Anthony allowed his eye to travel over the scrawled words, the sense of which brought little consolation to his weary brain.

  ‘… That you are returned at length I am right glad. God bless it to us both. But when I heard withal that Lawson, whom I fore-suspected, stole hence unto you, to serve his own turn as heretofore; how welcome that could be to your long-grieved mother, judge you. I can hardly say whether your gout or his company are the worse tidings. I have entertained this gentleman, Mr Faunt, to do so much kindness for me as to journey towards you, because your brother is preparing your lodging at Gray’s Inn very carefully for you. An honest gentleman, but one that feareth God indeed, and wise withal…

  ‘This one counsel your Christian and natural mother doth give you before the Lord, that above all worldly respects you carry yourself ever at your first coming as one that doth unfeignedly profess the true religion, and are not afraid to testify to the same by hearing and delighting in those religious exercises of the sincerer sort, be they French or English.’ (Oh, dear God, Anthony surely thought, for the untroubled equanimity of Michel de Montaigne.) ‘Courtesy is necessary,’ his mother continued after half a page of Greek and Latin intermixed, ‘but too common familiarity in talking and words is very unprofitable, and not without hurt-taking, ut nunc sunt tempora. Remember you have no father. And you have little enough, if not too little, regarded your kind and simple mother’s wholesome advice from time to time…

  ‘Let not Lawson, that fox, be acquainted with my letters… He commonly opened underminingly all letters sent to you from Council or friends. I know it, and you may too much, if God open your eyes as I trust he will. Send it back, to be sure, by Mr Faunt sealed; but he will pry and prattle. So fare you well, and the Lord bless you and keep you forever.

  Your mother, A. Bacon.

  ‘I trust you, with your servants, use prayer twice a day, having been where reformation is. Omit not for any. Your brother is too negligent herein.’

  For which heaven be praised, and let there be some measure of peace and a well-warmed bed to greet him in that chamber at Gray’s Inn.

  So much had changed during those twelve years of absence, and the nineteen-year-old beardless youth with curling hair that had been his brother Francis, of whom the artist Hilliard had said on painting his likeness, ‘If only I could paint his mind’, had now turned one-and-thirty. He had filled out and grown to middle height, and the expression in his eyes was more lively and penetrating than ever. One curious weakness that had been his from childhood, which he was never to overcome, was a sudden fit of fainting when the moon was in eclipse; the eclipse ended, he was himself again. His health was never robust, although he was not to be crippled by gout or to suffer from nervous anxiety like his brother Anthony. His powers of concentration were formidable; he could work long hours day and night without sleep, and turn with the greatest facility from drafting a speech, which he would throw off with consummate ease in Parliament, to composing a masque or some nonsensical trifle for his juniors in Gray’s Inn.

  If Francis had matured, so twelve years abroad had left their stamp upon the elder brother. Here was a man of thirty-three who looked nearer forty, pale of complexion, heavier of build, who, because of his lameness, walked with a cane, while the cut of his hair, the trim of his beard, his intonation, even the accent, proclaimed him a Frenchman. His gestures were foreign, the shrug and the smile were Gallic, and, like all expatriates returning to their own shores, he seemed more interested in the affairs of France than in those of his mother country.

  However, he must adapt and learn. And his younger brother Francis had much to tell him. Their mother was more irascible than ever, she must not be crossed. Gorhambury needed its master, farms and manors were in a sad state, debts were piling up. Tenants were at odds with one another. Servants were one day dismissed and the next day reinstated. Their mother was more tight-fisted than her Majesty, if such a thing were possible, and Francis himself did not know where to turn for money. As for their uncle Burghley, the Lord Treasurer, he had been singularly unhelpful both financially and in advancing the younger brother’s affairs. Francis must make his own way in the world. No, his uncle would not further this or that suit to her Majesty.

