The Fifth of November

by L. A. G. Strong

  Fawkes looked at him, lowering his beard on his chest.

  ‘It was bad when I was here last,’ he said. ‘But by what you tell me, it would seem that we have no life at all.’

  ‘Nor ever we shall have, under this—this bloody-minded tyrant and his pack of hounds,’ said Catesby savagely.

  The words were out. There was a moment of silence, while the men, from very habit, looked at the window and door, lest someone should have overheard. Catesby saw the glances, and his lip twisted in a sneer.

  ‘Have no fear. There is no one in the house but ourselves. I have sent my servant out. Did I not open the door myself?’

  ‘I have no fear.’ Wright let his breath out in a long hissing sigh. ‘But ’tis second nature with a man now to look about him before he speaks.’

  ‘Well, for once you may speak your mind. Here are none but we. For James, our king’—no words could express the intensity of scorn he put into the title—’you know I have no cause to love him. Yet I have bided my time, lest a grievance of my own should blind my judgment. But the man’s heart is utterly hardened. If I strike, it is not for myself alone, but for the Church of God.’

  Again a kind of chill crossed his hearers’ hearts at the open avowal of purpose. Only Guy Fawkes seemed unmoved. He gazed at Catesby with an odd, almost mild light in his eyes.

  ‘It seems,’ he said quietly, ‘that from what you tell us, we have no remedy save in our own arms. What do you propose, Master Catesby?’

  The question was so casual, he might have been asking Catesby about his plans for spending the evening. Winter and Wright looked at him with a kind of wondering admiration. Brave and desperate as they were, passionately devout, ready to die for their faith, they yet shrank from asking their leader the direct question. Forced by an unjust law into being criminals when they had done no wrong, and so coming to hold the law in contempt, they were yet subjects of the realm. Centuries of law-abiding citizenship were in their blood, and it was not easy, even after all they had seen and suffered, to throw allegiance off and prepare to strike at the very throne itself. This, they knew, was what Catesby must plan, since nothing less would serve: but they hesitated to ask the question and hear the words.

  So, with relief and wonder, they heard their new comrade’s unruffled voice, and felt their respect for him grow as they awaited the answer. Wright in particular felt a glow of pride in his old schoolfellow.

  Catesby did not answer at once. He looked fixedly at Guy, and pursed his lips together until his moustache and beard were joined, and his mouth was altogether hidden. He looked down for a moment. Then, as if having taken a decision, he abruptly raised his head.

  ‘I will tell you,’ he said. ‘First—’

  He stopped, and the four sat as if transfixed. From the door below came a loud sound of knocking.

  The men exchanged glances. Then Catesby rose.

  ‘Maybe it is Percy,’ he said.

  ‘It is not our right knock.’

  Catesby shrugged.

  ‘He might forget.’

  ‘It is well the priest is not here,’ said Wright, as he reached the door.

  Catesby frowned.

  ‘That disguise of his. I think—’

  He paused, shrugged again and went down.

  A minute later they heard him returning, with Percy’s voice, loud and impatient, on the stairs.

  ‘I could not remember your accursed knock. Your pardon, gentlemen, if I frightened you.’ He stood in the doorway, and gave them a nod of greeting. ‘But I knew, if I knocked loud enough, you would open.’

  Percy was a tall man, older than the others. He was handsome, with a great black beard, turning grey, and hair that was even greyer, with tufts of white. He stooped a little.

  Crossing to the window side of the table, he caught sight of Fawkes. Catesby presented him, with a short explanation.

  ‘Aye.’ Percy sat down, and drank off half the glass that had been put in his hand. ‘Master Fawkes, I am glad to see you. It is time we had a man of action here. There has been overmuch talk, and little done.’

  Catesby received this badly, and Wright, all his animosity revived, scowled openly.

  ‘I do not think you will find cause to complain.’ Catesby’s voice showed little of the resentment he felt. ‘It is better to be well advised, in a matter of such moment, than to rush into action over-hastily.’

  ‘Nay, faith, I will acquit you of that,’ cried Percy, ‘Your worst enemy will not call you over-hasty.’

