29
Ned Willard was on the alert, looking anxiously around the chapel, studying the wedding guests, watchful for danger signs. King James was expected to attend, and Ned was as afraid for James’s life as he had been for Elizabeth’s. The secret service could never relax its vigilance.
It was three days after Christmas, 1604.
Ned did not much like King James. The new king had turned out to be less tolerant than Elizabeth, and not just of Catholics. He had a bee in his bonnet about witches – he had written a book on the subject – and he had brought in harsh legislation against them. Ned thought they were mostly harmless old women. All the same Ned was determined to protect James in order to prevent the civil war he dreaded.
The bridegroom was Philip Herbert, the twenty-year-old son of the earl of Pembroke. Philip had caught the eye of King James in the embarrassing way that charming young men often took the fancy of the thirty-eight-year-old king. A court wit had said: ‘Elizabeth was king, now James is queen,’ and this wisecrack had been repeated all over London. James had encouraged young Philip to get married, as if to prove that his interest in the boy was innocent – which no one believed.
The bride was Susan de Vere, granddaughter of the late William Cecil and niece of secretary of state Robert Cecil, Ned’s friend and colleague. Knowing that James was coming, bride and groom waited at the altar, for the king had to be the last to arrive. They were at a chapel within White Hall Palace, where it would be all too easy for an assassin to strike.
Ned was hearing rumours from his spies in Paris, Rome, Brussels and Madrid: English Catholic exiles all over Europe were conspiring to get rid of King James who, they felt, had betrayed them. But Ned had not yet learned the details of specific plots so all he could do, for the time being, was keep his eyes open.
If he had thought, when young, of what life would be like when he was sixty-five, he would have assumed that his work would be done. Either he and Elizabeth would have succeeded, and England would be the first country in the world to have freedom of religion; or he would have failed, and Englishmen would again be burned at the stake for their beliefs. He had never anticipated that the struggle would still be as fierce as ever when he was old and Elizabeth was dead; that Parliament would still be persecuting Catholics and that Catholics would still be trying to kill the monarch. Would it never end?
He glanced at Margery beside him, a bright blue hat set at an angle on her silver curls. She met his eye and said: ‘What?’
‘I don’t want the groom to see you,’ Ned murmured teasingly. ‘He may want to marry you instead of the bride.’
She giggled. ‘I’m an old lady.’
‘You’re the prettiest old lady in London.’ It was true.
Ned looked around the room restlessly. He recognized most of those present. He had been intimate with the Cecils for almost half a century, and he knew the groom’s family almost as well. Some of the younger people at the back were only vaguely familiar, and he guessed they were friends of the happy couple. Ned found it increasingly difficult, as the years went by, to tell one youngster from another.
He and Margery were near the front, but Ned was not comfortable there, and he kept looking over his shoulder; so in the end he left Margery and went to the back of the room. From there he could watch everyone, like a mother pigeon studying the other birds, looking for the magpie that would eat her chicks.
All the men wore swords, as a matter of course, so any one of them could have been an assassin, in theory. This generalized suspicion was next to useless, and Ned racked his brains as to how he might learn more.
The king and queen came in at last, safe and sound, and Ned was relieved to see that they were escorted by a dozen men-at-arms. An assassin would have trouble getting past such a bodyguard. Ned sat down and relaxed a little.
The royal couple took their time walking up the aisle, greeting friends and favourites, and acknowledging the bows of others graciously. When they got to the front, James nodded to the clergyman to begin.
While the service was going on, a new arrival slipped into the chapel, and Ned’s instincts sounded an alarm.
The newcomer stood at the back. Ned studied him, not caring whether the man knew he was being stared at. He was in his thirties, tall and broad, with something of the air of a soldier about him. However, he did not look stressed or even tense. He leaned against the wall, stroking his long moustache and watching the rite. He radiated arrogant confidence.
Ned decided to speak to him. He got up and walked to the back. As he approached, the newcomer nodded casually and said: ‘Good day to you, Sir Ned.’
‘You know me—’
‘Everyone knows you, Sir Ned.’ The remark was a compliment with an undertone of mockery.
‘—I don’t know you,’ Ned finished.
‘Fawkes,’ said the man. ‘Guy Fawkes, at your service.’
‘And who invited you here?’
‘I’m a friend of the groom, if it matters to you.’
A man who was about to kill a king would not be able to converse in this bantering manner. Nevertheless, Ned had a bad feeling about Fawkes. There was something about his coolness, his half-hidden disrespect, and his satirical tone that suggested subversive inclinations. Ned probed further. ‘I haven’t met you before.’
‘I come from York. My father was a proctor in the consistory court there.’
‘Ah.’ A proctor was a lawyer, and a consistory court was a Church tribunal. To hold such a post, Fawkes’s father would have to be an irreproachable Protestant, and must have taken the oath of allegiance that Catholics abhorred. Fawkes was almost certainly harmless.
All the same, as Ned returned to his seat he decided to keep an eye on Guy Fawkes.
*
ROLLO FITZGERALD reconnoitred Westminster, looking for a weak spot.
A collection of large and small buildings clustered around a court called Westminster Yard. Rollo was nervous about prowling around, but no one seemed to pay him much attention. The courtyard was a gloomy square where prostitutes loitered. No doubt other nefarious doings took place there after dark. The complex was walled and gated, but the gates were rarely closed, even at night. Within the precincts were all the Parliament buildings plus several taverns, a bakery, and a wine merchant’s with extensive cellars.
The House of Lords, where the king would come to open Parliament, was a building on the plan of a squat letter H. The grand hall of the Lords, the biggest room, was the crossbar. One upright of the H was the Prince’s Chamber, used as a robing room; the other was the Painted Chamber, for committee meetings. But those three rooms were on the upstairs floor. Rollo was more interested in the ground-floor rooms underneath.
Beneath the Prince’s Chamber was a porter’s lodge and an apartment for the Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe. Alongside ran a narrow passage, Parliament Place, leading to a wharf called Parliament Stairs on the left bank of the Thames.
Rollo went to a nearby tavern called The Boatman and pretended to be a firewood dealer looking for storage space and willing to buy drinks for anyone who could give him information. There he gleaned two exciting nuggets: one, that the Wardrobe Keeper did not need his apartment and was willing to rent it out; and two, that it had a cellar. However, he was told, the place was reserved for courtiers, and was not available to common tradesmen. Rollo looked crestfallen and said he would have to search elsewhere. The regulars at the bar thanked him for the drinks and wished him luck.
Rollo had already recruited a co-conspirator, the courtier Thomas Percy. As a Catholic, Percy would never be an advisor to the king, but James had made him one of the Gentlemen Pensioners, a group of ceremonial royal bodyguards. Percy’s support was a mixed blessing, for he was a mercurial character, alternately full of manic energy or paralysed by gloom, not unlike his ancestor Hotspur in a popular play about the youth of Henry V; but now he proved useful. At Rollo’s suggestion, Percy claimed he needed the Wardrobe Keeper’s rooms for his wife to live in while he was at court and – after a prolonged negotiation – he rented the apartment.
