Chapter 10
Though Gresham did not know it, the mood of William Parker, Lord Monteagle, was as destructive and tense as his own. He had waited for news every hour since his abrupt dismissal from Whitehall, yet none had come. The King was due back from hunting today, he knew. He could restrain his impatience no longer. Hurrying to Whitehall, he at least suffered no delay in being shown in to Cecil's presence. Indeed, barriers seemed to melt at his name. Gratified at the sudden power he seemed able to wield, he bowed in a rather cursory manner to Cecil, forgetting for a moment who was Lord and who was master.
'My Lord Monteagle!' said Cecil, an icy warmth in his voice. 'You must think I had forgotten you and your recent good service. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are weighty matters, matters we have let ripen on the vine.' 'You will tell the King, my Lord? Today?' A flicker of annoyance crossed Cecil's face. 'In time, my good Lord, all in good time. Trust me, my Lord, as a friend, as well as an elder.' Cecil's tone softened, became almost caressing as his gimlet eyes fixed on the young man with his strong, straight body. 'You are beholden to me for a very large sum of money still outstanding against your name, are you not? You are beholden to me for restoring you and your family's standing and fortune, are you not? You have received those very great gifts in exchange merely for a little information, have you not? You may trust my judgement in these great matters of state, as I trust your judgement in lesser matters.'
Damn you, thought Monteagle. I am not your friend. I am your slave. As he left, his bow was deep and low.
'The men we sent out, they're still reporting, some of them.' Mannion stood by Gresham's side. 'They say these Papists are back in London, mostly. Gathering together for some devilry, I guess. Do you want to see three of them? Percy's booked dinner for three at The Mitre, in Bread Street. It's a haunt of theirs. Bold as brass. Our men say there's no sign of anyone else watching them.'
Why not? Gresham agonised. Why were these men gathering in London, instead of fleeing for their lives? Why was every Catholic sympathiser in London not being hounded down?
Could Gresham risk being an onlooker at this devils' supper? He was driven to it by his own demon, the frustration tearing at him as a real growth in his side would have done. Even the basic questions that were grist to his survival seemed irrelevant. Should he change his complexion from its deathly white? What disguise should he wear? Should he slip out of a side door of the House, or go as if to an appointment with his surgeon?
Why hadn't this powder plot folded in on itself? Had Monteagle been so unconvincing in his presentation of the letter?
Had he even presented the letter at all?
Robert Cecil knew little about warfare. It seemed to him that it excited men of a certain type, that it was costly beyond belief and that its results were unpredictable. It also seemed that an army large enough to fight a war was necessary to accompany the King on one of his hunting expeditions. The already astronomical expenses of the Royal household rose by the minute, and Cecil sighed as the endless train of horses and carts and assorted wagons brought back His Royal Highness King James I from his pleasures.
He waited until the afternoon following. Friday was an unlucky day in common belief, but also the first of the month, symbolic perhaps of a new start. King James was in his Gallery at Whitehall, alone.
Cecil approached, bowed, and offered the Monteagle letter, without comment. James raised an eyebrow, took it and read it. He looked up at Cecil, who made no comment again. He read it a second time, taking more care.
‘It was delivered at night, sire, to my Lord Monteagle. He brought it straight here, to me.' And it was undated, thank God, thought Cecil. Would James be angered at the length of time it had taken to bring this letter to his attention?
'Clearly, my liege,' said Cecil, 'whoever wrote this is a fool.'
'In which case,' said the King, 'it were as well not to receive it likewise as a fool.'
Intelligence and experience, thought Cecil, his heart racing behind his composed exterior. Never forget this man has survived by his wits as King of the Scots. Never forget that conspiracies are second nature to him. Never forget there is no-one as wise as a fool.
Where were the others? thought Tresham as he entered White Webbs. He was shown to a room he had never entered before, and before he knew it the door had slammed behind him and he was facing Robert Catesby. Tom Wintour stood behind him. He drew both bolts on the door.
It all hinged on one sentence, Tresham was to realise later. If Catesby had said to him, in that terrifyingly calm voice of his, 'Why have you betrayed us?' Tresham's face would have broken down into a confession of guilt. He had betrayed the plotters to 'Selkirk', as well as betraying his marriage vows, his religion and, for all he knew, the God he had never properly worshipped.
But Catesby did not ask why Tresham had betrayed his friends.
Instead, he chose to ask, ‘Tell me, cousin, why did you send the letter?'
The letter? What letter? The last letter Tresham had sent had been a peremptory demand for unpaid rent from one of his newly acquired tenants. Genuine confusion crossed his face.
'What letter? I've sent no letter!'
The instant vehemence of his response caused Catesby to pause. Even Wintour, poised behind him, shuffled uncertainly. Catesby spoke again.
'Don't pretend ignorance. Who else would send a letter to Lord Monteagle — your brother-in-law — warning him not to attend Parliament if he wished to preserve his life?'
'Now you mention it, I'd gladly have sent such a letter, if I'd only thought of it! You know what I think. We won't build our faith by this act, we'll destroy people's faith in it. I confess I'd thought of writing a warning, not to Monteagle, to one of the King's secretaries, but I never sent any such letter. Do you hear me? I never sent a letter’
Sincerity strikes its own note. Sincerity uttered with a man holding a drawn dagger at your back strikes an even deeper note. It was picked up by Catesby and Wintour.
'If not you, who else?' It was Wintour this time, almost hissing in his intensity.
'How would I know? And can the condemned man at least sit down? It's not much of a last request!'
Tresham's genuine exhaustion, physical and mental, came to his aid. His tiredness was clearly no counterfeit.
If I can keep saying what I know to be true, I might yet walk out of here alive, thought Tresham. That would be an irony, for a man who was a congenital liar.
Gresham was exhausted, though mentally rather than physically. The strain of having to act the invalid in front of every servant* the strain of waiting, had all taken its toll. Standing to wash that morning he had felt himself shivering, something he had never done unless he had a fever. Mannion had said nothing, but Gresham noted the fire had been stacked higher than normal when he went to eat his breakfast.
Mannion had arranged the next meeting with Tresham in a stew, or brothel.
'It makes sense,' he had remonstrated. 'There's more control over who comes into a whorehouse than there ever is in a tavern. It's across the river, so we can get you over in a covered boat from our own jetty.'
In the meantime, Mannion had surpassed himself at The Mitre. Pretending to be searching out a room for his master and finding out which room Percy had booked, he had taken the adjacent one for an hour earlier. By the time Percy occupied his room the servants would have finished bringing the food and have left them to their bottles. Even better, an iron hook from which a lamp had hung had worked loose from the rough plaster of the dividing wall in Percy's room, and been fixed anew an inch or so up, leaving a hole. It had taken Mannion a split second with his dagger to drive through the hole and leave a clear mark on the wall of the adjacent room. It was the work of a few seconds to enlarge the hole so that one man could look through. Yet he worked with the utmost care at it, as the tap boy left their room. The plaster was old and rotten, and too much pressure would not open an eye hole, all but invisible in the other room, but rather tear out a great gaping hole.
Reluctantly Gresham had allowed Jane's importunings, and taken her with him, heavily hooded. At the inn it was just another well-bred lady coming to an assignation with a gentleman. They extinguished the lights in their room as they heard Percy and his guests enter. Mannion was first to look through. He had the descriptions of the
