Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

'Why so?'

Tresham had had the same thoughts as Gresham. 'One loose word from any one of the plotters and they could be betrayed. I'm implicated now, regardless. If I'm arrested I can plead that I tried to stop the plot — which is quite true — and stayed with Catesby simply to act from the inside to further act against it. If I move my family to London it will confirm my innocence. A man who fears the fire doesn't move nearer the furnace.'

•No,' said Gresham, 'but a man who wants to light it most certainly does.'

You are, thought Gresham, very optimistic indeed about your likely fate if this plot is discovered. Live in hope, though. It does no harm.

'A lesser brain than yours,' he continued, 'might think to strip his house and gather his wealth, then return to London and vanish quietly before anyone knew what was happening.'

Was this man a mind-reader? Just such thoughts had been gaining increasing strength in Tresham's mind.

'Such thoughts wouldn't merit serious attention, from a sensible man, for two reasons. Firstly, a man who vanishes is still alive, and can still be found. Secondly, there is a watch on you at all times. It's an experienced watch, by people who make their living out of it, and would as soon as kill you as keep tail on you. We'll decide when you leave, together. Let this be our own private little conspiracy.'

So it had ended, and Tresham taken the mad ride to Rushton. Dust was rising everywhere, as hangings were taken down and the few precious carpets taken up, clothes and bed linen assaulted to rid them of dust before being packed tight into the chests that littered the halls, and stairways. What few fires there were blew smoke throughout the house, as doors were banged open and shut to the carts and horses waiting outside.

There was one final thing to be done, apart from face the anger and incomprehension of his mother, wife and sisters. The family papers, so carefully tended and preserved by his father, had been sealed three times over, and placed in the house where no unfriendly eyes would ever gaze on them. It felt like a burial.

Tresham headed for White Webbs, the Enfield home of Anne Vaux. He knew that Father Garnet would be there, together with Catesby, Fawkes and Tom Wintour. Catesby had assured him that Anne knew nothing of the detail of the plot, yet he felt a deep unease. White Webbs had become the gathering centre for the conspirators. It was riddled with priest-holes, and conveniently close to London. He could not believe Anne Vaux would agree to mass slaughter in Parliament. Yet he could not see how she would not know, given the iron hand of control she and the other Catholic women exercised over the Faith in England. Father Garnet was a garrulous fool, and to be trusted as much as any Jesuit, yet how had he supported this murderous plan? Catesby was insistent that Garnet knew about the plot and endorsed it.

Tresham felt a deep, inner exhaustion as he entered the familiar doors, doors that once had been comforting to him. Catesby, Fawkes and Tom Wintour were there, with Robert Keyes. He had not liked Fawkes on their one previous meeting, feeling in him a contempt for the civilians with whom he was temporarily involved. His dislike had increased now he realised that this was the man who had planted the powder, and the man who was prepared to light the fuse to it. To Hell with the Lords in Parliament, who probably deserved to go there anyway. The powder could blow up whoever it pleased, but there was a terrible danger of Francis Tresham being caught in the blast..

From the start Tresham sensed a difference in Catesby. They were seated together in a room of dark oak panelling, bare of portraits but with mullioned windows overlooking the tended garden. By it a kitchen maid was poking at a mass of green in the kitchen garden, seeking the best plants to take back inside to Cook. Tresham looked enviously down on her bent back, noting her complete absorption in her task. Could his life ever be that simple?

'We're bound to blow up several of our own kind. Not just common people — the people whose leadership we depend on! Are we Catholics, or are we cannibals, feeding off our own kind?' Tresham was pushing at the point.

There was a sardonic grin on Fawkes's face. He rarely spoke, and when he did it was with a strange tang of Yorkshire and Spain in his accent.

'People die in wars,' he said now. 'Innocent people, as well as guilty people and soldiers.'

'For too long,' said Catesby, 'we've seen our battle as being about ideas and faith. Those things aren't "what we fight with. They're what we fight for. And fight we must. Do you think those who might die in the Lords would think their lives lost if by their death we bring God's rule back into England?'

'They won't be able to tell us, will they?' grunted Tresham. 'They'll be dead.'

'Some, not all. Many won't come, because they know they'll have to pass legislation against our kind. Others we can warn.'

They ran through the list. It was far too long. There was young Thomas Howard, recently appointed Earl of Arundel and restored to that ancient title. How could the young Lord Vaux be allowed into the massacre, given what the Vaux women had done for the Faith over the years? Tresham argued, as he had to, for his two brothers-in-law, Monteagle and Stourton. Then there was Lord Montagu… why, Gatesby had dined with two of them hardly a week past. Had he taken their supper whilst looking at them and knowing he was signing their death warrants?… Tresham had an unexpected ally in Robert Keyes, when he spoke in defence of Lord Mordaunt. Keyes was Tresham's age, a large man with a flowing red beard, but a generous soul, for all that he was a poor man. He had been one of the first to join the conspiracy. Perhaps it was the pair of them speaking out in favour of Mordaunt that provoked Catesby to show his fangs.

'Mordaunt!' he sneered. 'Why, I wouldn't tell that man a secret for a room full of jewels! It's precisely because of men such as him that we can't tell all and sundry what's to happen. They'd destroy us as readily as if we marched to tell the King ourselves.'

'But the young Arundel,' said Tresham. 'Surely if we kill such as him we're killing our hope for the future?'

'Why, then, stop him from coming by other means. Isn't there a man here who could give the boy a wound that'll keep him in bed for a week or two?'

A splutter of conversation broke out around the table. Catesby let it run.

'Hold!' he announced firmly, after fully quarter of an hour of pointless debate with no conclusion. 'I myself have warned Montagu.' He glared round the table, daring any there present to deny him his right. 'One or two of the others, possibly, I might tell hours before, if I so decide. You will leave it with me.'

There was total silence around the table.

'This is no petty squabble,' he carried on, in a low voice that carried as if it had been sharpened. 'This is the battle for the soul of England. Didn't Christ die to redeem us all? Wasn't Christ innocent of all evil? Didn't his mother, and his father, have long hours to mourn his death? Sometimes the innocent must perish with the guilty, sooner than lose the battle.'

They arranged to meet again on October 23rd, at The Irish Boy.

A wider gathering was planned for the day after at The Mitre tavern in Bread Street, between Cheapside and the river, though not for the conspirators. Catesby was cheerful enough to muster a smile when he told his devilish company not to meet him there. He was due to meet ambassadors for the archdukes. He had spread the word that he and Charles Percy, Thomas Percy's brother, were forming a troop to go and fight in Europe, partly to lure away any Government spies in the taverns, partly to reassure Anne Vaux and Father Garnet. For those who did not probe too deeply, the expedition was good enough cover for their purchase of horses and weapons.