The Desperate remedy

Chapter 3

Father Garnet was in prison. As prisons went it was pleasant enough. The half-timbered house had been sheltering Jesuits safely for years, its walls peppered with hiding places. The fire burnt cheerfully in the grate, the oak panels mellowed in the evening sun and there was wine at hand. Yet it was still prison.

A curlew sounded in the meadows outside the house, its forlorn, mewing cry echoing the priest's mood. Father Garnet was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his whole life. It was no crisis of faith. When he summoned the image of Our Saviour into his mind the rushing well of tenderness, the biting pain of love were the same as ever, undiminished and unrelenting. Rather, it was simple exhaustion.

How long had he been in England, fighting for the faith that was his life? Fighting for it with his life?

He had forgotten how many years, years of being continually shunted from one secret house to another, years of disguise, of whispered Masses in shuttered rooms. The Jesuit priest was a hunted animal in England, yet at least the real animal was given a quick death by the hounds. If the priest was found he would be stripped and trussed to a wooden hurdle, dragged through the streets behind a horse, to be reviled and spat at by the worst sort of scum. Hauled on to a scaffold, he would be dropped and hung until the choking edge of suffocation had plunged him near into unconsciousness, and hurriedly cut down whilst still aware. Rough-handled over to the nearby block, the executioner would then hack off his testicles, to show that he should never have been born, and thrust them before the priest's agonised face. Then the crude blade would strike into the chest, and the heart be torn out, the bleeding, pathetic flesh held up for the baying crowd to see, to the cry, 'Here lies the heart of a traitor!'

Father Garnet's dreams were haunted by the first, coarse feel of that rope around his neck, the gasping panic of strangulation, the sharp, shrieking cut of the metal. Was it weakness to be so scared? Could he pray to be spared this pain, or should he pray to have it inflicted on him, thus becoming a glorious martyr for the Faith? A good man, he prayed for neither. The first was unfair and a coward's way, the second was untrue. He prayed instead simply for the wisdom to understand.

O my God. Why hast Thou forsaken me?

Garnet tensed. Horse's hooves sounded outside his window. He looked expectantly at the bell over the fireplace in his room. Were it to ring, tugged frantically by a loyal servant, Garnet would hastily grab his bottle and glass so as to hide his presence, run outside into the passageway and back into the adjoining room. The fireplace there was kept deliberately blackened, ash in the basket, as if used every day. Behind it lay a priest-hole, activated by a hidden lever. Within lay a rosary and a crucifix, scraps of dried-out food and a single, thin and emaciated turd. This was evidence enough that a priest had once lain, eaten and shat therein. The stench of urine, added to every three days by loyal Catholic servants ordered to piss, there, gave force to the message.

The real priest-hole lay behind. Two men might crouch in it, but not stand or sit. A thousand men might seek how to enter it, but never find the means of entry unless they were told. Even the fiercest fire built in the first fireplace would not singe the occupants of the second priest-hole, for all the damage it could have done to occupants of the first.

A cheerful call wafted up from the gatehouse, greeting the rider. Father Garnet relaxed again in his chair.

He felt a dread terror as he contemplated that young fool Catesby and his hellish plot. Catesby had told his servant what was planned, then sought to calm the servant's disquiet by sending him to confess to Father Tesimond. The servant, thought Garnet, had a deal more common sense than the master, but then that was usually the way. As for Tesimond, he had received the confession and run straight to Garnet, in turn confessing all to him.

It was a nightmare. Garnet could no more break the secrecy of the confessional than he could sell his soul to the Devil. He could not disclose what Father Tesimond had told him to any person upon earth on pain of the loss of his immortal soul.

It would not just kill the Lords and Government of England, Garnet realised, a single tear forming in his eye and cooling as it found release and trekked down his cheek. It would kill the cause of Catholicism in England for years, perhaps for ever, uniting the country in a frenzy of hatred against the Popish impostors. It was the most awful, the most terrible thing that any young madcap rebel could conceive and carry out. And he, Father Garnet, was bound by the most awful vow of all not to reveal his knowledge. He had to persuade Catesby to give it all up. An emissary to the Pope had to be the answer. Surely if the Pope condemned the plot, even so overweening a vanity as Catesby's would have to recognise its folly?

A sharp cramp cut across his stomach. Too much food and wine, and not nearly enough exercise, he knew. Or an omen of the executioner's knife cutting into his most sensitive flesh in front of the howling crowd… He stumbled to his feet, and vomited up most of his day's food into the flames of the fire.

Gresham stood bolt-upright in the rough iron tub, as naked as the day he was born, scrubbing with satisfaction at the few suspicions of dirt left on his reddened flesh. It was before dawn, two guttering candles piercing the gloom, and Mannion stood silent in a corner as the early morning ritual took its course. He held a huge towel over his arm, with the rest of his master's clothing waiting draped over two stools.

It was still a good body, Mannion thought with quiet satisfaction, though God knows why Gresham insisted on spoiling it with water. He knew every one of the wounds that criss-crossed his master's body, could probably name and date the cause of each one. Yet they were superficial, healed. The hips were narrow and muscled, the shoulders broad and strong and the dusting of hair across the manly chest so much more satisfying than the blanket of dead seaweed so many sported there. There was no self-consciousness in Mannion's frank appraisal, any more than there would have been embarrassment in Gresham's receipt of it, had he even realised it was taking place. Mannion knew every inch of that body, had carried it on his shoulders as a child, whooping through the apple orchards. He had thrashed it once, and only once, when its seven-year-old owner had stood up imperiously and demanded that Mannion do its bidding as he was a mere servant. Years later he had washed it when its owner could only whimper, half-conscious, with the searing pain of wounds that seemed never to heal. He had fed it by hand for months, never speaking, holding the sustenance in front of the mouth for hours, sometimes forcing it down the throat when all else failed.