That was a big step forward.
Officially, Rollo was in London for a long-drawn-out lawsuit between the earl of Tyne and a neighbour about the ownership of a watermill. This was a cover story. His real purpose was to kill the king. For that, he needed more men.
Guy Fawkes was just the type he was looking for. Fawkes’s staunchly Protestant father had died when little Guy was eight, and he had been raised by a Catholic mother and stepfather. As a wealthy young man Fawkes had rejected a life of idleness, sold the estate he had inherited from his father, and set out to look for adventure. He had left England and fought for Spain against the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands, where he had learned about engineering during sieges. Now he was back in London, at a loose end, ready for excitement.
Unfortunately, Fawkes was under surveillance.
This afternoon he was at the Globe Theatre, on the south side of the river Thames, watching a new play called Measure for Measure. Two places along the bench from him was Nick Bellows, an unobtrusive man in drab clothes, whom Rollo knew to be one of Ned Willard’s street stalkers.
Rollo was in the crowd of groundlings without seats. He followed the play with disapproval. Its story of a strong ruler who hypocritically breaks his own laws was blatantly designed to encourage disrespect for authority. Rollo was looking for an opportunity to speak to Fawkes without attracting the notice of Bellows, but it was proving difficult. Bellows discreetly followed when Fawkes left his seat, once to buy a cup of wine and once to piss in the river.
Rollo still had not spoken to him when the play came to an end and the audience began to leave. The crowd choked the exit and the people shuffled along slowly. Rollo manoeuvred himself behind Fawkes and spoke in a low voice directly into his ear. ‘Don’t look around, whatever you do, just listen,’ he said.
Perhaps Fawkes had been involved in clandestine activity before, for he did as Rollo said, only giving an almost imperceptible nod to show that he had understood.
‘His Holiness the Pope has work for you to do,’ Rollo said in the same low tone. ‘But you’re being followed by one of King James’s spies, so first you have to shake him off. Go to a tavern and drink a cup of wine, to give me a chance to get ahead of you. Then walk west along the river, away from the bridge. Wait until there is only one boat at the beach, then hire it to take you across, leaving your tail behind. On the other side, walk quickly to Fleet Street and meet me at the York tavern.’
Fawkes nodded again once.
Rollo moved away. He went over London Bridge and walked briskly through the city and beyond its walls to Fleet Street. He stood across the street from the York, wondering whether Fawkes would come. He guessed that Fawkes would be unable to resist the call of adventure, and he was right. Fawkes appeared, walking with the characteristic swagger that made Rollo think of a prize fighter. Rollo watched for another minute or two, but neither Bellows nor anyone else was following.
He went inside.
Fawkes was in a corner with a jug of wine and two goblets. Rollo sat opposite him, with his back to the room; hiding his face was now an ingrained habit. Fawkes said: ‘Who was following me?’
‘Nick Bellows. Small man in a brown coat, sitting next but two to you.’
‘I didn’t notice him.’
‘He goes to a certain amount of trouble not to be noticed.’
‘Of course. What do you want with me?’
‘I have a simple question for you,’ Rollo said. ‘Do you have the courage to kill the king?’
Fawkes looked at him hard, weighing him up. His stare would have intimidated many men, but Rollo was his equal in self-regard, and stared right back.
At last Fawkes said: ‘Yes.’
Rollo nodded, satisfied. This was the kind of plain speaking he wanted. ‘You’ve been a soldier, you understand discipline,’ he said.
Again Fawkes just said: ‘Yes.’
‘Your new name is John Johnson.’
‘Isn’t that a bit obvious?’
‘Don’t argue. You’re going to be the caretaker of a small apartment that we’ve rented. I’ll take you there now. You can’t go back to your lodging, it may be watched.’
‘There’s a pair of pistols in my room that I’d be sorry to leave behind.’
‘I’ll send someone to collect your belongings when I’m sure the coast is clear.’
‘All right.’
‘We should go now.’
‘Where is this apartment?’
‘At Westminster,’ said Rollo. ‘In the House of Lords.’
*
IT WAS ALREADY dark on a rainy evening, but the London taverns and shops were lit up with lanterns and blazing torches, and Margery knew she was not mistaken when she saw her brother across the street. He was standing outside a tavern called the White Swan, apparently saying goodbye to a tall man who Margery thought she recognized.
Margery had not seen her brother for years. That suited her: she did not like to be reminded of the fact that he was Jean Langlais. Because of this terrible secret she had almost turned down Ned’s proposal of marriage fifteen years ago. But if she had done so, she would never have been able to tell him why. She loved him so much, but in the end what tipped the balance was not her love for him but his for her. He longed for her, she knew, and if she had turned him down, without plausible explanation, he would have spent the rest of his life being mystified and wounded. She had power over his life and she was unable to resist the temptation to make him happy.
She could not be comfortable with her secret, but it was like the backache that had afflicted her ever since the birth of Roger: it never ceased to hurt, but she learned to live with it.
She crossed the street. As she did so the second man left, and Rollo turned to go back into the tavern. ‘Rollo!’ she said.
He stopped suddenly at the door, startled, and for a moment he looked so fearful that she felt concerned; then he recognized her. ‘It’s you,’ he said warily.
‘I didn’t know you were in London!’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that Thomas Percy you were talking to?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘I thought so. I recognized his prematurely grey hair.’ Margery did not know what religion Percy adhered to, but some of his famous family were Catholic, and Margery was suspicious. ‘You’re not up to your old tricks, are you, Rollo?’
‘Certainly not. All that is over.’
‘I hope so.’ Margery was not fully reassured. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘I’m handling a protracted lawsuit for the earl of Tyne. He’s in dispute with a neighbour over the ownership of a watermill.’
That was true, Margery knew. Her son Roger had mentioned it. ‘Roger says the legal fees and bribes have already cost more than three watermills.’
‘My clever nephew is right. But the earl is obstinate. Come inside.’
They went in and sat down. A man with a big red nose brought Rollo a cup of wine without asking. His proprietorial air suggested to Margery that he was the landlord. Rollo said: ‘Thank you, Hodgkinson.’
‘Something for the lady?’ the man asked.
‘A small glass of ale, please,’ Margery said.
Hodgkinson went away, and Margery said to Rollo: ‘Are you lodging here?’
‘Yes.’
She was puzzled. ‘Doesn’t the earl of Tyne have a London house?’
‘No, he just rents one when Parliament is sitting.’
‘You should use Shiring House. Bartlet would be happy for you to stay there.’
‘There are no servants there, just a janitor, except when Bartlet comes to London.’
‘Bartlet would gladly send a couple of people up here from New Castle to look after you, if you asked him.’
Rollo looked peeved. ‘Then they would spend his money on beef and wine for themselves and feed me bacon and beer, and if I complained, they’d tell Bartlet I was too high-handed and demanding. Frankly, I prefer a tavern.’
