played the wrong game and ended up being tortured and put out to grass, didn't he?'
'But the basic quandary he posed lives on, as it lived before he was born and as it will live on whilst humans seek and abuse power.' Gresham was lecturing her, unconsciously adopting the pose of a Fellow of his College talking to a young student. 'You see, Machiavelli said that truth wasn't necessarily worth very much, if it meant thousands of people dying. Good rulers put the welfare of their people above such minor things as truth and morality.'
'You're not a ruler,' said Jane, practically.
'No, but I could bring down Cecil and King James, I think.'
'Do you have evidence?'
'I could gain it easily enough. Men like Fawkes and Percy were paid to be traitors to their kind once. Pay them enough and they'll turn on Cecil as easily as they turned on their supposed friends.'
'So what will you do?' asked Jane, the anxiety cracking her voice.
'What will I do?' mused Gresham. The fire had smoked badly on being re-lit. In their panic to reawaken the household some wet timber had been placed on it. Now it had caught, and the cheery red flicker of the flames reflected in Gresham's eyes.
'What will I do?' he repeated. He turned towards Jane, with a thin, broad smile on his face. 'I shall be Machiavelli.'
The instructions to Fawkes had been clear. The frightened messenger was the same ambitious little rabbit Fawkes had showed the powder to an age ago. Fawkes was Cecil's safety catch, his half-cock on the pistol. Fawkes had to remain on guard until the last possible moment before the discovery of the powder, in case one of the other plotters decided to take matters into their own hands and light the fuse. Also, Cecil could not appear to know too much. A search party could not simply go directly to the cellar and find the powder. There had to be two searches, the first of the whole area. It would be told simply to observe and to report, to take no precipitate action that might trigger off the plotters. As such there would be no risk to Fawkes, particularly if the barrels were well buried under the faggots and firewood. If questioned he could claim quite truthfully to be servant to Thomas Percy, the tenant of the house. Who would distrust the servant to someone so recently appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber?
Suffolk would do to lead the search party. And Suffolk would be told to arrest no-one, to take no. action that might start a panic, thought Cecil. He would summon that fool Monteagle to go with Suffolk in the first search party. Let Monteagle report that the pile of brushwood really was very large for the size of house above it, so they could go back to it later. It would all add credibility.
The second search, the one that would go back to the cellar, would take place at one o'clock in the morning.
'One o'clock!' whispered the frightened rabbit, though there was no-one nearby to hear or to see. 'The time is most important! My
Lord says you may leave after midnight, but not before! If a hothead such as Catesby were to hear the plot exposed he could still seek to blow up the building and so provoke rebellion.'
My Lord may go and fuck himself, thought Fawkes, if he has enough red blood in him to fuck anything, which I doubt. An hour was cutting it too fine, but he did not doubt that my Lord would have a watcher in the vicinity. Cecil was right, of course. With a gaping hole where Parliament had been the rumours could fly, and who knows what might catch seed in the confusion.
The rabbit scuttled out of the cheap lodgings, and did not notice the figure in expensive doublet, hose and short cloak detach him-self, after a decent interval, from the wall and tuck in behind him on his route back to Whitehall. The figure could not fail to notice that two other men, in rough jerkins and with pockmarked faces, were also following the courtier, ahead. Typical of his type, the courtier stuck his chin in the air and barged his way through the common people, a testy 'Make way! Make way!' issuing from his lips. Suddenly he came upon two working men who, instead of moving aside in the busy, narrow street, put shoulder together to shoulder. He cannoned into them. Did one flick his heels to help him down into the mud? It was difficult to see, but certainly one of the men caught him a heavy blow on the head with his foot as he walked past the figure he had just helped knock over. Almost instantly, the two other men came up to the prostrate figure, and knelt down as if to offer help. There was a momentary flash of steel, so fast that no-one watching could be certain they had seen it, and the two men stood up and moved on, becoming lost immediately in the crowd.