With no obvious signal Mannion stepped forward. Gresham held out his arms, back towards Mannion, to receive the towel he knew would be draped across his shoulders. Without turning, he spoke. 'God, man. Your breath stinks. What on God's earth were you up to last night?'

Gresham stepped out of the tub, turning to grasp the towel round his cold frame.

'My duty, young master,' replied an impassive Mannion.

'And what duty might that be?' enquired Gresham shortly, irritated that his own conversational gambit required him to speak at this time in the morning.

'Why, sir, I'm a man. And the world must be peopled.'

And that, thought Gresham, showed why one should not engage in conversation with the servants.

He allowed Mannion to dress him. He could not remember when Jane had first started to sleep the night with him, regardless of his carnal needs. He knew it was shortly after their first, frantic lovemaking. He had resented the presence in his bed, the last citadel of his private person, when instead of leaving after their coupling she had turned over and lain gently on the far side of the bed, back towards him. Her young and muscled body lay there, its curves as relaxed and bored as a seasoned choirboy's arm swinging the censor. He had willed it to move, and gone to sleep so doing, waking up to find it gone and about its business.

He did not understand how in entering her body he had let her enter his mind.

Jane had never interfered with his silent routine of early morning washing, and Mannion's attendance on it as his body-servant. The relationship between Mannion and Jane was one of life's great secrets as far as Gresham was concerned. After that first day, when she had screamed to be taken off Mannion's horse, he had not discerned so much as a-flicker of disagreement between them. In his presence they were formal, even brisk, in their conversations. At times Gresham thought they used a shorthand between each other, a language he could not understand. It never crossed Gresham's mind that what united them was their love of him.

His breakfast was milk warm from the cow, brought from the fields near Islington. The bread was fresh-baked in the House's own ovens, and smelt divine. There was cheese, and strips of bacon burnt to the black as if on a campaign fire, a taste he had never lost. There was a concoction of eggs beaten up with milk and then heated over the fire until it bubbled a gentle yellow, a half-eaten beef pie. Dr Perse in Cambridge had advised him to eat a hearty breakfast above all other meals, and it suited Gresham's constitution. There were many who ate no breakfast at all.

Gresham finished his breakfast. Mannion left the room briefly and returned with one of the kitchen maids, who cleared the wooden table. There was a rustle, and the briefest sense of a fine perfume. Without turning round he sensed that Jane had entered the room. He waved a hand, motioning both to be seated.

Gresham nodded to the small beer and Mannion poured himself a tankard. He drank like a sewer, with a vast, slurping contentment that only just stopped short of the belch he clearly needed to deliver after devouring the whole tankard.

'For God's sake, man, let it go before you explode.' Mannion let loose a torrent of wind that started at his feet and came out finally from his mouth like the blast of the trumpet on Judgement Day. Jane looked at him as he rocked with the force of the expulsion, the tiniest flicker visible at the corner of her mouth. Gresham looked on with distaste, his lip curling.

'You are disgusting!' he said.

'Aye, sir. Disgusting.' Mannion poured himself another tankard and placed it cheerfully in front of him. 'Truly disgusting. But no longer thirsty, for which I thank you.'

It did not occur to Gresham to ask how many other gentlemen of his wealth and standing discussed the most important matters of the day after breakfast with their body-servant and their mistress. As for how many gentlemen were blessed with a body-servant who won both the morning's opening conversational gambits, he preferred not to think. The girl had made it clear from early on that she had a brain to match her body, one source of her capacity to irritate him more than any other person on earth. It was so much simpler to have the body as one container, and the brain in another, and far more convenient for the latter to be contained in a man. He had said so to Jane once. She had considered the proposition thoughtfully, and then hit him with the bedpan.

The upper room in which they sat was one of Gresham's favourites. Dressed with dark oak panelling that had been young in the Wars of the Roses, it had a large window and balcony overlooking the street. Already the hubbub of London was audible despite the lavish expenditure on glass in the window. As with most houses, the introduction of glass had not caused Gresham to remove the old, unwieldy shutters, which were an excellent defence. They had been thrown back as he had entered the room, revealing a watery, smoke-stained dawn.

Gresham gave a brief resumй of where he thought things stood, speaking as if to himself but knowing his silent, attentive audience. He listed the death of Will Shadwell, the meeting with Cecil, the strange task of Bacon. For Jane's sake he went over the story of the informer, the lack of any incriminating evidence on Bacon. They knew his ways, knew that in some way this careful repetition of the facts, this thinking aloud, enabled him to order things in his mind, to speed up thought. The fingers of his left hand began to drum gently on the rough wood of the table. It was a rare gesture for a man who held himself always in fierce physical control.

‘I’m uneasy. There's something in the air. Unrest, trouble. I don't know. Yet the feeling is there. As it was before Essex, the same feeling. What gossip is there in the markets and the fine shops, Jane? What are they talking of in St Paul's?'

The old cathedral of St Paul's was the crumbling centre of London. Even though it had lost its steeple to lightning some years before, it still dominated London in its centre. Occupying over twelve acres at the western end of Cheapside, it would have taken Jesus two lifetimes to clear it of its moneylenders. It was here that those caught by the new plant tobacco came to buy, here where every servant in London looked for vacancies on the siquis door. It was here that the gallant casually threw back his fine cloak to reveal the satin lining, and the younger son skulked in the doorway to hide his ragged doublet. It was here that the scaffold would be erected, the men twitching their last moments in earshot of the sermon being preached from St Paul's Cross. Puritan and Papist, gentleman and cutthroat, fine lady and bawd met, mingled and, not infrequently, came to blows or copulated. The country bumpkins who increasingly flocked to London were drawn to St Paul's and drew with them the lowlife who preyed on their naivety. It was the best centre for gossip in London, exceeded only by the Court itself.

