Yet the real worry was the lack of action on Cecil's part. It was as if the letter had never been received. The careful watch Gresham had placed on the cellar and house Percy had rented, as soon as Tresham had told him of it, had reported no untoward action or even interest in the place. The story of a plot being hatched in France was still current on the streets and gaining ground, but there was no hint to it of something closer to home, and no hint of gunpowder or mass murder or regicide. Tresham had been summoned to meet the conspirators again, but there was no sense of any special reason behind the summons. Sending the travel documents had been a gamble. They had cost him a small fortune, but as Jane had commented, quality never came cheap. In this instance, it was not quality he had paid for, but authenticity. The corrupt clerk who had charge of such matters had slipped the paper for signing into a heap so high that his master had yearned for it to come to an end with the intensity of a schoolboy wishing the end of school. Gresham needed his mole in the plotters' burrow to report. Had they noted men following them, questions being asked of the servants? Was the pressure on them to disband? Had the news of the letter reached them, through the servant, Ward, who was so close to the brothers Kit and Jack Wright, as Gresham had planned?
Gresham knew that impatience was his greatest weakness, yet the pressure of not knowing what was happening, coupled with the fear that nothing was happening, was near to destroying any peace of mind he might have. He called for music, and settled him-self to listen as the lute dropped jewelled notes in the way of the long walk of the strings and the nasal urgency of the wind instruments. It helped, but not enough. In public he was still bed-bound for most of the day, so it was on his bed that he lay back and tried to let the music soak into his veins, as the musicians assiduously played for him.
It was dangerous for so many to gather at one time in London, but Catesby deemed it necessary. They had planned it long ago, for a week before the explosion. To cancel it now would cause panic. The presence of the others would lull Tresham into a false sense of security. He would hardly expect a gathering in London to be kept if his comrades knew the plot had been exposed, reasoned Catesby.
The taciturn Fawkes was there, inscrutable as ever. Rookwood had come down to receive his instructions, and to be fortified by Catesby if necessary. Tom Wintour was there, trying to hide the murderous gleam in his eye, whilst Thomas Percy, wild-eyed and stained from travel, had finally broken from his rent-gathering in the north to make it to London.
Tresham looked nervous, tense, almost distracted. Catesby raised an eyebrow, and Tom Wintour's hand stiffened towards the dagger in his belt. Rookwood had been given the task of buying dinner, not sensing the patronising ease with which Catesby treated him at one and the same time as friend and servant.
'Is all well?' Rookwood enquired nervously. Wintour flicked a glance at Catesby. These well-born, idle rich were food for Court and fine lace and fancy manners, he thought, but no good when push came to shove. The rich had time for a conscience. Men such as Wintour had time for action. That was the difference. Wintour cursed the day they hatched a plot which needed the money of such as Ambrose Rookwood.
'All's well indeed,' said Catesby reassuringly. The wine Rook-. wood had provided and drunk of so liberally had not calmed him, but if anything made him more nervous. 'We're not discovered.
The King hasn't hurried back from his hunting. None of us have felt ourselves watched, have we?' Heads were shaken in the negative, around the table. 'Stout hearts and courage are what we need now.'
No response from Tresham, who was turning continually to look out on the street, as if hoping for someone to walk by and rescue him.
'None of our number would betray us!' said Wintour, in far too loud a voice. Tresham started, but whether through guilt or simply the explosive noise of Wintour's interjection was difficult to say.
'What say you, cousin?' said Catesby to Tresham. 'You're strangely silent.'
'I'm sorry;' said Tresham. 'I've things on my mind. I shouldn't trouble you with them.'
Catesby and Wintour exchanged glances.
'I must have some of your money, cousin,' said Catesby easily. 'You know how pressing the need is.'
'Are you still set on this? Can't we at least delay until we know what legislation Parliament will pass?'
'You know the answer. As I know you won't betray us.'