  ‘Nor, I hope, will he charge me of cowardice.’

  This time, the anger in his voice was clear. But Percy was not disconcerted.

  ‘Cowardice? God, no! Would I come here to you, would I plan to adventure myself with you, if I were not satisfied of your manhood? All I mean is that I have had enough of talk, and pine for action.’

  ‘You shall have it in good time.’ Catesby looked at him grimly. ‘Even as your knock sounded on the door, I was about to open my purpose to these gentlemen.’

  ‘Good. So long as it takes that pot-bellied, Scots traitor, that loll-tongued ape, that slubberdegullion pedant-’ He broke off, and spat noisily in the fire.

  Fawkes leaned forward.

  ‘Of whom do you speak?’

  ‘Of whom? Of whom? Why, there are no two such in the realm. I speak, my innocent sir, of His Gracious Majesty, James the First. Pray God he may be the last, and his reign soon over.’

  ‘You speak of him in very bitter terms, Master Percy.’

  ‘And with good reason, Master Fawkes. He served me scurvily.’

  ‘May we know how? Or is it a private matter?’

  ‘Faith, nothing private at all. These gentlemen know all about it. Before the clodpoll came to the throne, I visited him, and had from him a promise, on his about-to-be-kingly word, that he would in all ways help and succour those of the Catholic faith, and relieve their burdens. Which promise, when the sceptre was in his sweaty paw, he most basely refused, and was forsworn. No, Master Fawkes’—he laughed shortly—T owe him no love, and will not grieve for his misfortune. I give him over to you. The worse you use him, the louder I will applaud you.’

  Fawkes smiled his crooked smile. ‘I will study to deserve your applause, Master Percy. But it is not I who lead here. I am but come to aid Master Catesby, and know what he shall devise.’

  ‘That is good.’ Percy swung his chair round, and crossed his legs. ‘Let us hear your plan,’ he said to Catesby.

  The note of patronage in his voice was not lost on Catesby. In the last few minutes—influenced maybe in part by Wright’s blunt words, but more by what he saw—it had become clear to him that, if he were to remain leader, he must measure his strength against Percy once and for all.

  He looked at Wright and Winter, and then at Fawkes, whose eyes he found were fixed on his own. Their expression did not change, but he read a message in them.

  ‘In good time, Master Percy,’ he replied at last. ‘Just as it is an enterprise not lightly to be undertaken, so it is not lightly to be divulged. Nay’—he held up a hand as Percy seemed about to utter an indignant protest—‘you demand action, Master Percy. Rest assured, you shall have it: a blow at him you hate, and many besides. It is a desperate remedy we are seeking, and, once bound to it, we shall be each in the other’s hand.’

  He pushed his chair back from the table.

  ‘I do not think it meet to embark on such a project without due thought. We will part now, by your leave; and, when we have all considered the matter, let us meet again. If then we are of the same mind, we will swear an oath, and hear mass: and I shall afterwards disclose what I have in mind.’

  Percy sneered.

  ‘Overmuch ceremony, Master Catesby. We are not children. You talk as if you could not trust us to keep counsel.’

  ‘I agree with Master Catesby,’ put in Wright doggedly. ‘We cannot be too well advised how we adventure ourselves upon a project so dangerous.’

  Percy turned to combat this,
when a new thought struck him.

  ‘Oho!’ he said. ‘Is that how the wind blows? You have told the rest, but will not yet tell me.’

  ‘No.’ It was Fawkes’s voice. ‘We have heard nothing of it. At least, Master Winter and I have not.’

  He raised his eyebrows inquiringly at Wright, who growled: ‘Nor 1.’

  ‘Not a living soul has heard it.’ Catesby looked straight into Percy’s flushed face. ‘Nor shall here it, till I divulge it to you all.’

  Percy returned his gaze for a moment, then shrugged, and rose.

  ‘I waste my time,’ he said. ‘When is it we meet?’

  Catesby had won the first encounter. The question acknowledged it.

  ‘On Tuesday next, at eleven in the morning.’

