door half open, bowed down low, and kicked the door back out of the man's hand with all his might. It flew back on its hinges, banging off the wall with a magnificent crash, and rebounding with sufficient force to knock the shocked servant forward on his heels. The figure in the chair started sufficiently to knock over his wine glass, and leapt to his feet, turning in alarm to view the cause of the upheaval.
It was Sir Francis Bacon.
'My apologies, Sir Francis,' said Gresham, albeit with his infuriating careless grin on his face. 'Doors are good places for men to hide behind with a knife, particularly so when one does not know who it is one is being invited to meet.'
That, thought Gresham, will teach you not to give me your name.
Bacon looked as if his heartbeat had returned to merely twice its normal rate by now, and some colour had come back into his cheeks. He nodded to Gresham and invited him to sit down.
'My apologies, sir. I'd forgotten what it is to be a man of action — particularly as it wasn't in that role that I asked to see you.'
There was well-cooked meat on the table, and what looked like a delicate dish of fish. It too was cooked through, unlike much of the food Gresham had seen outside. A fire blazed in the hearth. A man who could command good food, a fire and a private room at one of His Majesty's gatherings was no fool, Gresham thought.
Bacon was a relatively small figure, his most notable feature what his friends described as deep hazel eyes, which his enemies (who outnumbered the friends) described as snake-like. He motioned to his servant, who was muttering words by the door among which could be heard 'oaf', 'ruffian' and even a hint of 'call yourself a gentleman…' He was rubbing his hand, which had near been wrenched from the arm when Gresham had hurled the door out of its grip. The servant, with marked unwillingness, brought a bundle tied in tape to Gresham, and surlily plonked it down on the table before him. It was a bundle of books, six in all, identical.
'I call it The Advancement of Learning. I've been working on it for many years. In it I ask for the cobwebs to be blown off our vision of learning. I ask that we seek anew to experiment, and to learn from that experimentation, as the only way that true learning will advance.'
'I'm honoured, Sir Francis. But why should I be so honoured, the mere bastard son of a merchant and an occasional supplicant at the altar of learning?'
'I was more inclined to make a present of six copies of my book to the Patron of Granville College, Cambridge, and the man who more than any other is responsible for the rising star of the College.'
Gresham looked at Bacon impassively, inclining his head slightly forward as if Bacon had spoken to him in a foreign language he did not quite understand.
'Forgive me, Sir Henry. I know your wish to be anonymous, and whilst I don't understand it I can be capable of respecting it. Yet I too have my spies — or, rather, I have those in Cambridge who will respect me for my mind, and trust me as such, rather than see me as a lawyer, a Parliamentarian or a candidate for high office. Your secret is safe with me, and with old Thomas here — who is, by the way, the only one of my feckless crew of servants who I'd trust with such a secret.'
A muttered 'young vagabond' could be heard from the doorway. Gresham hoped Mannion would not kick old Thomas to silence him.
Gresham picked on one phrase of Bacon's statement. 'Are you a candidate for high office, Sir Francis?'
'I'm worse, sir. I'm a failed candidate for high office. With superb judgement,' he said with heavy irony, 'I backed Essex, who lost, and so I lost the support of the Queen. That was the first disaster. I opposed Cecil, who won, so now I have an enemy in the most powerful man in the land. That was the second disaster. I then prosecuted Essex — who, by the way, ignored all and every piece of the excellent advice I gave him — and in so doing lost the support of any poor fool who had not already left my party. That was the third disaster. I am a mediocre lawyer with an excellent brain, and lawyers don't need a brain. That is the fourth disaster. I am troubled with occasional pangs of morality, and lawyers need that even less, which is the fifth disaster. I am also ruthlessly ambitious, and thereby offend even my few friends, which is the sixth disaster. I am not so much sinking, Henry Gresham, as vanished beyond sight of mortal man!'