Margery was not sure whether he was irritated by her or by the thought of dishonest servants, but she decided to drop the question. If he wanted to stay in a tavern, he could. ‘How are you, anyway?’ she said.
‘The same as ever. The earl of Tyne is a good master. How about you? Is Ned well?’
‘He’s in Paris right now.’
‘Really?’ said Rollo, interested. ‘What’s he doing there?’
‘His work,’ she said vaguely. ‘I’m not really sure.’
Rollo knew she was lying. ‘Spying on Catholics, I assume. That’s his work, as everyone knows.’
‘Come on, Rollo, it’s your fault for trying to murder his queen. Don’t pretend to be indignant.’
‘Are you happy with Ned?’
‘Yes. God in his wisdom has given me a strange life, but for the last fifteen years I have been truly happy.’ She noticed that his shoes and stockings were covered with mud. ‘How on earth did you get so dirty?’
‘I had to walk along the foreshore.’
‘Why?’
‘Long story. And I have an appointment.’ Rollo stood up.
Margery realized she was being dismissed. She kissed her brother’s cheek and left. She had not asked him what his appointment was about, and as she walked away from the tavern she asked herself why. The answer came immediately: she did not think he would tell her the truth.
*
ROLLO IMPOSED STRICT security at the Wardrobe Keeper’s apartment. Everyone arrived before dawn, so that they would not be seen entering. Each man brought his own food, and they did not go outside in daylight. They left again after dark.
Rollo was almost seventy, so he left the harder work to younger men such as Fawkes and Percy, but even they struggled. All were the sons of noble and wealthy families, and none of them had previously done much digging.
They had first to demolish the brick wall of the cellar, then scoop out the earth behind it. The tunnel needed to be large enough for a number of thirty-two-gallon barrels of gunpowder to be dragged inside. They saved time by making it no larger, but the disadvantage of that was that they had to work bent double, or lying down; and the confined space grew hot.
During the day they lived on salted fish, dried meat and raisins. Rollo would not let them send out for the kind of meal they were used to, fearing that they would draw attention to themselves.
It was muddy work, which was why Rollo had been embarrassingly dirty when he unexpectedly ran into Margery. The soil they removed from the tunnel had to be lugged up to ground level, then taken outside after dark and carried along Parliament Passage and down Parliament Stairs, from where it could be thrown into the river. Rollo had been unnerved when Margery asked about his filthy stockings, but she had seemed to accept his explanation.
The tunnellers were discreet, but not invisible. Even in the dark, they were sometimes seen coming and going by people carrying lanterns. To divert suspicion, Fawkes had let it be known that he had builders in, making some alterations that his master’s wife had demanded. Rollo hoped no one would notice the improbably large quantity of earth being displaced by mere alterations.
Then they ran into a difficulty so serious that Rollo was afraid it might ruin the whole plan. When they had tunnelled into the earth for several feet, they came up against a solid stone wall. Naturally, Rollo realized, the two-storey building above had proper foundations: he should have anticipated this. The work became harder and slower, but they had to go on, for they were not yet far enough under the debating chamber to be sure that the explosion would kill everyone there.
The stone foundations turned out to be several feet thick. Rollo feared they would not finish the job before the opening ceremony. Then Parliament was postponed, because of an outbreak of plague in London; and the tunnellers had a new deadline.
Even so, Rollo fretted. Progress was terribly slow. The longer they took, the more risk there was that they would be discovered. And there was another hazard. As they went farther, undermining the foundations, Rollo feared a collapse. Fawkes made stout timber props to support the roof – as he said he had done when digging under city walls in Netherlands sieges – but Rollo was not sure how much this fighting man really knew about mining. The tunnel might just fall in and kill them all. It could even bring down the entire building – which would achieve nothing if the king were not inside.
Taking a break one day, they talked about who would be in the chamber when the gunpowder went off. King James had three children. Prince Henry, who was eleven, and Prince Charles, four, would probably accompany their parents to the ceremony. ‘Assuming they both die, Princess Elizabeth will be the heir,’ said Percy. ‘She will be nine.’
Rollo had already thought about the princess. ‘We must be prepared to seize her,’ he said. ‘Whoever has her, has the throne.’
Percy said: ‘She lives at Coombe Abbey, in Warwickshire.’
‘She will need a Lord Protector, who will, of course, be the actual ruler of England.’
‘I propose my kinsman the earl of Northumberland.’
Rollo nodded. It was a good suggestion. Northumberland was one of the great peers of the realm and a Catholic sympathizer. But Rollo had a better idea. ‘I suggest the earl of Shiring.’
The others were not enthusiastic. Rollo knew what they were thinking: Bartlet Shiring was a good Catholic but did not have Northumberland’s stature.
Too polite to denigrate Rollo’s nephew, Percy said: ‘We must plan uprisings in all parts of the country where Catholic peers are strong. There must be no opportunity for the Protestants to promote a rival for the throne.’
‘I can guarantee that in the county of Shiring,’ said Rollo.
Someone said: ‘A lot of people will die.’
Rollo was impatient with men who worried about killing. A civil war would be a cleansing. ‘The Protestants deserve death,’ he said. ‘And the Catholics will go straight to heaven.’
Just then there was a strange noise. At first it sounded like a rush of water overhead. Then it turned into a rumble as of shifting rocks. Rollo immediately feared a collapse. The other men clearly had the same instinctive reaction, for they all rushed, as if to save their lives, up the narrow stone staircase that led from the cellar to the apartment at ground level.
There they stopped and listened. The noise continued, intermittently, but the floor was not shaking, and Rollo realized they had overreacted. The building was not about to fall down. But what was happening?
Rollo pointed at Fawkes. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll investigate. The rest of you, stay quiet.’
He led Fawkes outside and around the building. The noise had stopped, but Rollo thought it must have come from roughly where their tunnel ran.
At the back of the building, a row of windows ran along the upper storey, lighting the debating chamber. In the middle of the row was a small door opening on to a wooden exterior staircase: it was not much used, for the grand entrance was on the other side. Under the staircase, at ground level, was a double wooden door that Rollo had hardly noticed before. If he had thought about it, he would have assumed that it gave access to the kind of storeroom where gardeners kept spades. Now for the first time he saw both doors wide open. A carthorse stood patiently outside.
Rollo and Fawkes stepped through the doorway.
It was a store, but it was huge. In fact, Rollo guessed, it was probably the same length and width as the debating chamber directly above. He was not quite sure because the windowless vault was dark, illuminated mainly by the light coming through the doorway. From what he could see, it looked like the crypt of a church, with massive pillars curving up to a low wooden ceiling that must form the floor of the room above. Rollo realized with dismay that the tunnellers had probably been hacking through the base of one of those pillars. They were in even more danger of collapse than he had feared.
The room was mostly empty, with odd pieces of timber and sacking lying around, and a square table with a hole broken through its top. Rollo immediately saw the explanation for the noise: A man whose face was black with dust was shovelling coal from a pile onto a cart. That was the cause of the noise.
