The Desperate remedy

Chapter 9

The miners were thin, wiry creatures with an aversion to washing their backs and muscles made of corded steel. If they were to avoid discovery, it was essential that their work was done at break-neck speed, and in silence. The men could be housed easily enough, shutters kept tight and a single candle the only light. Food and drink were brought in after midnight, with those bringing it carting the waste away at the same time, usually choosing to dump it in the river where it was sluiced away. The men had been well briefed. Any curiosity they might have had was torn out of them by the sheer physical pressure of the work. The armed guards placed there to ensure that none of the bumpkins went sightseeing had an easy job.

'Silence!' Their overseer barked a whispered command and the men froze, those still in the tunnel slinking back. A rattle of hooves and wheels outside had stopped. There was a shouted command, the cart started up again. The men relaxed, the remainder climbing their way out through the hole in the floor, dripping sweat on to the newly sanded boards.

The men worked naked in the tunnel, though a few made a rough pouch for their testicles, to protect them from cuts, or placed a sweatband round their head. By their standards it was not difficult work, the main opening having been cut, but the scenes underground still looked like a vision of Hell. The feeble yellow light flickered over the naked bodies, glinting off the sweat that caked them, and seeming to emphasise the dark patches where muck and earth had become embedded in the miners' flesh. The air was foetid, stinking of sweat, piss and decay, and the light cast huge shadows on the rough wall as the miners hewed away at the subsoil and rock. The shadow dancers seemed like huge mythical creatures, beating punishment into an unyielding earth to the tune of the picks' out-of-tempo clink and thud. The job would soon be done, the miners sent back home richer but none the wiser.

Above the ground, London went about its normal business. The bankers and moneylenders bowed low and opened the doors of their fine timbered houses in Goldsmiths' Row, whilst yards away, hidden from sight and mind, the rat-infested rookeries held families of eight or ten souls, crammed into the one room. The prosperous shop owners took their over-dressed wives to sit on the benches by St Paul's and to hear the sermon, watching all the time to see which Privy Council member and which wife of which famous Lord was sitting in the privileged north gallery of the Cathedral wall. Meantime hungry-eyed men waited for the gawping sailors and country bumpkins come to see the great Cathedral, knowing that a false dash at a purse would mean the gallows only a few yards away from where the word of God was being preached. God was a strange master in this greatest of all cities. A wretch was being whipped through the street at the tail of a cart, for having denied God, whilst the moneylenders thronged the aisles of London's Cathedral. The bright-painted two and four-oar wherries cried out for trade on the riverbank, peaking as the time came for the afternoon performances in the playhouses across the river in Southwark. Sitting on one of their plush-covered cushions was a young girl, dressed as if for Court. She ran her hands through the water, the same water on which swans were floating a short way away. She had been told not to, but the pattern of the water and the sensuality of its cold across her hand were too great to resist. Later, she sucked her hand without thinking, watching as they neared their landing jetty and gazing in wonder at so many fine ships on the river. In seven days she would be dead, the incessant bleeding to which her surgeons submitted her sapping her body's resistance to the flux which raged through her thin, under-developed body. It is London, and in the playhouse Hotspur is about to proclaim:

'O gentlemen! The time of life is short; To spend that time basely were too long.'

When the play is finished, many of the same audience who listened to Shakespeare's poetry will stay on and pay to watch wild dogs tear a bear to pieces, the bear being tied to a stake.

'The one who worries me most,' said Gresham, 'is Monteagle.'

'Why more so than the others?' asked Jane. They had filled pages of paper with their scrawlings, gathering together all they could reach on the Catholic Lords.

'He hunts with the hounds and runs with the hare, I think,' said Gresham. 'If you were to pick someone more likely to be in this foul business, it must be him. His family are Catholic through and through. He's connected to the Howards and the Stanleys, through his mother. He fought with Essex in Ireland, even mounted d madcap rescue of him. He was at the siege in Essex House, and managed a pardon somehow. Tom Wintour acts as his secretary. He's married to Tresham's sister Elizabeth. He must have dined with every Catholic sympathiser in the country this past year or so…' Gresham's hand swept over the papers where they had tried to record the whisperings and reports of the spies they had sent out. 'And, to cap it all, he's a bosom friend of Catesby, so much so that he declares in public that when Catesby goes from him a light goes out in his life. Good God. If someone said that of me, I'd vomit.'

'Sir Henry,' said Jane, fluttering her eyelashes, 'when you leave my presence the sun goes out of my day, the moon goes out of my night and the liquid goes out from my…'

'Shut up!' said Gresham. 'You're a disgrace to your sex.'

'Surely Monteagle must be a conspirator, then?' said Jane, unabashed. 'Isn't he a prime contender for your blue blood, waiting behind the scenes and pulling all the strings? Catesby might have his own good reasons for not letting Tresham know Monteagle is involved. If you ask me, it's Tresham's money Catesby needs more than anything else. If Catesby had really wanted Tresham in he'd have recruited him much earlier. If he's suspicious of Tresham, wouldn't he hide Monteagle's involvement from him?'

