Knowing that Robert Cecil does not expect mute passivity from his intelligencers, Nicholas says, ‘I believe Master Spenser means the Earl of Essex, Sir Robert.’
Spenser glances at him. ‘Particularly the Earl of Essex.’
A gleam of curiosity blooms in Robert Cecil’s eyes.
‘Go on.’
‘I am right, am I not, when I say that the Cecils and the Devereuxs have what one might call “opposing views” on the present struggle with Spain?’ Spenser says.
Cecil allows himself a grudging smile. ‘Indeed. One might.’
‘We all know,’ says Spenser, gaining confidence, ‘that the Earl of Essex would fight the Dons through the gates of hell if he thought it would burnish his name. Whereas the Cecils – your late father, Lord Burghley, most prominently – are more…’ He searches for the right words, ones that will not deplete the small credit he thinks he’s managed to prise from Cecil, now that the matter of former insults has been laid aside. ‘Shall I say, practically minded?’
Cecil considers this for a moment, his clever little face giving away nothing.
‘My father’s view – my view – is common knowledge at court, Master Spenser,’ Cecil says at length. ‘This continual war is a burden the realm can ill afford: armies to field in the Low Countries and in Ireland; a navy to build and sustain, lest the Dons send yet another armada against us… A fellow doesn’t have to be the Lord Treasurer to see that after four bad harvests in a row, the conflict lays a heavy hand on England’s prosperity. It would be best if it were ended.’
Spenser lets out a slow breath, like a man who’s had a lucky escape. Then he says, ‘What if, Sir Robert… it could be? What if a peace between the two realms were possible?’
Cecil’s eyes narrow. ‘That’s nonsense. Only last year a second armada was attempted against us. Now that King Philip is dead, his son will seek to win the glory his father was denied.’
‘Not if he could be persuaded otherwise.’
It is said with such confidence that Cecil is, for once, taken aback.
‘What are you saying, Master Spenser? What does a poet know that the queen’s Secretary of State does not?’
Again Spenser chooses his words with care.
‘What if I were to tell you I have had secret correspondence from a certain faction in Madrid?’
Cecil eyes him with curiosity. ‘Then I would call you a traitor,’ he says slowly. ‘And you know full well what England does with traitors.’
‘But what if that faction feels – as do you – that this war has grown too burdensome to continue? What if the correspondence includes the proffering of an olive branch: what then?’
‘Does it?’
‘It will, Sir Robert – if it is delivered into the hands of the right person.’
Robert Cecil’s eyes fasten onto Spenser like a falcon’s talons on a particularly plump pigeon.
‘You’ve come a long way, Master Spenser. Perhaps it would be only courteous to hear what you have to say.’
It begins, Edmund Spenser says, with a man named Father Robert Persons. A man exiled from his homeland – a quarter-century past – because of his faith.
‘We met as young men,’ Spenser explains. ‘He was at Oxford, I at Cambridge. We were not contemporaries; I was seven years the younger. But I admired Persons, even though his religion was abhorrent to me. When he was forced out of Oxford for being a Catholic, he fled abroad. He wrote to me on several occasions, but he never sought to proselytize. Eventually he sought refuge in Spain. There, he won permission from King Philip to establish a seminary – at Valladolid. But I suspect you probably know that.’
Mr Secretary Cecil would consider it a grave dereliction of his duty if he didn’t, Nicholas thinks as he watches the interest shine in Cecil’s eyes.
‘We know the location of most of these Jesuit vipers’ nests, Master Spenser,’ Cecil confirms. ‘Robert Persons is, indeed, a name known to us.’ He gives Spenser a grim smile. ‘It will be even more familiar, should he dare to return. An appearance on the scaffold tends to give a man a measure of public notability.’
‘Father Persons has no intention of returning, Sir Robert.’
A note of contemptuous anger enters Cecil’s voice. ‘No, he just sends others. He leaves it to them to come here and attempt to corrupt the queen’s subjects away from her religion.’
But that is not where Robert Persons’s present energies are focused, Spenser explains quickly. While he would rather his chosen faith was the lawful religion of England, Father Persons has no desire to see his homeland devastated by a Spanish invasion.
‘How noble of him,’ Cecil interjects sourly.
More important than Robert Persons, Spenser explains, are the priest’s close friends amongst the supporters and patrons of the seminary at Valladolid.
‘A number of them can rightly claim to be Spain’s most influential courtiers. And by no means are they all thirsty for English blood,’ Spenser says. ‘Some of them believe it would be better for both realms if a peace treaty could be achieved.’
‘A peace treaty?’ Cecil says. To Nicholas, it is the first time Cecil has appeared wrong-footed.
These courtiers, Spenser explains, are prepared to use their influence to convince the new king, Philip III, that he would gain more glory in God’s eyes by bringing peace to a troubled world than by emptying the Spanish treasury in a futile conflict against the stubborn English – a conflict neither can win outright.
‘Spain, too, has suffered poor harvests,’ Spenser says, ‘and English depredations upon the silver fleets coming home from the New World means that treasury will not be easily refilled. In plain words, Sir Robert, Spain is in the same hole as we are.’
For a while Robert Cecil remains silent. To Nicholas’s eyes, his slight frame seems to contract as though gathering up the competing passions swirling within. Eventually Cecil asks, ‘Tell me, Master Spenser – how does a peddler of verse come to know such things?’
For the answer to that, Spenser says, we must imagine ourselves back in Cork. Not the Cork of the present, a town beset by the travails of rebellion, but the Cork of some two years ago. Spenser is in the town to sign the lease for his property there. He has not heard from his friend in Spain for several years. Indeed, he has all but forgotten Father Robert Persons.
‘The first letter to arrive was delivered by the master of a Portuguese carrack from Oporto, unloading sugar and spices at the Watergate.’
Spenser invites his little audience to imagine his surprise upon discovering the letter is from his former acquaintance. The subject is generaclass="underline" reminiscences of old times, old friends, a vague lament at the present state of the world.
And an invitation:
Reply, and tell me how things are with you, dear friend. Do not tarry. The bearer of this will stay in port not above seven days…
And, indeed, Spenser does not tarry. Far from it. The letter intrigues him. But being a patriot, he is careful not to reveal in his reply anything that could be construed as aiding an enemy of the realm. If the letter were to be intercepted and read by the wrong people, a man could lose his head, his limbs and his vitals through such carelessness. Thus, when a second letter arrives two months later, he is wholly receptive to Father Persons’s provision of a convenient cipher with which to encode all further communications.