Martin Stephen: The Desperate remedy

John Wright, or Jack as he had been known since his early childhood, had taken his usual seat at the back of the room. He was a stocky figure, his apparent heaviness deceptive. His sword arm was lightning fast, his agility with a blade in his hand legendary. It was a skill he had tried to use much less since God had called to him and he had answered. Would that his mouth had the same skill as his arm. It was not that he lacked thoughts or ideas, but somehow the link between brain and mouth had eluded him all his life. For years he had felt the frustration of hearing the nonsense others talked, seen the strike of wit that won the applause and the adulation, felt the ideas seething in his head but stumbled at the final hurdle of their expression. As a child he had been laughed at and mocked when the few words he could muster had tumbled out and dried up, like an empty barrel with a hole knocked in it. That was where he had learnt his agility, turning to his fists in those days to make sure that his school fellows paid his body the respect they would not give his words.

He had known Catesby casually for years, in the way that all the sons of the oppressed Catholic families banded together and knew each other. They had attended a Mass together, in the small hours of the night when the fewest servants would see and hear and the risk was reduced. The priest had been impassioned, the liturgy powerful beyond faith. Afterwards, Jack Wright had been moved to tears, and Catesby had turned to meet him.

'It's a thing to die for, isn't it, as Our Saviour was willing to die?' he had said, a fierce light in his eyes.

'It is…' Jack Wright had started to say, wanted to say that it was more than life, that it was the source of life, a faith and a beauty so poignant yet so tragic… but the words had dried up, as they always did, and the red flush of embarrassment crept up on nis face as his eyes dropped.

He felt Catesby's hand on his shoulder.

'We don't need words, do we? The words have been written for us. But we know the beauty. We of all people know the terrible beauty. To feel is enough, isn't it?'

Jack Wright looked up. Was it his imagination that a light pulsed from Robert Catesby's eyes? As if a tide of lovingly warm water had been released to sluice through his mind, the tears came to Jack's own eyes. Here was a man who knew, who understood. Here was a man who needed no words. From that moment in a cold chapel was the bond struck between Robert Catesby and Jack Wright.

Catesby's personality shone like a second sun, filling every corner of the tavern's room.

'Men have a right, a right given by God and by nature to defend their own lives and freedom, a right that no earthly power can take away,' he was arguing passionately, the light of martyrdom in his eyes, thumping the table for effect. 'We Catholics in England are mere slaves. 1 He dwelt on the word, drawing it out in all its shame. 'Lower even than slaves. We're free men, yet we allow our lives and our freedoms to be removed without law, without reason and without authority. Our very life, our vigour, is being sapped by this passive resistance, this feebleness, this palsy of fear and cowardice that's all we seem able to muster in the face of persecution. We're the laughing stock of Europe: despaired of by our friends, and despised by our enemies as God's lunatics!'

Despite the familiarity, the power of Catesby's personality tugged at Jack Wright's soul. When Catesby talked to you, you felt that you were, for him, the most important person in the world. Catesby could reach into men's souls. His audience stared in rapt silence, almost adoration, as he reviled the King, whipping them up into a frenzy of self-justifying anger against the monarch and Robert Cecil, his Chief Minister. It was a brilliant performance. Jack had seen it many times, yet still it held a measure of magic even for his cynical eyes and ears. For a moment, for all of them, the fear retreated, the gnawing, bitter fear that governed their every step, their every breath.

'And is there hope? No.'' Catesby spat out the negative, as if it were a red-hot pip from a sour cherry he had just eaten. 'With Robert Cecil pouring poison into the ear of the monarch, turning his eagerness into hate? There is no hope unless we ourselves create that hope!'

King James had seemed well-intentioned to the Catholic cause before his accession, and his wife was known to be Catholic. Cecil, the King's Chief Secretary, was widely credited with turning the mind of the King against English papists whilst at the same time toadying up to the Spaniards.

They needed some of Catesby's magic. At the mere thought of the tunnel Wright's flesh began to crawl and a spasm ran through his muscles. It had seemed easy enough. Hire the house, dig through until they were under the House of Lords, plant the powder. Yet before they were six feet into the tunnel they were gagging for air, their sweat turning the loose earth beneath them into greasy, salty mud. There was hardly room to move, the candle guttered and died in the rancid air and terror closed in with the darkness. The arm with the pick or shovel could only move back so far, the picking at the tunnel face tearing the same muscles time after time, reducing them to red-hot strings of pain. Their beards, hair and mouths became encrusted, unwashable, the dirt pitted into the skin. They felt the dust coat the inside of their lungs, their breath foul for hours afterwards, their racking coughs depositing a scummy yellow layer like vomit. They had reached the foundations after a lifetime of effort, half mad with the pain of their bodies, half mad with the thought of the soft, suffocating fall of earth and a hidden, slow and secret death. The ancient stone had seemed to bounce their feeble blows off its surface. They were tired, all of them. In time they would need money, horses, weapons, armour. Now their greatest need was for more brute strength and muscle. The two new conspirators would give them that at least.

Catesby finished his oration with a final flourish, and sat down, draining the tankard to its dregs in one huge gulp. Catesby did everything, from talking to drinking, as if he had half an hour of life left to him, and had to cram a lifetime's experience into a few minutes. He was a meteor in a dark sky. Jack could not help wonder how long that meteor would sustain its light, before it crashed to earth.

'Well spoken, Robin,' Jack said, going up to Catesby and taking his hand. Catesby had slumped down on a stool, as he sometimes did after one of his orations, as if his job was now done and the effort of speaking had drained him of his life force.

Catesby glanced up at his old friend, and smiled. It was a smile of total warmth that lit up Jack Wright's soul.

'I hope it was well spoken. But it's more than words we need now, Jack, much more than words.'

'We have a plan, don't we?'

'We do indeed,' replied Catesby. 'And there'll be those who'll seek to stop that plan before its rightful conclusion. They must be stopped, Jack. Stamped out like vermin…'

It was easy in talk to make a death seem nothing more than stamping on an insect. It was different when you forced the steel into the soft flesh, heard the shriek of pain, felt a man's dying breath on your face, saw the light fade from his eyes.

Wright shook the new recruits, Wintour and Grant, by the hand, and made his apologies. Both men were well-dressed, obviously prosperous, but both looked dour, old before their time. Jack hoped their muscles were more vigorous than their manner. The presence of the priest, with all the makings of a Mass, made him nervous. They were hunted men, these priests, hiding from one house to another, facing the rack and their innards ripped out if they were discovered, and bringing the same threat to those who hid them.

He slunk out into the late afternoon, feeling the bite of the wind on his flesh through the loose cloak, hand comforted by resting on the hilt of his sword. It would be more than the bite, of wind he would feel if they all played the wrong hand in this particular game of cards.