Jane went there nearly every day to visit the booksellers. She had more or less taught herself to read and had devoured the library built up by Gresham's father. The only time she had badgered him for money was to add to the library, to which he had willingly agreed. The House now had one of the finest collections of books in London. As a child she had become almost a talisman among the booksellers, the men vying with each other to attract her to their stalls. They knew her as the foundling of the fabulously wealthy and strangely reclusive Henry Gresham, and latterly his 'niece'. Yet when she made her purchase solemnly every Friday, always from a different stall, she got the best price in London, as well as the best gossip.

'Those who talk of books are full of Jonson's Sejanus, of course it was played some two years ago at the Globe. It's not very good, actually, very loud and long. Martha and I went. Thorp first took it on and entered it in November last, but refused to print it, and Blount's now taken it over. Jonson's friends say it's good to his face but damn it behind his back, and he's very vexed indeed with the world!'

Jane's face lit up as she relayed the tittle-tattle of the booksellers.

'When has Ben Jonson not been vexed with the world?' asked Gresham with a laugh, trying to imagine a world where his friend Jonson would be at peace with anything. 'Who wouldn't be vexed, with the ghost of Kit Marlowe grinning up at you from Hell and that clever brat Shakespeare taking the crowds at the Globe? But there must be other gossip?'

'There's always gossip in the places I visit, though none concerning Bacon. Except the normal, that is,' she replied, her brow furrowed in thought.

'So what is the normal?' asked Gresham gently.

'The normal is that he's a man of great ambition, a man of law and a man of Parliament, who'll sell his soul to the King for preferment. His fiancйe's a shrew, and he prefers the company of young men.' She giggled. 'As, so it's said, does his intended. There's no noise abroad that any of the young men are unwilling.' She looked him straight in the eye. 'It's become fashionable these days to try what's new. A courtier who wishes to be in the light of fashion will say that he needs his women, but that he loves only his young man or his boy.'

'Will they now? How very daring,' mused Gresham. 'Does this gossip talk of sedition, of treason, of plotting?'

'It talks of the King,' said Jane. 'They say the new King screams if he sights cold steel.'

It was rumoured that James's mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had witnessed her Italian lover Rizzio murdered in front of her, in some Godforsaken frozen Scottish palace, while the child that was to become James I was live in her belly. A drawn sword or dagger had ever since sent him into a fit either of madness or of swooning.

'They still talk of Raleigh, of course. Aren't people strange and fickle? The mob used to hate him when Essex was alive, but now they say Raleigh was the first Englishman to be tried and sentenced before the charge was heard.' Raleigh's trial, conducted by the irascible and lickspittle Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, had been a farce.

Gresham growled his response. 'Do they talk of how Raleigh was betrayed by the man who protested to be his deepest friend? By the man whose son Raleigh helped to bring up? Do they talk of Cecil so?'

'They talk more of the numbers in the King's service at Whitehall,' said Jane truthfully, 'and how they grow by the day. It's the talk of town that soon every gentleman in the country will be paid a pension to be in His Majesty's Chamber, and every working man in the whole country employed in the King's palaces. The

Scots Lords offend everyone. It's said that they stink, that to sit next to them is to get their fleas, that they've no breeding and that they rut like stags when they're not too drunk to know what they're doing.'

Gresham knew that over a thousand men worked to serve the King in his palace at Whitehall. It was a far cry from the days of Old Bess, for whom each coin she parted with was like a drop of blood.

'The merchants see what the King spends, and worry about their profits and yet more taxes.'

'There's more, though — talk of a Popish plot, now the treaty with Spain is signed. The Catholics are angry. They had high words of promise from the King, and had great hopes of his Catholic wife. It all seems to have turned sour, and the fines are bleeding some of the great families to death, they say.'

'It's not just talk, the first bit,' said Mannion. 'It's true.' He spoke with an air of total finality. 'The girls in the stews hear the pillow talk. The young merchants are full of the Government costing too much and doing too little. And they say the Papists are restless.'

'Well,' said Gresham with heavy irony, 'that has to be it, then. If the girls in the stews say it's true who can deny it?'

Jane carried on, ignoring Gresham. 'Any Papists who heard my Lord Archbishop preach his sermon at St Paul's Cross on Tuesday last will be more than restless. They'll be scared. He damned all. Papists to Hell. He said the King would pour out the last drop of blood in his body to defend the Protestant faith.'

So, thought Gresham, there is anger in the country. Three angers, in fact. The anger of the Catholics, the anger of a disappointed people in their profligate King and the increasing anger of the King against the Pope's followers. Yet when had there not been anger in the country? And none of what he had heard explained Will Shadwell’s death, or his intuitive sense of unease.

Jane and Mannion were waiting expectantly. He looked at Jane, his expression unfathomable. She wondered what thoughts were hidden by those dark eyes. For all that she believed she knew Gresham better than anyone except Mannion, there were times when she was frightened by her inability to read his mind and his soul. Had she known the image in his mind she would have been saddened and horrified in equal measure.

Gresham was thinking of blood. Its smell and its look. There is no smell like fresh human blood, as there is no smell like rotting human flesh. The first is warm, salty yet strangely thin, the latter so vile as to make a man retch into his boots. Gresham had seen so much blood shed, smelt so much dead flesh. It was so bad at times that even as he looked at Jane, flushed with all the fires of youth and excitement at the joy of living, he saw the blood pumping beneath her fair skin, saw her raped and mutilated by a troop of soldiers as he had seen so many young girls, smelt the rank odour of her death. Gresham saw the skull beneath the skin.

Would there be rebellion so soon again? Had people learnt nothing from the waste, the torment and the agony of the Essex rebellion, so short past? Were fine young men to be butchered on the pikes of mercenaries, their reeking guts to be torn out and shown to their wives? Were the Catholics to launch yet another blood bath in the vain hope that the country would join their rising?

'May I speak?' It was Jane, reluctant to interrupt his reverie.

'Madam,' replied Gresham with a short bow, 'the Four Furies have left for their supper after a hard night riding people down and I am temporarily without my wand of power, or a standing army, so I fear I lack the means to stop you talking.'

