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
