Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

'Well,' said Jane, 'Will Shadwell certainly wasn't the type to be coming to Cambridge to sign up for a degree.'

'Cease your nonsense,' said Gresham, caught unawares by her flippancy and the image of Will Shadwell in undergraduate gown and cap. He felt himself starting to sound pompous, and so switched tone, knowing it would annoy her. 'You, mistress, are an additional lure of great value to an enemy. My honour wouldn't permit your being taken and held by an enemy. Were I to be sidetracked by having to extract you from some den of thieves I would lose what little scent I might have followed. It would be most inconvenient.'

Jane stood up. 'Thank you, my Lord. It is good to know.' Her tone would have frozen the River Thames in midsummer. 'A poor thing such as me must never be an inconvenience..' She left most of the hinges still on the door.

Gresham grinned at Mannion. 'Call her back, will you, if the stairway's still standing.'

It took her longer than was necessary to reappear.

'I hadn't realised that it was convenient for me to appear before you, my Lord. Is it convenient that I stand, or would it be more convenient for me to kneel at your feet?' No arrow about to be released from the bow quivered with more hidden tension, or stood up straighter and more tall.

God, thought Gresham, you would fight God and Lucifer together if they made, friends again and joined forces against you!

Gresham, enjoying his rudeness, pointed a finger at her. 'Will you sit down, you stupid wench, and be silent?'

Jane planted her arms akimbo, looked him full in the face with a fire that beat the burning of Gwent. 'Yes, sir, I will sit down, if that be your will. No, sir, I am not stupid, nor am I a wench, and no, sir, I will not be silent!’

'God's blood!' barked Gresham. 'Am I to be served by an old man who thinks of nothing but beer and young whores, and a young wanton with a voice like a fishwife and a temper to match, who throws a fit every time she is challenged by her master?'

Mannion lacked the education to recognise a rhetorical question, so answered it, thoughtfully. 'Aye, sir. I reckon you are.'

There was a moment of frozen silence, then Gresham, Mannion and Jane burst out into peals of laughter.

Thomas Percy was sulking. It was nothing new.

'I swear the man was using loaded dice. Three sixes in a row, would you believe? I challenged him, but the fool of a landlord came between us and made us go outside.'

Percy was a brilliant swordsman, not perhaps the match of Jack Wright, but nearly so. The difference was that Jack Wright fought to win, with a dark intensity that was as terrifying as his swift movements. Percy enjoyed winging his man, cutting him here and there, taunting him, before moving in for the kill.

'When we got through the crowd, the bastard made a run for it! Coward! Who would believe it?'

'He must have heard of your prowess, cousin. Few men would stand against Thomas Percy with a blade in his hand!' It was Catesby, silky-smooth in voice, sitting at the head of the table where the plotters had dined.

Percy glanced suspiciously at Catesby, looking for mockery. He found none in the bland assurance of Catesby's eyes, and brought out a stained cloth with which he wiped the dripping sweat off his brow. Percy sweated like a pig, or like the inside of glass on a drenching rainy day.

Jack Wright, seated as always at the rear of the room, made one of his rare contributions. He spoke slowly, as if measuring every word: 'What of your peasants and their lawsuit?'

'Animals! Animals!' Percy spluttered into renewed anger, grabbing his tankard and spilling half its contents as he rammed the ale down his throat. Wright glanced at Catesby, the merest hint of a grin on his dour features. Catesby raised an eyebrow. Stirring Percy into anger was so easy that it had almost ceased to be amusing. Men's hair had turned white with fear. Had a lifetime of anger turned Percy's hair so white?

'Am I to let them lie in their hovels all hours of the day and night and pay no rent? How much trust would my Earl of Northumberland have in such a member of his family were I to leave them to stink and rot and pay no rent?'

'Dead men pay no rent…' It was Tom Wintour who spoke, Tom who had been in on the conspiracy from the start. A small, dark, wiry man, his restless wit was at odds with the glum pessimism of his elder brother. Robert Wintour had been recruited only recently, following again his younger brother but doing so with markedly little enthusiasm. Well, thought Tom, that was nothing new. He had long ago accepted that of the Wintour brothers he would have to generate the energy for both of them.

'Dead be damned!' Percy was warming to his theme, and never failed to rise to Tom Wintour's wit. 'There was no chance of that! We tickled them a little, that was all. There was a time when men would have taken it as their due, stout men who could take their punishment and not go whining to the law!'

And Percy's men had tickled their wives and daughters, by all accounts, with thirty of the tenants complaining direct to the Earl of Northumberland that his Constable and land agent had attacked them for rent they had already paid.

'And what of it, Robin?' Percy dropped into the familiar name, the one Catesby's friends used. 'Why must I go at my tenants like a dog after a hare? You know why! I need their miserable money! Must I be banker to this conspiracy, as well as its only link to the Court and all else?' Percy flung the question out like a spear, and already the thick sheen of sweat had formed over his whole face. Dark stains were visible under the arms of his shirt, his doublet cast carelessly over a nearby chair, and the same dark stains were on his hose over the cleft of his buttocks, and up his shirt along the line of his back.

Catesby took the angry question with a smile, waving his hand as if to say thank you. Far less of Thomas Percy's money had gone to swell the coffers of the plotters than Percy liked people to think, but he had been asked for, and had given, good coin. If this angry, self-serving torrent of words was the price Catesby had to pay for Percy's money then it was a price he was willing to pay.

'You've done well,' said Catesby placatingly, 'and all of us know it. We're grateful, truly grateful…'

The Duck and Drake in the Strand was rapidly becoming one of London's most fashionable taverns, and had long been a favoured ground for the conspirators to meet. It was convenient for Catesby, who had lodgings only a few doors away. Percy subsided into a grumble. It would flare up again soon, Catesby knew. He could write the speech.

Was Thomas. Percy not kinsman to the mighty Earl of Northumberland, the patron who had appointed him Constable of Alnwick Castle, the Percy stronghold in Northumberland? Had not the great Catholic Earl entrusted Thomas Percy above all others to act as his emissary to the upstart James VI of Scotland, offering the support of English Catholics to the Scottish King in exchange for simple tolerance of their faith? Had not Percy won the support of the King for the Catholic cause, only to have it wrenched away from him by that Anti-Christ Robert Cecil, the poison in the ear of the new monarch? Had not a month past that same Thomas Percy been made Gentleman Pensioner to King James I, allowing that same Thomas Percy access to the King of All England? Was it not Thomas Percy who had negotiated the rent of the house adjacent to the House of Lords from John Whynniard and Henry Ferrers, the house from whence a tunnel could be dug to undermine the very fabric of England's Government? Catesby's own house in Lambeth was almost opposite, for all the use he had been. It was Percy's power, influence and charm that had closed the deal, Percy would point out, causing Whynniard and the Catholic Ferrers to look the other way.