'Well,' said Gresham, snapping back to life and his normal sense, 'you have my secret..Are you still willing to tell me yours?'
'More than I ever was,' Andrewes responded, his face retaining a smile of intense compassion, 'but I'm still bound by secrecy. I can — no, I will — only tell you half a tale.'
'It will like be more meaningful than many that are being exchanged around us.' With a faint nod Gresham pointed to the man opposite, who, in gales of laughter, was telling the story of the student whose illicit emptying of his piss-pot always seemed to hit the same servant, and the servant's novel revenge.
'If you find these letters, you will have a choice,' said Andrewes. 'You can hand them over to Sir Edward, who will use them to promote himself with the King. You could hand them to Sir Francis Bacon, who will do likewise. I suppose you could hand them back to Sir Thomas Overbury, were it not for the fact that he would lose them again to the next flatterer who came his way. You could even try to use them yourself, for your own advantage. Or you could hand them to me.'
'To you, my lord Bishop? You said you had no interest in politics?'
'Precisely. That's why I would destroy them. Their revelation serves no purpose other than to unsettle the state. Their use is only for personal ambition. They were better never to have been written. Once written, they are better burned.'
'Why could I not burn them, if I find them?'
'Because your reputation is such that no one would believe you'd done so. Me they will believe.'
'Forgive me, my lord,' said Gresham, 'but you've no cause to love the King. He gave Canterbury to that pliant fool Abbot when you were the obvious choice. We have a king who's said in public that he doesn't give a turd for religion. How do I know — in the mythical state where I have these letters — that you wouldn't use them for your revenge?'
'You don't know,' said Lancelot Andrewes. 'You'd have to trust me. As I've trusted you by this request. You see, Sir Francis Bacon, with whom I am involved in this for other reasons, doesn't know that I've made this request. He thinks I'm seeing you on a different matter.'
'Is there a different matter?' asked Gresham.
'Yes,' said Andrewes. 'With these letters are other… papers. I won't tell you of their nature. I will tell you that they hold great potential to damage me, and Sir Francis Bacon. You know Bacon's hand? Here's an example of mine…' Andrewes reached into his purse and brought out a folded half sheet of paper. It held notes for an old sermon, Gresham saw, in a clear, flowing style. 'You'll recognise any papers that concern Bacon and myself. They'll be in our respective hands. I ask you simply to destroy them, immediately. Not even give them to me, or to Bacon. Destroy them.'
'And you will trust me to my word, when you've just told me that the world won't do so?'
'I will trust you, Sir Henry Gresham. I've no power over whether you trust me.'
Love letters again? thought Gresham. Did Andrewes, this most saintly of men, have a past to regret? Had he and Bacon even been in dalliance? Bacon made no secret of his fondness for young men. He filled his household with them, and allowed them to milk his estate for all it was worth, to the vicious amusement of Court circles.
'You may trust me, my lord Bishop,' said Gresham levelly, looking full into Andrewes' eyes.
'Yes,' said Andrewes, '1 think I may.'
Gresham was not drunk, but he knew his head would show that he had drunk the next morning. He eased off his gown in his college rooms, sensing his loneliness. Jane was safely tucked up in The Merchant's House, well-guarded. Mannion had seen Gresham into college, then signed himself off for a night roistering in Cambridge. Even he believed Gresham safe behind the locked gates of college.
He reacted to the noise almost before he consciously heard it, a sixth sense forcing him to swing round and grab his sword silently from its sheath. The third floorboard up on the staircase had been deliberately rough-sawn so that it squeaked when trodden on. It had squeaked now, after midnight, when all of college should be in bed and no one walking up the staircase that led only to Gresham's room.
He had not closed the outer door to his rooms, and the inner door was simply on its latch, not bolted nor barred. There was a sound of heavy breathing from outside, a rustle of clothing and then a click as the latch lifted and the door opened slowly.
Gresham waited until it was half open, and then kicked it back on itself as hard as he was able. The door shot back, met flesh and bone, and whoever it was creeping up on Gresham was flung back down the stairs with a wail of pain, protest and shock. Gresham ran out of the room, to see what mess, living or dead, waited for him.
It was LongLankin. A tumbled, head-over-heels and half-conscious LongLankin. But judging by the language, definitely alive.
'What d'yer fuckin' do dat for, yer pox-blasted twat!' he mumbled reproachfully, feeling gently for his loose teeth and a nose that looked broken. He drank the ale that Gresham had found for him with a shaking hand.
'What did you go creeping around college for in the dead of night?' asked Gresham malevolently, with a total lack of contrition.
'To find you, o' course. To tell you 'bout that man, that bookseller.'
'The bookseller?' Gresham felt a shock go through his system.
'Yeah, 'im with the play. E's in town tonight. E's got a room down a back street.'
It appeared LongLankin had been making his way home after a night of intellectual enquiry, and taken a turn down a back alley to relieve himself. Standing to do the job he had noted a light on in the downstairs room, its window curtained over. He had wondered if it was a whore setting up business on her own, and had gone to peer through the thin gap in the curtains. There he had seen the strange figure of the so-called bookseller, and come running to tell Gresham.
'How did you get into college?' asked Gresham. Doors were bolted and barred, a porter on duty.
'Never you mind,' said LongLankin truculently. Well, Gresham did mind, and tomorrow there would be a review of security. Moving as fast as the man would allow him, Gresham asked for a clear set of instructions for finding the house and then bundled LongLankin out to the porter's lodge with some money for his pains. He had with him a dark cloak with hood, his sword and dagger, and a lantern, its shutters closed for the moment so that no light escaped from it. Nodding to the startled porter, paid extra so as not to question Gresham's comings or goings, Gresham turned left out of the gatehouse, passing St John's on his right, turning again past the darkened bulk of Trinity College, dominated by its Clock Tower and the Great Gatehouse, heading towards the old Trumpington Gate.
It was a bad night for stalking, with a cloudless sky and the fullest possible moon. This was poor housing now, earth-floored and stinking. The house was there right enough, the light still burning in the room as LongLankin had described.
Was it wise to be out here on his own, when men had. already been mustered to kill him, in a street of hovels where the proceeds of his cloak alone would feed a family for a month? How sure was he of LongLankin? What if the man, a vagabond and a vagrant, had been set up to lure Gresham out from behind his stone walls and the protection of his men? Gresham had rushed off on LongLankin's word with hardly a thought. The chill of the night and the funereal, harsh white light of the moon were giving him second thoughts. He grinned sharply to himself. Was he more frightened of nameless men waiting to ambush him in the dark, or the reaction of Jane and Mannion to his foolhardy casting of caution to the winds? He had been careful for too long! He felt the pulse of excitement again in his veins, and picked up his pace, still moving silently through the deserted, moonlit street.
A noise from the end of the alley. Gresham pressed himself back into the wall of the mean house he was standing by. The building had shifted at some time in the past, as if a giant had pushed it forward, so the already steep overhang of the roof was doubled, creating a pool of darkness from the moon's glare.