The Desperate remedy

Chapter 7

‘I still don't think I like the sound of this man Francis Tresham,' said Jane, working through the pile of papers on which Gresham had scribbled notes and records of interviews.

Mannion's proposal for securing the undivided attention of Francis Tresham was simple. Waylay him in a street, knock him on the head and drag him off to Alsatia. Even in London's anarchic streets it struck Gresham that this direct action might draw unnecessary attention to those involved. Jane had the simplest and best idea. Send Tresham a note in his lodgings, a note promising that he would hear something to his advantage if he came to their address in Alsatia, with a time scrawled on it.

'Spiders don't go chasing flies,' said Jane. 'Flies come to spiders.'

Jane had read her man correctly. A sensible young man, newly come into his inheritance, would not have risked the trip into Alsatia on what might have been a wild-goose chase. But Francis Tresham was not sensible, not once during his whole life.

'So he comes here, knocks on the door — and then we knock him over?' suggested Mannion hopefully.

'He'll be on his own, if we tell him to,' said Gresham. 'If he's come this far, we're hardly going to need to drag him in through the door unconscious, are we? Do you only have four ways of responding to anything?'

'As many as that?' enquired Jane innocently.

'Eat it, drink it, bed it or hit it. Has it ever entered your mind to think about something?'

‘No,' said Mannion, 'takes too much time.' He gathered up the breakfast dishes. 'And whatever it is I do, it's kept me alive all these years.' He clumped down the stairs, clearly feeling himself fully justified.

Tresham's servant gloried in the name William Vavasour. He looked down his nose at the hefty bribe Mannion put with the note to his master, but did not refuse it. Tresham's greed triumphed over any discretion he might have had, and he turned up on cue at the door of the ill-favoured house as night was falling. A huge rat was feeding off something that might once have been flesh. It looked haughtily up at Tresham, and scuttled off only when it had delayed long enough to show who held the real command. The grumpy and ill-looking couple Gresham had installed on the ground floor of the house let Tresham in, and the man motioned with his head for him to go upstairs. As he did so, the door clanged shut behind him, and Tresham turned to see the doorway blocked out by the figure of Mannion.

'Upstairs…' Mannion breathed at him, and he fled up the thin wooden treads like a bolting rabbit.

Gresham sat at the table. The shutters had been closed, and the room was full of lamps. He was dressed in black, with a small, neat white ruff the only contrast on his dress. Several of the Gresham jewels sparkled on his fingers and his clothes. There was a chilling stillness to him. He flicked a hand, inviting Tresham to be seated.

Tresham was a wiry, unkempt figure in his late thirties, Gresham knew. He would have guessed him some years short of that, his boyish face showing few wrinkles. At first glance he was quite handsome, but the effect was reduced by a set of thin lips and eyes that flickered all the time like a snake's tongue. His shirt was filthy, the doublet over it richly slashed and pointed but crumpled and dirty. He wore muddy riding boots over a fine hose that would not have shamed an audience at court.

'Who are you? What do you want?' Tresham barked out the words, his hand fingering the fine sword hanging by his waist.

'I'm your avenging angel,' said Gresham mildly, 'and I can send you to Heaven or to Hell. What I want is to decide which one it will be.'

'You have no hold over me, you…'

Gresham cut Tresham short with one simple motion, holding up the palm of his hand.

'Francis Tresham, born 1567, first child and only son of Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton and Muriel Throckmorton of Coughton. Educated at St John's College and Gloucester Hall.

'First arrested in June 1591. You altered a Privy Council warrant, didn't you? Instead of some Godforsaken tailor who owed you money you substituted the name of a troublesome tenant. Then you beat him up and his pregnant daughter.'

'That's not true! The man was a rogue, he…'

'Shut up,' said Gresham, quietly, and for some reason Francis Tresham did so.

'Bailed out by your father this time, and countless times there-after. Married Anne Tufton of Hothfield, and soon one of the wild band who gathers in Essex House giving promises as rashly as they spend money they do not have. Arrested again in 1596 for possible involvement in a Catholic conspiracy, and arrested in 1601 for involvement in the Essex uprising. Bribed out of the Tower, to the near ruin of his father. The father who is now dead, of course. The loving father who spent thousands of pounds on rescuing his son, despite the fact that the son in question, allowed to live in the manor of Hoxton, tried to cheat his father out of lands he owned there…'

Tresham had sat with head bowed. Suddenly he placed both his hands under the table and heaved it up at Gresham, following it with a mad rush, his sword half out of his scabbard. It had worked for him in countless taverns and brawls.

He could not remember properly what happened next. The strange, dark man was suddenly not behind the table, but standing to one side. Tresham felt a huge blow to the side of his head, and then a searing, roaring pain. The dark man's toe connected with vicious power between his legs, the flat of his foot sending him flying through the air. He flew into the wall, cracking his head on a timber, and blackness descended.

'I knew you'd have to hit him,' said Mannion contentedly, dragging up the prostrate figure and propping him upright against the wall. 'Shall I tie him up?'

'No,' said Gresham. 'Let him try again, if he needs to. He must know who his new master is. He won't learn tied up.'

When Tresham came round he was aflame with pain. The most beautiful girl he had ever seen was sponging the blood off what felt like a large hole in his head. He felt sick with the agony in his groin.

The girl spoke calmly, as she took the sponge away. 'I think I'll not try to ease the pain down there,' she said. 'Look at me.'

He did so. Her eyes were the most startling dark pools he had ever seen, burning with an intensity he had only seen before on the coldest and clearest star-lit night.

'Take my advice. Don't fight him. Here or elsewhere. He'll win, and you'll die. Listen, do what he says, and you might live.'

She placed the bloodied cloth in a rough wooden bucket, and moved out of the light. Was he in Heaven, or in Hell? And was this stunning creature an angel or a devil?

'What do you want?' asked Tresham, muzzily.

