The Drowned City

Book 0: Daniel Pursglove

by K.J. Maitland

Genres: Historical Fiction; Renaissance; Crime Fiction; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

'This gripping thriller shows what a wonderful storyteller Maitland is' THE TIMES

'A dark and enthralling historical novel with a powerful narrative. The mysterious Daniel Pursglove has all the qualifications for a memorable series hero' ANDREW TAYLOR

'A colourful, compelling novel which makes a fine opening to a promised series' SUNDAY TIMES

'Devilishly good' DAILY MAIL

Gunpowder and treason changed England forever. But the tides are turning and revenge runs deep in this compelling historical thriller for fans of C.J. Sansom, Andrew Taylor's Ashes of London, Kate Mosse and Blood & Sugar.

1606. A year to the day that men were executed for conspiring to blow up Parliament, a towering wave devastates the Bristol Channel. Some proclaim God's vengeance. Others seek to take advantage.

In London, Daniel Pursglove lies in prison waiting to die. But Charles FitzAlan, close adviser to King James I, has a job in mind that will free a man of Daniel's skill from the horrors of Newgate. If he succeeds.

For Bristol is a hotbed of Catholic spies, and where better for the lone conspirator who evaded arrest, one Spero Pettingar, to gather allies than in the chaos of a drowned city? Daniel journeys there to investigate FitzAlan's lead, but soon finds himself at the heart of a dark Jesuit conspiracy - and in pursuit of a killer.

'Skilfully interweaves the threads of natural catastrophe, murder, conspiracy and espionage that go right to the heart of the Jacobean court' TRACY BORMAN

'Spies, thieves, murderers and King James I? Brilliant' CONN IGGULDEN

'There are few authors who can bring the past to life so compellingly - it was a genuine treat to follow Pursglove into the devastated streets of Bristol where shadows and menace lurk round almost every corner... Brilliant writing and more importantly, riveting reading' SIMON SCARROW

'The intrigues of Jacobean court politics simmer beneath the surface in this gripping and masterful crime novel... Maitland's post-flood Bristol is an apocalyptic world, convincingly anchored in its period, while eerily echoing the devastation of more recent natural disasters. I can't wait for more!' KATHERINE CLEMENTS

'Beautifully written with a dark heart, Maitland knows how to pull you deep into the early Jacobean period' RHIANNON WARD
(P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: April 1, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 400

Sample

NEWGATE GAOL, LONDON

FEBRUARY 1606

‘YOU’LL HAVE TO FIGHT each other for it!’ the turnkey shouted above the din of the crowded cell. He was standing in front of the only door at the far end of the long dungeon, dangling the last portion of bread between a decrepit old man and a skinny young boy. The turnkey grinned broadly, revealing his few remaining tobacco-stained teeth. Charity food was supposed to be shared equally between all the prisoners on the common side of the gaol, but they all knew the head gaoler kept the best of it to sell to those prisoners who were lucky enough still to have a few coins, and his turnkeys liked to have their sport with what remained.

One of the prisoners at the opposite end of the cell slowly lifted his head and turned to stare at the unfolding scene. He had not shared his name with his fellow inmates – not even a false name, as most offered. But dogs and men alike must be called something, so they had dubbed him Gallows on account of the scarlet firemark that twisted around his throat like a hangman’s noose, and which even his matted black beard could not quite conceal.

A few of the other prisoners had begun to edge towards the turnkey, wolves slinking from the shadows, their eyes fixed on the half-loaf of bread. The turnkey’s two assistants raised their halberds across their chests, gesturing for them to stay back. But most men were trying to shuffle well out of the way, those in irons dragging their heavy chains with them as best they could. When fights broke out, anyone unlucky enough to be too close could get their faces smashed or their legs broken.

