words in her ear, and left her with Donne who was rewriting the opening of Genesis to suggest how the new King came to be created, to the credit of neither the Holy Book nor King James. He motioned to Mannion, who emerged from out of the shadows where he had ensured a plentiful supply of food and drink.
The servant led them to a small room on the first floor of a nearby quadrangle. He opened it, and invited Gresham to enter. A figure sat in a tall chair, back to the door, in front of a small table and a blazing fire. There were no hangings for a man to hide behind that Gresham could see. He smiled at the servant, who was holding the door half open, bowed down low, and kicked the door back out of the man's hand with all his might. It flew back on its hinges, banging off the wall with a magnificent crash, and rebounding with sufficient force to knock the shocked servant forward on his heels. The figure in the chair started sufficiently to knock over his wine glass, and leapt to his feet, turning in alarm to view the cause of the upheaval.
It was Sir Francis Bacon.
'My apologies, Sir Francis,' said Gresham, albeit with his infuriating careless grin on his face. 'Doors are good places for men to hide behind with a knife, particularly so when one does not know who it is one is being invited to meet.'
That, thought Gresham, will teach you not to give me your name.
Bacon looked as if his heartbeat had returned to merely twice its normal rate by now, and some colour had come back into his cheeks. He nodded to Gresham and invited him to sit down.
'My apologies, sir. I'd forgotten what it is to be a man of action — particularly as it wasn't in that role that I asked to see you.'
There was well-cooked meat on the table, and what looked like a delicate dish of fish. It too was cooked through, unlike much of the food Gresham had seen outside. A fire blazed in the hearth. A man who could command good food, a fire and a private room at one of His Majesty's gatherings was no fool, Gresham thought.
Bacon was a relatively small figure, his most notable feature what his friends described as deep hazel eyes, which his enemies (who outnumbered the friends) described as snake-like. He motioned to his servant, who was muttering words by the door among which could be heard 'oaf', 'ruffian' and even a hint of 'call yourself a gentleman…' He was rubbing his hand, which had near been wrenched from the arm when Gresham had hurled the door out of its grip. The servant, with marked unwillingness, brought a bundle tied in tape to Gresham, and surlily plonked it down on the table before him. It was a bundle of books, six in all, identical.
'I call it The Advancement of Learning. I've been working on it for many years. In it I ask for the cobwebs to be blown off our vision of learning. I ask that we seek anew to experiment, and to learn from that experimentation, as the only way that true learning will advance.'
'I'm honoured, Sir Francis. But why should I be so honoured, the mere bastard son of a merchant and an occasional supplicant at the altar of learning?'
'I was more inclined to make a present of six copies of my book to the Patron of Granville College, Cambridge, and the man who more than any other is responsible for the rising star of the College.'
Gresham looked at Bacon impassively, inclining his head slightly forward as if Bacon had spoken to him in a foreign language he did not quite understand.
'Forgive me, Sir Henry. I know your wish to be anonymous, and whilst I don't understand it I can be capable of respecting it. Yet I too have my spies — or, rather, I have those in Cambridge who will respect me for my mind, and trust me as such, rather than see me as a lawyer, a Parliamentarian or a candidate for high office. Your secret is safe with me, and with old Thomas here — who is, by the way, the only one of my feckless crew of servants who I'd trust with such a secret.'
A muttered 'young vagabond' could be heard from the doorway. Gresham hoped Mannion would not kick old Thomas to silence him.
Gresham picked on one phrase of Bacon's statement. 'Are you a candidate for high office, Sir Francis?'
'I'm worse, sir. I'm a failed candidate for high office. With superb judgement,' he said with heavy irony, 'I backed Essex, who lost, and so I lost the support of the Queen. That was the first disaster. I opposed Cecil, who won, so now I have an enemy in the most powerful man in the land. That was the second disaster. I then prosecuted Essex — who, by the way, ignored all and every piece of the excellent advice I gave him — and in so doing lost the support of any poor fool who had not already left my party. That was the third disaster. I am a mediocre lawyer with an excellent brain, and lawyers don't need a brain. That is the fourth disaster. I am troubled with occasional pangs of morality, and lawyers need that even less, which is the fifth disaster. I am also ruthlessly ambitious, and thereby offend even my few friends, which is the sixth disaster. I am not so much sinking, Henry Gresham, as vanished beyond sight of mortal man!'
Gresham burst out laughing. 'Yet some who appear to sink deepest rise upwards again fastest! You were knighted only two years ago, Sir Francis. Not a disaster, surely?'
‘No. Merely a consolation and a leaving prize, earned more by my dear Brother Anthony than by myself.'
'I can only conclude,' Gresham replied, 'that given your own ranking of your good judgement, any regard you have for me is also a doomed misjudgement. Am I then the leading contender for the post of seventh disaster?'
Bacon joined in the laughter. 'Just as those who cook with the Devil need a long spoon, so you'd be as well advised to try and fly without wings as to nail your colours to any part of me. But no, what I want from you, if you're willing to grant it, is simple enough. I wish you to read my book. Then, if you think there's any sense in it at all, I wish you to give five copies to the five people in Cambridge for whose learning and judgement you have the most respect.'