'Shall we start again?' It was the same figure, dressed in black, seated behind the same table that had been returned to exactly the same place. Yet this time there was a silver jug and two goblets on the table, and a delicious smell of fruity wine. The wild thought crossed Tresham's mind that the man had known he would hurl the table back, had not placed the wine on it until the first, annoying little trial of strength was over and they could get down to business. A different type of fear began to flood through his veins, a fear so sharp that it started to soften the physical pain and make it less important.

'Guido or Guy Fawkes. Robert, or Robin as he is sometimes called, Catesby. Thomas Percy. Thomas Wintour. Robert Wintour. John Grant. Kit Wright. John Wright. Robert Keyes.'

Suddenly the pain returned.

'Do you want to come and sit at the table? To take some wine with me? You're not bound.'

The confidence, the sheer arrogance of the man. As far as Tresham could see there was only the woman in the room, seated in a corner. They had not even taken his sword or dagger away. An overwhelming sense of defeat came to Tresham. He crawled to his feet, sucking in his breath as the blood flowed through his broken head and sent needles into his brain and groin.

'What do you want? Who are you?'

Tresham knew the questions were sounding like an increasingly pathetic litany.

'I want you.' Gresham spoke as if it were the simplest thing in the world. ‘I know that something evil is being planned by a group of men who number you among their friends. I believe you either know of it, or are in a position to find out. And I know that you face ruin and prosecution already, because you've been in trouble too many times, and you'll be associated with whatever these your friends are up to regardless of whether or not you're involved. You're a very lonely man, Francis Tresham.'

He paused for a moment..

'And you're a fool. You've chased every fashion and innovation the world could offer, without thought, without sensitivity and without feeling. You've lived your life as if life itself was created only for you, and for your enjoyment.'

Tresham looked up, startled.

'Granted, you seem to love your wife as much as you love anyone except yourself, but even that's not much. I believe you're one of nature's traitors. A spy. A double agent…'

'My father was a pompous old fool.' There was defiance, a cruel arrogance in Tresham's eyes. As well as a capacity for a very quick recovery. 'He spent thousands on vainglorious buildings. What matter if some of that money was diverted to my vainglory? At least I was a living thing, not a thing of cold brick and stone! For him I feel no guilt.'

'I'm sure you don't,' said Gresham. 'But now you'll turn traitor for me.'

'And why should I do that?'

'For self-interest, as you've done everything in your life. Because if I know that your friends are about to behave most dangerously, so will others know, and you're too selfish to wish to be dragged down with them. Because I'll give you a great deal of money. And because I'll kill you if you don't.'

'How much money?'

Gresham told him. His eyes opened wide.

'Can you prove to me you have that much money?'

Gresham tossed a purse on to the table. It shivered under the weight. Tresham pulled it open, let the gold coins run through his fingers. Gresham felt rather than heard Jane's disapproval from behind him.

'Do you have to give good money to such a… stench of a man?' Jane had asked. She had never quite got used to, and never quite brought herself to believe, how much Gresham was worth. He saw money as a tool. She saw it as security.

Tresham's mind had been focussed by the gold. Perhaps here there was real profit, as well as mere survival.

'If my… friends are as indiscreet as you say, what if their ship breaks up and they're cast on the shore while I'm still inside it?'

'If needs be, you'll be spirited out of the Tower and sent off to France.'

'You can do that?' Disbelief mingled with wonder caught Tresham's voice. The sheer weight of gold had shocked him.

'Yes. Enough bargaining. How much do you already know of what your friends are planning?'

There are moments in life when huge crossroads come to bear in one time and in one place, not just on the life of one human, but on the life of countless thousands. A decision taken one way, and history spins instantly down one road, making that road seem the inevitable, the only choice. Yet there are countless other roads, and but for one decision, one moment frozen in time, the inevitable might never have happened. Without realisation, without seeing a tiny fraction of all the roads that might have been, in a filthy hovel, Francis Tresham chose his road, and in so doing chose the road for countless other souls. There was no priest there to sanctify or bless the act, no ritual to clothe and comfort the deed, no scribe ready to record a laundered version for later generations. There was only a man dressed in black with a neat white ruff and piercing eyes.

Tresham sat back, reached forward for wine as if daring Gresham to deny him.

'I know Robin Catesby has some idea to remove the Government and to bring in Catholic rule to England. He and the others have been talking for years. We've all been talking. Yet we've done nothing. Until now. Those names you mentioned. They've been meeting, all of them, more even than normal. There's talk, gossip. Whatever this plan is, it has the women all a-twitter, and the priests looking like a woman had been elected Pope. I know no details. Catesby's sworn me to secrecy. He told me it was safer if I knew nothing that could be tortured out of me, but that my time would come. He told me that he must keep me warm for the fire that would break out later. I think he's nervous of me.'

'You mean your friends don't think you're trustworthy?'

Tresham shrugged, carelessly.

An interesting young man, Gresham thought. Not without courage — the trick with the table would have worked with someone of less experience and speed. The crack on the head and the kick to the prospects of the next Tresham heir must still be causing him considerable pain, as would the shock of realising that his secret was in the hands of a potential enemy, yet he had recovered quickly, was thinking on his feet. He was offering no emotional pleading, no excuses. He was scum, thought Gresham. Will Shadwell with money and some breeding. An adventurer, a wanton.

'How do I know you'll pay me the rest?'

'I will,' said Gresham. 'It's as certain that I'll pay you if you spy for me as it's certain I'll kill you if you don't. Anyway, in the gospel, even Judas was paid.'

How would he take that hit?

Tresham blinked, but recovered. 'Without Judas, Christ might have lived. And if that had been true, we would have been deprived of all the bishops and prelates the world has ever seen. How could we have lived deprived of such comfort? Perhaps even Judas was sent from Heaven.'

Witty, too, thought Gresham, in a clumsy sort of way. His victim was speaking again.

'Who are you? For whom or for what do you work? Are you one of Cecil's men?'

'Be careful,' said Jane from her corner, 'unless you want the other side of your head broken, and more besides!'

'No,' said Gresham, 'I'm not one of Cecil's men. I'm someone who sees a torrent of blood falling on the heads of innocent and guilty alike. I can't stop that blood. I can, perhaps, limit it.'

'How can I know that? You're asking me to trust my life to you, without even a name I can call out should I die doing your will.'

'Then best make sure you don't die. And best make sure not to betray me. It's not good for those who seek to do so.'

'That I do believe. What do you want from me, if I'm asked to join whatever is planned? Just to betray my friends? Or to kill someone?' Neither prospect seemed to alarm Francis Tresham.

'Your friends have betrayed themselves already. I suspect they're like you, dead men merely waiting the fall of the executioner's axe. As for the rest of it, I want information.' Gresham felt like adding that whatever he asked for and received, its aim would be to get as few killed as possible. That might make it less attractive for Tresham. He kept silent.

'There's something I've not told you,' Tresham said, reaching another decision. He had adapted to the new circumstances with ferocious speed, thought Gresham. 'I'm bidden to dinner with Robin Catesby next week. At William Patrick's ordinary, The Irish Boy, on the Strand.'

'Who else goes?'

Tresham reeled off some names. One of them was Ben Jonson, the playwright, another the Catholic peer Lord Mordaunt.

'There'll be another guest. Myself.'

'How so? Do you want me to ask for another invitation?'

'No. How I get there is my concern. All that's required of you is to give no sign of recognition at the dinner. This Catesby,' said Gresham, 'describe him to me.'

Mannion escorted Tresham back to his lodgings, following a few paces behind. Francis Tresham had suddenly become a very valuable commodity. Gresham stayed with his other valuable commodity.

'I was right,' said Jane, 'I didn't like him at all.' He had leered at Jane as he left. 'I'd hate to be a woman in his power.'

Gresham needed to meet Catesby face to face. The man described by the informers and the man described by Francis Tresham was a larger-than-life figure, a maniac preacher with the capacity to lift people off their seats and brand them to his cause. Yet Gresham had known such people who were pure charlatans, whose bravado vanished at the first hint of reality. Was Catesby such a person, weaving a huge web of intrigue to feed a massive pride, a vessel of much noise and no substance? Or did he have the power to mount an uprising, to knock settled government off its perch and into the raging seas of rebellion and unrest?

Gresham had to see this Catesby, had to meet him, had to taste the flavour of the man in the flesh.

So it was that there was an extra guest at dinner in The Irish Boy.

Robert Catesby waited outside Harrowden, his horse restless, shaking its head and pawing the ground. It was as if the animal picked up the unease of its master. Tom Bates looked questioningly at his master, to ask if he wished Bates to take the horse walking round the yard. Catesby shook his head.

Everard Digby was taking an unconscionably long time to say farewell to his wife and children, he thought. It was not as if they were riding to the ends of the world. It was only some fifteen miles from Harrowden to Gayhurst. They had all gathered at Harrowden, both the Vaux women, the new Lord Vaux, the other women and the priests and all the other band of wittering folk. They thought, him hot-headed and rash, but he had the sense to realise how dangerous these gatherings were so soon after the pilgrimage to Flintshire had wound its very public way through the marches.

Digby — Sir Everard Digby — had also been one of the company at Harrowden, which was why Catesby had invited himself to attend. Yet the moment to get Digby on his own, to broach the plot and the vital part Digby had to play in it, never seemed to present itself. In desperation, Catesby had hinted at how much the party would enjoy a stay at Gayhurst, Digby's home, after the dilapidated state of Harrowden. When the ever-innocent Digby had agreed with his usual enthusiasm, it had been easy for Catesby to suggest that the two old friends might ride on ahead, to check that all was ready to receive the new guests at Gayhurst, or Gothurst as it was sometimes known.

Catesby saw all people through the mirror of his own soul. He had seen for years how the power and the charm he could direct on to his fellow men and women would eat away at their reserve and caution, however hard they tried to resist it, and make them as clay in his hands. For most of his life luring people into the web of his personality had been a game, a pleasure to put alongside hunting, gambling and, latterly, bedding a pretty woman.

Yet he felt uneasy over his final recruits. Francis Tresham was a wild and an angry thing, a man with no real belief that Catesby could anchor on to. Yet Catesby had always known that Tresham would also acquire a great deal of wealth on the death of his father, something which all along had made him an attractive proposition. Well, he would clinch it in London and then at Clerkenwell. The need for money was too pressing to allow for any delay, and once sworn in Tresham, like all the others, would have too much to lose by betrayal.

Everard Digby was a different proposition. Catesby needed him not only for his money, but for his personality as well. One of Digby's attractions was his innocence. Another was his staunch Protestant background. He had been converted by the priest Gerard, who not only behaved and dressed like a gentleman but, thought Catesby, actually believed he was one. Father Gerard had caught Digby somehow when he was ill, and used his panic to show him the true path. Amusingly, he had converted Mary, Digby's wife, entirely separately, with neither of the pair knowing of the other's conversion. It was typical of Gerard to keep the news from them and enjoy their consternation at the discovery.