'It works as a theory, but only to a degree. Why hold back on Monteagle, when he's told Tresham that the Earl of Northumberland is involved through Thomas Percy? Northumberland's a far bigger fish than Monteagle. And then there's the other side… look at all this. Monteagle gets given a massive fine after the Essex business — but there's no sign it was ever paid. Then look what happens. No sooner is he let out of jail and a new King on the throne than he gets his estates in Essex restored, and his right to sit in the House of Lords. Suddenly, everyone wants to know Lord Monteagle. James asks the French King to let his brother out of jail, he's made the Lord Commissioner who prorogues Parliament, wins a nice job in Queen Anne's court, gets his name on the charter when Prince Henry gets made Duke of York. My, my! Our Lord Monteagle is very popular all of a sudden, don't you think?'

'Everyone knows James favours those in the Essex rebellion,' said Jane, 'not just you.'

'I'm one of the few who knows James helped organise it,' said Gresham, 'however much others might suspect it. But there's more in it than that. This man's had good fortune positively poured all over him.'

'Good spy,' said Mannion.

He had seated himself on a stool, gazing out on the narrow, foetid street as night closed in. He had given the appearance of not listening, but it was always a mistake to assume that Mannion was not listening.

'Explain,' said Gresham.

'Monteagle. He'd make a good spy. He's an insider with the Papists, isn't he? An insider by birth, what's more, something you can't just buy. So if I'm Cecil, what do I do? Pay off his fine, or even simpler, write it off, provided he keeps me informed about what's happening with the Papists. That fine would've ruined Monteagle, ruined anybody. I'd be a bloody good spy with that fine hanging over me. Fits all round. Cecil hates common people. He'd far rather work with one of Monteagle's kind, all velvet-arsed and coach and horses.'

'That would explain why Catesby hasn't trusted Monteagle with the plot!' said Gresham. 'What a fool I am! Mannion — you're a genius. Of course Catesby must wonder why Monteagle wasn't ruined by an Ј8,000 fine! Of course he must look at all this preferment, and reach his own conclusions!'

'Well now,' said Mannion, 'I'm a genius now, am I? That's not a description I've had from you before. It's the tobacco, I believe, it grows the brain.'

'Grows the vomit, more like,' muttered Jane, who had banished Mannion from smoking his reeking pipe anywhere inside, but could not banish the smell of burnt sewage he carried on his clothes, his breath, his beard and seemingly his very skin.

'Monteagle has to be the man,' said Gresham, as if relieved of a great weight. 'He must already be one of Cecil's informers. If he's told of the plot, he'll have to run like a rabbit to Cecil. That fine won't be suspended for very long if one of Cecil's supposedly best inside men with the Papists doesn't know about something like this until too late. It'd be death for Monteagle.'.

'So how are you going to tell Lord Monteagle?' said Jane. She was out of sorts, her playful mood suddenly changed, sulking. 'Get me to dress up as a milkmaid and walk up to him in the street… "Forgive me, my Lord, but do you know that your Papist friends have put a ton of powder under the House of Lords and are planning to blow you to Heaven or to Hell when it's opened by the King?" Or write to him with a list of names? "Item: one raving idiot, named Robert Catesby. Talks a lot. Thinks he's God. Item: a second raving idiot, named Thomas Percy. White hair, sweats a lot. Item: various other conspirators, assorted. Item: one stack of gunpowder, fuse inserted… "'

'You're rarely boring,' said Gresham. 'Infuriating, yes, but boring, no. You're in danger of becoming really boring. Will I write him a letter, yes. Do I need your help with it, yes I most certainly do. And if it's the wrong letter, then hundreds of people might die unnecessarily and a civil war decimate this country.'

Jane's mood changed instantly. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's an explanation, not an excuse, but I've found these past few weeks here some of the worst weeks in my life — or, at least, my life after I met you. I'll try.'

'Thank you,' said Gresham. The women he had known before Jane were strange, inward, mysterious creatures. Jane had that quality of mystery, of being a book with most of the pages still withheld from his eyes and understanding. Yet in her also there was a simplicity. He would not need to secure her apology with gifts, with cooing words, or be blackmailed later by her because she had given in to him. She had said. It was done. It was also a change of mood that would test the patience of a saint.

'So what form must this letter take?'

'It must seem to come from a Catholic, to stop this business spreading out to affect Raleigh or any other innocents for that matter. Bad enough if it's seen as the Pope's business, but better that than it becomes all England's. It can't be seen to come from any one man, or woman for that matter, because it must make them mount a general search for powder, not a single search for one man.'

'You're missing the important thing,' said Jane.

'Which is?'

'The letter must seem to come from a plotter. One of their own. An insider. They must hear the letter's been delivered and read. They must know one of their own has written it. Only that way will they not know which way to turn. They'll feel betrayed. Their insecurity will make them break, and flee for cover.'

'You realise,' said Gresham, 'that if I do that I throw suspicion on to Tresham? He's the last to join, the least committed. Monteagle's his brother-in-law. He's the one with the most to gain, as far as they can see, from the plot fizzling out. Won't they kill him?'

