The Conscience of the King

It had happened before, often, in Gresham's life, but of all eventualities it was the one that left him most restless and ill at ease. He craved action. The combination of tension and inaction made him like a pent-up hound that turned to chew its own flesh in frustration. Shakespeare had apparently fled town immediately after the riot in The Globe. The men hired by Mahnion had scoured London and then Stratford for a trace of him, but had found nothing. At least there had been no more attacks on Gresham or his family. That fact did nothing to relieve the tedium of living their lives under permanent guard.

At least the evening ahead might offer some excitement. Was Gresham becoming a creature of the night? he wondered as he put on his academic dress for the evening meal. Work started at dawn and finished at sunset for students as well as for farm labourers. The main meal of the day at Granville College was therefore at noon. Candles and lamps were expensive, servants need to be abed early if they were to be up before the dawn to light the fires, and students needed at all costs to be discouraged from treating night as day. It all argued for the main meal to be in the full and free glare of God's sunlight. Yet Gresham had instituted, and paid for, three feasts a year, to be held in the evening in the Hall his money had built.

Why go to the extra expense? It was not something Gresham could explain easily. The light flickering off the walls and the portraits hung against the panelling, its yellow contrasting with the roaring red of the huge fire blazing in the magnificent fireplace halfway along the left-hand wall, was magical to him. That light gave the evening dinners the air of a happy conspiracy, the flowing food and drink easing conversation and loosening inhibitions. He revelled in the sense of holding back nature, flinging a challenge of light and warmth and noise into the face of the all-encompassing darkness and silence of the night.

The Fellows all met in the Combination Room before the meal, the noise of the students gathering in the Hall filtering through even the thick oaken door. The room was a new development, the common rooms of the colleges hitherto being largely the local taverns. Alan Sidesmith, the ageless President of the college, stood and greeted the Fellows and their guests as they arrived. Gresham had never seen Alan without a drink in his hand, yet had never seen him drunk. Sidesmith had a guest of his own tonight.

'Be on your best behaviour, Sir Henry!' he warned Gresham with a twinkle in his eye.*No less a person than the Bishop of Ely has asked to come to tonight's dinner.'

'Asked?' said Gresham.

'Indeed,' replied Sidesmith. 'He was preaching at Great St Mary's some weeks ago, and I went to listen, as one does. We were admiring the new tower. If I remember, his words were that if the college would see fit to invite him, he would see fit to accept. Oh, and by the way, he asked explicitly if you would be dining.'

The instinct for survival had placed tiny trip wires in Gresham's mind, trip wires that rang a jangle of bells inside his head when they were disturbed. Suddenly the noise was deafening, audible only to Gresham. One of the greatest theologians Cambridge had ever produced and the ex-Master of Pembroke Hall was entitled to invite himself for a dinner, wasn't he? And Gresham's dark reputation might be an added lure for a stately prelate, might it not? Whether or not he would appreciate the company of Gresham's guest was another matter. Bishop Lancelot Andrewes and Sir Edward Coke as bosom friends? Gresham rather doubted it. Yet such strange meetings were at the heart of college life — the clash of ideologies, the spur of debate and the strange conjoinings of people united only by their intelligence.

It had amused Gresham to invite Coke as his guest. It gave Gresham an edge, forced Coke to conform to the rituals of being an invitee. It was also time they met on home ground. Coke was a Trinity man, and Gresham guessed that curiosity about the torrent of novelty that was Granville College would override suspicion on Coke's part. He also guessed that under the carapace that hid Coke's real feelings from the world lay the fierce, burning fascination with university felt by all men who had left it.

'Are your rooms to your satisfaction?' enquired Gresham solicitously as Coke sidled in to the Combination Room. Coke never walked, Gresham had noted. He either paraded or sidled. The rooms in question had been built to receive James I on his visit to Granville College.

'Quite satisfactory, thank you, Sir Henry,' replied Coke drily. His eyes flickered over Gresham's face, forever seeking advantage, weakness, a loophole. 'Fit for a king, even.' A sense of humour, noted Gresham. A very limited sense of humour, dry almost to despair, but a sense of humour nonetheless and therefore very interesting. Was Coke offering an olive branch? More likely it was poison ivy. Gresham motioned Coke aside and into one of the bay windows that flanked the room, unaware of the natural courtesy with which he treated one of his bitterest enemies.

'Let's make this a university night, if you agree. But there is business. It can be disposed of quickly, if you're willing,' said Gresham.

It was as if he were on holiday, Gresham thought, sensing the lightness in his own soul. The college did this to him. Its backbiting and its petty rivalries followed known and even agreed rules. The backbiting and petty rivalries of Court knew no rules, nor any limit on the damage they might cause. By comparison life in a Cambridge college was heaven on earth to the hell of the Court.

That hooded look came over Coke's eyes, and he could not resist glancing over his shoulder, but he nodded. You would be no spy, thought Gresham. That look over your shoulder tells any interested party that you are worried about what we are going to discuss. It screams guilt to the careful watcher.

'Firstly, I know it's Marlowe who has possession of these papers.'

A tic started in Coke's left eye.

'He's already tried to kill me in the theatre incident you know about.'

Coke's face went red. Interesting. Most men went white when shocked with sudden news. Was the red the red of anger? Did Coke become angry when shocked, seeing everything as a personal attack? i've a host of men out searching for'him, here and in London. He'll be found, eventually, though he's gone to ground.'

'How long before Marlowe is found?' Coke's voice was grating, sharp. He did not challenge the identification of Marlowe. It was as if his mind ticked an issue off, like a clerk with a list of household goods up for sale. Once ticked, however threatening or revelatory, it was gone, merely a piece of information.

So you knew, thought Gresham, who this Cambridge bookseller was, as did Cecil. Yet you did not think it important to tell me.

Coke's eyes were dark pinpricks. Gresham decided to answer his question.