Jane waved her hand dismissively, as she would to a rather silly child. 'My Lord, I'm worried that you should become involved between Bacon and Cecil. There's danger in going on to any ground where there's no map. How do we know what argument might exist between the two of them? How can we know that you're not simply being used in some way to gain advantage for Cecil, perhaps at great cost to you?'

'She's right,' said Mannion. 'I'm as good a swimmer as anyone, but even I wouldn't swim certain stretches of the river, where I don't know what the current's doing.'

Gresham thought for a moment. He stood suddenly. Something had sealed in his mind as he listened. He felt a fear and an uncertainty, but now he knew where it sprang from and what he intended to do about it.

'I agree, it almost certainly is dangerous. But I won't know how dangerous until I find out more. Cecil rarely tells the whole truth when he briefs one of his men. He likes to keep his spies in the dark, just as much as he likes to keep everyone else in the dark. Men like him distrust the light.'

He walked over to Jane, pulled her up gently by her wrists and stood gazing at her.

'I see my lawyers this morning.' The vast fortune left to Gresham by his father carried title to thousands of acres of land and numerous properties, and with it continual detail of tenancies and rents. When in London Gresham's lawyer was always desperate to see him, the pile of documents that needed signing stretching from St Paul's to the river.

'After that, I visit Moll Cutpurse this evening. If there's knowledge to be had, Moll will have it. And tomorrow, we see the King.'

Jane gave a squeal of excitement, clapping her hands together.

'Have you no shame, girl, to be so carried away from your wits by an evening of over-bred drunkards and whores cavorting at the expense of the nation?'

'But, sir — I've so little chance to meet either! My life here is quite matronly and respectable. And how can a girl resist drunkenness and envy and pride and greed and gluttony and lechery and sloth and all those other terrible things unless she can learn to recognise them? And this is not ordinary sin. This is royal sin. It's positively my duty as a loyal subject to witness it! Where are we going? What is it His Majesty celebrates?'

Mannion grunted. 'His Majesty celebrates a cow farting in a field, as long as he can drink to it.' He took a swig of beer.

Jane appeared perfectly content without a social life in Gresham's absence. Such a life was hers for the asking. Money and fame mattered more than morality in the London of King James I, and the beautiful 'niece' of the wealthy and mysterious Henry Gresham would be a catch for any hostess, and a fine chase for any man in town. She never appeared tempted, but it did not mean that the young woman in her failed to enjoy hugely the opportunities when they arose.

'His Majesty, for once, is being economical. He kills two birds with one stone. The masque is both to welcome the ambassador from the Emperor, one Prince George Lodovic, and to bid farewell to the Spanish Ambassador,' announced Gresham.

Mannion had grabbed a crust which the maid had missed from the table, and was chewing on it with his few remaining teeth. 'They do say as the noble Prince' — no-one could put more loathing into the word Prince than Mannion — 'comes with his baggage overstuffed.'

'He brings three Earls,' piped up Jane, eagerly, 'one Baron, twenty-four gentlemen, twelve musketeers and one hundred servants. It's the talk of St Paul's,' she said, with great authority.

'Pigs feeding at the trough!' exclaimed Mannion, stuffing a remnant of Gresham's meal into his cavernous mouth, and spitting out a bit of bacon gristle. Something seemed to have got stuck in what was left of his molars. Gresham's eyes were drawn reluctantly and with extreme distaste to the sight, as Mannion dug for the stuck strand of meat with the enthusiasm of a miner sure he was on to a major seam of pure gold ore.

King James would be displeased at having to break off from his hunting. It was necessary for his health that he should hunt, he had told the Privy Council, and his health was, after all, the health of the nation. He had demanded they help take some of the burden of State affairs off his bending back. Cecil would have rubbed his hands with glee, thought Gresham, at being left to rule over the very fabric of government in the absence of the King. However, there was so much money from Spanish bribes sloshing around the Court that the departure of the Ambassador needs must require the King's return from hunting, and probably provoke the whole Court to go into mourning.

'What's the entertainment?' asked Jane.

'The entertainment will be provided by several fat Aldermen whose health will be put to great strain by the weight of jewels they and their even fatter wives will don for the evening, and a race between most members of the Houses of Lords and Commons to see who can place his face closest to the buttocks of His Royal Highness.' Gresham warmed to his theme. He started to mince round the chamber, bowing to various walls and doors with an inane smile on his face. 'The winner gets a pension, a title and the right to take first shot at Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. The loser has to try and extract an intelligent comment from Her Royal Highness the Queen Anne, but may opt to be hung, drawn and quartered instead, on the grounds that this is a sentence that at least leads to a relatively quick death.'

'My Lord!' said Jane, genuinely shocked. 'You shouldn't speak so about the King and His Queen!' She adopted the cool calm of the enigmatic beauty when at Court, but would talk for hours afterwards when she returned home about who had been wearing what and been seen speaking to whom. Gresham had once taxed her with her love of everything royal, pointing out some of the less savoury features of King James I of All England.

'It's perfectly possible, my Lord,' she had replied primly, 'for the institution to be divine whilst its agents on earth are merely human.'

Gresham looked at the eager sparkle in her eyes, and relented. At least she was not being distant, aloof and dignified, which he hated.

'I'm given to understand that His Majesty has commanded a masque from your good friends Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, in which the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity will appear to welcome Prince Lodovic, and bid farewell to the Spanish Ambassador. We go because Sir Francis Bacon will be a guest — a guest of honour, in fact, reading a pretty speech of welcome from the House of Commons. It's at Whitehall, of course. I remember you told me you had a most commanding book of sermons to read, and so informed the Lord Chamberlain that I'd be going alone…'

'Sir!' Jane shrieked in anguish, before the lights dancing behind his eyes told her the truth.