'He has to take his chance, doesn't he, as we all do?' There was no venom in Jane's voice. She had been on the river that night, she had read Machiavelli. She knew now that power and survival were not easy bedfellows with any simple morality. And she had taken a strong dislike to Tresham. 'Anyway, it's not that simple. Rookwood and Digby have even more to lose than Tresham. Anyone who knows Percy seems to understand why people associate treason with the family. And Tresham won't know about the letter. He'll be genuinely surprised. And if he feels the pressure building up too much, we ship him abroad. In fact, why don't we do it now? We've no further need of him.'

Gresham shook his head as if to clear it of debris. He was not thinking tonight. He knew the plot. The date was decided by Parliament, not Catesby, so he could not argue that he needed Tresham in with the plotters. Indeed, if Tresham fled it might work up an even greater panic among the plotters, force them to cancel their plans even more readily.

Yet that could wait. The important thing was the letter.

It took them two days. Firstly, the text had to be worked on and devised, a task that burnt the candles down to the base of the candlesticks. Then Mannion had to be sent, in disguise, to St Paul's to buy clean, fresh paper. One seller had a consignment fresh delivered from the Spanish Netherlands. It amused Mannion to think of the letter written on Papist paper, so he purchased it. The letter itself was written by Jane. When she had been learning to write, Gresham had come across scraps of paper in various hands, all of which he learned were Jane's cast-offs. From very early on she had shown the natural forger's instinct. She had an inventory of writing styles she could call up from memory, as Gresham had a library. of accents he could use at will. The hand she chose was clear, flowing, large. It was the old-fashioned hand of a lawyer who had drawn up a draft will for Sir Thomas Gresham, years ago. In a house where paper was never thrown away, Jane had come upon it and practised her writing on its back, deciding to copy the hand on the reverse side halfway through.

When they drew back from the table it was with almost total exhaustion. The letter lay before them, a rectangle of new paper with the clear lines marching across the page. There was a word scratched out on the first line. Jane in her tiredness had written in 'your' too early and made to throw the paper away, but Gresham had stopped her. In some way the scratched-out word made the letter look authentic, as if written in some haste. The text read:

'My Lord, the love I have for some of your friends breeds in me a care for your preservation. Therefore 1 advise you, as you care for your life, to think of some excuse to be absent from this Parliament. God and man have come together to punish the wickedness of our times. Do not dismiss what is written here, but take yourself off to the country where you may await events in safety. Even though it appears no trouble threatens I tell you this Parliament shall receive a terrible blow, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. Do not condemn this warning. It can do you no harm, and it may do you some good. The danger is passed once you bum this letter, and 1 hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it. I commend you to His holy protection.'

It was perfect, thought Gresham. It would hand Monteagle a God-given opportunity to do a service to the State which would see him set up for life. If Cecil and the King had any sense they would check and clear the cellars in ample time, and another plot would have been dismembered before it could do harm.

'Will it do?' said Jane anxiously, rubbing at her aching wrist.

Yes, thought Gresham, it will do. It has the certainty of a man convinced he is right, and just the right element of lip-smacking at the thought of evil being punished. It flatters Monteagle by singling him out. Is 'a terrible blow' explicit enough? Not for a man wanting to warn the Government, but explicit enough for a man simply wanting to warn off Monteagle. Would it work when it was shown to the King, as it had to be? Yes, thought Gresham. It would appeal to King James's sense of his own cleverness. It was a riddle a child could solve, but which a King would think had required Divine intelligence to work out. If it got to the King, and to Cecil.

If it did, and it was believed, there would be no explosion, no tangle of twisted limbs, stone and beams at Westminster, no smell of fresh blood on the morning air, no weeping and mourning, no terrifying purges and counter-purges, no executions and trials. A Catholic Lord would have exposed a plot by Catholic madmen well in time for it to be defused, literally and figuratively. In doing so the essential loyalty of the Catholics of England would have been proven, Catholic families would rally round to condemn the planned act of madness and many who would otherwise die would live on, to do with their lives as they wished.

If it failed to reach Cecil and the King, if its message was not deciphered, then that was another story.

'It's magnificent. When I tire of you, you can work as a lawyer's clerk, and make eyes at all the handsome men of law.'

The eyes that glared back at him looked as if they would put to best use a barrel of powder under Gresham. She was not to be teased out of her worry.

'This is no joke!'

'What's no joke is that the job's only half done,' said Gresham. 'What if Monteagle is the man behind the plot? What if he's the puppeteer? I don't believe it, but I can't discount it. If he is, he'll read it and burn it. He might not even tell the other plotters. We must make sure as well it's placed in his hand. What if Tom Wintour as his secretary opens it, and decides to mount a witchhunt and still keep the plot alive?'

'Is nothing ever simple, in this world in which you live?' asked Jane.

'Tom Ward,' said Mannion. 'He's your answer. He runs Monteagle's house for him.'

