Wright, who had not heard, swung his pick, and dealt another clanging blow at the stone. Catesby seized his arm. He turned in surprise.
‘What?’
‘Stay a minute. I thought I heard something.’
‘Heard—’
‘Ssst, I tell you!’
In silence, the workers waited. They could hear their own hearts throbbing, but nothing else. Their shadows, which had been leaping grotesquely on the walls and low ceiling of the cellar, stood in queer, distorted stillness.
Wright bore the silence for a few seconds, then spoke.
‘What is it you thought you heard?’
‘A noise overhead.’
‘Guy,’ said Wright, and made a move to go on.
‘Stop.’ The whisper was imperative. ‘It came from here.’ Catesby pointed ahead of where they were working.
As they stared up at the smoky, rough ceiling, there came a sound which froze them all: a loud, unmistakable rumbling, and a noise as of heavy feet. It stopped; then broke out again.
They stared at one another, their faces blanched even in the uncertain light. Then Wright moved as if stung.
‘They have broken into the house, and surprised Guy,’ he said thickly.
‘I do not think it,’ Winter said. ‘The noise seemed to come from here.’ He pointed. ‘If they were in our room, it would sound there.’
A long series of irregular bumps sounded to confirm his words, but it was not easy to say exactly from where they came.
Catesby let out a long breath.
‘I will go up and reconnoitre. Wait you here.’
‘No.’ Wright pushed past him. ‘I will go. You are our leader. We cannot do without you.’
‘If they have indeed discovered the place, we are all undone. They will leave no place unsearched. But—Nay. Stay where you are. Guy may have had time to cover over the door.’
‘They may be but searching the house, dragging furniture about. There is nothing to suspect.’
‘The bedclothes. They will find that we have slept there.’
‘There is silence now.’
‘Maybe they are gone upstairs to search.’
‘Then we must steal up now, and make our escape.’
‘Fool! The door will be guarded.’
As they whispered among themselves, Catesby had stepped noiselessly away. His voice, hissing for silence, came suddenly from the top of the ladder, starting them all.
Before they could protest, with infinite care he lifted the trap-door a few inches, and peeped out. Breathless, they watched him push it higher. Then a loud rumbling, straight above the tunnel, eased their fears. Wherever it came from, it was not from the house.
Catesby pushed the trap right back, and his legs disappeared. They heard him step across the room, and call cautiously for Guy. He called a second time, and then Guy’s voice answered in ordinary tones.
‘Whew!’ Winter leaned against the wall. ‘How easily frightened men become when they have secrets!’
‘I was not frightened,’ swore John Wright, ‘except to think that, after such labour, our plans might go for naught.’
His brother laughed. A quaver in his voice spoke of deep relief.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was frightened enough on my own account.’
John scowled at him. It seemed to him a family disgrace, not only to admit fear, but to feel it.
Then Catesby’s voice and Fawkes’s approached the trap-door, and both descended. All stood silent, listening for the noise. It did not come. Everything seemed so normal and ordinary that they began to wonder if they had heard it at all. Guy stood, fox-like, his head a little on one side, listening. He did not look at all sceptical. That was one of the qualities about him which his comrades most valued. He would not, like so many others, decry what he had not himself heard. He believed what he was told.
Then, just as even Catesby was beginning to feel that he must speak to reassure himself, came a loud thumping and rumbling. This time it sounded nearer, and lasted longer than before.
Guy made no comment, but listened judicially till the noise had finished. Then he looked at Catesby, with a slightly puzzled air.
‘I should know about this,’ he said, and suddenly grinned. ‘The intelligence has been at fault.’ While they stared, he made for the ladder. ‘I will go out tonight, and ask a few questions of my honest good neighbours.’
‘Be careful—’ Catesby began instantly, then stopped.
‘There is no need,’ Guy assured him calmly, one foot on the ladder. ‘I am sleeping this afternoon, as a good watchman may, when my slumbers are disturbed by a plaguy rumbling as of an earthquake. So I inquire of my friends what they are at.’
‘Why should it be your friends?’ John Wright asked.
‘The sounds come through the wall.’ Guy pointed. ‘They come from the house adjoining.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Even if they do not, I may suppose it, and do no harm by asking.’
He disappeared up the ladder. The working party looked at one another.
‘Well,’ said Catesby, ‘we can do no more now. If we can hear them, they can hear us.’
‘Maybe they have heard us already.’
‘I do not think it. If they had, they would have stopped to listen.’
Slowly, they went up, put on their coats, and closed the trap-door.
It was late that night when Guy returned. The men, expecting him eagerly, their nerves strained by the wait, saw at once that he was a prey to violent excitement. His long nose quivered, and his eyelids seemed to snap over his eyes.
‘Well, comrades,’ he said, as he sat down, ‘you will mine no more.’
‘What!’
‘Nay! Be not dismayed.’ His teeth and eyes flashed together. ‘Wait, and I will tell you all in order.
