William’s first glimpse of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, some two years previous, had been to see them huddled close in the yard of The George. Though the early spring sun was warming the old grey cobbles of the inn yard, the five men lurked beneath the gallery, in the shadow of the building, shunning the light, clinging to the dark side. So obvious a pack of desperadoes William could scarcely imagine. Muffled in heavy cloaks, though the day promised warmth; eyes glittering from under their tall, broad-brimmed hats; beards jutting pugilistically forth to challenge the innocent air. They were whispering loudly amongst themselves. If I were Captain of the Watch, he thought, I’d arrest them now, just for looking like that. He knew only two of the men – Thomas Percy and Robin Catesby – the latter tall, handsome and charismatic, who now welcomed him with an affectionate embrace.
“This is Shakespeare,” he informed his companions. “He is to become one of us.” The others nodded briefly to William, then ignored him and returned to their discussion. The smallest of the three unknowns, a young man with sad eyes and a reticent chin, was remonstrating with Catesby.
“Did you not say we were to meet at The Duck and Drake in the Strand?”
The others sniggered, as at some private joke.
“How many times have you been in The Duck and Drake, Tom?” asked Catesby.
“None, that I can recall. But there’s many a London inn I’ve never been inside.”
“The reason why you’ve never been inside that particular one,” Catesby continued with assumed gravity, “is that it does not exist.”
“What?”
“There is no such inn,” said Percy. “You would be searching for it still, if I hadn’t called you from across the road.”
“It was a decoy, Tom,” explained Catesby. “A false trail for any government spy trying to track us.”
“It’s just a pity,” put in Percy, “we forgot to tell you.”
More laughter, as Tom’s drooping nether lip jutted in a truculent pout.
“Think of it,” said Percy. “In the future, when we are known to history as the men who brought England back to the true faith, they will search in vain for the place where our plot was hatched. Historians will pore over maps; pilgrims will comb the streets; men will waste their lives in a fruitless quest for the whereabouts of the old Duck and Drake in the Strand.”
“And the real ale of The George and Dragon,” added Catesby, “is better far than the phantom brew of The Duck and Drake. Let’s in.”
They filed upstairs to a garret room, simply plastered and timbered, with a small lattice window overlooking the busy, traffic-impeded high street. Side-boards were furnished with food and drink, capons and pasties, ale and wine. There were no serving staff. With the door firmly closed, the five seated themselves around a table. Their hats and cloaks off, William was able to observe them. All five men produced from their clothes short clay pipes, and pouches of tobacco. The pipes, liberally stuffed with the weed, were lit from a match they passed around the table. Each man drew in the pungent cloud in long inhalations, drinking it down to the lungs, and from the nostrils puffed out wreaths of smoke.
“Now, William,” said Catesby, sounding refreshed, “these men are your brothers in this great enterprise. Tom Wintour, who hankers after The Duck and Drake; Jack Wright; and Guido Fawkes.”
Tom, recovered from his discomfiture, nodded pleasantly. A more reserved greeting came from Fawkes, a very tall man and powerfully built, with thick black hair and pointed beard, a prominent nose and red apple cheeks, a large downward-sloping moustache, and eyebrows that slanted strangely upwards to give him a perpetually quizzical expression. Wright was also a large Falstaffian man, stout but sprightly. He was burly with pleasant features, now distorted in a scowl of suspicion as he stared at William.
“Jack?” said Catesby. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t like ’im,” he said in a harsh northern accent. “I don’t like ’im one bit.”
“Why ever not?” laughed Percy.
“I don’t like the look of ’im. Once he knows our business, may we not be discovered?”
William cupped a hand to his ear, as if finding Wright’s speech hard to understand.
“Jack, Jack,” said Percy soothingly. “You can’t talk to William like that. He’s a genius. He’s the greatest writer of our time. His plays are known as the best in Europe.”
“And,” added Catesby, “he is one of us. His mother is an Arden. His father signed the Testament at my father’s house when Campion was with us. You need not fear him.”
“Well,” said Wright, mollified. “I’m sorry. Let me shake hands with thee.”
“I have no idea what you just said to me,” returned William, “but I will take it as an apology. The insult to me I forgive, right readily. But your offence to my mother tongue is unpardonable. For speaking English in that barbaric way, God may forgive you, but I never will.”
“Nay, nay, Will,” said Catesby. “Don’t provoke him. He’s a good fellow, and the best swordsman in England. Best beware his blade.”