Gresham had obtained details of all Bacon's engagements by bribing his clerk. A word to one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber and an invitation to Gresham had been immediately forthcoming. It gave Gresham a grim satisfaction that he had no need to beg an invitation from Cecil. As a major landowner and the patron of what many considered to be Cambridge's leading College, and as a known servant of the Crown for many years past, Gresham had no need of such help.

'Do I do gracious, or do I do alluring?' asked Jane.

'You "do" whatever will preserve and protect my honour,' said Gresham, 'which is a far more important thing than your female vanity. However, I'll gracefully accept as my due any information you might come across in the course of the evening.'

He had taken Jane with him as his niece to a levйe some years earlier and been incensed by her flirting with a young nobleman. He had been about to box her ears when she had poured out to him a torrent of secrets so damaging to the young nobleman's father that twenty full purses would not have bought the information.

'Weren't you ashamed?' he asked, part in horror, part in amazement at the skill with which the little vixen had stripped the fool of his secrets.

'Why?' she had asked, with total sincerity. 'I'm more worried about conceiving a baby than I am about being bedded by one, and anyway I do it for you.' She did, Gresham had realised. This was a woman who far preferred pitting herself against a man in the search for secrets to preparing a fine capon for supper, or supervising the making of the season's preserves. Her bкte noire was sewing.

Since then he had used her whenever it could be safely done.

Gresham stood up and paced the room. Tell me, who goes out with you on your errands to St Paul's?'

'It's usually young Will. He secretly hopes to marry me and he defends my honour…'

'No jesting.' The swooping, instant change of mood — like a hawk coming out from behind the sun, Mannion had commented — was upon him, and it froze the air. 'From now onwards you'll take three men with you, two in company, one a way behind. Make one of them Harry.'

Harry had seen service abroad, and been a gunner on one of the ships that had fired so many shots with so very few hits against the vast galleons of the Spanish. He was tough, very strong and totally ruthless.

'As you wish.' Jane curtseyed to Gresham, a troubled look on her face. 'Am I permitted to know why these extra precautions are necessary?'

Because, thought Gresham, I have let happen what I vowed would never take place. I have fallen in love with you. You are wanton, and then you are saintly, you are strong and hard and then the softest voice I know, you are fierce in one moment and vulnerable in the next, you fight to the bitter end yet you are defenceless. 1 do not understand you, though I know you in bed, and 1 know that when I am with you my heart beats faster and my life has an extra colour in its palette. You have become precious to me, and that gives power over me to any person who decides to take you and hold you and hurt you. You could be held and used against me, young miss.

'Whatever trail it is that Cecil's setting me on it'll carry danger. I can't believe other than that Will Shadwell was on his way to see me in Cambridge, and someone cared enough to kill him. Does that damned bead mean anything? Maybe Will had come across something the Catholics want hidden, or perhaps even Bacon is considering a public return to Rome. I must assume there's a link, even if I don't know what it is.'

'Well,' said Jane, 'Will Shadwell certainly wasn't the type to be coming to Cambridge to sign up for a degree.'

'Cease your nonsense,' said Gresham, caught unawares by her flippancy and the image of Will Shadwell in undergraduate gown and cap. He felt himself starting to sound pompous, and so switched tone, knowing it would annoy her. 'You, mistress, are an additional lure of great value to an enemy. My honour wouldn't permit your being taken and held by an enemy. Were I to be sidetracked by having to extract you from some den of thieves I would lose what little scent I might have followed. It would be most inconvenient.'

Jane stood up. 'Thank you, my Lord. It is good to know.' Her tone would have frozen the River Thames in midsummer. 'A poor thing such as me must never be an inconvenience..' She left most of the hinges still on the door.

Gresham grinned at Mannion. 'Call her back, will you, if the stairway's still standing.'

It took her longer than was necessary to reappear.

'I hadn't realised that it was convenient for me to appear before you, my Lord. Is it convenient that I stand, or would it be more convenient for me to kneel at your feet?' No arrow about to be released from the bow quivered with more hidden tension, or stood up straighter and more tall.

God, thought Gresham, you would fight God and Lucifer together if they made, friends again and joined forces against you!

Gresham, enjoying his rudeness, pointed a finger at her. 'Will you sit down, you stupid wench, and be silent?'

Jane planted her arms akimbo, looked him full in the face with a fire that beat the burning of Gwent. 'Yes, sir, I will sit down, if that be your will. No, sir, I am not stupid, nor am I a wench, and no, sir, I will not be silent!’

'God's blood!' barked Gresham. 'Am I to be served by an old man who thinks of nothing but beer and young whores, and a young wanton with a voice like a fishwife and a temper to match, who throws a fit every time she is challenged by her master?'

Mannion lacked the education to recognise a rhetorical question, so answered it, thoughtfully. 'Aye, sir. I reckon you are.'

There was a moment of frozen silence, then Gresham, Mannion and Jane burst out into peals of laughter.

Thomas Percy was sulking. It was nothing new.

'I swear the man was using loaded dice. Three sixes in a row, would you believe? I challenged him, but the fool of a landlord came between us and made us go outside.'

Percy was a brilliant swordsman, not perhaps the match of Jack Wright, but nearly so. The difference was that Jack Wright fought to win, with a dark intensity that was as terrifying as his swift movements. Percy enjoyed winging his man, cutting him here and there, taunting him, before moving in for the kill.

'When we got through the crowd, the bastard made a run for it! Coward! Who would believe it?'

'He must have heard of your prowess, cousin. Few men would stand against Thomas Percy with a blade in his hand!' It was Catesby, silky-smooth in voice, sitting at the head of the table where the plotters had dined.

Percy glanced suspiciously at Catesby, looking for mockery. He found none in the bland assurance of Catesby's eyes, and brought out a stained cloth with which he wiped the dripping sweat off his brow. Percy sweated like a pig, or like the inside of glass on a drenching rainy day.

