the President's right-hand side, the given reason being that he had his degree from Cambridge.
The great gong struck, and they processed into the Hall. Gresham's money had refounded Granville College, one of the most ancient and derelict in the University, yet he took his place on the High Table in strict order of seniority and the timing of his Fellowship, making him one of the most junior. The students in their gowns shuffled to their feet, benches scraping on the cold floor, as the President and Fellows entered. A student, a thin-faced boy with a face pockmarked from smallpox, came nervously forward, bowed to the President, and recited the long Latin grace. There was a subtle chorus of shuffling and, from somewhere among the depths of the student body, a hurriedly suppressed squeal as an arm was pinched. More bowing, and the business of the meal was allowed to continue.
Gresham's companion sniffed as he sat down.
'Out of sorts, Hugo?' asked Gresham, taking his own linen napkin from his sleeve.
The Fellow in question was a huge man, slobbering rolls of fat hanging over his neck and bulging out his thick arms into rotund sausages of flesh.
'I approve of tradition,' the man replied, grabbing at the warm bread that had already been placed on the platters in front of the Fellows. 'If three tables was good enough for this College in all its history, it's good enough for me.' He was already looking hungrily for the servant to bring in the first trenchers of food, and a glass of wine had already gone into the cavern he called his stomach.
'Ah,' said Gresham, 'but you didn't have the task of telling the eminent citizen of this town that he was good enough only for the second table, or telling that same to a man with an excellent degree who sees some jumped-up favourite of Court dining here on high.' It was an old argument, and Gresham did not offer it to convert, but merely to annoy. It worked. Hugo spluttered and sent dangerously large lumps of bread firing from his mouth across the table.
'It is a nonsense! A nonsense. I firmly believe…' Dinner at High Table was started, and would proceed along its normal path. Gresham had insisted that Granville College have a High Table for Fellows, guests and those with BAs and above, and the remaining tables for those studying for their first degree or those with no degree. He had proposed the abolition of the second, intermediate table to the President.
Alan Sidesmith had smiled.
'It'll cause a rumpus, you know,' he had said, with no sign that it concerned him at all. 'The young men of pleasure we seem to be receiving at this University in such large numbers will dislike a College where they can't buy their way into higher fare, and out of the company of the poor students.' Under the old system, the third table had been reserved for 'people of low condition'.
'What a great pity,' Gresham had replied. 'We'll just have to make do with taking students who wish to learn, instead of those who simply wish to play tennis, get drunk and swagger that they've done their study in Cambridge.'
'Now that would be something new,' Alan had responded, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. 'But I do hope it won't restrain you personally in pursuing those noble aims.'
In fact the young and the rich had flocked to Granville in its new foundation. Its High Table was frequently extended to several tables as it was besieged by the rich and the famous, its simple rule that no man without his Bachelor of Arts could sit there giving it an unexpected prestige. The fact that the rule had been waived only once, for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, had added to rather than taken away from the distinction.
The heady smell of fresh-baked bread and roast meat mingled with the sharper tang of the wine on High Table and the ale and beer cheerily being consumed by the students. Granville College ate a good dinner, the platters loaded with meat and fish and the game pies being offered first to High Table, and then taken down to vanish into the gaping mouths of the students. A senior student was reading aloud from the Bible, one of many monastic traditions the Colleges had absorbed. The difference was that whilst total silence would have greeted the reading in the monastery, here a burble of conversation was allowed to accompany it.
Hugo was denouncing the decline of logic in favour of rhetoric to his other neighbour at table. Gresham turned to the man on his left. A man after Gresham's own heart, he had been fighting for a greater musical element in the Cambridge course.
'How goes the new material?'
Edward smiled at Gresham.
'Slowly, but surely. Master Byrd presents challenges to those who try to do justice to his music'
'Musical challenges, or other challenges?' Gresham asked innocently. William Byrd was widely believed to be a committed Papist. He had published a book of sacred songs in 1575 which had circulated among Papists and found their way into Gresham's hands, and from thence to the man who ruled over the choir of Granville College.
'Challenges of all types,' answered Edward, with no sign that he wished to relinquish any of them. 'Firstly, it's a matter of debate whether or not the songs should be performed in a chapel at all. Secondly, singing them seems tantamount to declaring an allegiance to Rome. Thirdly, it's the Devil's own job deciding if they need an organ alongside them.'
'So in summary,' Gresham answered, 'their forthcoming presence in our order of service will result in the musical director being excommunicated for singing secular work in God's chamber, burnt alive for being a Papist and beaten by the Chapel organist for doing him out of a job?'
'Sir Henry,' answered Edward with a mock bow of his head, 'how can I challenge the wit and judgement of one so distinguished?'
'Not at all, if you know what's good for you,' said Gresham cheerfully, draining his glass. He was looking forward to the performance. 'But I wonder you bother with that music. There must be easier pieces.'
'When I meet music in which I hear God's hand,' said Edward sombrely, 'I'll risk the judgement of God's emissaries on earth to hear it played.'
There would be another stir when Edward believed he had the music to his standard, and allowed it to be sung. Accusations would fly back and forth, perhaps even the odd pate would be broken. Gresham ran his eye over the Fellowship of Granville College. One Fellow was a sodomite, making a play at every pretty boy who joined the College. Two others were bedding every serving girl who offered herself. Times being hard, there was no shortage of offers of either kind. Another had the pox, and had been seeing a local quack to little effect. Dipping the genitals in a mess of white vinegar was one of the least painful remedies, and the Fellow in question had been coming to dine for weeks smelling like a barrel of wine that had been allowed to go off in the sun. The newest Fellow was involved in a ruinous lawsuit, chasing an inheritance that an older brother would grab, at dreadful cost to the younger sibling. Two of them were Catholics to the core, two of them fierce Puritans. They sat at opposite ends of the table, and a pair of them had nearly come to blows in a recent public debate.
Opposites attract, thought Henry Gresham, and from the clash of opposites comes new ideas. He gazed contentedly, as much as his restless spirit could ever be content, over his High Table and the college he had refounded. He had no children that he knew of. He seemed destined to be barren. In the meantime, the 135 students and Fellows made a contented burbling noise in the Hall Gresham had built. It could hold two hundred with ease, and would do so before too long. His children? Possibly. His Foundation? Certainly.
The meal over, he had two reasons to retire to his rooms. The first was a letter written in his best handwriting, a letter which had been returned to him a few days previously by a man called Tom Barnes. Its style was faultless, and Gresham could only marvel at the sharp logic and intelligence that shone through the written words. There were only two problems with the letter. Firstly, Gresham had never written it, despite what seemed to be his handwriting and signature, and secondly, its content was sufficient to have him hung, drawn and quartered were it ever to reach any member of the Government. There could be many reasons for the existence of such a forgery, and Gresham needed time at least to eliminate from his mind some of the least likely. When that reading was over, he had his copy of the English translation of Machiavelli's The Prince, obtained from St Paul's for a King's ransom on his last visit to London. He had read it in the original Italian, of course. He was fascinated to compare the original with the translation. It was not to be.
The knock on the door was loud, insistent. Gresham slipped the letter through the gap in the floorboards beneath his feet, and shouted for the visitor to enter.
The courier stank of horse piss and sweat. He had arrived long after supper, his leathers stained with mud up to his armpits. Cambridge was at its most dank and dark, the Fenland mist swirling round the gates of the Colleges like a miasma of plague, waiting to strike. The feeble flicker of candle from the latticed and barred windows in the inner court hardly dented the blackness. The courier had arrived after nightfall. Every tongue would wag in the
