Tresham had sat with head bowed. Suddenly he placed both his hands under the table and heaved it up at Gresham, following it with a mad rush, his sword half out of his scabbard. It had worked for him in countless taverns and brawls.
He could not remember properly what happened next. The strange, dark man was suddenly not behind the table, but standing to one side. Tresham felt a huge blow to the side of his head, and then a searing, roaring pain. The dark man's toe connected with vicious power between his legs, the flat of his foot sending him flying through the air. He flew into the wall, cracking his head on a timber, and blackness descended.
'I knew you'd have to hit him,' said Mannion contentedly, dragging up the prostrate figure and propping him upright against the wall. 'Shall I tie him up?'
'No,' said Gresham. 'Let him try again, if he needs to. He must know who his new master is. He won't learn tied up.'
When Tresham came round he was aflame with pain. The most beautiful girl he had ever seen was sponging the blood off what felt like a large hole in his head. He felt sick with the agony in his groin.
The girl spoke calmly, as she took the sponge away. 'I think I'll not try to ease the pain down there,' she said. 'Look at me.'
He did so. Her eyes were the most startling dark pools he had ever seen, burning with an intensity he had only seen before on the coldest and clearest star-lit night.
'Take my advice. Don't fight him. Here or elsewhere. He'll win, and you'll die. Listen, do what he says, and you might live.'
She placed the bloodied cloth in a rough wooden bucket, and moved out of the light. Was he in Heaven, or in Hell? And was this stunning creature an angel or a devil?
'What do you want?' asked Tresham, muzzily.
'Shall we start again?' It was the same figure, dressed in black, seated behind the same table that had been returned to exactly the same place. Yet this time there was a silver jug and two goblets on the table, and a delicious smell of fruity wine. The wild thought crossed Tresham's mind that the man had known he would hurl the table back, had not placed the wine on it until the first, annoying little trial of strength was over and they could get down to business. A different type of fear began to flood through his veins, a fear so sharp that it started to soften the physical pain and make it less important.
'Guido or Guy Fawkes. Robert, or Robin as he is sometimes called, Catesby. Thomas Percy. Thomas Wintour. Robert Wintour. John Grant. Kit Wright. John Wright. Robert Keyes.'
Suddenly the pain returned.
'Do you want to come and sit at the table? To take some wine with me? You're not bound.'
The confidence, the sheer arrogance of the man. As far as Tresham could see there was only the woman in the room, seated in a corner. They had not even taken his sword or dagger away. An overwhelming sense of defeat came to Tresham. He crawled to his feet, sucking in his breath as the blood flowed through his broken head and sent needles into his brain and groin.
'What do you want? Who are you?'
Tresham knew the questions were sounding like an increasingly pathetic litany.
'I want you.' Gresham spoke as if it were the simplest thing in the world. ‘I know that something evil is being planned by a group of men who number you among their friends. I believe you either know of it, or are in a position to find out. And I know that you face ruin and prosecution already, because you've been in trouble too many times, and you'll be associated with whatever these your friends are up to regardless of whether or not you're involved. You're a very lonely man, Francis Tresham.'
He paused for a moment..
'And you're a fool. You've chased every fashion and innovation the world could offer, without thought, without sensitivity and without feeling. You've lived your life as if life itself was created only for you, and for your enjoyment.'
Tresham looked up, startled.
'Granted, you seem to love your wife as much as you love anyone except yourself, but even that's not much. I believe you're one of nature's traitors. A spy. A double agent…'
'My father was a pompous old fool.' There was defiance, a cruel arrogance in Tresham's eyes. As well as a capacity for a very quick recovery. 'He spent thousands on vainglorious buildings. What matter if some of that money was diverted to my vainglory? At least I was a living thing, not a thing of cold brick and stone! For him I feel no guilt.'
'I'm sure you don't,' said Gresham. 'But now you'll turn traitor for me.'
'And why should I do that?'
'For self-interest, as you've done everything in your life. Because if I know that your friends are about to behave most dangerously, so will others know, and you're too selfish to wish to be dragged down with them. Because I'll give you a great deal of money. And because I'll kill you if you don't.'
'How much money?'
Gresham told him. His eyes opened wide.
'Can you prove to me you have that much money?'
Gresham tossed a purse on to the table. It shivered under the weight. Tresham pulled it open, let the gold coins run through his fingers. Gresham felt rather than heard Jane's disapproval from behind him.
'Do you have to give good money to such a… stench of a man?' Jane had asked. She had never quite got used to, and never quite brought herself to believe, how much Gresham was worth. He saw money as a tool. She saw it as security.
Tresham's mind had been focussed by the gold. Perhaps here there was real profit, as well as mere survival.
'If my… friends are as indiscreet as you say, what if their ship breaks up and they're cast on the shore while I'm still inside it?'
'If needs be, you'll be spirited out of the Tower and sent off to France.'
'You can do that?' Disbelief mingled with wonder caught Tresham's voice. The sheer weight of gold had shocked him.
'Yes. Enough bargaining. How much do you already know of what your friends are planning?'
There are moments in life when huge crossroads come to bear in one time and in one place, not just on the life of one human, but on the life of countless thousands. A decision taken one way, and history spins instantly down one road, making that road seem the inevitable, the only choice. Yet there are countless other roads, and but for one decision, one moment frozen in time, the inevitable might never have happened. Without realisation, without seeing a tiny fraction of all the roads that might have been, in a filthy hovel, Francis Tresham chose his road, and in so doing chose the road for countless other souls. There was no priest there to sanctify or bless the act, no ritual to clothe and comfort the deed, no scribe ready to record a laundered version for later generations. There was only a man dressed in black with a neat white ruff and piercing eyes.
Tresham sat back, reached forward for wine as if daring Gresham to deny him.
'I know Robin Catesby has some idea to remove the Government and to bring in Catholic rule to England. He and the others have been talking for years. We've all been talking. Yet we've done nothing. Until now. Those names you mentioned. They've been meeting, all of them, more even than normal. There's talk, gossip. Whatever this plan is, it has the women all a-twitter, and the priests looking like a woman had been elected Pope. I know no details. Catesby's sworn me to secrecy. He told me it was safer if I knew nothing that could be tortured out of me, but that my time would come. He told me that he must keep me warm for the fire that would break out later. I think he's nervous of me.'