Jack Wright, seated as always at the rear of the room, made one of his rare contributions. He spoke slowly, as if measuring every word: 'What of your peasants and their lawsuit?'

'Animals! Animals!' Percy spluttered into renewed anger, grabbing his tankard and spilling half its contents as he rammed the ale down his throat. Wright glanced at Catesby, the merest hint of a grin on his dour features. Catesby raised an eyebrow. Stirring Percy into anger was so easy that it had almost ceased to be amusing. Men's hair had turned white with fear. Had a lifetime of anger turned Percy's hair so white?

'Am I to let them lie in their hovels all hours of the day and night and pay no rent? How much trust would my Earl of Northumberland have in such a member of his family were I to leave them to stink and rot and pay no rent?'

'Dead men pay no rent…' It was Tom Wintour who spoke, Tom who had been in on the conspiracy from the start. A small, dark, wiry man, his restless wit was at odds with the glum pessimism of his elder brother. Robert Wintour had been recruited only recently, following again his younger brother but doing so with markedly little enthusiasm. Well, thought Tom, that was nothing new. He had long ago accepted that of the Wintour brothers he would have to generate the energy for both of them.

'Dead be damned!' Percy was warming to his theme, and never failed to rise to Tom Wintour's wit. 'There was no chance of that! We tickled them a little, that was all. There was a time when men would have taken it as their due, stout men who could take their punishment and not go whining to the law!'

And Percy's men had tickled their wives and daughters, by all accounts, with thirty of the tenants complaining direct to the Earl of Northumberland that his Constable and land agent had attacked them for rent they had already paid.

'And what of it, Robin?' Percy dropped into the familiar name, the one Catesby's friends used. 'Why must I go at my tenants like a dog after a hare? You know why! I need their miserable money! Must I be banker to this conspiracy, as well as its only link to the Court and all else?' Percy flung the question out like a spear, and already the thick sheen of sweat had formed over his whole face. Dark stains were visible under the arms of his shirt, his doublet cast carelessly over a nearby chair, and the same dark stains were on his hose over the cleft of his buttocks, and up his shirt along the line of his back.

Catesby took the angry question with a smile, waving his hand as if to say thank you. Far less of Thomas Percy's money had gone to swell the coffers of the plotters than Percy liked people to think, but he had been asked for, and had given, good coin. If this angry, self-serving torrent of words was the price Catesby had to pay for Percy's money then it was a price he was willing to pay.

'You've done well,' said Catesby placatingly, 'and all of us know it. We're grateful, truly grateful…'

The Duck and Drake in the Strand was rapidly becoming one of London's most fashionable taverns, and had long been a favoured ground for the conspirators to meet. It was convenient for Catesby, who had lodgings only a few doors away. Percy subsided into a grumble. It would flare up again soon, Catesby knew. He could write the speech.

Was Thomas. Percy not kinsman to the mighty Earl of Northumberland, the patron who had appointed him Constable of Alnwick Castle, the Percy stronghold in Northumberland? Had not the great Catholic Earl entrusted Thomas Percy above all others to act as his emissary to the upstart James VI of Scotland, offering the support of English Catholics to the Scottish King in exchange for simple tolerance of their faith? Had not Percy won the support of the King for the Catholic cause, only to have it wrenched away from him by that Anti-Christ Robert Cecil, the poison in the ear of the new monarch? Had not a month past that same Thomas Percy been made Gentleman Pensioner to King James I, allowing that same Thomas Percy access to the King of All England? Was it not Thomas Percy who had negotiated the rent of the house adjacent to the House of Lords from John Whynniard and Henry Ferrers, the house from whence a tunnel could be dug to undermine the very fabric of England's Government? Catesby's own house in Lambeth was almost opposite, for all the use he had been. It was Percy's power, influence and charm that had closed the deal, Percy would point out, causing Whynniard and the Catholic Ferrers to look the other way.

Thomas Percy was a powerful man, thought Catesby, and a useful one, but flawed to his very centre. The anger that seemed to flare continually at the core of his being, anger against his tenants, against the invidious Cecil, against his lot in life, fuelled him but at the same time clouded his judgement. Was he noble-born? Percy's claim to be a member of Northumberland's family was at best tenuous. Yet the real problem was that of all the five original conspirators, Percy was the only one fighting for himself.

Catesby knew he was not fighting for himself. He was fighting for God. From as early as he could remember he had fallen in love with the Mass. The flickering candlelight, the language that resounded to the pit of one's brain, the transcendental union with a spirit higher and greater than that of man — even as a child his soul had risen to the Mass as a flower reaches towards the sun. He had recognised the joy of that faith, but seen the savage surgery it had caused on the body and mind of his father and mother. When he was a mere eight years of age he had seen his father tried in the Star Chamber for housing a Jesuit Father. Robert had known that Father, a foul-smelling man who had smiled all over the young Robert until the evening when he had plunged his hand down the boy's front and fondled his private parts. We do this for Jesus, the Father had said, his thumb and fingers working away. And there is more we can do for Jesus. And for this man my father is facing imprisonment and execution, thought the young Robert. He screamed and punched, even then strong for his age, and bloodied the priest's nose.

The priest had gone soon thereafter, spirited away as they always were. The humiliation, the fierce and burning bitterness, had lasted for years. Catesby had been driven to be the best at everything he had done, driven by the memory of a lost father whose suffering had soured his soul, a father whose suffering was betrayed by those for whom he suffered. Yet the meeting with his Catherine had shown him his true course. He had worshipped her from the first moment they met. When on his wedding night he had joined with her, her giggling turning first to a panting and then to a gasping and then to a scream of pleasure, he had known true salvation. She was the most beautiful, the most lovely, the most heavenly thing that had ever happened to him. Despite his dashing good looks and his charm, it was his virginity that he lost to Catherine on that night. As did so many men, he gave his soul as well to the first woman who opened her legs for him.

