Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

Mannion had arranged the next meeting with Tresham in a stew, or brothel.

'It makes sense,' he had remonstrated. 'There's more control over who comes into a whorehouse than there ever is in a tavern. It's across the river, so we can get you over in a covered boat from our own jetty.'

In the meantime, Mannion had surpassed himself at The Mitre. Pretending to be searching out a room for his master and finding out which room Percy had booked, he had taken the adjacent one for an hour earlier. By the time Percy occupied his room the servants would have finished bringing the food and have left them to their bottles. Even better, an iron hook from which a lamp had hung had worked loose from the rough plaster of the dividing wall in Percy's room, and been fixed anew an inch or so up, leaving a hole. It had taken Mannion a split second with his dagger to drive through the hole and leave a clear mark on the wall of the adjacent room. It was the work of a few seconds to enlarge the hole so that one man could look through. Yet he worked with the utmost care at it, as the tap boy left their room. The plaster was old and rotten, and too much pressure would not open an eye hole, all but invisible in the other room, but rather tear out a great gaping hole.

Reluctantly Gresham had allowed Jane's importunings, and taken her with him, heavily hooded. At the inn it was just another well-bred lady coming to an assignation with a gentleman. They extinguished the lights in their room as they heard Percy and his guests enter. Mannion was first to look through. He had the descriptions of the others from Tresham and from the agents he had sent out.

'That's Percy,' Mannion whispered, 'the tall one with the white hair and beard. They say he sweats all the time. The other big one, red beard and hair, he must be Fawkes. The third one… he might be Grant, Robert Grant…'

Gresham took over from Mannion, peering through the tiny hole to the well-lit room beyond. How normal they look, he thought as the men started their meal. How much easier things would be if those determined to bring mass destruction to nations somehow looked different from their fellow men.

Tresham realised that his life had hung in the balance at White Webbs, but it took time for the shock to hit him. He had swaggered his way through the meeting, but gone into a near collapse afterwards when he had realised what had so nearly happened to him.

The smell of bodies and stale sweat in the room they used suggested it had only recently been used for a different purpose. They had come by separate routes, the most devious way possible, Gresham in a closed boat over the river to Southwark. Tresham had not been followed, Mannion was prepared to swear.

Tell me what happened.' Gresham spoke calmly, sensing the rising terror in his spy.

Slowly, with much prompting, Tresham told his story. There had been a letter, to Lord Monteagle. It had caused Wintour to panic, but left Catesby strangely calm. The plotters had not been named. No action seemed to have been taken. The powder was secure. They were meeting tomorrow again, a group of them, to discuss the situation.

'And I'm the prime suspect,' he confessed. 'If they'd asked me a different question there might have been a different ending. Catesby

… I don't know about Robin. I think he believes me when I say I've written no letter. Tom Wintour, now there's a different story.'

Gresham thought for a moment. 'Are you prepared to be arrested for your part in this plot? Taken to the Tower?'

Tresham gaped at him. Even Mannion started and showed surprise.

'Arrested? Taken to the Tower? Is the world gone mad, and am I the only sane person left? If either happens then I'm a dead man! I might as well throw myself off the boat home and into the Thames.'

'An understandable conclusion,' said Gresham, 'but not necessarily true. Think on it. If you're arrested peacefully and can claim to have used your best endeavours to stop the plot, that'll give them pause to think. You're a late recruit. Persuade them of that, and they'll leave you 'til last. With any luck you'll escape torture. It has to be sanctioned by the King, and that'll take time.'

'Escape torture if I'm lucky! Hell's fire, man, what dp you think lam?'

'Someone who might prove very lucky in his friends. I said imprisoned in the Tower, not die in the Tower. Do you realise that when the news of this plot breaks you'll be a hunted man all your life? Well, our two interests come together. I need you to report to me for as long as possible, and that carries the risk that you'll be caught up in the exposure before you can get away. You need a new life — and you'll only get that if the world thinks you're dead.'

'And you can arrange that?' said Tresham incredulously.

'Did you realise that you've been receiving treatment for a complaint for some years past, from my good friend Dr Simon Forman?'

'Forman? That quack! I'm no woman wanting to miscarry quietly or to poison her husband, nor no idiot paying a fortune for a false horoscope.'

'Leave ranting to your friend Catesby. Forman is a better doctor than many who claim more training in that science. Now listen…'

Raleigh had told him on his last visit that he must drop the escape plan. He would never use it. His wife had pleaded with him. He had looked at her in that special way, the way he used for no-one else, and had stroked her head gently. 'A man does not run away,' he had said. 'A man lives by his honour, and if then he needs to die for his honour, then that too is part of the bargain.' What more fitting than that a plan that had been refused because it was not an honourable course of action should be used for a man who had lost all claim to honour?

It could be done, Gresham knew. Simon Forman could produce almost any symptoms to order. A urinary strangulation, he had favoured. Easy to fake with potions, easy to act. Forman could also produce substances that would slow the heartbeat down almost to nothing, make the body appear cold. The tricky part was getting the corpse diagnosed as dead, and into the coffin. Weeping women helped, flinging themselves on the corpse and keeping the doctors from a lengthy examination. They let the women in if the prisoner was seriously ill, knowing a man received better care from his family.

What would Cecil's reaction be when this plot was exposed? If it was done quickly and quietly, if the credit could be given to Cecil, who knows? He might save Gresham all the fuss and pretence and have Tresham declared dead in the Tower. If, that is, his gratitude to Gresham outweighed his hatred. Well, time would tell. With good fortune they would have these madmen cured of their plot and dispersed before Francis Tresham found himself a prisoner.

'Why not let him get himself arrested and then just leave him to die in the Tower?' Jane had asked sourly.

'Because I don't particularly want him implicating me in this business, and there's always the risk that he's seen and knows enough to find out that Alexander Selkirk is actually Sir Henry Gresham. But more important, I made an agreement with him. In exchange for his services I agreed his survival, as well as his wealth.'

'With scum? With people who make a rat look civilised?' said Jane.

'His personality is one thing. An agreement is another. It's a matter of honour. It wouldn't matter if the agreement was with Satan. Agreements must be honoured.'

If the truth be known he was more worried about the letter. Francis Tresham should have been able to be up and gone by now, the plot vanishing like smoke in the air. So the letter had been received and reported. Yet no action had sprung from those facts. What had happened? Had his letter been simply too vague to ring the right alarum bells? Had the King dismissed it? Had Cecil dismissed it as a forgery, a ploy to distract attention away from a more real threat, such as a foreign invasion?