Rollo glanced at Fawkes and knew they were both thinking the same thing. If they could get control of this room, they could place their gunpowder even nearer to the king – and they could stop tunnelling.
A woman of middle age was watching the carter work. When his vehicle was loaded, he counted coins with his sooty hands and gave them to her, evidently paying her for the coal. She took the coins to the doorway to examine them in the light before thanking the man. Then, as the carter backed his horse into the shafts of the cart, the woman turned to Rollo and Fawkes and said politely: ‘Good day to you, gentlemen. Is there something I can do for you?’
‘What is this room?’ Rollo asked.
‘I believe it used to be the kitchen, in the days when banquets were served in the grand chamber above. Now it’s my coal store. Or it was: spring is coming and I’m getting rid of my stocks. You may like to buy some: it’s the best hard coal from the banks of the river Tyne, burns really hot—’
Fawkes interrupted her. ‘We don’t want coal, but we’re looking for somewhere to store a large quantity of wood. My name is John Johnson, I’m caretaker of the Wardrobe Keeper’s apartment.’
‘I’m Ellen Skinner, widow and coal merchant.’
‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs Skinner. Is this place available to rent?’
‘I’ve got it leased for the rest of the year.’
‘But you’re getting rid of your stock, you say, because spring is coming. Few people buy coal in warm weather.’
She looked crafty. ‘I may have another use for the place.’
She was feigning reluctance, but Rollo could see the light of greed in her eyes. Her arguments were no more than negotiating tactics. He began to feel hopeful.
Fawkes said: ‘My master would pay well.’
‘I’d give up my lease for three pounds,’ she said. ‘And you’d have to pay the landlord on top of that – four pounds a year, he charges me.’
Rollo suppressed the impulse to say eagerly: It’s a bargain. The price did not matter, but if they were seen to be throwing money around, they would attract attention and, perhaps, suspicion.
Fawkes haggled for the sake of appearance. ‘Oh, madam, that seems too much,’ he said. ‘A pound for your lease at most, surely.’
‘I might keep the place. I’ll need a coal store come September.’
‘Split the difference,’ Fawkes said. ‘One pound ten shillings.’
‘If you could make it two pounds, I’d shake hands on it now.’
‘Oh, very well,’ Fawkes said, and held out his hand.
‘A pleasure, Mr Johnson,’ said the woman.
Fawkes said: ‘I assure you, Mrs Skinner, the pleasure is all mine.’
*
NED WENT TO Paris in a desperate attempt to find out what was happening in London.
He continued to hear vague rumours of Catholic plots against King James. And his suspicion had been heightened when Guy Fawkes deftly shook off his surveillance and disappeared. But there was a frustrating lack of detail in the gossip.
Many royal assassination plots had been hatched in Paris, often with the help of the ultra-Catholic Guise family. The Protestants there had maintained the network of spies Sylvie had set up. Ned hoped that one of them, most likely Alain de Guise, might be able to fill the gaps.
After the simultaneous murders of Duke Henri and Pierre Aumande, Ned had feared that Alain would no longer be a source of information on exiled English Catholics; but Alain had picked up some of his stepfather’s wiliness. He had made himself useful to the widow and befriended the new young duke, and so continued to live at the Guise palace in Paris and work for the family. And because the ultra-Catholic Guises were trusted by the English plotters, Alain learned a good deal about their plans, and passed the information to Ned by coded letters sent along well-established secret channels. Much of the exiles’ talk came to nothing, but several times over the years Alain’s tips had led to arrests.
Ned read all his letters, but now he was hoping to learn more by a personal visit. In face-to-face conversation random details could sometimes emerge and turn out to be important.
Worried though he was, the trip to France was nostalgic for him. It put him in mind of himself as a young man; of the great Walsingham, with whom he had worked for two decades; and, most of all, of Sylvie. On his way to meet Alain he went to the rue de la Serpente and stood for a while outside the bookshop that had been Sylvie’s home, remembering the happy day he had been invited to dinner there and had kissed her in the back room, and the terrible day Isabelle had been killed there.
It was a butcher’s shop now.
He crossed the bridge to the Île de la Cité, went into the cathedral, and said a prayer of thanks for Sylvie’s life. The church was Catholic, and Ned was Protestant, but he had long believed that God cared little about such distinctions.
And nowadays the king of France felt the same. Henri IV had signed the Edict of Nantes, giving Protestants religious freedom. The new duke of Guise was still a child, and the Guise family had not been able to undermine the peace this time; and so forty years of civil war had come to an end. Ned thanked God for Henry IV, too. Perhaps France, like England, was slowly fumbling its way towards tolerance.
Protestant services were still discreet, and usually held outside the walls of cities, to avoid inflaming ultra-Catholics. Ned walked south along the rue St Jacques, through the city gate, and out into the suburbs. A man sitting reading at the roadside was the signpost to a track that led through the woods to a hunting lodge. This was the informal church Sylvie had attended before Ned met her. It had been exposed by Pierre Aumande, and the congregation had broken up, but now it was again a place of worship.
Alain was already there, sitting with his wife and children. Also with him was his long-time friend Louise, the dowager marchioness of Nîmes. Both had been at the château of Blois when Duke Henri and Pierre had been murdered, and Ned suspected they had been in on the plot, though no one had dared to investigate either killing because of the presumed involvement of the king. Ned also saw Nath, who had taken over Sylvie’s business in illegal books: she had become a prosperous old lady in a fur hat.
Ned sat next to Alain, but did not speak until the hymns, when everyone was singing too loudly to hear their talk. ‘They all hate this James,’ Alain murmured to Ned, speaking French. ‘They say he broke his promises.’
‘They’re not wrong,’ Ned admitted. ‘All the same I have to stop them killing him. Otherwise the peace and prosperity that Elizabeth won with such a tremendous effort will be shattered by civil war. What else do you hear?’
‘They want to kill the entire royal family, all but the little princess, whom they will declare queen.’
‘The entire family,’ Ned repeated, horrified. ‘Bloodthirsty brutes.’
‘At the same time they will kill all the leading ministers and lords.’
‘They must be planning to burn down a palace, or something. They could do that while everyone was sitting at a banquet, or watching a play.’ He was one of the leading ministers. Suddenly this had become about saving his own life as well as the king’s. He felt a chill. ‘Where will they do it?’ he asked.
‘I have not been able to elucidate that point.’
‘Have you ever heard the name Guy Fawkes?’
Alain shook his head. ‘No. A group came to see the duke, but I don’t know who they were.’
‘No names were mentioned?’
‘No real names.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The only name I heard was a false one.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Jean Langlais,’ said Alain.
*
MARGERY WAS BOTHERED about Rollo. His answers to her questions had all been plausible, but just the same she did not trust him. However, she did not see what she could do about her unease. Of course, she could have told Ned that Rollo was Jean Langlais, but she could not bring herself to condemn her brother to the gallows just because he had muddy stockings.
