Martin Stephen: The galleon's grave

Yet he had wanted to cry, so much.

The child Henry Gresham, armed only with bed, board and a meagre allowance, had become feral, increasingly wild, left to fend for himself, stalking the great corridors of The House, and the cold streets which no one cared enough to stop him walking. He found his own way to school with no one to notice the huge tear in the doublet a servant had bought for him, nor the bruises from the endless fights with other boys who had somehow found out his bastardy. He had food, a roof over his head and clothes on his back. But he had no love. Nor did he allow himself to wish for it.

First George had come into his life when five boys had cornered Gresham in the school yard. He had knocked two of them out, but a third had got a stone and thrown it, hitting Gresham on the head and near knocking out his left eye. Blinded by blood, dizzy, he had fought on until he had dimly seen the stone-thrower fly through the air. George had decided to intervene, not liking the odds and attracted by the sheer courage and guts of the young boy he had never noticed before. Then Mannion, a mere servant, entered Henry Gresham’s life and, by caring for Him, became the only other person Henry Gresham cared about.

Gresham had battled to win his degree from Cambridge, serving at table to eke out his meagre allowance, suffering the jibes of the spoiled, wealthy undergraduates. George had offered money. Gresham had proudly rejected it. George was at Oxford, his family so rooted to its university that Gresham doubted they even knew there was a similar institution in Cambridge. The lawyer's visit had come as a complete surprise.

‘You are a rich young man, sir,' the dry-as-dust old man had said, looking down his nose at him as if he was something slightly distasteful found in the road, 'a very rich young man indeed.'

It was the vast fortune his father had accumulated in a lifetime of serving the financial needs of Kings and Queens. The fortune he had decided to leave to his bastard son, if and when that son obtained his degree.

Gresham had stood there, in the meagre room he shared with five other impoverished students, the remnants of the boiled mutton on the table. The grate was empty, smelling faintly of soot. He had long ago forgotten to feel the cold. He gazed and gazed at the copy of the will, in his threadbare jerkin and thrice-mended hose. The will that meant he would never have to go cold or hungry again. The will that made him not just the wealthiest student in Cambridge, but made him one of the wealthiest men in the country.

Life had been simple as a child. Survival. The enemy had been everyone. Now life seemed impossibly complex, and his problems were not just in London.

His troubles in College were not simply down to jealousy of his wealth. Though never directly accused, he was seen as having dangerous leanings towards Rome and Roman Catholicism, and his fondness for music in Chapel was widely derided. It did not help that he had been one of the most brilliant undergraduates of his time, as precocious as he had then been poor. He had also been one of the most unruly. His absences 'on the Queen's business' at Walsingham's bequest had bred extra resentment against him. Fellows of the College had banded together to deny him his degree, despite the superior quality of his work. A peremptory message from the Privy Council, one of the few favours Walsingham had ever returned him, had put the University in its place and given Gresham his degree. Even those on his side had reacted badly to being told what to do by the Government. And then his election as a Fellow had added fuel to the fire.

'It's a joke, isn't it?' said Gresham, pacing the small room, floorboards creaking under his feet, energy held back like the stretched gut of a crossbow. 'The first thing we do when we're born is cry. We spend a few years dodging disease, if we're lucky, and then we invent things to care about. Then we're disposed of, we rot and stink to high heaven and it's over. What a lot of noise and tumult. And all about nothing.'

‘So much for those bloody church services you drag me to!' said Mannion, whose support of religion was theoretical rather than practical. 'Anyway, you knows my view. We're 'ere to eat, drink and 'ave a bit o' fun.' Mannion was not generally troubled by depression. 'Stands to reason. God wouldn't have given us pleasures if he didn't want us to take them. What I'm not here for is to be ordered around by bloody Spaniards,' he added morosely. Now that he could get depressed about. Mannion had a thing about Spaniards. The hatred was at a peak with the wild rumours that a Spanish invasion was imminent.

'Spain, at least, has an identity, a belief in itself,' said Gresham. 'I sometimes wonder if England even knows what it is.'

'You wonder a bloody sight too much,' said Mannion. 'What you need is a lot less wondering and a bit more living.'

'So I'm meant to stop thinking, am I?' said Gresham caustically.

'Well, you can stop thinking Spain's so bloody marvellous, for starters, because it ain't. Load of heathens who want our women and burn people for pleasure. And if you don't watch out the next time a man comes at you, you'll start to think, instead of just stickin' 'im in the gut.' Mannion sucked at the last remnant of small ale in the pewter tankard by his side. 'Fact is, you're alive. He's dead, that bloody Spaniard in the meadows. You've got the luxury of bein' miserable. He ain't.'

'Come on, old man!' Gresham said, jumping up, 'lift your great stomach! Eager young minds are waiting to be filled at The Golden Lion!'

The mask was back, Mannion noted. He was used to his master's sudden swings of mood. But what damage was being wreaked under that mask?

Fellows made their reputation and their livelihood by the students they attracted to hear them teach. Gresham attracted more than anyone. There were a growing number of 'schools' in Cambridge where these groups could meet, but the local inns still provided a traditional venue for teacher and taught to assemble. They had been forced to find a new inn this year to cope with the growing number wanting to hear Henry Gresham. Perhaps his depression fired him up. He taught brilliantly, emerging outwardly carefree on to the street.

Mannion saw himself as an honorary academic. After all, Gresham's seminars took place in a building dedicated to the consumption of drink and food, and a building which not infrequently placed sex on the menu. For Mannion, it was not like attending a place of learning. It was more like attending a place of worship.

'Isn't Cambridge wonderful?' said Gresham, taking a deep breath 'of air.

'Bloody Brilliant,' said Mannion, adopting his annoying habit of speaking in capitals. The beer had been good, but now the street was full of the throng of students, of dons, carters, tradesmen and local people. Cambridge was more of a village than a town, Gresham thought, for all the splendour of the Colleges. The recent rain had soaked the thoroughfare and everyone had mud spattered up to their waists. A herd of sheep were being driven through to the market, with an ancient farmer in a smock being helped by a boy too young for the job. The sheep, instead of being tired by their long march, were restive and fickle. They swept this way and that across the road, driving into all classes of people and rub-bing the grease of their coats onto fine velvet. Last week a student had run into the middle of just such a herd, bodily picked up a fully-grown animal, and run off with it. Gresham shuddered to think why.

'Bloody Brilliant,' Mannion repeated, as Gresham prepared to set forth, having plotted the least mud-strewn path. 'It's set too low down so its air smells like the bilges of a ship. It gets the plague as regular as other places get dawn and sunset. Oh, and the University hate the town and the town hate the University, with neither of the stupid buggers able to see they both need each other.' He stood, glumly. The wind blew the smell of the river towards him. It was still Cambridge's main road, and its main sewer.