There was a decided flicker across Tresham's face, a sheen of sweat across it. This was too public a place to kill him, thought Catesby. It would panic Rookwood, and draw attention to them. Not here. Not now.
'If you still have reservations, cousin, now isn't the time to discuss them. White Webbs, Friday, two days from now. Come and dine with us there. And, I pray you, bring some of your gold with you. My purse has been deep, but it's drawn dry. Until Friday then. I hope you'll come ready for a reckoning!' laughed Catesby.
Chapter 10
Though Gresham did not know it, the mood of William Parker, Lord Monteagle, was as destructive and tense as his own. He had waited for news every hour since his abrupt dismissal from Whitehall, yet none had come. The King was due back from hunting today, he knew. He could restrain his impatience no longer. Hurrying to Whitehall, he at least suffered no delay in being shown in to Cecil's presence. Indeed, barriers seemed to melt at his name. Gratified at the sudden power he seemed able to wield, he bowed in a rather cursory manner to Cecil, forgetting for a moment who was Lord and who was master.
'My Lord Monteagle!' said Cecil, an icy warmth in his voice. 'You must think I had forgotten you and your recent good service. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are weighty matters, matters we have let ripen on the vine.' 'You will tell the King, my Lord? Today?' A flicker of annoyance crossed Cecil's face. 'In time, my good Lord, all in good time. Trust me, my Lord, as a friend, as well as an elder.' Cecil's tone softened, became almost caressing as his gimlet eyes fixed on the young man with his strong, straight body. 'You are beholden to me for a very large sum of money still outstanding against your name, are you not? You are beholden to me for restoring you and your family's standing and fortune, are you not? You have received those very great gifts in exchange merely for a little information, have you not? You may trust my judgement in these great matters of state, as I trust your judgement in lesser matters.'
Damn you, thought Monteagle. I am not your friend. I am your slave. As he left, his bow was deep and low.
'The men we sent out, they're still reporting, some of them.' Mannion stood by Gresham's side. 'They say these Papists are back in London, mostly. Gathering together for some devilry, I guess. Do you want to see three of them? Percy's booked dinner for three at The Mitre, in Bread Street. It's a haunt of theirs. Bold as brass. Our men say there's no sign of anyone else watching them.'
Why not? Gresham agonised. Why were these men gathering in London, instead of fleeing for their lives? Why was every Catholic sympathiser in London not being hounded down?
Could Gresham risk being an onlooker at this devils' supper? He was driven to it by his own demon, the frustration tearing at him as a real growth in his side would have done. Even the basic questions that were grist to his survival seemed irrelevant. Should he change his complexion from its deathly white? What disguise should he wear? Should he slip out of a side door of the House, or go as if to an appointment with his surgeon?
Why hadn't this powder plot folded in on itself? Had Monteagle been so unconvincing in his presentation of the letter?
Had he even presented the letter at all?
Robert Cecil knew little about warfare. It seemed to him that it excited men of a certain type, that it was costly beyond belief and that its results were unpredictable. It also seemed that an army large enough to fight a war was necessary to accompany the King on one of his hunting expeditions. The already astronomical expenses of the Royal household rose by the minute, and Cecil sighed as the endless train of horses and carts and assorted wagons brought back His Royal Highness King James I from his pleasures.
He waited until the afternoon following. Friday was an unlucky day in common belief, but also the first of the month, symbolic perhaps of a new start. King James was in his Gallery at Whitehall, alone.
Cecil approached, bowed, and offered the Monteagle letter, without comment. James raised an eyebrow, took it and read it. He looked up at Cecil, who made no comment again. He read it a second time, taking more care.
‘It was delivered at night, sire, to my Lord Monteagle. He brought it straight here, to me.' And it was undated, thank God, thought Cecil. Would James be angered at the length of time it had taken to bring this letter to his attention?
'Clearly, my liege,' said Cecil, 'whoever wrote this is a fool.'
'In which case,' said the King, 'it were as well not to receive it likewise as a fool.'