He had been lulled by the love of the flesh, human flesh, not the flesh of Christ Our Lord. He had gone as far as to flout the true religion, seduced by his new, human love into denying Divine love. True, he had continued to hide and to host a succession of Jesuit priests, part in honour of his parents, part in honour of many of those priests who truly placed the souls of their parishioners above all worldly concerns. He appeared less and less at Mass, and had his first son Robert baptised as an Anglican, to the scandal of the Catholic community and his father's friends.

'And do I have to settle the score for this as for everything else?'

Percy was being truculent over the bill, and his tone penetrated Catesby's inward pattern of thought.

'No fear of that, Thomas,' said Catesby. 'Here — take it from my purse, and my thanks for your company along with it.' He tossed the smaller of the two purses he carried so that it landed with a solid thump on the trestle. Percy could have picked it up, but he sniffed and turned away, returning to talk at Jack Wright, who nodded every few sentences but said nothing. It was left to Tom Wintour, reliable and ever-restless, to take it, unbar the door and go to find the landlord.

Then his world had collapsed, Catesby remembered, only half deflected by Percy's intrusion. Robert his son, on whom he and his wife doted, died suddenly, to be followed by Catesby's father and then by his lovely, his adorable Catherine herself. He had worn mourning on his body, yet it was his soul that was truly black in shock. It was a punishment from God, retribution for his turning away from the True Faith.

They did not realise it, any of the others, but in seeking to destroy the Government of England, the dashing and charismatic Robert Catesby was saying sorry to God and the True Faith.

Percy was droning on still, petulant, like a spoilt child denied a sweetmeat. In a month or two he would probably be dead, as they all would be dead. Yet by their death they would have become martyrs to the Faith, opening the floodgates that would allow Christ to reign again in England. A faint smile played on the face of Robert Catesby as he contemplated the thought. Christ had died so that all of humankind could be saved. What did a few lives matter if by their death England was allowed to live again?

They were in the library of the House, the room where Gresham knew he was most likely to find Jane once her domestic duties were over.

'What new people have you taken on in these past three months?' Gresham asked.

'Two, I think — a kitchen maid and a porter. Why do you ask, sir?'

'Someone must have been watching Will Shadwell. There must be a chance, therefore, that someone is watching his master. The best place to keep watch on a man is from inside his own house… Walsingham had a bribed servant in every nobleman's house in London.'

'Sir!' Jane exploded. 'I'd trust every man and woman of them with my life!'

'Jane, they worship you, God knows why — but there's never any servant on God's earth who's free from sin! You must learn. I'm truly sorry. It's a hard lesson. Trust no-one. Wasn't Judas Jesus's most favoured disciple, and what's a disciple but a servant? In any event, they probably risk too much by trying for someone already in employment. No, the easiest way would be to plant a rotten flower in this garden of rest. What of the two new people?'

'One's a distant cousin of Martha's. She's a lovely girl, about whom I’ve had to have strong words with your body-servant.' She gazed darkly at Mannion, who shrugged his shoulders as if to ask what a venerable innocent such as he should have to do with a young girl. 'He may pay his dues to your body, my Lord, but he'll keep away from those bodies over which I've charge and care. In any event, she's no spy. She lacks the brains, poor thing, apart from anything else.

'The other's a Northumbrian. He says he's seen service at sea. He comes with an excellent testimonial from my Earl of Northumberland's houses. He's a strong worker. I hired him above the others because he plays the lute.'

Gresham had the extravagant number of five musicians in his permanent employ, who played for him every evening he was in the House. Though Gresham hated public entertaining it was politic for him to drag himself to lay on five or six events a year, the taste and expense of which made them highlights of London's social calendar. For such events his band would be augmented by other musicians. It made for better music if there were such already in the employ of the House, if only through it allowing more of the practice which Gresham knew was essential for any good musician. The Cook played a merry flute, if a little too merry for Gresham's private ear of an evening, but more than good enough for a raucous evening where the finer points of intonation would never be heard by the guests.

'Was he with us when my room was gone through?' The room Gresham used as a study had been carefully searched one night some months ago. Only someone with an intimate knowledge of his papers would have spotted that a search had ever taken place.

'It happened on the first night he was with us,' Jane responded, with a frown.

'Didn't that make you suspicious?'

'Three houses had windows broken that night, on top storeys, including our own. There was a roofwalker about that night, for certain. It never crossed my mind to think that your intruder was anything other than such a man, on the look-out for whatever he might find.'

The houses crowding in on each other in London's streets meant that the roofs of even the finest properties often nearly touched each other. For the brave and the foolhardy, and for many thieves, there were roads across the roofs and into the houses more clearly laid out than the roadways beneath.

Gresham turned to Mannion.

'Bring this new man to me, in a half-hour. Send him to the dressing room, off the back balcony.' 'Do you want me there?' Jane asked.

'I think we're best left to do the business alone,' said Gresham. This time Jane took no offence.

They moved to the rear of the house, facing the river. Gresham's father had built a second great Hall at the back, with one of the finest balconies in London overlooking the Thames. A 'cut' from the main river allowed boats to dock at the House's own jetty. The room they chose to interview the new servant was just off the balcony, small and framed in brick and timber.

There was a clumping up the stairs, and Mannion ushered in the new man. He was tall, well-built and powerful, some thirty-five years old with a mop of reddish hair. There was no change in Gresham's expression as he greeted him.

'Good morning. Welcome to the House. You're pleased with your new post?'

If the man, Sam Fogarty as he had given his name, felt any surprise at this affable expression of interest from his master, he did not show it. He spoke confidently, looking Gresham in the eye. The accent was thick as sewage, but comprehensible.

'I'm well pleased, sir, to be in your Worship's service. It's the envy of London among serving-men to work in such a place.'

Gresham nodded to Mannion, who drew silently closer.

'Tell me, Sam, how long have you worked for my Lord Cecil?'

