'But what's the link between this and this powder plot?' asked Jane, genuinely bemused.
'What if Cecil knows something is brewing? The details can't be clear to him. No man like him would knowingly leave a ton of powder beneath his seat of power. But say he's caught the rumours, and sees in this plot a way to prove Raleigh a traitor at last? Say he bides his time and then seizes as many of the plotters as he can find. How many under torture wouldn't confess to Raleigh's being the ringleader? It would explain so much. Why Cecil is desperate to keep me out of the way, why he feared me so and set me off on a false trail. I've made no secret of my allegiance to Sir Walter. For God's sake, I visit the man in his prison openly! There are few men who could unstitch a plot to make Raleigh appear a traitor, and few who would want to do so as much as I. I'm one such. Perhaps the only such.'
'Did it kill Will Shadwell?' asked Jane.
'Of course,' said Gresham. 'Percy must have blurted something out to Shadwell when he was drunk. I wonder if Will took the story to Cecil first of all? That would be a fine joke. Cecil watching this lovely little plot bubbling away, his marvellous excuse to get rid of Raleigh once and for all, and along comes Will Shadwell ready to spoil it all with an early disclosure. I flattered myself thinking Will Shadwell was running with a story to me. I bet he was running away from Sam Fogarty and his crew; he must have picked up he was being followed, and seen me sis the only person who could protect him against Cecil.'
Jane was looking perplexed. 'But I still don't see why you can't just go to Cecil? Expose the plot and you stop a slaughter…'
'And I give Cecil myself as well as Raleigh, served up nice and hot on a plate! Think what happens if I appear in front of Cecil with the details of this fantastical plot. One of Raleigh's fiercest supporters, and a spymaster to boot? I'm clapped into jail the minute I open my mouth, and instead of saving my master I become an agent for his death! How easy to have me not as the discoverer of the plot, but as one of its leaders. There's a forged letter to prove me a Catholic. What was done once can be done again! I've supped with the plotters, haven't I? And I have a direct link to Raleigh. They can have me backwards and forwards between the plotters and the Tower quicker than a pair of oars in the flood tide. They can rack me until I say what they wish, never even need to bring me out in open court. Look at Raleigh's trial — his chief accuser was never even presented!'
'You would never testify against Raleigh!' exclaimed Jane.
'I would never willingly or knowingly testify against him, while I was in possession of my own senses. But courage and fortitude have nothing to do with torture, Jane. Christ himself on the Cross denied his father. It's not just their bodies men lose on the rack. It's their minds. Anyone can be broken, in time.'
'So you can't speak out, and you can't remain silent. Aren't there others you could reveal the details to?'
'That must be the answer. Young Tresham's a complicating factor. He's to be stopped from cutting and running, by the way. He's impulsive by nature. Before too long he'll weigh the odds -
God knows, I would if I struck a deal where I could be arrested and taken to the Tower as a traitor if my mad cousin spoke one word to the wrong people — and work out that it might be better for him just to vanish off to France on his own.' 'So who do you tell, and how?'
'There're enough pompous fools in the employ of the Crown who'd leap at the chance to discover a plot, but the mere discovery isn't enough. If the powder is simply found, it could still be proven as Raleigh's as much as anyone else's. No, however it's done, it has to be by some route or other that keeps it within the Catholics, identifies the whole awful business as driven by religion.'
'Well,' said Jane, 'you'd better get that pen and paper ready. How many Catholic sympathisers do we know?'
Someone was crying, not too far away in the house. The noise could be heard even above the noise of a great house being shut up and closed down, a keening wail that seemed to have no start and no ending. It would be one of the servants, Tresham thought. He was still not recovered from his madcap ride from London to Northamptonshire. Many of the servants had worked their whole lives for the Tresham family. They were wailing, as servants always did, yet little they knew how much better for them it would be to be dispersed before the avenging angels of Cecil descended on the house crying treason. He had done with Rushton, whatever happened. Already the house felt as if it belonged to someone else.