Lord Monteagle was dining at his house in Hoxton, north of London. It was originally a Tresham house, and it had come to him when he had married Tresham's daughter. Tom Ward had just seen his master in to supper, and was checking to see that the main courses — salt beef and mustard, a leg of mutton stuffed with garlic, a capon boiled with leeks and a pike in a rich sauce — were ready to serve. It was unusual to eat so well at seven o' clock in the evening, but Lord Monteagle had been at Court, and asked for a fine supper to be served in place of the dinner he had missed. Ward felt a tugging at his sleeve.

'There's a genl'man outside says he has a most urgent message for you, sir, 'bout your sister.'

Then why the Devil can't the man come inside and give it, cursed Ward. Yet a lifetime of being a Catholic, of never knowing when he might have to hide his faith, of a religion conducted in secret, made an assignation in a dark street just another fact of life, and no rarity. He went out into the street, lit only by the light spilling over from the still unshuttered windows of the house. A man in a long riding cloak, with hood drawn about his head, was waiting in the shadows. He stepped forward, not enough to reveal his face, and proffered Ward a letter.

'This is from Robert Catesby to your master. It's a matter of life and death — true life and death, your own, your master's and those of your faith. Your master must see it now, read it now. If there's delay in this, you'll have more blood on your hands than Pontius Pilate!'

The figure turned and moved away, leaving a stunned Ward holding the letter in his hand.

He went back into the house, his mind made up. His master fawned over Catesby, and if this letter was from him then there was no reason for Ward to deny it his master, nor reason to think its origins were suspect. Ward knew, as all the Catholic servants knew, there was a stir about, wild talk everywhere. All the more reason to get the letter to his master.

Monteagle was in good form. His table was groaning with the best of food and wine, his company gathered around him, his future secure. What man would not be happy who only a few years before had been banished from London, and now found himself done honour in Parliament and made a favourite of the King? The wheel of fortune had indeed turned in his favour, from his being cast down to his heading for the topmost heights.

Ward leant over and whispered in his ear.

'What? What?' he asked, irritated at the interruption. Ward was still trying to keep his voice low. Monteagle was near to bellowing back at him. 'A letter? What letter? Oh, away with you, man, give it to me here.'

He took the letter without looking to see if there was a decipherable seal on the wax, and broke it open with a grin to the others that bespoke a man so burdened with office that he could not keep importunate messengers away even at a time when all decent men were in their house and home. His eyes were blurring with the smoke that had blown back from the fire, and he only dimly saw the large, almost child-like handwriting, beginning, 'My Lord, the love I have for some of your friends…' Oh God, he thought, another begging letter for money or preferment. What it was to have influence in the Court! There was food on his fingers, and in any event it was impolite to read letters in company at table.

'Here, Tom, read it out, will you? My eyes are furred with this damned smoke. Whoever swept that chimney deserves a thrashing, not my good coin!' It would be amusing for his family and friends to hear the type of letter famous men such as he received.

Ward stepped up, took the letter, and squeezed his eyes as if to help him concentrate. He was not a fluent reader. Nor, he was thinking, am I an actor in the playhouse, to be set up in front of all the company to give a public reading. He stumbled as he tried to come to terms with the unfamiliar handwriting.

'My Lord, the love 1 have for some of your… friends breeds in me a care for your…'

'Enough, enough!' cried Monteagle, laughing and making the company laugh. 'We don't have all evening, Tom. Here, you, you can read. Take it and enlighten us.'

Bad enough to be asked to stand up and perform, thought Tom Ward, but worse to be humiliated by having the task removed. He gritted his teeth. Another footman, unusually able to read, took the letter nervously and began to speak it out.

'My Lord, the… love I have for some of your… friends breeds in me a care for your preservation. Therefore I advise you, as you care for your life, to think of some excuse to be absent from this Parliament.'

The laughter and the small talk faded into silence.

'God and man have come together to punish the wickedness of our times. Do not… dismiss what is written here, but take yourself off to the country where you may await events in safety. Even though it appears no trouble threatens 1 tell you this… Parliament shall receive a terrible blow, and yet they shall not see who hurts them.'

There was total silence now, the noise of clattering pans in the kitchen coming through into the room. The faces of Monteagle's family and guests were upturned and glistening in the light of the candles, looking towards the footman. The servant looked down at Monteagle, seeking his permission to carry on or to stop, his throat dry, his heart pounding through his head. Monteagle gazed like a stone ahead of him, eyes fixed on something invisible on the wall. The servant waited, then carried on.

' Do not condemn this warning. It can do you no harm, and it may do you some good. The… danger is passed once you burn this letter, and I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it. I… commend you to His holy protection.'

There was total silence.

'Is this some joke?' Monteagle demanded of the company. 'Some idiotic pasquil to stop me from my duty?' There was no-one who felt able to answer. The silence lengthened.

'Saddle my horse,' said Monteagle, quietly. 'I ride to Whitehall. Now.'

Without a further word, he swept out of the room. Behind him his company for supper looked and waited for who would say the first word.. It was a long time in coming.