'Cecil, sir?' To his credit, Sam's face hardly blanched. 'I've never worked for Lord Cecil. I came here from the north…'

He did not hear the blow coming from Mannion, but merely saw his world explode into stars and an instantaneous moment of blinding pain.

When he came to, minutes later, his feet were tightly trussed with stout cord, and his arms loosely tied behind his back. The top half of his body was extended over the opened trap door, a black hole from which a foul smell blew into the room.

'One push from Mannion,' said Gresham carefully, coming round from behind the table at which he had sat with a goblet of wine in his hand, 'and you'll descend that chute head-first. It's brick-lined. It descends the height of the House, with enough curves in it to break your head to pulp. At the bottom is an old well. It's been spoilt by foul water from the river creeping in. We no longer use it for water. As far as we know there's no exit to the river. Or to anywhere else. Those who survive the descent splash around for as long as they have breath and then drown. We've heard them for a day or more, but they always fall silent. Now tell me, how long have you worked for Lord Cecil?'

Sam's head was aflame, his gut sick with the foul stench of rotting flesh that swept up from the black depths of the trap door.

'I know of no work for Lord Cecil…'

Mannion pushed his body an inch or two closer to the drop.

Sam screamed.

'You see,' Gresham responded conversationally, 'I remember faces. I remember being ushered out through the servants' hall of his Lordship's house some two… or was it three?… years ago. And you were there, Master Sam, with your red mop, holding court to most of the kitchen wenches. I recognised you as you walked through the door. Your voice, as much as your hair and face. You were shouting to the wenches, back then, telling them a bad joke as I recollect…'

Gresham grabbed the man's hair and pulled his head back, looking into his fear-crazed eyes. 'Now tell me, Sam Redmop, for the last time. How long have you worked for Lord Cecil?'

'Sir… my Lord…' Suddenly, the man's whole body sagged. 'Spare me. Spare me. Four years. No more. Four years only.'

'Break his leg. The left one.'

The body writhed in protest. The crack was sickening as Mannion's club smashed the bone into a clean break. Sam screamed again.

Mannion pulled the body back from the abyss and flung the trap door shut, bolting it securely. He turned then to the writhing and gasping body, cut loose the cord around its legs and with a practised efficiency set splints around the twisted limb.

Sam's body could only flutter now, on the edge of unconsciousness. Gresham yanked his head round, more gently this time.

'We'll pay for a surgeon to look to your wound. You'll walk again, and walk as good as ever you did if you're careful. The pain you'll suffer is your payment for daring to seek to spy on Henry Gresham. No one spies on Henry Gresham. No one enters his household as a spy.

'You'll be held, in a secret place, until you can walk. You'll be given money, enough to get you back to Northumberland, and a little more. After that, it's up to you. Your Lord Cecil will be told that you came to visit the House, and that you suffered an accident in which you were most "unfortunately drowned. As far as Cecil is concerned you'll be dead. If he hears of your existence, he'll assume you've deceived him and turned to my service, and he'll kill you. I suggest a new name and a new livelihood. The old one is truly dead.'

Gresham let the head drop, and turned away. He stopped by the door. 'It's not good to seek to betray Henry Gresham. Remember my mercy in sparing your life and sending you on your way.'

He left, closing the door quietly behind him. Two porters entered and carried out the groaning, semi-conscious figure. Mannion growled a sentence of instruction at them. They nodded.

Mannion found Gresham in the Minstrels' Gallery of the Great Hall.

'Is it wise to declare war on Cecil?' he asked bluntly. 'Do you intend to send such a message to him?' 'Old friend, do you think I'm a fool?' 'Sometimes.'

'Well, rest assured. Master Sam believes his death has been announced to Cecil. That makes him truly a dead man if he seeks to return to Cecil's service. As for me, I'll send no message to Lord Cecil. Far better that he should wait and wonder what's happened to his spy, see his man vanish into silence. Let's keep his Lordship guessing, old man. And whilst we're so doing, let's find out what's truly happening out there. And why Lord Cecil wants a spy in my house. He keeps me guessing about Bacon. Now I shall keep him guessing about his spy.'

Mannion pondered this for a moment. 'Who'll tell your mistress that we hired a Judas?'

'I'll tell her. It wasn't her fault. It's only by chance I was able to spot him as what he was. Just as important, will you help me to tell Cook and your mistress why I ordered two rotting sides of beef?'

The trap door over which Sam had been suspended led to no well. It was a service chute, a straight drop to the ground floor where goods delivered from the river could be hoisted up to the top storeys of the House. A shutter at the bottom deprived it of light when closed. Two decaying sides of beef suspended on a shelf feet below the trap door provided the stench of the charnel house that so fixed the minds of those suspended above it.

A short distance away down the Strand, Robert Catesby's party was also breaking up, Thomas Percy still bleating to whoever would listen how hard done by he was.

Catesby marvelled at his own sense of relaxation, seeing and almost tasting the fear on the skin of the others. Even the delay in convening Parliament — it would not assemble now until

November 5th — could be handled. The cursed powder would be subject to its interminable decay. The risk of a chance discovery in the cellar, or drink or pillow talk from one of the conspirators revealing more than was wise, was ever-present and grew with each extra day. Yet they had come this far. They would prepare as well for November 5th as they had for October 3rd. God would protect them.

He began to hum the words from his favourite song of the moment:

'Thou art my King, O God…'

It had a springy, firm rhythm and a quick tempo, one of Tom Campion's best, he thought.

Through Thee will we Overthrow our enemies And in Thy Name I will tread them down. 1 will tread them down…'

Tom Wintour paused as he left the tavern. It had been a week or more since he had had a woman. The whores at The Duck and Drake were of the best kind, aimed at the fashionable clientele of the tavern. Even at this hour a handful were on duty, dressed like Court ladies. Why not, he thought, as his roving eye caught the glance of a particularly fine girl dressed in deep red. Why not? She was one of Moll Cutpurse's girls, he knew, and Moll's girls were the best there were.