He waited until the afternoon following. Friday was an unlucky day in common belief, but also the first of the month, symbolic perhaps of a new start. King James was in his Gallery at Whitehall, alone.
Cecil approached, bowed, and offered the Monteagle letter, without comment. James raised an eyebrow, took it and read it. He looked up at Cecil, who made no comment again. He read it a second time, taking more care.
‘It was delivered at night, sire, to my Lord Monteagle. He brought it straight here, to me.' And it was undated, thank God, thought Cecil. Would James be angered at the length of time it had taken to bring this letter to his attention?
'Clearly, my liege,' said Cecil, 'whoever wrote this is a fool.'
'In which case,' said the King, 'it were as well not to receive it likewise as a fool.'
Intelligence and experience, thought Cecil, his heart racing behind his composed exterior. Never forget this man has survived by his wits as King of the Scots. Never forget that conspiracies are second nature to him. Never forget there is no-one as wise as a fool.
Where were the others? thought Tresham as he entered White Webbs. He was shown to a room he had never entered before, and before he knew it the door had slammed behind him and he was facing Robert Catesby. Tom Wintour stood behind him. He drew both bolts on the door.
It all hinged on one sentence, Tresham was to realise later. If Catesby had said to him, in that terrifyingly calm voice of his, 'Why have you betrayed us?' Tresham's face would have broken down into a confession of guilt. He had betrayed the plotters to 'Selkirk', as well as betraying his marriage vows, his religion and, for all he knew, the God he had never properly worshipped.
But Catesby did not ask why Tresham had betrayed his friends.
Instead, he chose to ask, ‘Tell me, cousin, why did you send the letter?'
The letter? What letter? The last letter Tresham had sent had been a peremptory demand for unpaid rent from one of his newly acquired tenants. Genuine confusion crossed his face.
'What letter? I've sent no letter!'
The instant vehemence of his response caused Catesby to pause. Even Wintour, poised behind him, shuffled uncertainly. Catesby spoke again.
'Don't pretend ignorance. Who else would send a letter to Lord Monteagle — your brother-in-law — warning him not to attend Parliament if he wished to preserve his life?'
'Now you mention it, I'd gladly have sent such a letter, if I'd only thought of it! You know what I think. We won't build our faith by this act, we'll destroy people's faith in it. I confess I'd thought of writing a warning, not to Monteagle, to one of the King's secretaries, but I never sent any such letter. Do you hear me? I never sent a letter’
Sincerity strikes its own note. Sincerity uttered with a man holding a drawn dagger at your back strikes an even deeper note. It was picked up by Catesby and Wintour.
'If not you, who else?' It was Wintour this time, almost hissing in his intensity.
'How would I know? And can the condemned man at least sit down? It's not much of a last request!'
Tresham's genuine exhaustion, physical and mental, came to his aid. His tiredness was clearly no counterfeit.
If I can keep saying what I know to be true, I might yet walk out of here alive, thought Tresham. That would be an irony, for a man who was a congenital liar.
Gresham was exhausted, though mentally rather than physically. The strain of having to act the invalid in front of every servant* the strain of waiting, had all taken its toll. Standing to wash that morning he had felt himself shivering, something he had never done unless he had a fever. Mannion had said nothing, but Gresham noted the fire had been stacked higher than normal when he went to eat his breakfast.
Mannion had arranged the next meeting with Tresham in a stew, or brothel.
'It makes sense,' he had remonstrated. 'There's more control over who comes into a whorehouse than there ever is in a tavern. It's across the river, so we can get you over in a covered boat from our own jetty.'
In the meantime, Mannion had surpassed himself at The Mitre. Pretending to be searching out a room for his master and finding out which room Percy had booked, he had taken the adjacent one for an hour earlier. By the time Percy occupied his room the servants would have finished bringing the food and have left them to their bottles. Even better, an iron hook from which a lamp had hung had worked loose from the rough plaster of the dividing wall in Percy's room, and been fixed anew an inch or so up, leaving a hole. It had taken Mannion a split second with his dagger to drive through the hole and leave a clear mark on the wall of the adjacent room. It was the work of a few seconds to enlarge the hole so that one man could look through. Yet he worked with the utmost care at it, as the tap boy left their room. The plaster was old and rotten, and too much pressure would not open an eye hole, all but invisible in the other room, but rather tear out a great gaping hole.
Reluctantly Gresham had allowed Jane's importunings, and taken her with him, heavily hooded. At the inn it was just another well-bred lady coming to an assignation with a gentleman. They extinguished the lights in their room as they heard Percy and his guests enter. Mannion was first to look through. He had the descriptions of the others from Tresham and from the agents he had sent out.
'That's Percy,' Mannion whispered, 'the tall one with the white hair and beard. They say he sweats all the time. The other big one, red beard and hair, he must be Fawkes. The third one… he might be Grant, Robert Grant…'
Gresham took over from Mannion, peering through the tiny hole to the well-lit room beyond. How normal they look, he thought as the men started their meal. How much easier things would be if those determined to bring mass destruction to nations somehow looked different from their fellow men.
Tresham realised that his life had hung in the balance at White Webbs, but it took time for the shock to hit him. He had swaggered his way through the meeting, but gone into a near collapse afterwards when he had realised what had so nearly happened to him.
The smell of bodies and stale sweat in the room they used suggested it had only recently been used for a different purpose. They had come by separate routes, the most devious way possible, Gresham in a closed boat over the river to Southwark. Tresham had not been followed, Mannion was prepared to swear.
Tell me what happened.' Gresham spoke calmly, sensing the rising terror in his spy.
Slowly, with much prompting, Tresham told his story. There had been a letter, to Lord Monteagle. It had caused Wintour to panic, but left Catesby strangely calm. The plotters had not been named. No action seemed to have been taken. The powder was secure. They were meeting tomorrow again, a group of them, to discuss the situation.
'And I'm the prime suspect,' he confessed. 'If they'd asked me a different question there might have been a different ending. Catesby
… I don't know about Robin. I think he believes me when I say I've written no letter. Tom Wintour, now there's a different story.'
Gresham thought for a moment. 'Are you prepared to be arrested for your part in this plot? Taken to the Tower?'
Tresham gaped at him. Even Mannion started and showed surprise.
'Arrested? Taken to the Tower? Is the world gone mad, and am I the only sane person left? If either happens then I'm a dead man! I might as well throw myself off the boat home and into the Thames.'