Martin Stephen: The Desperate remedy

Catesby had withdrawn into himself, even Percy seemed to be quiet. Only Tom Wintour, who had joined them late, had energy, walking, talking, organising a defence. They needed more men, if they were to fight off the likely assault on Holbeache and live to ride again. An outrider had reported a party, probably the Sheriff of Worcestershire, trailing them. Not one Catholic had joined their progress, which had leached men like a sandbag leaching out in the rain. John Talbot lived ten miles distant, at Pepperhill. He was Robert Wintour's father-in-law. Would Robert go to ask for men and support? 'How may I go, when he'll guard my wife when I am dead?' Tom Wintour looked with contempt at his brother. Without a word, he put his aching body on his horse again, and rode out to John Talbot's house, seeking the help he knew in his heart would not be offered.

Gresham rode harder even than he had ridden on that day from Cambridge to London. They had spirited Tresham out of his lodgings, placed him in a safe house. Dunchurch, he had said, repeating it as if it were a litany. They must go to Dunchurch. It is where they planned to gather, under cover of a hunting party, to raise the country up in rebellion. They will go to Dunchurch.

Gresham arrived at The Red Lion as the rump of the party was leaving on its mad, foolish dash across the country.

'Where are they heading?' he had hissed to an ostler, trying to thrust coin into the man's hand.

'To Hell and beyond, as far as I cares!' the man had replied, thrusting the money aside and running back into the inn, distrust visible in his every gesture.

Catesby's crew had rested, taken food. Gresham had no time. With an inward groan he remounted. At least following was not difficult, despite the driving rain. Servants and other riders peeled off from the party at regular intervals, to much shouting and yelling. At the start their leaders tried to give chase, but soon exhaustion crept in, and they simply tried to box in the cavalcade with their own horses. Still the leakage from the party continued, still the numbers, dimly visible sometimes, audible always, diminished. They were slowing down all the time, like a drowning man whose flapping at the water becomes more and more feeble as his strength leaves him.

Gresham had never felt more tired. He was soaked through, shivering violently with the cold, his teeth chattering so that he could hardly bite on the hard-baked meat he had flung into his saddlebag as he had left London. Yet he had to keep on guard. The servants and gentlemen who. had escaped Catesby's party flew past him on the road, drawing their swords if they had them and fearing he was a pursuer. One had even taken a scything blow at Gresham's head with his sword as he had passed, Gresham blocking it only at the last second with a clang of steel. Finally, just as his horse was about to expire beneath him, the tattered, pathetic remnant of the party had come to rest at Holbeache. They could enter the house, with its warmth, its fires and its food. Gresham was examining the lay-out of the courtyard and steps up into the main house, wracked with icy cold, when his passport into Holbeache emerged from inside. The courtyard gate opened, revealing another horse and rider. The horse was a thoroughbred, a beautiful animal, but its rider was clearly a fleeing servant, whose riding experience was limited to sitting on the back of a cart on its way to market. The man was bouncing violently up and down on the back of the horse, clearly terrified. Gresham forced his own mount out into the roadway with perfect timing, taking his foot out of the stirrup and giving the rider a hefty boot as he was at the top of his bounce and halfway out of his saddle already. He fell with a yelp, escaping being dragged along only because his feet had never properly found the stirrups of his own horse.

Gresham took the rough jerkin and trews from the stunned man and sent him, half naked, bouncing along the road on his own exhausted mount. Liberally covering his disguise in mud, he walked into the house, or rather stumbled and gasped into it.

'A bite of bread and ten minutes by a fire, I beg of you?' He did not have to feign exhaustion. T've ridden from Dunchurch, but my master, he took off without me just outside the house. Help me, please. I've no master, no home and like to have no head when all this comes out…' The harassed woman he had spoken to had hardly listened, glancing all the time nervously over his shoulder, pushing him in the direction of the kitchen.

He was inside. The kitchen was a babble of noise. Servants shared their master's fate, and there was real terror in their ranks. Old campaigning instincts took over. Gresham grabbed a fistful of greasy, half-warm meat from a stone table and a mug of small beer that appeared somehow out of the chaos, and crammed both down his throat. The plotters were together in the Hall upstairs, he heard. They would not be leaving now, he thought, with night coming on. They were blown, exhausted. There was enough of the real Henry Gresham left to light a tiny smile in the corner of his mouth. He was inside the lions' den. It was about time he decided what use to make of his achievement.

Thomas Percy looked at the sodden crowd of his fellow plotters and cursed the luck that had exposed Fawkes. Clearly, Cecil's plan had misfired. Or had Cecil betrayed them? He doubted it. If Cecil had wanted both of them out of the way Percy would not have been let to go with the others to end up in this dreadful hole of a house. Percy caught the tail of his fear, which was starting to fly up and away like a kite out of control, and brought it back down to earth again with an effort. He had to assume that his job remained what it had always been, to kill Catesby and as many of the other conspirators as possible. Cecil had always feared Catesby, recognising in him the capacity to lift and sway an audience. He had been willing to use him, the perfect unwitting foil for a plot that would bring Cecil nothing but credit, but yet he had always feared his power to incite. Cecil had been too much scarred by the ability of Sir Walter Raleigh at his trial to win hearts and minds by the power of his words and the attraction of his figure. He did not want Robert Catesby standing at the Bar, weaving the same spells with his audience that he had woven with the conspirators. Catesby had to die decently early, and that was Percy's role:

He had considered killing him on their journey, but no chance that did not threaten his own life had presented itself. The life of Thomas Percy was a very important thing, and soon to become even more important. Once Catesby had been disposed of, and the other plotters either killed or handed over to authority — Cecil had wanted some two or three at most, no more, if possible — then Percy would return in triumph to London bringing Catesby's body slung over a horse. He had thought on that, and thought that it would look best stripped to its shirt, as it would have been for an execution. He had reminded himself that he must drape the body over a horse as soon as possible after Catesby's death, before it froze in death and stuck out on either side like a bar across the saddle. In the midst of that triumph, he and Cecil would discuss the details he would give about the treachery of the ninth Earl of Northumberland, how the evil Earl had unwittingly placed in the hands of his kinsman the details of the treachery and the revolution he planned — his kinsman, who having handed the fate of the ninth Earl over to Cecil would, of course, become the tenth Earl of Northumberland. Had he riot always claimed, even to the ninth Earl himself, that his branch of the family was older than that represented by the ninth Earl? Well, now he would prove it.

The powder they had taken from Hewell Grange had been loaded into an open cart. The drenching rain had soaked it. Their plan now was to rest for as long as it took to get their breath back, and then dash into Wales to gather support and await news of the landings and the Spanish troops that Percy had lied about to