'Just as you say it's not a good thing for a lawyer to have brains or morals, so these commodities aren't always in the most supply at the High Tables of Cambridge or Oxford. You trust me, a bastard and an ex-soldier, to make such a judgement?'
'As for the bastard, the ex-soldier or the many other things I hear you might be, I've no knowledge except what you tell me. Yet I've some feeling for another creature who bears your name.'
'And who might that be, Sir Francis?' enquired Gresham lightly.
'The author of Machiavelli's Choice, and also the author of Sonnets on the Source of Power.'
To the best of Gresham's knowledge his pamphlet on Machiavelli had been circulated secretly in Cambridge to the tune of only a hundred copies, with no way of tracing the authorship back to Gresham. He had been new on the scene at Cambridge in those days, and wished to test the water of the town before making his commitment to it, to Oxford or even to Wittenburg. Seemingly within days it had been the talk of every High Table, generating considerable excitement and a surprising measure of agreement and approbation. The Sonnets had been even more privately circulated, in manuscript and never printed. John Donne had sniffed and said nothing when he read them, so Gresham had known they were good. Bacon was very well informed, or capable of inspired guesswork.
So Bacon knew. So it was done. Leave the past behind. Do not fight what cannot be changed. Gresham rarely spent time making decisions. Life was for living, for deciding, and not for thinking. Showing no shock at Bacon's knowledge, he simply said, 'I'll take the books, Sir Francis, with gratitude, and will do as you wish, provided I like what I read.' He smiled broadly at Bacon. 'If not, I fear I will cast the books as deep as you think your reputation has sunk!'
'Worry not,' said Bacon, 'reputations are shallow, meaningless things, but like all things insubstantial they can rise as easily as they can sink.'
Gresham took an
other decision. 'Sir Francis, while we're here you might perhaps answer one question that is concerning me at the present time…'
Bacon looked up, pleased with the outcome of the exchange, invigorated by the dialogue. 'Of course,' he said.
'Why has my Lord Cecil tasked me with finding damning evidence of unnatural practices on your part?'
The colour drained from Bacon's face, and his mouth snapped open. There was presumably a tongue inside it, but it was finding it the Devil's own work to make a noise. 'He… I…'
The surly servant bumbled up to the table, looked witheringly at Gresham, and heaved a goblet of wine at his master. Bacon drank deeply, coughed only slightly, and returned to earth.
'As I think I've made clear, I wasn't aware that Cecil had any such designs — and, indeed, can think of no reason why he should do so. I pose no threat to him at present.'
Ruthless? Ambitious? Capable of deceiving? Almost certainly all three, Gresham thought, but somehow not corrupt, and, to Gresham at least, not dangerous. Gresham took another decision.
'Sir Francis, I don't know what you do between your sheets, or between the sheets of others, and frankly I don't care, provided you keep out from under my sheets. Tell me, if I were to pursue this chase Cecil has set me on, would I find a truth that would rock Church and State on its heels, and see you in a court not as a lawyer but as a criminal?'
The eyes of the two men locked together for what seemed a very long time. Bacon spoke first.
'You would find an impending marriage the heat of which wouldn't raise the temperature of a drop of Thames water by a single degree — and might even freeze it. You would find a man for whom talk with women has never been easy. You would find a lonely man, Henry Gresham, more lonely than you might imagine, who surrounds himself with young male servants who cheat him and run him riot and drink and eat him dry, but who fill the air with laughter, excitement and energy. And if some of those young men keep him company at times, then there's no force to it, no violence, and there's comfort for a lonely man and I think something not without a certain value for the young men, if they so choose. I don't mean money, Sir Henry, but something softer. Is that hard for you to understand, with your fine strong girl by your side?'
'No, Sir Francis,' spoke Gresham, softly, his gaze still locked into Bacon's, 'it's easy to understand, for I have been there also, albeit only once.' Bacon's eyebrows rose. Gresham broke the look, and got to his feet.
'You'll hear no more of this from me. I'll tell Cecil you were left in a cornfield as a child by mistake and had an unfortunate meeting with a reaper and a very sharp scythe.' Gresham applied his most serious expression to his face. Bacon, whose hazel eyes had twinkled at the thought of the reaper, assumed an equally serious expression. 'But, Sir Francis, will I get six more of your volumes if I forbear to tell Cecil about the sheep?'
Bacon's laughter followed him out of the room. A man in need of laughter, thought Gresham, and a man starved of it for too often and for too long.
A couple of young nobles had joined the supper party when Gresham returned, of families whose fathers had not gained the pox from their horses, and Jane was at the centre of a crowd of admirers. Her dark eyes sparkled more brilliantly than the jewels that adorned her, the rise of her breasts and the flick of her head to remove a ringlet from out of vision accentuating the raw sensuality she carried almost, but not quite, unconsciously. Beautiful women are so often spoilt, mused Gresham. They know their beauty, they are flattered by it and they use it, as they are made to feel superior by it. But you, my Jane, simply accept your beauty and take no credit for it. You believe in yourself, girl, but not so that others must suffer for your belief. She glanced at Gresham to gain his approval. He grinned at her, pathetically pleased that his opinion mattered to this creature who had him in her thrall.
