The galleon's grave

Chapter 2

March-April, 1587 Granville College, Cambridge

The choir were singing in the Chapel. There were only a handful of them, a symbol of the resurgence in the fortunes of Granville College, but they were good. The beautiful, delicate soaring voices escaped the half-open door and drifted over the College like a flock of swifts.

Things had to be bad if the music failed to move Henry Gresham. A young man who had already been hurt too often by a passion for people, he channelled the fiery avalanche of his emotions into the safe release of music. But today he gazed vacantly out of the latticed window, down to the courtyard. Two rooms to himself was a great luxury indeed in Cambridge. Most Fellows shared their room with students, hiring out truckle beds. Outside, what little peace there ever was in Cambridge was being destroyed by the noise of the men building the new wing, the first sign of the money Gresham was pouring into his old College. Two weeks ago the entire scaffolding had come clattering down, with five men on it. One had broken both legs, another an arm. The students had sawn through the ropes holding the wooden poles in place the night before.

The black mood tore at his mind, the face of the man he had murdered in the meadows returning and swimming up at him.

'Snap out of this!' growled Mannion. He was worried. What was it in Gresham that made him bottle so much up? How many people realised the truth about the laconic, assured and confident young man who strode through Cambridge and London as if he did not have a care in the world? It was simply a mask, an imposition of outer calm over a heaving maelstrom of clashing moods and an almost gross sensitivity. And apparently it was only Mannion who was allowed to see beneath this mask.

'What is there to snap out of it for? said Gresham, bleakly.

Mannion was annoying. Henry Gresham did not want people to care for him. He had been born a bastard, his mother never named, a startling by-blow from the success story that was the life of the great Sir Thomas Gresham. To everyone's surprise Sir Thomas had acknowledged the child. But it had been a cold, clinical childhood. Then his father had died when Gresham was nine years old. He remembered thinking how lucky he was that he felt no urge to cry. He had seen other children cry at the death of a parent. It was a weakness to cry. Emotional attachments were a weakness. A person was better without that weakness. Stronger.

Yet he had wanted to cry, so much.

The child Henry Gresham, armed only with bed, board and a meagre allowance, had become feral, increasingly wild, left to fend for himself, stalking the great corridors of The House, and the cold streets which no one cared enough to stop him walking. He found his own way to school with no one to notice the huge tear in the doublet a servant had bought for him, nor the bruises from the endless fights with other boys who had somehow found out his bastardy. He had food, a roof over his head and clothes on his back. But he had no love. Nor did he allow himself to wish for it.

First George had come into his life when five boys had cornered Gresham in the school yard. He had knocked two of them out, but a third had got a stone and thrown it, hitting Gresham on the head and near knocking out his left eye. Blinded by blood, dizzy, he had fought on until he had dimly seen the stone-thrower fly through the air. George had decided to intervene, not liking the odds and attracted by the sheer courage and guts of the young boy he had never noticed before. Then Mannion, a mere servant, entered Henry Gresham’s life and, by caring for Him, became the only other person Henry Gresham cared about.

Gresham had battled to win his degree from Cambridge, serving at table to eke out his meagre allowance, suffering the jibes of the spoiled, wealthy undergraduates. George had offered money. Gresham had proudly rejected it. George was at Oxford, his family so rooted to its university that Gresham doubted they even knew there was a similar institution in Cambridge. The lawyer's visit had come as a complete surprise.

‘You are a rich young man, sir,' the dry-as-dust old man had said, looking down his nose at him as if he was something slightly distasteful found in the road, 'a very rich young man indeed.'

It was the vast fortune his father had accumulated in a lifetime of serving the financial needs of Kings and Queens. The fortune he had decided to leave to his bastard son, if and when that son obtained his degree.

Gresham had stood there, in the meagre room he shared with five other impoverished students, the remnants of the boiled mutton on the table. The grate was empty, smelling faintly of soot. He had long ago forgotten to feel the cold. He gazed and gazed at the copy of the will, in his threadbare jerkin and thrice-mended hose. The will that meant he would never have to go cold or hungry again. The will that made him not just the wealthiest student in Cambridge, but made him one of the wealthiest men in the country.