Gallows sank down to his haunches, clutching his own ration of bread tightly to his chest. He pressed his back against the wall, ignoring the green slime oozing down the sharp stones. His shirt was already so mouldy and stinking, it scarcely mattered what else fouled it, but even after four months rotting in this hell pit – or was it five now? – he still hadn’t grown used to the maddening itch of the lice swarming through his dark hair and beard. He clawed furiously at them.

‘That’s it, you have a good scratch while you can,’ one of the guards called out. ‘When they chop off your hands, what you going to use to rub your itch then – your pizzle?’

The men around him shifted uncomfortably. But it wasn’t pity that prevented them from joining in the guard’s mockery, or even fear of Gallows’ fists – he’d never raised a hand to any of them. But they’d all heard the rumours about why he was here, and they had enough troubles of their own without baiting a man who could call down even more misery upon them, especially now that his iron shackles had been removed.

Gallows alone laughed at the guard’s feeble joke. But he had watched the executioner’s blade slice through the flesh and bone of others many times. He had heard the agonised screams, seen the humiliation and misery of the years that stretched out beyond, and it was all he could do not to heave his guts into the straw.

The long, narrow underground chamber was crammed full of prisoners awaiting trial and contemplating what lay in store for them. The Hole, as they called it, where the common men were caged – as opposed to the masters’ quarters that housed the prisoners of rank and means – had no bed boards, no fires and no blankets, unless you could pay for them. The slime that dripped from the walls was only kept from freezing in winter by the heat from their bodies, and the air was clotted with the sweat of unwashed flesh, the fetid breath and farts from sour stomachs and the noxious clouds of tarry smoke expelled by those prisoners who could afford to buy the foul-smelling tobacco from the gaoler. That first night when Gallows had lain shivering on the floor listening to the snores, whimpers and groans, he’d been certain he would suffocate in that nauseous stench, but death does not come any more easily than sleep when you ache for it.

He should have seen it coming, should have got out of London long before. They say a violent wind rages when a great monarch dies. There may not have been a storm at the hour of the old Queen’s death, but the wind had changed that day, and when the foreign Scottish king rode into London, cloaked in his fear and superstition, the mood in the city had begun to darken. People shrank into themselves, their shoulders hunched and their eyes lowered as they do when they hurry along the streets on a cold, wet evening. The summer of the Queen’s reign was turning to winter under the new king. But Gallows had not understood just how keenly that winter wind would bite, until the night he’d been jerked from sleep by the hammering on the door of his lodgings, felt the gloved hands seize him and drag him, naked, down the narrow stairs, gagging from the iron bit they’d thrust into his mouth.

‘Not hungry?’ The turnkey was waving the bread in the faces of the two prisoners, as if he was taunting chained dogs. ‘What about you, sirrah, I thought you used to be one of the Queen’s men, killed a dozen Spaniards with your bare hands, didn’t you? Why don’t you show us how it’s done?’

The older prisoner was white-haired, his back crooked as a gnarled apple tree. He seemed ancient to Gallows, but he probably wasn’t. When Gallows had been dragged into Newgate, the gaoler had recorded his age as thirty or thereabouts, for the prisoner had never known the day or even the year of his birth. But he was certain he must look twice as old as that man now. What would he look like after four months had been dragged into six or eight or ten? Some men rotted in the Hole for years before they were brought to trial, if they ever were.

The old man rocked unsteadily on his feet. A glistening line of grey drool oozed slug-like from the corner of his mouth and trailed through his sparse beard. The other prisoners reckoned his wits had long since fled. The boy who faced him was a good foot shorter. His ribs stood out on his bare chest like those on a starveling greyhound. A single blow would surely snap them like kindling. In the coppery light of the turnkey’s lamp it was hard to see the expressions of the two prisoners, but both were plainly trying to slink away.

Gallows lowered his head and tried to swallow the last of his own dry bread without coughing. Sometimes the pails of greasy, grey water would not be brought in until hours later in the day, and the men were forced to eat while their throats were raw from breathing in the foul night air, with nothing to wash the hard crumbs down. It encouraged those who still had money, or relatives to provide it, to buy beer and wine from the gaoler’s tap. However stale or sour the ale was, if you were thirsty it was as welcome as the finest sack.