“I wasn’t thinking of challenging him to a duel,” said William. “But I might put him in a play. As a choleric Yorkshire jackass.”
“Ay, the pen is mightier. But we are all here of one company. Percy is my cousin. Jack went to school with Guido in York.”
“I am surprised he went to school at all. And I did not know there were any schools in York. They clearly do not teach boys to speak English.”
“Come, enough of this folly,” Fawkes interjected. His saturnine composure was nettled by the continual jesting. “This is not a playhouse. We have a serious matter in hand.”
“Well then,” said Catesby. “To business. William, we admit you of our council. We have all sworn an oath, as you must do. Here is the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, on which we have all sworn.” He placed on the table a small book, bound in brown calfskin, with decorated spine, and gold lettered title on a red morocco backstrip. “Kiss it, and swear. By the Blessed Trinity. By the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist. By the Body and Blood of Christ. By the dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea. Together, all of us, in life and death. One heart, one mind, one mission. To kill a king.”
All crossed themselves, on breasts and lips. Reverently William kissed the book, and assented to the oath.
“Amen. Now, we have debated endlessly of the ‘why’ in this business. This king, who has broken every promise he made to our Catholic brethren; who has fined and repressed us to the point of penury; and who now moves to persecute us with grievous penalties – this king must die. Today, we are here to speak of the ‘how.’ We have talked endlessly, gentlemen, and done nothing. But how do we get close enough to this king to take him off? None of us are trusted, even you, Percy, though you be a Gentleman Pensioner.”
“Gentleman or pensioner,” said Percy shortly, “James would as soon have me near him as a cockatrice.”
“And none could bear a weapon anywhere near him, save his Scottish lords, whom he trusts with his life. But now we have, among our number, one who has privilege to come close enough to the royal person to almost touch him. One who has the prerogative to carry a sword, albeit a toy one, close enough to reach the tyrant’s heart.”
Eyes levelled at William, in search of a reaction. His face remained illegible.
“William here has killed many a king in his plays,” said Percy. “He is the royal playwright, and an actor in his own plays. He could write himself a part, the character of some revenger perhaps, and bear a real sword in place of his buttoned foil. His weapon would be ready in his hand. He could approach the king at some necessary moment of the action. And so, the deed is done.”
A ruffle of approval swept the board.
“Did you not have a play,” said Catesby, “Homelaicte I think it was, a fine comedy, in which a prince stabbed the king who murdered his father? And did he not do this at a play?”
“Approximately,” said William. “But …”
“Can you not play it again?” Catesby continued. “Have at the Player King, and stab the real one? Not in jest, but in earnest?”
“A tragedy,” said William.
Fawkes glared at him. “Only for those who love the king.”
“No,” said William with some asperity. “My Hamlet was a tragedy, not a comedy.”
“Really?” said Catesby, bemused. “I distinctly remember laughing.”
“I foresee one disadvantage to this plan,” said William. “And that is that the assassin cannot hope to survive the assassination. It is a suicide mission.”
“Why man,” said Fawkes belligerently, “we all risk our lives in the very act of being here, and speaking of such high treason.”
“True,” replied William. “But in this scheme only one would die for sure. The rest of you may risk your lives from a safe distance. You will kill your king, and live to tell the tale of the poor player who perished in your cause.”
“We have no fear of venturing our bodies,” said Percy earnestly. “You know that. It is a matter of who can get close enough. For that, William, we need someone like you. As the prophet Isaiah says, ‘whom shall we send? And who will go for us?’”
“I wrote another play, a few years ago, Julius Caesar, the tragedy of Caesar’s death in the Capitol. Those who swore to kill him agreed that all should strike a blow. All should share the common guilt. All should bathe their hands in Caesar’s blood. Now I will gladly place myself in such peril for the Cause, even at risk of certain death. But only if you will all risk with me. One for all; all for one. Or if one alone, then none.”
“He has something there,” said Percy. “We are like generals who order their troops forward into ambush while we stay safe behind.”
“Could we not disguise ourselves as Players,” put in Percy, “and so join the action?”
“We could all of us wear masks, and appear in the play,” said Wright, catching on. “At the signal we could deal with the Scottish lords, while William here dispatches James.”
“Such a play,” said William gravely, “would have to be a Dumb Show, in every sense. For not even a Scottish king could understand your speech.”