Life had been simple as a child. Survival. The enemy had been everyone. Now life seemed impossibly complex, and his problems were not just in London.

His troubles in College were not simply down to jealousy of his wealth. Though never directly accused, he was seen as having dangerous leanings towards Rome and Roman Catholicism, and his fondness for music in Chapel was widely derided. It did not help that he had been one of the most brilliant undergraduates of his time, as precocious as he had then been poor. He had also been one of the most unruly. His absences 'on the Queen's business' at Walsingham's bequest had bred extra resentment against him. Fellows of the College had banded together to deny him his degree, despite the superior quality of his work. A peremptory message from the Privy Council, one of the few favours Walsingham had ever returned him, had put the University in its place and given Gresham his degree. Even those on his side had reacted badly to being told what to do by the Government. And then his election as a Fellow had added fuel to the fire.

'It's a joke, isn't it?' said Gresham, pacing the small room, floorboards creaking under his feet, energy held back like the stretched gut of a crossbow. 'The first thing we do when we're born is cry. We spend a few years dodging disease, if we're lucky, and then we invent things to care about. Then we're disposed of, we rot and stink to high heaven and it's over. What a lot of noise and tumult. And all about nothing.'

‘So much for those bloody church services you drag me to!' said Mannion, whose support of religion was theoretical rather than practical. 'Anyway, you knows my view. We're 'ere to eat, drink and 'ave a bit o' fun.' Mannion was not generally troubled by depression. 'Stands to reason. God wouldn't have given us pleasures if he didn't want us to take them. What I'm not here for is to be ordered around by bloody Spaniards,' he added morosely. Now that he could get depressed about. Mannion had a thing about Spaniards. The hatred was at a peak with the wild rumours that a Spanish invasion was imminent.

'Spain, at least, has an identity, a belief in itself,' said Gresham. 'I sometimes wonder if England even knows what it is.'

'You wonder a bloody sight too much,' said Mannion. 'What you need is a lot less wondering and a bit more living.'

'So I'm meant to stop thinking, am I?' said Gresham caustically.

'Well, you can stop thinking Spain's so bloody marvellous, for starters, because it ain't. Load of heathens who want our women and burn people for pleasure. And if you don't watch out the next time a man comes at you, you'll start to think, instead of just stickin' 'im in the gut.' Mannion sucked at the last remnant of small ale in the pewter tankard by his side. 'Fact is, you're alive. He's dead, that bloody Spaniard in the meadows. You've got the luxury of bein' miserable. He ain't.'

'Come on, old man!' Gresham said, jumping up, 'lift your great stomach! Eager young minds are waiting to be filled at The Golden Lion!'

The mask was back, Mannion noted. He was used to his master's sudden swings of mood. But what damage was being wreaked under that mask?

Fellows made their reputation and their livelihood by the students they attracted to hear them teach. Gresham attracted more than anyone. There were a growing number of 'schools' in Cambridge where these groups could meet, but the local inns still provided a traditional venue for teacher and taught to assemble. They had been forced to find a new inn this year to cope with the growing number wanting to hear Henry Gresham. Perhaps his depression fired him up. He taught brilliantly, emerging outwardly carefree on to the street.

Mannion saw himself as an honorary academic. After all, Gresham's seminars took place in a building dedicated to the consumption of drink and food, and a building which not infrequently placed sex on the menu. For Mannion, it was not like attending a place of learning. It was more like attending a place of worship.

'Isn't Cambridge wonderful?' said Gresham, taking a deep breath 'of air.

'Bloody Brilliant,' said Mannion, adopting his annoying habit of speaking in capitals. The beer had been good, but now the street was full of the throng of students, of dons, carters, tradesmen and local people. Cambridge was more of a village than a town, Gresham thought, for all the splendour of the Colleges. The recent rain had soaked the thoroughfare and everyone had mud spattered up to their waists. A herd of sheep were being driven through to the market, with an ancient farmer in a smock being helped by a boy too young for the job. The sheep, instead of being tired by their long march, were restive and fickle. They swept this way and that across the road, driving into all classes of people and rub-bing the grease of their coats onto fine velvet. Last week a student had run into the middle of just such a herd, bodily picked up a fully-grown animal, and run off with it. Gresham shuddered to think why.

