The Desperate remedy

Chapter 10

Though Gresham did not know it, the mood of William Parker, Lord Monteagle, was as destructive and tense as his own. He had waited for news every hour since his abrupt dismissal from Whitehall, yet none had come. The King was due back from hunting today, he knew. He could restrain his impatience no longer. Hurrying to Whitehall, he at least suffered no delay in being shown in to Cecil's presence. Indeed, barriers seemed to melt at his name. Gratified at the sudden power he seemed able to wield, he bowed in a rather cursory manner to Cecil, forgetting for a moment who was Lord and who was master.

'My Lord Monteagle!' said Cecil, an icy warmth in his voice. 'You must think I had forgotten you and your recent good service. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are weighty matters, matters we have let ripen on the vine.' 'You will tell the King, my Lord? Today?' A flicker of annoyance crossed Cecil's face. 'In time, my good Lord, all in good time. Trust me, my Lord, as a friend, as well as an elder.' Cecil's tone softened, became almost caressing as his gimlet eyes fixed on the young man with his strong, straight body. 'You are beholden to me for a very large sum of money still outstanding against your name, are you not? You are beholden to me for restoring you and your family's standing and fortune, are you not? You have received those very great gifts in exchange merely for a little information, have you not? You may trust my judgement in these great matters of state, as I trust your judgement in lesser matters.'

Damn you, thought Monteagle. I am not your friend. I am your slave. As he left, his bow was deep and low.

'The men we sent out, they're still reporting, some of them.' Mannion stood by Gresham's side. 'They say these Papists are back in London, mostly. Gathering together for some devilry, I guess. Do you want to see three of them? Percy's booked dinner for three at The Mitre, in Bread Street. It's a haunt of theirs. Bold as brass. Our men say there's no sign of anyone else watching them.'

Why not? Gresham agonised. Why were these men gathering in London, instead of fleeing for their lives? Why was every Catholic sympathiser in London not being hounded down?

Could Gresham risk being an onlooker at this devils' supper? He was driven to it by his own demon, the frustration tearing at him as a real growth in his side would have done. Even the basic questions that were grist to his survival seemed irrelevant. Should he change his complexion from its deathly white? What disguise should he wear? Should he slip out of a side door of the House, or go as if to an appointment with his surgeon?

Why hadn't this powder plot folded in on itself? Had Monteagle been so unconvincing in his presentation of the letter?

Had he even presented the letter at all?

Robert Cecil knew little about warfare. It seemed to him that it excited men of a certain type, that it was costly beyond belief and that its results were unpredictable. It also seemed that an army large enough to fight a war was necessary to accompany the King on one of his hunting expeditions. The already astronomical expenses of the Royal household rose by the minute, and Cecil sighed as the endless train of horses and carts and assorted wagons brought back His Royal Highness King James I from his pleasures.

He waited until the afternoon following. Friday was an unlucky day in common belief, but also the first of the month, symbolic perhaps of a new start. King James was in his Gallery at Whitehall, alone.

Cecil approached, bowed, and offered the Monteagle letter, without comment. James raised an eyebrow, took it and read it. He looked up at Cecil, who made no comment again. He read it a second time, taking more care.

‘It was delivered at night, sire, to my Lord Monteagle. He brought it straight here, to me.' And it was undated, thank God, thought Cecil. Would James be angered at the length of time it had taken to bring this letter to his attention?

'Clearly, my liege,' said Cecil, 'whoever wrote this is a fool.'

'In which case,' said the King, 'it were as well not to receive it likewise as a fool.'

Intelligence and experience, thought Cecil, his heart racing behind his composed exterior. Never forget this man has survived by his wits as King of the Scots. Never forget that conspiracies are second nature to him. Never forget there is no-one as wise as a fool.

Where were the others? thought Tresham as he entered White Webbs. He was shown to a room he had never entered before, and before he knew it the door had slammed behind him and he was facing Robert Catesby. Tom Wintour stood behind him. He drew both bolts on the door.

