'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 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.'