“Ay, time enough, indeed,” echoed Winter. “My Lord Monteagle may be abroad, or what not, when the Parliament opens. Pray you, Mr Tresham, trouble not yourself. I doubt not all shall go well.”
Tresham murmured something to the effect that things left to drift as they would did not invariably drift into the right harbour: but he dropped the topic for the moment.
Hitherto the secret meetings of the conspirators had been in the house beyond Clement’s Inn: but it was now deemed necessary to have a more secluded and secure retreat.
In the forest depths of Enfield Chase was an old hunting-lodge, named White Webbs, never used except occasionally by sportsmen. This was selected as a non-suspicious place of meeting. The conspirators were now nearly ready: a few days would make them quite so. Satan was also ready, and probably required no time for preparation. And God was ready too.
They met at White Webbs on the 21st of September, just a fortnight before the day appointed for the meeting of Parliament: Catesby, the Winters, the Wrights, Digby, Keyes, Grant, and Bates. Tresham was not there; he had ceased to attend the meetings, and said, if Lord Monteagle at least might not be saved he would neither find the money he had promised, nor assist any further with the plot.
They had not sat many minutes, when Percy and Fawkes joined them, the former impetuous person being in an evident state of suppressed excitement, while the latter very cool individual showed no trace of emotion.
“Now, what think you?” cried Percy. “The Parliament is prorogued yet again.”
“Sure, they have never wind of our project?” suggested one of the brothers Wright.
“Till when?” demanded Catesby, knitting his brows.
“For another month—till the fifth of November.”