It all hinged on one sentence, Tresham was to realise later. If Catesby had said to him, in that terrifyingly calm voice of his, 'Why have you betrayed us?' Tresham's face would have broken down into a confession of guilt. He had betrayed the plotters to 'Selkirk', as well as betraying his marriage vows, his religion and, for all he knew, the God he had never properly worshipped.

But Catesby did not ask why Tresham had betrayed his friends.

Instead, he chose to ask, ‘Tell me, cousin, why did you send the letter?'

The letter? What letter? The last letter Tresham had sent had been a peremptory demand for unpaid rent from one of his newly acquired tenants. Genuine confusion crossed his face.

'What letter? I've sent no letter!'

The instant vehemence of his response caused Catesby to pause. Even Wintour, poised behind him, shuffled uncertainly. Catesby spoke again.

'Don't pretend ignorance. Who else would send a letter to Lord Monteagle — your brother-in-law — warning him not to attend Parliament if he wished to preserve his life?'

'Now you mention it, I'd gladly have sent such a letter, if I'd only thought of it! You know what I think. We won't build our faith by this act, we'll destroy people's faith in it. I confess I'd thought of writing a warning, not to Monteagle, to one of the King's secretaries, but I never sent any such letter. Do you hear me? I never sent a letter’

Sincerity strikes its own note. Sincerity uttered with a man holding a drawn dagger at your back strikes an even deeper note. It was picked up by Catesby and Wintour.

'If not you, who else?' It was Wintour this time, almost hissing in his intensity.

'How would I know? And can the condemned man at least sit down? It's not much of a last request!'

Tresham's genuine exhaustion, physical and mental, came to his aid. His tiredness was clearly no counterfeit.

If I can keep saying what I know to be true, I might yet walk out of here alive, thought Tresham. That would be an irony, for a man who was a congenital liar.

Gresham was exhausted, though mentally rather than physically. The strain of having to act the invalid in front of every servant* the strain of waiting, had all taken its toll. Standing to wash that morning he had felt himself shivering, something he had never done unless he had a fever. Mannion had said nothing, but Gresham noted the fire had been stacked higher than normal when he went to eat his breakfast.

Mannion had arranged the next meeting with Tresham in a stew, or brothel.

'It makes sense,' he had remonstrated. 'There's more control over who comes into a whorehouse than there ever is in a tavern. It's across the river, so we can get you over in a covered boat from our own jetty.'

In the meantime, Mannion had surpassed himself at The Mitre. Pretending to be searching out a room for his master and finding out which room Percy had booked, he had taken the adjacent one for an hour earlier. By the time Percy occupied his room the servants would have finished bringing the food and have left them to their bottles. Even better, an iron hook from which a lamp had hung had worked loose from the rough plaster of the dividing wall in Percy's room, and been fixed anew an inch or so up, leaving a hole. It had taken Mannion a split second with his dagger to drive through the hole and leave a clear mark on the wall of the adjacent room. It was the work of a few seconds to enlarge the hole so that one man could look through. Yet he worked with the utmost care at it, as the tap boy left their room. The plaster was old and rotten, and too much pressure would not open an eye hole, all but invisible in the other room, but rather tear out a great gaping hole.

Reluctantly Gresham had allowed Jane's importunings, and taken her with him, heavily hooded. At the inn it was just another well-bred lady coming to an assignation with a gentleman. They extinguished the lights in their room as they heard Percy and his guests enter. Mannion was first to look through. He had the descriptions of the others from Tresham and from the agents he had sent out.

'That's Percy,' Mannion whispered, 'the tall one with the white hair and beard. They say he sweats all the time. The other big one, red beard and hair, he must be Fawkes. The third one… he might be Grant, Robert Grant…'

Gresham took over from Mannion, peering through the tiny hole to the well-lit room beyond. How normal they look, he thought as the men started their meal. How much easier things would be if those determined to bring mass destruction to nations somehow looked different from their fellow men.

Tresham realised that his life had hung in the balance at White Webbs, but it took time for the shock to hit him. He had swaggered his way through the meeting, but gone into a near collapse afterwards when he had realised what had so nearly happened to him.

The smell of bodies and stale sweat in the room they used suggested it had only recently been used for a different purpose. They had come by separate routes, the most devious way possible, Gresham in a closed boat over the river to Southwark. Tresham had not been followed, Mannion was prepared to swear.