'Tonight. Three months on. Who knows? Patience is crucial to this game we play, Sir Edward. Without it, the tension eats us up from within, burns our soul. And another concern who's gone to ground is Shakespeare. Vanished from London and from Stratford.'

'Shakespeare was always the lesser concern,' said Coke, a little too hurriedly. 'Could Marlowe have killed him?' Coke was uncertain, hiding it beneath a face that might now have been carved out of plaster. Clinical. That was the word. He was driven by huge self-esteem and vast pride, but at the point of contact with his conscious mind all that emotion, all that energy, became focused into something as hard and cold as steel. His own ambition. Does this man have the capacity to love another human being? thought Gresham.

'Marlowe's made one very theatrical attempt to kill him already. Equally, with that knowledge in mind, Shakespeare may have simply gone into hiding.'

The real cause of Old Ben's death had been known to very few people. One of them had been willing to talk to Gresham for a purse that could have doubled as ballast for a big ship by its weight.

'Your answer on Overbury?' Gresham asked. He had written to Coke detailing the bare outline of the attack, and been unequivocal in his demand. Find out if Overbury was behind the attack on Gresham and Jane.

Coke sighed. It was a theatrical gesture, but for the briefest of moments, his age — he was sixty — showed through the veneer of his face.

'As best as I can judge, Overbury knew nothing of the attack on you. He is an impossible man.' There was venom in Coke's voice. 'The only certainty about him is his arrogance. I base my conclusion on the vehemence with which he expressed the wish that you and your kin had been slaughtered, while denying setting up the assault. If it had been his idea, he would have bragged about it.'

Coke had the capacity to be glaringly honest when he so chose. It was an excellent ploy, thought Gresham. The brief moments of sincerity served to validate the months of lies.

'We must join the assembly,' said Gresham. 'Before we do, tell me about the atmosphere in Court. Is the King troubled by the loss of these letters? Indeed, does he know the letters are lost?'

'The King? I have told him. After much agonising on my part. It seemed best,' said Coke.

Best? thought Gresham. The theft of the letters shows Carr and Overbury to be fools, it tells the King that Robert Cecil trusted Coke above all others and makes it clear that Coke is a man of discretion, not one to blab secrets to the whole world. Best, therefore, for Sir Edward Coke. 'He is troubled, certainly,' Coke carried on smoothly. 'The letters are, by the way, in his own hand, so I believe.' And therefore infinitely more damning and damaging. What prompted men to put things in writing? Or women, for that matter? It had killed Mary, Queen of Scots, and could have done the same for Elizabeth. 'Yet His Majesty… seems more fickle by the moment.'

Fickle? Drunk, more likely, and settling in to an ever-increasing lassitude. Nor had he appointed a successor to Cecil, though it was believed to be only a matter of time before the job went to the beautiful Robert Carr. Which meant, of course, that the real power would be in the hands of Sir Thomas Overbury.

'We'll stay in touch,' said Gresham lightly. 'Now let me introduce you to the feuding clan I call my Fellowship…'

Whatever else the joint invitation to Coke and Andrewes had done it had certainly set the other Fellows alight. Granville College was entertaining the greatest theologian in the land, the man who many said had done far more than translate much of the Old Testament in the new King James Bible, and also dining the man held to be the greatest lawyer of the age. It was a coup.

They filed into the Hall, Alan Sidesmith leading with Andrewes by his side, the Fellows in pairs either with their guests or with each other. There was a rustle and scraping back of benches as the students, over a hundred now the college was expanding so rapidly, stood up and fell silent. It was early evening, and the golden light of the sun slanted through the high windows and gleamed off wood and silver. The candles and lamps were not yet lit, and would not be so for another hour or more. There were two high tables, to meet the number of guests. Unusually, there was no distinction among the lesser tables. Other colleges allowed money and influence to buy a place at high table, and had separate tables for pensioners, the students who paid for their education. The poor scholars, the sizars, held a third category of table, if they were lucky enough to be fed at all instead of serving their fellow students to pay their way. Gresham had pioneered a simple rule. Only those with a Cambridge or Oxford degree could sit at high table. So in Gresham's college on the night of a feast, sizars and pensioners sat together and ate the same food. He paid for outsiders to come and wait at table on these nights. Let the poor students be served for once or thrice a year. Their brains were no worse than their richer peers so let their stomachs be treated as the same. Gresham had appointed a new cook, the best in Cambridge, before he had appointed a new president. It was the main reason for the college's huge popularity.

There had been two exceptions to the rule that only those with a Cambridge or Oxford degree sat at high table: Queen Elizabeth I and King James I.

The gong was struck and a senior student rose to read the long Latin grace. At a normal dinner his peers would have tried to pinch him, or fallen into a spasm of coughing. On a feast night they let him be. The student had a deep bass voice. The sonority of the Latin grace rolled around the great Hall and up into its beautiful rafters, increasing the raw power of the language. The grace ended. The feast began.

For all that Gresham's money had saved Granville College from total collapse, his place on the Fellowship had started at the bottom. Now he was quite advanced, in the top third even of the Fellows gathered. Traditionally, a Fellow's guest sat on his right, the President's guest at his right at the top of the table. At Andrewes' request, Gresham and the President had exchanged guests. Sir

Edward Coke sat by the side of Alan Sidesmith, surrounded by an adoring audience of sycophantic law Fellows. Andrewes sat to the right of Gresham, three or four seats from the top of the table. He let the theologians who surrounded Andrewes have their fill of him.

It was not until the candles had been lit and the flames were dancing over the faces of the guests that Gresham and Andrewes turned to each other, each confident that they had paid their social dues to those sitting within earshot. Andrewes had been witty, Gresham noted, in telling stories of how the forty-six members of the panel drawn together to write the King James Bible had undertaken their duties in very different ways, but not a note of malice had crept into his conversation.