Gresham watched from the alleyway a short distance up from Monteagle's house. He heard the yelling and the stirring in the stables, saw the lights move back and forth in the darkened yard, heard the rasping sound of rough bolts being drawn back on stable doors. With a spurt of mud Lord Monteagle and two other horsemen sped out of the house, and down the street in the direction of Whitehall.

The cold had taken all feeling out of Gresham's feet, and his hands were little better. The old serjeant who had coached him in the Netherlands would be chiding him now, were he alive. ‘Yer have to keep the blood flowing inside yer limbs if yer want to stay alive’ he would have said, 'and stop someone shedding it outside yerbody!'

Well, the business was under way. It had a power and a force of its own. Gresham saw history like a great river, with estuaries beyond number flowing in intricate patterns away from the main course and then, after interminable rambling, back in again. He did not have the arrogance to think that he could stem that river, unlike many men. He knew that at times he had placed a dam across one of the estuaries, blocked the course it would otherwise have run. So the water would not take the course it would otherwise have done. Perhaps it would go where he willed it to go. Yet water, and rivers, had minds of their own. No man could determine Fortune. All one could do was try.

Gresham did not see Tom Ward retire to his own small chamber, produce a pen and paper and write a hasty note, which he then sealed with a copy of his master's seal. The various marriages between the Ward and the Wright families had cemented a relationship which had gone back decades. God only knew what the letter Ward had given to his master meant for Kit and Jack Wright, but if there was devilment afoot Tom Ward guessed they would be in it to the hilt. The man who had given him the letter had mentioned Catesby. Well, Tom Ward knew Catesby was at White Webbs, most likely with one or both of the Wright brothers, from what he had heard. Ward scribbled down the barest details of the letter and its disclosure, and sealed what he had written. Within minutes of his master's riding forth, one of the strongest riders in Monteagle's employment was similarly pounding through the mud, this time on Ward's orders to head for Enfield. Within hours Catesby would know of the letter.

It was a shaken and dishevelled Monteagle who loudly demanded entry to the Chief Secretary's private apartments at Whitehall. Yet he was not as dishevelled as on a previous appearance, not far from this very spot. To his shame and chagrin he had fallen into the Thames and nearly drowned during the Essex rebellion, being dragged out looking little better than a corpse. Even now as he was rowed up the Thames the cry would come across the river from an anonymous wherry, 'I thought that's one as preferred to swim the river!', followed by a guffaw of laughter.

These were not the rooms to which he had been taken, several years before, in fear of his life. His reception there had been as icy-cold in tone as he had expected, but very different in content. Cecil had recruited him as an informer with the clinical certainty of a surgeon sawing off a leg. What choice did he have? The deal allowed him to retain his religion and its observance, and acquire the state he thought had been lost for ever. In return he only had to keep Cecil informed — and as Cecil had said, that information was more likely to preserve both the peace of the nation and peace for Catholics than it was to disrupt. Well, if ever he was to prove that true it was now.

The door swung open into the brightly lit room. A supper such as he had just left was about to be served on a sumptuously carved table. At its head sat Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Chief Secretary to King James I. It was not the sight of Cecil that took Monteagle aback. It was his guests. Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton. Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk. Four of the most powerful men in all England, and three of them known as either Catholic or Catholic sympathisers.

The irony of it would have struck Monteagle less forcibly had he noticed the letter on the table between the four noble Lords, a letter written on paper from the Spanish Netherlands, in a broad, large and almost child-like hand. Cecil had turned it over, face down, smoothly as Monteagle had burst into the room. It read:

'My Lord, were you and my Lords of Northampton, Suffolk and Worcester to meet for supper on Saturday evening at your palace in Whitehall you will find a message come to you there that will preserve your souls as good food preserves the flesh, and do much to preserve the nation and your self.'

'Will it work?' Jane had asked.

'Who knows?' said Gresham. Jane's hand was stained with ink, crooked with the time she had spent crouched over the paper. He leant over and placed his hand over her own. His hand was cold, hers warm. 'The presence of the three great Catholic Lords when the letter's delivered will serve two purposes, if it can be engineered. It'll force Cecil into action even if he's biding his time to implicate Raleigh in some way. It'll clear the Catholic Lords of any involvement.'

'If I was Cecil,' said Jane, 'I'd think some madman wanted all four of us together to assassinate us.'

'You'd need an uprising to do that, and an army to go with it. The request's for them to gather in the heart of Cecil's stronghold, not for him to come unarmed to a field in Islington at midnight. No, there are two key words in it for Cecil — "souls" will tell him it's to do with Catholics. I'm sure he doesn't know details of the plot, but if all London is buzzing with rumours that there's a plot of some sort he must have heard something, and he'd be madder than he is to ignore anything linked to those rumours. And we've mentioned his "preservation". There's nothing closer to his heart than that. It might work. We're not lost if it doesn't. The presence of the Catholic Lords is a bonus, not the main prize. The main prize is to get that powder removed and the plotters dispersed.'

Monteagle knew nothing of this. He had steeled himself to present before the Chief Secretary, and now found himself facing a court consisting not just of one but four of the people in the strongest position to influence his life, career and prospects.

