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