The only furnishings in the Hole were the rings embedded in walls, pillars and blocks to which neck and heavy leg irons could be chained. As many irons were fastened to a man as the head gaoler was inclined to load upon him, until the prisoner paid to have them removed. Those who had languished there for many months took a malicious delight in telling newcomers that a man had once been fastened so tightly to the wall by the neck, it had broken his back, while others had been forced into leg irons so small that they had lost the limb. Raw, weeping lesions around Gallows’ ankles marked where the irons had bitten into his flesh and rubbed against his bone. And the rats always returned to gnaw on the same tasty sore.

Then, without explanation or warning, three days ago, he’d been dragged to the room where his irons had been struck off. The fee had been paid, the turnkey told him. But by whom? He hadn’t a single relative living in this world that he knew of and no friend who would risk being associated with him after his arrest. But the turnkey only shrugged when he asked the identity of his benefactor.

‘Gaoler gives his orders for them to come off, so off they come. And,’ he added, jabbing his finger at the prisoner, ‘you’d do well to bless your good fortune instead of asking pert questions. The gaoler can have them loaded on you again any time he pleases. You want to remember that.’

That night he’d lain awake, kicking at the rats, and wondering if his irons had been removed by mistake when the mercy had been bought for some other man. It certainly hadn’t been done on the orders of that bastard Molyngton who’d interrogated him before he’d been cast into Newgate. Molyngton would gladly have seen him chained to a wall by a spiked iron collar, as would the spectators who’d been howling for his blood like a hoard of rapacious demons. There was only one who’d dared to meet his gaze, a woman who had smiled encouragingly from the gallery, as if she didn’t care who saw her, but then she must have been a woman of some consequence, else she would not have been admitted to the interrogation. The delicate lace ruff that circled her slender neck and the ruby and pearl jewel at her breast were finer than any merchant’s wife would wear. The wife of some official at the Royal Court, perhaps? Although the dark auburn hair piled high on her head had not been covered by a married woman’s coif – but, these days, that did not always signify. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman of rank had shown him favour.

The shouts from the other prisoners had settled into a steady chant of Fight! Fight!

‘I’ll wager my bread on the old cadger.’

‘Two pence on the boy taking first blood.’

Fight! Fight! Fight! Prisoners started beating time with their irons. One who was chained to a pillar in the centre of the room began whimpering in fear, pressing his hands to his ears and rocking like a frightened child.

The turnkey’s two assistants marched towards the two prisoners, their boots crunching on the lice and beetles that so thickly carpeted the flagstones it sounded as if they were walking over gravel. They jabbed the old man and the young lad in their backs with the points of their halberds, prodding them closer. A scarlet flower slowly blossomed on the man’s shirt where the metal tip had pierced the skin. The young lad gazed wildly around, his eyes rolling like a terrified horse’s.

A prisoner, crouching in the furthest corner of the cell, clambered to his feet, his fists clenched. He lumbered towards the turnkey. But Gallows’ hand shot out, grabbing the man’s ankle and digging his fingers into his leg iron sores until he sank down again.

‘Not your fight, brother,’ Gallows muttered. ‘That bastard’ll have you flayed to the bone and them alongside you.’

The turnkey was losing patience. He seized the lad by the back of the neck and cracked the boy’s head against the old man’s. Both staggered backwards, and the old man tumbled to the floor, but was swiftly hauled to his feet by two of the assistants. The turnkey, still holding the boy by the scruff, shoved him hard so that he collided with the old man again.

‘Punch him, go on!’