  And yet—and here was the rub—uncle Burghley had taken great care to advance his own son, their cousin Robert Cecil, to a place of great authority, namely, to take over much of the work and many of the duties of the late Secretary of State Walsingham. There was Robert, creeping about at Court with bundles of paper under his arm, full of self-importance. A visit by the Queen to the Burghley home at Theobalds had doubled his conceit; she had called him ‘Elf’ and been extremely gracious, and then topped it all by knighting him three months later. Their cousin, that sneaking hunchback who used to go running with tales to their aunt Mildred, was now Sir Robert. Yes, indeed, it was only a matter of time before he was raised to the full position of Secretary of State, his father the Lord Treasurer would see to that. But the Lord Treasurer’s nephews, Anthony and Francis Bacon? No honours had come their way or were likely to, unless they found a patron. Anthony, Francis considered, had at least earned some reward for all his years in foreign service. The sooner he appeared at Court the better.

  Their other cousin Edward Hoby, son of aunt Elizabeth, Lady Russell, was of the same opinion. ‘It will be best if you repair to Court as soon as you come to London,’ he urged in a letter of welcome. Anthony took to his bed instantly. His leg was too painful, he could not walk. He had a touch of ague into the bargain. Edward Hoby came to visit him, and shook his head in sympathy. Unlike cousin Robert, he promised to see her Majesty on his cousin’s account, and was as good as his word.

  It pleased her sacred Majesty much upon the stroke of eleven tonight [he told Anthony on February 19th] to call me unto her, and among other things, questioned me if I had seen you since your return. I told her Highness that I had, and that as I had found an infirm body of you, so a much more grieved mind to have had that unhappiness, as through your own infirmities, not to have been able to behold her, which your heart so much coveted to serve. I added further, that her Majesty should find you un homme arresté, much more stayed and advised than others of us your kinsmen. She concluded, that she was sorry you were in so evil a plight, earnestly affirming, how that you had been greatly and from good hands recommended to her. And this I thought good to give you, as a taste of her Majesty’s grace towards you. I humbly thanked her for her great care and princely regard had of you in her absence, wherewith you as yet relieved yourself. And so, praying God to send you perfect health, and you to command me, I end, very late,

  Your poor kinsman to serve you,

  Edward Hoby.

  So du Plessis had not blabbed, at least to the Queen. Unless, Anthony wondered, her Majesty had been playing cousin Hoby with her customary finesse? The gout, which had eased, returned twofold. He was certainly not well enough to go to Court. The lodging in Gray’s Inn would serve for the time being, with his faithful companions Tom Lawson and George Jenkyll at his side, all the French books he had brought with him to unpack, correspondence to sort from France, Italy and Spain, and, when Francis could spare a moment, conversations between them lasting far into the night. Because Francis had a plan for their joint future, which was to cease importuning their uncle Burghley and cousin Robert for advancement and offer their services instead to the one man in the whole of England who, by natural charm and personality, had stepped as if by magic into his late stepfather’s shoes as favourite to the Queen, namely, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

  Francis, not invariably a shrewd judge of character, felt instinctively that Essex, though not yet twenty-five, had the potentiality of a great leader. The Queen of England, now middle-aged, had no heir. It was possible, indeed probable, that she would turn increasingly to the Earl of Essex during the years to come, and Essex needed behind him men with brains, who could supply him with information from every European source. Who better to do that than Anthony? His contacts were wide, and indifferent health was no barrier to the receiving and forwarding of intelligence. If necessary he could do it from his bed! While Francis himself, acting in an advisory capacity to Essex, would also be well-placed to advance in the legal field. As those in high positions grew older and had to be replaced by younger men, one who close to the young Earl would not be overlooked.

  Anthony saw the force of his brother’s arguments. As he was to say some years later, ‘On the one side, coming over, I found nothing but fair words, which make fools vain, and yet even in those no offer, or hopeful assurance of real kindness, which I though I might justly expect at the Lord Treasurer’s hands, who had inned my ten years’ harvest into his own barn, without any halfpenny charge. And on the other side, having understood the Earl of Essex’s rare virtues and perfections, and the interest he had worthily in my sovereign’s favour, together with his special noble kindness to my germain brother, whereby he was no less bound and in deep arrearages to the Earl, than I knew myself to be free and beforehand with my Lord Treasurer, I did extremely long to meet with some opportunity to make the honourable Earl know, how much I honoured and esteemed his excellent gifts, and how earnestly I desired to deserve his good opinion and love, and to acknowledge thankfully my brother’s debt.’