The slippery element in Monteagle that had let him survive as long as he had came to his rescue. He bowed low to all four men. Collecting himself, he asked if-it were possible for him to have a private word with his Lordship, with no disrespect, of course, intended to the other three noble Lords.

Cecil glanced at the other three, nodded briefly to them, and motioned Monteagle over to a side room. The servants had laid the wine there, before bringing it in to the supper, and one of them scuttled out as if branded as Cecil swept into the room.

Give me your damned message, Cecil was tempted to say, so that I can at least know where I stand in a business that is becoming too complicated for its own good. But, of course, he said nothing, merely enquiring politely about Lord Monteagle's health.

Lord Monteagle's health, he mused, would not stand many more rides such as he had clearly just made. He was having trouble catching his breath, the mud was caked up his waist and sweat dripping down his cheeks on to his beard. Monteagle was pouring out the story, offering Cecil the letter finally, after he had given a highly embossed version of its contents.

A slight shudder passed through Cecil as he saw the hand on Monteagle's letter, matching that on the paper turned over on his table.

'Thank you, my Lord,' said Cecil carefully, refolding the letter. 'It is good that you have brought this to my attention, whatever the consequences might be.' He nodded to Monteagle, ushering him out and back into the main chamber. The three Lords waited like gargoyles on a Cathedral wall, only their flickering eyes betraying their tension.

Without a word, Cecil handed the letter to Northampton. Northampton's ferocious ambition was widely known at Court, being born out of so many years in the wilderness during Elizabeth's reign. As a convert will cram a lifetime of passion into whatever years remain him, so Northampton was determined to make the best of what time remained to him by the political fireside. The letter was passed round to the other two, who read it in silence. Unknown to Monteagle, Northampton glanced down at the earlier letter, lying in the centre of the table, eyebrows raised. No, Cecil's eyes signalled, let that remain between us, not between ourselves and this young Lord.

'Government receives many such letters, my Lord Monteagle, as you may well know,' said Cecil finally, breaking the long silence.

Monteagle was visibly deflating in front of the harsh glare of power. His shoulders slumped. Had he made a complete fool of himself?

'Yet I have had word for some months past of scheming abroad, scheming, I fear, from those of your faith. We will show this to His Majesty, expose it to his wisdom and invite his view. Plots are as fruit, my Lord. They need time to ripen.'

Show it to His Majesty? Tonight? Tomorrow? Had he done the right thing to ride through the night and interrupt this supper? Or would his letter be placed in a pile of submissions or petitions, to be dealt with in due time and in due order?

'His Majesty…' stumbled Monteagle.

'Is in Royston,' answered Cecil, calmly, 'hunting. He remains there until the thirtieth, when he stays at Ware, returning to London and Whitehall the next day. There is no invisible blow waiting in the forest, I am sure,' said Cecil condescendingly, turning to the other, three Lords. He was rewarded by thin smiles from them.

'We are grateful to you for your care in this matter, my Lord. Be assured, it will not harm your credit with His Majesty. You may return to your supper with a heart and mind at rest.'

He was being dismissed. He bowed low and backed out, even as servants began to bring in the delayed meal to the chamber. It was a perplexed young Lord who rode more slowly than he had come through the dark streets, to a supper by now hopelessly spoilt.

'You didn't need to put me so close,' said Mannion, rubbing his hands by the fire. 'With the noise he made you'd have thought it was an army coming to Whitehall, not just three men.'

Gresham had stationed Mannion by the main gate of Whitehall, to check that Monteagle had gone where it was intended he go.

'What do we do now?' asked Jane.

Gresham gazed at her for a moment, then moving so quickly that she could not react he grasped her round the waist, pulled her towards him and placed a long and lingering kiss on her full lips.

'I'm not a meal to be picked up off the table when it pleases!' she exclaimed, pulling away. She had returned the kiss, though, he noticed.

'Don your serving-girl clothes!' cried Gresham. 'We go to the playhouse!'

'Can we afford to? What if we're seen?'

'After all this time in this hovel, I think we can't afford not to. We'll dress as servants and stand at the back of the Pit. And after that, we're back to the House and civilisation, I think.'

'Are we out of danger, then?'

'I'll limp back into town as if a growth has been carved out of my side and I'm only recently recovered. Wherever I go people will look at me and feel ill, though I shall of course keep to my bed for weeks on end. An invalid will present no threat to Cecil. And anyway, the plot is out — what has Cecil to fear from me?'

Robert Catesby had spent the morning trying to ease the worries of Anne Vaux at White Webbs. It did not matter if he succeeded in demolishing her fears. All that mattered was that he allayed them. Hardly a week to go, and then he could throw off this continual need to hide behind fabrication and deceit. A week from now, and the world would know the truth.

