“I will undertake that,” said Percy eagerly.
“Do we concur, then, to elect him King?” asked Catesby.
“Hold, good gentlemen! by your leave, we go something too fast,” said Fawkes. “How if Mr Percy be unable—as may be—to win Duke Charles into his hands?”
“Why, then comes the Lady Elizabeth,” said Winter.
“What say you to the only English-born of the royal issue—the Lady Mary? She, at least, is uninfect with heresy.”
There was a laugh at this suggestion: for the Princess Mary was not quite five months old.
“Very well, if we could win her,” answered Catesby: “but she would be hard to come by. No—the one easiest had, and as likely as any to serve our turn, is the young lady at Combe. Let the memory of Elizabeth the heretic, so dear to the hearts of Englishmen, be extinguished in the brighter glories of Elizabeth the Catholic. Bring her up in the Catholic faith, and wed her to a Catholic Prince, and I will lay mine head to pawn that she shall make a right royal queen, and the star of England’s glory shall suffer no tarnish in her hands. I have seen the little maid, and a bright, brave, bonnie lass she is.”
“How old?” asked Robert Winter.
“Nine years. Just the right age. Old enough to queen it, and take a pleasure therein; and not old enough to have drunk in much heresy—no more than Fathers Garnet and Gerard can soon distil out again.”
“Nay! Too old, Mr Catesby,” said Thomas Winter. “At five years, the little Duke might be so: but not his sister at nine. She’ll have learned heresy enough by then; and women are more perverse than men. They ever hold error tighter, and truth likewise.”