Gresham burst out laughing. 'Yet some who appear to sink deepest rise upwards again fastest! You were knighted only two years ago, Sir Francis. Not a disaster, surely?'
‘No. Merely a consolation and a leaving prize, earned more by my dear Brother Anthony than by myself.'
'I can only conclude,' Gresham replied, 'that given your own ranking of your good judgement, any regard you have for me is also a doomed misjudgement. Am I then the leading contender for the post of seventh disaster?'
Bacon joined in the laughter. 'Just as those who cook with the Devil need a long spoon, so you'd be as well advised to try and fly without wings as to nail your colours to any part of me. But no, what I want from you, if you're willing to grant it, is simple enough. I wish you to read my book. Then, if you think there's any sense in it at all, I wish you to give five copies to the five people in Cambridge for whose learning and judgement you have the most respect.'
'Just as you say it's not a good thing for a lawyer to have brains or morals, so these commodities aren't always in the most supply at the High Tables of Cambridge or Oxford. You trust me, a bastard and an ex-soldier, to make such a judgement?'
'As for the bastard, the ex-soldier or the many other things I hear you might be, I've no knowledge except what you tell me. Yet I've some feeling for another creature who bears your name.'
'And who might that be, Sir Francis?' enquired Gresham lightly.
'The author of Machiavelli's Choice, and also the author of Sonnets on the Source of Power.'
To the best of Gresham's knowledge his pamphlet on Machiavelli had been circulated secretly in Cambridge to the tune of only a hundred copies, with no way of tracing the authorship back to Gresham. He had been new on the scene at Cambridge in those days, and wished to test the water of the town before making his commitment to it, to Oxford or even to Wittenburg. Seemingly within days it had been the talk of every High Table, generating considerable excitement and a surprising measure of agreement and approbation. The Sonnets had been even more privately circulated, in manuscript and never printed. John Donne had sniffed and said nothing when he read them, so Gresham had known they were good. Bacon was very well informed, or capable of inspired guesswork.
So Bacon knew. So it was done. Leave the past behind. Do not fight what cannot be changed. Gresham rarely spent time making decisions. Life was for living, for deciding, and not for thinking. Showing no shock at Bacon's knowledge, he simply said, 'I'll take the books, Sir Francis, with gratitude, and will do as you wish, provided I like what I read.' He smiled broadly at Bacon. 'If not, I fear I will cast the books as deep as you think your reputation has sunk!'
'Worry not,' said Bacon, 'reputations are shallow, meaningless things, but like all things insubstantial they can rise as easily as they can sink.'
Gresham took another decision. 'Sir Francis, while we're here you might perhaps answer one question that is concerning me at the present time…'
Bacon looked up, pleased with the outcome of the exchange, invigorated by the dialogue. 'Of course,' he said.
'Why has my Lord Cecil tasked me with finding damning evidence of unnatural practices on your part?'
The colour drained from Bacon's face, and his mouth snapped open. There was presumably a tongue inside it, but it was finding it the Devil's own work to make a noise. 'He… I…'
The surly servant bumbled up to the table, looked witheringly at Gresham, and heaved a goblet of wine at his master. Bacon drank deeply, coughed only slightly, and returned to earth.
'As I think I've made clear, I wasn't aware that Cecil had any such designs — and, indeed, can think of no reason why he should do so. I pose no threat to him at present.'
Ruthless? Ambitious? Capable of deceiving? Almost certainly all three, Gresham thought, but somehow not corrupt, and, to Gresham at least, not dangerous. Gresham took another decision.
'Sir Francis, I don't know what you do between your sheets, or between the sheets of others, and frankly I don't care, provided you keep out from under my sheets. Tell me, if I were to pursue this chase Cecil has set me on, would I find a truth that would rock Church and State on its heels, and see you in a court not as a lawyer but as a criminal?'
The eyes of the two men locked together for what seemed a very long time. Bacon spoke first.
'You would find an impending marriage the heat of which wouldn't raise the temperature of a drop of Thames
