horses, and I need your chivalry and your access to the Court so that the Princess
Elizabeth will come sweetly and there will be no second blood bath. They rode on in silence. Catesby's skill lay in knowing when to talk, but also in when to stay silent.
'What of our friends, Robin? What of the Catholic Lords? Are they to be blown to perdition, as well as our enemies? How could God forgive such a crime?'
'Rest assured, it's taken care of. Those who're worth saving will be preserved, without knowing how or why they were saved. We've thought long on this, and we need you.'
'What of the priests? What do they say? How can a priest sane-tify murder?'
'The priests know. They've approved the matter,' Catesby lied. Perhaps a priest knew under the secret of the confessional, but that was not to approve the act, merely to recognise that nothing could break that secret and the bond it established between a man, his priest and his God. How could he head off the young fool going to Father Garnet to confess? Garnet would not reveal the confession directly, but he could take steps in Europe to deny Catesby the help on which his rebellion would depend.
'When we reach your home, I'll show you the texts that make what we do a necessary evil. The Scriptures have always allowed acts of violence against the heathen — were the innocents on the walls of Jericho to be spared before the anger of the Lord? Were the Philistines to be allowed to triumph over God's people and his armies? Didn't the Pope sanctify the death of that whore Elizabeth when she declared herself against God's people?'
Catesby leant over again, and reined in his friend's horse. Gayhurst was visible in the distance, a wisp of smoke and nestling buildings.
'You know what threats we face. Do you want your children to inherit from their father? Do you wish our cause to be ruined, our people cast into penury, our faith trampled into the dust and mud? Then do nothing. Or rise up against the tide of fortune, and fight. Fight like a man.'
Sir Everard Digby gazed out on to the home of his wife and his children, the scene of his idyllic marriage and a life as near perfect, in his opinion, as the age could offer. There in the brick and stone of Gayhurst was a future to bring redemption to Hell, a smile on the face of the universe. Was he to risk it all in one fateful throw? Was it his duty? Was it his lot to suffer now, having been blessed so much in his early life?
He turned to his friend.
'You say the priests know of this? They've agreed to it? You'll show me these passages?'
I have you now, exulted Catesby. I have you, and your fine horses, your money and your manners. I have you.
'I will, Everard. Upon my life and upon my soul, I will.'
He set his face into a hard frown, as befitted a man set on serious business, hiding his exultation. Was there a particular pleasure in wrenching a man away from his beautiful wife and fine sons, in placing that wife and her brood in the way of risk and total loss? Digby had been too happy, thought Catesby. No mortal deserved that happiness, it was not the way of the world. Pain, suffering and sacrifice, those were the way of the world. Pain, suffering and sacrifice that all the world had to experience before they could gain entrance to God's kingdom. He was doing Everard Digby a favour by plunging him into Hell on earth. It would guarantee him his place in Heaven.
Ben Jonson's Court was The Mermaid tavern, his Presence Chamber its tap room and his courtiers a huge and adoring crowd of actors and writers, and an equal crowd of would-be actors and writers. However, The Mermaid was far too public a place for a man to be seen who was not meant to be in London at all. The next best bet was Jonson's lodgings.
Jonson had money, now that his liaison with Inigo Jones was producing a torrent of Court income. Gresham doubted that his friend's incomings would ever exceed his outgoings. His lodgings were in a back street a long way away from any fashionable area, but gratifyingly near Alsatia. It was not early in the morning when Gresham, in a workman's uniform, arrived at Jonson's chamber door. He had brought Mannion with him, feeling threat in the very air he breathed. Jane he had brought partly because of the feeling that she was only safe when with him, and partly through the realisation that it was folly to leave a young and beautiful woman on her own in Alsatia. She was also becoming very bored, a sulphurous cloud of tedium hanging over her in the tiny environs of their bolt hole.
The landlord knew Gresham, and let him in with a grin. Jonson had been too drunk to bolt the door when he had fallen into his bed. He lay fully clothed, his snores shaking dust off the ashes of the dead fire. Gresham crept up to him from behind, placed a dagger gently against his throat and hissed loudly in his ear, 'Pay me the money you owe me now, or die!'
Jonson leapt up as if a charge of powder had been set off beneath him, and landed back on the bed, feeling the steel against his throat, eyes as staring wide as a dead fish, unable to see his assailant. He started to gargle, white froth coming from his mouth.
Jane spoke. 'Or he might let you off if you give him a mention in your next play. Ugh! Do you ever wash a shirt?'
Jonson's whole body subsided back on to the bed, hearing the familiar voice, as if the life had drained out of it. Jane was wandering round the room, which looked as if an exceedingly dirty garrison of troops had been stationed in it for months. She picked up various bits of linen, wrinkling her nose as she threw them into a pile.
Jonson rolled over on the bed. 'You bastard!' he grunted at Gresham.
'True. But at least my poetry's good,' responded Gresham with a grin.
''Calumnies are answered best with silence',' responded Jonson. When he quoted from his own works he always stuck his chest out.
'Please don't quote from your own work, Ben,' asked Gresham. 'Only someone of exceptional arrogance would even remember what they had written, never mind spout it to an unsuspecting public at every opportunity.'
'I am exceptional in everything I do,' grunted Jonson, rubbing his head and heaving himself upright.
'Exceptional as a sycophant, I believe. What were those lines you wrote to celebrate Robert Cecil's sudden uplifting to be Earl of Salisbury? Do I remember…
'What need hast thou of me, or of my Muse Whose actions do themselves so celebrate?''
'Aye, well,' Jonson responded, pulling on a pair of boots, 'a man has to live.'
''I do honour the very flea of his dog'?' asked Gresham, quoting from Every Man In His Humour.
'Please don't quote from my works, Sir Henry,' said Jonson solemnly. 'I find it degrades the beauty of my lines.'
Jane was an avid playgoer, and Gresham had become converted during his time with Kit Marlowe. They had known Jonson for years. He traced his roots back to Scotland, and had done so when it was not fashionable to be so linked, and was a Catholic, when it had never been fashionable. He was also an entirely self-taught classical scholar of awesome knowledge, a brawler who had killed a man, a poet of huge genius and a boor, a man of great intuition who at times showed the sensitivity of a stone privy in the Tower. Ben Jonson's body could be and had been caged. His spirit was uncontainable. That at least he shared with Walter Raleigh.
Without expression, Jane picked up the overflowing yellow chamber pot from beside the bed, opened the shuttered window and hurled out the contents into the street below. A fierce yell and a squeal suggested it had found a target. Jonson stopped rubbing his head and feasted his eyes on Jane's trim figure, a beatific smile on his lips. He recovered quickly from shocks. His life had produced enough of them for him to have had to learn quickly.
'Avert your gaze, old lecher, and listen to me. You dine with Lord Mordaunt and Robert Catesby soon enough, I hear?'
Jonson struck a dramatic pose on the bed, the effect somewhat ruined by a button popping off as he raised both his arms. He launched into verse:
'' Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sport of love!''
'My name's Jane,' replied the object of his attention, poking with her foot at the remnants of what could have been last week's meal on the floor. 'As for your kind proposition, ' all the adulteries of art. They strike mine eyes, but not my heart'.'
'Spoken beautifully!' exclaimed Jonson, gallantly. 'Almost as well as I could do it myself.'
'Lord Mordaunt? Catesby?' interjected Gresham.
'You're well informed, as ever. What of them?'
He got up clumsily from the bed and walked over to a low, rough-carved table with some bottles on it. Jane
