fearfully back at him. They were below ground level, the dismal, dark room set into the very foundations of the White Tower. He knew what the guards were thinking. Leave Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, alone with this blackguard, this Devil on earth, this Guy Fawkes… fear of what would happen to them if the Chief Secretary was attacked fought for a brief moment with fear of the Chief Secretary. Fear of Cecil won. They backed away, bowing. Cecil closed the door. The bottom of it grated on the filthy floor.
Fawkes was huddled on the floor, rubbing his shoulder where the guards had hurled him to the ground. His head was badly gashed where he had been thrown down, the blood half-dried, fresh seeping through the caked residue. The cell was lit by the flames of a rough torch hung in an iron bracket. Even by its light the wetness on the walls glistened and sparkled on the five-hundred-year-old stone.
'Why did you betray me?' Fawkes's voice was rough, but steady enough. Cecil was caught off guard. It should not be Fawkes, the prisoner, opening this conversation.
'I did not betray you!' hissed Cecil through clenched teeth. The cold was penetrating even through the thickness of his rich cloak. 'You were betrayed by the fool who brought the orders for the search forward by an hour.'
'My Lord, we had a bargain.' There was fear in Fawkes's voice, but also resolution, and a tone Cecil could not quite track down.
'The terms and conditions appear to have changed very significantly!' he snapped.
'You'll have to have me testify, my Lord,' said Fawkes. The blow to his head must have disorientated him. He spoke in starts, as if suffering from momentary losses of concentration. 'I think it wouldn't be in your Lordship's interest to have me testify the truth.'
Fawkes's body was shaking now with the cold, Cecil noted with satisfaction.
'Many better than you have died in this Tower, without word and without testimony,' said Cecil, looking with loathing at Fawkes. 'Many have screamed for weeks in this Tower before they welcomed the sweet release of death. Have a care what you threaten.'
'No,' said Fawkes, 'have a care what you threaten.' His teeth were chattering now. 'If someone knows enough of your plans to bring the time of the search forward an hour, then someone knows enough of your perfidy to place you, my Lord the Earl of Salisbury, in this Tower, to die or to scream for your death alongside me. You need me, you need me to give a confession that will confirm your version of events, to name your other conspirators. If I stand firm, my Lord, many can challenge your honour's actions. None can prove them false.'
How grating was that accent of Yorkshire, how ludicrous the Spanish lilt laid over it.
'As you seem so much in control,' Cecil said as his eyes flicked over the manacles that chained Fawkes's feet to the wall, 'you will certainly be able to tell me what you wish me to do.'
Fawkes was shivering heavily now, his arms clasped round himself in a feeble attempt to keep warm.
'Move me to a secret chamber, a chamber with warmth and food. Many who have been tortured here have never been heard. Now may one be tortured who never was. Put out that I was steadfast, then that I was put to the torture. Write me a confession, what you will. I'll testify to your plot, as you'll have me do.'
'And then?’
'And then I shall die, weakened so far by the unspeakable pain you put me to that my constitution gave in. Here, in this Tower. Out of sight. And you will get me to France.'
There was something of desperation in Fawkes's voice. As well there might be. Cecil's mind was racing.
A live, testifying Fawkes would be an asset, if he testified correctly. The Keeper of the Tower, Waad, had incriminated Mary Queen of Scots. Hiding the nature of what was happening to Guy Fawkes was a mere biting-on compared to the meals that man had eaten. As for France, it was a long journey from London to Dover and across the Channel. A long and dangerous journey.
'Guards!' Cecil shouted. 'This man is no good to us dead with cold. Take him to a chamber with fire in it — warming fire, not the torturer's brazier! And keep his legs in chains!' he said viciously, as he left to discuss matters with Sir William Waad.
Robert Wintour had been having supper with Catesby's mother. Catesby had determined to tell his mother the truth before riding on to Dunchurch, but as he sat on his sweating horse outside his home he felt for the first time a chill wind blow through die heat of his self-belief. He could not face his mother, not now. He sent Tom Bates to summon Wintour to a field outside the house. Robert Wintour had always been a baleful recruit at best, unlike his firebrand younger brother. Now he was totally downcast.