'What, drunk again, my lady?' he riposted, and she laughed full out loud at the nonsense and the heady excitement of it all, forgetting in the face of him the icy detachment she favoured at Court.
No-one paid any attention to the King, who was following his usual practice of seeming to woo the ladies sat near to him at the same time as veering frequently into appalling rudeness and acid attacks on their kind. The Spanish Ambassador was nowhere to be seen.
Clouds of wet smoke began to drift out over the courtyards and artificial lake created by the workmen, sign that the masque was about to begin. Not all the musicians were drunk, and in the light evening air they made quite a passable noise, Gresham thought. Sufficient wisps of smoke were persuaded on to the lake for at least a suggestion of mystery to be created. A huge gate at the far end of the lake opened silently, and with no visible sign of propulsion the gilded boat drew out from the gate with the flimsily clad figure of Faith in the prow. Large towers rose up from the lake as the ship passed by — Inigo had excelled himself, as every one actually worked — and a choir joined in with the musicians to herald the progress of the boat. It was all rather jolly, thought Gresham to his surprise, as lights sprang up around and on the lake, and he found himself admiring both the ingenuity of his friend and the music, whose composer he did not know.
James, without his Queen, awaited the arrival of the first boat in a gilded palace erected at the other end of the lake. He was drunk, but not embarrassingly so, taking short but frequent sips from his jewel-encrusted goblet. There was spittle on his mouth: some said his tongue was over-large, causing him to dribble.
Inigo Jones had come to stand by Gresham.
"Not bad, eh?' he nudged, and then his face sagged. 'Oh no. Dear Christ, no…'
A whoosh of flame came from the barriers between the lake and the bonfires. Something like two dying snakes curled up and flopped over, smoking at the edges. They were the ropes destined to haul back the first boat as it sped towards the King, slowing it down and finally drawing it to a decorous halt by the landing stage under the King's viewing platform where Faith could descend and deliver a beautiful, if over-lengthy, speech to the King. Instead of slowing down it sped on with seemingly ever-increasing speed. Faith began visibly to lose faith, at least in things worldly, lost her lines and began to look round in anguish for someone to do something to stop Faith turning into Despair. This did gain the attention not only of many more of the assembled throng, but also of increasing numbers of the musicians who lost the beat and increasingly played their piece as if its finish was a race where there might be five minutes' difference between first and last.
A peasant girl would have shown more mettle in a crisis, but Lady Broadway had been slapped into playing the role of Faith by her husband, who desperately needed the King's favour. She started to scream and flap her hands, reducing most of the audience to fits of laughter. The boat crunched into the landing stage and she was flung forward through the air, landing tumbling head-first almost into the King's lap, head over heels, her masque dress over her head and showing clearly that my Lady wore no undergarments. The King, who looked fuddled, seemed hardly to notice. There was a cheer from a group of drunken courtiers as Lady Broadway, like her vessel battered but not-yet sinking, somehow rose to her feet and tried to deliver a garbled version of her speech.
To thou, Great Guardian of Our Faith, Preserver of our country's peace…'
Gresham looked down at Jane, who was laughing with such violent physical force that she looked like to burst out of her own dress.
'Well,' said Gresham, 'that was good. I wonder what comes next?'
The remainder of the masque went without interruption, the climax being the delivery of the empty-headed Queen Anne as Charity to her husband. The King clearly believed charity began at home, and left his rostrum almost as soon as his Queen had landed and delivered him an extravagant kiss.
There was a tap on Gresham's wrist. He turned, half expecting to see old Thomas. Instead it was one of the young Scots Lords, half drunk, who through an accent thick as alcohol-soaked ship's timber intimated that His Majesty wished to see Henry Gresham and his niece.
The K
ing was in the Great Hall, rather than the Presence Chamber, a blazing fire sending most of its heat up the chimney and the chill of a foggy summer night beginning to creep into the room.
'Good evening to you, Sir Henry Gresham. I hope you and your… niece…' his gimlet eyes flickered over Jane, 'have supped and dined well?' He spoke the 'Sir' as if it were 'Sair', the accent thickening the more he spoke.
The words were slurred, but only slightly so. The man had a strange mix of muscularity — no-one who rode to hounds as often as he did could fail to be fit — and the same sense of a warped body that came from Cecil.
Gresham bowed low, to match Jane's deep curtsey.
'Your Majesty, we are humbled and inspired in equal measure by your Highness's generosity and benevolence to your humble subjects. Your Majesty affords us great honour by your hospitality.'
Well, I managed to say 'humble' twice, 'Majesty' twice and Highness once, thought Gresham. Not bad.
'I hear you have been of good service to Our State in times past, Sir Henry.'
Ears around the Hall pricked at this. Many of the time-servers were either unconscious of spewing their guts up in their favoured location, or banging at their whores, but the professional power-brokers would neither have drunk too much nor expect to go to bed before His Majesty. There was no sign of Cecil, Gresham noted, but those who reported to him would be sprinkled throughout the Hall.
'What little I have done can never be enough, Your Majesty. Those of us who can offer some small service only regret it is not more.'
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