The lad cringed in fear and humiliation. He raised his skinny arms to protect his head, leaving his belly exposed. One of the guards jabbed him violently in the guts and he doubled over. The turnkey reached for the lad’s hair, intending to drag him upright—

A thump echoed from the stone as the door was pushed open with such violence that it crashed into the wall. The guards always flung the door wide and sprang back to ensure that they couldn’t be ambushed. All heads turned. The head gaoler stood wrapped in the flickering red-orange glow from the torches in the passageway, looking like a demon risen from a stage trapdoor, except that he held no pitchfork. Lifting a lantern, he peered at the tableau posed in front of him.

‘So, this is where you’re skulking, Lacy. What’s keeping you?’ He took pace inside, wrinkling his nose at the stench, for he seldom troubled to come down to the bowels of the prison himself. ‘There’s a prisoner wanted up top in quick time, and no one to fetch him. No point in me keeping a hound, if I have to do my own barking. You want to remember that, if you want to stay turnkey here.’

‘Went mad, he did, attacked this lad without any cause,’ the turnkey protested indignantly, jerking his chin towards the old man.

‘Should be in irons, he should,’ one of the assistants muttered, twisting the prisoner’s arm up his back, as if he was hoping to make him snarl like a wild man in a cage.

Lacy shuffled forward and seized the old man’s shoulder, as if to prove it took three strapping men to restrain him. ‘Don’t you worry, sir, we’ll flog the fight out of him. He’ll not cause trouble after that, if he survives.’

‘Aye, well, you’ll have to wait for his hide.’ The head gaoler held the lantern higher, peering down the long chamber. Finally, he pointed to Gallows. ‘He’s the man I’ve come for. Fetch him. He’s about to get what he deserves.’

‘MOVE YOUR SCABBY ARSE. I’ve a hot dinner waiting for me,’ the gaoler growled, as the prisoner stumbled ahead of him up the stone steps and down a long passageway. The blazing torches in the brackets along the walls guttered and smoked in the icy blasts that blew in through the narrow slits. He gulped greedily at the fresh air and tried to snatch a glimpse of the outside world, but the windows were too narrow to see more than a flash of watery daylight as the gaoler prodded him past.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

Gallows was sure of one thing; he was not being led to the gate through which the felons were taken to the assizes. Nor was this the way to the room with the blacksmith’s forge – and the head gaoler would not come in person to fetch a prisoner to be returned to irons.

Had Molyngton changed his mind or been persuaded to change it? Was he now determined not just to demand a confession, but to extract one by whatever means might prove expedient to loosen a stubborn tongue? The bastard would relish that.

When did you make a pact with the Devil?

What form does your familiar take?

There had been witnesses, or so Molyngton declared – though they had not been brought to Westminster to testify, for fear that the accused would take revenge on them – witnesses who had sworn they had seen him transform a mouse into a viper by sorcery and burn a doll with fire, before making it reappear whole and unmarked.

Do you dare to deny it?

Will you add to your manifold sins and crimes by lying before God?

The gaoler halted before a low door, thrust it open and jerked his head, impatient for his charge to enter. The prisoner edged towards the doorway, bracing himself for whatever might be waiting for him inside. The rough stone wall and the paved slabs of the floor seemed to undulate in the light of a candle burning somewhere beyond his sight, and his guts twisted into a hard knot. No window, then. That did not bode well. No one could hear you scream in a room like this.

‘What are you waiting for? Get in there,’ the gaoler growled. He seized the prisoner by the back of his shirt and thrust him violently through the doorway.

The door slammed behind him with a hollow echo that set the stones ringing, and Gallows found himself in a long and narrow chamber. Aside from iron rings set at intervals in the wall, the only furniture was a plain table at the far end on which a single candle burned on an iron pricket. The flame was so dim that the corners of the room lay in darkness, but the floor in the centre of the room was empty. He ran his gaze swiftly over walls and ceiling. No racks, or vices or whips. No chains or ropes dangling from hooks in the beam. It was said they always ensured prisoners saw the instruments of persuasion the moment they were brought in, for the sight alone was often enough to loosen a man’s tongue. It was only as the shadow behind the table moved that he realised someone was already seated there.