The courtier's throat was cut, his life-blood ebbing away into the mud and staining the fashionable yellow starch of his ruff. Cecil had closed off one possible leakage of information in advance of the final act of his great play. The courtier gaped up at the figure in doublet and hose, gasping, terror in his eyes.
'They… they have stabbed me!' he croaked, unnecessarily.
'On your master Cecil's orders, be sure. If you wish a surgeon,' said Henry Gresham, bending down and whispering into the courtier's ear, 'you must first tell me what you said to Master Fawkes.'
The search party had seemed as inept as the rabbit had promised. Lurking outside, Fawkes had given his name as Johnson and told the leader he was Thomas Percy's servant and this Thomas Percy's rented house. The senior Lord in all his finery had seemed to be in a hurry to be anywhere except where he was, and the other young popinjay had tried to ask more questions but been hauled away by the other.
At eleven o'clock he took a simple lantern and materials to make the fire and light the fuse. The rabbit had been insistent that these were left by the powder, as if to suggest that everything was ready to ignite it at a moment's notice. He dressed carefully for the cold night, the spurs jangling as he walked for the last time to the cellar and opened the ancient door. Keyes had given him a watch, to time the fuse, as he thought. He had little realised that it would time Fawkes's escape. He sat on the stool he had lugged down into the cellar, not lighting the lantern, just letting the darkness and the silence enfold him. The dust, the ancient smell of decay, had become almost a comfort to him. So much danger in these barrels, so much threat, yet so much silence and peace here, underground. A broad grin lit his face in the dark as he thought on his master, Cecil. He wished he could see the expression on Cecil's face when the surprise was delivered. A pity he would be long gone.
He dimly heard the church bells strike midnight, and rose stiffly to his feet. He needed no light to walk to the door, the path learnt off by heart. He stopped, suddenly. A noise? From outside? He waited. Silence. A dog, or the wind. Nevertheless, he was careful in drawing back the door. Silence. He poked his head round the door for one final inspection. There was the tiniest flicker of light…
A roaring yell, and the full weight of the door was flung against his unsuspecting body, hurling him back into the cellar. He was down, and three, four, five men were on top of him…
'Leave off!' he screamed. 'I am under the orders of…' A sixth sense made him close his mouth. Something had gone wrong, horribly wrong. Yet these men — King's men, he saw by the uniform — were clearly not going to kill him or it would have been done by now. My Lord Cecil could not bear to have his part in this exposed… No, while he was alive he had power. This must, must be a mistake. He could surely stave off the truth until Cecil found a way of releasing him…
As the bound figure of Fawkes was bundled away by his men, Sir Thomas Knyvett mopped his brow, despite the cold of the night.
'A dreadful business, Sir Henry, dreadful business. You note the man was booted and spurred for flight? Cloak and hat and all! Had you not come in all haste with the message to commence our search early I fear he would have escaped! A dreadful business, dreadful…'
'It was, Sir Thomas, a pleasure to be of service to you, to my Lord the Earl of Salisbury and to His Majesty the King,' replied Sir Henry Gresham.
Kit Wright could not sleep. He envied any man who could do so, on this night of all nights. He was uneasy at being parted from his brother. As children the others had always joked that they hunted in pairs, and without his brother he felt strangely incomplete. Essentially a pious and a decent man, Wright prayed with his bare knees against the splintered boards for half the night. He failed to find his usual consolation. The same deep anger was there still in his soul for the seeming death of the religion he loved in the country he loved, the anger that Catesby had seen and tapped into. Until now that anger had killed any qualms of conscience he might have, but now, with the terrible thing so near, he could not rid his mind of screaming, the screaming of those buried under the rubble of Fawkes's powder.
He gave up sleep, dressed, and lay on his cot, fully clothed. There was a noise, surely? He got up, and opened the shutter. His heart stopped. A tide of torchlight was coming up the Strand, twenty, thirty, maybe even