While Ned was in Paris, Margery decided to take her grandson Jack, the son of Roger, on a visit to New Castle. She felt it was her duty. Whatever Jack ended up doing with his life, he could be helped by his aristocratic relations. He did not have to like them, but he had to know them. Having an earl for an uncle was sometimes better than money. And, when Bartlet died, the next earl would be his son Swifty, who was Jack’s cousin.
Jack was an enquiring, argumentative twelve-year-old. He entered energetically into disputatious conversations with Roger and with Ned, always taking the view opposite to that of the adult he was talking to. Ned said that Jack was exactly like the young Margery, but she could hardly believe she had been so cocky. Jack was small, like Margery, with the same curly dark hair. He was pretty now, but in a year or two he would begin to turn into a man, and then his looks would coarsen. The pleasure and fascination of watching children and grandchildren grow and alter was the great joy of being elderly, for Margery.
Naturally, Jack disagreed with his grandmother about the need for this visit. ‘I want to be an adventurer, like Uncle Barney,’ he said. ‘Noblemen have nothing to do with trade – they just sit back and collect rents from people.’
‘The nobility keep the peace and enforce the rules,’ she argued. ‘You can’t do business without laws and standards. How much silver is there in a penny? How wide is a yard of cloth? What happens when men don’t pay their debts?’
‘They make the rules to suit themselves,’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, the Kingsbridge Guild enforces weights and measures, not the earl.’
She smiled. ‘Perhaps you should be a statesman, like Sir Ned, rather than an adventurer.’
‘Why?’
‘You have such strong ideas about government. You could be the Government. Some of the most powerful men at court used to be clever schoolboys like you.’
He looked thoughtful. He was at the delightful age where anything seemed possible.
But she wanted him to behave himself at New Castle. ‘Be polite,’ she said as they approached. ‘Don’t argue with Uncle Bartlet. You’re here to make friends, not enemies.’
‘Very well, grandmother.’
She was not sure he had taken her warning to heart, but she had done her best. A child will always be what he is, she thought, and not what you want him to be.
Her son, Earl Bartlet, welcomed them. In his forties now, he was freckled like Margery’s father, but he had modelled himself on Bart, who, he thought, was his father. The fact that Bartlet was in truth the result of rape by Earl Swithin had not completely poisoned the relationship between mother and son, miraculously. While Jack explored the castle, Margery sat in the hall with Bartlet and drank a glass of wine. She said: ‘I hope Swifty and Jack get to know one another better.’
‘I doubt they’ll be close,’ said Bartlet. ‘There’s a big age gap between twelve and twenty.’
‘I bumped into your Uncle Rollo in London. He’s staying in a tavern. I don’t know why he doesn’t use Shiring House.’
Bartlet shrugged. ‘I’d be delighted if he would. Make my lazy caretaker do some work for a change.’
A steward poured Margery more wine. ‘You’ll be heading up to London yourself later this year, for the opening of Parliament.’
‘Not necessarily.’
Margery was surprised. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ll say I’m ill.’ All earls were obliged to attend Parliament, and if they wanted to get out of it, they had to say they were too ill to travel.
‘But what’s the real reason?’
‘I’ve got too much to do here.’
That did not make sense to Margery. ‘You’ve never missed a Parliament, since you became earl. Nor did your father and grandfather. It’s the reason you have a house in London.’
‘The new king has no interest in the views of the earl of Shiring.’
This was uncharacteristic. Bartlet, like Bart and Swithin, would normally voice his opinion – loudly – without asking whether anyone cared to hear it. ‘Don’t you want to oppose any further anti-Catholic legislation?’
‘I think we’ve lost that battle.’
‘I’ve never known you to be so defeatist.’
‘It’s important to know when to fight on – and when to stop.’ Bartlet stood up. ‘You probably want to settle into your room before dinner. Have you got everything you need?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ She kissed him and went upstairs. She was intrigued. Maybe he was not like Bart and Swithin after all. Their pride would never have allowed them to say things like I think we’ve lost that battle. They would never admit that they might have been in the wrong.
Perhaps Bartlet was growing up.
*
THE MOST DIFFICULT and dangerous part of Rollo’s plan came when he had to buy thirty-six barrels of gunpowder and bring them to Westminster.
With two of his younger conspirators he crossed the river and walked to Rotherhithe, a neighbourhood of docks and shipyards. There they went to a stable and told an ostler that they wanted to rent a sturdy flatbed cart and two horses to pull it. ‘We have to pick up a load of timbers from a demolished old ship,’ Rollo said. ‘I’m going to use them to build a barn.’ Ships’ timbers were often recycled this way.
The ostler was not interested in Rollo’s story. He showed Rollo a cart and two sturdy horses, and Rollo said: ‘Fine, that’s just what I need.’
Then the ostler said: ‘My man Weston will drive you.’
Rollo frowned. He could not accept this. A driver would witness everything. ‘I’d rather drive myself,’ he said, trying not to sound agitated. ‘I have two helpers.’
The ostler shook his head. ‘If Weston doesn’t go with you, you’ll have to pay a deposit, otherwise how do I know you’ll bring the cart back?’
‘How much?’ Rollo asked for the sake of appearances – he was willing to pay more or less anything.
‘Five pounds for each of the horses and a pound for the cart.’
‘You’ll have to give me a receipt.’
When the transaction was finalized, they drove out of the stable yard and went to a firewood supplier called Pearce. There Rollo bought faggots, irregular branches tied in bundles, and billets, which were more regular split logs, also roped together. They loaded all the wood onto the cart. Pearce was curious about Rollo’s insistence on meticulously stacking the bundles on the cart in the shape of a hollow square, leaving an empty space in the middle. ‘You must be picking up another load that you want to keep hidden,’ he said.
‘Nothing valuable,’ said Rollo, as if he was afraid of thieves.
Pearce tapped the side of his nose knowingly. ‘Enough said.’
They drove the cart to Greenwich, where Rollo had a rendezvous with Captain Radcliffe.
Guy Fawkes had calculated the amount of gunpowder required to be sure of completely destroying the House of Lords and killing everyone in it. A gentleman who owned a pistol or an arquebus might buy a box of gunpowder for his own use, and no one would ask any questions; but there was no legitimate way for Rollo to buy the quantity he needed without arousing suspicion.
His solution was to go to a criminal.
Radcliffe was a corrupt quartermaster who bought supplies for the royal navy. Half of what he purchased never went on board a ship, but was privately re-sold by him to line his own pockets. Radcliffe’s biggest problem was hiding how rich he was.
The good thing about him, from Rollo’s point of view, was that he could not babble about the sale of gunpowder, for if he did, he would be hanged for stealing from the king. He had to keep silent, for the sake of his own life.
Rollo met Radcliffe in the yard of a tavern. They loaded eight barrels onto the cart, stacking them two high in the middle of the square of firewood. A casual observer would assume the barrels contained ale.
‘You must be expecting a war,’ said Radcliffe.
Rollo had an answer ready. ‘We’re merchant sailors,’ he said. ‘We need to defend ourselves.’