Tell me what happened.' Gresham spoke calmly, sensing the rising terror in his spy.

Slowly, with much prompting, Tresham told his story. There had been a letter, to Lord Monteagle. It had caused Wintour to panic, but left Catesby strangely calm. The plotters had not been named. No action seemed to have been taken. The powder was secure. They were meeting tomorrow again, a group of them, to discuss the situation.

'And I'm the prime suspect,' he confessed. 'If they'd asked me a different question there might have been a different ending. Catesby

… I don't know about Robin. I think he believes me when I say I've written no letter. Tom Wintour, now there's a different story.'

Gresham thought for a moment. 'Are you prepared to be arrested for your part in this plot? Taken to the Tower?'

Tresham gaped at him. Even Mannion started and showed surprise.

'Arrested? Taken to the Tower? Is the world gone mad, and am I the only sane person left? If either happens then I'm a dead man! I might as well throw myself off the boat home and into the Thames.'

'An understandable conclusion,' said Gresham, 'but not necessarily true. Think on it. If you're arrested peacefully and can claim to have used your best endeavours to stop the plot, that'll give them pause to think. You're a late recruit. Persuade them of that, and they'll leave you 'til last. With any luck you'll escape torture. It has to be sanctioned by the King, and that'll take time.'

'Escape torture if I'm lucky! Hell's fire, man, what dp you think lam?'

'Someone who might prove very lucky in his friends. I said imprisoned in the Tower, not die in the Tower. Do you realise that when the news of this plot breaks you'll be a hunted man all your life? Well, our two interests come together. I need you to report to me for as long as possible, and that carries the risk that you'll be caught up in the exposure before you can get away. You need a new life — and you'll only get that if the world thinks you're dead.'

'And you can arrange that?' said Tresham incredulously.

'Did you realise that you've been receiving treatment for a complaint for some years past, from my good friend Dr Simon Forman?'

'Forman? That quack! I'm no woman wanting to miscarry quietly or to poison her husband, nor no idiot paying a fortune for a false horoscope.'

'Leave ranting to your friend Catesby. Forman is a better doctor than many who claim more training in that science. Now listen…'

Raleigh had told him on his last visit that he must drop the escape plan. He would never use it. His wife had pleaded with him. He had looked at her in that special way, the way he used for no-one else, and had stroked her head gently. 'A man does not run away,' he had said. 'A man lives by his honour, and if then he needs to die for his honour, then that too is part of the bargain.' What more fitting than that a plan that had been refused because it was not an honourable course of action should be used for a man who had lost all claim to honour?

It could be done, Gresham knew. Simon Forman could produce almost any symptoms to order. A urinary strangulation, he had favoured. Easy to fake with potions, easy to act. Forman could also produce substances that would slow the heartbeat down almost to nothing, make the body appear cold. The tricky part was getting the corpse diagnosed as dead, and into the coffin. Weeping women helped, flinging themselves on the corpse and keeping the doctors from a lengthy examination. They let the women in if the prisoner was seriously ill, knowing a man received better care from his family.

What would Cecil's reaction be when this plot was exposed? If it was done quickly and quietly, if the credit could be given to Cecil, who knows? He might save Gresham all the fuss and pretence and have Tresham declared dead in the Tower. If, that is, his gratitude to Gresham outweighed his hatred. Well, time would tell. With good fortune they would have these madmen cured of their plot and dispersed before Francis Tresham found himself a prisoner.

'Why not let him get himself arrested and then just leave him to die in the Tower?' Jane had asked sourly.

'Because I don't particularly want him implicating me in this business, and there's always the risk that he's seen and knows enough to find out that Alexander Selkirk is actually Sir Henry Gresham. But more important, I made an agreement with him. In exchange for his services I agreed his survival, as well as his wealth.'

'With scum? With people who make a rat look civilised?' said Jane.

'His personality is one thing. An agreement is another. It's a matter of honour. It wouldn't matter if the agreement was with Satan. Agreements must be honoured.'