'Bloody Brilliant,' Mannion repeated, as Gresham prepared to set forth, having plotted the least mud-strewn path. 'It's set too low down so its air smells like the bilges of a ship. It gets the plague as regular as other places get dawn and sunset. Oh, and the University hate the town and the town hate the University, with neither of the stupid buggers able to see they both need each other.' He stood, glumly. The wind blew the smell of the river towards him. It was still Cambridge's main road, and its main sewer.

'You're getting old!' Gresham jibed. 'This is where you dare to be wise! This is where the white-hot heat of debate burns up the foul vapours of the air! This is life! Young life!'

'Right,' said Mannion. 'Glad you told me.'

Gresham ignored Mannion and set off, looking not so much like a Fellow of a College as the fine young heir to a noble house, a young colt luxuriating in the use of his long limbs.

They navigated the crowded streets, still tame compared to London's frenetic bustle. Ramshackle, leaning wooden houses threatened to topple over, a stark contrast to the pure stone, brick and soaring lines of the Colleges. No wonder there was so often trouble between the University and the townspeople, thought Gresham. There was an arrogance in these buildings, and in the people who taught and learned within their walls.

'Why do you stick with this lot?' asked Mannion as they pushed their way through the crowds to within sight of Granville. 'Any other College would take you with open arms.'

Why indeed, thought Gresham? It was a thought that bothered him, with half the Fellowship seething with hatred and envy against him. 'Bloody mindedness,' he said, with startling self-honesty. 'I'm damned if I'll let them force me out of My College.' Did he realise he too was speaking in capital letters? He had been truly educated at Granville College. Few men forget their debt to the place that gives them their real education.

Noon was the main meal of the day. In theory the Fellows sat on the High Table, the students beneath them. In practice the wealthier students had created their own High Table, buying in food often more exotic than that served to the Fellows. These same students paid the poorer ones to wait on them and, if they were feeling very gracious, would even allow these intelligent servingmen the leavings of the meal.

They proceeded into the Hall, dark-panelled and with a roaring fire in the great hearth at the end even at noon, and the air rustled as the students stood, scraping back their crude benches. For once, no one upset a bench and sent it crashing to the ground; the students must either have forgotten to greet the Master in the traditional way, or were too drunk to remember to do so. Gresham took his seat, ignoring the frosty looks directed his way by several of the Fellows. He looked to his neighbour opposite, to be met with a glare of hatred.

Will Smith. Fellow of Granville College. Living witness to Cambridge's increasing dedication to hard-core Puritanism. Thin almost to extinction, smaller than average, a shock of fair curls crowning an extraordinarily high forehead and an intensity that would freeze river water. It was no Godliness that Gresham could recognise that drove Will Smith. It was hatred. Hatred, essentially, of anyone having fun.

The interminable Latin Grace was read out by a student who was as nervous as the rest of his fellows were bored. Someone timed a raucously loud fart precisely in-between the end of Grace and the solemn 'Amen'. The students giggled and shifted, the Fellowship looked stolidly ahead. To more scraping of benches Granville College sat down to eat.

Smith almost drove his thin, sweating face into Gresham's across the table. 'The smell of beer is on your breath!' he accused scornfully.

'Weil, it would be, wouldn't it?' Gresham replied mildly, hiding the fact that his good humour was vanishing as quickly as it had returned to him that morning. 'It's what they sell at The Golden Lion. You really don't want to touch the wine. It's-'

'Have you no shame? You desecrate our place of worship with idle music. You drink, you swear, you copulate… and you deny the word of God!' The man was using his words like daggers.

'Good heavens!' said Gresham, his voice calm, 'All those at the same time?'

There was a splutter of laughter from up the table. Tom Pleasance was a man whose vast bulk showed a serious commitment to the sins of eating and drinking. Fat Tom was one of Gresham's few allies.

What do you do when half the Fellows of your College hate you? Mannion's answer was simple. There were relatively few things in life, and you did four things with them. You drank them. You ate them. You slept with them. Or you thumped them. On the basis that Will Smith and his kind could not be eaten nor drunk, and that it would be unhealthy to sleep with them, there was only one alternative.

