lose them.
'The powder from Hewell Grange is soaked through. If this place is put to siege, we might have need of it.' Percy spoke gruffly, in the old-soldier manner he had adopted from the outset with the conspirators.
'What do you suggest — warm it with a match?' It was Digby, a pale imitation of himself.
'Almost. It's wet enough to make spreading it out before the hearth safe enough. If Tom manages to bring back some extra people, the more dry powder we can show them the more likely they are to think we've a chance.'
He was surprised they agreed to it, but it was exhaustion speaking through their actions, and despair. Any action seemed to put back the tide of hopelessness.
They spread the powder out on to the stone hearth, moving the rushes aside first. The fire was well established, the wood seasoned and long since past spitting. Catesby, Rookwood and Grant took seats at the long trestle table to one side of the fire, hastily drawing up plans for the defence of the house. Henry Morgan, one of the few from the Dunchurch 'hunting party' who had stayed with them, joined them, as did Percy, for a while. Robert Wintour was huddled in a corner.
'I had a dream last night.' His sepulchral tones startled the men by the table, all of whom looked up.
'I saw church steeples bent awry, and sad, terrible faces inside the churches, looking out. Faces of despair.' Was he talking to himself, or to them? It could have been either. The men turned back, one by one, to their crude plans for defence. The problem was that few of them knew the house, and the owner was out of it with Tom Wintour.
Percy stood up, announcing he was going to piss. As he went to the door, it opened in his face, and the frightened figure of a servant came into the Hall, a huge pile of fresh logs held in front of him, half covering even his face. Percy pushed him aside, causing him to stumble and drop the top two or three logs. The servant mumbled apologies, as scared as the rest of the Holbeache servants, placed the remnant of his load on the floor and scrabbled to pick up the lost logs. A few of the conspirators glanced his way, disinterested, and looked away. Very carefully the servant made his way to the side of the hearth. He stopped as he saw the powder laid out, carefully moving round the black earth piled on the floor. He bent to lay his logs on top of the others on the side of the hearth, but the top log seemed to leap out from the pile of its own accord and fell into the fire. It crashed into the flames, dislodging embers that flew almost gently through the air and landed red among the black of the powder. The servant, who could see what was coming, flung the rest of his logs forward and dashed for the protection offered by the side of the jutting stone fireplace.
There was a blinding flash, and a sucking roar. For a brief instant Holbeache was turned into Hell. From a scene of almost peaceful domesticity the Hall was reduced to smouldering ruin. Panelling had caught fire, and those upright in the room were rushing to smother the small flames. The peculiar, acrid stench of powder mingled with the stench of burnt flesh and smouldering wood. John Grant was sitting on the ground, making small keening noises, rocking backwards and forwards, his hands clutched to his eyes.
They were burnt out, even blacker than the surrounding skin in his crisped, baked face, his hair, eyebrows and beard half gone and scorched. The man Morgan still had some sight, but was badly burnt. Catesby and Rookwood were badly scorched, both in obvious severe pain.
The two Wright brothers had been dozing in a corner, now jerked into wakefulness by the blast of fire. Percy rushed back into the room. Robert Wintour had escaped the worst of the searing heat, huddled in his corner. He was standing now, staring wild-eyed at the devastation. He stuck his arm out, a shivering finger pointing at Catesby and the others.
'The faces! The faces!' he said. 'The faces in my dream! These are the faces!' He waited, as if for an answer. His hand dropped to his side. He raised his eyes, locked them on to the pain-filled vision of Catesby. 'Well,' he said, in a low voice of total hatred, 'you have your blast now, cousin!' He turned and left.
There had been exhaustion, some despair and fear (in the room before, but also some bravado. Now there was nothing. It was as if they realised it was over. It had to be God's judgement. Those who had intended to blow up their enemies by powder had themselves been blown up. The link was too clear, too obvious.