‘Indeed, you do,’ said Radcliffe.
‘We’re not pirates.’
‘No,’ said Radcliffe. ‘Of course not.’
Like Pearce, Radcliffe was inclined to believe whatever Rollo denied.
When they were done they completed the square and added wood on top, so that the secret load could not be seen even from a high window.
Then Rollo drove the cart back to Westminster. He went carefully. Crashes between wheeled vehicles were commonplace, usually leading to fistfights between the drivers which sometimes escalated into street riots. The London crowd, never slow to seize an opportunity, would often rob the carts of their loads while the drivers were distracted. If that happened to him, the game would be up. He drove so cautiously, always allowing another cart to go first, that other drivers began to look suspiciously at him.
He made it back to Westminster Yard without incident.
Fawkes was waiting and opened the double doors as they approached, so that Rollo was able to drive the cart into the storeroom without stopping. Fawkes closed the doors behind the cart, and Rollo slumped with relief. He had got away with it.
He only had to do the same thing three more times.
Fawkes pointed to a new door in the wall, dimly visible by the light of a lamp. ‘I made a passage from here to the Wardrobe Keeper’s apartment,’ he said. ‘Now we can go from one to the other without stepping outside and risking being seen.’
‘Very good,’ said Rollo. ‘What about the cellar?’
‘I’ve bricked up the tunnel.’
‘Show me.’
The two men went through the new doorway into the apartment, then down the stairs to the cellar. Fawkes had filled in the hole they had made in the wall, but the repair was visible even by candlelight. ‘Get some mud or soot and dirty the new bricks,’ Rollo said. ‘And maybe hack at them a bit with a pickaxe, so that they look as if they’ve been damaged over the years.’
‘Good idea.’
‘I want that patch of wall to be indistinguishable from all the rest.’
‘Of course. But no one is going to come down here anyway.’
‘Just in case,’ said Rollo. ‘We can’t be too careful.’
They returned to the storeroom.
The other two were unloading the gunpowder barrels and rolling them to the far end of the space. Rollo directed them to put the firewood in front of the barrels, stacking the bundles carefully so that the pile would remain stable. One of the young men stood on the broken table, careful not to put his foot through the hole, and the other passed bundles up to him to be placed at the top.
When it was done Rollo studied their work carefully. No one would suspect that this was anything other than a stack of firewood. He was satisfied. ‘Even if someone were to search this place,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘they probably wouldn’t find the gunpowder.’
*
NED AND MARGERY lived in St Paul’s Churchyard, in a pleasant row house with a pear tree in the backyard. It was not grand, but Margery had made it cosy with rugs and pictures, and they had coal fires to keep the place warm in winter. Ned liked it because he could look out and see the cathedral, which reminded him of Kingsbridge.
Ned arrived back from Paris late one evening, tired and anxious. Margery made him a light supper and they went to bed and made love. In the morning he told her about his trip. She was shocked rigid by what he said, and struggled to hide her emotions. Fortunately, he was in a hurry to report to Robert Cecil, and he went out immediately after breakfast, leaving her free to think in peace.
There was a plan to kill the royal family, all except Princess Elizabeth, and at the same time all the leading ministers, which probably meant burning down a palace, Ned had said. But Margery knew more. Bartlet was going to miss the opening of Parliament, for the first time since he had become earl of Shiring. Margery had been puzzled by his decision, but now it made sense. The plotters would strike at Westminster.
The opening ceremony was ten days away.
How did Bartlet know about it? Ned had learned that Jean Langlais was involved, and Margery knew that Langlais was Rollo. Bartlet’s uncle Rollo had warned him to stay away.
She knew it all, now, but what was she to do? She could denounce Rollo to Ned, and perhaps that was what she would have to do in the end, although she shuddered with horror at the thought of sending her brother to his death. However, there might be a better way. She could go and see Rollo. She knew where he was lodging. She could tell him she knew everything and threaten to reveal all to Ned. Once Ned knew, the entire plot was doomed. Rollo would have no choice but to give the whole thing up.
She put on a heavy cloak and stout boots and went out into the London autumn.
She walked to the White Swan and found the red-nosed landlord. ‘Good day to you, Mr Hodgkinson,’ she said. ‘I was here a few weeks ago.’
The landlord was grumpy, perhaps because he had drunk too much of his own wine the night before. He gave her a look of indifference and said: ‘I can’t remember everyone who buys a cup of wine in here.’
‘No matter. I want to see Rollo Fitzgerald.’
‘There’s no one of that name in the house,’ he said tersely.
‘But he was lodging here!’
He gave her a hostile look. ‘May I ask who you are?’
Margery assumed an air of aristocratic hauteur. ‘I am the dowager countess of Shiring, and you would do well to mind your manners.’
He changed his tune. No one wanted to quarrel with an aristocrat. ‘I beg your pardon, my lady, but I can’t recall ever having a guest of the name you mentioned.’
‘I wonder if any of his friends stayed here. What about Jean Langlais?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Hodgkinson. ‘French name, though he spoke like an Englishman. But he left.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
‘No. Monsieur Langlais is not a man to give out unnecessary information, my lady. Close-mouthed, he is.’
Of course he was.
She left the inn. What was she going to do now? She had no idea where Rollo might be. There was now little point in denouncing him to Ned, for Ned would not be able to find him either. She racked her brains. People were going to commit an atrocity, and she had to stop them.
Could she give warning? Perhaps she could do that without condemning Rollo to death. She considered an anonymous letter. She could write to Ned, disguising her handwriting, and pretend to be one of the conspirators. She need not say anything about Rollo. The letter would simply warn Ned to stay away from the opening of Parliament if he wanted to live.
But that was implausible. Why would a Catholic conspirator want to save the life of a famous Protestant courtier?
On the other hand, if the letter went to a Catholic, he might approve of the plot and keep the news to himself.
What she needed was someone in between: a man who was loyal to the king, but sufficiently friendly to Catholics that they would not want to kill him. There were several such people at court, and Margery thought of Lord Monteagle, a Catholic who wanted to be at peace with his Protestant countrymen. People such as Rollo and Bartlet spoke of him as a weak ditherer, but Margery thought he was sensible. If he were warned he would sound the alarm.
She decided to write him a letter.
She stepped out to one of the many stationery shops in St Paul’s Churchyard and bought some paper of a type she did not normally use. Back in the house, she sharpened a quill with a pen knife. Using her left hand to disguise her writing, she began:
My Lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation.
That was nicely vague, she thought.
Therefore, I would advise you as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift off your attendance at this Parliament.
That was unmistakable: his life was in danger.
What would Rollo say in such a message? Something pious, perhaps.
For God and man have concurred to punish the wickedness of this time.
That seemed to have the right apocalyptic tone.
And think not slightly of this advertisement, but retire yourself into your country where you may expect the event in safety.
She needed to say something about the means by which the killing would be done. But all she knew was that Ned thought they planned to set the building on fire. She should hint at something like that.
For though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament. And yet they shall not see who hurts them.
