The Lady of Secrets (28 page)

At first they had pretended to come from a family persecuted and ruined because of their adherence to the Catholic faith, thus forcing Amelia and Beatrice into a life of degradation in order to survive. But it had not taken long for the women to reveal their true nature.

He did not know which of them he found to be the worst, Beatrice with her mocking eyes and cruel smile or Amelia with her syrupy voice and ridiculous efforts to be all coy and girlish.

But he reminded himself he would soon be rid of them forever. It would all be over in less than a fortnight, everything …

He quickened his pace, hurrying through the area the locals referred to as the Cotton Garden. Westminster Palace loomed ahead of him, the ancient walls softened by moonlight, shadows concealing the havoc time had wrought upon the red sandstone. It had been a long time since Westminster
was an official royal residence, not since the days of Edward the Confessor. Much of the original structure had been destroyed by fire. What remained had become a curious jumble of parliamentary chambers and law courts rubbing shoulders with private lodgings, wine shops, taverns, and brothels.

Patrick tipped back his head, peering up at the upper story of the palace’s left wing. Known as the Queen’s Chamber, it was where James Stuart would address the House of Lords in ten days’ time. Patrick tried to picture it as a blackened shell, stone rubble and fallen beams. Tried and failed. Such destructive imaginings held no reality. Those centuries-old walls appeared too strong, too smugly serene beneath the pale October moon.

He lowered his gaze and made his way toward a door on the ground floor of the palace, directly beneath the Queen’s Chamber. He rapped out the prearranged signal and waited, casting a nervous look about him.

The door creaked open a crack. He could just make out the face of Mr. Johnston, the man’s eyes a mere glint above his thick mustache and bushy beard. When he recognized Patrick, he opened the door wide enough to allow him to enter and then closed it quickly behind him.

“Sir Patrick,” Johnston growled by way of greeting.

“Johnston,” Patrick began, but considering the hour and the place, such pretense seemed unnecessary.

“Mr. Fawkes,” he amended.

Fawkes carried a lantern, but it cast a feeble glow to illuminate the vast cavelike chamber that yawned before Patrick. Thick with dust and cobwebs clinging to the wooden beams, the room appeared empty except for piles of fallen masonry and the enormous stack of firewood.

Patrick had heard about the cellar that had been leased
when the arrangements had first been made. But he had never yet seen it for himself. It was not at all the small, underground hole that he had imagined.

“What was this place?” he asked Fawkes.

“I believe it once served as the kitchens for the old palace.”

It was not Fawkes who answered, but another voice that echoed off the chamber’s cavernous walls. Patrick started, glancing to his right where two men emerged from the shadows.

One was Thomas Percy, his shock of white hair and pale face visible against the backdrop of the walls and his own dark clothing. He gave Patrick a terse nod, but the man who had spoken, Robert Catesby, stepped forward and wrung Patrick’s hand with as much warmth and ease as though they greeted each other in one of the antechambers at Whitehall.

Catesby was a handsome man, tall and athletic. He possessed a quality that Patrick envied and was hard-pressed to define. Catesby had a kind of radiance that drew other men to him. He easily gained their trust.

Catesby made a graceful gesture that encompassed the entire chamber. “This place has served no purpose for years, except to be leased out as a storeroom, which makes it ideal for our purposes, located as it is, directly below the old Queen’s Chamber.”

Patrick glanced up at the wooden beams of the ceiling. It presented but a weak barrier between this chamber and where parliament would convene. But the very openness of this vast room disturbed him.

Catesby was indisputably the leader of their group, having worked on this plot for the last two years. As a latecomer recruited only the past summer, Patrick still felt like an outsider.
He had never questioned any of Catesby’s arrangements or decisions before, but now he could not help but demur.

“I had imagined a cellar, some small room all but forgotten. Is there not a danger in employing this large store-room so readily accessible? What if someone inspects this place and notices all of that?” He pointed at the mountain of wood.

“Unlikely. No one ever comes down here,” Catesby said.

Fawkes added, “You can see that most of the tracks through the dirt were made by my boots. But if by chance someone did become curious to have a look at the old kitchens, what would they see? Just the firewood I have amassed to get me through the winter. My lodging is close by.”