The letter arrived at midday, brought to table by Tom Bates. The messenger, a simple serving lad, had become hopelessly lost, as a result of riding through the night, and had nearly killed his mount. Catesby read the hasty scribble, expressionless, and care-fully folded it before slipping it into the large pocket sewn into his breeches. He finished his meal quietly, allowing Anne to chatter about the fate of various neighbours' experiences of childbirth and children in general. He rose from the table, thanked Anne politely and nodded to the others round the table. Tom Wintour needed no hint or secret signals to rise shortly afterwards, and join him. Not long after, the Wright brothers followed suit.

'We appear to have a slight problem,' said Catesby dryly, handing the note to Wintour, and on to the Wrights. The colour rose in Wintour's face as he read it. 'We owe a debt to your kinsman, Tom Ward, I think,' added Catesby, as first Kit and then Jack Wright took the letter. Both the Wrights had been in on the plot from its earliest days, and neither Kit nor Jack Wright would utter three words where none would do. Two strong, taciturn men, they grunted as the import of the letter sank in, and looked to Catesby.

'We're discovered!' For a brief moment, the hatred that drove Wintour to contemplate an act of mass murder showed clearly on his face. Stupidly, he turned to look over his shoulder, as if even then the troops of the King would be trampling across the lawns of Enfield to arrest them both.

'Peace, cousin,' said Catesby. 'We're safe as yet. Think. Think what it means.'

'It means Cecil and the King know about our plot!' Wintour's face was grotesque, distorted with the mix of anger and fear that coloured it dark red.

'It means no such thing!' Catesby's words were like a slap across Wintour's face. 'True, the letter sounds a warning over Parliament, but they'll look for an army to be the agent of harm, not one man in a cellar!'

'We're not named. Not any of us.' It was Kit Wright, who often spoke both for himself and for his brother.

In his haste to warn Catesby and the Wrights, Tom Ward had written only that Monteagle's letter had advised him not to attend Parliament and had warned him of a strike against Parliament. Would Catesby's relative calm have been shattered if Ward had told him of the phrase 'terrible blow', and the letter's emphasis on the invisibility of that blow? He was never to know, never to see the letter and destined only to hear about it from a frightened servant relying on memory. That particular estuary received no dam, and its water trickled along unhindered down the path Fate had set.

'We'll know soon enough if we're discovered. Do you think if any of us are suspected Cecil and the King will leave us to go about our business? Fawkes can keep a watch oh the cellar. If there's any interest in it, then we'll know we're truly discovered, and plan accordingly. But before that, look at what this letter must mean.'

Wintour looked blankly at him.

'A traitor, Tom, a traitor! One of us must have written that letter. We've a snake in our little garden.'

The redness had begun to recede from Wintour's face, but it came back with a flood. 'Tresham! That bastard Tresham!' he roared.

'Possibly — but be cautious. Digby and Rookwood have more to lose than most of us, and wives who may fear they will lose their husbands and their livelihoods. Perhaps one of the other women… a priest who's heard too much in confession… a servant who's overheard his master… perhaps even your brother.'

'Robert! Never in a thousand years! He may be nervous, but if he isn't loyal then the Pope's not God's appointed.'

'We've to consider everyone, haven't we?' It was as if Catesby was discussing a game of cards.

'You'll call Tresham here? Now?' Wintour's face made it clear that Francis Tresham would be walking into his death when he came to White Webbs.

'Call him, yes. But not now. We're due to meet at Temple Bar on Wednesday. Tom, we must keep silent about this letter at least for a while. We must! You know the others. We can't let them think it's all over yet. Let's wait and see if a hue and cry starts. There were no names in the letter, were there? It will take time to examine, time in which we'll know if we're being followed or watched. Let's tell the others on Wednesday, and watch Tresham as a man has never been watched. Then let's decide.'

Wintour's face made it clear what his decision already was. As far as Tom Wintour was concerned, Francis Tresham was a dead man. The four conspirators ordered a bottle of wine. Catesby doubted there was more to discuss, yet there would be support in the wine and in the companionship of its drinking.

Francis Tresham, unaware of the plot being hatched on his life, and blissfully unaware of the Monteagle letter, lay in his rooms at Lincoln's Inn Walk. There was a knock on the door. He leapt as if for his life, grabbing the sword that lay by the bed. His servant, the learned but dilatory Vavasour, was out buying wine. There was another knock on the door, loud and urgent. Tresham held his sword poised, and wrenched it open. Something hit him, and he was suddenly on the floor with a ringing head, his sword held in the left hand of his visitor. It was the ox of a servant, Selkirk's servant.

'My master sends you the first down payment.' He tossed a package towards Tresham. 'And I wouldn't open doors suddenly, with a sword in your hand, if I were you.'

It was a passport, a travel warrant from the Government. It permitted him to travel abroad for two years, with horses, servants and other necessaries.

'The money, and the details of the ship, come when he's finished with you. Don't run out on him, will you? I'd hate to ruin that fine doublet you're wearing.'

'Why so long?' Gresham's scalp itched so that he longed to tear the skin off his head, his head was pounding as it had not done so since the river. 'Why is nothing happening?'

Gresham had revelled in the return to the House, and Jane had gone straight to her beloved library as if it were an old friend brought back from the grave. Yet as his impatience grew it was seeming more and more like a prison, more and more like the rooms in Alsatia.