  Why Francis should have been indebted to the Earl, in 1592, is not clear. Possibly some financial assistance had been given in return for legal advice or letters written in the Earl’s name—Francis had the natural ability to turn his hand to anything—and while Essex was in France at King Henri’s side from August 1591 Francis, from Gray’s Inn, would seem to have been already in his service.

  Anthony indebted to the King of France; Francis indebted to the Earl of Essex; Henri IV and Essex brothers-in-arms on the field of battle, and with a good understanding of each other. Intelligence could be a two-way measure. Information passed to the Earl of Essex could also be fed to the King of France, who had saved Anthony’s life in Montauban and still expected some return. Anthony had little choice. If he could serve two masters without dishonour, and at the same time help his younger brother towards higher things than the wearing of a bencher’s gown, he was prepared to do so.

  He was perhaps less well prepared, despite all Francis had said, for the tremendous effect that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, would have upon him, turning natural courtesy and diplomatic self-effacement into instant admiration and enthusiasm. Here was someone more worthy of devotion than even Henri IV had been while still King of Navarre, and less coarse-grained, less robust, than that monarch, who, with his broad jesting and his garlic breath, had sometimes seemed larger than life itself. Robert Devereux was sensitive, aware; he came into the room and looked about him as though uncertain of what he should find, and his eye, meeting Anthony’s, held a light of recognition, showing interest and pleasure, and understanding too, as if to say, ‘Ours shall not be the relationship of master and man but that of friends’. True, Henri of Navarre had shown familiarity from the first encounter, familiarity in a hearty fashion, let us all be fellows of a kind and so to the stables, or to tennis. Not Robert Devereux. Tall, stooping a little, head thrust forward to enquire, complexion pale, and his manner first eager, then of a sudden hesitant, withdrawn. The ruddy hair he had inherited from his mother, Lettice Knollys, hung to his shoulders. He wore as yet no beard, and a small moustache brushed his upper lip. Almost at once he fell to discussing not the French wars, not the plight of Europe, but literature. Mr Bacon had known Montaigne? He had read the Essays? Anthony was won. Francis had no further qualms about his brother’s possible diffidence. He smiled to himself, and then withdrew and left them.

  Robert Devereux had been nine years old when his father, Walter Devereux the first Earl of Essex, had died in Ireland in 1576 of dysentery. His illness had seized him suddenly, and there were those who said later that he had been poisoned. He wrote a touching farewell letter to the Queen from his sick bed, asking her to be a mother to his children. Those same gossips who murmured poison said that even as her husband lay dying his wife Lettice, the Queen’s cousin and the daughter of Sir Francis Knollys, Controller to the royal household, was mistress to the Earl of Leicester, their liaison kept secret from the Queen. Their marriage was performed in private two years later.

  Young Robert had for some months been educated in the establishment which Lord Burghley kept for sons of noblemen, before going to Cambridge. He had inherited estates in Wales, at Lanfey, and had hoped to remain there, leading a studious life and farming. He had no desire to come up to London and present himself to the Queen. Finally, at the age of seventeen, he had been persuaded by his mother and his stepfather, the Earl of Leicester, to do so, and was at once received into the royal favour. Active both in body and mind, he had found life at Court too slow, and when his stepfather was appointed in command of the expedition to the Low Countries in 1585 Robert Devereux had gone with him. It was in this campaign that Philip Sidney, the flower of English chivalry, had lost his life, bequeathing his sword to his young friend Robert for sentiment’s sake. Sidney had loved Robert’s sister Penelope when she was barely fourteen, and she had been the inspiration for his poem Astrophel and Stella. But Penelope had married Lord Rich, whom she did not love, and Philip Sidney had wed Sir Francis Walsingham’s daughter. When Robert Devereux inherited his dead friend’s sword he vowed to look after the widowed Frances, and did so for good measure, for he married her four years later.

  Romantic, moody, impulsive, yet hesitant, these were the qualities that Anthony Bacon savoured most in his new employer-to-be. The fact that he had the ear of his middleaged sovereign, who frankly spoilt him as she might a wayward child, was no great matter, except that Anthony would be able to warn him against du Plessis as a scandal-monger and a teller of tales. And if the Earl of Essex were to learn the truth about what had happened at Montauban? Somehow, with sure instinct, Anthony knew he would understand.