'Well, Sir Henry,' said Andrewes at last, 'can you confirm the rumours I hear, and tell me whether or not it is in fact the anti-Christ by whose side I sit tonight?' There was a sparkle in his eyes, alongside a strange darkness, and a lightness of touch in his tone.

Gresham replied equally lightly. There was no offence in Andrewes' tone, and none taken. 'Before I answer, my lord Bishop, perhaps I could ask if I am indeed sitting next to the Saviour Himself, a man so pure as to be canonised before the formality of his death?'

Andrewes laughed out loud, a rich, gurgling noise of such deep humanity and happiness that it caught Gresham unawares.

'Why, Sir Henry,' said Andrewes, wiping his face with the linen napkin supplied to him. 'If I'm as far from the description you've heard of me, then I must guess you're as far from the description I've heard of you! Is it possible we're both mere mortals, with all the sins and all the strengths associated with that kind?'

'On the other hand,' said Gresham idly, 'it's probably more fun playing at being Christ and anti-Christ. Now there's a dialogue to light up a high table.'

'If lighting up a high table is your pleasure, then so it would be.'

There were few men who could hold their gaze with Henry Gresham. Andrewes was succeeding, with no sign of flinching. 'But it would only be play, wouldn't it? Like so much of the talk at these evenings, splendid though they are. We're both too intelligent to believe that we're God or Satan. I fear we'll hear neither of them speak tonight. Only alcohol, and good food… and a fearsome headache for too many of us when dawn breaks!'

'My lord Bishop,' Gresham responded, 'if we're not here to play — with words, with our illusions, with our own self-importance — then why do we dine at high table?'

'Perhaps,' said Andrewes, 'to enquire after the truth?'

'Well,' said Gresham, 'that would be a rare thing in a Cambridge college, wouldn't it?'

'True,' said Andrewes, 'but I understand you're a man who sets precedents, rather than believing he should slavishly follow them.'

There was a moment's silence before Gresham answered. 'So, my lord Bishop,' he replied, 'would you care to set a precedent and tell the truth here tonight?'

'I'll do more than that,' responded the Bishop of Ely, 'I'll tell you a secret. Or rather, part of a secret. After all, there could be no safer place, here among all these people.'

Now you would have made a spy, thought Gresham, in a way that Coke never would. As the evening wore on the triple spell of good wine, good food and good company had worked their magic, loosening the tongues and heightening the sensitivities. Nowhere in the world were there more people talking and fewer people listening than at a Cambridge feast, except perhaps in a court of law. The deal to insert the serpent into Eden could have been concluded tonight, and no one would have heard.

'My lord,' said Gresham, a rare intensity in his tone. 'Tell me what you will, but I can guarantee you no secrecy in return. Be careful before you confide in such as me.'

'Ah,' replied Andrewes, lifting the goblet to his mouth but merely brushing his lips with the wine, 'but, you see, I come prepared. I've done my homework, Sir Henry. I've asked people their opinion of you.'

'And who have you asked, my lord Bishop?' asked Gresham, intrigued at the inner calm of the man.

'Not the courtiers, the politicians and the prelates, that's for sure. For them you're a strange and fearful creature, to be trusted as much as Beelzebub, a man rumoured to have had a strange hold over Robert Cecil, and even the King. A dark, explosive force, they see you as. A man who has killed, and who has ordered others to be killed. A man with a remarkable capacity to survive. And, of course, a man to be envied above all others. Vast wealth, a stunningly beautiful wife, fine heirs, a good brain and a good body… My, my, Sir Henry, how you do provoke the sin of envy in others.'

'Thank you, my lord, for. telling me who you've not asked. My question, if I may be so bold and impertinent as to repeat it, is who you did ask.'

'Your servants, Sir Henry,' replied Andrewes, taking a clear drink of his wine at last. Gresham stiffened. Andrewes noted it — a good spy indeed! — and put out his hand as if to calm him. 'Don't worry. They haven't let you down. The opposite, in fact. I always go to the servants when I want to find the quality of a man or a woman. Your servants are particularly good at telling those who question them nothing. Details of your whereabouts and your movements? Details of your security arrangements? The layout of your houses? I doubt most of them would give up those secrets even under torture. But, you see, a servant doesn't feel bound by any vow of secrecy when it comes to telling how proud they are to serve their master, or their mistress. And even if they don't say it, they make it clear in the language their bodies speak whether or not they would die for you.'

Gresham, embarrassed, interjected, 'All men give up their secrets under torture, if the torturer is skilled in his trade. All too often servants are not given the choice of whether or not to die for their master.' Why was this man in danger of forcing him onto the back foot?

'Well,' said Andrewes, 'your servants trust you, and your mistress. They do rather more, actually. They love you both. But forgive me for being an old cynic, if you will. I rate the trust on a higher level than the love.'

The hubbub around them was increasing. There was a sheen of sweat over most of the faces, and fingers were being pointed and tables thumped as points were made.

'You were summoned by Robert Cecil, I believe, for a very last meeting. 7' Andrewes continued, i also believe that at that meeting the loss of certain papers was discussed, and a rather unholy alliance forged between you and your declared enemy, Sir Edward Coke, for the retrieval of those papers.'

Good God! thought Gresham. Had Cecil posted a broadsheet around London detailing their meeting? And, what was it to do with an East Anglian bishop, a master of sixteen languages? Gresham revealed nothing of his inner turmoil. Instead, he consciously relaxed every muscle in his body.

'I thought men of God were committed to the ultimate truth, my lord. I didn't realise how skilled they were at fiction. You have no proof of your version of events.'

That hit home for some reason. Tiny muscles contracted along Andrewes' face and neck. Tension. A shock. Gresham filed it away.

'Well,' said Andrewes, recovering quickly, 'let's stick to truth. Very many of those papers you've been set after have no relevance to me.'

'And no capacity to harm you?' Gresham asked.

