“If it like you, Mistress Abbott,” said Charity, opening the door immediately after a knock, “here’s your Ben, that says your master wants you.”
“Ay,” shouted Ben from the door in no dulcet tones, “and he said if you didn’t come, he’d fetch you. You were safe to be gossiping somewhere, he said, and says he—”
“Take that for your imperence, Sir!” was his mother’s answer, hurrying to the door, with a gesture suited to the words. “Well, I do vow, if ever I come forth to have half a word with a neighbour, that man o’ mine’s sure for to call it gossiping.—Get away wi’ thee! I’m coming in a wink.—Well, but you do look cheery and peaceful! I would I could ha’ tarried a bit. Mrs Lettice, my dear, you take warning by me, and don’t you marry a man as gives you no liberty. Stand up for your rights, my dear, and get ’em—that’s what I say. Good even! There’s no end to the imperence of lads, and no more to the masterfulness of men. Don’t you have nought to do with ’em! Good-night.”
“I could not have stood it another minute!” said Aubrey as soon as she was out of hearing, while he and Lettice made the walls echo.
On a calm June evening, three men met at a house in Thames Street, where Garnet lodged. They were Robert Catesby, the Reverend Oswald Greenway, and the Reverend Henry Garnet. They met to consult and decide on the last uncertainties, and as it were to finish off the scheme of the plot. The conclusions ended, Garnet let out his friends, who with hats drawn low down, and faces muffled in their cloaks, glided softly and darkly away.
As the month of August ran out, the conspirators gradually returned to London, with some exceptions, who joined their ghostly father, Garnet, in a pious pilgrimage to Saint Winifred’s Well, better known as Holywell, in Flintshire. The party numbered about thirty, and comprised Lady Digby, two daughters of Lord Vaux, Rookwood, and his wife. Thomas Winter wrote to Grant that “friends” would reach Norbrook on the second or third of September, begging him to “void his house of Morgan and his she-mate,” as otherwise it “would hardly bear all the company.” The route taken was from Goathurst, the home and inheritance of Lady Digby, by Daventry, Norbrook, the residence of Grant, Huddington, the house of Robert Winter, and Shrewsbury, to Holt, in Flintshire. In some uneasy nightmare during that pilgrimage, did a faint prescience of that which was to come ever flit before the eyes of Ambrose Rookwood, as to the circumstances wherein he should journey that road again? From Holt the ladies walked barefoot to the “holy well,” which, according to tradition, had sprung up on the place where Saint Winifred’s head had rolled on being cut off: they remained at the well for the night. They returned the same way, mass being said by Garnet at Huddington and Norbrook. It is difficult to believe that those who went on this pilgrimage could be wholly innocent of “intention” respecting the plot so soon to be executed.
Fawkes arrived from abroad on the first of September, staying the first night at an inn outside Aldgate. The next day, he went down to the Tower Wharf, hailed a boat, and was ferried to Westminster, where, under his alias of John Johnson, and Percy’s servant, he relieved Mrs Gibbons of her charge, took possession of his master’s house, and of the cellar where was stored his master’s stock of winter fuel. A careful examination of the door of the vault showed that it had not been tampered with during the absence of the conspirators.
Winter now returned to London, taking up his abode in his old quarters at the Duck, where Keyes, Rookwood, and Christopher Wright, had apartments also. Catesby and Percy did not return till later. The latter had gone to Bath, where he found Lord Monteagle; and the two sent to Catesby, entreating “the dear Robin” to join them. Catesby obeyed, and came.
The Bath, as it was then usual to call the ancient city of hot springs, was a very different town from that which we now know. Like all of Roman origin, its design was cruciform, with four gates, and as usual a church at every gate. The only one of these churches now standing—and that has been rebuilt—is Saint James’s, at South Gate. The modern fashionable part of Bath, including Milsom Street, the Circus, and the Crescent, lies outside the walls of the ancient Aqua Solis.
Mr Catesby found his friends in Cheap Street, which ran from Stawles Church, in the midst of the city, to East Gate, Here he vegetated for a week, resting after his toil, and applying himself to the business which had apparently brought him, by diligent attendance at the King’s Bath, on the site of the present Pump-room. Here, at this time, ladies and gentlemen, in elaborate costumes and adorned by wonderful hair-dressing, bathed together under the eyes of the public, which contributed its quota of amusement and interest by pelting the bathers with dead dogs, cats, and pigs—a state of things not considered disgusting, but laughable.