Page 325 of A Column of Fire

Ned shouted a warning, but one of his companions was already acting. It was Edmund Doubleday, he saw, and he was running after Johnson.

Johnson reached a door in the end wall, not previously visible in the dim light, and threw it open.

At that moment Doubleday launched himself through the air. He cannoned into Johnson with an audible thud. Both men fell to the floor.

Johnson tried to struggle up, and Doubleday grabbed his leg. Johnson kicked Doubleday in the face. Then the others surrounded them. As Johnson tried to get to his feet they shoved him down again. Someone sat on him. Another man grabbed his arms and a third sat on his legs.

Johnson stopped struggling.

Ned crossed the room and looked down at Johnson. His face was now clearly visible in the light of several lamps. ‘I recognize you,’ Ned said. ‘You’re Guy Fawkes.’

‘Go to hell,’ said Fawkes.

Ned said: ‘Tie his hands behind his back and hobble his ankles so that he can walk but not run.’

Someone said: ‘There’s no rope.’

‘Take off his breeches and tear them into strips.’ A man with no breeches would not get far.

Something had triggered Johnson’s sudden flight. ‘What are you scared of?’ Ned asked thoughtfully.

There was no reply.

It was when I threw down the second bundle of firewood, Ned thought. What was the significance of that?

‘Go through his pockets,’ he said.

Doubleday knelt beside Johnson and searched him. Doubleday had a large red mark on his face from the kick, and it was already beginning to swell, but he appeared not to have noticed it yet.

From inside Johnson’s cloak Doubleday produced a tinder box and a touchwood match.

So, Ned thought, he was going to set fire to something. The match was notched, as if for the purpose of timing its burning – perhaps so that the person who lit it would be able to get away before . . .

Before what?

Ned looked over at the firewood stack, then at the man who was holding his flaming torch, and a terrifying possibility occurred to him.

‘Take my torch outside immediately, please, and put out the flames,’ he said, just managing to keep his voice calm. ‘Right now.’

The man to whom he had given the torch stepped smartly outside. Ned heard the hissing sound of flames being extinguished in water, probably a nearby horse trough, and he breathed a little easier.

The interior was still dimly lit by the lanterns held by the others in the search party. ‘Now,’ said Ned, ‘let’s see if this wall of firewood conceals what I think it does.’

The younger men started moving the bundles. Almost immediately Ned saw a dark-grey powder on the floor. It was almost the same colour as the stones of which the floor was made. It looked like gunpowder.

He shuddered to think how near to it he had stood with his flaming, sparking torch in his hand. No wonder Johnson had been nervous.

Behind the bundles was a space, just as in Sylvie’s warehouse; but here it was not Bibles that were hidden, but barrels – dozens of them. One had been tilted off its base to spill a heap of powder on the floor. Ned held up a lamp to see more, and was awestruck. There were at least thirty barrels of various sizes – more than enough gunpowder to flatten the House of Lords and kill everyone inside.

Including Ned Willard.

He was surprised at how angry he felt at the thought that Rollo had planned to kill him, as well as the royal family and the rest of the Privy Council and most members of Parliament.

He was not the only one to feel that way. Doubleday said: ‘They were going to murder us all!’ Several others voiced their agreement.

One of the men standing over Fawkes kicked him in the balls, hard. Fawkes writhed in pain.

Ned understood the impetus but stopped the violence. ‘We need him conscious and talking,’ he said. ‘He’s going to give us the names of all his collaborators.’