  ‘So be it. Good day to you all. Nay—I can find my own way.’

  He swung his cloak over his shouder, and left the room.

  There was silence after he had gone. The four men looked at one another. Wright’s feelings were too much for him. He grinned openly.

  ‘Well spoken,’ he said to Catesby. ‘Well spoken. Now he will know his place.’

  Catesby tapped his fingers on the table.

  ‘I must use him carefully,’ he said. ‘He is most necessary to us. You must restrain yourselves, if I seem to show him preference. We cannot do without him.’

  ‘It irks me that he should think himself so high.’

  ‘Trust me to handle him, when we meet on Tuesday.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Fawkes suddenly. ‘We will trust you.’

  Chapter Nine

  The wandering mind which had witnessed this meeting was by now fixed in its strange groove. At first, it seemed tethered to the house. It saw the room empty; darkness falling; the curtain drawn in the morning by a serving man, and sunlight, reflected from the river, shimmering and dancing on the walls. It heard the cries in the street outside, the sounds of the river, the rumbling of carts over the cobbles.

  Then Catesby was sitting at the table, in the long summer dusk, biting his moustache, beginning a conciliatory letter to Percy. Candles were lit. He wrote on, then, with an impatient curse, crumpled the paper and threw it aside. He rose, crossed to the window, and leaned out, taking deep breaths of the evening air.

  Presently, starting as if stung, he turned, picked up the crumpled letter from the floor, straightened it out, and burned it carefully in the candle flame. After this he put on his cloak and set out: and the watching mind knew that he was going to seek Winter.

  From this point, it lost all memory of itself or its owner, and was merged in what it saw. The spectator at the play lost himself and became a part of it.

  The Tuesday morning had come, and the conspirators were met again, all except Percy.

  Catesby waited for his appearance with some anxiety, which he hid from the others.

  At his first opportunity, he drew Guy Fawkes aside.

  ‘I have, in small measure, broken my word to you, Master Fawkes.’

  Fawkes’s bright eyes watched him without change of expression.

  ‘I said, last time, that no man should know of my purpose till we met again. I should have made plain that one beside myself knew of it already.’

  Fawkes nodded.

  ‘Master Winter,’ he said.

  ‘How? He did not tell you?’

  The thin shoulders shrugged.

  ‘He came to look for me; to see if I were suitable for your purpose. It was but reasonable to suppose he knew what that purpose was. Besides, he is your kinsman.’

  Catesby’s face relaxed.

  ‘You do not take it amiss, I hope, Master Fawkes. Master Wright is something jealous, especially of—’ Fawkes’s lopsided grin checked him.

  ‘He is my old schoolfellow,’ he said. ‘Have no fear. When I am well led, I take nothing amiss. I see that I am well led now.’

  Catesby was deeply pleased, but did not know how to show his pleasure.

  ‘One word more,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Do not let the priest know that we purpose any violence.’ He gave Fawkes a look of meaning, then went back to the doorway, and called Wright, repeating the same injunction to him.

  ‘The priest? Who? Lambert?’

  ‘No. I have had no word of him since we met last. I am not sorry, for our purpose’s sake. It is not safe to bring him here. He goes too open. That disguise of his would not deceive a child.’

  ‘Pray God he may not be taken.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Catesby grimly.

  ‘You speak as if you doubted him.’

  ‘I do not doubt his courage, though no one knows, till he suffer it, what the torture will not wring from him. It is rather his boldness that I fear. Nothing has harmed him yet. He is like a man whom the plague has passed by, who thinks that it can never touch him. Such men take risks: and no one near us must take risks.’

  Fawkes nodded again and moved off.

  ‘Devil take this Percy!’ It was Wright again. ‘He is late.’ A gleam of hope appeared in his eyes. ‘Perhaps he will not come.’

  ‘He will come,’ said Catesby shortly.

  And a few minutes later the prophecy was fulfilled.