'Neither relevance, nor harm,' said Andrewes. 'Politics I despise. I'll do what I have to with courts and with kings. They exist, as does a final hill on a long and wearisome journey, or the need to pay the shopkeeper before acquiring the food. They exist, and as such need to be met. But they're not existence. Existence is about the soul. The spirit. That which places us above the animals. There's little to be learned about that in courts, or in converse with kings.'

'So what is it that you fear in these papers that I might have been set on to find?'

'You know Sir Francis Bacon, I believe?'

Another change of course, another shock for Gresham. He showed none of. it either in his body or his voice.

'We've met.'

'Sir Francis and your guest tonight, Sir Edward Coke, are locked in battle for royal favour and for the legal dominance of England. You appear to be in alliance with Sir Edward.'

Appearances can be deceptive, thought Gresham, without intending to speak it. Andrewes continued. *Not unreasonably, Sir Francis opposed my coming here tonight. Gently, of course. Unlike you, he doesn't deal in force.' Ouch, thought Gresham. A hit, a palpable hit. 'He thought no purpose would be served by my confiding in you. He even thought it could be tantamount to suicide for us both. He said that you answered to your own masters, and that they were different masters to those I serve, and to those he served. Not better, nor worse. Just different. Are they that different, Sir Henry?'

'How can I know,' answered Gresham simply, 'until I know you, and Sir Francis, and who your masters are, far better than I do now?'

'A fair point,' Andrewes sighed. 'So let me tell you my half truth. The papers you most need to find are between a monarch and his

… friend.'

'And do you condemn such friendships? You, a bishop of the Church of England?'

That stopped Andrewes in his tracks, Gresham was pleased to note.

'That depends,'Andrewes replied at length. 'Are bishops allowed to depend?'

'Probably not,' said the Bishop of Ely, 'but this one is contrary. At least in being so he is true to the habits of a lifetime, if not to the doctrine of the Church.'

'Contrary? But God's will is clear. It is definite. At least, it's so in the eyes and ears and heart of every bishop I've ever talked to.'

'Perhaps this bishop is aware of the difference between being God's representative on earth and being God himself!' snapped Andrewes. 'As for my condemnation, I condemn lust. I find it far harder to condemn love.'

'The difference?' asked Gresham, intrigued.

'Lust? It satisfies the needs of our bodies. Love? It satisfies the needs of our souls. The body dies, and shrinks through appalling and sickening putrefaction after death. It is fallible and rotten. The soul lives on.'

'So if a man finds solace for his soul in a relationship with another man, and the bodily relationship is merely a passage to that meeting of souls, then he is free from sin?'

Why was the silence between these two men so separate from the noise which surrounded them? How had they managed to create their own private globe of communication amid so much let-ting down of barriers? i… I…' For once in his life, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes was lost for words. Sir Henry Gresham spoke for him.

'You've offered secrets to me. Now let me really surprise you. Let me offer a secret, a hugely damaging secret, to you. I offer it in the full knowledge that you can give me no vow of secrecy in return.'

Now the shock was on Andrewes' face. Of all things, this was not what he had expected. The burning intensity in Gresham's face and voice was frightening. Such intensity did not convince or heal. It burned an inexorable mark into the recipient.

'I once loved a man. And, yes, for one night, and one night only, that love ceased to become spiritual and became physical. And later that same young man was charged with my sin. I was the leader. I was the instigator. I was the master. I pleaded to be the victim. And as they… executed him, I sobbed out loud to be the one who was blamed. And as-'

Even Gresham was forced to pause.

'And as they did… unspeakable things to him on the way to his death…'

Was it true? Were there tears in the eyes of Sir Henry Gresham, that famous dark force against whom there was no resistance?

'He cursed me for the suffering I had brought upon his poor body and his poor soul. And so he died, in hatred of me. So tell me, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, is there forgiveness in the Church of England for men like me. 7'

'No,' said the Bishop simply. 'No forgiveness. Not from the Church. But from another poor mortal such as me, yes. Forgiveness. And pain for your pain. And, if you would believe me, understanding. And one more thing. The screams a dying man gives out in his agony are not the truth. I do not hold that Christ in his agony believed that his Father had forsaken him. Yet he asked if this was so. If you remember the dying moments of your friend, you remember him as his enemies wanted him to become. Remember him rather as the man you loved. As he, I believe, will be remembering you, in his new place of rest.'

There was no absolution that could cleanse Gresham's soul, no alchemy to heal his wound. He had thrown his bitterness and his story at the Bishop as a weapon, to unseat the man and see whether the calm he radiated was genuine or merely a front. In return, for the first time in twenty years, something had crossed the air between them that touched Gresham. For the first time, something approaching a sense of peace started to seep in to that most damaged part of Gresham's brain.

'Well,' said Gresham, snapping back to life and his normal sense, 'you have my secret..Are you still willing to tell me yours?'

'More than I ever was,' Andrewes responded, his face retaining a smile of intense compassion, 'but I'm still bound by secrecy. I can — no, I will — only tell you half a tale.'

'It will like be more meaningful than many that are being exchanged around us.' With a faint nod Gresham pointed to the man opposite, who, in gales of laughter, was telling the story of the student whose illicit emptying of his piss-pot always seemed to hit the same servant, and the servant's novel revenge.

'If you find these letters, you will have a choice,' said Andrewes. 'You can hand them over to Sir Edward, who will use them to promote himself with the King. You could hand them to Sir Francis Bacon, who will do likewise. I suppose you could hand them back to Sir Thomas Overbury, were it not for the fact that he would lose them again to the next flatterer who came his way. You could even try to use them yourself, for your own advantage. Or you could hand them to me.'

'To you, my lord Bishop? You said you had no interest in politics?'

'Precisely. That's why I would destroy them. Their revelation serves no purpose other than to unsettle the state. Their use is only for personal ambition. They were better never to have been written. Once written, they are better burned.'

'Why could I not burn them, if I find them?'

'Because your reputation is such that no one would believe you'd done so. Me they will believe.'