‘The noise which we have heard comes from a cellar of the house adjoining this, which, as you know, stands empty. It belongs also to Master Wynniard. I have my news from a good friend of mine, by name Gibbins, whose wife cleans the house and keeps watch on it.’
Catesby started forward, a furious energy in the movement.
‘Does she live there?’
Fawkes understood at once the question and its implied rebuke.
‘No. Be at ease upon that. She and her husband live next door to that again, in the house above the cellar of which I speak. Yes. The cellar, though it belongs to the house next door, runs underneath the other—and underneath something else as well. And, even from next door, one cannot hear our mining.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I have been there, to talk with Mistress Gibbins, and be sure.’
‘What—there, while we worked?’
‘Master Winter was above, resting his arm. Do you not recall, Master Winter? I told you I must go out, and asked you to keep the watch awhile?’
‘Yes, it is true.’
Guy nodded. His eyelids snapped again, and he hugged himself in secret glee.
‘So I spoke with friend Gibbins, and, albeit he is a silent, taciturn man—’
‘Damn his silence!’ Percy, who had been watching Guy in amazement, could only conclude that he was drunk. ‘What did he say?’
‘He told me what was toward.’ Guy turned an innocent eye upon him: ‘The cellar is used to stock coal. Mr. Wynniard being ill, his wife does all his business for him. She has let the cellar to one Mistress Skinner, a coal merchant. Mistress Skinner has a mind to marry again, and the man she has chosen is well to do; so she will sell coal no longer, and does not need the cellar. Accordingly, she has sold her stock, and it is the removing of it which we have heard.’
‘So that it will soon be empty, and we can resume our work.’
Percy’s impatient mind leaped ahead of the rest. Catesby gave him a grim glance.
‘For so long as it remains tenantless.’
‘It will soon have a tenant.’ Guy rocked himself in his chair.
‘What? It is taken already?’<
br />
‘No. But, tomorrow, we will take it.’
They stared for a second, then broke into expressions of approval.
‘To be safe against others, you mean.’
‘Why’—Christopher Wright looked at Catesby—’this is a most fortunate happening for us.’
‘More fortunate than that, even,’ Guy took him up. ‘This cellar of which we speak is very large. Treble the size of this below us here. Part of it, as I said, lies under the house where live Gibbins and his wife.’ He paused. ‘The rest lies under the Parliament House itself.’
There was a moment of silence, as the meaning of his words sank in. Then all the voices broke out at once.
‘What?’
‘Under the Parliament House?’
‘It lies under—’
‘Then we—’
Catesby cut them short with a savage gesture.
‘Are you certain, man?’
‘Certain. There is a trap-door giving into the House itself. It has not been opened this many years, but Gibbins tells me, with assurance, that his father used it, years agone.’
He looked round on them.
‘So you may leave your mining, and, when the cellar is empty, move in the powder, and be ready in a day to send them sky high.’
A volley of comments followed, varying from cries of thanksgiving and sheer wonder to the angry growl of John Wright.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Do you tell me we have had all those weeks of labour for nothing?’
Fawkes laughed.
‘Think rather,’ he said, ‘that you have suddenly come to the end of your tunnel before you expected it, and are through.’
He turned to Catesby.
‘If I may suggest it—’ he said tentatively.
‘Go on.’
‘It would be better, for our more security, if we did not move openly about this business of the cellar. Let Master Percy lease it, as he leased this. It will serve him to store faggots and fuel, which I will bespeak in his name: and my good friend Gibbins shall move them in. Then, when all is ready, I will remove the Gibbinses and give them supper at some tavern, while you carry the powder in, and cover it with faggots. So will all be ready, and honest Gibbins be at hand to swear, if any question him, that there is nothing in the cellar but harmless kindling, which he put there with his own hands.’
‘But how shall we get the powder into the cellar? We dare not carry it out of the door and into the next house.’
‘Has it struck you to wonder how we heard the noise so plain?’
‘N-no.’ Winter pulled at his beard in perplexity.
‘It would not sound so through the stone wall. A corner of the cellar adjoins a corner of ours. It will be but half a day’s work to break a doorway through the wall.’
‘What?’ Catesby leaned forward incredulously.
‘Yes. At a right angle to the mighty wall we have been trying to cut through. It lies partly above us.’ He drew roughly with his forefinger on the table. ‘If we cut through here’—he pointed on his plan, to a place rather more than half-way up the cellar wall—’we shall come in at the floor level. Rising just so much as will serve to pass through a keg of powder, we may slide them through to the floor, with three men to lift them here, and but one on the far side to receive them.’
Half an hour later, all was arranged, and the conspirators went to bed jubilant: all except John Wright, who still regretted the tunnel and the backbreaking work he had put in at it.
He had some more the next day. While Percy set in train the business necessary to hire the new cellar, the rest first blocked up the entrance to their mine, and then set about cutting the new doorway at the place where Guy had marked upon the wall. They were dubious of his accuracy, and called him down two or three times to say so; but he persisted cheerfully that his calculations could not be wrong, and, when at last they got through, they found he had erred by a few inches only, and those on the safe side. That is to say, they had cut through just above the floor, instead of on a level with it.