“But do you think it could be done?” asked Catesby earnestly.
“No,” said William. “The actors are too well-known at court. We are all normal size. No disguise could conceal the identity of this Magog, or his companion giant Gog over there.”
“Then what?” said Percy. “Catesby brought you in with this service in mind. You say it cannot succeed. What else?”
William brooded for a moment in silence. “Your plan,” he went on, “is the assassination. How many attempts have been made on the king’s life?”
“Since he came here, only the Main Plot that I know of. In Scotland he was endangered many times. The lords Gowrie and Angus seized and held him when he was but a boy. Young Bothwell laid fire at his door. One Ruthven assaulted him and was run through.”
“Yet he lives still. What of the old queen, her late majesty Elizabeth? How many attempts?”
“Many.”
“Yes, many. And all failed. I saw my cousin Arden’s hacked-off head grinning back at me on London Bridge. His death did not improve his appearance. I saw Babbington hang, choking and blue. Saw his privy members sliced off like the tail of a radish. Saw his belly slit across, and his entrails tumble out before his very eyes. Have you smelt a man’s entrails? Saw him dragged to the block and quartered like an animal. He could not kill Elizabeth. Neither could the others.”
“But these are not the only kings in the world,” said Fawkes. “Think of France. Henri III, the last of the Valois kings, was murdered by Jacques Clement, a mere Dominican friar. Or the present king, Henri. More than one assassin has reached his very side. One came close enough to cut his lip. Those who failed in England show us the way. With more courage and resolution, it can be done. It falls to us who follow to complete their mission.”
“You are men of action, men of the sword. You think naturally of killing: the quick lunge, the subtle thrust. I am a poet. You think with your sword-arm; I with my imagination. You think small. I think big. If you had seen my Caesar, you would know the fate of those who think to crush a tyranny by ending the tyrant’s life. They were men of belief, like you; soldiers on a crusade; honourable men. Caesar was their sole enemy; Caesar they killed. And those they left alive, Marc Antony and Octavius, lived to destroy them. Brutus and Cassius died in ignominy by their own hands.”
“Are you saying we should kill all the great lords who support the king?” said Catesby. “Such a thing is not possible. We have not the strength to destroy so many at one blow. And if we had, such wholesale slaughter would shake the people’s loyalty to its roots. They would find it barbaric, intolerable. Is it not impiety to send so many, all at once, to perdition? Such a sight becomes the battlefield, but here would show much amiss. We cannot wage total war in the streets and houses of England.”
“Again, you think with your muscles, not your brain. You think only of killing by hand. Of stabbing a man to death in full public view, leaving you standing there for all to see, blade smoking with hot gore, the blood-boltered murderer. There are other ways. On what occasions would you find king, princes, bishops, lords, all assembled together in one place?”
“Some royal birthday, perhaps?”
“In church, where we cannot touch them?”
“On a state occasion?”
“My Caesar,” said William, “was killed in the Capitol.”
“The Parliament House?” Percy grabbed at the idea. “But to slaughter them all, that would take an army. We are but few.”
“Shut the doors and set a fire,” suggested Wintour. “Burn the house down, and all of them in it.”
“Impossible,” said Catesby. “A fire can be doused. Some would escape, most likely James himself.”
“No,” explained William. “You must advance on them in silence. In secret. So they do not see the danger until it is too late. You must come at them from nowhere.”
“You riddle with us, Player,” said Fawkes. “Speak plain.”
“We Catholics cannot live in the light of day, but inhabit a perpetual night where none can see the truth of what we do. We are like ghosts who cannot endure the daylight.”
“Was there not a ghost in your play, Will?” asked Percy.
“Think,” William went on. “Where is our faith housed in these evil times?”
“In the Holy Church.”
“In the Blessed Sacrament of the altar.”
“In the breasts of the faithful.”
“Good Catechetical answers, all. But where is it, in reality, physically present, here in the world? Where do we harbour our priests? Where are our Masses celebrated? Where do we hide when the king’s men hammer at the door?”
“Priest holes.”
“Secret chambers.”
“Hidden passages.”
“Exactly. That is our domain. We inhabit the darkness, and shun the light.”
“But God, in the beginning, divided the light from the darkness,” said Wintour, “and saw that it was good.”
