'The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends.'
In winter it was cold and damp in Cambridge. The chill winds blew in from Siberia. The low mists that breathed out from the river in the early morning gave a sense of mystery to everything they touched, as the snow gave a sense of magic. At night, with a clear sky, the moon picked out the stone and buttresses of the colleges with cold clarity, bathing them in white light. With snow on them they became monuments of stunning beauty.
In summer, even on the brightest day, the air was often thick and heavy, as if infected by the Fens. The flies were everywhere, even staying on meat as it was speared by the eater's knife and lifted to his or her mouth. The river flowed like a dark sludge, stinking, its water seeming to thicken as it slapped against the hulls of the boats plying their trade, staining the painted wood. When the air and the smell became particularly thick Gresham had seen people freeze in their tracks in the muddied street when a man sneezed. The plague looked over Cambridge's shoulder at all times, the sneeze one of its first symptoms.
Gresham was back in his rooms at Granville College, the rooms in the medieval court he had claimed from the first days when his wealth had started to reinvigorate and refound the college. The shelves were country carpentry, rough-hewn but solid and not bending beneath the weight of books and papers Gresham had loaded on them over the years. Gresham doubted his guest for the evening had noted the books. He doubted he could read.
Candlelight usually hid a multitude of sins. In LongLankin's case it exposed them. The gentle light of the wicks flickered across LongLankin's face, revealing it for the battleground it was. Two or three huge boils disfigured his face, crusted volcanoes, enough to throw long shadows across it when the light glanced in a certain direction. The few teeth in his face reinforced the black, gaping holes where the others had been, emphasising the empty space rather than compensating for it.
'I durino,' he said, 'I just dunno.' He swilled the remnants of his small ale round the tankard Gresham had filled for him. LongLankin never drank wine. Maybe he thought it might make him middle class.
'Let's try again,' said Gresham. 'Remember. What did this bookseller look like?'
'I told yen I were drunk. I was rubbished. I wouldn't 'ave recognised me own mother if she'd shoved her tit in me mouth.'
'LongLankin,' said Gresham with evident distaste, 'please: spare me the details of your weaning.' No one ever called him 'Long' or 'Lankin'. For some reason, he was LongLankin. One word. Indivisible. And he was very drunk, with the memory of an alcoholic colander.
'Look,' said LongLankin, 'It's as easy as this.' He spoke with the certainty of someone who has completed the drunk's progress. Sober. Mellowed and softened. Drunk. Very drunk. Trashed. Unconscious. Awake and in agony. Nearly mellowed and softened again. 'He were… a man. Shrunk. Warped. Dwarfed.'
'LongLankin,' said Gresham with a patience he did not feel. 'That doesn't help me find him. To be frank, Cambridge isn't agog with news of shrunken dwarves claiming to be booksellers-'
'Plays!' LongLankin had remembered something. It was a new experience, and he was clearly pleased with it. A smile appeared on the linked crevasses of his face. One of the boils on his neck, Gresham noticed, had a single tuft of thick hair sticking out of it.
'Plays?'
'He said he… said he did things with plays.' 'What did he do with plays?' asked Gresham, intrigued, his boredom forgotten.
'Said… said…' LongLankin's memory was fading again, like a candle guttering out its last few moment of light. 'Said he wanted the students to put one on, like. Y'know, like they do.'
Gresham knew. There had been riots lasting two days last year when the John's men, coming to see a Trinity comedy, had been locked out for shortage of seats. The John's men had tried to break into the college, and the Trinity men had taken to hurling the heaviest objects they could find from the rooftops and gatehouse. Plays were hot material in Cambridge.
It was no good. LongLankin could tell him no more, and all he had confirmed was the existence of a man masquerading as bookseller, and the link to the theatre. Gresham bundled the semi-comatose man out of the room, and sat back in the high-backed oak chair. It was at a moment such as this that he savoured his loneliness. It was a huge luxury, another privilege of his vast wealth. Most of the other Fellows would board three or four students in their rooms, the Fellow taking the main bed, the students on truckle beds.
So there was a man who called himself a bookseller, appearing suddenly in Cambridge. Yet the few people this man had introduced himself to had heard nothing about stolen letters from the King to his lover. Plays. It was all he had talked about.
Plays.. Theatre. Was this about politics? Or was it about plays? The only certain thing was that it would be about power. It was always about power. Gresham needed to regain his feel for the theatre. He and his family would go to the play.