Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

'But ma poor wifie! Ma lovely Agnes! An innocent wee lass, taken awa' before she had time to say her prayers…' Was Gresham pushing it too far, would the reference to the dead and innocent wife draw forth a response? It did, but not of the type Gresham expected. Catesby smashed his tankard down on the table with such force that three wooden platters jumped off and rolled along the floor. No-one moved to stop them.

'Innocent? Innocent! We're alive now because we feed on the dead flesh of animals, innocent animals! Like the lamb in the Old Testament, the innocent must be sacrificed so the higher order may triumph. Their squealing over their death does them no credit. Rather they should praise those who sacrifice them, praise those who make something meaningful come from their paltry death. Did Joshua ask for the innocent to leave the walls of Jericho? When the walls fell, do you imagine the soldiers asked who was innocent and who was guilty before they raped and pillaged in the name of God? Innocence is not a virtue. It is a handicap.'

On that note the party ended. Gresham had met many men in his life, some good, some bad, most merely human with all the frailty and weakness humanity brought along as their natural baggage. Pure goodness he had met, surprisingly, far more often than pure evil. Indeed the number in that latter group he could count on the fingers of one hand.

Tonight, Gresham knew he was in the presence of evil. It was in the eyes. It was always in the eyes. Catesby's had a fierce, fixed gleam, an inner light that did not come and go with the moment, with the rising fumes of wine to the head, the excitement of sex or even the lust of battle. The intensity of that madman's gleam did not waver or flicker. Yet it was so gentle, a flash of yellow deep in the pupils, deep and intense burning, that it was almost buried in the proud and handsome tilt of the chin. Gresham had seen that light in the eyes of a judge, in the eyes of a hangman. It was the evil of a man who could not conceive he could be wrong, but whose self-belief could only be satisfied, like a dread hunger, by feeding it with the belief of others. All men, and all beliefs, were simply fuel for Robert Catesby's vanity. In the handsome, dashing figure of Robert Catesby, for a brief and terrible moment, Henry Gresham saw the pride of Lucifer, walking on earth.

"Normal men suspend their feelings,' said Jane, trying to wash as much as possible of the dye off his body, and trying to understand what Gresham, still shaken, had told her. 'When they kill, or when they rape and mutilate, they lock away their feelings behind a great iron door, only opening it when the business is done. Because they didn't feel it when it happened, they tell themselves it never happened. This man, it seems, has no door to shut. Perhaps it was ripped off its hinges when his wife died?'

'Or perhaps it was never truly there.' Gresham shivered and not only with the cold. 'Here, your hands are cold. Let me take over.'

'When I've finished the bits you can't reach. Be still.'

'Why do I doubt so much? Do you doubt? Everything?'

She had hardly ever seen him like this, reverting almost to a child-like questioning and simplicity, the veneer of cynical amusement and wit broken through and shattered. It was not that his body was naked before her. For a brief moment, it was his mind. She was careful not to interrupt the measured sweep of her hand, or reveal her feelings in her voice.

'Sometimes I doubt. Who isn't prey to doubt?'

'Catesby. Catesby isn't prey to doubt. He takes the fear, the worry, the doubt we humans have and he forces it out, drives it from him somehow in a way he doesn't and I don't understand. And then he turns it into something evil, a fire that draws other people to it like a moth to a candle, and burns them up before they've realised what's happening. Or perhaps makes them so they don't care, makes them so they want to be destroyed.'

They made love in the tiny bed, little more than a mattress cast on the floor, and Gresham felt the warmth creep back into his soul.

Well, his question was answered. Not so much piss and wind, Master Robert Catesby. More an avenging, fallen angel, willing to unleash the winds of Hell on earth.

It was dark outside, the first wind of winter dashing against the houses, and bringing with it a fine rain that first put a layer of watery, tiny jewels on a woollen cloak, and then soaked it through.

'I saw him as if for the first time last night,' said Francis Tresham. He was sitting at the table with which he had tried to knock the brains out of Henry Gresham only a few days previously, sipping morosely at the fine wine Gresham had placed in his hand. 'He's a vulture, isn't he? I suppose I've been under his spell most of my life. I think it was your being there that let me take a step back almost, to see him as he really is. He doesn't care about God, does he? Or perhaps he thinks he is God? Either way, I realised last night, for all his talk, who Robin Catesby does care about. Himself.'

Which is perhaps why you would recognise it more easily than others, thought Gresham, as it describes the pair of you equally well. Gresham's hair and beard had returned to their normal black intensity, apart from an occasional flash of orange when the light caught it from a certain angle.

‘I could ask Jonson who you are,' said Tresham. He frequently changed the tack of a conversation, without warning. It followed the restless, ever-changing direction of his eyes, as if anything he gazed at for more than a few seconds became too hot for them to rest on. Perhaps it was a trick to catch the listener unawares; perhaps it was just his nature.

'You could ask,' said Gresham calmly. He knew Jonson was safe. If Tresham did not know that fact, he would find out easily enough without need of words from Henry Gresham.

'Tell me again what it is you offer me.'

'When we've amassed enough information to deal with this plotting, you'll receive travel documents to France, a thousand pounds in your purse and secret passage to a ship, out of the way of your friends or Cecil, whichever one is most hot to kill you.'

'How can you do that?'

Because, young man, I have had a plan waiting these years past to release Sir Walter Raleigh and get him to sanctuary in Europe, a plan he has refused to use, believing it would be taken as confession of his guilt were he so to escape.

'I can do it. That's all you need to know. You'll be taken to the south coast and there put on a boat, and delivered to France. The thousand pounds is in addition to any money you can raise yourself. You'll want to tidy your affairs, won't you, and leave as much as possible to your wife and family? You'll be given another name, and papers in that name that will pass any muster.'

'What about my family?'

'That's up to you. They can come later, when the hue and cry's died down, or you can leave them. You can tell me later.'

If Tresham had decided whether he would desert his family or not, he was not going to let Gresham see it.

'I think I'm to be inducted on Monday. I'm bid to another dinner, at Lord Stourton's, in Clerkenwell. The invitation came from Robin. Stourton's my kinsman.'

'I know,' said Gresham, whose mind by now carried an encyclopaedic list of the inter-relations between England's Catholic families. 'So is Lord Monteagle. It's no secret.'

'It's strange the invitation comes from Catesby, not from my relative. It makes me think there's a reason other than the pleasure of my company for my being invited.'

'Then you must go.'

'What freedom do I have?'

'Freedom to do what?'

'Can I speak as myself, or do I have to speak from a script that you've written?'

'There are only two conditions. Firstly, you must speak as keeps you on the inside of whatever is happening. If by staying there you can bring it to an end, then so much the better — but you must under no circumstances be so dismissive that you're excluded. You're no use to me in ignorance. The second is that you must report back to me immediately, and tell me everything that took place.'