'Keep thumping 'em when they're contrary,' Mannion had announced with finality. ‘Eventually, they'll give up. If you hurt 'em enough.'

'What happens if they "thump" me first?' a morose Gresham had asked.

'Then you're a stupid bastard.' Well, that was that, then.

It was not unusual for rising young stars from the Court to visit Cambridge, nor for falling ones for that matter. Gresham noted the arrival of Robert Cecil in the Hall with little enthusiasm, not least of all because in his heart Gresham did not wish to go to sea. Cecil's arrival could only mean that he carried Walsingham's orders for him. Cecil was a Trinity man, here to look at a donation to some new building. Or at least, that was the public story. His presence had excited considerable interest in the small world of College. His father was the most powerful man in England. It was common knowledge that Lord Burghley was grooming his second son to take over from him as the Queen's Chief Minister, common knowledge that there was serious aristocratic opposition to any such succession. What excitement! It was the intrigue of which College life was made up.

Cecil initially nodded to Gresham politely enough, and then leaned over to him quickly when his neighbour's attention had been diverted by the arrival of new dishes.

'We must meet,' Cecil said. 'Privately, after this. In your rooms. I come on Walsingham's business.' He turned away suddenly to engage in conversation with the Master.

'It's the talk of the town, I tell you, sir!' The speaker was Alan Sidesmith, a senior Fellow and one of Gresham's other friends in College. He had recently returned from London. A man of urbane polish, he hid an acid wit under an unflappable exterior. Whatever this talk was, Cecil's body language was showing he did not wish to hear it.

'They're talking of nothing else except the prophecy. I'm. given to understand that the Queen is to issue a proclamation condemning its heresy, so concerned are the powers that be.'

'It is nothing!' Cecil interjected, drawn from his conversation with the Master. The man clearly had ears that could stretch down a whole table, thought Gresham. 'A mere fad, superstitious fancy…'

Cecil's obvious reluctance to have the topic aired was like a red flag to a bull for the Fellowship.

'What is it, this prophecy?' asked one, a thin man with a streak of venison gravy down his chin.

'The man was popularly known as "Regiomontanus",' said Sidesmith. 'I believe he was actually called Muller. Johan Muller, of Konigsberg. He died over a hundred years ago.'

'Muller? The mathematician? The one who did the calculations for Columbus and his navigating tables?' It was Adam Balderstone, a drunkard who was one of Gresham's bitterest enemies in College.

Now, it was happening, Gresham could see — that strange alchemy of College life, the coming together despite the vicious rivalries and deep enmities. The Fellows had started to gather round Sidesmith, moving the trestle tables aside to get closer, hunching forward in their interest. Students had left their tables, rich and poor, and were gathering on the edges of the group of men. The College was starting to breathe its magic, drawing these disparate men together, declaring a temporary truce even between those who yesterday could have killed each other.

Something started to sing in Gresham's heart. For all its anger and petty hatreds, its turmoil and parochial tumult, these strange, isolated moments of harmony were the reason why he felt at home only here, why he was pouring out money in the face of envy to revitalise this College. We do not own our lives, he thought. At best we are merely tenants. But sometimes we can buy a stake in the future, a stake in something that will outlive our frantic, short share of life. A young man in an all-male community, he was too young to realise that this same justification was what drove men to have children.

'Yes,' said Sidesmith, 'but the prophecy derives from others as well.'

'Its principles are Biblical as well as mathematical.' It was Balderstone again. His eyes were bright, and One could see something of the excitement that had drawn the students to him in droves when he had first taught at Cambridge. Who would have thought that an obscure prophecy could have aroused him so, thought Gresham. Not for the first time he reminded himself: never think you can completely know any human being. 'Muller and others — Melancthon, Stofler, Postel — argued that all human history is contained in a series of cycles.'

'These… cycles, are they Biblical?' It was the Dean of the College.

'Only in part,' Balderstone said. 'They are authenticated by the Holy Bible — passages in Revelations, Daniel XII and Isaiah — but their structure is numerical, based on permutations of the numbers seven and ten.'