‘Come closer, sirrah. I’ve nae desire for my words to be heard by the whole of Newgate.’ The man’s accent was Scottish, thick as curds, but there was nothing to be learned from that, you couldn’t take a dozen paces in London now without hearing it. Englishmen grumbled that so many men had followed their king south that the only Scots left north of the border were highland cattle.

A long, grimy hand snaked out of the shadows and lifted the pricket to inspect the prisoner more closely, but in doing so the stranger briefly illuminated his own face. He was a broad-shouldered figure, plainly clad, with unfashionably short hair and a sparse though neatly trimmed beard. Drooping bags beneath his eyes seemed to suggest a man who slept but fitfully. He set the candle down on the table, plunging his own features back into darkness.

‘You grow thin, Daniel. Prison does nae suit you, but I warrant you’ll have even less flesh on your bones after a month dangling in a gibbet cage.’

Gallows’ head gave a little jerk. No one had called him Daniel since he’d arrived in Newgate. ‘You have the advantage of me, sir. The gaoler didn’t tell me your name.’

The man snorted. ‘It’s not his business to do so. But I’ve been told ye canna contain your curiosity. We share that much in common, as do all men of wit and intelligence. So, I’ll satisfy yours. FitzAlan’s my name . . . Charles FitzAlan, a close confidant of the King. I like to think I am the King’s most trusted adviser.’

Every fool at Court flattered himself he was that, Gallows thought.

FitzAlan rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, pressing his long fingers together. The nails were rimmed with black, as if he had been clawing in the ground – at least, Gallows hoped it was dirt and not dried blood.

‘His Majesty the King has lately received lamentable news of a disaster that has befallen his realm. Some days ago, a great flood swept in from the sea up the Channel of Bristol, destroying numerous villages and drowning many people and livestock. As yet, it is not known how many have perished. They say as many as two thousand souls are lost, but the waters still cover the land and it may be weeks before some places can be reached and the full extent of the damage discovered, for the lands are low-lying and the sea has invaded far inland, in places as much as fourteen miles.’

The prisoner looked up sharply. ‘But the storm didn’t reach London?’

‘There was no storm,’ FitzAlan said. ‘The sea raged in without reason or warning. It was . . .’ He seemed to consider the word. ‘It was a most unnatural disaster and in that lies the rub.’

Unnatural – Molyngton had used that same word at his interrogation.

‘The flood struck on the thirtieth day of January. Does that strike you as interesting, Daniel?’

‘You can’t tell night from day in this place, sir, save by the changing faces of the guards. I don’t even know how many months have passed since I was brought here.’

‘Come now, sirrah, that date is surely burned into the remembrance of the whole of London, indeed the whole of England,’ FitzAlan said impatiently. ‘It was the day that the first of the Gunpowder Treason conspirators received justice on the quartering block.’

The prisoner suddenly saw where this was leading. Was it really only a year ago? It seemed now like a dozen lifetimes. If it had been any other execution, he would have been there in the crowd waiting for the condemned, plying his trade among the piemakers and broadside sellers. But that day was not a day for magic, and he’d taken refuge from the biting cold by the warming fire of an inn. London was as agitated as a nest of angry wasps and even he’d had more sense than to risk being stung.

Thomas Bates, Everard Digby, John Grant and Robert Wintour, along with the three other prisoners who had conspired to blow up King and Parliament, had been tied to hurdles and dragged to St Paul’s Churchyard, there to be hung and then cut down before they lost consciousness, castrated, disembowelled and quartered. And though most men in England had not actually watched the spectacle themselves, in the weeks to come they would be almost convinced they had, for the account of the barbarous deaths had spread faster than a fire in a field of dry corn. And for those who had not heard the tale as they drank their tankards of ale in London’s inns, the broadsides detailed each brutal slash of the executioner’s knife, every cry of agony, for those eager to lap up the last bloody drop of that play.