'Forgive me, my lord,' said Gresham, 'but you've no cause to love the King. He gave Canterbury to that pliant fool Abbot when you were the obvious choice. We have a king who's said in public that he doesn't give a turd for religion. How do I know — in the mythical state where I have these letters — that you wouldn't use them for your revenge?'

'You don't know,' said Lancelot Andrewes. 'You'd have to trust me. As I've trusted you by this request. You see, Sir Francis Bacon, with whom I am involved in this for other reasons, doesn't know that I've made this request. He thinks I'm seeing you on a different matter.'

'Is there a different matter?' asked Gresham.

'Yes,' said Andrewes. 'With these letters are other… papers. I won't tell you of their nature. I will tell you that they hold great potential to damage me, and Sir Francis Bacon. You know Bacon's hand? Here's an example of mine…' Andrewes reached into his purse and brought out a folded half sheet of paper. It held notes for an old sermon, Gresham saw, in a clear, flowing style. 'You'll recognise any papers that concern Bacon and myself. They'll be in our respective hands. I ask you simply to destroy them, immediately. Not even give them to me, or to Bacon. Destroy them.'

'And you will trust me to my word, when you've just told me that the world won't do so?'

'I will trust you, Sir Henry Gresham. I've no power over whether you trust me.'

Love letters again? thought Gresham. Did Andrewes, this most saintly of men, have a past to regret? Had he and Bacon even been in dalliance? Bacon made no secret of his fondness for young men. He filled his household with them, and allowed them to milk his estate for all it was worth, to the vicious amusement of Court circles.

'You may trust me, my lord Bishop,' said Gresham levelly, looking full into Andrewes' eyes.

'Yes,' said Andrewes, '1 think I may.'

Gresham was not drunk, but he knew his head would show that he had drunk the next morning. He eased off his gown in his college rooms, sensing his loneliness. Jane was safely tucked up in The Merchant's House, well-guarded. Mannion had seen Gresham into college, then signed himself off for a night roistering in Cambridge. Even he believed Gresham safe behind the locked gates of college.

He reacted to the noise almost before he consciously heard it, a sixth sense forcing him to swing round and grab his sword silently from its sheath. The third floorboard up on the staircase had been deliberately rough-sawn so that it squeaked when trodden on. It had squeaked now, after midnight, when all of college should be in bed and no one walking up the staircase that led only to Gresham's room.

He had not closed the outer door to his rooms, and the inner door was simply on its latch, not bolted nor barred. There was a sound of heavy breathing from outside, a rustle of clothing and then a click as the latch lifted and the door opened slowly.

Gresham waited until it was half open, and then kicked it back on itself as hard as he was able. The door shot back, met flesh and bone, and whoever it was creeping up on Gresham was flung back down the stairs with a wail of pain, protest and shock. Gresham ran out of the room, to see what mess, living or dead, waited for him.

It was LongLankin. A tumbled, head-over-heels and half-conscious LongLankin. But judging by the language, definitely alive.

'What d'yer fuckin' do dat for, yer pox-blasted twat!' he mumbled reproachfully, feeling gently for his loose teeth and a nose that looked broken. He drank the ale that Gresham had found for him with a shaking hand.

'What did you go creeping around college for in the dead of night?' asked Gresham malevolently, with a total lack of contrition.

'To find you, o' course. To tell you 'bout that man, that bookseller.'

'The bookseller?' Gresham felt a shock go through his system.

'Yeah, 'im with the play. E's in town tonight. E's got a room down a back street.'

It appeared LongLankin had been making his way home after a night of intellectual enquiry, and taken a turn down a back alley to relieve himself. Standing to do the job he had noted a light on in the downstairs room, its window curtained over. He had wondered if it was a whore setting up business on her own, and had gone to peer through the thin gap in the curtains. There he had seen the strange figure of the so-called bookseller, and come running to tell Gresham.

'How did you get into college?' asked Gresham. Doors were bolted and barred, a porter on duty.

'Never you mind,' said LongLankin truculently. Well, Gresham did mind, and tomorrow there would be a review of security. Moving as fast as the man would allow him, Gresham asked for a clear set of instructions for finding the house and then bundled LongLankin out to the porter's lodge with some money for his pains. He had with him a dark cloak with hood, his sword and dagger, and a lantern, its shutters closed for the moment so that no light escaped from it. Nodding to the startled porter, paid extra so as not to question Gresham's comings or goings, Gresham turned left out of the gatehouse, passing St John's on his right, turning again past the darkened bulk of Trinity College, dominated by its Clock Tower and the Great Gatehouse, heading towards the old Trumpington Gate.

It was a bad night for stalking, with a cloudless sky and the fullest possible moon. This was poor housing now, earth-floored and stinking. The house was there right enough, the light still burning in the room as LongLankin had described.

Was it wise to be out here on his own, when men had. already been mustered to kill him, in a street of hovels where the proceeds of his cloak alone would feed a family for a month? How sure was he of LongLankin? What if the man, a vagabond and a vagrant, had been set up to lure Gresham out from behind his stone walls and the protection of his men? Gresham had rushed off on LongLankin's word with hardly a thought. The chill of the night and the funereal, harsh white light of the moon were giving him second thoughts. He grinned sharply to himself. Was he more frightened of nameless men waiting to ambush him in the dark, or the reaction of Jane and Mannion to his foolhardy casting of caution to the winds? He had been careful for too long! He felt the pulse of excitement again in his veins, and picked up his pace, still moving silently through the deserted, moonlit street.

A noise from the end of the alley. Gresham pressed himself back into the wall of the mean house he was standing by. The building had shifted at some time in the past, as if a giant had pushed it forward, so the already steep overhang of the roof was doubled, creating a pool of darkness from the moon's glare.

It was only one man. He was heavily built, lumbering rather than walking, making noise enough for an army. He stopped at the door of Marlowe's house and knocked, a peculiar tap-tap-tap that was obviously a code. The light moved from the curtained room and spilled out under the cheap, warped wood of the doorway. It opened to reveal a short, hooded figure.