A frisson of fear shuddered through the group. Numerology was accepted as a valid path of knowledge, but smacked to some of witchcraft.

'But what is the importance of all this?' It was the Master, part fascinated, part unsettled by Cecil's obvious displeasure.

Sidesmith glanced at Balderstone, who glanced back and shrugged.

'The prophecy of Regiomontanus is based on the belief that the penultimate cycle of human history closed in 1518 with Luther's defiance of the Pope,' said Sidesmith. There was shuffling in the crowd. Cambridge was fiercely Puritan, a Puritanism that had been made possible by Luther's defiance. Yet Gresham knew there were those in the Hall whose outward observance of Protestant ritual covered weekly attendance at the Mass, conducted in secret by priests whose bowels would be hung out to dry in front of them while their hearts were still beating if they were discovered.

'So are we all to die this year?' *No,' said Sidesmith.*Not this year. Next year. One version states that the final cycle is based on ten times seven years.'

'The time of the Babylonian captivity?' asked an excited young voice from die back, showing off.

'Precisely. It states that in 1588 the Seventh Seal will be broken.'

There was silence. From far away came the call of a servant in the kitchen.

'Some say that the anti-Christ will be overthrown in that year. That it will be the final judgement.'

For a moment the Hall seemed to darken. A cloud passing over the sun? Coincidence.

'What are the words or the prophecy?' It was another young student eagerly questioning.

Sidesmith did not raise his voice, but the sonorous words seemed to echo and reverberate in the Hall:

'"Post mille exactos a partu virginis annos

Et post quingentos rursus ab orbe datos

Octavagesimus octavus mirabilis annus

Ingruet et secum tristitia satis trahet.

Si non hoc anno totus malus occidet orbis,

Si non in totum terra fretumque ruant,

Cuncta tamen mundi sursum ibunt atque descrescent

Imperia et luctus undique grandis erit."'

For the Fellows, the Latin translated instantly in their minds. Gresham saw the confusion on the faces of some of the students, and cut in before they started to babble their ignorance to each other.

'"A thousand years from the virgin birth

Five hundred more allowed the globe,

Then is the wondrous eighty-eighth year

Bringing with it great woe. If, this year,

Total catastrophe does not befall, if land

And sea do not collapse in total ruin, yet

The whole world will suffer upheavals,

Empires will dwindle From everywhere

Will be great lamentation."'

This time the silence was longer. *Nonsense!' It was one of the most enfeebled of the Fellows, taken now to spluttering and declamation as the power of his mind left him. 'Superstitious nonsense, from those with brains in their backsides rather than in their heads. We shall not fight Spain if our soldiers and our sailors start in the belief that they are already dead.'

'Why, sir,' said Fat Tom, who claimed ancestry from Julius Caesar, and also claimed his ancestor's skill in military planning despite, never having been within shooting distance of an arquebus, 'I hardly feel we need to bring backsides into the debate. I person-ally always try to keep them out.'

The students laughed, as Tom had intended. Tom called everybody 'my dear' and spoke in a rather high voice from the top of his nose. He had once been challenged by a student who had called him a sodomite. Tom was a man who never willingly used one word where twenty would do. He had looked down on the boy, who could have been sent down for such an insult, and gave an answer that had immediately entered the folklore of the College. 'Young man,' he had said, 'I had to choose some years ago whether my pleasure was to come from food and drink or from sexual congress. My choice of the former makes the latter impractical, as I have trouble finding a bed to support me alone. At best, therefore, I can only be a sodomite in theory, and as you have shown a total inability to grasp any theory whatsoever, I would suggest that if such accusations are to be made then they should come from someone who does not have his brain up his arse.'

Tom's style and voice were deceptively languid. He spoke as if to the general mass. All knew he was talking to the man whose father was the government. 'If there is fear, it is only because men can see what government is blind to.'

'Your meaning, sir?' asked Cecil mildly. He had not pretended that the statement had been directed at anyone but him, but the neutrality of his response made him seem merely courteous and interested, rather than offended.

'There is confusion in our ranks, sir.' Tom was equally courteous. 'It's known that Spain is gathering ships. We have the greatest opposing army this side of antiquity a short sea journey away in the Netherlands, under Parma, the most powerful general in the world today.'