Catesby was recovered enough to speak. The fire had caught the one side of his face, pulling up his lip so that it seemed he had a permanent snarl. Robert Catesby. Jack Wright. Kit Wright. John Grant, writhing on the floor, hands fluttering at the wet bandage round his destroyed eyes. Ambrose Rookwood, moaning as the cold of the bandages touched his burnt flesh. Thomas Percy. With the exception of Rookwood and Wintour, the men stood at the end of the affair almost as they had stood from its outset.
'We are too few to fight.' Thomas Percy spoke the obvious.
'Then we must die fighting.' It was Catesby. No-one raised his voice against him.
Tom Wintour stopped as he, entered the hall, his face draining of all blood in shock. He ran to Catesby, looking in horror at his ravaged and twisted face. If only he had brought good news! There was no help coming. Sir John Talbot had not even let them inside his house, but shouted them off as he might a carrier of the plague. A fleeing servant had told them of the explosion, and Stephen Littleton, the owner of Holbeache, had slipped away from his side. Everard Digby had gone. Tom Bates, the ever-faithful servant, was also missing.
'Where is my brother?' It was Tom Wintour, his eyes roaming the room.
'Gone.' It was Kit Wright. 'With all the others.' Robert Wintour had waited this long in his life to take a decision of his own.
Henry Gresham had picked himself up from the side of the fireplace, where the blast had thrown him. He was bruised badly enough, but nothing was broken. The heat had singed the back of his head, in between the collar of his jerkin and his bonnet.
He had intended only to eavesdrop on the plotters. The smell of the powder had hit him even through the door. In an instant he was back in the Netherlands, and it was as if the pain that had been his constant companion then for months came back to hit him also. Picking up the logs strewn outside the door and going in had been a terrible thing for him to do. When he had met Percy his heart had stopped, but Percy was not the type to recognise a lowly servant.
He had wanted to be sick as he had contemplated the fire, the powder and the need to fling his log into the midst of the fire. Yet the irony, the awful, dreadful irony, of firing these men up with powder, the sheer justice of it, had driven him. Loose powder does not explode, he knew, but burns off in an instant, developing a searing heat and light.
Those who know an explosion is about to take place can profit in the seconds immediately following. With no mental shock to add to the physical, Gresham was able to pick himself up in the immediate aftermath, scuttling through the door before anyone thought to ask of the servant who had caused the blow. He doubted any realised even that it had been the servant, so great was their confusion. What a pity Percy had chosen that moment to leave. Gresham was surprised by how little damage the fire had done. He could not judge at that moment the damage it had done to the spirit, as well as the bodies, of the plotters.
Gresham knew that the Sheriff of Worcestershire was hastening to lay siege to the plotters. The servant whose clothes he had taken had babbled of little else. Percy had to die at Holbeache, that much Gresham now knew. The question was how.
Thomas Percy was much taken at that moment by the other side of the question. How to preserve his life? He had believed they could beat off the Sheriff's men easily enough, with a pistol ball in the back for Catesby in the dying moments of the fight, or on their flight into Wales. That damned explosion had killed no-one, but merely increased the odds for their attackers and made the plotters vow to fight to the death. Well, so be it, mused Percy. There was risk in all things. He was playing for an earldom. He would wait for the siege, kill Catesby and then prove his credentials by firing a ball into one of the others — Tom Wintour by preference — and shouting that he was an agent of the King's. Far better than an agent of Robert Cecil for these country bumpkins.
The call to arms came some time before eleven o'clock. They propped the blinded Grant up in a corner, still moaning. Rookwood declared his intention to fight, though God knew if he could see enough to hit anyone, thought Percy. At the windows, they could see that it was more than a hundred men gathering outside. Torches lit those out of range, whilst movements in the shadow showed men running up under cover of the darkness to hide close to the walls, there presumably to make an assault through the main gate into the yard. Suddenly, a flickering light showed them more. Someone had lit a fire, almost under them. They were being smoked out. Damn! If they had more men they could have mounted a guard on the outer perimeter.
Catesby turned his head stiffly, and looked at Wintour. The latter nodded, the briefest of gestures. Grabbing
