'You mean your friends don't think you're trustworthy?'
Tresham shrugged, carelessly.
An interesting young man, Gresham thought. Not without courage — the trick with the table would have worked with someone of less experience and speed. The crack on the head and the kick to the prospects of the next Tresham heir must still be causing him considerable pain, as would the shock of realising that his secret was in the hands of a potential enemy, yet he had recovered quickly, was thinking on his feet. He was offering no emotional pleading, no excuses. He was scum, thought Gresham. Will Shadwell with money and some breeding. An adventurer, a wanton.
'How do I know you'll pay me the rest?'
'I will,' said Gresham. 'It's as certain that I'll pay you if you spy for me as it's certain I'll kill you if you don't. Anyway, in the gospel, even Judas was paid.'
How would he take that hit?
Tresham blinked, but recovered. 'Without Judas, Christ might have lived. And if that had been true, we would have been deprived of all the bishops and prelates the world has ever seen. How could we have lived deprived of such comfort? Perhaps even Judas was sent from Heaven.'
Witty, too, thought Gresham, in a clumsy sort of way. His victim was speaking again.
'Who are you? For whom or for what do you work? Are you one of Cecil's men?'
'Be careful,' said Jane from her corner, 'unless you want the other side of your head broken, and more besides!'
'No,' said Gresham, 'I'm not one of Cecil's men. I'm someone who sees a torrent of blood falling on the heads of innocent and guilty alike. I can't stop that blood. I can, perhaps, limit it.'
'How can I know that? You're asking me to trust my life to you, without even a name I can call out should I die doing your will.'
'Then best make sure you don't die. And best make sure not to betray me. It's not good for those who seek to do so.'
'That I do believe. What do you want from me, if I'm asked to join whatever is planned? Just to betray my friends? Or to kill someone?' Neither prospect seemed to alarm Francis Tresham.
'Your friends have betrayed themselves already. I suspect they're like you, dead men merely waiting the fall of the executioner's axe. As for the rest of it, I want information.' Gresham felt like adding that whatever he asked for and received, its aim would be to get as few killed as possible. That might make it less attractive for Tresham. He kept silent.
'There's something I've not told you,' Tresham said, reaching another decision. He had adapted to the new circumstances with ferocious speed, thought Gresham. 'I'm bidden to dinner with Robin Catesby next week. At William Patrick's ordinary, The Irish Boy, on the Strand.'
'Who else goes?'
Tresham reeled off some names. One of them was Ben Jonson, the playwright, another the Catholic peer Lord Mordaunt.
'There'll be another guest. Myself.'
'How so? Do you want me to ask for another invitation?'
'No. How I get there is my concern. All that's required of you is to give no sign of recognition at the dinner. This Catesby,' said Gresham, 'describe him to me.'
Mannion escorted Tresham back to his lodgings, following a few paces behind. Francis Tresham had suddenly become a very valuable commodity. Gresham stayed with his other valuable commodity.
'I was right,' said Jane, 'I didn't like him at all.' He had leered at Jane as he left. 'I'd hate to be a woman in his power.'
Gresham needed to meet Catesby face to face. The man described by the informers and the man described by Francis Tresham was a larger-than-life figure, a maniac preacher with the capacity to lift people off their seats and brand them to his cause. Yet Gresham had known such people who were pure charlatans, whose bravado vanished at the first hint of reality. Was Catesby such a person, weaving a huge web of intrigue to feed a massive pride, a vessel of much noise and no substance? Or did he have the power to mount an uprising, to knock settled government off its perch and into the raging seas of rebellion and unrest?
Gresham had to see this Catesby, had to meet him, had to taste the flavour of the man in the flesh.
So it was that there was an extra guest at dinner in The Irish Boy.
Robert Catesby waited outside Harrowden, his horse restless, shaking its head and pawing the ground. It was as if the animal picked up the unease of its master. Tom Bates looked questioningly at his master, to ask if he wished Bates to take the horse walking round the yard. Catesby shook his head.
