Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

'They're mad!' Gresham spoke almost in a whisper.

'I said as much, but to no avail. There's no reason in my cousin.'

'Who else is involved?'

'Those you know of. Some others you don't know. Is it necessary I give their names?'

'I doubt very much that I'm the one who will do them the greatest harm.'

'Over and above the ones you know? Ambrose Rookwood. Everard Digby. Tom Bates, Catesby's servant. That's all I know.'

"No nobility?' Gresham asked, with sudden interest. 'Who is to be the Protector if this succeeds? Who's driving it? What about Northumberland?'

'He was mentioned through Thomas Percy. Apparently Tom has given Robin his word that Northumberland's hordes will come streaming down once the Parliament is blown to Hell and backwards. Yet it could be bombast, from that man of all men. None others of true quality were mentioned by Robin. For God's sake, man, Stourton's married to one of my sisters, as is Monteagle! These are my family.’

Family has never meant very much to you before, thought Gresham.

'May I speak?' It was Jane. Gresham nodded.

'What good will come of it? Why can they think your religion will be helped by this… this slaughter?'

In a tired voice Tresham explained the Spanish troops, the English Regiment and again the hoped-for involvement of the Earl of Northumberland.

Gresham got up and paced the room. His tension was clear.

'It makes no sense. Northumberland hardly knows his northern lands, never mind commanding enough loyalty from his minions up there to let them come down and put their heads on a block.'

'It don't always need blue blood to shed plenty of the red kind. Commoners can kill as well.' Mannion spoke, and Gresham swung round to him.

'But commoners need a leader. Even the Peasants had Wat Tyler,' responded Gresham.

'Is Catesby such a leader?' It was Jane who spoke the words. They hung in the air.

'Could it be so? That Robin sees himself hailed as Protector? Surely no…' Tresham was aghast, unwilling to be convinced of what his heart told him.

'Lucifer thought he could defeat God and be hailed in Heaven,' said Jane. 'Why should his works on earth have any less pride to them?'

It was pure accident that brought Catesby into direct contact with Viscount Montagu. He had been walking through the Savoy, on his way back to the Strand, when he turned a corner to find himself face to face with the young Catholic Lord. A brave young man, Montagu had spent five days in the Fleet prison as his reward for speaking out in Parliament against the acts of recusancy. Just the sort of man to make Francis Tresham snivel in pity at the thought of his death, thought Catesby. Did they not realise, he and his kind, that if Christ had to die to save the world then a few men dying to save Christ was no price at all to pay?

Catesby could not afford to ignore Montagu. He had been seen and recognised. The great Catholic families of England not only knew each other; they had frequently been brought up with each other.

'Good morning, my Lord,' he said, bowing low. 'Are you well?' It was verging on the impertinent to speak so directly to one so well born, but Catesby was increasingly fed by a fire of risk. If Montagu was offended, he did not show it, asking after Catesby's health in turn with every show of sincerity.

'Is it the Parliament that brings your Lordship to town?' enquired Catesby. Montagu's home was in Sussex. He offered to Catesby the fact that he was visiting his aunt, and hoped to gain the King's permission to be absent from Parliament. He did not need to specify his reasons to Catesby. Both knew that the devout young man would baulk at being present if any more laws against Catholics were passed, and might land himself in prison for an even longer term if he spoke his mind.

'I'm sure your Lordship takes no pleasure to be there,' offered Catesby sympathetically. Well, if Montagu was already chasing the King for leave of absence, there was nothing Catesby needed to do more, except offer Montagu's likely absence as his doing to Tresham and the others.

A storm was brewing, Catesby knew. His plot had been based on the Catholic family of England, the blood links between them that formed a mutual bond of huge strength, despite their bickering. Yet families protected their own. The death of some members of that family — leading members, the nobility who had held sway for years — was proving a sticking point. Catesby needed to stiffen their resolve, in this most crucial of all times.

He knew that Fawkes, the Wright brothers and Tom Wintour and a servant were due to meet that day at The Bell in Daventry. He had sent his own servant, Tom Bates, to keep an eye on them. It was time to start drawing them all to London now. Whatever the risk, they had to meet with each other more and more. Only with them under his eye would he be assured that they would keep to his path. He had seen dissent in plots before, seen how disunity tore a plan of action apart. He was their leader. Only with him would they haul together on the one line, bring the strength they needed to the great project.

'I need a Bishop, and a College of Theologians.'

'What's a theologian?' asked Mannion, unhelpfully. He had been let off the leash for half a day, and had returned to the house in Alsatia looking smugly self-satisfied. Gresham and Jane had pointedly not asked him what he had been up to. Despite the length of their time in the bolt hole, Gresham had seen no sign that they were being watched. His scalp had not itched. He wished he could give Jane the same freedom, albeit she would not choose the same destination as Mannion. Perhaps another disguise and a trip to the playhouse was an answer.

'Why would they help?' asked Jane.

It was late evening, and the house should have been in bed. It was Gresham who kept them up, feeling forced to take pen and paper, and to try and sketch out the problems that lay before him.

'Why, I'd listen to what the Bishops said, and know that the opposite answer was the right one. Or I'd listen to the theologians argue, and become so angry that I'd choose a path, even if only to silence them and their ramblings.'

'Will it help to speak the problem out again?'

'Perhaps. Who knows? It's all a question of what we do now. I believe the story of this powder. It's fanciful, even farcical, too much so to be an invention. No, the powder is there, right enough. Why it's there, and what to do about it, that's much harder.'

'Surely we know why it's there?'

'We know why Catesby and the others think it's there. We know how they intend to use it a bare few weeks from now. But such a monstrous evil… I can't believe there isn't blue blood at the heart of this, somewhere.'

'Well, you have three Catholic Lords in Cecil's pocket — Suffolk,

Northampton and-Worcester. Between them they run over half of the country.'

'That's the problem. What've they to gain by a plot to overthrow the King and his Chief Secretary? They're well in bed with both of them, sitting very prettily on top of their own particular dung heap. They'd be mad to rock the boat, never mind blow it to pieces.'

'Northumberland then?'

'Possibly, but if so, only at a distance. The old Earl is no arch-plotter. He prefers his study and his experiments, and brooding in silence on how harshly the world has treated him. He's deaf, you know. Deaf people live in fear, fear of things going on that they don't know about. Northumberland is more frightened than most. He knows his family history. He knows no-one in London trusts a Percy. If he's in this, then he's pulling strings, like a puppeteer.'

'Surely all this is irrelevant? What they plan is obscene. It's an evil to end all evils. It must be stopped. Can't you simply swallow your pride, go to Cecil and reveal everything you know?'