A mutter of agreement and fear went round the tables. Nowhere was dread of Spain stronger than in Puritan Cambridge. The Duke of Parma and his fierce Spanish soldiers were names used to frighten naughty children.

'There is… less confusion than you might conceive,' responded Cecil carefully, leaning forward. 'The Queen is eternally vigilant!'

'Why, so Her Majesty is,' said Fat Tom, 'but to us yokels out here in the country her generals appear less so. Where is the army that will repel the Duke of Parma? And with such soldiers as we have, where is the strategy? Are we to defend the whole coast, every port and harbour and beach, spread such men as we have around so thinly that they will report an invasion but be too weak to fight it off? Or do we concentrate our men at focal points to meet the attacker, risking that they land where we do not expect and march on London unopposed. Both tactics are risky, but it's even more risky to have no tactics at all!'

Tom was on the verge of rudeness, the distinction between that and academic robustness always being blurred. Cecil refused to rise to any bait.

'We have soldiers enough,' he said. God knows where they were, thought Gresham. England had never had a standing army, and the few professional soldiers it could muster were most of them in Flanders, failing to defeat the mighty Duke of Parma. 'But more than that we have our ships, surely? Ships enough to drop King Philip's lumbering galleons to the bottom of the sea, with or without Parma's precious soldiers in them.'

'The sea,' said Fat Tom, warming to his cause even more, 'is vast and even the most "lumbering'' of galleons is very small. Our fleet and theirs could pass each other in the night as if both were invisible.'

'And we have Drake…' said Cecil with an air of finality. There was a slight tick in his left eye, Gresham noted, an almost invisible flickering of the flesh. Drake. El Draco. Feared above all others by the Spaniards. Rumoured to have a magic glass through which he could see the position of every Spanish ship at sea. How else to explain the miraculous way he found the Spanish treasure vessels? A murmur of approval swept over the students. Drake was a talisman, a magic symbol to wave away fear of invasion. 'Drake is a mighty figure indeed. And captaining, of course, one of our new fine ships. Ships that can dip and weave across the waves like a dancer, sailing almost into the wind…'

In the face of bitter opposition, Hawkins, The Queen's Admiral, had cut down the huge castles that dominated the bow and stern of warships. Instead he had forced through new vessels with low, lean profiles, eminently more manoeuvrable and capable of sailing almost directly into the wind. The great castles had been for soldiers, so that they could pour down a musket fire on their enemy and then launch themselves down on their foe as they came alongside, grappled and boarded. Yet these vast castles fore and aft, their size almost a symbol of the ego of the ship's captain, caught the wind like a vast sail, made the ships almost unmanoeuvrable unless the wind was directly behind them.

We have ships that can stand off from an enemy and blow it out of the water. No boarding, no coming alongside.' It was Gresham taking over now. He had no need and no desire to offend Cecil, at least not until he knew what this man's game was. Yet if he was to become involved in the defence of England, it would be as wise to hear the answer from London to some obvious questions. 'But Drake has never commanded an English fleet in battle with another fleet. Even the Queen described him as her pirate,' Gresham said. A flicker of laughter went round the table. 'His only experience is in attacking primarily merchant vessels, or inferior forces, for the purpose of taking their cargo and enriching both the nation and himself. Glorious, certainly. But the Spaniards have fought pitched battles at sea, with several fleets.'

Though I wonder how glorious it really is, thought Gresham, or whether it is simply greed. And piracy.

'Our captains, even if they know how to use our ships and can resist the lure of treasure, are reported to be at each other's throats more often than they fight the enemy,' Gresham continued. It was known that Frobisher had threatened to tear Drake's heart out. 'Each ship in our fleet is a mere individual, operating at the whim of its captain. It's like an army where the officers are at war with each other, and each soldier takes a personal decision which enemy to fight!'

'I think,' said Cecil smoothly, 'that our captains can be trusted to unite in the face of any threat we might face from Spain. And if a young man such as yourself, with no experience of sea-faring, can identify these problems, think you not that those with all the experience in the world of seafaring, and their masters, are aware of them as well and have plans in hand to solve them?'