Everard Digby was taking an unconscionably long time to say farewell to his wife and children, he thought. It was not as if they were riding to the ends of the world. It was only some fifteen miles from Harrowden to Gayhurst. They had all gathered at Harrowden, both the Vaux women, the new Lord Vaux, the other women and the priests and all the other band of wittering folk. They thought, him hot-headed and rash, but he had the sense to realise how dangerous these gatherings were so soon after the pilgrimage to Flintshire had wound its very public way through the marches.
Digby — Sir Everard Digby — had also been one of the company at Harrowden, which was why Catesby had invited himself to attend. Yet the moment to get Digby on his own, to broach the plot and the vital part Digby had to play in it, never seemed to present itself. In desperation, Catesby had hinted at how much the party would enjoy a stay at Gayhurst, Digby's home, after the dilapidated state of Harrowden. When the ever-innocent Digby had agreed with his usual enthusiasm, it had been easy for Catesby to suggest that the two old friends might ride on ahead, to check that all was ready to receive the new guests at Gayhurst, or Gothurst as it was sometimes known.
Catesby saw all people through the mirror of his own soul. He had seen for years how the power and the charm he could direct on to his fellow men and women would eat away at their reserve and caution, however hard they tried to resist it, and make them as clay in his hands. For most of his life luring people into the web of his personality had been a game, a pleasure to put alongside hunting, gambling and, latterly, bedding a pretty woman.
Yet he felt uneasy over his final recruits. Francis Tresham was a wild and an angry thing, a man with no real belief that Catesby could anchor on to. Yet Catesby had always known that Tresham would also acquire a great deal of wealth on the death of his father, something which all along had made him an attractive proposition. Well, he would clinch it in London and then at Clerkenwell. The need for money was too pressing to allow for any delay, and once sworn in Tresham, like all the others, would have too much to lose by betrayal.
Everard Digby was a different proposition. Catesby needed him not only for his money, but for his personality as well. One of Digby's attractions was his innocence. Another was his staunch Protestant background. He had been converted by the priest Gerard, who not only behaved and dressed like a gentleman but, thought Catesby, actually believed he was one. Father Gerard had caught Digby somehow when he was ill, and used his panic to show him the true path. Amusingly, he had converted Mary, Digby's wife, entirely separately, with neither of the pair knowing of the other's conversion. It was typical of Gerard to keep the news from them and enjoy their consternation at the discovery.
It was that radiant innocence, that wholesomeness that Catesby needed. Everard was not only known at Court. He was feted as one of its rising stars. He looked like a God, and he rode a horse as if he had been sewn to it in the womb. He was an excellent swordsman and, by all accounts, a brilliant musician, though the latter was something Catesby had never acquired the taste for. Someone had to invest Coombe Abbey and take away the Princess Elizabeth. If it was a rat-arsed Tom Wintour, John Grant with a face that looked like it had come from Hell or a drunken Thomas Percy who broke in to Coombe House to take the Princess Elizabeth, the ser-vants would as like fight to the death as do the decent thing and surrender before anyone got hurt, reckoning they were dead already. The Princess Elizabeth was only a girl after all, and too much fear could cause God knew what complications with her. Didn't girls who thought their virtue was threatened throw them' selves off high walls? Any girl with half her wits about her seeing Wintour, Grant or Percy coming towards her would know she was going to get more than a handshake. Yet if Digby was the attacker there might well be no fight at all. He was a Court favourite, a knight and one of the new King's Gentlemen Pensioners, known as a family man through and through, and with a visage that could calm a raging bull. Princess Elizabeth was no use to Catesby or to Catholicism skewered on a blade or cast down into a ditch. Why, Digby's charm might even keep the truth away from her about what had happened to her mother and father for some crucial hours. All the more likely if Digby himself did not know the truth — or at least, not the whole truth.