Martin Stephen - The Desperate remedy

They reined in. Catesby looked calm, but his eyes noted the state of Rookwood and Keyes.

'Well, Ambrose, your horses have done you proud to stand the pace! But why so fast?'

Rookwood had no other words. He blurted out, 'We're discovered! Fawkes is taken…'

Catesby. Bates. Jack Wright. Kit Wright. Keyes. Percy. Rookwood. The seven men stood in silence, the loudest noise the breathing of the horses, its steam stretching out in the cold air. The six scarves the men wore fluttered gently in the morning breeze. They were fine work. Rookwood had provided them. The weaving contained representations not only of the cross, but of items used in the Mass. Tom Bates had none, of course. He was a servant.

Silence. It was broken first by Jack Wright. His reaction was to start to curse, slowly at first, but with a rising voice of fear. The others looked, instinctively, to Catesby.

'Hold your noise, Jack!' Catesby's voice was like a whiplash.

'All is lost only when we all lose heart! There's chaos in London, isn't there? Confusion? Signal enough for all good Catholics to rise up on our side. We have horses, we have armour, we have weapons, don't we? We have men gathered at Dunchurch, don't we? All we need is stout hearts!'

Despite themselves, the men felt the warmth of his magic work its way back into the freezing bones. They rode, the Devil behind them and the Devil in front. Percy and Jack Wright tore at their cloaks, hurled them off into the hedgerow, as if by that small loss of weight they could drive their horses even faster.

Catesby yelled something back at them, in a delirium of speed and pounding hooves. They grinned insanely back through the blinding sweat and muscles that ached as if it was the men's feet driving them forward.

The furore outside seemed to bend the timbers of the house. Francis Tresham waited for the door to be flung inwards, to feel the hands round his throat, the blows to his body and head or even the stinging slash or probe of a blade. He waited. Why had they not come for him?

'Are you wishing to go the way of Lord Walsingham?' Mannion asked Gresham, glumly. Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster, had nearly bankrupted himself keeping a web of agents up and running. Gresham had placed one, two men on each of the plotters, one to watch, one to report wherever possible. The cost was appalling.

What was Tom Wintour playing at? The plotters were running now, running as he had hoped they would do when the letter was delivered to Monteagle. Gresham had nearly followed Catesby out of London, but to follow a man on those lonely, deserted roads without being discovered was almost impossible, and Gresham's instinct was to stay in London at least for a while to keep track of the anarchy he had unleashed. He had tracked Tom Wintour, choosing him instead of Thomas Percy because Wintour was the closest of all the conspirators to Catesby and, Gresham suspected, the born leader among them.

Gresham had witnessed Wintour issuing instructions, and then expected him to run for the stables where he kept his gelding. Instead Wintour had headed purposefully towards Westminster itself, the seat of the crime. Was it him escaping discovery by sheer bravado? Had he so much faith in Guy Fawkes resisting interrogation?

He saw Wintour stop and listen to a group of excited men in the street, and then followed him as he headed down King Street. There a crude barrier had been erected across the road, and a soldier barred his way. Wintour showed immense control, his shrugging manner, his easy craning of his head to look down the street perfectly those of the idle man caught up in a flood of gossip, speculation and interest.

Or was his gazing down the street simply the act of the vacuous onlooker? What was it that he so clearly wished to gain sight of? Whatever it was, he was unwilling to give it up. He walked round almost the whole perimeter of the Palace of Westminster, but there was a pattern to his ramblings, Gresham noticed, always returning to the one spot.

Whynniard's house. The phrase came back to Gresham from something Tresham had said. The plotters had started by hiring a house in the precincts of the Palace of Westminster, a house owned by John Whynniard. They had started a tunnel from there, Tresham had said, but given up the idea as beyond their physical and technical skills. That was when the cellar under the Lords had become vacant, allowing them to ditch the unfinished tunnel.

There it was. Whynniard's house. Gresham had been sufficiently interested when Tresham had mentioned the house to walk past it himself, and keep a watcher on it for a week. It was shuttered, empty. Yet now the empty house seemed to be the common denominator in Tom Wintour's appallingly dangerous trek round Westminster, even though the cordon thrown round Westminster meant he was unable to get closer than a stone's throw to-it.

A soldier was starting to look suspiciously at Wintour. He had stopped for the third time in the same spot, the one nearest the house. Without seeming to notice, Wintour began to melt towards the back of the crowd, breaking off from it and heading in the direction of the livery stables when Gresham knew he kept his horse. The house, thought Gresham, might repay some attention. But now his most urgent aim was to keep up with Tom Wintour. Had the plotters dispersed? Or had they run to some assembly point, from where they would try to rouse the nation? The game was still being played, and Gresham guessed the next rounds would be decided out of London.

'You will leave us!' Cecil spoke with a fierce intensity, hating the dullness of the guards as they looked fearfully back at him. They were below ground level, the dismal, dark room set into the very foundations of the White Tower. He knew what the guards were thinking. Leave Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, alone with this blackguard, this Devil on earth, this Guy Fawkes… fear of what would happen to them if the Chief Secretary was attacked fought for a brief moment with fear of the Chief Secretary. Fear of Cecil won. They backed away, bowing. Cecil closed the door. The bottom of it grated on the filthy floor.

Fawkes was huddled on the floor, rubbing his shoulder where the guards had hurled him to the ground. His head was badly gashed where he had been thrown down, the blood half-dried, fresh seeping through the caked residue. The cell was lit by the flames of a rough torch hung in an iron bracket. Even by its light the wetness on the walls glistened and sparkled on the five-hundred-year-old stone.

'Why did you betray me?' Fawkes's voice was rough, but steady enough. Cecil was caught off guard. It should not be Fawkes, the prisoner, opening this conversation.

'I did not betray you!' hissed Cecil through clenched teeth. The cold was penetrating even through the thickness of his rich cloak. 'You were betrayed by the fool who brought the orders for the search forward by an hour.'

'My Lord, we had a bargain.' There was fear in Fawkes's voice, but also resolution, and a tone Cecil could not quite track down.

'The terms and conditions appear to have changed very significantly!' he snapped.

'You'll have to have me testify, my Lord,' said Fawkes. The blow to his head must have disorientated him. He spoke in starts, as if suffering from momentary losses of concentration. 'I think it wouldn't be in your Lordship's interest to have me testify the truth.'

Fawkes's body was shaking now with the cold, Cecil noted with satisfaction.

'Many better than you have died in this Tower, without word and without testimony,' said Cecil, looking with loathing at Fawkes. 'Many have screamed for weeks in this Tower before they welcomed the sweet release of death. Have a care what you threaten.'

'No,' said Fawkes, 'have a care what you threaten.' His teeth were chattering now. 'If someone knows enough of your plans to bring the time of the search forward an hour, then someone knows enough of your perfidy to place you, my Lord the Earl of Salisbury, in this Tower, to die or to scream for your death alongside me. You need me, you need me to give a confession that will confirm your version of events, to name your other conspirators. If I stand firm, my Lord, many can challenge your honour's actions. None can prove them false.'