It was that radiant innocence, that wholesomeness that Catesby needed. Everard was not only known at Court. He was feted as one of its rising stars. He looked like a God, and he rode a horse as if he had been sewn to it in the womb. He was an excellent swordsman and, by all accounts, a brilliant musician, though the latter was something Catesby had never acquired the taste for. Someone had to invest Coombe Abbey and take away the Princess Elizabeth. If it was a rat-arsed Tom Wintour, John Grant with a face that looked like it had come from Hell or a drunken Thomas Percy who broke in to Coombe House to take the Princess Elizabeth, the ser-vants would as like fight to the death as do the decent thing and surrender before anyone got hurt, reckoning they were dead already. The Princess Elizabeth was only a girl after all, and too much fear could cause God knew what complications with her. Didn't girls who thought their virtue was threatened throw them' selves off high walls? Any girl with half her wits about her seeing Wintour, Grant or Percy coming towards her would know she was going to get more than a handshake. Yet if Digby was the attacker there might well be no fight at all. He was a Court favourite, a knight and one of the new King's Gentlemen Pensioners, known as a family man through and through, and with a visage that could calm a raging bull. Princess Elizabeth was no use to Catesby or to Catholicism skewered on a blade or cast down into a ditch. Why, Digby's charm might even keep the truth away from her about what had happened to her mother and father for some crucial hours. All the more likely if Digby himself did not know the truth — or at least, not the whole truth.

Why should Digby throw away a beautiful wife, a beautiful family and some of the best prospects in the country to join a wild plot? Catesby smiled to himself as Digby came pelting down the steps to his waiting horse, full of apologies and orders to his men. Beneath the sweet innocence the world saw in Sir Everard Digby, Catesby saw a mulish determination and stubbornness where it came to religion.

They set off along the deserted road, Tom Bates riding behind and carefully out of earshot. For a while they let the horses have their heads. It was as if they could not wait to shed the inactivity of the night in the stables, the pounding of their hooves driving the stable dust out of their bones and the remnants of the night out of their riders' bodies.

'Digby, old friend, will you do something to please me?'

They had reined in by the side of a brook that was almost a trickle, but which in a month would be roaring like a mini-torrent.

'I'd give my life to please you, Robin. You know that.'

'Will you swear an oath of secrecy to me? An oath that on all that's holy, and on all that you hold holy, you'll never reveal what I say to any living soul on earth?'

The ever-present smile on the youthful face of Everard Digby had gone now. There was still the flush of outrageous good health to his face, a face that had been full of happiness and contentment at his fine mount, the fine October morning and the excitement of riding with his friend. A frown of uncertainty caused little-used lines to crinkle in his face.

'I do so swear. You have my word as a gentleman. But why…'

‘I’ve asked you to swear a simple corporal oath, old friend. The others, the others who're sworn to secrecy, they've had to swear and seal the oath with the blessed sacrament. It's a measure of the faith I have in you, you who've always been special to me, that I need no more than your word as a gentleman. Here…' Catesby produced his dagger from his belt. A fine silver inlay, its hilt formed the sign of the Cross, 'swear, here on this dagger. Swear you'll be secret. Swear you'll be silent.'

They made a strange tableau that fine October morning, two finely horsed gentlemen etched against the skyline, the luxury of their lives a mystery to any peasant who might have seen them, imagining some joke or jest to be passing between them as they rested their horses by water.

'I swear,' said Digby, nervous now, but laying hand on the hilt. How cold it felt.

The pair moved on, the ever-present Bates behind them.

'Do you believe in me? Do you believe that I see things others don't see, understand things others don't understand? Do you?'

'Why, yes, of course…' Digby was nervous, unsettled. 'You know I've always looked up to you above all others, Robin. Wasn't I one of the first to recognise and tell you that you were special?'

Catesby put out a hand and stopped Digby's horse. It snorted, pushing its head up and down, irritated to be halted.

'Digby, I'm God's messenger. I have known it for years. God is working through me. Do you understand? Do you believe in me?'

He had stopped so the sun was directly behind him, and perhaps the threatening summer shower and the humidity was responsible for the faint aura that seemed to glow round Catesby's head and shoulders.

Everard Digby felt the hot tears scorch his eyelids, and a mixture of embarrassment, fear and awe caused him to stumble in his words.

'I… I do believe in you, Robin. You've always been so certain, always known best… yes, perhaps it is God I hear speaking through your mouth… I… I…' The hot tears broke their confine and flooded down his face.

'Sssh,' said Catesby, taking his hand and laying it gently across Digby's mouth, as if he were a kind father soothing a baby. 'And listen to me. We plan to destroy the King and his minions. We've powder stacked beneath the Lords, primed and ready. On the day when Parliament is opened, when the King and his heir, when Cecil and his crew, when all those who've oppressed the True Faith are gathered under the one roof, we'll light a fire that won't be extinguished until God's rule is again dominant in England. We'll blow them all to Hell. Even as the blast is happening we'll seize the Princess Elizabeth, and ride through the Midlands and west, raising thousands to add to the three hundred we've assembled. Percy will bring his men down from the north, the Spanish troops in Dover will throw off" their idleness and march to Rochester, strangling the Thames and London's life blood. From the south will come the Catholics of Europe…'

It is doubtful if Digby heard beyond the first half of Catesby's words. The colour drained from his face. His hands clutched at the horse's reins so hard as to make the animal jump and slither in protest. It was not the movement of his horse that made him put a hand on his pommel, but the sudden wave of sickness and fear that came over him. He stumbled into words.

'This is… strange beyond belief. It's a terrible thing, a terrible thing. You ask for my support…'. 'I demand your support.' Catesby leant over to his friend, driving hard with his voice as his chin jutted forward and his voice rose. 'This is no fancy, no boy's play. This is God's work, I know it, a blast that will echo up to Heaven and down to Hell! There can be no-one on the sidelines in this. You're in, or you're a coward. Are you a coward?'

Digby was too young and too spoilt to see that he was being goaded by the accusation of cowardice, goaded into not thinking.

'I'm no coward!' The cry was drawn out of him, as if from a drowning man at the bottom of a deep well. Catesby gave him no time to relent.

'You'll join us then? You'll risk your life for your faith? The faith you've so newly found? Or will you give it up as easily as it came to you? Are you a Christian, or do you simply worship at the altar of ease arid comfort, saying the words but denying the duty of faith? Is your belief real, or is it false coin?'