As this only meant that they had to cut a little bit more downwards, and not quite so far upwards, it made no practical difference whatever.
Once the entry to the new cellar had been cut, it was concealed, and the unsuspecting Gibbins carried in the faggots and fuel. These were so disposed, under Guy’s direction, as practically to fill the cellar: so that it was an easy matter to clear a space by the opening, pass the kegs through, and arrange them under a thick covering of fuel.
When this was done, and the cellar tidied up, and the opening in the first cellar hidden also, there was not a sign to attract the most suspicious attention. The conspirators surveyed their work and felt well satisfied.
Next came an important conference as to ways and means. Money, needed for so many purposes, particularly in the Midlands, where Grant was busy and reported much progress, was beginning to run short. The time had come to call in fresh supporters. With their plans matured, and all in readiness, Catesby argued that they now stood a far better chance of support than when the means were still uncertain. The rest, in exalted mood, agreed with him easily.
They did not demur, either, when he went on to claim for himself the task of enrolling the fresh supporters. It was a difficult business, with deadly risk if the wrong man were approached. Percy had ideas of his own, and put forward several suggestions, but the rest were glad to leave this delicate matter to their leader.
Underground, when it was a matter of mining, Guy had been the man to whom they looked. Now, Catesby took command, and they deferred to him with a readiness which showed how deeply, in all these months, his personality had taken its effect upon them.
Addressing man after man in turn, he gave them exact directions for the time ahead. All were to disperse, and do as he told them till they met again.
To Guy he turned last. ‘You,’ he said, ‘must go further afield still. For the next months, it is well that you should not be seen. There is nothing you can do here. The house will be empty. If you stay, you may draw suspicion. An empty house none will trouble about. We do not want anyone to inquire what Percy keeps here so particularly that a man must guard it. Hitherto, you served a good purpose here. Now that all is ready, you serve none.’
Guy nodded.
‘Where must I go?’
‘Out of England. The Low Countries will be best.’
Guy’s eyebrows rose, but he accepted the order without comment.
‘Who shall keep the key?’ he asked.
‘He in whose name the house is hired.’
Guy smiled, and handed the key to Percy, who looked at it, and pocketed it in silence.
All this time, the mind that was wandering from its place over three hundred years later had been watching, living with the conspirators, Fawkes particularly, entering sometimes into their very minds, and knowing all they did. Free from its own time, it progressed in theirs.
And, later in the same night, without warning, without visible cause, from that same far point in space and time, from a room of that same house in Lancaster Gate, a second mind loosened itself and rose, like a star from one of the rockets that a few hours before had been filling the sky. Drawn by some strange magnet, it made its mysterious, purposeful way in the same direction as the first.
Arrived, it woke, not gradually like the first, but to sudden and full awareness. …
Chapter Fourteen
On a fine afternoon of late summer, when the sun, bursting through the soft clouds after a showery morning, made London bright and wonderful as a fair, a young man started to walk from Charing Cross down Whitehall to Westminster.
The exhilaration of the change from gloom to brilliance filled his spirit. He drew deep breaths of the breeze that blew from the river, and looked about him on the buildings and the people with delight in his heart. Everyone had caught the infection of happiness. Men walked briskly, singing and whistling as they went, and calling greetings to each other, even though they were strangers.
The young man blushed, laughed, and waved his hand. He went on, self-conscious, but happy. It was a good-natured world, despite all that was said: and London was a wonderful city. He had not been there long, and it was still new and strange to him.
He walked on his way, looking about him, admiring the buildings on either side. On his right lay a number of new houses, each in its own grounds, belonging to the court. Then came a large tilt-yard, where the court gentlemen and the nobility exercised themselves in jousting and the like. The young man looked eagerly at it, but, at this hour of the day, it lay empty. All he could see was a single groom, exercising a horse. The sun flashed on its trappings as it tossed its head, and he heard the groom’s voice, sharp and thin, carried on the breeze.
The other side, on which he was walking, was all new houses too. Then came a large space enclosed by a high brick wall, so high that one could scarcely see over it. The young man knew what that was. It was called Scotland, and there, in a palace now pulled down, had come Henry VIII’s sister Margaret, after her husband the King of Scotland died, and lived for years.
Next, as he neared Westminster, he passed White Hall itself, and gazed up at the gate-house and the gallery built to look down upon another tilt-yard that adjoined the orchard and gardens. Beyond the tilt-yard were more places for sport, a cockpit, several courts for tennis, and a bowling alley or so, and finally, right across the street, a high arch, so that the nobility might pass from one part of the gardens to the other.
Here again, however, there was nothing going on. The only sport to be seen was a group of page-boys and lackeys squatting on the ground, just inside one of the wrought-iron gateways, and playing marbles.
Fair and inviting it all looked in the summer sun, and beyond it he saw the light dancing on the river, and the gleam of the sunlight on the gilded vane that swung and wavered above the Parliament House. A choir of bells from the abbey completed his joy. All London seemed to be making holiday.
The Fifth of November Page 9