Marlowe.

Something tightened across Gresham's heart as he saw the figure he had last seen firing a crossbow bolt at Jane. Hold back! Clamp down on the emotion, use head, not heart. Revenge would come. A greater need now was information.

Marlowe muttered something at the man. All these years on, and still that same odd, high-pitched voice. As Gresham watched he managed to reduce the lantern's outpouring to a mere sliver of light, and handed it to the man, motioning him to start off. Marlowe was dressed for the night, boots and heavy, black cloak. He used that same high-prancing step.

At this late hour in the dark, close streets, anything live scuttled and scurried rather than walked, unless it was the drunk singing softly as he staggered solemnly round and round in a circle, thinking all the while he was headed home. Gresham kept his distance, moving crab-like from house to house as he followed the two men. They were moving to the centre of town, Gresham saw, past Bene't Church and on to King's.

The chapel was even more magnificent bathed in the stark moonlight. It rose over Cambridge like a blessing, soaring yet monolithic, so simple yet so infinitely complex.

King's College Chapel? Why was Marlowe headed there? It was long past midnight — there were no services. The strange couple made their way to the west end and its door. Locked, surely, at this time of night? If they had a key then Gresham had no hope of following them inside, presuming Marlowe would lock the door behind him. No. No key. The door simply opened and swallowed the two men, closing softly behind them. So someone had been bribed to keep the door open. Cheaper and far less risky than letting a stranger have a key.

Gresham flitted over the ground to the door. He could hear nothing through its thick, ironed oak. Gently, ever so gently, he lifted the huge handle. It was smooth, easy: grease. The mechanism had been greased beforehand. He could smell it.

He paused for a second, the great door ready to swing open. His senses were screaming signals to his brain. Did a man ever feel so alive as when he risked his life on one throw of the dice? In battle, perhaps, or in the moment of sexual relief. If he went in it was to face two men who knew where they were going and what they were doing. He was far from any help or assistance. If he died here, it would be unseen and unexplained, a mystery to keep the high table talking and the taverns full for six months or so, and then to be forgotten, just another of the strange legends of Cambridge. The spy who was found dead in King's College Chapel. Was he to be like Marlowe, an enigma whose death history would argue over for ever?

He took three, careful, deep breaths. With infinite gentleness and in one single fluid movement he entered the chapel. Its walls were not walls at all, but windows, bursting out in colour in the daylight, now an eerie patchwork in the intensity of the moon. The windows rose to the intricate, soaring passion of the fan vaulting, visible now only as the merest variation in light and shade in the blackness of the roof. A rare cloud passed over the face of the moon, and a blanket of total darkness swept up the chapel like a threatening high tide. Gresham stood just inside the door. So gently had he slipped into the building that the air had hardly moved around him. He stood, poised, waiting, in total silence, listening. Waiting for the blow, the sudden indrawn hiss and snap of breath so many men took before a sudden action.

Nothing. Silence. Wait. Yes, there it was. The tiniest scrabbling noise, soft in itself and coming as if through a door or other barrier. There, in the corner. The narrow doorway that led up to the roof through one of the corner turrets. He eased across the stone floor, sword in hand, just another silent shadow. The doorway up into the turret was ajar. The slightest of sounds made it clear that Marlowe and his hired help were scrabbling up the narrow, circular staircase. One of them must have kicked a piece of loose rubble. It skittered down the stone steps, each noise as it landed as loud as a gong in the prevailing darkness and silence. The noise startled Marlowe and his companion. They halted. Silence. A brief whispered con-versation and they started off again, both panting and heaving with effort. Unfit, thought Gresham. Dying, in Marlowe's case, from a rot within. Dying for the third time.

Gresham eased himself on to the first of the steps. They were smooth, cold. The soft leather of his fine shoes kissed the stone and made no noise. There were long, thin, slit windows up the side of the tower, more like those built for archers in a castle than those built for a church. Gresham's night vision was perfect now, and the harsh moonlight shafting in from the thin windows was just enough to allow him to discern the pattern of the steps. No tricks here, Gresham thought grimly. In some of the places he had fought the builders had put in a straight run of ten or twelve steps of uniform size and then put in a step with two or three extra inches of height or depth. The effect on attackers hurtling up them was catastrophic, catching them out and sending them tumbling time after time.

He was coming to the first exit now, the one that would lead off into the gap between the top of the magnificent fan vaulting that formed the ceiling of the chapel and its lead and timber roof. The small door led to a stone corridor that ran the whole side length of the chapel. It had windows, and pools of moonlight interspersed with black holes of dark. To the right was a passage up on to the top of the vaulting. For all its fine and delicate tracery, hanging suspended as if floating, the magnificent, unprecedented fan vaulting was built of the heaviest stone, each of the central corbels that seemed to draw the delicate strips of stone together weighing over a ton. A man could easily walk along the centre of the vaulting, which rose up in a quarter circle from both sides, without a tremor. In effect, the two halves of the stone roof met in the middle, leaned against each other and supported their vast weight, passing it down to the buttresses on the side walls.

Light! Not the petrified light of the moon but a lantern, flickering a third of the way along the side of the vault. Marlowe was muttering, cursing. His man was reaching clumsily into the area behind where the great roof beams nestled snugly on to the outer wall. Behind each beam was a cavity, perhaps a foot or eighteen inches deep, a perfect masonry box without a lid. The man grunted and brought out a package which looked for all the world like an oiled, canvas satchel.

The papers. The papers which seemed to have haunted him and so many others for so long. It had to be them.

What a magnificent place to hide documents. The space between the roof and the vaulting was dry as tinder, ventilated by the wind that drove through the end windows. There would be no mould or decay, though God knows there was enough dust. Each of the vast, arching roof beams formed in effect an alcove, several in number. Who would think to look behind the timbers, reach down and fumble for a package in the hidden cavities that lay there?