If the truth be known he was more worried about the letter. Francis Tresham should have been able to be up and gone by now, the plot vanishing like smoke in the air. So the letter had been received and reported. Yet no action had sprung from those facts. What had happened? Had his letter been simply too vague to ring the right alarum bells? Had the King dismissed it? Had Cecil dismissed it as a forgery, a ploy to distract attention away from a more real threat, such as a foreign invasion?

Back at the House the itching in his scalp was unbearable. He called for water and- a basin, dipped his head and scrubbed at his hair with the beautifully scented French soap. The first and the second buckets, drawn as he had insisted from the sweet water of the House's own well, had been brought by servants. The third was brought by Jane.

'Are we washing out the stains of the world?' she enquired, pouring the contents on a head still half full of suds. Her fingers massaged his scalp, moving slowly and firmly through the tangled hair, easing the froth down and into the basin. A reddish tinge was still occasionally visible amidst the white suds.

'I must go to Cecil,' he said quietly.

There was no gasp of breath, no exclamation, only a slight faltering in the pressure of her fingers on his scalp, before the smooth, fluid motion recommenced.

'The letter's failed,' he said. 'I'd thought to spare bloodshed by naming no names, thought to spare Raleigh, thought to be honourable to Tresham, thought to disperse a plot before it could act. Well, I've failed.' He sat back, feeling the cold droplets of water course down his neck and back before Jane placed the towel on his head. 'One man has visited the cellar, our watcher swears, a man answering Fawkes's description. No man else. That cellar must be identified, emptied. Without the powder there's no plot.'

'How will you do it? Empty it yourself?'

'And have them fill it up again? Or be arrested as chief plotter? No thank you! I'll simply tell Cecil that on my sickbed I received notice that a certain cellar below the House of Lords is crammed full of gunpowder. I'll make it impossible for him not to search it. And you, Jane, will make sure it's searched, should I not return.

Searched and exposed. With the powder gone there's no powder plot.'

‘And Raleigh?'

'He once told me that honour was the difference between a man and an animal. Is it more honourable to preserve my old master against a harm that might not come to him, or to preserve the nation from another blood bath that certainly will come unless I can stop it? I must take a gamble with the man I'd least willingly put at risk. How long have we been meddling with this plot? In all that time we've found not a whisper, not a syllable that could link it to Raleigh. Oh, I know, they can fabricate what evidence they wish, but I've been thinking.'

At times it felt as if he had been doing nothing else, lying awake for most of the night, the thoughts churning through his head.

'Raleigh has had one trial where there was no true evidence, and what there was consisted of lies. It was unpopular, hugely unpopular. I think it surprised Cecil, shocked him even, as only a threat to his own power would shock him. There's no real evidence to link Raleigh to any of this. I have to gamble Cecil won't risk another false trial with false evidence so soon after the last.'

'You're a stupid man, Henry Gresham.'

'Why so? Am I putting Raleigh at too much risk?'

'No, it's not Raleigh. It's you. You're never content, are you?' She knelt at his feet, wiping the shreds of soap off his shirt and hose. 'You say that survival is all a man can hope for, yet you put your own strange form of honour far beyond mere survival. You say you can influence nothing, yet you seek all the time to exert just such an influence. You think yourself ruthless, and you are ruthless with those who let you down or stand in your way, yet you'll risk your own life in the name of honour.'

He drew her hands gently off him, and stood up. 'Today, I ceased to be ill. Life is for living, isn't it? And when I see Cecil tonight, I'll at least know I'm alive, in every pore of my body, even until that life's extinguished. And after, I doubt my corpse will care.'

'No,' said Jane, 'but my living body will care. And the mind it contains.' They looked at each other in silence.

The letter is confirmed,' said Catesby. It was Sunday, November 3rd. It was the last planned meeting of the conspirators, or such as could be mustered in one place. The news of the letter had shattered the peace of mind of those who had heard, as if there had not been tension enough already.

'Are we lost, then? Do I ride to Dunchurch?' It was Everard Digby, ever the dandy, leaning nonchalantly on the table in a doublet double-slashed in yellow and purple. In the morning he was due to ride to Dunchurch, where a 'hunting party' was to gather at The Red Lion. This party was a crucial element in Catesby's plotting. It was from here that Digby would move to Coombe House, a mere eight miles away, and capture the Princess Elizabeth, and this gathering was to be the base of the three hundred horsemen Catesby believed he could muster.