What else would a conspirator think about? Destroying the evidence?
This counsel is not to be condemned because it may do you good, and can do you no harm; for the danger is past as soon as you have burned the letter.
And how should she end? With something sincere, she decided.
And I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it: to whose Holy protection I commend you.
She folded the letter and sealed it, pressing a coin into the soft wax and wiggling it a bit to make the impression unreadable, as if a seal ring had been carelessly applied.
Now she had to deliver it.
She would probably be seen by people at the house, and perhaps by Monteagle himself, who knew her, so she needed a disguise.
Margery and Ned employed a maid-of-all-work who was at present washing sheets in the backyard. Margery told her to take the rest of the day off and gave her sixpence to go to the bear-baiting.
She went to Ned’s wardrobe. She put on a pair of his breeches, tucking her petticoats inside for bulk, and then a frayed old doublet. Ned was slim, but, nevertheless, his clothes were too big for her. However, a mere messenger would be expected to be badly dressed. She put on a worn-down pair of his shoes and stuffed them with rags to make them fit. Her ankles were too small for a man, she saw. She pinned up her hair and put on Ned’s third-best hat.
It would be awkward if Ned were to come home now. But he would almost certainly be out all day: work would have piled up on his table while he was in Paris. And he was supposed to have dinner at Cecil’s house. The likelihood of a surprise return was low – she hoped.
In the mirror she did not look much like a man. She was too pretty, and her hands were too small. She put a coal shovel up the chimney and brought down a quantity of soot, then used it to besmirch her hands and face. That was better, the mirror told her. Now she could pass for a grubby little old man of the kind who might well be used as a messenger.
She left the house by the back door and hurried away, hoping that any neighbours who glimpsed her would not recognize her. She went east to Ald Gate, and passed through it out of the city. She walked through fields to the village of Hoxton, where Monteagle had a suburban house in a large garden. She went to the back door, as a scruffy messenger would.
A man with his mouth full of food came to the door. She handed the letter to him and said in her gruffest voice: ‘For Lord Monteagle, personal and very important.’
The man chewed and swallowed. ‘And who is it from?’
‘A gentleman that gave me a penny.’
‘All right, old boy, here’s another.’
She held out her hand, small but dirty, and took the coin, then she turned away.
*
NED WILLARD AND most of the Privy Council were sitting around Robert Cecil’s dining table when a servant came in to tell Cecil that Lord Monteagle needed to speak to him very urgently.
Cecil excused himself and asked Ned to go with him. Monteagle was waiting in a side room, looking anxious, holding a sheet of paper as if it might explode. He began with what was obviously a prepared sentence. ‘The writer of this letter appears to think me a traitor,’ he said, ‘but I hope to prove I am not by bringing the letter to you, the secretary of state, within an hour of having received it.’
It struck Ned as ironic that the tall, strapping young Lord Monteagle was so visibly frightened of the dwarfish Cecil.
‘Your loyalty isn’t in doubt,’ Cecil murmured pacifically.
That was not quite true, Ned thought; but Cecil was being polite.
Monteagle proffered the letter and Cecil took it. His high, white forehead creased in a frown as he began to read. ‘By the Mass, this is untidy handwriting.’ He read to the end, then passed it to Ned. Cecil’s hands were long and fine-boned, like those of a tall woman.
Cecil asked Monteagle: ‘How did this come to you?’
‘My manservant brought it to me at supper. It was given him by a man who came to the kitchen door. My man gave the messenger a penny.’
‘After you had read the letter, did you send someone to fetch the messenger back?’
‘Of course, but he’d disappeared. Frankly, I suspect my servant may have finished his supper before bringing the letter to me, though he swore otherwise. At all events, we couldn’t find the messenger when we looked for him. So I saddled my horse and came straight here.’
‘You did the right thing, my lord.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What do you think of it, Ned?’
‘The whole thing is plainly some kind of fake,’ said Ned.
Monteagle was surprised. ‘Really?’
‘Look. The writer cares for your preservation, he says, out of the love he bears some of your friends. It seems a bit unlikely.’
‘Why?’
‘The letter is proof of treason. If a man knows of a plot to kill the king, his duty is to tell the Privy Council; and if he does not do so he may hang for it. Would a man endanger his own life for the sake of a friend of a friend?’
Monteagle was bewildered. ‘I never thought of that,’ he said. ‘I took the letter at face value.’
Cecil smiled knowingly. ‘Sir Ned never takes anything at face value,’ he said.
‘In fact,’ Ned went on, ‘I suspect the writer is very well known to you, or at least to someone to whom you might show the letter.’
Once again Monteagle looked out of his depth. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘No one writes like this except a schoolboy who has not yet gained full control of his pen. Yet the phrasing is that of an adult. Therefore the writing is deliberately disguised. That suggests that someone who is likely to read the letter knows the sender well enough to recognize his hand.’
‘How dreadful,’ said Monteagle. ‘I wonder who it can be?’
‘The sentence about the wickedness of the time is mere padding,’ Ned went on, thinking aloud. ‘The meat of the message is in the next sentence. If Monteagle attends Parliament, he may be killed. That part, I suspect, is true. It fits with what I learned in Paris.’
Cecil said: ‘But how is the killing to be done?’
‘Key question. I believe the writer doesn’t know. Look at the vagueness. “They shall receive a terrible blow . . . they shall not see who hurts them.” It suggests danger from a distance, perhaps by cannon fire, but nothing more specific.’
Cecil nodded. ‘Or, of course, the whole thing could be a figment of a madman’s imagination.’
Ned said: ‘I don’t think so.’
Cecil shrugged. ‘There’s no concrete evidence, and nothing we can check. An anonymous letter is just a piece of paper.’
Cecil was right, the evidence was flimsy – but Ned’s instinct told him the threat was real. Anxiously he said: ‘Whatever we think, the letter must be shown to the king.’
‘Of course,’ said Cecil. ‘He’s hunting in Hertfordshire, but this will be the first thing he sees when he returns to London.’
*
MARGERY HAD ALWAYS known this terrible day would come. She had managed to forget the fact, even for years at a time, and she had been happy, but in her heart she had realized there would be a reckoning. She had deceived Ned for decades, but a lie always came back to you, sooner or later, and now that time had come.
‘I know that Jean Langlais means to kill the king,’ Ned said to her, worried and frustrated. ‘But I can’t do anything about it because I don’t know who Langlais is or where to find him.’
Margery felt crucified by guilt. She had known that the elusive man Ned had been hunting most of his life was Rollo, and she had kept this knowledge to herself.
But now it seemed that Rollo was going to kill the king and queen and their two sons, plus all the leading ministers including Ned himself. She could not allow that to happen. Yet still she was not sure what to do, for even if she revealed the secret it might not save anyone. She knew who Langlais was but not where he was, and she had no idea how he planned to kill everyone.