Marlowe and his man were less than halfway along the roof space. Their lantern stood at a tilt on the curving stone of the vaulting. Silently, Gresham reached out for the random, rusty nails embedded in the great timbers. He prayed for no clink of metal, hung his darkened lantern over the largest and sturdiest nail. Then, in one swift movement, he flicked open all four shutters of the lantern with a twist of the wheel that operated the mechanism and stepped behind the nearest beam, his back to the door that led out again into the tower.

The shock was dramatic. The extra light speared through the darkness at the end of the chamber. Marlowe gave a sharp cry and whirled round, losing his footing and falling with a curse to the floor. His man said nothing, but let out an animal grunt and came charging, instinctively aggressive, towards the source of the light. He dragged from his belt a cudgel, a club of hardened wood that some men would have found too heavy to lift, never mind swing. In confined spaces it was a good weapon. Gresham had seen one snap the fine blade of a sword in half, before being driven down to crack wide open the swordsman's skull. Marlowe looked up, saw the man and his satchel charging down the length of the vaulting, and tried to cry out to stop him. It was no use. Marlowe was part-winded. Even if his strangled noise had been heard, the brute of a man had the wind behind him and would not be stopped. As he reached the lantern, looking wildly round him, Gresham rose like an avenging nemesis out of the side wall and grabbed the strap of the satchel. The man's headlong rush was stopped sharp by the pressure of the canvas around his neck. His feet skittered out from under him, and as he hit the floor Gresham gave a savage, downward jerk of his arms. The hulk made a noise between a gurgle and a cry, and lay silent. His mouth lay open, and Gresham saw that the man had no tongue. That was why his noises had been so animal. Had he killed him with the blow? No. He was still breathing. Damn!

Gresham sensed rather than saw or heard the movement from further up the. roof and instinctively swung back behind the beam. There was a flicker of silver and the knife — an Italian throwing knife, Gresham had time to note — swished by like liquid metal to embed itself, quivering slightly, into the next beam along.

Marlowe was standing now, fumbling for a second knife, eyes blazing hatred. It was not clear if he recognised Gresham. Without stopping to think, Gresham reached up to the rear beam, dragged the still-trembling knife from deep in the old wood and hurled it back to its owner.

It was a bad throw, taken in too much haste. Instead of heading for the centre of the rib cage, it veered to the right. Marlowe was holding the second knife now, hand and arm upraised, ready to throw. His own returned knife sank into his wrist, just below the hand. Marlowe was flung backwards, the second knife flying out of his grasp and landing with a clang on the centre of the vaulting, from where it rolled down to the side. His scream was more animal than human, a tearing, wrenching noise that opened the doors of hell. He crashed to the ground, looking in appalled horror at his own knife embedded in his arm, the blood starting to seep down to soak invisibly into his black cloak. With a last, croaking cry, he passed out. Or had he?

There was red in Gresham's eyes. The overwhelming, overriding urge to survive had him in its wildest grip. He must kill the brute with no tongue. He must kill Marlowe. Now, while both were defenceless. Now, before they could rise up on either side of him.

He had his sword raised over the throat of the brute nearest him, choosing him first.

Then he stopped.

Fool! Was he an animal to be dominated by a blood lust? He needed Marlowe alive, needed him to tell him the truth, needed that truth to plot Gresham's own survival through the tangled paths of Coke, Bacon, Overbury, Andrewes, King James and the ghost of Robert Cecil.

With all his force Gresham kicked the huge man in the stomach. He hardly moved. Satisfied, Gresham ripped the man's tunic further apart at the neck along the stitching and dragged it half down over his unresisting body, pinioning his arms to his side. Then, for good measure, he took the flapping arms of the tunic and tied them across the man's back in a fierce knot, making an impromptu strait-jacket.

Eyes on Marlowe's prone figure, he crept forward. His every sense was on sword edge. There was no need to test Marlowe's unconsciousness. The knife through his arm would have him screaming if he were conscious. Noting distastefully the blood that lay around the body — it would not be a fair gift to Jane to pick up a dose of the clap from this man's bodily fluid and pass it on to her — he picked up Marlowe's booted foot, noting the stench of the man as he did so, and dragged him, head bouncing off the floor, to join his servant. He took a leather studded belt off the servant and used it to bind Marlowe's feet together. That left Marlowe with one arm free. He would not be using the other to unpick any belt or rope, not with his own knife embedded in it. Time! Time! This was all taking far too long! He would have to bind Marlowe with his own doublet, then hope to carry him unseen through the streets. The other servant had better be imprisoned too, which meant Mannion and others coming back up here, all before dawn. Time! Why was there never enough time?

Time stopped. Motion stopped. The world froze.

A noise.

A noise of hasty breath and a footfall. Faint. Very faint. A flickering shadow of a noise, as of the softest of feet making the quietest possible-haste along the corridor alongside the vaulting.

He had no more time.

Was the man on the roof, waiting? Or was the noise him fleeing the violence below? It made sense to have him on the roof at the start. Send someone in ahead — someone to unlock the door even — to scout out the ground. Mount to the roof, wait there in silence. Hang the tiniest of lights from the parapet — no one to notice it at that time of night — to show the coast was clear. Whoever it was may have left his post to greet Marlowe when he saw him scuttling across the green. That would explain why the watcher had not seen Gresham, following on and skirting the edge, a minute or two later.

So was he on the roof? Or waiting in the corridor outside? Damn! With enough lanterns lit to guide an armada, Gresham had lost his night vision. If he doused both the lanterns now the listener would have the advantage. There was no alternative. He chopped the light, then crouched back against the wall, having first placed Marlowe's lamp across the entry a man would have to walk over if he entered the vault.

Silence. Not even a breath of wind. Harsh moonlight cutting through the end window. Even the upward side of the vaulting was beautiful, though only a handful of men would ever see it.