A small tear formed in Everard Digby's right eye, and rolled gently down his cheek. The wind whittled away at it, making it tremble as it hung on his flesh.

'Must I join, Robin? Must I do this?'

'If you're a Christian, you must. If you're a coward, do nothing, except remain secret. Let the men risk all for justice and for their faith, while the children stay at home.'

If the barbs hit home there was no reaction on Digby's face, as round, as innocent and as woebegone as a boy who has been told that Christmas will not happen after all. It was a face that would have melted the heart of a devil, but not the devil sent to accompany Sir Everard Digby on his lonely road to damnation, the devil who went by the name of Catesby.

'I'm no coward, nor no boy. If I must join, I will join your hellish plan, God help me and my loved ones.' There was a pathetic dignity in his tone.

But you have not yet said that you will join, Catesby thought. And I need you. I need your wealth, I need your horses, and I need your chivalry and your access to the Court so that the Princess

Elizabeth will come sweetly and there will be no second blood bath. They rode on in silence. Catesby's skill lay in knowing when to talk, but also in when to stay silent.

'What of our friends, Robin? What of the Catholic Lords? Are they to be blown to perdition, as well as our enemies? How could God forgive such a crime?'

'Rest assured, it's taken care of. Those who're worth saving will be preserved, without knowing how or why they were saved. We've thought long on this, and we need you.'

'What of the priests? What do they say? How can a priest sane-tify murder?'

'The priests know. They've approved the matter,' Catesby lied. Perhaps a priest knew under the secret of the confessional, but that was not to approve the act, merely to recognise that nothing could break that secret and the bond it established between a man, his priest and his God. How could he head off the young fool going to Father Garnet to confess? Garnet would not reveal the confession directly, but he could take steps in Europe to deny Catesby the help on which his rebellion would depend.

'When we reach your home, I'll show you the texts that make what we do a necessary evil. The Scriptures have always allowed acts of violence against the heathen — were the innocents on the walls of Jericho to be spared before the anger of the Lord? Were the Philistines to be allowed to triumph over God's people and his armies? Didn't the Pope sanctify the death of that whore Elizabeth when she declared herself against God's people?'

Catesby leant over again, and reined in his friend's horse. Gayhurst was visible in the distance, a wisp of smoke and nestling buildings.

'You know what threats we face. Do you want your children to inherit from their father? Do you wish our cause to be ruined, our people cast into penury, our faith trampled into the dust and mud? Then do nothing. Or rise up against the tide of fortune, and fight. Fight like a man.'

Sir Everard Digby gazed out on to the home of his wife and his children, the scene of his idyllic marriage and a life as near perfect, in his opinion, as the age could offer. There in the brick and stone of Gayhurst was a future to bring redemption to Hell, a smile on the face of the universe. Was he to risk it all in one fateful throw? Was it his duty? Was it his lot to suffer now, having been blessed so much in his early life?

He turned to his friend.

'You say the priests know of this? They've agreed to it? You'll show me these passages?'

I have you now, exulted Catesby. I have you, and your fine horses, your money and your manners. I have you.

'I will, Everard. Upon my life and upon my soul, I will.'

He set his face into a hard frown, as befitted a man set on serious business, hiding his exultation. Was there a particular pleasure in wrenching a man away from his beautiful wife and fine sons, in placing that wife and her brood in the way of risk and total loss? Digby had been too happy, thought Catesby. No mortal deserved that happiness, it was not the way of the world. Pain, suffering and sacrifice, those were the way of the world. Pain, suffering and sacrifice that all the world had to experience before they could gain entrance to God's kingdom. He was doing Everard Digby a favour by plunging him into Hell on earth. It would guarantee him his place in Heaven.

Ben Jonson's Court was The Mermaid tavern, his Presence Chamber its tap room and his courtiers a huge and adoring crowd of actors and writers, and an equal crowd of would-be actors and writers. However, The Mermaid was far too public a place for a man to be seen who was not meant to be in London at all. The next best bet was Jonson's lodgings.

Jonson had money, now that his liaison with Inigo Jones was producing a torrent of Court income. Gresham doubted that his friend's incomings would ever exceed his outgoings. His lodgings were in a back street a long way away from any fashionable area, but gratifyingly near Alsatia. It was not early in the morning when Gresham, in a workman's uniform, arrived at Jonson's chamber door. He had brought Mannion with him, feeling threat in the very air he breathed. Jane he had brought partly because of the feeling that she was only safe when with him, and partly through the realisation that it was folly to leave a young and beautiful woman on her own in Alsatia. She was also becoming very bored, a sulphurous cloud of tedium hanging over her in the tiny environs of their bolt hole.

The landlord knew Gresham, and let him in with a grin. Jonson had been too drunk to bolt the door when he had fallen into his bed. He lay fully clothed, his snores shaking dust off the ashes of the dead fire. Gresham crept up to him from behind, placed a dagger gently against his throat and hissed loudly in his ear, 'Pay me the money you owe me now, or die!'

Jonson leapt up as if a charge of powder had been set off beneath him, and landed back on the bed, feeling the steel against his throat, eyes as staring wide as a dead fish, unable to see his assailant. He started to gargle, white froth coming from his mouth.

Jane spoke. 'Or he might let you off if you give him a mention in your next play. Ugh! Do you ever wash a shirt?'

Jonson's whole body subsided back on to the bed, hearing the familiar voice, as if the life had drained out of it. Jane was wandering round the room, which looked as if an exceedingly dirty garrison of troops had been stationed in it for months. She picked up various bits of linen, wrinkling her nose as she threw them into a pile.

Jonson rolled over on the bed. 'You bastard!' he grunted at Gresham.

'True. But at least my poetry's good,' responded Gresham with a grin.

'"Calumnies are answered best with silence",' responded Jonson. When he quoted from his own works he always stuck his chest out.

