'Possibly, but if so, only at a distance. The old Earl is no arch-plotter. He prefers his study and his experiments, and brooding in silence on how harshly the world has treated him. He's deaf, you know. Deaf people live in fear, fear of things going on that they don't know about. Northumberland is more frightened than most. He knows his family history. He knows no-one in London trusts a Percy. If he's in this, then he's pulling strings, like a puppeteer.'
'Surely all this is irrelevant? What they plan is obscene. It's an evil to end all evils. It must be stopped. Can't you simply swallow your pride, go to Cecil and reveal everything you know?'
'Cecil wants me dead, remember? I daren't go to him, not without threatening one other person I care for greatly.'
'Raleigh? Surely Sir Walter would never be involved in something such as this?'
'Sir Walter involved? Never in a thousand lifetimes! Raleigh has never had to hide his powder, and I would have been the first to know if this was his hatching. But Raleigh's life hangs by a thread, and Cecil needs only the flimsiest of excuses to cut that thread. One hint of a plot and Raleigh is dead. Raleigh doesn't need to be involved in reality. All Cecil needs to pin the plot on to Raleigh is the slenderest of leads. You see, Raleigh is a real threat to Cecil. While he rots in the Tower, and the people line the riverbank to cheer him on his daily walk on the walls and a King who has had him condemned can't run the risk of executing him — now there's a threat not just to a King, but to the Chief Secretary who betrayed his friend! Popularity, Jane. Popularity. Raleigh has become popular.'
Gresham was on his feet now, pacing the room.
'It's the one thing Cecil can never have, the one thing he fears! Cecil has intellect in plenty. He has wealth, he has power and he has cunning, and he's cautious beyond belief. Yet the one thing that threatens him is a popular uprising. He's no feel for the common man, no, nor any love for them. He can sit in his palace and scheme and manipulate and plot and plan, but he can't reach out like Sir Walter can reach out and make people's hearts sing and their spirits rise just by the sight of him. So he fears Raleigh above all others, my poor captain in his captive tower, and he fears that Raleigh might win over the King. Raleigh's the symbol of the popularity Cecil will never have, and a power he'll never have, the power to move people's hearts and minds. Cecil knows it's a power that could be used to knock him off his perch, so he fears it as well as envies it.'
'But what's the link between this and this powder plot?' asked Jane, genuinely bemused.
'What if Cecil knows something is brewing? The details can't be clear to him. No man like him would knowingly leave a ton of powder beneath his seat of power. But say he's caught the rumours, and sees in this plot a way to prove Raleigh a traitor at last? Say he bides his time and then seizes as many of the plotters as he can find. How many under torture wouldn't confess to Raleigh's being the ringleader? It would explain so much. Why Cecil is desperate to keep me out of the way, why he feared me so and set me off on a false trail. I've made no secret of my allegiance to Sir Walter. For God's sake, I visit the man in his prison openly! There are few men who could unstitch a plot to make Raleigh appear a traitor, and few who would want to do so as much as I. I'm one such. Perhaps the only such.'
'Did it kill Will Shadwell?' asked Jane.
'Of course,' said Gresham. 'Percy must have blurted something out to Shadwell when he was drunk. I wonder if Will took the story to Cecil first of all? That would be a fine joke. Cecil watching this lovely little plot bubbling away, his marvellous excuse to get rid of Raleigh once and for all, and along comes Will Shadwell ready to spoil it all with an early disclosure. I flattered myself thinking Will Shadwell was running with a story to me. I bet he was running away from Sam Fogarty and his crew; he must have picked up he was being followed, and seen me sis the only person who could protect him against Cecil.'
