Midnight

Endless chimes

Then silence again

Still no sleep comes

But thick darkness smothers me

The power cut prevents me reading

I should have kept candles in case

Eyes open or closed gave no less darkness

Then suddenly a whisper, or was it wind outside?

It came again, more clearly now, but it wasn’t English

“Omnes interficere” from the mouth of a desperate but elderly man

Twice more it called and never again then deep sleep engulfed me

I awoke quite late, almost nine, washed, dressed and presented myself for breakfast

Other guests had eaten and gone apart from one man still seated but still

A strange man dressed in clothes from Shakesperian times and still wearing his tricorn hat

Then he rose, seemingly without moving his chair and, passing my table, he looked at me

When the landlady came for my breakfast order I asked about the strangely dressed guest I’d met

She straightened suddenly as if a great shock had become upon her and her face turned ghostly white

“That’s the ghost of Robert Catesby, he stayed here the night before the gunpowder plot” she almost whispered conspiritorily

“He’d met here with French Catholic men sent by the Pope to support his cause” “Will you be wanting eggs?”

I relayed by breakfast requirements and requested a daily newspaper which she brought from another table and returned to the kitchen

I spread the newspaper out on the table, the best to gather the headlines, and I was taken aback by it

“WESTMINSTER TERROR ATTACK: DRIVER ARRESTED AFTER MAN MOWS DOWN CYCLISTS AND PLOUGHS INTO PARLIAMENT BARRIER” shot back at me from the Telegraph