'This is from Robert Catesby to your master. It's a matter of life and death — true life and death, your own, your master's and those of your faith. Your master must see it now, read it now. If there's delay in this, you'll have more blood on your hands than Pontius Pilate!'
The figure turned and moved away, leaving a stunned Ward holding the letter in his hand.
He went back into the house, his mind made up. His master fawned over Catesby, and if this letter was from him then there was no reason for Ward to deny it his master, nor reason to think its origins were suspect. Ward knew, as all the Catholic servants knew, there was a stir about, wild talk everywhere. All the more reason to get the letter to his master.
Monteagle was in good form. His table was groaning with the best of food and wine, his company gathered around him, his future secure. What man would not be happy who only a few years before had been banished from London, and now found himself done honour in Parliament and made a favourite of the King? The wheel of fortune had indeed turned in his favour, from his being cast down to his heading for the topmost heights.
Ward leant over and whispered in his ear.
'What? What?' he asked, irritated at the interruption. Ward was still trying to keep his voice low. Monteagle was near to bellowing back at him. 'A letter? What letter? Oh, away with you, man, give it to me here.'
He took the letter without looking to see if there was a decipherable seal on the wax, and broke it open with a grin to the others that bespoke a man so burdened with office that he could not keep importunate messengers away even at a time when all decent men were in their house and home. His eyes were blurring with the smoke that had blown back from the fire, and he only dimly saw the large, almost child-like handwriting, beginning, 'My Lord, the love I have for some of your friends…' Oh God, he thought, another begging letter for money or preferment. What it was to have influence in the Court! There was food on his fingers, and in any event it was impolite to read letters in company at table.
'Here, Tom, read it out, will you? My eyes are furred with this damned smoke. Whoever swept that chimney deserves a thrashing, not my good coin!' It would be amusing for his family and friends to hear the type of letter famous men such as he received.
Ward stepped up, took the letter, and squeezed his eyes as if to help him concentrate. He was not a fluent reader. Nor, he was thinking, am I an actor in the playhouse, to be set up in front of all the company to give a public reading. He stumbled as he tried to come to terms with the unfamiliar handwriting.
'My Lord, the love 1 have for some of your… friends breeds in me a care for your…'
'Enough, enough!' cried Monteagle, laughing and making the company laugh. 'We don't have all evening, Tom. Here, you, you can read. Take it and enlighten us.'
Bad enough to be asked to stand up and perform, thought Tom Ward, but worse to be humiliated by having the task removed. He gritted his teeth. Another footman, unusually able to read, took the letter nervously and began to speak it out.
'My Lord, the… love I have for some of your… friends breeds in me a care for your preservation. Therefore I advise you, as you care for your life, to think of some excuse to be absent from this Parliament.'
The laughter and the small talk faded into silence.
'God and man have come together to punish the wickedness of our times. Do not… dismiss what is written here, but take yourself off to the country where you may await events in safety. Even though it appears no trouble threatens 1 tell you this… Parliament shall receive a terrible blow, and yet they shall not see who hurts them.'
There was total silence now, the noise of clattering pans in the kitchen coming through into the room. The faces of Monteagle's family and guests were upturned and glistening in the light of the candles, looking towards the footman. The servant looked down at Monteagle, seeking his permission to carry on or to stop, his throat dry, his heart pounding through his head. Monteagle gazed like a stone ahead of him, eyes fixed on something invisible on the wall. The servant waited, then carried on.
' Do not condemn this warning. It can do you no harm, and it may do you some good. The… danger is passed once you burn this letter, and I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it. I… commend you to His holy protection.'
There was total silence.
'Is this some joke?' Monteagle demanded of the company. 'Some idiotic pasquil to stop me from my duty?' There was no-one who felt able to answer. The silence lengthened.
'Saddle my horse,' said Monteagle, quietly. 'I ride to Whitehall. Now.'
Without a further word, he swept out of the room. Behind him his company for supper looked and waited for who would say the first word.. It was a long time in coming.
Gresham watched from the alleyway a short distance up from Monteagle's house. He heard the yelling and the stirring in the stables, saw the lights move back and forth in the darkened yard, heard the rasping sound of rough bolts being drawn back on stable doors. With a spurt of mud Lord Monteagle and two other horsemen sped out of the house, and down the street in the direction of Whitehall.
The cold had taken all feeling out of Gresham's feet, and his hands were little better. The old serjeant who had coached him in the Netherlands would be chiding him now, were he alive. ‘Yer have to keep the blood flowing inside yer limbs if yer want to stay alive’ he would have said, 'and stop someone shedding it outside yerbody!'
Well, the business was under way. It had a power and a force of its own. Gresham saw history like a great river, with estuaries beyond number flowing in intricate patterns away from the main course and then, after interminable rambling, back in again. He did not have the arrogance to think that he could stem that river, unlike many men. He knew that at times he had placed a dam across one of the estuaries, blocked the course it would otherwise have run. So the water would not take the course it would otherwise have done. Perhaps it would go where he willed it to go. Yet water, and rivers, had minds of their own. No man could determine Fortune. All one could do was try.
Gresham did not see Tom Ward retire to his own small chamber, produce a pen and paper and write a hasty note, which he then sealed with a copy of his master's seal. The various marriages between the Ward and the Wright families had cemented a relationship which had gone back decades. God only knew what the letter Ward had given to his master meant for Kit and Jack Wright, but if there was devilment afoot Tom Ward guessed they would be in it to the hilt. The man who had given him the letter had mentioned Catesby. Well, Tom Ward knew Catesby was at White Webbs, most likely with one or both of the Wright brothers, from what he had heard. Ward scribbled down the barest details of the letter and its disclosure, and sealed what he had written. Within minutes of his master's riding forth, one of the strongest riders in Monteagle's employment was similarly pounding through the mud, this time on Ward's orders to head for Enfield. Within hours Catesby would know of the letter.
It was a shaken and dishevelled Monteagle who loudly demanded entry to the Chief Secretary's private apartments at Whitehall. Yet he was not as dishevelled as on a previous appearance, not far from this very spot. To his shame and chagrin he had fallen into the Thames and nearly drowned during the Essex rebellion, being dragged out looking little better than a corpse. Even now as he was rowed up the Thames the cry would come across the river from an anonymous wherry, 'I thought that's one as preferred to swim the river!', followed by a guffaw of laughter.