She and Ned were at home in St Paul’s Churchyard. They had eaten a breakfast of hen’s eggs with weak beer, and Ned had his hat on, about to leave for Robert Cecil’s house. At this moment in the day he often lingered, standing by the fire, to share his worries with her. Now he said: ‘Langlais has been very, very careful – always.’
Margery knew that was true. The secret priests she had helped Rollo smuggle into England had known him as Langlais, and none of them had been told she was his sister. The same went for all the people he conspired with to free Mary Stuart and make her queen: they all knew him as Langlais, none as Rollo Fitzgerald. In being so cautious he was unlike most of his co-conspirators. They had approached their mission in a daredevil spirit, but Rollo had known the quality of the people he was up against, especially of Ned, and he had never taken unnecessary risks.
Margery said to Ned: ‘Can’t you cancel the opening of Parliament?’
‘No. We might postpone it, or move it to a different location; though that would look bad enough: James’s enemies would say the king is so hated by the people that he’s afraid to open his own Parliament in case he might be assassinated. So James will make the decision himself. But the ceremony has to take place some time, somewhere. The country must be governed.’
Margery could bear it no longer. She said: ‘Ned, I did a terrible thing.’
At first he was not sure how to take this. ‘What?’
‘I didn’t lie to you, but I kept a secret from you. I thought I had to. I still think I had to. But you will be terribly angry.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I know who Jean Langlais is.’
Ned was uncharacteristically bewildered. ‘What? How could you – who is it?’
‘It’s Rollo.’
Ned looked as if he had been told someone had died. He went pale and his mouth dropped open. He staggered and sat down heavily. At last he said: ‘And you knew?’
Margery could not speak. She felt as if she were being strangled. She realized that tears were streaming down her cheeks. She nodded.
‘How long?’
She gasped, sobbed, and managed to say: ‘Always.’
‘But how could you keep this from me?’
When at last she found words, they came fast. ‘I thought he was just smuggling harmless priests into England to bring the sacraments to Catholics, then you found out he was conspiring to free Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth and he left the country, and he came back after the Spanish armada but he said it was all over and he wouldn’t conspire any more, and if I betrayed him, he would reveal that Bartlet and Roger had helped smuggle priests.’
‘You wrote the letter to Monteagle.’
She nodded. ‘I wanted to warn you without condemning Rollo.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Bartlet told me he’s not coming to the opening of Parliament. He’s never missed it before. Rollo must have warned him.’
‘All this going on, and I didn’t know. Me, the master spy, deceived by his own wife.’
‘Oh, Ned.’
Ned looked at her as if she were the vilest criminal. ‘And Rollo was in Kingsbridge the day Sylvie died.’
His words were like a bullet, and she found she could no longer stand. She sank to her knees on the rug. ‘You want to kill me, I can tell,’ she said. ‘Go ahead, do it, I can’t live now.’
‘I was so angry when people said I could no longer be trusted to work for Queen Elizabeth because I had married a Catholic. What fools they were, I thought. Now it turns out that I was the fool.’
‘No, you weren’t.’
He gave her a look so full of rage that it broke her heart. ‘Oh, yes, I was,’ he said.
And then he went out.
*
NED AND CECIL saw King James on the first day of November. He received them at White Hall, in the Long Gallery that ran from the private rooms to the orchard. As well as paintings the gallery featured priceless draperies in gold and silver brocade, just the kind of thing James liked.
Ned knew that Cecil doubted the authenticity of the Monteagle letter, suspecting it might be no more than a piece of troublemaking. Cecil continued to believe this even when Ned told him that Earl Bartlet, a Catholic peer, was planning to miss the opening of Parliament for no plausible reason, and had probably been warned off.
Cecil’s plan was to take all possible precautions, but not to reschedule the ceremony. Ned had a different agenda.
Ned wanted to do more than prevent the planned murders. Too often he had been on the trail of traitors only to see them scared off, after which they lived to plot another day. This time he wanted to arrest the conspirators. He wanted, finally, to get Rollo.
Cecil gave the Monteagle letter to James, saying: ‘One would, of course, never keep something such as this from your majesty. On the other hand, it may not merit being taken seriously. It isn’t backed by any facts.’
Ned added: ‘No facts, your majesty, but there are supporting indications. I heard rumours in Paris.’
James shrugged. ‘Rumours,’ he said.
Ned said: ‘You can’t believe them, and you can’t ignore them.’
‘Exactly.’ James read the letter, holding it up to the lamp, for the winter light coming through the windows was weak.
He took his time, and Ned’s thoughts strayed to Margery. He had not seen her since her revelation. He was sleeping at a tavern. He could not bear the thought of seeing her or speaking to her: it was too painful. He could not even identify the emotion that swamped him, whether rage or hatred or grief. All he could do was look away and engage his mind with something else.
The king let the beringed hand holding the letter drop to his side, and he stood still for a minute or so, looking nowhere. Ned saw intelligence in his eyes, and a determined line to his mouth, but a streak of self-indulgence was evidenced by his blemished skin and puffy eyes. It was hard, Ned guessed, to be disciplined and moderate when you possessed absolute power.
The king read the letter again, then said to Cecil: ‘What do you think?’
‘We could reinforce Westminster Yard with guards and cannons immediately. Then we could close the gates and search the precincts thoroughly. After that we could control and monitor everyone entering and leaving until the opening of Parliament is safely past.’
This was Cecil’s preferred plan, but both he and Ned knew they had to give the king options, not instructions.
James was always conscious of his public image, for all his talk of the divine right of kings. ‘We must take care not to alarm the public over what might be nothing at all,’ he said. ‘It makes the king look weak and frightened.’
‘Your majesty’s safety is paramount. But Sir Ned has an alternative suggestion.’
James looked enquiringly at Ned.
Ned was ready. ‘Consider this, your majesty. If there is a plot, then perhaps the preparations are not yet complete. So if we act now we may fail to find what we’re looking for. Worse, we may find incomplete preparations, which would give us only questionable evidence at a trial. Then the Catholic pamphleteers would say the charges were trumped up as a pretext for persecution.’
James did not yet get the point. ‘We have to do something.’
‘Indeed. In order to catch all the plotters and seize the maximum amount of incriminating evidence, we need to pounce at the last minute. That will protect your majesty both immediately and, importantly, in the future as well.’ Ned held his breath: this was the crucial point.
James looked at Cecil. ‘I think he may be right.’
‘It’s for your majesty to judge.’
The king turned back to Ned. ‘Very well. Act on the fourth of November.’
‘Thank you, your majesty,’ Ned said with relief.
Ned and Cecil back away, bowing, then the king was struck by an afterthought and said: ‘Do we have any idea who is behind this wickedness?’
All Ned’s frenzy at Margery came back to him in a tidal wave, and he struggled to suppress the shaking of his body. ‘Yes, your majesty,’ he said in a voice that was barely controlled. ‘It’s a man called Rollo Fitzgerald from Shiring. I’m ashamed to tell you that he’s my brother-in-law.’
‘In that case,’ said James with more than a hint of menace, ‘by God’s blood, you’d better catch the swine.’