“So He did,” replied William. “And yet, ever since the coming of Our Saviour, His faithful children have been found worshipping in the dark, hiding from the light of day. Think of St Paul, lying in the shades of his prison cell. Of the Christians in Rome, hiding in crypts and catacombs beneath the city. Of our own priests and martyrs, walled up in the shadows of a priest-hole, buried in blackness, with nothing but their own filth for company. So it has been for 1600 years. The children of God are always those who dwell in darkness, and the shadow of death.”
Percy and Catesby glanced at one another, as if beginning to understand. Wright continued to scowl in suspicion. Wintour looked intrigued, Fawkes fascinated.
“You know the work of Little John the carpenter?”
“Of course. Nicholas Owen. He has fashioned priest-holes and secret compartments in all our houses. A master of cunning contrivance and curious craft. But these are places to hide, not sally-ports for ambuscade.”
“There is another place where Little John exercises his skills. In the theatre we also have hidden compartments in which actors can conceal themselves, and from which they can emerge. Most especially under the stage. There, in the darkness, men and boys may hide from the light of day. But then they issue forth into the light, from the trap, at the designated time.”
“Yes!” cried Catesby. “Your Ghost came from beneath the stage! Through the trap-door! He was in his night-gown. I remember. That’s what made me laugh. I told you it was funny.”
“The trap-door is a portal, a permeable barrier between two worlds. The space beneath the stage is a place of darkness, that we may identify as another world. In our plays, fiends from Hell emerge, and drag the damned soul down to fiery torment. A ghost from Purgatory rises and freely walks the earth. The dead may rise from their graves at the necromancer’s command, and prey upon the living. Do they not call us devils, children of Satan, instruments of darkness? But who is it that has cast us into this Hell? Let us rise, then, from the darkness of the tomb, like ghosts to haunt the living. Let us issue forth, like demons from the pit, to tear the flesh from our oppressors’ bones, and drain our enemy’s blood.”
“So we attack them from below,” said Percy, at last seeing the practical application. “I see. Is there a cellar beneath the Parliament House?”
“Certainly,” said Fawkes. “There is an undercroft. Right beneath the floor of the House. Used for storing firewood, old broken furniture, empty barrels.”
“Could we not take possession of such a place?” asked Percy. “Clear the space and secure it. Fill it with a troop of armed men, sufficient to the task.”
“But there are many adjoining apartments,” Fawkes continued. “Numerous chambers on that lower level. Some of them are leased, I believe. They are not private places. You will find men working there, night and day. There is no access to the cellar without being detected. We could not infiltrate and hide a company of men there in secret. Someone would see us.”
“Even if we could gain access, the odds are still too great,” observed Catesby. “Surprise lasts only a few moments. Guards are everywhere, and reinforcements at call. We could not hope to meet them all. Meanwhile, the king escapes.”
“Who said anything about an armed assault?” said William. “That could be done at any time, if you had the force. But you do not. And that is why you need to think beyond the tried and trusted, think beneath the obvious. Say you have taken possession of that cellar beneath the House. Say you secure it. Lock it up. Keep others from entering. What then? What other means of assault are open to you?”
The blue smoke of their pipes had by now woven an opaque smog, through which the conspirators peered in silence at William, who vented a sigh of frustration.
“I really do have to spell it out for you, don’t I? How was James’s father killed?”
Light fell upon them in a blinding rush.
“Gunpowder!” said Percy. “He was blown sky high at Kirk O’Fields.”
“Two barrels of powder,” said Fawkes, “lodged beneath his chamber.”
“He was in his night-gown too,” put in Catesby. “Now that really was funny.”
“But that was but a small explosion,” said Wintour, “merely enough to kill one or two men.”
“But all you would you need to kill more men,” said Fawkes, “is more powder!”
“Blow up the Parliament House!” said Catesby in wonder. “How much powder would be required?”
“Thirty or forty barrels,” said Fawkes. “Placed right beneath the Chair of State.”
“Would it work?”
“Of course it would work. The whole building would be devastated.”
“Think of it,” said William. “What is a building? A haven; a harbour; a shelter from nature and the hand of war. We can live inside it, love inside it, conceive and bear our children, and it will protect us. The young can grow up in it, the sick recover their illness. But turn that building into a weapon, and we can be destroyed by the same roof and walls that have protected us from weather, and climate, from wild beasts and wilder men.
“I saw a town in Italy, after an earthquake. It was a heap of rubble. Those who died were beneath it, killed by their own homes. The shepherds, abiding in the fields, were pulling the dead from the ruins.