It was a good, telling point. There was a buzz of support from round the table. People needed to believe in this, Gresham realised. He also realised he had not added to the number of his friends by seeming to challenge the reassurance of Cecil, and the reputation of Drake. The thinnest possible glint in Cecil's eyes suggested that he knew he had scored an emotional victory, if not an intellectual one, with the Fellowship.

The knock on the door came shortly after Gresham returned to his rooms. Mannion had been dismissed and was no doubt now haunting one of the less respectable taverns in Cambridge. Cecil motioned his own servant away, ordering him to shut both the outer and the inner door. It was an unusual slip from a man Gresham suspected weighed every move. Gresham could have pointed out that these were his rooms and it was therefore his decision as to whether the doors were open or shut. He kept his counsel.

'It is kind of you to see me,' said Cecil, inclining his head to Gresham and knowing that Gresham had no option.

'It's an honour,' Gresham replied, inclining likewise and knowing that it was not.

'You argued your case well,' said Cecil. The man had small, gimlet eyes. The cut of the long cloak he had donned, and the doublet under it, obscured the crook in his back, and his hair was arranged so as to cover in part the indentation in the side of his head that his detractors said had been caused when his wet nurse had dropped him on to a stone floor.

Yet I lost it, thought Gresham. However well I argued, it was you who took the balance of the Fellowship with you. What had Walsingham once said to him? To admit weakness is sometimes to gain strength'.

'Had we been in formal disputation, I think we both know you would have won,' said Gresham. Formal debates were the meat and drink of Cambridge academic life, central to its academic processes.

'Those who say what the listeners wish to hear frequently defeat those who tell the truth,' replied Cecil, something akin to a dry smile passing his lips.

Well now! Two sets of truth following on one from the other! At this rate we'll be in bed together by midnight and married in the morning, thought Gresham. 'I'm forgetting my manners,' he said aloud. 'Can I tempt you to some wine?'

'How kind,' replied Cecil. The voice was thin, reedy, but with the strength of wire. Gresham got up and poured the wine into a fine Venetian glass. If Cecil noticed how expensive his drinking vessel was he did not show it, merely toying with the stem as if distracted. Gresham decided to say nothing. It was Cecil who broke the silence. 'Unfortunately you are correct. We have no proper army to defend our shores. Drake is unreliable. Our ships are individuals, not a unified fleet such as the Spanish possess, with tactics they have tried out in battle.'

Gresham was able to control his face. Here was an admission indeed — an admission that could be taken to come direct from the Queen's Chief Minister.

'You will condemn me, no doubt,' said Cecil. Was he aware of the shock he had caused? It was difficult to know; the man was a courtier and a politician, bred to hide his feelings, as Gresham had been forced to learn to do. 'Condemn me for seeking to defeat your arguments tonight in front of your Fellowship when I knew them to be correct.' Was there the slightest hint of pleasure that he had been victorious?

'I condemn no one,' said Gresham, 'I leave that to judges and to politicians.'

'It is an instinct for one such as myself to calm fears,' said Cecil. 'Even more so if they are true.'

'I am no sailor,' said Gresham, repeating what he had said to Walsingham. "What role can I play in these great events?'

'From what little I know, you can act as eyes and ears for our country in Lisbon. And I believe for some while you have acted as an… agent, for Walsingham?'

'You must know I have,' answered Gresham simply.

'A spy? Are we allowed to use the word?' In using it Cecil had allowed a degree of venom to creep into his voice.

'If you don't, others will. And spies are necessary, after all,' said Gresham. 'As are dogs. And even lice must be necessary, or surely God would not have created them?'

'Very necessary,' said Cecil with the same distaste as one might describe the fellow who cleared out the midden. Both men were resisting an urge to scratch. 'In any event, here are the papers Sir Francis wished you to have. He requested that. I urge caution on you. As I am sure you know, such orders as he has chosen to give you will mean your death if they are found on your person in a foreign country. Sir Francis suggests-'

'That I destroy them once they are read. It is an order with which I'm familiar,' said Gresham with a thin smile.

