S. Parris - Treachery

‘Tell Walsingham you sold false information to mislead the Spanish. He may show you mercy,’ I say, turning to leave.

He laughs: a dry, brittle sound, like the crackle of kindling.

‘No, he won’t.’ He shakes his head. ‘There will be no mercy for that. Walsingham would send his own grandchildren to Tyburn if he thought they had betrayed England.’

I can say nothing to this — I know it to be true. Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster is unbending when it comes to protecting the realm, and just as ruthless as Drake. Perhaps this is part of what makes him a great man, too.

‘I will die as a traitor.’ He seems to shrink even further inside himself as he says this. His voice is hollow, as empty of self-pity as it is of hope. I can offer him no comfort on this score.

‘Your time’s up, Spaniard.’ The key rattles in the lock and the door creaks open. ‘Out you get. Leave this filth to rot.’ Now that I have had my money’s worth, the gaoler evidently feels no further need to waste his efforts on courtesy.

‘Remember what I said, Gilbert. Answer their questions and you may yet be saved the worst.’

The gaoler cackles. ‘Not bloody likely. This one’s going to the Tower tomorrow. And the French bastard next door. It’ll make this place seem like a fucking palace.’

‘Doctor Bruno,’ Gilbert calls, as the door is closing. His formality sounds strange in this pit. He struggles to his knees, the chains striking the stone. ‘Will you tell Drake I did not betray him? I want him to know that, at least, even if he does not believe me.’

I am still not sure if I believe him, but I nod anyway, snatching a last look at him through the tiny grille in the door before I blunder out into the air and sunlight, thinking about the risks a man will take to make his mark on the world. For Drake, this means pitting himself against the elements and the might of Spain to cross the ocean, not for the treasure, but simply to say that he has done it. For Sidney, it means leaving a wife and new-born child and a comfortable life of poetry and politics for the blood and dust of battle. For Gilbert, it meant gambling a traitor’s death against the chance to see his maps famed throughout Europe and his name spoken in the same breath as Mercator and Ortelius. And for me — a life in exile, chased from one court to another, knowing that I will never see my homeland again without facing death, all because I refused to keep my ideas to myself, because I too knew that I had to put my books out in the world, even if the act of doing so cost me my life. I believed Gilbert when he said his ambition was more than vanity. He wanted nothing less than to change the way men think about the world, and he was right: this I do understand.

‘Burn it.’ Sir Francis Walsingham pushes the bundle of papers across the table towards me. They have been rolled together and bound with a black ribbon. I reach out and lay a protective hand on them.

‘But, the Queen-’

He shakes his head. ‘She wants no knowledge of it, Bruno. Without the original, this is no more than an extremely dangerous fiction.’ He regards me with a grave expression.

‘But surely, if the Vatican are trying to conceal a text of this significance from all of Christendom, that is a matter to concern her?’ Sidney lays his palms flat on the table and leans forward, giving his father-in-law a defiant look. Walsingham remains silent, his attention fixed on his clasped hands in front of him. The candles have burned low in the wall sconces and in the silver candlesticks on the dining table, gilding the edges of our wine glasses and casting leaping shadows along the linenfold panelling. Dusk falls earlier, now that September is almost out, and the evening air is sharp with the chill of autumn.

The soft light catches the lines on Walsingham’s face: the shadows under his eyes from all the nights when England’s business keeps him from sleep; the furrows in his high forehead from frowning over encoded dispatches from all over the realm and the rest of Europe; the sombre downturn of his mouth beneath the fine moustaches. You do not often see Walsingham laugh; his is not a job that allows much room for frivolity. He is over fifty now, and though he appears to have the stamina of a man half his age, the strain of defending England and her queen is beginning to show.

‘The Vatican may have all manner of heretical writings locked away in its archives,’ he says, raising his head. ‘They have spent centuries trying to suppress the Gnostic sects.’

‘Perhaps because they were afraid,’ I say quietly. ‘Perhaps they needed to protect their own advantage, because they feared one of those Gnostic gospels contained the truth?’

‘That is not Queen Elizabeth’s fight, Bruno,’ Walsingham says. He sounds tired. ‘Look how Christendom is tearing itself apart over differences in interpreting the scriptures we already have. And you bring her a book that is not concerned with the finer details of the composition of bread and wine, but one which purports to overturn the entire doctrine of salvation and denies the resurrection.’ He spreads his hands wide to illustrate the enormity of my folly. ‘No possible advantage could come to her from making public such a book as this, and every possible harm. As soon as she understood its contents, she wanted no part of it. And she advised me that if anyone printed or distributed copies of it, they would be punished as heretics.’

‘But what if it should be true ?’ I persist.

‘Do you think it is true?’ he asks, after a pause.

I look at him, finding no clue in his unfathomable dark eyes as to how I should weigh my answer. Walsingham is unswervingly devout in his Protestant faith, and conservative with it; for all his seeming mildness, he will have men racked or disembowelled sooner than see it threatened. Do I believe the Gospel of Judas? It is not a straightforward question, as he well knows. For all their errors, I believe the Gnostics were groping their way towards the truth. We humans are more than flawed clay, born stained by sin, worthless without redemption, as it has suited the Church to tell us all these hundreds of years. That spark of divinity the Gnostics recognised, that potential to create, to invent, to comprehend the universe and, in doing so, to become god-like — that lies dormant in all of us. We deserve better than an eternity spent struggling out of Purgatory, or consigned to Hell by some arbitrary predestined salvation, depending on your preferred doctrine. Or so I believe. I am not sure this is what Walsingham wishes to hear.

‘There are elements that I find plausible,’ I say carefully.

He allows a small smile. ‘A diplomat as ever, Bruno. It is certainly an intriguing document. But still, best destroyed. For all our sakes.’

I draw the papers towards me and nod, lowering my eyes with appropriate deference. But I do not make him a promise.

‘And Her Majesty?’ I ask, hardly daring to voice the rest of the question.

Walsingham does not reply immediately, but when I look up and meet his steady gaze, I already know his answer and my hopes plummet like an anchor.

‘I have spoken to the Queen about your situation, Bruno, but …’ He purses his lips and shakes his head. ‘There is little she can do. Your ideas are too controversial. She finds your books thought-provoking, she told me so, but she cannot be seen to endorse them publicly. It would be impossible for her to give you any kind of official role at court, especially after she was forced to banish John Dee.’

I nod, though I feel numb. John Dee was the nearest Queen Elizabeth ever came to appointing a court philosopher, but his knowledge of astrology and his alchemical experiments made him a figure of suspicion to the more extreme Puritans among her advisers, who began to attack him subtly with rumours of black magic and all kinds of immorality, even to cast sly aspersions on the Queen herself for listening to his counsel. Eventually, to spare his reputation and hers, she paid him to travel in Europe, furthering his studies, though Dee and all his friends knew this amounted to banishment. He has been gone two years now, with no prospect of being recalled. So there was little chance that she would willingly become the patron of another philosopher whose knowledge of occult sciences made him just as dangerous, and who was not even a native Englishman. But still, I had dared to hope.