Gresham rose to his feet and moved carefully out into the corri-dor, then up a few flights of the tower's circular staircase and on to the roof. Inch by inch, he crept upwards. His sword he extended at full length ahead of him. Anyone lunging down would be pierced before they could reach him. The coward's way, an old sergeant had laughed at him in the Lowland Wars. Three weeks later the man was dead, killed storming a tower. Not the coward's way. The sur-vivor's way.

The door was open at the top. Gresham could see an arch of the night sky outlined at the stair's head. Quandary. Was there room behind it for a man to hide, to plunge the door into his face as he had done with LongLankin? He moved up on to the last step. The slightest breath of night air touched his face. He had not noticed his thin sheen of sweat. He took two or three deep, silent breaths. Then, gathering himself up into a ball of muscle, he hurled himself through the opening. As he landed over the threshhold, out in the open now, his foot caught in the clumsy wooden duckboards that ran alongside the roof. He fell, still gripping his sword, with an almighty clatter.

He rolled forward, freed his sword. Silence. Nothing. He lifted his eyes to the line of the roof.

Nothing.

The thin rooftop passageway in which he lay was faced to his left with ornate stonework, shoulder high, the parapet wall of King's College Chapel. To his right, the roof rose steeply to its ridge. The moonlight showed there was no one in sight. Yet the further along the channel the eye went, the more the shadows merged into each other.

Where would Gresham have hidden?

Suddenly he knew the answer. It was a terrible risk. He knew what he would have to do to find his enemy. It would hinge on a moment of balance, a reaction a split-second early.

But life was risk. It was not the fear that mattered. All people felt fear. It was the ability to conquer it.

The roof ladder, laid flat on the roof itself, was a clumsy thing, roughly fashioned out of unseasoned timber, leading up to the ridge. Its partner would lie on the other side. To crawl up it or to stand on its bottom rung and walk up? He stood.

The ladder was rock firm, surprisingly so. As he walked up the roof, ever so carefully, measuring each step, his sword arm upraised, his other arm flung out preposterously for balance, he sensed rather than saw how high he was. Something dropped in the pit of his stomach as he imagined his height above ground. With each careful step he took, the ridge line of the roof dropped one notch towards him. Agonisingly slowly, the top line of the roof came to his head height. Next step and his eyes were above it. Next step and his shoulders…

The man had lain himself flat on the other side of the roof, by the side of the ladder. As Gresham's head appeared shadowed against the moonlit sky, the man leaned slightly down on his left shoulder and slashed his sword arm from the right side of his body through the area occupied by Gresham's head and neck.

He had acted too early! One more step up the ladder and the whole bulk of Gresham's upper body would have been there to meet the blow. As it was, a normal man would have flung his head back as the flicker of a blade headed for his eyes, thereby probably unbalancing himself and falling backwards off the roof. Instead Gresham leaned forward and parried the blow with his own sword, inches from his cheek. He held the other's blade, slammed his wrist down to a rasp of steel and waited for the hilt to engage with the hilt of the other sword. A fierce, vicious twist. The other's sword flew through the air, over the ornate stonework. It must have fallen on earth. There was no noise. The man was spreadeagled below Gresham now, struggling for a knife, a hand clutching the timber of the roof ladder. Pitilessly, Gresham brought his blade back, selected his spot and plunged it through the neck of his assailant.

Kill or be killed. This man was no innocent. He had made his choice, taken his chance. And he had lost. A spasm passed through the prone body, the hand gripped even tighter to the ladder for a moment, and then let go. His body slid down the smooth surface of the roof, tumbling into the narrow passageway at its foot.

Gresham looked around. A ghostly mist, some fifteen or twenty feet high, shrouded Cambridge, the moonlight picking out its every curl and fold. Housetops and church spires poked out from the enchanted smoke, glinting with moisture. The throbbing in his head began, the throbbing he knew would develop into an agonising pain, the pain he knew came with the killing and the fear.

He walked down the opposite roof ladder. To his surprise, he found the man still alive. Dying, certainly, blood pouring uncontrollably from his neck, but still living. With an agonised last puking of muscles, the man turned his head towards Gresham, the blood thickening and spurting as it streamed from the wound.

Gresham stopped, as if struck by a blow.

It was Heaton. Nicholas Heaton. Cecil's messenger. The man who had been so confident of serving the King. And who was dying, covered in blood, an accomplice to Marlowe, wearing the livery of the King! *What does your master have to do with this man Marlowe?' hissed Gresham, hauling Heaton up to face level, dagger pressed against his chest. Heaton's eyes were glazed, blinking. With a superhuman heave Gresham hoisted him on top of the ornamental stonework that fringed the wall, hanging him over it, facing the terrible drop to the ground. His thick blood fell before him, showing the way, leaking from his torn neck.

'Will you tell me now?'

But Nicholas Heaton was dead, carrying whatever secrets he held with him. There was much here for Gresham to think on.

Minutes later, and with a final heave, Gresham pushed at the body. It slid, about to fall to the ground, but hung for a second by the tunic, ludicrously, off a cone of carved stone. Then, with a ripping and tearing of cloth, it slid over the edge. What was it he had said to Heaton all that time ago, at their last meeting?

Take care. Those who rise to greater heights have far further to fall.

Marlowe had gone. The servant still lay there, comatose. The belt, severed with stabbing rasps of a knife that Gresham must have missed, lay at his feet.

Well, if Marlowe was in league with King James, killing him might have been a murder too far, until Gresham could ascertain the nature of their link. Much more here to provoke thought.

Clutching his satchel, Gresham finally left the chapel. One servant would be found pulped on the ground the next morning. The other would probably still be in the roof. Did King James hold enough power to keep what had happened secret? Or would Cambridge be buzzing tomorrow with strange murders and men falling off college roofs?

Gresham, the pain growing in his head, decided he didn't care either way. He had a satchel to open.