Robert Catesby would change the world. He smiled to himself as he urged his horse onwards.
The countryside he rode through was dressed in shades of green, with the increasingly darker and richer colours showing the first heaviness of autumn. The thick woodlands on the tops of the gentle hills contrasted in their untamed wildness with the neat rows of the tilled land in the valleys and the strips of pasture. Seen from the inside of a healthy young body, astride a fine horse and with a thick cloak to hand to keep out the chill of evening when it came, it was truly God's green and pleasant land. One could almost forget the rising tide of persecution that was first of all choking and then surely killing off the great families of England, who for years had asked nothing but peace to worship God in the one and true way of the Faith.
Catesby reined in, and gazed out over the pastoral landscape, with a few wisps of smoke showing the whereabouts of peasant cottages, and a fine stone manor on the hillside exuding calm and authority over the scattered holdings. He imagined his own men pounding through and over the harvest-bare fields, the glinting helmets of the Spanish troops catching the sun as they struck fear and trembling into the hearts of the ignorant peasants in the fields.
If the grand vision was simple, and the grand players in place, it was the detail, as ever, that caused the problems. The men had kept their mouths shut, Catesby knew, but there was talk among the women, and of course among the servants. It could hardly be otherwise. The stockpiling they had already done, under the guidance of John Grant and Robert Wintour, could hardly have gone unnoticed by the womenfolk. The stables were fuller by the minute. There would have to be more horses, more weapons. Most of all, he was desperately short of money, and in particular money for horses.
Well, Catesby had an answer to all those problems, he thought as he rode on his way to Huddington Court, the home of Robert Wintour. You could not defeat gossip, but you could block it by spreading other stories and simply overloading the capacity of the tongues to wag. As for money and horses, there were three names he was prepared to risk as new conspirators now there was so little time left to go for them to get it wrong — Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Three young and moneyed men were about to be persuaded to give God, and Robert Catesby, some of their wealth.
His horse shied as some loose stones dislodged by its passage rattled down the steep embankment upon which he rode. It was a nervous creature, but strong and powerful, and he instinctively leant forward to soothe its nervousness.
Horses were the key. Catesby had timed his visit carefully. Ambrose Rookwood had one of the finest stables of any man in England, and his love of horses was legendary, as was his love of fine clothes. That same love of fine horses meant he would never stay with the women and the others on the recent pilgrimage some forty of them had taken to Winifred's Well at Holt. He would ride on ahead, stopping over at Huddington on the way to his own ancestral home at Coldham Hall. It was a woman's thing, this pilgrimage, thought Catesby, but Rookwood's love of his wife had sent him on it and his desire to drive a good horse hard meant that he would ride ahead on its return. That in turn meant that Catesby would see him without the presence of Elizabeth, his wife. Rookwood was a dandy and a showman, but he listened to his wife, who had a great deal more sense than he did. The last thing Catesby wanted was pillow talk the night after he had enlisted Rookwood.
He rode into the courtyard and handed his horse over to the groom who came rushing up to him. Other men might take their mount to the stables themselves, and see it in its stall, fed and rubbed down. Catesby saw no reason why he should do what a servant could do just as well. He had more important fish to fry, as the small, dark and elegant figure of Rookwood did him the honour of coming down the steps almost dancing with joy, and caught him in a warm embrace, as if it were his house and not Robert Wintour's.
Yes, thought Catesby, as they went arm in arm into the house. You have two things I stand most in need of. You have horses and you have wealth.
Catesby felt a growing excitement as he agreed to a warming cup of wine, even before taking his boots and riding cloak off. The dour Robert Wintour had appeared, radiating as much warmth as if Catesby were Anti-Christ come to visit. Rookwood was chattering on about a new Hungarian riding coat he had just acquired, with its velvet lining. You have a fine fortune and a fine wife, Catesby thought, and enough brats scampering about your home to fill a farmyard. Your days are filled with your fine horses, your fine wife, your fine sons, your hawks and your hounds.
Rookwood brushed aside the servant hovering to take Catesby to his room, as if it was he and not Robert Wintour who was master of Huddington, and strode up the stairs himself in his eagerness to show his friend where he would be resting his head.
Catesby followed his friend up the stairs to his chamber. Once
Catesby had held a loving wife, had the fine son and the fine house warmed with love and happiness, before they were cruelly dragged away from him. Rookwood's family faced destruction and execution from the involvement Catesby brought, the friend with the viper in his pack.
That, thought Catesby, is their problem, not mine. Life dealt cruel blows. Why should Rookwood, Digby or any other body on earth have the happiness that Catesby had been denied? If there was a hint of pleasure in Catesby's damnation of his friend and all that his friend loved and cared for it was a very private emotion, one he chose not to let see the light of day.
Gresham had gone to the cellar where Cecil's spy, Sam Fogarty, was being held until he had strength enough to be carted out of London. The man had cried out in fear as Gresham had entered.
They had been ordered to kill Shadwell, he had said. He did not have to say whose orders these were. He was Cecil's man. They had cornered him finally on the outskirts of Cambridge, stalked him through the night, hurled the body into the river. No, he did not know why the death had been ordered. Why should he and the others be told? Their business was to kill, not to ask why.
By the time he had finished, the man was speaking almost confidently, believing he was useful to Gresham. Gresham looked calmly down at him.
'This is for Will Shadwell,' he said. In one swift movement he lunged with the dagger in his hand, penetrating the eye exactly in the centre of the pupil and driving upwards until the splintering sound of bone told him he had carved through the soft brain to the skull. It was the blow that had killed Will Shadwell. As the man fell he flung his arms out, hands facing up to the ceiling as if in supplication. They were still trembling. Gresham pulled the dagger away, and stood up.
Jane had woken in the night, as he had known she would. He had held her as the truth had returned, bringing on wracking sobs, imagining it to be like holding a woman through the pangs of birth. Yet it was not a child that had been born from her, but knowledge. Later, at night, they had made love, gently, in the way that she had taught him for the times when the edge was gone from their violent, urgent need for each other's bodies. It had seemed as if his whole body had poured its passion and its intensity into that one focal moment of release, met by her soft cry. For a few seconds after that moment, even sometimes for a few minutes, Gresham felt at peace, the demons inside him stilled. So it was with Jane, he suspected. A new demon was in her, a shared demon. How it would fit with the others inside her head, the restless spirits whose nature he could only guess at, only Jane would know. There would be no more tears for others to see, Gresham knew. She had killed a man. She would learn, like him, to cry inside her head.