Tresham believed he could still stop the plot. If that was the case, Rushton could be opened up again easily enough. The death of so many Catholic nobles was the key, he was sure. It might not work as an argument for postponement on Catesby, but it could work on the others. He had laboured the point with his dark angel. The man showed so little resemblance to Alexander Selkirk, the semi-drunk Scot who had accompanied Jonson, that Tresham had to pinch himself to know they were one and the same. 'Selkirk' had not disagreed with him, but gazed levelly into his eyes and said resignedly,
'You must try, as best you can. It's best you don't know of the other plan to destroy this plot before it happens. You'll be all the more surprised when you do hear of it. Remember when you're challenged to stick with the truth.' Tresham had pondered on that, not really understanding, and pleaded to be allowed to ride north and close up his home, bringing his family down to London.
'Why should you wish that?' the man had asked.
'I leave this country for a while, whatever happens. I need to put my affairs in order, gather my money and bring my family together so that when I vanish they can help and support each other. I must also consider being arrested.'
'Why so?'
Tresham had had the same thoughts as Gresham. 'One loose word from any one of the plotters and they could be betrayed. I'm implicated now, regardless. If I'm arrested I can plead that I tried to stop the plot — which is quite true — and stayed with Catesby simply to act from the inside to further act against it. If I move my family to London it will confirm my innocence. A man who fears the fire doesn't move nearer the furnace.'
•No,' said Gresham, 'but a man who wants to light it most certainly does.'
You are, thought Gresham, very optimistic indeed about your likely fate if this plot is discovered. Live in hope, though. It does no harm.
'A lesser brain than yours,' he continued, 'might think to strip his house and gather his wealth, then return to London and vanish quietly before anyone knew what was happening.'
Was this man a mind-reader? Just such thoughts had been gaining increasing strength in Tresham's mind.
'Such thoughts wouldn't merit serious attention, from a sensible man, for two reasons. Firstly, a man who vanishes is still alive, and can still be found. Secondly, there is a watch on you at all times. It's an experienced watch, by people who make their living out of it, and would as soon as kill you as keep tail on you. We'll decide when you leave, together. Let this be our own private little conspiracy.'
So it had ended, and Tresham taken the mad ride to Rushton. Dust was rising everywhere, as hangings were taken down and the few precious carpets taken up, clothes and bed linen assaulted to rid them of dust before being packed tight into the chests that littered the halls, and stairways. What few fires there were blew smoke throughout the house, as doors were banged open and shut to the carts and horses waiting outside.
There was one final thing to be done, apart from face the anger and incomprehension of his mother, wife and sisters. The family papers, so carefully tended and preserved by his father, had been sealed three times over, and placed in the house where no unfriendly eyes would ever gaze on them. It felt like a burial.
Tresham headed for White Webbs, the Enfield home of Anne Vaux. He knew that Father Garnet would be there, together with Catesby, Fawkes and Tom Wintour. Catesby had assured him that Anne knew nothing of the detail of the plot, yet he felt a deep unease. White Webbs had become the gathering centre for the conspirators. It was riddled with priest-holes, and conveniently close to London. He could not believe
Anne Vaux would agree to mass slaughter in Parliament. Yet he could not see how she would not know, given the iron hand of control she and the other Catholic women exercised over the Faith in England. Father Garnet was a garrulous fool, and to be trusted as much as any Jesuit, yet how had he supported this murderous plan? Catesby was insistent that Garnet knew about the plot and endorsed it.
Tresham felt a deep, inner exhaustion as he entered the familiar doors, doors that once had been comforting to him. Catesby, Fawkes and Tom Wintour were there, with Robert Keyes. He had not liked Fawkes on their one previous meeting, feeling in him a contempt for the civilians with whom he was temporarily involved. His dislike had increased now he realised that this was the man who had planted the powder, and the man who was prepared to light the fuse to it. To Hell with the Lords in Parliament, who probably deserved to go there anyway. The powder could blow up whoever it pleased, but there was a terrible danger of Francis Tresham being caught in the blast..
