Gresham took the rough jerkin and trews from the stunned man and sent him, half naked, bouncing along the road on his own exhausted mount. Liberally covering his disguise in mud, he walked into the house, or rather stumbled and gasped into it.
'A bite of bread and ten minutes by a fire, I beg of you?' He did not have to feign exhaustion. T've ridden from Dunchurch, but my master, he took off without me just outside the house. Help me, please. I've no master, no home and like to have no head when all this comes out…' The harassed woman he had spoken to had hardly listened, glancing all the time nervously over his shoulder, pushing him in the direction of the kitchen.
He was inside. The kitchen was a babble of noise. Servants shared their master's fate, and there was real terror in their ranks. Old campaigning instincts took over. Gresham grabbed a fistful of greasy, half-warm meat from a stone table and a mug of small beer that appeared somehow out of the chaos, and crammed both down his throat. The plotters were together in the Hall upstairs, he heard. They would not be leaving now, he thought, with night coming on. They were blown, exhausted. There was enough of the real Henry Gresham left to light a tiny smile in the corner of his mouth. He was inside the lions' den. It was about time he decided what use to make of his achievement.
Thomas Percy looked at the sodden crowd of his fellow plotters and cursed the luck that had exposed Fawkes. Clearly, Cecil's plan had misfired. Or had Cecil betrayed them? He doubted it. If Cecil had wanted both of them out of the way Percy would not have been let to go with the others to end up in this dreadful hole of a house. Percy caught the tail of his fear, which was starting to fly up and away like a kite out of control, and brought it back down to earth again with an effort. He had to assume that his job remained what it had always been, to kill Catesby and as many of the other conspirators as possible. Cecil had always feared Catesby, recognising in him the capacity to lift and sway an audience. He had been willing to use him, the perfect unwitting foil for a plot that would bring Cecil nothing but credit, but yet he had always feared his power to incite. Cecil had been too much scarred by the ability of Sir Walter Raleigh at his trial to win hearts and minds by the power of his words and the attraction of his figure. He did not want Robert Catesby standing at the Bar, weaving the same spells with his audience that he had woven with the conspirators. Catesby had to die decently early, and that was Percy's role:
He had considered killing him on their journey, but no chance that did not threaten his own life had presented itself. The life of Thomas Percy was a very important thing, and soon to become even more important. Once Catesby had been disposed of, and the other plotters either killed or handed over to authority — Cecil had wanted some two or three at most, no more, if possible — then Percy would return in triumph to London bringing Catesby's body slung over a horse. He had thought on that, and thought that it would look best stripped to its shirt, as it would have been for an execution. He had reminded himself that he must drape the body over a horse as soon as possible after Catesby's death, before it froze in death and stuck out on either side like a bar across the saddle. In the midst of that triumph, he and Cecil would discuss the details he would give about the treachery of the ninth Earl of Northumberland, how the evil Earl had unwittingly placed in the hands of his kinsman the details of the treachery and the revolution he planned — his kinsman, who having handed the fate of the ninth Earl over to Cecil would, of course, become the tenth Earl of Northumberland. Had he riot always claimed, even to the ninth Earl himself, that his branch of the family was older than that represented by the ninth Earl? Well, now he would prove it.
The powder they had taken from Hewell Grange had been loaded into an open cart. The drenching rain had soaked it. Their plan now was to rest for as long as it took to get their breath back, and then dash into Wales to gather support and await news of the landings and the Spanish troops that Percy had lied about to
Catesby. There never were any plans for invasion, and never any knowledge of any part of the plot by the ninth Earl — a delicious irony which Percy intended to savour when he became the tenth Earl.
Yet they might have to make a stand at Holbeache. The Sheriff of Worcestershire was on their trail. A servant who was probably running away had run into the Sheriff's party, over a hundred men, and gone back to Catesby as the lesser evil. Catesby and Wintour were convinced they could beat off the Sheriff's party, who would be untrained men in the face of a determined, well-armed opposition fighting defensively and for their lives. It was a classic situation — thirty men defending who were fighting to keep their lives, a hundred or so attacking who could only lose them.
'The powder from Hewell Grange is soaked through. If this place is put to siege, we might have need of it.' Percy spoke gruffly, in the old-soldier manner he had adopted from the outset with the conspirators.
'What do you suggest — warm it with a match?' It was Digby, a pale imitation of himself.
'Almost. It's wet enough to make spreading it out before the hearth safe enough. If Tom manages to bring back some extra people, the more dry powder we can show them the more likely they are to think we've a chance.'
He was surprised they agreed to it, but it was exhaustion speaking through their actions, and despair. Any action seemed to put back the tide of hopelessness.
They spread the powder out on to the stone hearth, moving the rushes aside first. The fire was well established, the wood seasoned and long since past spitting. Catesby, Rookwood and Grant took seats at the long trestle table to one side of the fire, hastily drawing up plans for the defence of the house. Henry Morgan, one of the few from the Dunchurch 'hunting party' who had stayed with them, joined them, as did Percy, for a while. Robert Wintour was huddled in a corner.
'I had a dream last night.' His sepulchral tones startled the men by the table, all of whom looked up.
'I saw church steeples bent awry, and sad, terrible faces inside the churches, looking out. Faces of despair.' Was he talking to himself, or to them? It could have been either. The men turned back, one by one, to their crude plans for defence. The problem was that few of them knew the house, and the owner was out of it with Tom Wintour.
Percy stood up, announcing he was going to piss. As he went to the door, it opened in his face, and the frightened figure of a servant came into the Hall, a huge pile of fresh logs held in front of him, half covering even his face. Percy pushed him aside, causing him to stumble and drop the top two or three logs. The servant mumbled apologies, as scared as the rest of the Holbeache servants, placed the remnant of his load on the floor and scrabbled to pick up the lost logs. A few of the conspirators glanced his way, disinterested, and looked away. Very carefully the servant made his way to the side of the hearth. He stopped as he saw the powder laid out, carefully moving round the black earth piled on the floor. He bent to lay his logs on top of the others on the side of the hearth, but the top log seemed to leap out from the pile of its own accord and fell into the fire. It crashed into the flames, dislodging embers that flew almost gently through the air and landed red among the black of the powder. The servant, who could see what was coming, flung the rest of his logs forward and dashed for the protection offered by the side of the jutting stone fireplace.