“You have all seen buildings engulfed by fire. The house becomes a shroud of flame that murders with a blaze. Only the houseless go free. Think of the Parliament House as a weapon. A cannon, say. Charge it with powder. Ram it full of human shot. Light the fuse, and discharge it at the moon. The house becomes the lethal instrument that slaughters all within. Kill them all, with one blow. The be-all and the end-all.”
A pregnant silence, heavy with tobacco and thought. The conspirators all stared at Shakespeare with something like awe. The ingenuity! The scope and scale! The depth and breadth of imagination! Not one of them, with all their military experience, crusading zeal and organisational ability, could have thought up such a scheme. It had to emerge from the fertile mind of an artist, a poet, a dreamer. For it is only the imagination that can body forth the shapes of things unknown.
“It is a stroke at the root,” said Catesby, breaking the silence.
“It would bring about new alterations,” said Percy, “in religion, in government, in the whole realm.”
“The effect would be terrible,” said Wintour. “So many casualties. The innocent slaughtered along with the guilty. This is how it would be seen: as murder, not tyrannicide. The king, yes. But the queen and princes? The royal babes? All the pretty chickens and their dam, at one fell swoop?”
“The cubs must be put down, if they are with their sire,” said Fawkes. “And the queen is mother to his heirs. It has always been so. If they live, we die. Unless we can seize one of them and make him serve us.”
“What of the Catholic lords,” Wintour went on, “our friends, relations, patrons? What of Monteagle, Stourton, Northumberland?”
“Casualties of war.”
“But I fear that to destroy the Parliament House, which so many hold sacred as the temple of law and the seat of government, may turn many against us.”
“Why man,” said Percy, “it is in that place they have done us all the mischief! It is there they have devised their fines, their taxes, their arrests and executions. All the injuries and oppressions from which our people suffer, stem from there. What better house to serve as the place of their punishment? There they would give the death blow to the Catholic cause. There we would hope to bring upon their heads the same end they have designed for others.”
“There is divine justice in it,” said Fawkes. “Samson brought the Temple of Dagon crashing down on the heads of the Philistines. It will be seen as the will of God.”
“It is true,” murmured Catesby. “The nature of the disease requires so sharp a remedy. In necessity as great as ours, the harshness of the deed should have no effect on us, in view of the cruelty and unbridled barbarity our enemies use towards us. We only work against life. They rob us of what is dearer than life: our goods, freedom, honour, and every shred of hope for our posterity. What man is there so lacking in religion, so shallow in his knowledge of God, that he would not despise, for the sake of these, everything else in the world, including life itself?”
“And yet,” Wintour went on, refusing to be cowed by their opposition, “it seems to me that such an act may strike the heart with fear, but not inspire it with love. Think what a quantity of blood we must spill! From such a holocaust there may spring an enormous hatred, and for us, a reputation for infamy among those we have bereaved. So great a blast may blow the horrid deed in every eye.”
“That tears may drown the wind,” said William thoughtfully. “Tell me, all of you, when a man is put to death on the scaffold, why is the act of execution rendered so dreadful, so obscene, so shameful that even the most hard-hearted man will close his eyes to shut out the horror? If a man must be put to death, could it not be encompassed with dignity and respect? He may be hanged, quietly, in private, his priest by him, his relatives near, the officers of the law looking on to ensure justice. Let him wear his own clothes, a sober suit of black, and be allowed his own private prayers. Let all be decent, and modest; let him be taken off with gentleness and mercy. He has done wrong; he deserves his punishment; now he is gone, to trouble the state no more.
“Instead of this, what do we see? Cruel exposure of obscene nakedness. Coarse laughter at a man’s weakness and fear, as he shits and pisses and whimpers his way to ignominious death. Vicious torment visited on a wretched body already enfeebled by torture. Emasculated, ripped inside out, gutted like a fish, quartered like a carcass on a butcher’s stall.
“Now why is this dreadful pageant thought necessary? Is it to prove the power of the state, that can apply such wanton cruelty at will? Why no, for that power is already manifested in the execution itself. Is it to show that the punishment must fit the crime? No, for the punishment exceeds the crime. I will tell you: it is to compel belief that the horror of the penalty must imply an equally horrid offence. The terror of the execution creates the enormity of the crime.