'We should surely throw ourselves on the King's mercy,' he said, 'and with God's grace some mercy might be shown.'
Catesby hardly bothered to answer.
'There will be no mercy. We must ride on to Dunchurch, to meet with the company. Only then can we decide.' He did not give a single backward glance to the house under whose roof his mother fretted.
There were over a hundred people gathered in and around The Red Lion. Brothers, cousins, relations, younger sons of Catholic families, all had gathered. Catesby had hoped for more, at least a hundred and fifty. Yet even now it might be enough. A babble of voices greeted Catesby's arrival. His heart began to beat faster, as it always did when he stood in front of a crowd. The blood began to speed through his veins. He held his hand up to command silence.
There was silence.
Briefly, quickly, he told them of the plot, that the powder had been discovered, but that London was aflame with rumour and suspicion.
'Are we sheep or cattle, to troop gently to our slaughter? Or are we men, men with a faith to be fought for? We have horses, we have guns, we have powder. If we ride now, ride for our freedom and our Faith, hundreds will join us from the west, the west where the Faith has always lived and flourished. We must strike now, strike while confusion reigns. Are we men of faith, or are we cowards?'
He was shouting now, standing up in his stirrups.
There was silence. They looked at him in the feeble light of a few torches. Then one, then a second, then a third turned away from the light, edging their horses off into the darkness. There was a pause, then a fourth, a fifth and then a stream. A muttered, muted babble of conversation rose between those left. Just as it seemed the departures were ended, another two or three would turn and move away, like rows of infantry having remorseless gap after gap blown in their line by withering cannon fire as they waited for a charge.
Robert Catesby had failed. For the first time in his life, he had spread the cloak of his character, the fire of his personality, out to a group, and seen it fall on stony ground. Soon, there were hardly forty left in the square outside the inn, making it seem almost deserted.
The fire cooled in Catesby, leaving a solid, hard dark nugget of cold in its place. He would die now, he knew. Perhaps he had always known. In a strange way the realisation took a dread weight off him. He was certain now, certain in a different way. He owed himself a good death. Himself, and the others he had brought along for all these months and years. They would want, would need to die with him, he knew.
He smiled, disconcerting even more those nearest to him. He allowed the runt of his rebellion, the rebellion that never hap-pened and never would happen, to eat and rest a while. The sulky landlord and servants were desperate to be rid of them, desperate to avoid the taint they knew their association would provide. Even now they were remembering the detail they would so willingly give to the King's men and the Sheriff's men when they arrived, as they most assuredly would arrive.
And then, shortly after eleven o'clock at night, they began the ride. It should have been told of in some ancient saga, become a story to read out by the fireside on late, cold winter's nights, to frighten the young children. It was a ride of despair and desperation, of harsh and stupid courage. It was helpless and hopeless, madness in human form, a ride of the Valkyrie where only the horses had hope and their riders were dead men already.
From Dunchurch to Warwick Castle; the stables there raided, ten fresh horses taken to relieve the mounts of those who had ridden from London. Robert Wintour wringing his hands — 'It will make an uproar in the country!' — Ambrose Rookwood disdainful, his supply of fine horseflesh inexhaustible. On, on to John Grant's house at Norbrook, to pick up the powder, shot and muskets hoarded there. Through Snitterfield, across the treacherous ford of the Alne, on to Alcester. Through Arrow, then out along the Worcester Road, and then on the back roads and by-ways to Huddington. Two o'clock on Wednesday afternoon. Fifteen terror-driven, bone-crunching, muscle-wrenching hours. Sleep. Mass at three o'clock on the Thursday morning, then down to dress in armour, to pick arms and take ammunition from the long tables loaded with weaponry, the remainder hurled into carts. Six o'clock on a bleak