'Please don't quote from your own work, Ben,' asked Gresham. 'Only someone of exceptional arrogance would even remember what they had written, never mind spout it to an unsuspecting public at every opportunity.'

'I am exceptional in everything I do,' grunted Jonson, rubbing his head and heaving himself upright.

'Exceptional as a sycophant, I believe. What were those lines you wrote to celebrate Robert Cecil's sudden uplifting to be Earl of Salisbury? Do I remember…

"What need hast thou of me, or of my Muse Whose actions do themselves so celebrate?"'

'Aye, well,' Jonson responded, pulling on a pair of boots, 'a man has to live.'

'"I do honour the very flea of his dog"?' asked Gresham, quoting from Every Man In His Humour.

'Please don't quote from my works, Sir Henry,' said Jonson solemnly. 'I find it degrades the beauty of my lines.'

Jane was an avid playgoer, and Gresham had become converted during his time with Kit Marlowe. They had known Jonson for years. He traced his roots back to Scotland, and had done so when it was not fashionable to be so linked, and was a Catholic, when it had never been fashionable. He was also an entirely self-taught classical scholar of awesome knowledge, a brawler who had killed a man, a poet of huge genius and a boor, a man of great intuition who at times showed the sensitivity of a stone privy in the Tower. Ben Jonson's body could be and had been caged. His spirit was uncontainable. That at least he shared with Walter Raleigh.

Without expression, Jane picked up the overflowing yellow chamber pot from beside the bed, opened the shuttered window and hurled out the contents into the street below. A fierce yell and a squeal suggested it had found a target. Jonson stopped rubbing his head and feasted his eyes on Jane's trim figure, a beatific smile on his lips. He recovered quickly from shocks. His life had produced enough of them for him to have had to learn quickly.

'Avert your gaze, old lecher, and listen to me. You dine with Lord Mordaunt and Robert Catesby soon enough, I hear?'

Jonson struck a dramatic pose on the bed, the effect somewhat ruined by a button popping off as he raised both his arms. He launched into verse:

'" Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sport of love!"'

'My name's Jane,' replied the object of his attention, poking with her foot at the remnants of what could have been last week's meal on the floor. 'As for your kind proposition, " all the adulteries of art. They strike mine eyes, but not my heart".'

'Spoken beautifully!' exclaimed Jonson, gallantly. 'Almost as well as I could do it myself.'

'Lord Mordaunt? Catesby?' interjected Gresham.

'You're well informed, as ever. What of them?'

He got up clumsily from the bed and walked over to a low, rough-carved table with some bottles on it. Jane stood before it and glowered at him. He veered in mid-course, changing direction to the jug and ewer with something like fresh water in them. He bent over it, motioning to Gresham, who came and poured the contents slowly over his head. He stood up and shook his wet mane like a dog coming out of the river.

'I'm growing thin. I stand in need of a good dinner,' Gresham said, replacing the empty ewer. 'I will be your Scottish cousin who's arrived from the north, in the hope of rich pickings in this city which has newly learned to love a Scotsman so much. Under the circumstances, young Catesby will be delighted to add an extra place to the table, so your kinsman can taste the delights of life with the nobility.'

'Hmmph!' grunted Jonson. 'I trust you've a good Scots accent?'

He looked enquiringly at Jane, and when she stepped aside went to the table and poured two beakers of cheap sack. He offered one to Gresham, who declined it, sipped appreciatively at his own lifer saver and offered Gresham's to Mannion. 'You're invisible, I see…' It was the phrase he used when Gresham did not wish to be recognised. ‘Why this sudden interest in my friends?'

'Is Robert — Robin — Catesby a friend of yours?'

Jonson sat down heavily on a stool. He tossed some written sheets to Jane with an inquisitorial raised eyebrow. She caught them, nodded and settled in a corner to read the scribblings that were Jonson's next play.

'It's most unfair and unusual that someone so beautiful should have intelligence as well,' grumbled Jonson, changing the subject. ' " Blind Fortune still Bestows her gifts on such as cannot use them."'

'Is Catesby that beautiful?' asked Gresham, pretending not to notice.

‘Not him, you fool. Her. That angel who has mistakenly taken to living with an old satyr such as yourself. Perhaps she's hoping to reform you. Beautiful women like to reform lost men,' he added hopefully, watching her as she became instantly lost and totally absorbed in the manuscript.

'I thought it was her honesty you most liked?' There had been a massive row between Jonson and Jane when she had last criticised a piece of his writing. He had called her a lying slut and broken a perfectly good stool by hurling it against a wall, following which Gresham had broken his head. He had rewritten the piece though, Gresham had noticed. 'But you haven't answered my question. Is Catesby a friend of yours?'

'I know him. Everyone of my faith knows him. A friend? Hardly. I refuse to acknowledge the sun shines out of his arse, which is a prerequisite of anyone wanting friendship with him. Young Catesby sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between worshipping our Saviour, and his being our Saviour. He's not a good… influence, I think, on our younger people. But he has a good table. And I'm a good guest.' He gazed sadly down at the remnants of liquid in the now-empty beaker. 'They'll all be Catholics there. Are you after Catholics? Will your presence at our table bring harm to our faith?'

Gresham thought for a moment. If he was to expose a plot to kidnap the King, harm would come to the plotters. But to Catholicism? More harm would come if the plot were allowed to go ahead than if it were destroyed.

'To your faith, no. To some people of your faith, in all probability, yes. To you, too, Ben, if you plan to be in rebellion against the State, as well as against every person of culture and taste…'

The bantering tone did not hide the seriousness of Gresham's answer.

There was a bellow of laughter. 'Me? A rebel! God help me! Don't you think trouble enough comes looking for me, without me sending out invitations for more of it to come visiting?'

Ben Jonson had a mouth as big as his capacity for drink, and a wild reputation, but Gresham had never known him betray a secret. Or, at least, never betray one of Gresham's secrets. Gresham had rescued Jonson from the bailiffs and debtors' prison. The old secrets between them stood custodian over the new ones. Jane gave instructions for the bulging bag of washing to be sent off by servant to the laundress at the House. His manuscript she took away with her. The boredom of Alsatia was due to be lessened at least a little.

'There's risk in this dinner,' said Mannion flatly on their return. He was right. For all its huge size, London was a small town where those at the top of its society were concerned. The other guests seemed unlikely enough on the surface to recognise Gresham for who he was, but disguise would be prudent, and Gresham worked on two principles. Either one altered the original hardly at all, or one went for something outrageously different. He opted for the latter.

'Hold still, will you!' said a cross Jane as she applied the last of the dye to his hair and beard. It had been turned from the darkest black to something reddish, if not verging on positive ginger. A salve applied to his face, neck and hands (and, on Jane's insistence and in the face of his firm opposition, to the whole of the rest of his body) turned his skin dark, almost like that of a Moor. He had not trimmed his beard since they moved out of the House, with the result that it now straggled and looked, as Mannion said, 'Like a badly blown cornfield.' From his extensive wardrobe Gresham had chosen a suit of clothes that a country bumpkin might have been offered by the worst country tailor as being the height of fashion in London. The whole dreadful mess was topped off by a vast bonnet that clashed with his hair and beard and his suit of clothes, and a large eyepatch.

'For the first time in my life, I fear death,' he said to Jane as she finished the last patting on of paste to his beard.

He saw her face fall, and immediately regretted his teasing of her.

'Why so? If you feel that way, you must…'

He raised his hand to stop her. 'Can you imagine what my tailor will say if I go to my coffin dressed like this?' he asked, aghast. The swinging blow to his head was arrested only just in time as she realised it might disturb the newly applied colour.

Dressed like a country bumpkin, and a Scots one at that, Gresham was near besieged by every criminal on duty in London, who saw him coming and could not believe their luck. After he had been pestered with offers of women, card games, bowling alleys and dice halls where only yesterday a fortune had been made to rival Lord Salisbury's, couplings of such power achieved to rival Samson's, and various places where both had been achieved simultaneously, it was a relief to arrive at William Patrick's ordinary. Jonson always arrived at dinner as early as possible, to maximise the amount of time spent troughing at someone else's expense. He met Gresham, held back a brief explosion of apoplexy with commendable restraint, and brought him in to the company.

It was a lively affair. The Irish Boy served excellent food, with wine that was certainly drinkable. Gresham, who had a nose for these things, noticed that Catesby did not stint himself either with the room he had taken or the food and wine served. The room was fresh-painted and had clean rushes strewn on the floor, with hangings of some expense on the walls. A large window let some of the noise of the Strand through, as the cracks in the floorboards and door let some of the noise of the thriving, bustling ordinary up to assail their ears, but not enough to impede conversation.

'It's guid tae meet yae al, guid, guid…' Gresham, who had decided to be called Alexander Selkirk, slurred his words and let them tail off incoherently, a man middlingly drunk but also bemused with new sights and sounds.

He need hardly have bothered. Catesby barely glanced at him before he was dismissed. Jonson was the man, the star brought in to show how well-connected Catesby was, and all eyes were on him. A major playwright, a talking point at Court who was also a Catholic: Ben Jonson was a superb social catch.

'Well met, sir, well met.' It was Tom Wintour, shaking hands with the company, clapping those he knew well on the back. So this was the man for whose sake a whore's bottom would be sore for weeks to come, thought Gresham.

'Here, this is Selkirk, Alex Selkirk, a cousin of mine from Scotland… Cousin Alex, meet Tom Wintour…' Jonson was barely remembering to introduce Gresham. There was a crowd of people, there was good food, there was wine, and Jonson was expanding with almost every minute that passed by. Tom Wintour had come with Catesby. He was a short, stocky figure, with a round face and a cannon-fire way of speech. He was quick, agile, keeping his wit under control but showing a pushy argumentativeness that Gresham imagined could be explosive in more confined or tense situations.

'Have you brought a lot of your friends with you down from the north?' asked Tom Wintour with outward innocence. The reference to King James's horde of hangers-on drawing a guffaw from another member of the company.

'No, no,' replied Gresham, 'but I may hope tae do so if the pickin's are reet guid enough!'

A man to be watched, thought Gresham, someone with the power of the hothead but also the determination and intelligence to be a dangerous enemy. He had the body of a fighter too, Gresham noted, for all that he lacked height.

'My, and you must tell me who your tailor is, Mr Selkirk!' It was Tresham. He had given no flicker of recognition. 'Clothes like that will make a stir anywhere you go!' Another guffaw from the company, except Lord Mordaunt, who thought himself too refined to laugh. Tresham seemed to delight in wearing clothes that had clearly cost good money, but which were crumpled as if tossed carelessly aside at the end of the day. He played his part well, making several scurrilous jokes about the Scots that would have perplexed the real person Gresham was pretending to be, yet got home to other town guests.

Jonson talked endlessly, largely about himself, but he did so with such power, force and good humour that there was a dance in the eyes of all those who listened. The appalling rule of the Lord Chancellor and his power over the plays, the sheer vagabond criminality of all printers and the complete lack of any resemblance to a civilised race of theatre managers and actors, the wonder of Latin, the plan for the next masque, the plan for the next play, the belief that a grateful city should afford its greatest living playwright a theatre of his own, the dreadful affair between Sir Robert Dudley and the mistress he wished to marry… fuelled by greater and greater quantities of alcohol, Jonson's genius and his buffoonery climbed towards the stars in harness.

And what of Catesby? Was this a man full of piss and wind, or a man capable of kidnapping a King? As Gresham observed him it seemed as if the room became darker and darker, the sense of an evil presence almost unbearable. As even Jonson grew tired, and the stories thinner and more unbelievable, so quietly, with hardly a ripple, Robert Catesby began to dominate the conversation, the room and all the people within it.