But rumours persisted that some, if not all, of the men who were dragged to the quartering block on that day and the next were innocent or, at the very least, had been deliberately drawn into the conspiracy by the Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, to harden King and country against the recusants.

‘Well, Daniel, can you see what conclusions some might draw from the flood striking on the very anniversary of the executions?’

What manner of trap was this man baiting? Gallows had been raised in one of the great Catholic houses of England and although it had been fifteen years since Lord Fairfax had thrown him out of his household, fifteen years since he’d heard the words of the Mass murmured in low voices, he knew full well what Catholics would be muttering about this flood – and not just behind locked doors, and in the secret priest holes, but openly in the taverns and marketplaces, too.

‘Speak up, sirrah! It will not profit you to play the gowk with me. Your wits were as keen as the eye of a hawk, and your tongue ready enough to answer, when Sir Henry Molyngton questioned you.’

The prisoner ran his tongue over his cracked lips, selecting his words with care. ‘There may be some fanatical recusants who might be foolish enough to believe that this flood was a sign of God’s anger . . . revenge for the executions.’

He waited for the King’s adviser to press harder, but instead FitzAlan nodded gravely, as if that was the answer he had been seeking.

‘Aye, some would say as much, and it takes but a wee pinch of yeast to make the whole vat ferment. I don’t doubt you know, as does every Jack and Jill in England, that after the King and all Parliament had been blown asunder, the plotters intended to slaughter every Scot in London, kidnap the King’s own daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, and install that young lass upon the throne.’

It may have been the flicker of the candle flame, but Gallows thought he saw a tremor convulse the man behind the table, as if he was seeing the bloody and mutilated remains of his Sovereign and friend lying before him.

The moment passed and FitzAlan resumed, fixing his gaze on the prisoner. ‘But that threat has not receded. The Gunpowder Treason was not the first attempt to be made on the King’s life, nor will it be the last. If the recusants take this flood as a sign from God, it might encourage the Catholics to rise up against their lawful Sovereign.’

Gallows knew this was no imaginary fear. As a boy in the Fairfax household he’d learned to hide in the shadows – curiosity always overcoming the threat of a beating – as he’d strained to hear the earnest conversations between the old chaplain and the young priests who oftentimes slipped into the house under the cover of darkness. He’d not understood much of what the young men had excitedly gabbled back then, but after the arrest and trial of the gunpowder plotters, the phrases he remembered hearing had taken on a new and chilling clarity.

Was this the reason for FitzAlan’s interest in him? But even if he had somehow discovered he’d once been a member of that Catholic household, it had been over fifteen years since George Fairfax had ordered him to leave. Fairfax’s old chaplain, Father Waldegrave, was probably long dead by now, and the King himself had banished all the zealous young priests from England.

Gallows’ skin prickled, sensing that the trap was about to be sprung. He fought to keep his expression blank, glad of the guttering candlelight that masked any flicker of disquiet that might betray him. He held himself taut as FitzAlan hunched forward, studying him, as though trying to make up his mind about something. But his face, too, was cloaked in shadow and twisting flame. The stone walls undulated in the sickly yellow light as if they were dissolving. An unnerving silence filled the small chamber, amplifying the rasp of the prisoner’s own breath and the relentless drip of water beating on hollow flags. Gallows waited.

THE CHAIR BENEATH FitzAlan’s backside creaked as he leaned back. ‘This catastrophic flood has wrought much damage, not merely to those villages and towns it has destroyed, but to the whole realm. The ports along the west coast are almost destroyed, as are the King’s ships and sea defences. If a single wall of a castle is breached, then the castle lies at the mercy of any who might seek to take it, and this flood has breached one wall of the mighty fortress that is England. I don’t doubt news has already reached the shores of France and Holland, and it will speed swiftly enough to Spain.’