There was the tedium of keeping up the pretence to cope with. The paste that kept his skin sickly-white needed to be re-applied twice a day, and Jane had to use a thin linen cloth rather than her hands, in case they too turned white. No lump in his side was necessary, the theoretical growth having been theoretically cut out, but it was necessary to keep a supply of fresh pig's blood to stain his shirts with, the amount decreasing every day very slightly, as well as suitably gory 'dressings' to be sent out with the servants. Gresham trusted the servants in the House more than he had let Jane know, but all it needed was for one to comment in the market or on the street about Gresham's miraculous recovery for unwanted attention to be directed on to him.

Yet the real worry was the lack of action on Cecil's part. It was as if the letter had never been received. The careful watch Gresham had placed on the cellar and house Percy had rented, as soon as Tresham had told him of it, had reported no untoward action or even interest in the place. The story of a plot being hatched in France was still current on the streets and gaining ground, but there was no hint to it of something closer to home, and no hint of gunpowder or mass murder or regicide. Tresham had been summoned to meet the conspirators again, but there was no sense of any special reason behind the summons. Sending the travel documents had been a gamble. They had cost him a small fortune, but as Jane had commented, quality never came cheap. In this instance, it was not quality he had paid for, but authenticity. The corrupt clerk who had charge of such matters had slipped the paper for signing into a heap so high that his master had yearned for it to come to an end with the intensity of a schoolboy wishing the end of school. Gresham needed his mole in the plotters' burrow to report. Had they noted men following them, questions being asked of the servants? Was the pressure on them to disband? Had the news of the letter reached them, through the servant, Ward, who was so close to the brothers Kit and Jack Wright, as Gresham had planned?

Gresham knew that impatience was his greatest weakness, yet the pressure of not knowing what was happening, coupled with the fear that nothing was happening, was near to destroying any peace of mind he might have. He called for music, and settled him-self to listen as the lute dropped jewelled notes in the way of the long walk of the strings and the nasal urgency of the wind instruments. It helped, but not enough. In public he was still bed-bound for most of the day, so it was on his bed that he lay back and tried to let the music soak into his veins, as the musicians assiduously played for him.

It was dangerous for so many to gather at one time in London, but Catesby deemed it necessary. They had planned it long ago, for a week before the explosion. To cancel it now would cause panic. The presence of the others would lull Tresham into a false sense of security. He would hardly expect a gathering in London to be kept if his comrades knew the plot had been exposed, reasoned Catesby.

The taciturn Fawkes was there, inscrutable as ever. Rookwood had come down to receive his instructions, and to be fortified by Catesby if necessary. Tom Wintour was there, trying to hide the murderous gleam in his eye, whilst Thomas Percy, wild-eyed and stained from travel, had finally broken from his rent-gathering in the north to make it to London.

Tresham looked nervous, tense, almost distracted. Catesby raised an eyebrow, and Tom Wintour's hand stiffened towards the dagger in his belt. Rookwood had been given the task of buying dinner, not sensing the patronising ease with which Catesby treated him at one and the same time as friend and servant.

'Is all well?' Rookwood enquired nervously. Wintour flicked a glance at Catesby. These well-born, idle rich were food for Court and fine lace and fancy manners, he thought, but no good when push came to shove. The rich had time for a conscience. Men such as Wintour had time for action. That was the difference. Wintour cursed the day they hatched a plot which needed the money of such as Ambrose Rookwood.

'All's well indeed,' said Catesby reassuringly. The wine Rook-. wood had provided and drunk of so liberally had not calmed him, but if anything made him more nervous. 'We're not discovered.

The King hasn't hurried back from his hunting. None of us have felt ourselves watched, have we?' Heads were shaken in the negative, around the table. 'Stout hearts and courage are what we need now.'

No response from Tresham, who was turning continually to look out on the street, as if hoping for someone to walk by and rescue him.

'None of our number would betray us!' said Wintour, in far too loud a voice. Tresham started, but whether through guilt or simply the explosive noise of Wintour's interjection was difficult to say.

'What say you, cousin?' said Catesby to Tresham. 'You're strangely silent.'

'I'm sorry;' said Tresham. 'I've things on my mind. I shouldn't trouble you with them.'

Catesby and Wintour exchanged glances.

'I must have some of your money, cousin,' said Catesby easily. 'You know how pressing the need is.'

'Are you still set on this? Can't we at least delay until we know what legislation Parliament will pass?'

'You know the answer. As I know you won't betray us.'

There was a decided flicker across Tresham's face, a sheen of sweat across it. This was too public a place to kill him, thought Catesby. It would panic Rookwood, and draw attention to them. Not here. Not now.

'If you still have reservations, cousin, now isn't the time to discuss them. White Webbs, Friday, two days from now. Come and dine with us there. And, I pray you, bring some of your gold with you. My purse has been deep, but it's drawn dry. Until Friday then. I hope you'll come ready for a reckoning!' laughed Catesby.