Intelligence and experience, thought Cecil, his heart racing behind his composed exterior. Never forget this man has survived by his wits as King of the Scots. Never forget that conspiracies are second nature to him. Never forget there is no-one as wise as a fool.
Where were the others? thought Tresham as he entered White Webbs. He was shown to a room he had never entered before, and before he knew it the door had slammed behind him and he was facing Robert Catesby. Tom Wintour stood behind him. He drew both bolts on the door.
It all hinged on one sentence, Tresham was to realise later. If Catesby had said to him, in that terrifyingly calm voice of his, 'Why have you betrayed us?' Tresham's face would have broken down into a confession of guilt. He had betrayed the plotters to 'Selkirk', as well as betraying his marriage vows, his religion and, for all he knew, the God he had never properly worshipped.
But Catesby did not ask why Tresham had betrayed his friends.
Instead, he chose to ask, ‘Tell me, cousin, why did you send the letter?'
The letter? What letter? The last letter Tresham had sent had been a peremptory demand for unpaid rent from one of his newly acquired tenants. Genuine confusion crossed his face.
'What letter? I've sent no letter!'
The instant vehemence of his response caused Catesby to pause. Even Wintour, poised behind him, shuffled uncertainly. Catesby spoke again.
'Don't pretend ignorance. Who else would send a letter to Lord Monteagle — your brother-in-law — warning him not to attend Parliament if he wished to preserve his life?'
'Now you mention it, I'd gladly have sent such a letter, if I'd only thought of it! You know what I think. We won't build our faith by this act, we'll destroy people's faith in it. I confess I'd thought of writing a warning, not to Monteagle, to one of the King's secretaries, but I never sent any such letter. Do you hear me? I never sent a letter’
Sincerity strikes its own note. Sincerity uttered with a man holding a drawn dagger at your back strikes an even deeper note. It was picked up by Catesby and Wintour.
'If not you, who else?' It was Wintour this time, almost hissing in his intensity.
'How would I know? And can the condemned man at least sit down? It's not much of a last request!'
Tresham's genuine exhaustion, physical and mental, came to his aid. His tiredness was clearly no counterfeit.
If I can keep saying what I know to be true, I might yet walk out of here alive, thought Tresham. That would be an irony, for a man who was a congenital liar.
Gresham was exhausted, though mentally rather than physically. The strain of having to act the invalid in front of every servant* the strain of waiting, had all taken its toll. Standing to wash that morning he had felt himself shivering, something he had never done unless he had a fever. Mannion had said nothing, but Gresham noted the fire had been stacked higher than normal when he went to eat his breakfast.
Mannion had arranged the next meeting with Tresham in a stew, or brothel.
'It makes sense,' he had remonstrated. 'There's more control over who comes into a whorehouse than there ever is in a tavern. It's across the river, so we can get you over in a covered boat from our own jetty.'
In the meantime, Mannion had surpassed himself at The Mitre. Pretending to be searching out a room for his master and finding out which room Percy had booked, he had taken the adjacent one for an hour earlier. By the time Percy occupied his room the servants would have finished bringing the food and have left them to their bottles. Even better, an iron hook from which a lamp had hung had worked loose from the rough plaster of the dividing wall in Percy's room, and been fixed anew an inch or so up, leaving a hole. It had taken Mannion a split second with his dagger to drive through the hole and leave a clear mark on the wall of the adjacent room. It was the work of a few seconds to enlarge the hole so that one man could look through. Yet he worked with the utmost care at it, as the tap boy left their room. The plaster was old and rotten, and too much pressure would not open an eye hole, all but invisible in the other room, but rather tear out a great gaping hole.
Reluctantly Gresham had allowed Jane's importunings, and taken her with him, heavily hooded. At the inn it was just another well-bred lady coming to an assignation with a gentleman. They extinguished the lights in their room as they heard Percy and his guests enter. Mannion was first to look through. He had the descriptions of the others from Tresham and from the agents he had sent out.