'I urge delay.' It was Tresham who spoke, causing an uneasy stir and a poisonous glance from Tom Wintour. 'Here, see these.' There was a slap as the package containing his travel papers landed on the trestle. 'I'll pay for some of the same, for all of you. Let's wait out this Parliament, see what comes to pass both with the law and the letter, take ourselves to France for some month or two. We can come to no harm in France, and we preserve ourselves to act when we think fit, when there's no cloud of suspicion over us.'

'Your cloud of suspicion will easily be dispelled with a cloud of smoke, smoke shot through with fire! Is it conscience that makes you speak, or fear?' Tom Wintour spat the words out.

Tresham rose to his feet, as did Wintour. Tresham felt a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down on to his stool.

'Peace? If we fight ourselves how can we fight others! You ride, as we planned!' It was Thomas Percy, his vehemence startling the others. 'Yet we're cautious as well. We've two days to wait, and to watch. We've a ship moored on the Thames, ready and waiting our presence. We can be there as quickly as it takes to hail a wherry, and drop down the river before any hue and cry can catch us. You, Guido, you can keep an eye on the powder, report back any mischief there. Granted, we can't be rash. But nor should we waste years of planning before we have to.'

A heated discussion followed, but Tresham could see that Percy's passion had won the day.

Percy knew he had dominance. Yet it seemed he wished to cap it all:

‘I've the means to test whether we're discovered. I'll use it.' 'What means?' It was Digby.

'The Earl of Northumberland's a member of the Privy Council, isn't he?' said Percy. 'I'll go to see him, at Syon House, tomorrow, on the excuse of needing a loan.' He barked out a laugh. 'It's not a new thing for me to do. If the letter's caused any serious problems, I must hear it. They'll detain me, for certain.'

'You'll take that risk?' Catesby seemed genuinely moved.

'It's a lesser risk than many we've taken,' said Percy, 'and yes, I'll take it.'

There was actual applause round the table. Yes, thought Percy, smiling through clenched teeth at his easy victory. I shall go to see my Lord the Earl of Northumberland at Syon House, and make sure that every servant at Syon House sees and hears me there, and that we talk in the Hall alone, out of earshot of all others. And then I shall go to my nephew Josceline Percy, in the employ of my Lord the Earl of Northumberland, and similarly make it known that I have been there. And then, he thought with a warm glow of vicious satisfaction in his heart, then see if my Lord the Earl of Northumberland can escape being implicated in what is to happen. Then, having steadied the plotters and unbeknown to them signed the death warrant of his kinsman, he left them. He had business, he said, to attend to in town.

Had Percy and Catesby worked it all out before the meeting? thought Tresham. There was no way of knowing. If only they had taken his bait and gone, now, there and then.

It was dark as Gresham rode to Whitehall, the lantern Mannion bore before him giving out a pitiful light as it swung back and forth with the rhythm of the horse. Cecil must be getting tired of late-night interruptions, thought Gresham, though at nine o'clock he must at least by now have finished his supper. Prime fillet of baby, perhaps, with a snake's venom sauce. He felt a strange inner calm, as he always did immediately before an action of great risk.

In Walsingham's day the spies and agents had used a small, private door, just off one of the jetties that served the Palace. Its use had lapsed, with Cecil preferring to work with ambassadors and the gentry abroad who came in through the front door, rather than the lowlife Walsingham acquired in such large (and effective) numbers. Gresham called out to Mannion, and reined in as the glow of Whitehall appeared before him, the flaring torches still lighting the main drive to its gate. Some inner voice spoke to him, and he dismounted, handing the reins to Mannion, asking him quietly to wait where they stood. A tavern with some sign of life still in it was nearby. Normally Mannion would have jumped at the chance. This evening, he seemed uneasy.

'Don't you need me there, with you?'

'He'd never grant you admittance. And I might need to leave in a hurry.' Mannion nodded, reluctant, undecided but as always obedient.

