Martin Stephen: The Desperate remedy

The courtier's throat was cut, his life-blood ebbing away into the mud and staining the fashionable yellow starch of his ruff. Cecil had closed off one possible leakage of information in advance of the final act of his great play. The courtier gaped up at the figure in doublet and hose, gasping, terror in his eyes.

'They… they have stabbed me!' he croaked, unnecessarily.

'On your master Cecil's orders, be sure. If you wish a surgeon,' said Henry Gresham, bending down and whispering into the courtier's ear, 'you must first tell me what you said to Master Fawkes.'

The search party had seemed as inept as the rabbit had promised. Lurking outside, Fawkes had given his name as Johnson and told the leader he was Thomas Percy's servant and this Thomas Percy's rented house. The senior Lord in all his finery had seemed to be in a hurry to be anywhere except where he was, and the other young popinjay had tried to ask more questions but been hauled away by the other.

At eleven o'clock he took a simple lantern and materials to make the fire and light the fuse. The rabbit had been insistent that these were left by the powder, as if to suggest that everything was ready to ignite it at a moment's notice. He dressed carefully for the cold night, the spurs jangling as he walked for the last time to the cellar and opened the ancient door. Keyes had given him a watch, to time the fuse, as he thought. He had little realised that it would time Fawkes's escape. He sat on the stool he had lugged down into the cellar, not lighting the lantern, just letting the darkness and the silence enfold him. The dust, the ancient smell of decay, had become almost a comfort to him. So much danger in these barrels, so much threat, yet so much silence and peace here, underground. A broad grin lit his face in the dark as he thought on his master, Cecil. He wished he could see the expression on Cecil's face when the surprise was delivered. A pity he would be long gone.

He dimly heard the church bells strike midnight, and rose stiffly to his feet. He needed no light to walk to the door, the path learnt off by heart. He stopped, suddenly. A noise? From outside? He waited. Silence. A dog, or the wind. Nevertheless, he was careful in drawing back the door. Silence. He poked his head round the door for one final inspection. There was the tiniest flicker of light…

A roaring yell, and the full weight of the door was flung against his unsuspecting body, hurling him back into the cellar. He was down, and three, four, five men were on top of him…

'Leave off!' he screamed. 'I am under the orders of…' A sixth sense made him close his mouth. Something had gone wrong, horribly wrong. Yet these men — King's men, he saw by the uniform — were clearly not going to kill him or it would have been done by now. My Lord Cecil could not bear to have his part in this exposed… No, while he was alive he had power. This must, must be a mistake. He could surely stave off the truth until Cecil found a way of releasing him…

As the bound figure of Fawkes was bundled away by his men, Sir Thomas Knyvett mopped his brow, despite the cold of the night.

'A dreadful business, Sir Henry, dreadful business. You note the man was booted and spurred for flight? Cloak and hat and all! Had you not come in all haste with the message to commence our search early I fear he would have escaped! A dreadful business, dreadful…'

'It was, Sir Thomas, a pleasure to be of service to you, to my Lord the Earl of Salisbury and to His Majesty the King,' replied Sir Henry Gresham.

Kit Wright could not sleep. He envied any man who could do so, on this night of all nights. He was uneasy at being parted from his brother. As children the others had always joked that they hunted in pairs, and without his brother he felt strangely incomplete. Essentially a pious and a decent man, Wright prayed with his bare knees against the splintered boards for half the night. He failed to find his usual consolation. The same deep anger was there still in his soul for the seeming death of the religion he loved in the country he loved, the anger that Catesby had seen and tapped into. Until now that anger had killed any qualms of conscience he might have, but now, with the terrible thing so near, he could not rid his mind of screaming, the screaming of those buried under the rubble of Fawkes's powder.

He gave up sleep, dressed, and lay on his cot, fully clothed. There was a noise, surely? He got up, and opened the shutter. His heart stopped. A tide of torchlight was coming up the Strand, twenty, thirty, maybe even forty men. For him! For him! They must be coming for him! He turned and grabbed a cloak, buckling his sword as he flung open the door of his room. Even in his haste, he was not the first. The landlord, ludicrous in long nightshirt with offensive stains round its middle, had already unlocked the door and was standing, barefoot, gaping at the outside. Wright pushed past him, and halted as a dazed and half-dressed Lord Monteagle thrust past him, to be hailed from horseback by a finely dressed noble. 'My Lord! My Lord!' the noble was saying, as Monteagle's servants tried to put him in contact with his horse in the increasing melee of people. 'We must call up Northumberland! Now! With haste!'

There could be only one reason for every noble's house on the Strand to be being woken up this long after midnight. The plot had been discovered. How long did he have? Keeping as close to the sides of the houses as he could, Wright ran to Wintour's lodging, at The Duck and Drake. Breathlessly he gasped out the news. Wintour, as ever, kept control, pulling his clothes on as he spoke.

'Go to Essex House,' he commanded. 'Listen; they'll have the true story there, if they have it anywhere. If it's as we fear, go to Percy's lodging. Tell him to leave, now. It's his name on the cellar lease. He'll be the first warrant they issue — and find out if Fawkes is taken!’

'He's a calm one, my Lord!' The first questions were being asked of John Johnson, the man found in the cellar. 'He tells us nothing except his name, and that he's a servant of Thomas Percy. I didn't expect to see such calm in one so evil.'

Why had that fool Knyvett gone so early? Why?

He was here now, bustling in his own importance.

'Your messenger came most timely, my Lord.'

Messenger?

'He did?' replied Cecil.

'Sir Henry Gresham made fine speed to inform me of the change in plan.'

A great darkness opened up in front of the Chief Secretary.

One by one the plotters were roused, and, bleary-eyed, headed for the stables where their horses kicked and rose, sensing their owners' nervousness. From over London, they drove their mounts furiously, heading north, following the route Catesby, Bates and Jack Wright had taken the day before, the route to The Red Lion at Dunchurch. It was there they had planned to meet, to rally the band of armed, mounted Catholics who would sweep through the West Country raising a fire of rebellion as red as that burning at Westminster. Fear made them flee, some homing instinct sending them to where they had planned to go all along. No-one raised the alarm with Francis Tresham, and not only because he was a newcomer. The further away he was, the more belief in his guilt spread like a cloud of smoke among the plotters.

Meet at Dunchurch.

It was the only security they had left.

If there were legends to be told about this affair, thought Ambrose Rookwood, his ride would be the greatest legend of all. He had left London last, except for Tom Wintour. He had supplied the horses for the others, but kept the best for himself. Thirty miles in two hours, on one horse! His head was aflame with the power and the exhaustion of it. His every limb ached, and he could hardly distinguish between his own sweat and lather and that of his present horse. He had overtaken Robert Keyes just beyond Highgate, then Percy and Kit Wright. Catesby, John Wright and Bates he saw on the horizon just beyond Brickhill.