From the start Tresham sensed a difference in Catesby. They were seated together in a room of dark oak panelling, bare of portraits but with mullioned windows overlooking the tended garden. By it a kitchen maid was poking at a mass of green in the kitchen garden, seeking the best plants to take back inside to Cook. Tresham looked enviously down on her bent back, noting her complete absorption in her task. Could his life ever be that simple?
'We're bound to blow up several of our own kind. Not just common people — the people whose leadership we depend on! Are we Catholics, or are we cannibals, feeding off our own kind?' Tresham was pushing at the point.
There was a sardonic grin on Fawkes's face. He rarely spoke, and when he did it was with a strange tang of Yorkshire and Spain in his accent.
'People die in wars,' he said now. 'Innocent people, as well as guilty people and soldiers.'
'For too long,' said Catesby, 'we've seen our battle as being about ideas and faith. Those things aren't "what we fight with. They're what we fight for. And fight we must. Do you think those who might die in the Lords would think their lives lost if by their death we bring God's rule back into England?'
'They won't be able to tell us, will they?' grunted Tresham. 'They'll be dead.'
'Some, not all. Many won't come, because they know they'll have to pass legislation against our kind. Others we can warn.'
They ran through the list. It was far too long. There was young Thomas Howard, recently appointed Earl of Arundel and restored to that ancient title. How could the young Lord Vaux be allowed into the massacre, given what the Vaux women had done for the Faith over the years? Tresham argued, as he had to, for his two brothers-in-law, Monteagle and Stourton. Then there was Lord Montagu… why, Gatesby had dined with two of them hardly a week past. Had he taken their supper whilst looking at them and knowing he was signing their death warrants?… Tresham had an unexpected ally in Robert Keyes, when he spoke in defence of Lord Mordaunt. Keyes was Tresham's age, a large man with a flowing red beard, but a generous soul, for all that he was a poor man. He had been one of the first to join the conspiracy. Perhaps it was the pair of them speaking out in favour of Mordaunt that provoked Catesby to show his fangs.
'Mordaunt!' he sneered. 'Why, I wouldn't tell that man a secret for a room full of jewels! It's precisely because of men such as him that we can't tell all and sundry what's to happen. They'd destroy us as readily as if we marched to tell the King ourselves.'
'But the young Arundel,' said Tresham. 'Surely if we kill such as him we're killing our hope for the future?'
'Why, then, stop him from coming by other means. Isn't there a man here who could give the boy a wound that'll keep him in bed for a week or two?'
A splutter of conversation broke out around the table. Catesby let it run.
'Hold!' he announced firmly, after fully quarter of an hour of pointless debate with no conclusion. 'I myself have warned Montagu.' He glared round the table, daring any there present to deny him his right. 'One or two of the others, possibly, I might tell hours before, if I so decide. You will leave it with me.'
There was total silence around the table.
'This is no petty squabble,' he carried on, in a low voice that carried as if it had been sharpened. 'This is the battle for the soul of England. Didn't Christ die to redeem us all? Wasn't Christ innocent of all evil? Didn't his mother, and his father, have long hours to mourn his death? Sometimes the innocent must perish with the guilty, sooner than lose the battle.'
They arranged to meet again on October 23rd, at The Irish Boy.
A wider gathering was planned for the day after at The Mitre tavern in Bread Street, between Cheapside and the river, though not for the conspirators. Catesby was cheerful enough to muster a smile when he told his devilish company not to meet him there. He was due to meet ambassadors for the archdukes. He had spread the word that he and Charles Percy, Thomas Percy's brother, were forming a troop to go and fight in Europe, partly to lure away any Government spies in the taverns, partly to reassure Anne Vaux and Father Garnet. For those who did not probe too deeply, the expedition was good enough cover for their purchase of horses and weapons.