  When, in early January 1592, du Plessis had been negotiating with the Queen, and she had told him she would send no further troops to succour the King of France, the Earl of Essex was actually at Dieppe preparing to return to England. He had lost his younger brother Walter in the siege of Rouen, and was accompanied by many sick and wounded men. What remained of his army he had left in charge of his bluff and devoted companion-in-arms, the Welshman Sir Roger Williams. It was soon after his return to England that the meeting between the Earl and the two brothers took place.

  Anthony kept to his quarters at Grey’s Inn during the first six months after his return. If he had not the strength to present himself to the Queen, neither could he brace himself for a long encounter with his mother. Friends must act as go-between. And anyway the weather made a good excuse.

  ‘I pray you be careful to keep good diet and order,’ she warned him at the end of February. ‘It is here marvellous cold and sharp: too sharp yet for you, I think… I would gladly you had well seen her Majesty; but be in some good state of health first… Look well to your servants and your things.’ And in March, ‘Believe not everyone that speaks fair to you at your first coming. It is to serve their turn.’

  Lady Bacon could still not hear Lawson’s name mentioned, nor would she have approved of Anthony lending George Jenkyll, with him at Gray’s Inn, works by Plato and Hippias, the great astronomer of antiquity. As for Francis, he surrounded himself with thieving Welshmen, one after the other, and her greatest hate was reserved for one Henry Percy (surely a scion of the Earl of Northumberland’s on the wrong side of the blanket), about whom she said, ‘I pity your brother yet as long as he pities not himself but keepeth that bloody Percy as I told him then, yea, as a coach companion and bed companion, a proud profane costly fellow, whose being about him I verily perceive the Lord God doth mislike, and doth less bless your brother in credit and otherwise in his health.’ Despite her disapproval, Henry Percy was to remain with Francis until his death.

  The truth was that Anthony and Francis, after twelve years’ separation, found one another’s company congenial, and that of their joint attendants too. There was merriment and feasting in their chambers; the more favoured of the law-students were welcome guests; and when the Earl of Essex himself could be spared from Court and snatch an evening at Walsingham House in Seething Lane, which his wife had inherited from her father, it was only a short drive thence to Gray’s Inn.

  ‘My man said he heard you rose at three of the clock,’ Lady Bacon scolded. ‘I thought that was not well. So suddenly from bedding much to rise so early; newly out of your diet. Be wise and godly too, and discern what is good and what not for your health. I like not your lending your coach yet to any lord or lady. If you once begin, you shall hardly end…’

  The letter arrived only a few days after a previous warning. ‘Be wary of suppers late or full. Procure rest in convenient time. It helpeth much to digestion. I verily think your brother’s weak stomach to digest hath been much caused and confirmed by untimely going to bed, and then musing nescio quid when he should sleep, and then in consequent by late rising and long lying in bed; whereby his men are made slothful and himself continueth sickly. But my sons haste not to hearken to their mother’s good counsel in time to prevent.’

  But bed was the best place for writing, whether correspondence or other matters. Both Anthony and Francis found it so. By now they had grown so strong in renewed fraternal friendship that they could exchange ideas on all subjects, literary and political, and if gout attacked Anthony’s right hand then one of his attendants took over, or some willing law-student skilled in penmanship.

  The Inn of Glaucus became a code word for Gray’s Inn and all who dwelt therein—a classical allusion to Glaucus, who was devoured by his horses for having spurned the power of Venus. Lady Bacon, for all her scholarship, might not have grasped the significance of such a term; but she would have been aghast had she known that one of Anthony’s contacts in Bordeaux, a certain John Blagge, had written to warn him that an ex-debtor of Mr Bacon’s was speaking evil of him both in Bordeaux and in La Rochelle, calling him a bastard and a sodomite, and was even now on his way to London to spread mischief. Mr Blagge had threatened to pull the fellow’s ugly nose from his drunken face, but to no avail. ‘Let your worship,’ the writer continued, ‘beware of the viper, and chastise him for his villainy if he appears in Fenchurch Street, where he is like to lodge. It spited him to the guts that your bills were so honourably and speedily paid. Truly I bewail the time that ever I knew him.’