Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

Catesby saw all people through the mirror of his own soul. He had seen for years how the power and the charm he could direct on to his fellow men and women would eat away at their reserve and caution, however hard they tried to resist it, and make them as clay in his hands. For most of his life luring people into the web of his personality had been a game, a pleasure to put alongside hunting, gambling and, latterly, bedding a pretty woman.

Yet he felt uneasy over his final recruits. Francis Tresham was a wild and an angry thing, a man with no real belief that Catesby could anchor on to. Yet Catesby had always known that Tresham would also acquire a great deal of wealth on the death of his father, something which all along had made him an attractive proposition. Well, he would clinch it in London and then at Clerkenwell. The need for money was too pressing to allow for any delay, and once sworn in Tresham, like all the others, would have too much to lose by betrayal.

Everard Digby was a different proposition. Catesby needed him not only for his money, but for his personality as well. One of Digby's attractions was his innocence. Another was his staunch Protestant background. He had been converted by the priest Gerard, who not only behaved and dressed like a gentleman but, thought Catesby, actually believed he was one. Father Gerard had caught Digby somehow when he was ill, and used his panic to show him the true path. Amusingly, he had converted Mary, Digby's wife, entirely separately, with neither of the pair knowing of the other's conversion. It was typical of Gerard to keep the news from them and enjoy their consternation at the discovery.

It was that radiant innocence, that wholesomeness that Catesby needed. Everard was not only known at Court. He was feted as one of its rising stars. He looked like a God, and he rode a horse as if he had been sewn to it in the womb. He was an excellent swordsman and, by all accounts, a brilliant musician, though the latter was something Catesby had never acquired the taste for. Someone had to invest Coombe Abbey and take away the Princess Elizabeth. If it was a rat-arsed Tom Wintour, John Grant with a face that looked like it had come from Hell or a drunken Thomas Percy who broke in to Coombe House to take the Princess Elizabeth, the ser-vants would as like fight to the death as do the decent thing and surrender before anyone got hurt, reckoning they were dead already. The Princess Elizabeth was only a girl after all, and too much fear could cause God knew what complications with her. Didn't girls who thought their virtue was threatened throw them' selves off high walls? Any girl with half her wits about her seeing Wintour, Grant or Percy coming towards her would know she was going to get more than a handshake. Yet if Digby was the attacker there might well be no fight at all. He was a Court favourite, a knight and one of the new King's Gentlemen Pensioners, known as a family man through and through, and with a visage that could calm a raging bull. Princess Elizabeth was no use to Catesby or to Catholicism skewered on a blade or cast down into a ditch. Why, Digby's charm might even keep the truth away from her about what had happened to her mother and father for some crucial hours. All the more likely if Digby himself did not know the truth — or at least, not the whole truth.

Why should Digby throw away a beautiful wife, a beautiful family and some of the best prospects in the country to join a wild plot? Catesby smiled to himself as Digby came pelting down the steps to his waiting horse, full of apologies and orders to his men. Beneath the sweet innocence the world saw in Sir Everard Digby, Catesby saw a mulish determination and stubbornness where it came to religion.

They set off along the deserted road, Tom Bates riding behind and carefully out of earshot. For a while they let the horses have their heads. It was as if they could not wait to shed the inactivity of the night in the stables, the pounding of their hooves driving the stable dust out of their bones and the remnants of the night out of their riders' bodies.

'Digby, old friend, will you do something to please me?'

They had reined in by the side of a brook that was almost a trickle, but which in a month would be roaring like a mini-torrent.

'I'd give my life to please you, Robin. You know that.'

'Will you swear an oath of secrecy to me? An oath that on all that's holy, and on all that you hold holy, you'll never reveal what I say to any living soul on earth?'

The ever-present smile on the youthful face of Everard Digby had gone now. There was still the flush of outrageous good health to his face, a face that had been full of happiness and contentment at his fine mount, the fine October morning and the excitement of riding with his friend. A frown of uncertainty caused little-used lines to crinkle in his face.

'I do so swear. You have my word as a gentleman. But why…'

‘I’ve asked you to swear a simple corporal oath, old friend. The others, the others who're sworn to secrecy, they've had to swear and seal the oath with the blessed sacrament. It's a measure of the faith I have in you, you who've always been special to me, that I need no more than your word as a gentleman. Here…' Catesby produced his dagger from his belt. A fine silver inlay, its hilt formed the sign of the Cross, 'swear, here on this dagger. Swear you'll be secret. Swear you'll be silent.'

They made a strange tableau that fine October morning, two finely horsed gentlemen etched against the skyline, the luxury of their lives a mystery to any peasant who might have seen them, imagining some joke or jest to be passing between them as they rested their horses by water.

'I swear,' said Digby, nervous now, but laying hand on the hilt. How cold it felt.

The pair moved on, the ever-present Bates behind them.

'Do you believe in me? Do you believe that I see things others don't see, understand things others don't understand? Do you?'

'Why, yes, of course…' Digby was nervous, unsettled. 'You know I've always looked up to you above all others, Robin. Wasn't I one of the first to recognise and tell you that you were special?'

Catesby put out a hand and stopped Digby's horse. It snorted, pushing its head up and down, irritated to be halted.

'Digby, I'm God's messenger. I have known it for years. God is working through me. Do you understand? Do you believe in me?'

He had stopped so the sun was directly behind him, and perhaps the threatening summer shower and the humidity was responsible for the faint aura that seemed to glow round Catesby's head and shoulders.

Everard Digby felt the hot tears scorch his eyelids, and a mixture of embarrassment, fear and awe caused him to stumble in his words.

'I… I do believe in you, Robin. You've always been so certain, always known best… yes, perhaps it is God I hear speaking through your mouth… I… I…' The hot tears broke their confine and flooded down his face.

'Sssh,' said Catesby, taking his hand and laying it gently across Digby's mouth, as if he were a kind father soothing a baby. 'And listen to me. We plan to destroy the King and his minions. We've powder stacked beneath the Lords, primed and ready. On the day when Parliament is opened, when the King and his heir, when Cecil and his crew, when all those who've oppressed the True Faith are gathered under the one roof, we'll light a fire that won't be extinguished until God's rule is again dominant in England. We'll blow them all to Hell. Even as the blast is happening we'll seize the Princess Elizabeth, and ride through the Midlands and west, raising thousands to add to the three hundred we've assembled. Percy will bring his men down from the north, the Spanish troops in Dover will throw off" their idleness and march to Rochester, strangling the Thames and London's life blood. From the south will come the Catholics of Europe…'