"Guy here will go home with you," Catesby said, "and help you think on it."

"No, he will not," Ben said. "I want none breathing on me while I think. I go into this in full libero arbitrio. I cannot be made to do it."

"That is true," Catesby said. "Except by the promptings of your own destiny, Master Jonson. I see the martyr's crown hovering above you." He looked somewhat fiercely at Tresham. "Frank," he said, "you waver. It is strange you waver when you were loudest once in saying perdition to the betrayer of the faith of his own royal mother. There are measures may be taken to discourage waverers." He looked at dark Guido and then back at pale Tresham.

"I am no waverer. I ask only that we right our souls on this matter of the killing of Catholics along with Protestants. It is a matter of theology I would ask that we concern ourselves withal."

"Theology," little Bates now said. "There is enow of theology at the Godless court, holy Jamie and his atheistical bishops. Out on theology. Let us have the true faith back and God's enemies blown up. I drink to you," he said, "Master Jonson," and drank.

"I too drink to me," Ben said, and drank likewise. He wiped his loose lips and wrung his beard and said, looking at the company severally, "Now I go home. To pray. For blessing and eke for guidance."

"Guido will go with you for guidance through the perilous streets," Catesby said.

"I go alone. I am in no peril."

"Guy will be your guide."

Ben, with Guido Fawkes at his flank, was some way advanced through the warren of stinks and drunkenness and stinking drunken bravoes that led to his lodgings when, to keep up his courage, he began to sing:

"Here will we sit upon the rocks

And see the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals."

At the song Fawkes clicked his fingers and said: