A Fine Madness by Alan Judd (best classic books TXT) 📕

was already much spoken of in London. He must have written it since his work for us, while supposedly studying. He wrote fast, I do know that.

He shook his head. ‘No, this one is about the work of the Devil.’

‘A dangerous subject.’

‘Less dangerous than writing about his opposite, don’t you think? We know all about the Devil’s works and we know what he is – one of us. Which is more than we can say of our dear Lord.’ He hurried on before I could respond. ‘But early days, early days. This one is yet to come. There will be other plays first.’ He took his gown from the hook on the door, slipped it on over his tunic and stood before me as if to make a formal speech. ‘Thomas, I am grateful that I shall get my degree, truly grateful. Please tell Sir Francis. I am grateful not only for myself but for my family and my patron, Sir Roger. I should not want him to think I had been frivolous of my time here. Nor insensible to the generosity of the Archbishop Parker scholarship.’

Christopher’s patron, the man who had spoken for him as a scholarship boy, was the judge, Sir Roger Manwood. Like Christopher, he was a man of Kent, known also to Mr Secretary, a Kentish man.

‘We knew nothing of any difficulty until very recently. Otherwise it would have been resolved sooner. Or would never have arisen.’

‘I knew nothing of it myself until I got here from London.’

‘How did you—?’

‘Poley. Robert Poley was here. He was returning to London and said he would ensure people knew. A favour he will doubtless remind me of one day. Never lets a favour go to waste, does our Robert.’

I imagine that is a name that means nothing to you, sir? It is forgotten by everyone now except a few relics of those days, like myself. Yet those were times when it seemed that nothing happened in the kingdom without Robert Poley’s delicate fox prints discernible nearby, whether on palace lawns or in the filth of hovels. He made himself at home anywhere and was key to our disruption of the Babington plot. You know of that, surely – the plot to kill Queen Elizabeth and put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne? That young fool Babington went to the gallows for it without ever knowing whether his ‘beloved Poley’, as he still termed him, was his true friend and fellow-conspirator or his secret and most deadly enemy. But that was Robert Poley for you, not quite a gentleman, not quite a Catholic, not quite a Protestant, nor ever quite a proven rogue. Mr Secretary even took him into his household at Barn Elms for a period in order to assess him thoroughly, but was still never quite sure of the man. That Poley served us well he acknowledged, but so thought those he betrayed on our behalf. ‘I do not find but that Poley hath dealt honestly with me,’ he declared to me once, ‘yet I am loath to lay myself anyway open to him.’

Christopher’s mention of him surprised me, though it should not have because I knew Poley got everywhere. ‘Poley? What was Poley doing in Cambridge?’ I asked.

‘What Poley does everywhere, pursuing his own mysterious purposes. You must know him better than I. If I had asked he would either have invented a lie or he would have told the truth, not because it was true but because he saw advantage in my knowing. Thus he is essentially false even when true. So I didn’t ask and he didn’t volunteer.’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘Yet I cannot dislike the man. There’s something about an honest knave so long as he has charm, don’t you think?’ He looked at me, his eyes still smiling. ‘Not jealous, are you, Thomas?’

‘Of course not, why should I be?’ But he had hit the mark, as usual.

It was true that I neither liked nor trusted Poley but we could not ignore him. He was one of our best and most flexible agents, adept at talking his way into almost anyone’s confidence. In Paris he ingeniously got himself recruited by the exile Thomas Morgan, Queen Mary’s chief intelligencer, equivalent of Sir Francis on our side. Through Poley we identified many of Morgan’s agents, the English Catholics lured to France to be turned into priests and secretly sent back into the kingdom to undermine us. The seedmen of sedition, Sir Francis called them. So deep was Poley in the Babington Plot – which should really be called the Ballard Plot since Ballard the priest was the prime mover – and hence so exposed to suspicion that afterwards Mr Secretary had him imprisoned for a while to conceal his role. Yet even in gaol he contrived to live comfortably and seduce a good woman who visited.

I believe he had as little natural affection for me as I for him. His charm did not work on me. We never had hard words, still less came to blows, but he was wary of me because I enjoyed Mr Secretary’s confidence. He knew too that while he dealt in the secrets men told him, I knew what they told others and knew too what they secretly wrote, including what they wrote of him. His wariness probably protected me from his outright enmity.

I told Christopher of my meeting with Dr Norgate and Dr Copcot and what the Privy Council letter had said.

‘That will be an arrow in Dr Norgate’s eye,’ he said. ‘It is not just for my absences that he is against me. Others have been absent for as long but their degrees were not threatened.’

‘He thought you were defecting to Rheims to become a Catholic.’

‘They say that of anyone they don’t like. No, the good doctor has taken against me because he thinks I mock true Godliness and because I mix with players here in Cambridge. The authorities here think plays and players bring disrepute upon