Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

The name and his profession clinched it for Gresham.

Why did a group of Catholics, many of whom had a history of rebellion only a few years earlier with the ill-fated Essex, want to meet with a soldier and armourer? Such men knew about weapons, armour and powder. The presence of one of Northumberland's relatives and henchmen had to be crucial. So did the servant gossip of great stocks of weaponry and horses over and above any conceivable need being laid in.

A group of dissident men in regular conclave. A professional soldier. A potential leader drawn from one of the oldest aristocratic families in the kingdom. Weapons and war supplies being bought in.

It had to be an uprising.

With the Spanish troops quartered in Dover? Possibly. Was Northumberland involved? He was the only Catholic with the breeding and the standing to act as Protector if King James was done away with. If Gresham were in Northumberland's rich shoes, he would not bother with the Spanish troops in Dover, except as perhaps a distant threat to divert Cecil's attention. Rather he would turn not only to all the young English Catholic men blooding themselves and defining their manhood in the European wars, but to all the disaffected soldiers in Europe who might smell easy meat in knocking a new Scottish King off an English throne. After all, had not a Catholic ambassador described James in the hearing of his court as 'a scabbard without a sword'? Europe was more scared of Queen Bess than they were of James. Scottish Kings were brought up to defend themselves by a knife in the back, not a cavalry charge to the front. There was nothing approaching an army in England, and the only man left to build and lead a fleet was Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing in the Tower on a trumped-up charge of treason.

Gresham paced up and down the small room, spilling his thoughts to Jane and Mannion.

'It must be an uprising!' he exclaimed. 'These men aren't courtiers, men who wish to rule! They're gentry, foolish idealists, men who think because they've held a sword and fought off a drunken ploughboy in a market-town brawl that they're soldiers. I don't believe the Earl of Northumberland could stir himself to be King if he was asked by Jesus himself! No, their plot must be to kidnap the King. He makes it easy. The man's besotted with hunting. Where easier to grab a monarch than in a forest where his men are bound to be split up? Take him, hold him in some stronghold with two or three hundred well-armed men. Move your mercenaries and your missionaries over from the Lowlands before a navy or an army can be mustered. The King's a coward. Show him some cold steel, prick him a little, make him sign what you will. Make him call a Parliament, make him promise God on earth to the people. Ride him in state back to London… they will have to kill Cecil, of course…'

Gresham's mind was racing ahead, as it always did, plotting the moves he himself would have undertaken in order to turn the uprising into a new government.

'Would it work?' The question was Mannion's.

'It could be made to work. I must meet these men, this Catesby and this Tresham above all. Then I will know.'

Then, almost at the end of September, Sharpy Sam had sent a message to the House for Gresham to meet him, in a Deptford tavern a stone's throw away from where Kit Marlowe's murder was meant to have taken place.

Sam was a Devon man with a deep burr in his voice. Like most of his kind he was a pirate at heart, but for some reason had turned from the sea twenty years past to take up his wandering trade.

'They were on a pilgrimage,' he had told Gresham over their third flagon of ale. He spoke slowly, measuring every word as if it had a value. 'Would you believe it? As bold as brass they were, some forty of them, paradin' through the marches as if they owned the land, priests in tow. Not as some of them looked like priests, as I remember,' he said disapprovingly. He took a pull of his ale, rolling the taste around his tongue before swallowing it. 'I made for Huddington, thinkin' I'd let them come to me instead of my chasin' all over the countryside, and got myself taken indoors. There's no doubt the servants and womenfolk are all a-twitter — more horses in the stable than the Duke of Parma, more swords than the Armada. They says it's for the young folk to go an' fight with the Archduke. Archpiss, if you ask me. More like that lot want the Archduke over here, rapin', lootin' and pillagin'.' The phrase obviously rang a bell with Sharpy, who repeated it, rolling it around his mouth like the ale. 'Rapin', lootin' and pillagin'.'

'Disgraceful,' said Gresham, 'all this rapin', lootin' and pillagin'.' There was a sniff that could have been a splutter from Jane, but which turned into a loudly blown nose. She was parked behind Gresham, dirt all over her face, and training herself to look longingly at the beer the men were drinking. 'Noisy girl, isn't she?' enquired Sharpy. 'Nice tits, though,' he added approvingly, and grinned at her. If Sharpy realised that Gresham had suddenly acquired an inability to put a 'g' on the end of his words, he did not show it

'Well, there's two bits of news as might interest you. The first is that man Catesby. Handsome bugger, fancies himself. Pure luck, as it happens. I was down at Huddington — that cook they 'ave, she's special in the kitchen and special up against an apple tree — when this Catesby rides in to see his friend, Rookwood. He'd come ahead, seein' as he likes fine horseflesh, and likes to ride them hard. Lovely boy, Rookwood. Dressed like a paint shop. Talk is among his servants, Catesby gets going with Rookwood, he comes over all miserable, spends the night on his knees in a tiny room there, one candle. He's mumblin' a prayer, and they tries to listen. Can't hear much, except somethin' about "God's vengeance" and a "great enterprise" and "preserve my family". That put the fear of God into the servants' hall, I can tell you. Well, anyhow, next mornin' Rookwood takes a great mass o' money out of his chest and gives it to this Catesby. Catesby's up to somethin', that's sure.

An' it's somethin' that needs a ton of money, that's sure as well. I bin there with Essex and his bunch, I were there with Babington and his bunch, I seen it and I smelt it before. It's rebellion, I tell you, the stupid buggers. Some people don't deserve to be born with heads on their bodies. Should be taken off at birth, to save the hangman the trouble later on!' 'There was other news, Sharpy?'

'Right enough. Another tankard of this would be welcome… thanks. That boy Tresham you asked after? News is, his father's dead. Not before time, by the sound of it. Pompous old bugger, they says as know. Left a ton of debt, but young Francis got a pretty penny still. Not before time. They say as how he's up to his young neck in debt. 'E's a bastard, that one. Tried to do in a pregnant girl, fiddled his father out of land.'

'I don't think I'm going to like this Francis Tresham,' said Jane.

'I think you'd better pray to God you never meet him!' answered Gresham.

The house in Alsatia was starting to feel like home, Gresham thought ruefully as they finally made it back there from Deptford. It was not the house that depressed him, he knew, as he mounted the stairs and slumped down on a chair, the black mood mounting in him.

Mannion went downstairs, to bring them wine.

'Does it matter, this uprising?' Jane had tuned in to his mood, was trying to tease the melancholy out of him without seeming to do so. 'All Kings and Queens are rotten,' she said calmly, in a sweeping generalisation that Gresham noted as disposing of humanity's favoured form of government for several thousand years past. 'Look at our King. His legs can't hold up his body, his tongue's too big for his mouth so he slobbers like a baby and his clothes are as ragged as the jewels he places on them are bright. He stinks and he's lousy. He learnt his statecraft in a small nation that's only learned to survive by alliance with France and by murdering its rulers, and so he negotiates a treaty with Spain instead of realising that we're victors over Spain and a great power now in our own right. His wife has no brains and his favourites no balls… excuse my language… are we worse off if he's knocked off his throne?'