All that remained now was to kidnap Tresham.
Syon House, London home of the Earl of Percy, was on alert. The Earl, often a quiet and studious man, was in one of his tempers. Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, noted the hesitancy in the step of the servant who came in answer to his furious ringing of the bell. Increasingly deaf, and slow in his ways, Henry Percy had shown from his earliest days an ability to conjure up a temper out of nothing. They used to call him the Wizard Earl, though not because of his ability to conjure up a rage. Rather it was their ignorance, their seeing black magic in his simple experiments and refusing to accept that knowledge could be advanced by such means without recourse to God or the Devil. Raleigh had been an ally, and his reward had been a farcical trial for treason and a judgement that left him rotting in the Tower. Others of the so-called 'School of Night' had died scandalous deaths, like Kit Marlowe, or simply faded away. Now only he was left. His power in the north — that dreadful land of rain, mist and pickpockets — was unchallenged, even reinforced by the accession to the English throne of a Scottish King. True, neither King James VI of Scotland nor King James I of England could stop the reivers and the incessant border raids, and no-one ever would. Yet at least the Earl of Northumberland knew that he would not have to be the vanguard against an invading Scottish army in the lifetime of the present
King. No, the threat to him no longer came from the north. It came from London. Yet precisely from where in London it came was more difficult to answer. From the carcass of James I, leader of the nation the Percys had been in bitter conflict with for centuries? Or from the twisted body of Robert Cecil?
Percy shuffled across the room. There were no rushes nor fine carpet on the stone flags of the floor, and the fire in the vast hearth was unlit despite the chill the stonework inflicted. He had inherited Syon House from his wife Dorothy, who held the leasehold on it. He was well rid of her, and in keeping the house and losing the woman he had kept the better part of the bargain. Autumn would have come early to the north, as if the harsh countryside resented the warmth of summer and could not wait to return to the cold. The noise of the grey sea crashing against rock the colour of the castle walls was one of his most vivid memories of the north.
He stood by an open window, letting the taste of London wash against his face and skin. His so-called relative, the young Thomas Percy, would be busy telling the City how he had the confidence and the assurances of the ninth Earl of Northumberland, his relative and patron. So much to the good. Young Thomas would learn as many had before him why the senior branch of the Percys had survived the savagery of the north and all the politics of London could bring to bear, and why there had always been a third person present at their meetings. A flicker of something that might have been the start of a savage smile lifted the corner of the Earl's mouth. He would learn, would Thomas Percy, as would all enemies of the Percy clan and the Catholic faith. They thought him easily led, as if he could not see through their pathetic flattery. They joked about his inability to keep a secret, not realising how carefully he had cultivated that image. Well, Robert Cecil, jumped-up Earl of Salisbury, would find soon enough whether Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, could keep a secret, a secret that when revealed would destroy Robert Cecil for ever.
Chapter 7
‘I still don't think I like the sound of this man Francis Tresham,' said Jane, working through the pile of papers on which Gresham had scribbled notes and records of interviews.
Mannion's proposal for securing the undivided attention of Francis Tresham was simple. Waylay him in a street, knock him on the head and drag him off to Alsatia. Even in London's anarchic streets it struck Gresham that this direct action might draw unnecessary attention to those involved. Jane had the simplest and best idea. Send Tresham a note in his lodgings, a note promising that he would hear something to his advantage if he came to their address in Alsatia, with a time scrawled on it.
'Spiders don't go chasing flies,' said Jane. 'Flies come to spiders.'
Jane had read her man correctly. A sensible young man, newly come into his inheritance, would not have risked the trip into Alsatia on what might have been a wild-goose chase. But Francis Tresham was not sensible, not once during his whole life.
'So he comes here, knocks on the door — and then we knock him over?' suggested Mannion hopefully.
'He'll be on his own, if we tell him to,' said Gresham. 'If he's come this far, we're hardly going to need to drag him in through the door unconscious, are we? Do you only have four ways of responding to anything?'
'As many as that?' enquired Jane innocently.
'Eat it, drink it, bed it or hit it. Has it ever entered your mind to think about something?'
‘No,' said Mannion, 'takes too much time.' He gathered up the breakfast dishes. 'And whatever it is I do, it's kept me alive all these years.' He clumped down the stairs, clearly feeling himself fully justified.
Tresham's servant gloried in the name William Vavasour. He looked down his nose at the hefty bribe Mannion put with the note to his master, but did not refuse it. Tresham's greed triumphed over any discretion he might have had, and he turned up on cue at the door of the ill-favoured house as night was falling. A huge rat was feeding off something that might once have been flesh. It looked haughtily up at Tresham, and scuttled off only when it had delayed long enough to show who held the real command. The grumpy and ill-looking couple Gresham had installed on the ground floor of the house let Tresham in, and the man motioned with his head for him to go upstairs. As he did so, the door clanged shut behind him, and Tresham turned to see the doorway blocked out by the figure of Mannion.
'Upstairs…' Mannion breathed at him, and he fled up the thin wooden treads like a bolting rabbit.
Gresham sat at the table. The shutters had been closed, and the room was full of lamps. He was dressed in black, with a small, neat white ruff the only contrast on his dress. Several of the Gresham jewels sparkled on his fingers and his clothes. There was a chilling stillness to him. He flicked a hand, inviting Tresham to be seated.
Tresham was a wiry, unkempt figure in his late thirties, Gresham knew. He would have guessed him some years short of that, his boyish face showing few wrinkles. At first glance he was quite handsome, but the effect was reduced by a set of thin lips and eyes that flickered all the time like a snake's tongue. His shirt was filthy, the doublet over it richly slashed and pointed but crumpled and dirty. He wore muddy riding boots over a fine hose that would not have shamed an audience at court.
'Who are you? What do you want?' Tresham barked out the words, his hand fingering the fine sword hanging by his waist.
'I'm your avenging angel,' said Gresham mildly, 'and I can send you to Heaven or to Hell. What I want is to decide which one it will be.'
'You have no hold over me, you…'
Gresham cut Tresham short with one simple motion, holding up the palm of his hand.
'Francis Tresham, born 1567, first child and only son of Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton and Muriel Throckmorton of Coughton. Educated at St John's College and Gloucester Hall.
'First arrested in June 1591. You altered a Privy Council warrant, didn't you? Instead of some Godforsaken tailor who owed you money you substituted the name of a troublesome tenant. Then you beat him up and his pregnant daughter.'
'That's not true! The man was a rogue, he…'
'Shut up,' said Gresham, quietly, and for some reason Francis Tresham did so.
'Bailed out by your father this time, and countless times there-after. Married Anne Tufton of Hothfield, and soon one of the wild band who gathers in Essex House giving promises as rashly as they spend money they do not have. Arrested again in 1596 for possible involvement in a Catholic conspiracy, and arrested in 1601 for involvement in the Essex uprising. Bribed out of the Tower, to the near ruin of his father. The father who is now dead, of course. The loving father who spent thousands of pounds on rescuing his son, despite the fact that the son in question, allowed to live in the manor of Hoxton, tried to cheat his father out of lands he owned there…'