That evening, Garnet gave a shilling to his keeper, with a request to have some oranges brought to him. This fruit, first introduced into England about 1568, was at that time very cheap and plentiful, about eighteen-pence the hundred being the usual price. Sir William Wade, lounging about the gallery as usual, met the keeper as he came out of the cell with the money in his hand.
“What would the old fox now?” demanded he.
“An ’t please you, Sir, Mr Garnet asked for oranges.”
“Oh, come! he may have an orange or two—he can’t do any harm with them without he choke himself, and that should spare the King the cost of a rope to hang him,” said shrewd Sir William.
But he was not quite shrewd enough, for it never occurred to his non-Jesuitical mind that one of those innocent oranges was destined to play the part of a traitorous inkstand by the Reverend Henry Garnet.
A large sheet of paper, folded letter-wise, came out of the prison in the keeper’s hand an hour later. It was addressed to the Reverend Thomas Rookwood, and contained only—in appearance—the following very unobjectionable words. They were written in ink, at the top of the first page:—
“Let these spectacles be set in leather, and with a leather case, or let the fould be fitter for the nose.—Yours for ever, Henry Garnett.”
Who could think of detaining so innocent a missive, or prevent the poor prisoner from obtaining a pair of comfortable spectacles? But when the sheet of paper was held to the fire, a very different letter started out, in faint tracings of orange-juice:—
“This bearer knoweth that I write thus, but thinks it must be read with water. The papers sent with bisket-bread I was forced to burn, and did not read. I am sorry they have, without advise of friends, adventured in so wicked an action.—I must needs acknowledge my being with the two sisters, and that at White Webbs, as is trew, for they are so jealous of White Webbs that I can no way else satisfy. My names I all confesse but that last... I have acknowledged that I went from Sir Everard’s to Coughton... Where is Mrs Anne?”
A few days later, on the 2nd of March, after a careful reconnoitre to avoid the ubiquitous Sir William, Garnet applied his lips to the cranny in the door.