From Bread Street, mused Francis Tresham, you could see both the Tower of London, its White Tower with its four new pepper-pot cupolas, and St Paul's, still without its steeple after a lightning blast in Elizabeth's reign. Prime executions spots, the Tower and St Paul's. He felt a clawing in his stomach, and wondered if the crowds would be gathering in one of those spots to see his disembowelment before November 5th.
It had to be stopped, this madness. It had to cease.
Chapter 9
The miners were thin, wiry creatures with an aversion to washing their backs and muscles made of corded steel. If they were to avoid discovery, it was essential that their work was done at break-neck speed, and in silence. The men could be housed easily enough, shutters kept tight and a single candle the only light. Food and drink were brought in after midnight, with those bringing it carting the waste away at the same time, usually choosing to dump it in the river where it was sluiced away. The men had been well briefed. Any curiosity they might have had was torn out of them by the sheer physical pressure of the work. The armed guards placed there to ensure that none of the bumpkins went sightseeing had an easy job.
'Silence!' Their overseer barked a whispered command and the men froze, those still in the tunnel slinking back. A rattle of hooves and wheels outside had stopped. There was a shouted command, the cart started up again. The men relaxed, the remainder climbing their way out through the hole in the floor, dripping sweat on to the newly sanded boards.
The men worked naked in the tunnel, though a few made a rough pouch for their testicles, to protect them from cuts, or placed a sweatband round their head. By their standards it was not difficult work, the main opening having been cut, but the scenes underground still looked like a vision of Hell. The feeble yellow light flickered over the naked bodies, glinting off the sweat that caked them, and seeming to emphasise the dark patches where muck and earth had become embedded in the miners' flesh. The air was foetid, stinking of sweat, piss and decay, and the light cast huge shadows on the rough wall as the miners hewed away at the subsoil and rock. The shadow dancers seemed like huge mythical creatures, beating punishment into an unyielding earth to the tune of the picks' out-of-tempo clink and thud. The job would soon be done, the miners sent back home richer but none the wiser.
Above the ground, London went about its normal business. The bankers and moneylenders bowed low and opened the doors of their fine timbered houses in Goldsmiths' Row, whilst yards away, hidden from sight and mind, the rat-infested rookeries held families of eight or ten souls, crammed into the one room. The prosperous shop owners took their over-dressed wives to sit on the benches by St Paul's and to hear the sermon, watching all the time to see which Privy Council member and which wife of which famous Lord was sitting in the privileged north gallery of the Cathedral wall. Meantime hungry-eyed men waited for the gawping sailors and country bum
pkins come to see the great Cathedral, knowing that a false dash at a purse would mean the gallows only a few yards away from where the word of God was being preached. God was a strange master in this greatest of all cities. A wretch was being whipped through the street at the tail of a cart, for having denied God, whilst the moneylenders thronged the aisles of London's Cathedral. The bright-painted two and four-oar wherries cried out for trade on the riverbank, peaking as the time came for the afternoon performances in the playhouses across the river in Southwark. Sitting on one of their plush-covered cushions was a young girl, dressed as if for Court. She ran her hands through the water, the same water on which swans were floating a short way away. She had been told not to, but the pattern of the water and the sensuality of its cold across her hand were too great to resist. Later, she sucked her hand without thinking, watching as they neared their landing jetty and gazing in wonder at so many fine ships on the river. In seven days she would be dead, the incessant bleeding to which her surgeons submitted her sapping her body's resistance to the flux which raged through her thin, under-developed body. It is London, and in the playhouse Hotspur is about to proclaim:
'O gentlemen! The time of life is short; To spend that time basely were too long.'
When the play is finished, many of the same audience who listened to Shakespeare's poetry will stay on and pay to watch wild dogs tear a bear to pieces, the bear being tied to a stake.
'The one who worries me most,' said Gresham, 'is Monteagle.'
'Why more so than the others?' asked Jane. They had filled pages of paper with their scrawlings, gathering together all they could reach on the Catholic Lords.
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