“It would seem a great deal of firewood for one person,” Patrick said.

Fawkes gave a thin smile. “I am a very cold man.”

Catesby strode over to the woodpile. He reached for one of the logs, easing it aside. Patrick moved closer to watch, but he maintained a cautious distance as did Thomas Percy, a fact that did not escape Fawkes’s notice.

The man laughed. “You need not be so nervous, gentlemen. You’ll come to no harm as long as Catesby doesn’t conduct his inspection while holding a lighted torch.”

Catesby eased away several of the logs, exposing the end of one crate. “So how many of these are there now?”

“Thirty-six,” Fawkes said.

When Catesby started to pry off the lid, Fawkes protested, “There is no need for that. I have kept careful watch over the powder, tested it frequently to make sure it does not become decayed.”

“Decayed?” Patrick asked.

“Aye, when gunpowder sits for too long, it breaks down
into its various parts of ammonium and sulfate. It becomes utterly worthless. That is what happened to the first supply we laid in over a year ago. Replacing it was a costly and risky business. That is why we cannot afford another delay, so I hope you have done your part, Sir Patrick.”

Before Sir Patrick could answer, Thomas Percy spoke up for him. “He has. The king’s fears have been allayed by that cunning woman Sir Patrick fetched from France. She convinced the king the curse has been lifted, although I cannot fathom how. We all know what a poor opinion of women the king has and Mistress Wolfe did not look like anything out of the ordinary.”

Didn’t she? From the moment Patrick had first seen Meg, he had sensed something different about her, something fey that had disconcerted him. He marveled at Percy’s inability to see it.

Fawkes regarded him curiously. “So how did she convince the king? What magic did she employ?”

“None.” But Patrick shifted uneasily as he recalled the way Meg had stared into the king’s eyes as though she not only had the ability to read James’s mind, but could influence his thoughts as well. Patrick would have been ashamed to admit it to a hardened soldier like Fawkes, but he had become afraid of Meg, so terrified of her strange power, he was leery of returning to his own home.

“She appeared to simply hold the king’s hands and pray over him.”

“She
prayed
over him?” Percy marveled. “Odd sort of behavior for a witch.”

“It little matters how she did it,” Catesby said. “The important thing is that the king will not delay the opening of parliament again.”

Fawkes looked skeptical. “Aye, unless those witches do something further to torment him.”

“They won’t. They want to see James punished as much as we do, but they will cease their mischief. I shall see to it,” Sir Patrick said.

Catesby appeared satisfied. He turned back to his inspection of the crates. “You are sure we have accrued enough powder?” he asked Fawkes.

“Enough to blast away the chamber above us and every man in it.”

“Every man, woman, and child,” Sir Patrick murmured.

“We all knew that Queen Anne and Prince Henry would attend the opening ceremony with the king. Is that now a problem for you, Sir Patrick?” Catesby asked.

“No, but the king might bring his youngest son as well. Prince Charles is only four years old.”

“He’s always been a sickly lad. So weak he just learned to walk this year. He’d be likely to die soon anyway,” Fawkes said.

“Is that what we must tell ourselves to justify the slaughter of an innocent?”

Fawkes glared at him. “This is a holy war, Sir Patrick, and in any conflict, there are always innocent casualties.”

Patrick knew that better than anyone, but he could not dispel the image of little Charles taking those first wobbly steps, James kneeling down and holding his arms wide until the boy tottered into them. Then with a laugh of triumph, he hugs his son and lifts him up, James’s face beaming with fatherly pride and joy.

Patrick closed his eyes against the memory, forcing another image of James Stuart to the forefront of his mind, the
cowardly king, just like any other monarch, callous and indifferent to the suffering he caused.

Patrick groped beneath his jerkin, his fingers closing over the locket that held the precious strands of
her
hair and for a moment, his grief was as savage as if it were only yesterday that—

“Sir Patrick?” Fawkes’s voice dragged him back to the present. Patrick opened his eyes to find the mercenary soldier all but in his face as Fawkes demanded, “Am I the only one who remembers that a good and holy man is slated to die today? In the eyes of God, Father Gregoire is worth a thousandfold more than that sickly Stuart whelp. Yet our priest is to be executed in the most brutal fashion possible, hanged, cut down while he still lives, his bowels torn out before his own eyes.”