'We're all victims to the printers!' Jonson was almost shouting now. 'They buy the work, they print the work, they bind the Work and they sell the work — and, if they so please, they put another man's name on the cover! And they get the profit, whilst the poor man who produces the work, whose brain sweats it out over weeks and months — he gets the leavings after the cursed printer has done! Why, these men are nothing more than vultures!'

Catesby broke in. The very quietness of his voice commanded attention.

'Why,' he said to a perspiring Jonson, 'you revile the printers, yet they're as the lice upon your body. They lie still and wait for you to come to them. They backbite and they infect, yet you've no remedy. They feed off you, yet you stop them not. If they grow fat on your blood, isn't it your fault? Throw off your old clothes, man. Scrub your skin. Take the louse between your thumb arid finger…' he picked up a nut from the table, 'and crack it… thus!' The nut shattered over the table. 'Blood for blood; take back your blood, man, or cease your complaining.' It was said gently, conversationally, yet it had the menace of steel slithering out of a smooth scabbard.

There was a pause, and conversation resumed along with the bringing of two fine, freshly baked pies. Later, another of the guests, Lord Mordaunt, raised an obscure theological point, on whether to equivocate or withhold the truth was the same as to tell a lie. Catesby fixed Mordaunt with his eyes and led him down a theological line that had the man tangled in his own arguments as badly as a young ostler caught in the reins of a train of horses.

Catesby knew his Bible, Gresham had to give him that. Textual evidence dropped from him like other men oozed sweat. Gresham had mimed becoming progressively more drunk as the evening wore. He decided to speak.

'I dinnae like the Bible.' That brought a hush, as Gresham knew it would. He had spoken in his thick Scots accent, as a drunk would when suddenly brought back to awareness for an instant. 'There's tae much blood, tae much killin'. Tae many of ma friends have deed..Gresham started to sob, in the maudlin way that drunks did when they had uttered a profound alcoholic truth.

Catesby did not even look at him as he replied. Too much killing, Mr Selkirk? No, surely not. There can be no life without death. Christ wasn't our Saviour until he died in agony.'

'But ma poor wifie! Ma lovely Agnes! An innocent wee lass, taken awa' before she had time to say her prayers…' Was Gresham pushing it too far, would the reference to the dead and innocent wife draw forth a response? It did, but not of the type Gresham expected. Catesby smashed his tankard down on the table with such force that three wooden platters jumped off and rolled along the floor. No-one moved to stop them.

'Innocent? Innocent! We're alive now because we feed on the dead flesh of animals, innocent animals! Like the lamb in the Old Testament, the innocent must be sacrificed so the higher order may triumph. Their squealing over their death does them no credit. Rather they should praise those who sacrifice them, praise those who make something meaningful come from their paltry death. Did Joshua ask for the innocent to leave the walls of Jericho? When the walls fell, do you imagine the soldiers asked who was innocent and who was guilty before they raped and pillaged in the name of God? Innocence is not a virtue. It is a handicap.'

On that note the party ended. Gresham had met many men in his life, some good, some bad, most merely human with all the frailty and weakness humanity brought along as their natural baggage. Pure goodness he had met, surprisingly, far more often than pure evil. Indeed the number in that latter group he could count on the fingers of one hand.

Tonight, Gresham knew he was in the presence of evil. It was in the eyes. It was always in the eyes. Catesby's had a fierce, fixed gleam, an inner light that did not come and go with the moment, with the rising fumes of wine to the head, the excitement of sex or even the lust of battle. The intensity of that madman's gleam did not waver or flicker. Yet it was so gentle, a flash of yellow deep in the pupils, deep and intense burning, that it was almost buried in the proud and handsome tilt of the chin. Gresham had seen that light in the eyes of a judge, in the eyes of a hangman. It was the evil of a man who could not conceive he could be wrong, but whose self-belief could only be satisfied, like a dread hunger, by feeding it with the belief of others. All men, and all beliefs, were simply fuel for Robert Catesby's vanity. In the handsome, dashing figure of Robert Catesby, for a brief and terrible moment, Henry Gresham saw the pride of Lucifer, walking on earth.

"Normal men suspend their feelings,' said Jane, trying to wash as much as possible of the dye off his body, and trying to understand what Gresham, still shaken, had told her. 'When they kill, or when they rape and mutilate, they lock away their feelings behind a great iron door, only opening it when the business is done. Because they didn't feel it when it happened, they tell themselves it never happened. This man, it seems, has no door to shut. Perhaps it was ripped off its hinges when his wife died?'

'Or perhaps it was never truly there.' Gresham shivered and not only with the cold. 'Here, your hands are cold. Let me take over.'

'When I've finished the bits you can't reach. Be still.'

'Why do I doubt so much? Do you doubt? Everything?'

She had hardly ever seen him like this, reverting almost to a child-like questioning and simplicity, the veneer of cynical amusement and wit broken through and shattered. It was not that his body was naked before her. For a brief moment, it was his mind. She was careful not to interrupt the measured sweep of her hand, or reveal her feelings in her voice.

'Sometimes I doubt. Who isn't prey to doubt?'

'Catesby. Catesby isn't prey to doubt. He takes the fear, the worry, the doubt we humans have and he forces it out, drives it from him somehow in a way he doesn't and I don't understand. And then he turns it into something evil, a fire that draws other people to it like a moth to a candle, and burns them up before they've realised what's happening. Or perhaps makes them so they don't care, makes them so they want to be destroyed.'

They made love in the tiny bed, little more than a mattress cast on the floor, and Gresham felt the warmth creep back into his soul.

Well, his question was answered. Not so much piss and wind, Master Robert Catesby. More an avenging, fallen angel, willing to unleash the winds of Hell on earth.