  Percy was in a dangerous mood. Curiosity had brought him, half against his will: curiosity and vanity. Worsted though he had been, in his first trial of strength with Catesby, he had every hope of assuming the leadership at a later stage. And there burned in the man a real sense of anger and injustice, and a zeal to strike a blow for the faith.

  He greeted the others with a touch of hauteur, and made plain to the least intelligent that he had come rather to see what was going to happen than to commit himself to share in it.

  As he saw this, Catesby left the room for a minute, and returned, bearing a large book.

  ‘Before we go further in this business,’ he said, ‘let us all swear an oath, upon this Primer, to keep secrecy and faith.

  He looked around, his gaze coming to rest on Percy.

  ‘Are you willing to swear it?’

  Percy met his gaze.

  ‘Come,’ he exclaimed. ‘Propose your oath.’

  ‘Very well.’ Catesby took from the book a piece of paper. He cleared his throat, and read it aloud.

  ‘ “You shall swear by the Blessed Trinity, and by the Sacrament you now propose to receive, never to disclose directly or indirectly, by word or circumstance, the matter that shall be proposed to you to keep secret, nor desist from execution thereof until the rest shall give you leave.”’

  He looked up.

  ‘This same shall be proposed to every man we see fit to take into us.’

  ‘Content,’ said Percy.

  ‘And you, sirs?’

  ‘I approve,’ said Wright.

  ‘And I.’

  ‘And I.’

  ‘That is well. Then let us swear it, without delay.’

  One by one, beginning with Catesby, they laid their hands on the Primer and took the oath. Percy swore second, Fawkes last.

  Then they went into the next room, to hear mass and receive the Sacrament.

  When they came back, they were inclined at first to talk loudly and laugh in reaction from the solemnity of what had happened. Percy began to tell a story of the court breaking off abruptly as the priest came in.

  Father Gerard, only too familiar with the phenomenon of men breaking off their conversation as he came into a room, rubbed his hands together, looked down, then smiled gently upon them.

  ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘I have many people to see this morning.’

  ‘Before you go, Father,’ said Catesby, ‘tell them the tale you told me. About the poor woman.’

  A cloud came over the long, sensitive face. The priest sighed.

  ‘A small thing, my sons, but, in its very smallness, crueller than many. A poor old woman came for alms, and was given a pint of new milk. There stood by one Rogers, a continual and bitter persecutor of our people. The old woman was hungry and in need. He took the milk from her, and washed his hands in
it, saying she was not worthy to have alms, and that it should go hard indeed with any that showed her kindness or gave her anything, were it so much as a stick of wood for firing.’

  Wright swore loudly.

  ‘The cowardly villain! I would I had been there.’

  Father Gerard turned to him, a light of amusement in his eyes.

  ‘I am very glad you were not. We should have lost you, and nothing gained. You would not even have benefited the poor old woman. No, my friends. We must bear all, and seem blind and deaf, if we and those who suffer with us are to live. Well’—he walked to the door, and looked around—’take care of yourselves. God bless you all.’

  ‘Take care of yourself, too, Father.’

  ‘You are better disguised than Father Lambert, anyhow.’

  The blue eyes clouded again.

  ‘Ah, poor Father Lambert. I am worried about him. He is overbrave. Well—’

  He smiled round upon them, and left. Catesby went downstairs with him, and showed him out. He came up the stairs with a speed born of long acquaintance with their twists and bends and beams.

  ‘Now, Master Percy. You and I have conference to make. Master Winter—will you take our friends into the next room?’

  Wright’s face crimsoned, but Catesby did not look at him. Fawkes touched his arm.

  ‘Come Master Wright.’

  And, after a brief struggle with himself, Wright consented to be led into the next room.

  Catesby turned to his companion.

  ‘Now, Master Percy. You shall be the first to hear what I propose. I could not well promise it the other day, when all were present, lest I offend any man.’

  Percy’s whole manner changed. He almost purred with pleasure and gratified vanity. Seating himself, and stroking his beard complacently, he listened to the words which Catesby, in a low tone, poured into his ear.

  The recital did not take long. As it went on, his eyes flashed. At the end, he threw back his head, and brought his fist down upon the table.