"And then there will be a new era of love for the true faith?" Ben asked.

"We will think of that after the blowing up," Catesby said. "Certainly there will be a many problems, but sufficient to the day as the Gospel saith. First the blowing up."

"And the choice of the one to whom shall be given the glory of setting flame to the faggots for the blowing up," Kit Wright said. They all now looked at Ben.

"He too will be blown up?" Ben asked.

"There is every likelihood that he will be blown up," Catesby said. "But he will at once be endued with a crown of martyrdom. You, Master Jonson, are wide open." They all continued to look at Ben. Ben said:

"How first are you to convey the barrels to the cellar?"

"It is a wine cellar," Rob Winter said. "The barrels will be brought on a vintner's dray. What have you there, the guards will ask. Wine, will come the answer. Wine, as hath been ordered. It is all very simple."

"And the faggots?"

"The faggots will be in another barrel, dry and ready for the laying on. And he that is to do the brave deed will go as a guard in a borrowed livery. Bearing a torch."

"In broad daylight?" Ben asked.

"He will say he has orders to search the cellar for possible treasonous men lurking. It is all very simple."

Francis Tresham now spoke. "I am against it," he said. "It is a plot of some cruelty. Also of some injustice. The Queen, true, is a foreigner and doth not matter. But there are enow good Catholic Englishmen in hiding among those of the parliament. We are blowing up our own."

"Martyrs' crowns," Ben said. "Think not of it."

"You will do the deed?" Catesby said, leaning closer to Ben and, indeed, discharging a blast of hammy garlic onto him.

"I will think on it," Ben said. "Your reasons are of a fairly persuadent order. I will go home now and start to think on it."

"Guy here will go home with you," Catesby said, "and help you think on it."

"No, he will not," Ben said. "I want none breathing on me while I think. I go into this in full libero arbitrio. I cannot be made to do it."

"That is true," Catesby said. "Except by the promptings of your own destiny, Master Jonson. I see the martyr's crown hovering above you." He looked somewhat fiercely at Tresham. "Frank," he said, "you waver. It is strange you waver when you were loudest once in saying perdition to the betrayer of the faith of his own royal mother. There are measures may be taken to discourage waverers." He looked at dark Guido and then back at pale Tresham.

"I am no waverer. I ask only that we right our souls on this matter of the killing of Catholics along with Protestants. It is a matter of theology I would ask that we concern ourselves withal."

"Theology," little Bates now said. "There is enow of theology at the Godless court, holy Jamie and his atheistical bishops. Out on theology. Let us have the true faith back and God's enemies blown up. I drink to you," he said, "Master Jonson," and drank.

"I too drink to me," Ben said, and drank likewise. He wiped his loose lips and wrung his beard and said, looking at the company severally, "Now I go home. To pray. For blessing and eke for guidance."

"Guido will go with you for guidance through the perilous streets," Catesby said.

"I go alone. I am in no peril."

"Guy will be your guide."

Ben, with Guido Fawkes at his flank, was some way advanced through the warren of stinks and drunkenness and stinking drunken bravoes that led to his lodgings when, to keep up his courage, he began to sing:

"Here will we sit upon the rocks

And see the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals."

At the song Fawkes clicked his fingers and said:

"Spy."

"I cry your mercy, what was that?"

"Spy, I said. I think you to be a manner of spy."

Ben ceased walking or rolling and looked at him fair and straight beneath the moon. "You are drunk, man. You know not what you say."

"Spy. I asked myself long who it was you put me in mind of, and he too was a poet and spy. He cried his sodomitical atheism to the streets, and none did him harm. I conclude he was under protection. His name was Kit Marlowe. That was a song of his you were singing but now. Spy."

"Marlowe," Ben said soberly. "He was all our fathers, though he was slain young, God help him. You flatter me more than you know. But I am no spy." They heard as it were antiphonal singing, though more drunk than sober, approach.

"Sit we amid the ewes and tegs

Where pastors custodise their gregs

And cantant avians do vie

With numinous sonority."

"O Jesus," Ben prayed. "Jack Marston."

It was Marston, true, drunk, true, but able to see, mainly from the bulk, who stood in his path. "Jonson, cheat, rogue, liar, ingrate, thief too. I am out now, see, and have learned all. Graaagh." The sound was of blood rising in the throat.

"You speak too plain to be true Marston. Where be your inkhorn nonsensicalities? Thief, you say. No man says thief to Jonson. Any more," he added to Fawkes, "than he says spy."

"Thief I say again. You said that you would pay me when Henslowe paid you, that Henslowe had not paid you, therefore you could not pay me. But Henslowe has paid you, has, thief. I was with him this night, I saw his account book. Draw, thief." He drew himself, though staggering.

"If it is but six shilling and threepence you want, let us have no talk of drawing. Come to my lodgings and you shall have a little on account. I will not have that thief, Jack. I am a man of probity and of religion."

"Of that we hear too," Marston cried. "The lactifluous nipples of the Christine genetrix and the viniform sanguinity of the eucharistic abomination. Draw."

"Very well." Ben sighed and unsheathed his short dagger. "I have killed, Jack," he said, "and my adversary was sober. I killed Gab Spencer, remember, and he too said thief." Ben now saw the reflection of flames in a bottle-paned window. Torches lurching round the corner of Cow Lane. Four men with swords and cudgels, the watch. With relief he lunged towards Marston. Lunging, he saw Fawkes flee. Wanted no trouble, right too, right for his filthy cause. Marston thrust, tottered, fell. Ben sheathed his dagger and leapt onto Marston's back, took his ears like ewer handles and began to crack his nose into the dirt of the cobbles. Then the watch was on him.

It was four of the morning when Will received the message to go at once to the Marshalsea. A boy hammered at the door below and Will went to his window, Mountjoy in his nightshirt also appearing, a minute later, at his.

"Mester Shakepaw?"

"Approximately. What, boy?"

"Mester Jonson in the jail do want ye naow vis minik."

"He wants money?"

"I fink not sao. E gyve me manny, a ole groat, see ere."

"Go away, garsoon," Mountjoy cried harshly, "discommoding the voisinage so. We desire no parlying of prisons in this quartier. It is a quartier respectable."

"I'll come," Will sighed. "I'll come now."

Few were sleeping in the Marshalsea. There was a kind of growling merriness, with drink, cursing, fumbling at plackets, gaming, a richer though darker version of the dayworld of the free. There was even a one-eyed man selling hot possets. Will listened, sipping, to Ben's story. "The names," Ben said, "take down the names."

"I can remember well enough of the names."

"You cannot. You are poor at remembering. You cannot remember even your own lines. Take your tablet, take down the names. And then to Cecil."

"Now?"

"Now, yes. Easy enough for you. You're a groom of the bedchamber, a sort of royal officer."

"This is no jape?"