“When you see a man thrust a sharp blade into another man’s body, say one hot afternoon in a tavern yard, seemingly random and unprovoked, your very being cries out, why? What prompts that man to exercise such violence on another? There must be a motive we cannot see; a reason, albeit one we cannot know. And when you see a man torn to pieces on Tower Hill, or in St Paul’s yard, this is also what you feel: there must be a reason. What is being done to him, could not be done, if it were not for the absolute enormity of his wrongdoing. The crime fits the punishment: the punishment defines the crime. There is an equivalence of dread. Terror breeds terror: blood will have blood.”
“Repel force with force,” added Catesby.
“And so it is with this Gunpowder Plot, as we may call it,” William continued. “The scale of the violence will map the scope of our injuries. The dismembered corpses strewing Westminster will put all in mind of those innocents for true religion quartered on the scaffold. The ruin of their Parliament House will equal the destruction of our church. And from its ashes we will rise the phoenix of the one true faith.”
“Let it be so,” said Fawkes. “We have our Plot. And so, gentlemen, it is time for us to stop talking, and to do somewhat, here and in England.”
“We’ll need a house in Westminster.”
“We’ll need powder.”
“We’ll need weapons.”
“You Percy,” Fawkes went on, assuming command, “will secure lodgings. In your capacity as Gentleman Pensioner.”
“Aye.”
“And I’ll gather the powder. Catesby: you undertake to secure a lease on one of the apartments adjoining the cellar under the Parliament House.”
“I will.”
“Jack, a store of weapons?”
“We may start with these,” said Wright, fetching from a side-table a roll of cloth which he unwrapped on the table. Inside it lay five of the most beautiful swords William had ever seen. He took one up, and examined it. It featured a forged iron guard, consisting of round bars and an up-turned shell, the obverse chiselled with graphic illustrations. The quillons were long, straight and tapered, with turned finials, and the integrated knucklebow connected with double bars to the shell. The blade was over a yard long, and deeply engraved with scenes from the Bible, depicted with exquisite precision and skill.
During one of his Spanish voyages, Fawkes had travelled to the little walled town of Toledo, south of Madrid, sought out Juan Martinez, the most celebrated swordsmith of the day, and commissioned him to forge a number of weapons to a specific design and scheme of decoration.
First the master craftsman had heated his furnace to its full intensity, and shaped the sword, firm and strong, folding over three layers of steel, and hammering them together into a gleaming blade. Then he made the grip, formed from twisted wire, alternating silver and iron. Lastly he added the curved guard, forged for strength, and shaped for beauty.
With many a wonder did his cunning hand enrich the blade. On the shell he wrought the creation of the heavens and the earth: the land and the sea, the sun and the moon, and the stars that glorify the face of heaven. On one face of the blade he wrought also the image of Paradise, Adam and Eve with the serpent, and their banishment from the garden for their original fault. Then he wrought Cain slaying his brother Abel, and Noah delivered from the flood, and Samson groping the temple-posts to overwhelm the world.
On the other side he wrought the Annunciation, and the Nativity of Our Lord, and the Temptation in the Wilderness. And there, towards the point of the slender blade, etched in miniature, were scenes from the Passion of Christ. It was a speaking story in steel. Here Jesus stands before Pilate, and is condemned to death. Here he shoulders the cross, and begins his long journey down the Via Dolorosa. There he falls, and meets his mother. Simon of Cyrene helps him, and Veronica wipes his face. He is stripped, and nailed to the cross, and dies. He is deposed, and laid in the tomb for his last human rest. One short sleep past, he wakes eternally. Death once dead, says the sword’s sharp point, there’s no more dying then.
William replaced the weapon on the table with a kind of reverence. He was moved almost to tears by such artistry, such craft, such precision revealed in the chasing of the fine lines into obdurate steel. And he was struck to the heart by the fanatical piety of men who had troubled to acquire such ornate and decorative weapons to prosecute their bloody cause, when in fact any old iron would have served. They truly were modern-day crusaders, or warrior-monks, like the knights of old, the Templars and the Hospitallers, who took that long hot road to Jerusalem to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from its infidel occupiers. They burned with a devouring flame of religious zeal, an absolute devotion to a mission that demanded, and cost, not less than everything. Though he could never wield such a weapon himself, it was an honour simply to be of their company. And so it was with a feeling somewhere between devotion and love that he left them, and made his way north through the dark narrow lanes, back to his lodgings in Silver Street.