"And then there will be a new era of love for the true faith?" Ben asked.

"We will think of that after the blowing up," Catesby said. "Certainly there will be a many problems, but sufficient to the day as the Gospel saith. First the blowing up."

"And the choice of the one to whom shall be given the glory of setting flame to the faggots for the blowing up," Kit Wright said. They all now looked at Ben.

"He too will be blown up?" Ben asked.

"There is every likelihood that he will be blown up," Catesby said. "But he will at once be endued with a crown of martyrdom. You, Master Jonson, are wide open." They all continued to look at Ben. Ben said:

"How first are you to convey the barrels to the cellar?"

"It is a wine cellar," Rob Winter said. "The barrels will be brought on a vintner's dray. What have you there, the guards will ask. Wine, will come the answer. Wine, as hath been ordered. It is all very simple."

"And the faggots?"

"The faggots will be in another barrel, dry and ready for the laying on. And he that is to do the brave deed will go as a guard in a borrowed livery. Bearing a torch."

"In broad daylight?" Ben asked.

"He will say he has orders to search the cellar for possible treasonous men lurking. It is all very simple."

Francis Tresham now spoke. "I am against it," he said. "It is a plot of some cruelty. Also of some injustice. The Queen, true, is a foreigner and doth not matter. But there are enow good Catholic Englishmen in hiding among those of the parliament. We are blowing up our own."

"Martyrs' crowns," Ben said. "Think not of it."

"You will do the deed?" Catesby said, leaning closer to Ben and, indeed, discharging a blast of hammy garlic onto him.

"I will think on it," Ben said. "Your reasons are of a fairly persuadent order. I will go home now and start to think on it."