Nau looked terrified, and Alison sympathized. What could one secretary do?
Mary got off her horse and sat on the ground. ‘I will not go!’ she said.
Willard spoke for the first time. Addressing one of his group, he said: ‘Go to that house.’ He pointed to a substantial farmhouse half-hidden by trees a mile away. ‘They’re sure to have a cart. Bring it here. If necessary, we’ll tie up Mary Stuart and put her in the cart.’
Mary stood up again, giving in. ‘I shall ride,’ she said dispiritedly. She got back on her horse.
Gorges handed Paulet a piece of paper, presumably an arrest warrant. Paulet read it and nodded. He kept the paper, perhaps wanting proof – in case anything should go wrong – that he had been ordered to let Mary out of his care.
Mary was pale and shaking. ‘Am I to be executed?’ she said in a trembling voice.
Alison wanted to cry.
Paulet looked at Mary contemptuously. After a cruelly long pause he answered her question. ‘Not today.’
The arresting party got ready to move off. One of them kicked Mary’s horse from behind, causing the beast to start, jolting Mary; but she was a good rider, and stayed in the saddle as the horse moved off. The others went with her, keeping her surrounded.
Alison cried as she watched Mary ride away, presumably to yet another prison. How had this happened? It could only be that Babington’s plot had been uncovered by Ned Willard.
Alison turned to Paulet. ‘What is to be done with her?’
‘She will be put on trial for treason.’
‘And then?’
‘And then she will be punished for her crimes,’ said Paulet. ‘God’s will be done.’
*
BABINGTON PROVED ELUSIVE. Ned searched every London house where the conspirator had lodged without finding any clues. He set up a nationwide manhunt, sending a description of Babington and his associates to sheriffs, harbourmasters and lord lieutenants of counties. He dispatched two men to Babington’s parents’ home in Derbyshire. In every communication he threatened the death penalty for anyone helping any of the conspirators to escape.
In fact, Ned was not particularly concerned about Babington. The man was no longer much of a danger. His plot had been smashed. Mary had been moved, most of the conspirators were now being interrogated in the Tower of London, and Babington himself was a fugitive. All those Catholic noblemen who had been getting ready to support the invasion must now be putting their old armour back into storage.
However, Ned knew from long and dismal experience that another plot might readily grow in the ashes of the old. He had to find a way to make that impossible. The treason trial of Mary Stuart ought to discredit her in the eyes of all but her most fanatical supporters, he thought.
And there was one man he was desperate to capture. Every prisoner interrogated had mentioned Jean Langlais. All said he was not French but English, and some had met him at the English College. They described him as a tallish man of about fifty going bald on top: there seemed nothing very distinctive about his appearance. No one knew his real name or where he came from.
The very fact that so little was known about someone so important suggested, to Ned, that he was extraordinarily competent and therefore dangerous.
Ned now knew, from interrogating Robert Pooley, that both Langlais and Babington had been at Pooley’s house minutes before the raid. They were probably the two seen, by the men-at-arms, running away from the neighbouring church, their escape aided by an obstructive flock of sheep. Ned had just missed them. But they were probably still together, along with the few conspirators remaining at large.
It took Ned ten days to track them down.
On 14 August a frightened rider on a sweating horse arrived at the house in Seething Lane. He was a young member of the Bellamy family, well-known Catholics but not suspected of treason. Babington and his fellow fugitives had turned up at the family’s home, Uxendon Hall near the village of Harrow-on-the-Hill, a dozen miles west of London. Exhausted and starving, they had begged for shelter. The Bellamys had given them food and drink – compelled to do so under threat of their lives, they claimed – but had then insisted that the runaways leave the house and travel on. Now the family were terrified they would be hanged as collaborators, and eager to prove their loyalty by helping the authorities catch the conspirators.
Ned ordered horses immediately.
Riding hard, it took him and his men-at-arms less than two hours to reach Harrow-on-the-Hill. As the name suggested, the village was perched on top of a hill that stuck up out of the surrounding fields, and boasted a little school started recently by a local farmer. Ned stopped at the village inn and learned that a group of suspiciously bedraggled strangers had passed through earlier, on foot, heading north.
Guided by young Bellamy, the party followed the road to the boundary of the parish of Harrow, marked by an ancient sarsen stone, and through the next village, which Bellamy said was called Harrow Weald. Beyond the village, at an inn called The Hare, they caught up with their quarry.
Ned and his men walked into the building with swords drawn ready for a fight, but Babington’s little group offered no resistance.
Ned looked hard at them. They were a sorry sight, having cut their hair inexpertly and stained their faces with some kind of juice in a poor attempt at disguise. They were young noblemen accustomed to soft beds, yet they had been sleeping rough for ten days. They seemed almost relieved to be caught.
Ned said: ‘Which one of you is Jean Langlais?’
For a moment no one answered.
