'Don your serving-girl clothes!' cried Gresham. 'We go to the playhouse!'
'Can we afford to? What if we're seen?'
'After all this time in this hovel, I think we can't afford not to. We'll dress as servants and stand at the back of the Pit. And after that, we're back to the House and civilisation, I think.'
'Are we out of danger, then?'
'I'll limp back into town as if a growth has been carved out of my side and I'm only recently recovered. Wherever I go people will look at me and feel ill, though I shall of course keep to my bed for weeks on end. An invalid will present no threat to Cecil. And anyway, the plot is out — what has Cecil to fear from me?'
Robert Catesby had spent the morning trying to ease the worries of Anne Vaux at White Webbs. It did not matter if he succeeded in demolishing her fears. All that mattered was that he allayed them. Hardly a week to go, and then he could throw off this continual need to hide behind fabrication and deceit. A week from now, and the world would know the truth.
The letter arrived at midday, brought to table by Tom Bates. The messenger, a simple serving lad, had become hopelessly lost, as a result of riding through the night, and had nearly killed his mount. Catesby read the hasty scribble, expressionless, and care-fully folded it before slipping it into the large pocket sewn into his breeches. He finished his meal quietly, allowing Anne to chatter about the fate of various neighbours' experiences of childbirth and children in general. He rose from the table, thanked Anne politely and nodded to the others round the table. Tom Wintour needed no hint or secret signals to rise shortly afterwards, and join him. Not long after, the Wright brothers followed suit.
'We appear to have a slight problem,' said Catesby dryly, handing the note to Wintour, and on to the Wrights. The colour rose in Wintour's face as he read it. 'We owe a debt to your kinsman, Tom Ward, I think,' added Catesby, as first Kit and then Jack Wright took the letter. Both the Wrights had been in on the plot from its earliest days, and neither Kit nor Jack Wright would utter three words where none would do. Two strong, taciturn men, they grunted as the import of the letter sank in, and looked to Catesby.
'We're discovered!' For a brief moment, the hatred that drove Wintour to contemplate an act of mass murder showed clearly on his face. Stupidly, he turned to look over his shoulder, as if even then the troops of the King would be trampling across the lawns of Enfield to arrest them both.
'Peace, cousin,' said Catesby. 'We're safe as yet. Think. Think what it means.'
'It means Cecil and the King know about our plot!' Wintour's face was grotesque, distorted with the mix of anger and fear that coloured it dark red.
'It means no such thing!' Catesby's words were like a slap across Wintour's face. 'True, the letter sounds a warning over Parliament, but they'll look for an army to be the agent of harm, not one man in a cellar!'
'We're not named. Not any of us.' It was Kit Wright, who often spoke both for himself and for his brother.
In his haste to warn Catesby and the Wrights, Tom Ward had written only that Monteagle's letter had advised him not to attend Parliament and had warned him of a strike against Parliament. Would Catesby's relative calm have been shattered if Ward had told him of the phrase 'terrible blow', and the letter's emphasis on the invisibility of that blow? He was never to know, never to see the letter and destined only to hear about it from a frightened servant relying on memory. That particular estuary received no dam, and its water trickled along unhindered down the path Fate had set.
'We'll know soon enough if we're discovered. Do you think if any of us are suspected Cecil and the King will leave us to go about our business? Fawkes can keep a watch oh the cellar. If there's any interest in it, then we'll know we're truly discovered, and plan accordingly. But before that, look at what this letter must mean.'
Wintour looked blankly at him.
'A traitor, Tom, a traitor! One of us must have written that letter. We've a snake in our little garden.'
The redness had begun to recede from Wintour's face, but it came back with a flood. 'Tresham! That bastard Tresham!' he roared.
'Possibly — but be cautious. Digby and Rookwood have more to lose than most of us, and wives who may fear they will lose their husbands and their livelihoods. Perhaps one of the other women… a priest who's heard too much in confession… a servant who's overheard his master… perhaps even your brother.'
'Robert! Never in a thousand years! He may be nervous, but if he isn't loyal then the Pope's not God's appointed.'
'We've to consider everyone, haven't we?' It was as if Catesby was discussing a game of cards.
'You'll call Tresham here? Now?' Wintour's face made it clear that Francis Tresham would be walking into his death when he came to White Webbs.
'Call him, yes. But not now. We're due to meet at Temple Bar on Wednesday. Tom, we must keep silent about this letter at least for a while. We must! You know the others. We can't let them think it's all over yet. Let's wait and see if a hue and cry starts. There were no names in the letter, were there? It will take time to examine, time in which we'll know if we're being followed or watched. Let's tell the others on Wednesday, and watch Tresham as a man has never been watched. Then let's decide.'
Wintour's face made it clear what his decision already was. As far as Tom Wintour was concerned, Francis Tresham was a dead man. The four conspirators ordered a bottle of wine. Catesby doubted there was more to discuss, yet there would be support in the wine and in the companionship of its drinking.
Francis Tresham, unaware of the plot being hatched on his life, and blissfully unaware of the Monteagle letter, lay in his rooms at Lincoln's Inn Walk. There was a knock on the door. He leapt as if for his life, grabbing the sword that lay by the bed. His servant, the learned but dilatory Vavasour, was out buying wine. There was another knock on the door, loud and urgent. Tresham held his sword poised, and wrenched it open. Something hit him, and he was suddenly on the floor with a ringing head, his sword held in the left hand of his visitor. It was the ox of a servant, Selkirk's servant.
'My master sends you the first down payment.' He tossed a package towards Tresham. 'And I wouldn't open doors suddenly, with a sword in your hand, if I were you.'
It was a passport, a travel warrant from the Government. It permitted him to travel abroad for two years, with horses, servants and other necessaries.
'The money, and the details of the ship, come when he's finished with you. Don't run out on him, will you? I'd hate to ruin that fine doublet you're wearing.'
'Why so long?' Gresham's scalp itched so that he longed to tear the skin off his head, his head was pounding as it had not done so since the river. 'Why is nothing happening?'
Gresham had revelled in the return to the House, and Jane had gone straight to her beloved library as if it were an old friend brought back from the grave. Yet as his impatience grew it was seeming more and more like a prison, more and more like the rooms in Alsatia.
There was the tedium of keeping up the pretence to cope with. The paste that kept his skin sickly-white needed to be re-applied twice a day, and Jane had to use a thin linen cloth rather than her hands, in case they too turned white. No lump in his side was necessary, the theoretical growth having been theoretically cut out, but it was necessary to keep a supply of fresh pig's blood to stain his shirts with, the amount decreasing every day very slightly, as well as suitably gory 'dressings' to be sent out with the servants. Gresham trusted the servants in the House more than he had let Jane know, but all it needed was for one to comment in the market or on the street about Gresham's miraculous recovery for unwanted attention to be directed on to him.