Instead of the main path, Gresham broke off to the left, by the river. The vast expense of the Royal Household did not spread to employing enough gardeners, Gresham noticed in the dim light that spun off from the Palace. A handful of weeds, drooping from the winter but still virulent, were invading the edge of the path.

A gate barred his way, with two guards standing by it. They were cold, stamping their feet, and they let Gresham through with only a cursory question. He was finely dressed, and not for the first time

Gresham realised how much stress his age placed on dress and outward appearance. He gave his name as 'Sir Alexander Selkirk', with a grin of memory. The path kinked round out of sight of the guards, and there was the side gate. It was unguarded. He approached it, noting the signs of neglect, the wild grass lapping the bottom of the door. He looked round. A household of thousands was here each going about their particular business, but none looking out at this particular spot at this particular time. He tried the door. It was locked. He had not thought of entering secretly before that moment, but the slight give on the door put the idea into his head. His inner voice, that very calm commentator who seemed to live in his brain and talk to him only at moments of high drama, whispered to try the door again.

The frame on the outside was covered in mildew, probably the result of the proximity of the river. Gresham took his dagger and poked it into the wood. It sank in a great way, meeting almost no resistance from the spongy, rotted timber. He looked round again. Nothing. There were a series of narrow, unlit windows running off on either side of the door. Storehouses, if Gresham remembered correctly. Iron bars had been placed over them, too small for even a monkey to climb through. He examined the nearest window. The mortar was crumbling, the workmanship old, and shoddy. He picked at the base of the nearest bar with his dagger, and a chunk of mortar fell away, revealing the red, rusting base of the bar. A few minutes' more work and it was completely exposed. He eased it from its setting, leaving a neat, round hole in the better-textured mortar at the top where the bar had lain. The bar was heavy, perhaps a finger's thickness. He eased it into the gap between the door and its frame. The door's timbers were still relatively sound, but the rotten frame allowed him to push the bar, half an inch, then a whole inch in. Gently he forced the bar back. He could feel it bending, just as he could visualise the screws on the inside of the doorframe coming loose from the wet timber, the screws that held the iron box into which the lock fitted. He stopped, reinserting the bar into the even larger gap that now existed, and forced it away from his hand. There was a gentle tearing noise, and the door gave, shrieking on its rusted hinges. He slipped inside, pushing the door to. There were bolts top and bottom, he noticed, the topmost bolt seated in what looked like firm timber. They had not been pushed in.

He knew his way up the stairs, which had a layer of dust on them with only a few footmarks. He stumbled in the almost complete blackness, feeling his way with a hand on the walls. The chamber where Cecil met spies was at the top of the stairs, with three corridors branching off it. One led up to the main and State apartments, one was the access route that Gresham had used and the other he had never trodden. In addition there was a door in the panelling, leading to not so much a secret as rather a private passageway, part above ground and part tunnel, to Westminster.

Torches burnt in the passage, throwing a garish light on the unadorned walls. This was a business area of the Palace, shorn of frippery. Gresham advanced to the door, expecting to feel silence and emptiness at this hour of night, and that he would need to go up a floor to the State rooms where, no doubt, Cecil was still ensconced.

He froze as he heard low voices from within the chamber, inaudible and no more than a dull rumble. There was a scraping as of stools being pushed back. Gresham dipped back into the doorway from where he had emerged, wrapping its shadow round him. The door ahead of him opened. A blaze of light splashed out into the corridor. Cecil himself emerged, gave a brief glance along the corridor, and stood aside. Two figures followed him, glanced themselves up and down the corridor, and moved over to the door in the panelling, opening it and vanishing.

The figures were unmistakable. Gresham had seen them only the night before. Both were so tall as to have to duck under the lintel of the door as they entered the private passageway.

Guy Fawkes. Thomas Percy.

Gresham leant back, his head resting on the cool brickwork in darkness, controlling his breathing.

Guy Fawkes and Thomas Percy. Discoursing in the room the King's Chief Secretary used for his spies and agents. Discoursing with that same Chief Minister. Two of the leading agents in this powder plot.

And allies of Robert Cecil.