Jane was looking perplexed. 'But I still don't see why you can't just go to Cecil? Expose the plot and you stop a slaughter…'
'And I give Cecil myself as well as Raleigh, served up nice and hot on a plate! Think what happens if I appear in front of Cecil with the details of this fantastical plot. One of Raleigh's fiercest supporters, and a spymaster to boot? I'm clapped into jail the minute I open my mouth, and instead of saving my master I become an agent for his death! How easy to have me not as the discoverer of the plot, but as one of its leaders. There's a forged letter to prove me a Catholic. What was done once can be done again! I've supped with the plotters, haven't I? And I have a direct link to Raleigh. They can have me backwards and forwards between the plotters and the Tower quicker than a pair of oars in the flood tide. They can rack me until I say what they wish, never even need to bring me out in open court. Look at Raleigh's trial — his chief accuser was never even presented!'
'You would never testify against Raleigh!' exclaimed Jane.
'I would never willingly or knowingly testify against him, while I was in possession of my own senses. But courage and fortitude have nothing to do with torture, Jane. Christ himself on the Cross denied his father. It's not just their bodies men lose on the rack. It's their minds. Anyone can be broken, in time.'
'So you can't speak out, and you can't remain silent. Aren't there others you could reveal the details to?'
'That must be the answer. Young Tresham's a complicating factor. He's to be stopped from cutting and running, by the way. He's impulsive by nature. Before too long he'll weigh the odds -
God knows, I would if I struck a deal where I could be arrested and taken to the Tower as a traitor if my mad cousin spoke one word to the wrong people — and work out that it might be better for him just to vanish off to France on his own.' 'So who do you tell, and how?'
'There're enough pompous fools in the employ of the Crown who'd leap at the chance to discover a plot, but the mere discovery isn't enough. If the powder is simply found, it could still be proven as Raleigh's as much as anyone else's. No, however it's done, it has to be by some route or other that keeps it within the Catholics, identifies the whole awful business as driven by religion.'
'Well,' said Jane, 'you'd better get that pen and paper ready. How many Catholic sympathisers do we know?'
Someone was crying, not too far away in the house. The noise could be heard even above the noise of a great house being shut up and closed down, a keening wail that seemed to have no start and no ending. It would be one of the servants, Tresham thought. He was still not recovered from his madcap ride from London to Northamptonshire. Many of the servants had worked their whole lives for the Tresham family. They were wailing, as servants always did, yet little they knew how much better for them it would be to be dispersed before the avenging angels of Cecil descended on the house crying treason. He had done with Rushton, whatever happened. Already the house felt as if it belonged to someone else.
Tresham believed he could still stop the plot. If that was the case, Rushton could be opened up again easily enough. The death of so many Catholic nobles was the key, he was sure. It might not work as an argument for postponement on Catesby, but it could work on the others. He had laboured the point with his dark angel. The man showed so little resemblance to Alexander Selkirk, the semi-drunk Scot who had accompanied Jonson, that Tresham had to pinch himself to know they were one and the same. 'Selkirk' had not disagreed with him, but gazed levelly into his eyes and said resignedly,
'You must try, as best you can. It's best you don't know of the other plan to destroy this plot before it happens. You'll be all the more surprised when you do hear of it. Remember when you're challenged to stick with the truth.' Tresham had pondered on that, not really understanding, and pleaded to be allowed to ride north and close up his home, bringing his family down to London.
'Why should you wish that?' the man had asked.
'I leave this country for a while, whatever happens. I need to put my affairs in order, gather my money and bring my family together so that when I vanish they can help and support each other. I must also consider being arrested.'
'Why so?'
Tresham had had the same thoughts as Gresham. 'One loose word from any one of the plotters and they could be betrayed. I'm implicated now, regardless. If I'm arrested I can plead that I tried to stop the plot — which is quite true — and stayed with Catesby simply to act from the inside to further act against it. If I move my family to London it will confirm my innocence. A man who fears the fire doesn't move nearer the furnace.'
•No,' said Gresham, 'but a man who wants to light it most certainly does.'
You are, thought Gresham, very optimistic indeed about your likely fate if this plot is discovered. Live in hope, though. It does no harm.
'A lesser brain than yours,' he continued, 'might think to strip his house and gather his wealth, then return to London and vanish quietly before anyone knew what was happening.'