“I am well aware of that, Mr. Fawkes.” Patrick took a step back and crossed himself. “None of us has forgotten and we will all pray for Father Gregoire.”

“We are past the point of praying,” Fawkes snapped. “Unless we want to see our brethren continue to be slaughtered, we must act and with none of these womanish qualms.”

“Aye, but what of our brethren in parliament?” Thomas Percy protested. “There will be men in that chamber who are as committed to the true faith as we—young Lord Monteagle, Lord Montrose, and my own kinsman, the Earl of Northumberland. If we could but find some means to warn them to stay away from the parliament—”

“We have already discussed this, Thomas,” Catesby said, a thread of impatience in his voice. “I deplore the loss of those good men as much as you, but any attempt to alert anyone can only serve to arouse suspicion. Far too many know of
our plans already. If anyone breathes a word in the wrong quarter, we all risk exposure.”

Patrick had wrestled with his own conscience over the matter, but he was obliged to agree with Catesby. Many good men would die in the explosion, but just as many were hazarding their lives in this holy cause. Patrick did not know all the names of his fellow conspirators nor did he want to, in case anything went wrong and he found himself arrested. He wanted to believe he was the stuff of martyrs, but he also knew men far stronger than he had broken under the torture of the rack.

Patrick caressed the locket, only vaguely aware that the other three men had moved on to discuss all that needed to be done after the assassination of the king, but he had nothing to contribute. He could not seem to think past the explosion, as though the conflagration that would be the culmination of all his years of purpose and planning would burn away his anger and grief, reducing him to a pile of ashes as well.

Catesby’s voice seemed to come from a great distance as he reminded them of where all the conspirators would rendezvous after the explosion to incite rebellion and seize control of the government. Fawkes was to set sail for Europe and seek audience with all the Catholic monarchs, enlist support by convincing them of the justice of their cause.

“Justice! At least be honest with yourself and acknowledge your plot for what it is … revenge.”

Armagil’s troubling words echoed through Patrick’s mind, but his hand clamped down tight upon the locket. If revenge was what was in his heart, then so be it. He’d confess his sin, do his penance, and trust to God’s forgiveness.

Fawkes replaced the logs, carefully concealing the crate of gunpowder as they prepared to take their leave. Thomas
Percy was the first to do so, disappearing into the night. Patrick prepared to follow suit when he was arrested by Catesby’s gentle touch upon his arm.

“You are more quiet tonight than usual, Sir Patrick. Not having second thoughts, I trust?”

“No, sir. I assure you there is no possibility of that.”

“And you know your part?”

Patrick nodded. “Go hunting with the king, keep him free from any further alarm, and make sure he returns in time.”

“I meant your part after the deed is done. You realize something will have to be done about those ungodly women. They may despise James Stuart as much as we do, but we cannot have the success of our holy cause tainted by any association with their petty revenge. Those witches will have to be … silenced, including the one that now resides beneath your roof.”

Margaret Wolfe, the one to whom Patrick had given his word of honor that she would be safe if she accompanied him to England. He felt a stab of conscience, but that pledge had been given when he had thought Meg to be a good woman, the gentle healer she proclaimed herself to be.

“I understand what needs to be done,” he said. “Amelia Rivers was foolish enough to confide in me that she and her sister plan to hold some hellish rite of celebration on the night before the explosion. I know where they intend to meet with the rest of their coven. I shall make sure they are all captured. None will escape.”

“Good.” Catesby smiled. “Although it is a trifle ironic. When King James perishes in the fire, it will seem as though the witch’s curse came true. Had you thought of that?”

“Oh, yes,” Patrick said softly. “I have thought about that a great deal.”

“T
WO O’CLOCK AND THE WEATHER IS FAIR.”

The watchman’s voice seemed to come from far off as Meg fought to keep awake. The hours after midnight were the loneliest, most treacherous, most dangerous time of day.