stopped, reinserting the bar into the even larger gap that now existed, and forced it away from his hand. There was a gentle tearing noise, and the door gave, shrieking on its rusted hinges. He slipped inside, pushing the door to. There were bolts top and bottom, he noticed, the topmost bolt seated in what looked like firm timber. They had not been pushed in.
He knew his way up the stairs, which had a layer of dust on them with only a few footmarks. He stumbled in the almost complete blackness, feeling his way with a hand on the walls. The chamber where Cecil met spies was at the top of the stairs, with three corridors branching off it. One led up to the main and State apartments, one was the access route that Gresham had used and the other he had never trodden. In addition there was a door in the panelling, leading to not so much a secret as rather a private passageway, part above ground and part tunnel, to Westminster.
Torches burnt in the passage, throwing a garish light on the unadorned walls. This was a business area of the Palace, shorn of frippery. Gresham advanced to the door, expecting to feel silence and emptiness at this hour of night, and that he would need to go up a floor to the State rooms where, no doubt, Cecil was still ensconced.
He froze as he heard low voices from within the chamber, inaudible and no more than a dull rumble. There was a scraping as of stools being pushed back. Gresham dipped back into the doorway from where he had emerged, wrapping its shadow round him. The door ahead of him opened. A blaze of light splashed out into the corridor. Cecil himself emerged, gave a brief glance along the corridor, and stood aside. Two figures followed him, glanced themselves up and down the corridor, and moved over to the door in the panelling, opening it and vanishing.
The figures were unmistakable. Gresham had seen them only the night before. Both were so tall as to have to duck under the lintel of the door as they entered the private passageway.
Guy Fawkes. Thomas Percy.
Gresham leant back, his head resting on the cool brickwork in darkness, controlling his breathing.
Guy Fawkes and Thomas Percy. Discoursing in the room the King's Chief Secretary used for his spies and agents. Discoursing with that same Chief Minister. Two of the leading agents in this powder plot.
And allies of Robert Cecil.
Chapter 11
'Fool! Fool! What a complete fool I’ve been!' Gresham's anger was uncontainable. It surged through the House, seeming to shake the very walls, threatening to tear him and all it came into contact with apart. The candles had been out, and hurriedly relit. They guttered, smoking from where there had been no time to trim the wicks.
'Do be quiet, will you?' Jane seemed angered by his anger. 'It's not foolishness I hear, it's self-pity! If you're a fool then we're all fools! Who could've dreamt of the King's Chief Minister wishing to blow up the King and Parliament?' She was scared. The rampaging thing that was Gresham was like a wild creature. She felt her world falling apart, torn by forces beyond her control.
The accusation of self-pity stung him like a slap across the face, because it was correct.
'That's where we've all been fools. How could I not have seen it? He doesn't want to blow up Parliament. He wants the credit for discovering the plot to blow up the King and Parliament! Can't you see? He's been in control of this from the start. The only people who benefit from this are the King and his chief henchman.
'It all makes sense now,' he continued. 'Unpopularity — I said that was the key. The King's increasingly unpopular, and Cecil's never been popular. The Raleigh business gives them a permanent thorn in their side, which they can't remove, and the Treaty with Spain's laughed at. Everyone knows the Court's awash with Spanish pensions and bribes. When this so-called plot is exposed, at the last minute, Cecil will go down in history as the saviour of the nation and the Protestant faith, and James receive a huge backlash of sympathy. They'll ride on the back of this for years to come. It's all too easy for them.'
'But I'm still not clear,' said Jane, her brow furrowed in thought. 'Did Cecil start the plot off?'
‘I doubt it. Catesby probably gave it to him on a plate. A God-given hothead, on whom Cecil placed a saddle without him even realising he was being ridden. Catesby must have walked straight into the arms of one of their agents overseas when they were looking for someone to deal with the powder.'
'And Fawkes?'
Gresham started to rampage among the vast pile of papers he had hurled on to the table when he returned. They were the reports of the spies and informers they had engaged at the start of this business, page after page of painstaking notes.
'The agent he walked into, of course. Either turned years ago, or suborned latterly. Look at his record! Born to a fine Protestant family, sells up his inheritance to go and fight in the Netherlands. All right, when he gets there he chooses to fight for Spain. So? Who has the money and the gold in the Netherlands? Who's paying a pension to nearly every one of James's courtiers at this very moment? The Spaniards. To Catesby and Wintour he's been a soldier of conscience. What if he's only ever been a soldier of convenience? A mercenary, fighting for the side that gives him most and pretending a religion to win promotion? Whilst taking a fat purse from Cecil to spy on the Spaniards, his employers, in the meantime!'
'So Catesby walked unbeknowingly into a trap set by Cecil?'
'Catesby triggered a series of thoughts in Cecil's mind, more like. The idiot goes blundering through Europe, looking for someone to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and latches on to one of Cecil's double agents. What a stroke of luck for Cecil — he has a real, a genuine conspirator to make the plot look real, and all the while he's paying the man with his hand on the fuse. It can't go wrong for him, provided he keeps a sufficient distance. No wonder he wanted me somewhere else.'
'What about Percy?' asked Jane.
Gresham threshed around among the papers again.
'Just look at his record. As wild as they come. Where is it…' he pounced on a piece of paper,'… thirty-four charges of dishonesty proven against him by Northumberland's tenants. He's nothing more than a bully boy, and then all of a sudden he marries a woman and converts to Catholicism — what a miraculous conversion! I'll bet anything you care to put down that was when he was grabbed to spy on the Catholics. What a bargain — he could tell them about the grand Earl of Northumberland, as well as the lesser kind. If you think about it, a Percy must have seemed like God's gift. Being a traitor is poured into them at birth, and what better guard against a northern rising than to have one of Northumberland's kinsmen on the inside!'
'I… I just can't take this in,' said Jane. 'Is everyone in the spy or a double agent in this world? Is there no- one… normal?’
'Oh, yes,' said Gresham, 'there're plenty of normal people. They die young.'
'Well,' said Mannion. 'That's all fine and well. A bit of philosophy always helps at a bad time, as I'm first to admit. But now that's over, can we decide what we're going to do?'
'What indeed,' said Gresham.
He looked almost devilish, his face receiving the light flung up from the lamps on the table. Jane felt a shiver of fear run through her body. How well did she know this man?
'I'm sorry,' she said, 'forgive me for being a stupid woman.' She glared at Gresham. Wisely, he said nothing. 'But how do Fawkes and Percy get out of this? The plot has to be discovered for James and Cecil to get the benefit, but if it's discovered it's death for Fawkes and Percy.'
'Fawkes just makes sure nothing does actually blow up, and then he's off on the nearest ship on the Thames. New identity, new life and a great deal richer than ever he was before. As for Percy… how do you think a knighthood and some fat manors would do him? The brave discoverer of the infamous Gunpowder Plot! The man who risked life and limb to ensure that every man involved in this blasphemous endeavour was brought to justice. Or he could simply take a fat purse and a different name… but I doubt it, somehow.'
'So what do we do now? Expose Cecil's involvement? Or just let the plotters walk into Cecil's trap, and pretend we never knew?'
'There you have it. it's Machiavelli's choice, isn't it?'
'Machiavelli died some years ago. We're still alive, in case you hadn't noticed. So, for that matter, are the plotters, King James and Robert Cecil,' said Jane acidly. 'I think we can keep Machiavelli out of it. After all, he