He held up his hand, casting a snake’s head shadow on the wall. ‘True, the King has made peace with Catholic Spain, but the Pope is not enamoured of that peace and with encouragement from the English Jesuits who have fled to Europe, there are some who might seek to break that treaty, especially if they thought there was a chance to install the Spanish Infanta as Queen of England. Twice before, enemies of the King have used witchcraft to try to destroy him through the conjuring of storms at sea. And twice they were defeated by the grace of God. But the King needs to know if his enemies have made a third attempt. Was this flood also conjured by enchantments? Were witches and sorcerers paid by the Jesuits to wreck the King’s ports and ships, to open England’s gates to an invading army?’

He rocked forward in his chair, as if about to impart a great secret. ‘That is why I am sent here, Daniel. King James is an expert on witchcraft, doubtless you have heard of the book he has written on the subject, Daemonologie. You have read it?’ For a moment, FitzAlan’s tone was suffused with the youthful enthusiasm of a drinking companion eagerly inquiring if a friend has seen a play that he has found so amusing. ‘The King takes a great interest in the questioning of those accused of maleficium. Full report was made to him of your interrogation. Your answers and, shall we say, your unusual skills have convinced him that you also have a knowledge of both those who practise enchantments and those who feign to do so.’

‘I have never pretended to—’

FitzAlan cut through the prisoner’s words with a razor-sharp tone. ‘Kennel your tongue, sirrah. I am speaking. The King desires that you should travel to the west of England and make your own investigations as to whether the author of this flood is nature or the Devil.’

The prisoner almost laughed. ‘Travel? Believe me, sir, if I really was a sorcerer, I’d have already made myself invisible to the guards and walked out of here. Or conjured one of the rats into a dog, and sent it to fetch me the keys.’

‘You should have put that proof to Molyngton, it might have spared you both a keg of wasted words.’ FitzAlan made an odd guttural sound, which might have been a snort of laughter. ‘The King is no sorcerer, either. All the same, one word from him will magically unlock any door in this realm. You are detained at His Majesty’s pleasure; therefore, it follows it may please him not to detain you.’

‘Are you saying I am pardoned?’

Again, that strange growling laugh. ‘I am certain I never uttered that particular word. But if you make diligent and discreet inquiries, and return in person to deliver a report which pleases the King, you will indeed be granted an absolute pardon. Furthermore, His Majesty might be persuaded to offer you some small remuneration, enough to keep you from the temptation of returning to your old ways for a few weeks at least.’

The prisoner had watched the battle between utter relief and mistrust play out on the faces of men reprieved on the scaffold. Now he felt it. He would keep his hands! He would walk out of here a free man! Yet even as the door swung open, he saw it slamming shut before he could reach it. What exactly was FitzAlan asking of him?

‘Is there someone you suspect, sir, someone I should watch?’

It may have been a trick of the guttering candle flame, but it seemed to the prisoner that he saw the trace of a crooked smile.

‘Aye, you were well chosen,’ FitzAlan murmured almost to himself. He glanced at the door behind the prisoner, as if to assure himself it was securely closed. ‘Come a little closer.’

Gallows stepped forward till he was almost touching the table between them.

FitzAlan rested his chin on his hands. ‘You’ll recall there were four Jesuits complicit in the Gunpowder Treason, all smuggled into England some years before as missionaries for the Holy See. Henry Garnet, their leader, and Edward Oldcorne paid the price of their treachery on the executioner’s block. But the other two, John Gerard and Oswald Tesimond, escaped our shores.’

The prisoner nodded wearily. For weeks you hadn’t been able to walk down a street in London without someone trying to sell you a broadside crammed with fresh revelations about the Jesuit conspiracy in the plot.

‘But what you will not know,’ FitzAlan continued, ‘is there was a fifth Jesuit conspirator, one who has never been found. The last time the conspirators all met together, in the Mitre Tavern in Bread Street, there was one man present who the