'Indeed,' said Cecil, pleasantly. Why did his pleasantness worry Gresham? 'And I wish you well on the voyage. I understand Sir Francis is hoping for a great victory related to barrel staves.'

'Barrel staves?' said Gresham incredulously. A sense of humour was not a feature he associated with Robert Cecil. 'Are we going to acquire large quantities of barrel staves and beat the Spaniards over the head with them? I would have thought pikes and muskets were a more conventional-'

Cecil refused to rise to Gresham's sarcasm. He interrupted Gresham.

'My lord believes we can cripple the Armada through barrel staves as much as through cannon fire. A great Armada of ships requires thousands of tons of food, of wine of water, of powder — all stored in barrels. Where else can such commodities be stored? Have you tasted beer from a barrel made of unseasoned staves?'

Sour beer! Of course! Water was a dangerous drink, and the brewing process seemed to take the badness out of water. Even Gresham knew what happened on board ship if a barrel was broached and the contents poisoned through unseasoned timber. Such timber also bent and shrank, letting out the contents. Mind you, so few hops were used in brewing the beer for the Queen's ships that the stuff was rumoured to be rotten before it got into the barrels. Cecil continued, as if lecturing a child.

'Because the wood for staves has to season and, because Spain needs far more barrels than are currently available, the order has gone out for suitable wood across Europe. Small boats, mainly, in their hundreds. Heading for Lisbon. Walsingham believes if we can sink or capture enough of these vessels, we will give the Spaniards gut rot for food and poison for their drink. Drake's instructions are to patrol off Lisbon or Cadiz, attack if he can. If not, he should pick up all the coastal trade, sink most of it.'

'While this is fascinating,' said Gresham, 'I'm slightly at a loss to see its relevance’

'It is very simple,' said Cecil. 'Sir Francis needs not only information on the great ships that Philip is gathering — their cannon, their shot and their powder — but he wishes you to ascertain the state of the lesser shipping, the state of those unglamorous supplies that will underpin Spain's fleet.'

An unglamorous mission then, thought Gresham, seeking to find out unglamorous facts. 'Is there enmity between your father and Walsingham?' he asked Cecil. It was almost a random thought, allied to a desire to unsettle him. Why did Gresham dislike him so much?

‘Not at all,' replied Cecil. Gresham had chosen the wrong question. Or Cecil was hard to unsettle. 'If there were, it would hardly be likely that I would be running errands for Sir Francis.'

I cannot see why you should run such errands, thought Gresham, and it worries me. More layers of intrigue. Yet as far as Gresham could judge, Cecil had not told him a single lie. Who could hope to disentangle the truth from the lies?

The usual permissions have been given to the College, I understand,' said Cecil. The 'usual permissions' were letters from the Privy Council requesting that 'no hindrance' be given to one Henry Gresham for absence 'required in the service of Her Majesty'. It would, of course, lead to the usual resentments, as if Gresham did not have enough trouble in College already. And he would need to pay someone to cover his lectures.

Some instinct had drawn Mannion back. He stepped into Gresham's rooms as Cecil brushed past him.

‘We're going to sea to fight the Spanish, then spy in Lisbon,' said Gresham.

For a moment a strange expression flickered across the face of the normally phlegmatic Mannion. Then it was gone. 'Fight the Spanish?' he said. 'I thought all you wanted to do was to get into bed with them.'

Gresham sighed, and chose to ignore the sally. He relayed his conversation with Cecil.

'I don't like it, not one bit,' said Mannion. 'That Cecil's on the ladder right enough, and 'e don't mind who 'e treads on to get up it. The way these bastards work at Court, I bet 'e 'asn't given you half the story.'

'There'll be battles at sea that'll decide the fate of England. Maybe set the map of Europe for hundreds of years to come. And I've been offered a ringside seat. What man could turn that down?' asked Gresham. Well, it would make a story for the girls, and there was some excitement in it.

'One with more sense than you,' responded Mannion. 'Well, I'm glad I taught you to swim.' He had indeed done so in Gresham's youth. Gresham's hatred of the sea did not extend to swimming in the cool clear waters of his father's lake, or the upper reaches of the Cam before Cambridge's sewage stained its waters.

'Let's hope we don't have to,' said Gresham, with feeling.