Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

'But that's not why you refuse to escape?' queried Gresham.

'No, I suppose not. You know me too well. If I escape, where do I go? To Spain, and prove that I was a traitor all along? All I do by running is prove my accusers were right. My battle is here. As you have reason to know, I'm not a man who runs away from battles.'

'Yet you're suggesting that I should do just that?'

‘Not run away, no. Hide, yes. Go to Cambridge and lie low there, perhaps? It's such a small place you'd be bound to hear of any outsiders coming to the town who might pose a threat. Go abroad? You've enough hiding places there, haven't you? Cecil is all-powerful. He wants you dead, for what you might know, just as he wants me dead for what I might become. You can swear until Doomsday that you know nothing and he won't believe you. My advice is to take a leaf out of that girl Moll's book. Lie low, go away.'

'I accept half the advice,' said Gresham. 'Hide and lie low, yes. But not in Cambridge, nor in Europe. Here, in London, in Cecil's back yard, where I can still do my work, turn the tables on him. I have my battles, like you. Like you, I don't run away. I stay and fight.'

Robert Catesby was riding through the gently rolling, lush-green pastures of Worcestershire. He had made good time on his journey to meet Ambrose Rookwood and enlist him into the conspiracy. He had cultivated the friendship of Rookwood for years, waiting for just such a moment. He needed Rookwood's wealth, and the horses that wealth would buy. No-one understood his genius, he mused. There was no-one else who could have had the vision he had, conceived of the plot and welded so many different individuals to it. Well, history would know.

They had abandoned the tunnel. It had come near to killing them, not their victims. It had to be God's will that just as the tunnel had proved impossible the lease on a house with cellars directly under the House of Lords had become available. It was stacked now with powder, hidden under piles of faggots and firewood. With one blasting roar of flame that would light up London and burn for years he would destroy all semblance of government in Britain. Into that vacuum of power he would ride with three hundred men. Horsed, armed and ready, they would first of all sweep up the Princess Elizabeth from her thinly guarded home at Coombe Abbey and offer her as the heir apparent. The same three hundred men, swelled by then with other Catholic supporters, would race through the Midlands and along the Welsh borders where Catholic support was at its strongest, gathering strength all the time. Meanwhile the 1,500 Spanish troops idling at Dover would throw off their pretended stupor and race in turn to Rochester. With no army to oppose them, they would sit astride the Thames and starve London into submission if it failed to support the uprising. Fawkes had promised it would be so, returning from Europe with secret assurances. Catesby and every Catholic who could ride a horse would by that time be streaming in their thousands to the gates of London, whilst Sir William Stanley would be bringing his English Regiment over from Europe, land them at Southampton to underpin the new regime, regardless of Spain's support. Again, Fawkes had confirmed that all they were waiting for was the excuse to move. With Percy acting as intermediary to the Earl of Northumberland, and the threat of all his power sweeping down from the north seemingly assured, God had to be on their side.

Robert Catesby would change the world. He smiled to himself as he urged his horse onwards.

The countryside he rode through was dressed in shades of green, with the increasingly darker and richer colours showing the first heaviness of autumn. The thick woodlands on the tops of the gentle hills contrasted in their untamed wildness with the neat rows of the tilled land in the valleys and the strips of pasture. Seen from the inside of a healthy young body, astride a fine horse and with a thick cloak to hand to keep out the chill of evening when it came, it was truly God's green and pleasant land. One could almost forget the rising tide of persecution that was first of all choking and then surely killing off the great families of England, who for years had asked nothing but peace to worship God in the one and true way of the Faith.

Catesby reined in, and gazed out over the pastoral landscape, with a few wisps of smoke showing the whereabouts of peasant cottages, and a fine stone manor on the hillside exuding calm and authority over the scattered holdings. He imagined his own men pounding through and over the harvest-bare fields, the glinting helmets of the Spanish troops catching the sun as they struck fear and trembling into the hearts of the ignorant peasants in the fields.

If the grand vision was simple, and the grand players in place, it was the detail, as ever, that caused the problems. The men had kept their mouths shut, Catesby knew, but there was talk among the women, and of course among the servants. It could hardly be otherwise. The stockpiling they had already done, under the guidance of John Grant and Robert Wintour, could hardly have gone unnoticed by the womenfolk. The stables were fuller by the minute. There would have to be more horses, more weapons. Most of all, he was desperately short of money, and in particular money for horses.

Well, Catesby had an answer to all those problems, he thought as he rode on his way to Huddington Court, the home of Robert Wintour. You could not defeat gossip, but you could block it by spreading other stories and simply overloading the capacity of the tongues to wag. As for money and horses, there were three names he was prepared to risk as new conspirators now there was so little time left to go for them to get it wrong — Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Three young and moneyed men were about to be persuaded to give God, and Robert Catesby, some of their wealth.

His horse shied as some loose stones dislodged by its passage rattled down the steep embankment upon which he rode. It was a nervous creature, but strong and powerful, and he instinctively leant forward to soothe its nervousness.

Horses were the key. Catesby had timed his visit carefully. Ambrose Rookwood had one of the finest stables of any man in England, and his love of horses was legendary, as was his love of fine clothes. That same love of fine horses meant he would never stay with the women and the others on the recent pilgrimage some forty of them had taken to Winifred's Well at Holt. He would ride on ahead, stopping over at Huddington on the way to his own ancestral home at Coldham Hall. It was a woman's thing, this pilgrimage, thought Catesby, but Rookwood's love of his wife had sent him on it and his desire to drive a good horse hard meant that he would ride ahead on its return. That in turn meant that Catesby would see him without the presence of Elizabeth, his wife. Rookwood was a dandy and a showman, but he listened to his wife, who had a great deal more sense than he did. The last thing Catesby wanted was pillow talk the night after he had enlisted Rookwood.

He rode into the courtyard and handed his horse over to the groom who came rushing up to him. Other men might take their mount to the stables themselves, and see it in its stall, fed and rubbed down. Catesby saw no reason why he should do what a servant could do just as well. He had more important fish to fry, as the small, dark and elegant figure of Rookwood did him the honour of coming down the steps almost dancing with joy, and caught him in a warm embrace, as if it were his house and not Robert Wintour's.

Yes, thought Catesby, as they went arm in arm into the house. You have two things I stand most in need of. You have horses and you have wealth.

Catesby felt a growing excitement as he agreed to a warming cup of wine, even before taking his boots and riding cloak off. The dour Robert Wintour had appeared, radiating as much warmth as if Catesby were Anti-Christ come to visit. Rookwood was chattering on about a new Hungarian riding coat he had just acquired, with its velvet lining. You have a fine fortune and a fine wife, Catesby thought, and enough brats scampering about your home to fill a farmyard. Your days are filled with your fine horses, your fine wife, your fine sons, your hawks and your hounds.