'That's Percy,' Mannion whispered, 'the tall one with the white hair and beard. They say he sweats all the time. The other big one, red beard and hair, he must be Fawkes. The third one… he might be Grant, Robert Grant…'
Gresham took over from Mannion, peering through the tiny hole to the well-lit room beyond. How normal they look, he thought as the men started their meal. How much easier things would be if those determined to bring mass destruction to nations somehow looked different from their fellow men.
Tresham realised that his life had hung in the balance at White Webbs, but it took time for the shock to hit him. He had swaggered his way through the meeting, but gone into a near collapse afterwards when he had realised what had so nearly happened to him.
The smell of bodies and stale sweat in the room they used suggested it had only recently been used for a different purpose. They had come by separate routes, the most devious way possible, Gresham in a closed boat over the river to Southwark. Tresham had not been followed, Mannion was prepared to swear.
Tell me what happened.' Gresham spoke calmly, sensing the rising terror in his spy.
Slowly, with much prompting, Tresham told his story. There had been a letter, to Lord Monteagle. It had caused Wintour to panic, but left Catesby strangely calm. The plotters had not been named. No action seemed to have been taken. The powder was secure. They were meeting tomorrow again, a group of them, to discuss the situation.
'And I'm the prime suspect,' he confessed. 'If they'd asked me a different question there might have been a different ending. Catesby
… I don't know about Robin. I think he believes me when I say I've written no letter. Tom Wintour, now there's a different story.'
Gresham thought for a moment. 'Are you prepared to be arrested for your part in this plot? Taken to the Tower?'
Tresham gaped at him. Even Mannion started and showed surprise.
'Arrested? Taken to the Tower? Is the world gone mad, and am I the only sane person left? If either happens then I'm a dead man! I might as well throw myself off the boat home and into the Thames.'
'An understandable conclusion,' said Gresham, 'but not necessarily true. Think on it. If you're arrested peacefully and can claim to have used your best endeavours to stop the plot, that'll give them pause to think. You're a late recruit. Persuade them of that, and they'll leave you 'til last. With any luck you'll escape torture. It has to be sanctioned by the King, and that'll take time.'
'Escape torture if I'm lucky! Hell's fire, man, what dp you think lam?'
'Someone who might prove very lucky in his friends. I said imprisoned in the Tower, not die in the Tower. Do you realise that when the news of this plot breaks you'll be a hunted man all your life? Well, our two interests come toget
her. I need you to report to me for as long as possible, and that carries the risk that you'll be caught up in the exposure before you can get away. You need a new life — and you'll only get that if the world thinks you're dead.'
'And you can arrange that?' said Tresham incredulously.
'Did you realise that you've been receiving treatment for a complaint for some years past, from my good friend Dr Simon Forman?'
'Forman? That quack! I'm no woman wanting to miscarry quietly or to poison her husband, nor no idiot paying a fortune for a false horoscope.'
'Leave ranting to your friend Catesby. Forman is a better doctor than many who claim more training in that science. Now listen…'
Raleigh had told him on his last visit that he must drop the escape plan. He would never use it. His wife had pleaded with him. He had looked at her in that special way, the way he used for no-one else, and had stroked her head gently. 'A man does not run away,' he had said. 'A man lives by his honour, and if then he needs to die for his honour, then that too is part of the bargain.' What more fitting than that a plan that had been refused because it was not an honourable course of action should be used for a man who had lost all claim to honour?
It could be done, Gresham knew. Simon Forman could produce almost any symptoms to order. A urinary strangulation, he had favoured. Easy to fake with potions, easy to act. Forman could also produce substances that would slow the heartbeat down almost to nothing, make the body appear cold. The tricky part was getting the corpse diagnosed as dead, and into the coffin. Weeping women helped, flinging themselves on the corpse and keeping the doctors from a lengthy examination. They let the women in if the prisoner was seriously ill, knowing a man received better care from his family.
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